THE WOMAN WHO SAW GOD
ONE day, when I was visiting a village on the steppes, I came upon a
strange comedy very typical of Russian life. I went in to a bootmaker to
get one of my boots sewn up, and I overheard the following conversation.
“Marya Petrovna has seen the Anti-Christ,” says the cobbler’s wife.
“No,” says Jeremy, her husband, “it is God who has looked on her. God
has been very pleased with Masha.”
“Yes,” rejoins his wife, “she seems very holy, but I don’t like it. Last
Sunday at church she knelt so long that everyone thought she had fallen
asleep. When the priest opened the door of the church she went in and
knelt down on the stones before the blessed Ikon. All through the
service she kneeled, and all through the Communion, and though she had
bought her loaf and the priest called her she did not go up to the
altar, but simply went on kneeling. Then, when the bells rang and we all
went out, she still remained kneeling. And she didn’t cross herself. The
priest himself had to come and lift her out of the church so that he
could lock up. I think she’s under a curse. She has done some dreadful
sin—has talked with wood spirits, perhaps.”
“The Squire’s son came on the Devil’s hoof marks in the forest last
week, and saw a man with eight dead foxes shortly afterwards.”
The cobbler’s wife held up her hands with horror.
Katusha, a young woman from a neighbouring izba, has come in.
“You speak of Marya Petrovna,” says she. “We saw her last night, Tanya,
Lida and I and a lot of us looking through the window. She was kneeling
on her knees and praying to the samovar and calling it God. The priest
went in and tried to talk with her, and he tried to raise her, but it
was difficult, so he picked up the samovar instead and hid it away. Then
poor Masha stood up, and we saw her look at the big black pot that has
the cabbage soup in it, and she crossed herself as if it were an Ikon.
Two days, they say, she hasn’t eaten, and Peter, her husband, has had to
get his meals himself. She won’t do anything in the house, and directly
she sees something new she goes down on her knees to it. The priest has
been reasoning with her, and she says she sees God everywhere. God is
everywhere, that is true, but Masha says He’s in the pots and pans and
in the stove, and she won’t sit on a chair because she says it’s all
God. You should have seen her last night, she looked a holy saint, and
her eyes were full of light.”
“Lord save us!” exclaimed the cobbler’s wife.
“Permit me to go on. Her eyes were full of light, and she lifted up her
hands to the roof, and sang strange music, so that we all felt
terrified, and the priest wept. When we saw the priest weeping we didn’t
know what to think, and presently he and Peter came and told us to go
home, and that Marya Petrovna had had a vision—God had been so good to
her.”
The cobbler looked very solemnly at her for some minutes, and then
turned his gaze upon his wife. “I think,” said he, “that it may be that
this is the second coming of Christ.”
“Idiot!” exclaimed his wife. “How could Masha be Christ?”
“I don’t mean Masha,” he replied, “but perhaps she sees Him coming. He
may be getting nearer and nearer every moment, and Masha may see the
glory brighter and brighter. Masha always was our most religious.”
At this point the grocer’s wife, in a red petticoat and a jacket and a
shawl, rushed in, and exclaimed:
“Just think, friends, Marya Petrovna is dead! I am absolutely the first
person to give the news, I had it from the priest just as he left the
house. He watched with her all night—but pardon me, I must be going.”
With that she rushed out to be the first to give the news to the rest of
the village.
The cobbler and his wife exclaimed together, “Bozhe moï! Oh, Lord!” And
Katusha slipped out after the grocer’s wife, intending evidently to have
her share in the glory of gossip. The cobbler threw aside his last, and
went out as he was, in his apron and without his hat, and his wife went
with him. They swelled the little crowd that was already collected
outside Masha’s dwelling.
It was indeed as the grocer’s wife had indicated. Marya Petrovna had
died. Of what she had died everyone could say something. Some peasants
ascribed it to the Devil and some to God. The majority held that God had
taken her to heaven. The priest’s explanation was that the woman’s life
had been very acceptable to God, and that He had blessed her with a
vision of His glory. The vision had been a promise; it had perhaps shown
her her glorious place in heaven. The vision of God had entered her
eyes, so that she could not put it aside and look at the ordinary things
of life. She could not see a samovar—she saw God. She couldn’t make tea
with the samovar; that would have been sacrilege. She could not eat
soup, she couldn’t sit down, she couldn’t lie down, she couldn’t touch
anything. To do these things was sacrilege. So she died. She died from
utter exhaustion and from starvation. No doubt God had taken this means
to bring her from the world.
Such was the story that the priest communicated to his superiors and to
St Petersburg, hoping that it might perhaps be thought fit to honour the
mortal memory of this new Mary whom the Lord had honoured. No
canonisation, however, followed, though to the inhabitants of the
village of Celo the woman remains a saint and a wonder, and the moujiks
cross themselves as they pass the cottage where she used to live.
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