Stories (55 page)

For a long time he heard someone’s footsteps in the next room and could not remember who it was. At last the door opened and Sisoy came in, holding a candle and a teacup.

“In bed already, Your Grace?” he asked. “And I’ve come because I want to rub you with vodka and vinegar. If you rub it in well, it can be of great benefit. Lord Jesus Christ … There … There … And I’ve just been to our monastery … I doan like it! I’ll leave here tomorrow, Your Grace, I want no more of it. Lord Jesus Christ… There …”

Sisoy was unable to stay long in one place, and it seemed to him that he had been living in St. Pankraty’s Monastery for a whole year by then. And, above all, listening to him, it was hard to understand
where his home was, whether he loved anyone or anything, whether he believed in God … He did not understand himself why he was a monk, and he did not think about it, and the time of his tonsuring had long been erased from his memory; it looked as if he had simply been born a monk.

“I’ll leave tomorrow. God bless the lot of them!”

“I’d like to talk with you … I never can get around to it,” the bishop said softly, forcing himself. “I don’t know anyone or anything here.”

“So be it, if you like I’ll stay till Sunday, but no longer. I want none of it! Pah!”

“What sort of bishop am I?” the bishop went on softly. “I should be a village priest, a deacon … or a simple monk … All this oppresses me, oppresses me …”

“What? Lord Jesus Christ … There … Well, go to sleep, Your Grace! … No point! Forget it! Good night!”

The bishop did not sleep all night. And in the morning, around eight o’clock, he began to have intestinal bleeding. The
cell attendant became frightened and ran first to the archimandrite, then for the monastery doctor, Ivan Andreich, who lived in town. The doctor, a stout old man with a long gray beard, examined the bishop for a long time, and kept shaking his head and scowling, then said:

“You know, Your Grace, you’ve got typhoid fever.”

Within an hour the bishop became very thin from the bleeding, pale, pinched, his face shrank, his eyes were now big, he looked older, smaller, and it seemed to him that he was thinner, weaker, more insignificant than anyone, that all that had once been had gone somewhere very far away and would no longer repeat itself, would not be continued.

“How good!” he thought. “How good!”

His old mother came. Seeing his shrunken face and big eyes, she became frightened, fell on her knees by his bed, and started kissing his face, shoulders, hands. And to her, too, it seemed that he was thinner, weaker, and more insignificant than anyone, and she no longer remembered that he was a bishop, and she kissed him like a child very near and dear to her.

“Pavlusha, my darling,” she said, “my dear one! … My little son! … What makes you like this? Pavlusha, answer me!”

Katya, pale, stern, stood nearby and did not understand what was the matter with her uncle, why there was such suffering on her
grandmother’s face, why she was saying such touching, sad words. And he could no longer say a word, he understood nothing, and imagined that he was now a simple, ordinary man, walking briskly, merrily across the fields, tapping his stick, and over him was the broad sky, flooded with sunlight, and he was free as a bird and could go wherever he liked!

“My little son, Pavlusha, answer me!” said the old woman. “What’s the matter with you? My dear one!”

“Don’t trouble His Grace,” Sisoy said crossly, passing through the room. “Let him sleep … there’s no point… forget it! …”

Three doctors came, held a consultation, then left. The day was long, unbelievably long, then night came and lasted a very, very long time, and towards morning on Saturday the cell attendant went up to the old woman, who was lying on a sofa in the drawing room, and asked her to go to the bedroom: the bishop had bid the world farewell.

The next day was Easter. There were forty-two churches and six monasteries in the town; a resounding, joyful ringing of bells hung over the town from morning till evening, never silent, stirring up the spring air; the birds sang, the sun shone brightly. It was noisy on the big market square, swings were swinging, barrel organs playing, accordions shrieked, drunken voices shouted. In the afternoon people went driving about the main streets—in short, all was cheerful, all was well, just as it had been the year before, and as it would also be, in all probability, the year after.

A month later a new auxiliary bishop was appointed, and no one thought of Bishop Pyotr anymore. Soon he was completely forgotten. And only the old woman, the mother of the deceased, who now lives with her deacon son-in-law in a forsaken little provincial town, when she went out before evening to meet her cow, and got together by the pasture with other women, would begin telling them about her children and grandchildren, and how she once had a son who was a bishop, and she said it timidly, afraid they would not believe her …

And indeed not everyone believed her.

A
PRIL
1902

I
t was ten o’clock in the evening, and a full moon was shining over the garden. In the Shumins’ house the vigil ordered by the grandmother, Marfa Mikhailovna, had just ended, and now Nadya—she had gone out to the garden for a moment—could see the table being set for a light meal in the reception room, and her grandmother bustling about in her magnificent silk dress; Father Andrei, the archpriest of the cathedral, was talking about something with Nadya’s mother, Nina Ivanovna, and now, through the window in the evening light, her mother for some reason looked very young; next to
her stood Father Andrei’s son, Andrei Andreich, listening attentively

The garden was quiet, cool, and shadows lay dark and peaceful on the ground. From somewhere far away, very far, probably outside town, came the calling of frogs. May, sweet May, was in the air! She breathed deeply and wanted to think that, not here, but somewhere under the sky, above the trees, far outside town, in the fields and woods, spring’s own life was now unfolding, mysterious, beautiful, rich, and holy, inaccessible to the understanding of weak, sinful human beings. And for some reason she wanted to cry.

She, Nadya, was already twenty-three years old; since the age of sixteen she had been dreaming passionately of marriage, and now at last she was the fiancée of Andrei Andreich, the same one who was
standing behind the window; she liked him, the wedding was already set for the seventh of July, and yet there was no joy, she slept badly at night, her gaiety had vanished … From the
open window to the basement, where the kitchen was, came the sounds of people hurrying about, of knives chopping, of the door slamming shut on its pulley; there was a smell of roast turkey and pickled cherries. And for some reason it seemed that it would be like this all her life, without change, without end!

Now someone came out of the house and stood on the porch; it was Alexander Timofeich, or simply Sasha, a guest, come from Moscow ten days before. Long ago a distant relative, Marya Petrovna, an impoverished widow, a small, thin, ailing gentlewoman, used to come to the grandmother for charity. She had a son Sasha. For some reason he was said to be a wonderful artist, and when his mother died, the grandmother, for the salvation of her soul, sent him to Komissarov’s school in Moscow; two years later he transferred to a school of fine arts, stayed there for nearly fifteen years,
and finished up none too brilliantly in architecture, but he did not go into architecture anyway, but worked in one of the Moscow printing houses. He came to the grandmother’s almost every summer, usually very sick, to rest and recuperate.

He was now wearing a buttoned-up frock coat and shabby duck trousers frayed at the bottoms. His shirt was unironed, and his entire look was somehow unfresh. Very thin, with large eyes and long, slender fingers, bearded, dark, but, for all that, handsome. He was accustomed to the Shumins, as to his own family, and felt at home with them. And the room he lived in there had long been known as Sasha’s room.

Standing on the porch, he saw Nadya and went over to her.

“It’s nice here,” he said.

“Of course it’s nice. You ought to stay till autumn.”

“Yes, that’s probably so. Perhaps I’ll stay with you till September.”

He laughed for no reason and sat down beside her.

“And I’m sitting here and looking at mama,” said Nadya. “She looks so young from here! My mama has her weaknesses, of course,” she added after a pause, “but still she’s an extraordinary woman.”

“Yes, she’s nice …” Sasha agreed. “Your mama is, of course, a very kind and dear woman in her own way, but … how shall I put it? Early this morning I went to your kitchen, and there were four servants sleeping right on the floor, no beds, rags instead of sheets,
stench, bedbugs, cockroaches … The same as it was twenty years ago, no change at all. Well, your grandmother, God be with her, that’s how grandmothers are; but your mama speaks French, takes part in theatricals. It seems she might understand.”

When Sasha spoke, he held up two long, skinny fingers in front of his listener.

“I find everything here somehow wild, because I’m unused to it,” he went on. “Devil knows, nobody’s doing anything. Your mother spends the whole day strolling about like some sort of duchess, your grandmother also doesn’t do anything, and neither do you. And your fiancé, Andrei Andreich, doesn’t do anything either.”

Nadya had heard it all last year and, it seemed, the year before last, and she knew that Sasha could not think differently, and it used to make her laugh, but now for some reason she felt annoyed.

“That’s all the same old, boring stuff,” she said and got up. “Try to invent something newer.”

He laughed and also got up, and they both went towards the house. Tall, beautiful, trim, she now looked very healthy and well-dressed beside him; she sensed it and felt sorry for him and, for some reason, slightly awkward.

“And you say a lot that’s unnecessary,” she said. “You just talked about my Andrei, but you don’t know him.”

“My Andrei… God be with your Andrei! It’s your youth I feel sorry for.”

When they went into the reception room, everyone was just sitting down to supper. The grandmother, or granny, as she was known at home, very stout, homely, with thick eyebrows and a little mustache, spoke loudly, and from her voice and manner of speaking it was clear that she was the head of the household. She owned the shopping stalls in the market and the old house with columns and a garden, but every morning she prayed that God would save her from ruin, and with tears at that. Her daughter-in-law, Nadya’s mother, Nina Ivanovna, blond, tightly corseted, in a pince-nez, and with diamonds on ever
y finger; and Father Andrei, an old man, lean, toothless, and with a look as if he were about to say something very funny; and his son, Andrei Andreich, Nadya’s fiancé, stout and handsome, with wavy hair, resembling an actor or an artist—all three were talking about hypnotism.

“You’ll recover after a week with me,” said granny, addressing
Sasha, “only you must eat more. Just look at you!” she said. “It’s frightful! A real prodigal son, if I ever saw one!”

“I have scattered the riches which thou gavest me,” Father Andrei said slowly, with laughing eyes. “Accursed, I have fed with senseless swine …”
¹

“I love my papa,” said Andrei Andreich, touching his father’s shoulder. “A nice old man. A kind old man.”

They all fell silent. Sasha suddenly burst out laughing and put his napkin to his mouth.

“So you believe in hypnotism?” Father Andrei asked Nina Ivanovna.

“I cannot, of course, maintain that I believe in it,” Nina Ivanovna replied, giving her face a serious, even stern, expression, “but I must admit that there is much in nature that is mysterious and incomprehensible.”

“I fully agree with you, though I must add for my own part that faith considerably diminishes the sphere of the mysterious for us.”

A big, very fat turkey was served. Father Andrei and Nina Ivanovna continued their conversation. The diamonds glittered on Nina Ivanovna’s fingers, then tears began to glitter in her eyes, she became upset.

“Though I dare not argue with you,” she said, “you must agree that there are a great many insoluble riddles in life.”

“Not a single one, I dare assure you.”

After supper Andrei Andreich played the violin and Nina Ivanovna accompanied him on the piano. Ten years ago he had graduated from the university with a degree in philology, but he did not work anywhere, had no definite occupation, and only participated occasionally in concerts of a charitable nature; and in town he was called an artiste.

Andrei Andreich played; everyone listened silently. The samovar boiled quietly on the table, and only Sasha drank tea. Then, as it struck twelve, a string suddenly broke on the violin; everyone laughed and began bustling about and saying good-bye.

After seeing her fiancé off, Nadya went to her room upstairs, where she lived with her mother (the grandmother occupied the lower floor). Below, in the reception room, the lights were being put out, but Sasha still sat and drank tea. He always drank tea for a long time, Moscow-style, up to seven glasses at a time. Long after
she had undressed and gone to bed, Nadya could hear the servants tidying up downstairs, and her grandmother being angry At las
t everything quieted down, and all that could be heard was Sasha coughing occasionally in a bass voice downstairs in his room.

When Nadya woke up, it must have been about two o’clock. Dawn was breaking. Somewhere far away a night watchman was rapping. She did not want to sleep, her bed was very soft, uncomfortable. Nadya, as on all previous nights that May, sat up in bed and began to think. Her thoughts were the same as last night, monotonous, superfluous, importunate—thoughts of how Andrei Andreich had begun courting her and proposed to her, how she had accepted and had then gradually come to appreciate this kind, intelligent man. But now, for some reason, with less than a month to go till the wedding, she had begu
n to experience fear, anxiety, as if something uncertain and oppressive awaited her.

“Tick-tock, tick-tock …” the watchman rapped lazily. “Tick-tock …”

Through the big old window she can see the garden, and further away the densely flowering lilac bushes, sleepy and languid from the cold; and dense white mist is slowly drifting towards the lilacs, wanting to cover them. Drowsy rooks are cawing in the distant trees.

“My God, what makes it so oppressive for me?”

Perhaps every fiancée feels the same way before her wedding. Who knows! Or is it Sasha’s influence? But Sasha has been saying the same thing for several years on end, as if by rote, and when he says it, it seems naïve and strange. But, anyway, why can she not get Sasha out of her head? Why?

The watchman had stopped rapping long ago. Under the window and in the garden birds began making noise, the mist left the garden, everything around brightened up with the light of spring, a
s with a smile. Soon the whole garden revived, warmed and caressed by the sun, and dewdrops sparkled like diamonds on the leaves; and that morning the old, long-neglected garden seemed so young, so festive.

Granny was already awake. Sasha coughed in a rough bass. There
was the sound of the samovar being prepared downstairs, of chairs being moved around.

The hours passed slowly. Nadya had long been up and strolling in the garden, but the morning still dragged on.

Then Nina Ivanovna came, teary-eyed, with a glass of mineral water. She was taken up with spiritism, homeopathy, read a lot, liked to talk of the doubts to which she was susceptible, and all that, as it seemed to Nadya, contained a deep, mysterious meaning. Now Nadya kissed her mother and walked beside her.

“What were you crying about, mother?” she asked.

“Last night I began reading a story describing an old man and his daughter. The old man works in some office and, well, so his superior falls in love with his daughter. I didn’t finish it, but there’s a passage where I couldn’t help crying,” said Nina Ivanovna, and she sipped from the glass. “This morning I remembered it and cried a little more.”

“And I’ve been feeling so cheerless all these days,” said Nadya, after some silence. “Why can’t I sleep nights?”

“I don’t know, dear. When I can’t sleep at night, I close my eyes very, very tight, like this, and picture Anna Karenina to myself, how she walks and speaks, or I picture something historical, from the ancient world …”

Nadya felt that her mother did not and could not understand her. She felt it for the first time in her life, and even became frightened, wanted to hide herself; and she went to her room.

At two o’clock they sat down to dinner. It was Wednesday, a fast day, and therefore the grandmother was served a meatless borscht and bream with kasha.

To tease the grandmother, Sasha ate both his own meat soup and the meatless borscht. He joked all the while they were eating, but his jokes came out clumsy, invariably calculated to moralize, and it came out as not funny at all when, before producing a witticism, he raised his very long, emaciated, dead-looking fingers, and the thought occurred to one that he was very ill and was perhaps not long for this world, and one pitied him to the point of tears.

After dinner the grandmother went to her room to rest. Nina Ivanovna played the piano for a little while and then she also left.

“Ah, dear Nadya,” Sasha began his usual after-dinner conversation, “if only you would listen to me! If only you would!”

She was sitting deep in an old armchair, her eyes closed, while he quietly paced up and down the room.

“If you’d just go and study!” he said. “Only enlightened and holy people are interesting, only they are needed. The more such people there are, the sooner the Kingdom of God will come on earth. Of your town then there will gradually be no stone left upon stone— everything will turn upside down, everything will change as if by magic. And there will be huge, magnificent houses here, wonderful gardens, extraordinary fountains, remarkable people … But that’s not the main thing. The main thing is that the crowd as we think of it, as it is now, this evil will not exist then, because every man
will have faith, and every man will know what he lives for, and no one will seek support from the crowd. My dear, my darling, go! Show them all that this stagnant, gray, sinful life is sickening to you. Show it to yourself at least!”