[Part 5]

 

It was in spring, on the eve of the mid-Pentecostal feast. Father Sergy was officiating at the vigil service in his hermitage church, where the congregation was as large as the little church could hold, about twenty people. They were all well-to-do proprietors or merchants. Father Sergy admitted everyone, but a selection was made by the monk in attendance and by an assistant who was sent to the hermitage every day from the monastery. A crowd of some eighty people, wanderers,* mostly peasant women, stood outside waiting for Father Sergy to come out and bless them. Meanwhile he conducted the service, but at the point at which he went out to the tomb of his predecessor, he staggered and would have fallen had he not been caught by a merchant standing behind him and by the monk acting as deacon.

‘What is the matter, Father Sergy? Dear man! O Lord!’ exclaimed the women. ‘He is as white as a sheet!’

But Father Sergy recovered immediately, and though very pale, he waved the merchant and the deacon aside and continued to chant the service. Father Serapion, the deacon, the acolytes, and Sofya Ivanovna, a lady who always lived near the hermitage and tended Father Sergy, begged him to bring the service to an end.

‘No, there’s nothing the matter,’ said Father Sergy, slightly smiling from beneath his moustache and continuing the service. ‘Yes, that is the way the saints behaved!’ he thought.

‘A saint, an angel of God!’ he heard just then the voice of Sofya Ivanovna behind him, and also of the merchant who had supported him. He did not heed their entreaties, but went on with the service. Again crowding together they all made their way by the narrow passages back into the little church, and there, though abbreviating it slightly, Father Sergy completed vespers.

Immediately after the service Father Sergy, having pronounced the benediction on those present, went over to the bench under the elm tree at the entrance to the cave. He wished to rest and breathe the fresh air which he felt in need of, but as soon as he left the church the crowd of people rushed to him soliciting his blessing, his advice, and his help. There were women wanderers who constantly tramped from one holy place to another and from one starets to another, and were always entranced by every shrine and every starets. Father Sergy knew this common, cold, conventional, and most irreligious type. There were men wanderers, for the most part discharged soldiers, unaccustomed to a settled life, poverty-stricken, and many of them old and drunken, who tramped from monastery to monastery merely to be fed. There were rough peasants and peasant women who had come with their selfish requirements, seeking cures or to have doubts about quite practical affairs solved for them, about marrying off a daughter, or hiring a shop, or buying a bit of land, or how to atone for smothering a child or having an illegitimate one.

All this was an old story and not in the least interesting to him. He knew he would hear nothing new from these folk, that they would arouse no religious emotion in him, but he liked to see the crowd to which his blessing and advice was necessary and precious, so while that crowd oppressed him it also pleased him. Father Serapion began to drive them away, saying that Father Sergy was tired. But Father Sergy, remembering the words of the Gospel: ‘Forbid them’ (children) ‘not to come unto me’,* and feeling tenderly towards himself at this recollection, said they should be allowed to approach.

He rose, went to the railing beyond which the crowd had gathered, and began blessing them and answering their questions, but in a voice so weak that he was touched with pity for himself. Yet despite his wish to receive them all he could not do it. Things again grew dark before his eyes, and he staggered and grasped the railings. He felt a rush of blood to his head and first went pale and then suddenly flushed.

‘I must leave the rest till tomorrow. I cannot do more today,’ and, pronouncing a general benediction, he returned to the bench. The merchant again supported him, and leading him by the arm helped him to be seated.

‘Father!’ came voices from the crowd. ‘Dear Father! Do not forsake us. Without you we are lost!’

The merchant, having seated Father Sergy on the bench under the elm, took on himself police duties and drove the people off very resolutely. It is true that he spoke in a low voice so that Father Sergy might not hear him, but his words were incisive and angry.

‘Be off, be off! He has blessed you, and what more do you want? Get along with you, or I’ll wring your necks! Move on there! Get along, you old woman with your dirty leg-bands! Go, go! Where are you trying to get to? You’ve been told, that’s enough. Tomorrow will be as God wills, but for today he has finished!’

‘Father! Only let my eyes have a glimpse of his dear face!’ said an old woman.

‘I’ll glimpse you! Where are you trying to get to?’

Father Sergy noticed that the merchant seemed to be acting roughly, and in a feeble voice told the attendant that the people should not be driven away. He knew that they would be driven away all the same, and he much desired to be left alone and to rest, but he sent the attendant with that message to produce an impression.

‘All right, all right! I am not driving them away. I am only remonstrating with them,’ replied the merchant. ‘You know they wouldn’t hesitate to drive a man to death. They have no pity, they only consider themselves. You’ve been told you cannot see him. Go away! Tomorrow!’ And he got rid of them all.

He took all these pains because he liked order and liked to domineer and drive the people away, but chiefly because he wanted to have Father Sergy to himself. He was a widower with an only daughter who was an invalid and unmarried, and whom he had brought fourteen hundred versts to Father Sergy to be healed. For two years past he had been taking her to different places to be cured, first to the university clinic in the chief town of the province, but that did no good, then to a peasant in the province of Samara, where she got a little better, then to a doctor in Moscow to whom he paid much money, but this did no good at all. Now he had been told that Father Sergy wrought cures, and had brought her to him. So when all the people had been driven away he approached Father Sergy, and suddenly falling on his knees exclaimed loudly:

‘Holy Father! Bless my afflicted offspring that she may be healed of her malady. I venture to prostrate myself at your holy feet.’ And he folded his hands in supplication. He said and did all this as if he were doing something clearly and firmly appointed by law and custom, as if one must and should ask for a daughter to be cured in just this way and no other. He did it with such conviction that it seemed even to Father Sergy that it should be said and done in just that way. But nevertheless he bade him rise and tell him what the trouble was. The merchant said that his daughter, a girl of twenty-two, had fallen ill two years ago, after her mother’s sudden death, that she had moaned (as he expressed it) and since then had grown worse. And now he has brought her fourteen hundred versts and she is waiting in the guesthouse till Father Sergy should give orders to bring her. She did not go out during the day, being afraid of the light, and could only come after sunset.

‘Is she very weak?’ asked Father Sergy.

‘No, she has no particular weakness. She is quite plump and is only “nerastenic”, as the doctor says. If you will only let me bring her this evening, Father Sergy, I’ll fly like a spirit to fetch her. Holy Father! Revive a parent’s heart, restore his line, save his afflicted daughter by your prayers!’ And the merchant again threw himself on his knees and bending his head sideways over his folded hands, he remained stock still. Father Sergy again told him to get up, and thinking how heavy his activities were and how he went through with them patiently notwithstanding, he sighed heavily and after a few seconds of silence, said:

‘Well, bring her this evening. I will pray for her, but now I am tired.’ And he closed his eyes. ‘I will send for you.’

The merchant went away, stepping on tiptoe, which only made his boots creak the louder, and Father Sergy remained alone.

Father Sergy’s whole life was filled by church services and by people who came to see him, but today had been a particularly difficult one. In the morning an important official had arrived and had had a long conversation with him, and after that a lady had come with her son. This son was a young professor, a non-believer, whom the mother, an ardent believer and devoted to Father Sergy, had brought that he might talk to him. The conversation had been very trying. The young man, evidently not wishing to have a controversy with a monk, had agreed with him in everything as with someone who was mentally inferior. Father Sergy saw that the young man did not believe but yet was satisfied, tranquil, and at ease, and the memory of that conversation now disquieted him.

‘Have something to eat, Father,’ said the attendant.

‘All right, bring me something.’

The attendant went to a hut that had been arranged some ten paces from the cave, and Father Sergy remained alone.

The time was long past when he had lived alone doing everything for himself and eating only rye-bread, or rolls prepared for the Church. He had been advised long since that he had no right to neglect his health, and he was given wholesome, though Lenten, food. He ate sparingly, though much more than he had done, and often he ate with much pleasure and not as formerly with aversion and a sense of guilt. So it was now. He had some gruel, drank a cup of tea, and ate half a white roll.

The attendant went away, and Father Sergy remained alone under the elm tree.

It was a wonderful May evening, when the birches, aspens, elms, wild cherries, and oaks had just burst into foliage. The bush of wild cherries behind the elm tree was in full bloom and had not yet begun to shed its blossoms. The nightingales, one quite near at hand and two or three others in the bushes down by the river, began to trill and then burst into full song. From the river came the far-off singing of peasants returning, no doubt, from their work. The sun was setting behind the forest, its last rays glowing through the leaves. All that side was brilliant green, the other side with the elm tree was dark. The cockchafers flew clumsily about, falling to the ground when they collided with anything.

After supper Father Sergy began to repeat a silent prayer: ‘O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon us!’ and then later he read a psalm, and suddenly in the middle of the psalm a sparrow flew out from the bush, alighted on the ground, and hopped towards him chirping as it came, but then it took fright at something and flew away. He said a prayer which referred to his renunciation of the world and hastened to finish it in order to send for the merchant with the sick daughter. She interested him because she was a distraction, a new face, and because both she and her father considered him a saint whose prayers were efficacious. Outwardly he disavowed that idea, but in the depths of his soul he considered it to be true.

He was often amazed that this had happened, that he, Stepan Kasatsky, had come to be such an extraordinary saintly type and even a worker of miracles, but of the fact that he was such there could not be the least doubt. He could not fail to believe in the miracles he himself witnessed, beginning with the sick boy and ending with the old woman who had recovered her sight when he had prayed for her.

Strange as it might be, it was so. Accordingly the merchant’s daughter interested him as a new individual who had faith in him and also as a fresh opportunity to confirm his healing powers and enhance his fame. ‘They bring people a thousand versts and write about it in the papers. The Emperor knows of it, and they know of it in Europe, in unbelieving Europe,’ he thought. And suddenly he felt ashamed of his vanity and again began to pray. ‘Lord, King of Heaven, Comforter, Soul of Truth! Come and enter into us and cleanse us from all sin and save and bless our souls. Cleanse me from the sin of worldly vanity that troubles me!* he repeated, and he remembered how often he had prayed about this and how vain till now his prayers had been in that respect. His prayers worked miracles for others, but in his own case God had not granted him liberation from this petty passion.

He remembered his prayers at the commencement of his life at the hermitage, when he prayed for purity, humility, and love, and how it seemed to him then that God heard his prayers. He had retained his purity and had chopped off his finger. And he lifted the shrivelled stump of that finger to his lips and kissed it. It seemed to him now that he had been humble then when he had always seemed loathsome to himself on account of his sinfulness. And when he remembered the tender feelings with which he had then met an old man who was bringing a drunken soldier to him to ask alms and how he had received her, it seemed to him that he had then possessed love also. But now? And he asked himself whether he loved anyone, whether he loved Sofya Ivanovna, or Father Serapion, whether he had any feeling of love for all who had come to him that day, for that learned young man with whom he had had that instructive discussion in which he was concerned only to show off his own intelligence and that he had not lagged behind the times in knowledge. He wanted and needed their love, but felt none towards them. He now had neither love nor humility nor purity.

He was pleased to know that the merchant’s daughter was twenty-two, and he wondered whether she was good-looking. When he inquired whether she was weak, he really wanted to know if she had feminine charm.

‘Can I have fallen so low?’ he thought. ‘Lord, help me! Restore me, my Lord and God!’ And he clasped his hands and began to pray.

The nightingales burst into song, a cockchafer knocked against him and crept up the back of his neck. He brushed it off. ‘But does he exist? What if I am knocking at a door fastened from outside? The bar is on the door for all to see. Nature, the nightingales and the cockchafers, is that bar. Perhaps the young man was right.’ And he began to pray aloud. He prayed for a long time till these thoughts vanished and he again felt calm and confident. He rang the bell and told the attendant to say that the merchant might bring his daughter to him now.

The merchant came, leading his daughter by the arm. He led her into the cell and immediately left.

She was a very fair girl, plump and very short, with a pale, frightened, childish face and a much developed feminine figure. Father Sergy remained seated on the bench at the entrance and when she was passing and stopped beside him for his blessing he was aghast at himself for the way he looked at her body. As she passed by him he felt he’d been stung. He saw by her face that she was sensual and feeble-minded. He rose and went into the cell. She was sitting on a stool waiting for him, and when he entered she rose.

‘I want to go back to my papa,’ she said.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ he replied. ‘What are you suffering from?’

‘I am in pain all over,’ she said, and suddenly her face lit up with a smile.

‘You will be well,’ said he. ‘Pray!’

‘What is the use of praying? I have prayed and it does no good.’ And she continued to smile. ‘I want you to pray for me and lay your hands on me. I saw you in a dream.’

‘How did you see me?’

‘I saw you put your hands on my breast like this.’ She took his hand and pressed it to her breast. ‘Right here.’

He yielded his right hand to her.

‘What is your name?’ he asked, trembling all over and feeling that he was overcome and that his desire had already passed beyond control.

‘Marya. Why?’

She took his hand and kissed it, and then put her arm round his waist and pressed him to herself.

‘What are you doing?’ he said. ‘Marya, you are the devil!’

‘Oh, perhaps. What does it matter?’

And embracing him she sat down with him on the bed.

At dawn he went out onto the porch.

‘Can this all have happened? Her father will come and she will tell him everything. She is the devil! What am I to do? Here is the axe with which I chopped off my finger.’ He snatched up the axe and moved back towards the cell.

The attendant came up.

‘Do you want some wood chopped? Let me have the axe.’

He yielded up the axe and entered the cell. She was lying there asleep. He looked at her with horror and passed on beyond the partition, where he took down the peasant clothes and put them on. Then he seized a pair of scissors, cut off his long hair, and went out along the path down the hill to the river, where he had not been for more than three years.

A road ran beside the river and he went along it and walked till noon. Then he went into a field of rye and lay down there. Towards evening he approached a village on a river. He did not enter the village, but went towards the river, towards a cliff.

It was early morning, half an hour before sunrise. All was damp and gloomy and a cold early wind was blowing from the west. ‘Yes, I must end it all. There is no God. But how am I to end it? Throw myself into the river? I can swim, and wouldn’t drown. Hang myself? Yes, just throw this sash over a branch.’ This seemed so feasible and so easy that he was horrified. As usual at moments of despair he felt the need of prayer. But there was no one to pray to. There was no God. He lay down resting on his arm, and suddenly such a longing for sleep overcame him that he could no longer support his head on his hand, but stretched out his arm, laid his head upon it, and fell asleep. But that sleep lasted only for a moment. He woke up immediately and began either to daydream or remember.

He saw himself as a child in his mother’s home in the country. A carriage drives up, and out of it steps Uncle Nikolay Sergeevich, with his long, spade-shaped, black beard, and with him Pashenka, a thin little girl with large meek eyes and a timid pathetic face. And into their company of boys Pashenka is brought and they have to play with her, but it is boring. She is stupid, and it ends by their making fun of her and forcing her to show how she can swim. She lies down on the floor and shows them, and they all laugh and make a fool of her. She sees this and blushes red in patches and becomes more pitiable than before, so pitiable that he feels ashamed and can never forget that crooked, kindly, submissive smile. And Sergy remembered having seen her since then. Long after, just before he became a monk, she had married a landowner who squandered all her fortune and was in the habit of beating her. She had had two children, a son and a daughter, but the son had died while still young. And Sergy remembered having seen her very wretched. Then again he had seen her in the monastery when she was a widow. She had been still the same, not exactly stupid, but insipid, insignificant, and pitiable. She had come with her daughter and her daughter’s fiancé. They were already poor at that time and later on he had heard that she was living in a small provincial town and was very poor.

‘Why am I thinking about her?’ he asked himself, but he could not cease doing so. ‘Where is she? How is she getting on? Is she still as unhappy as she was then when she had to show us how to swim on the floor? But why should I think about her? What am I doing? I must put an end to myself.’

And again he was terrified, and again, to escape from that thought, he went on thinking about Pashenka.

So he lay for a long time, thinking now of his unavoidable end and now of Pashenka. She presented herself to him as a means of salvation. At last he fell asleep, and in his sleep he saw an angel who came to him and said: ‘Go to Pashenka and learn from her what you have to do, what your sin is, and wherein lies your salvation.’

He awoke, and having decided that this was a vision sent by God, he rejoiced and resolved to do what had been told him in the vision. He knew the town where she lived. It was some three hundred versts away, and he set out to walk there.