Читать книгу Birds of Heaven, and Other Stories - Владимир Галактионович Короленко - Страница 9

It was a quiet, starless night. The horizon could still be traced as an indistinct line beneath the clouds, but still lower hung a thick mist, endless, shapeless, without form or details.

We walked on quite a while in silence. The wanderer panted timidly and tried to smother his cough.

“I don’t see Avtonomov,” he kept saying, and he gazed helplessly in the blackness of the night.

“We can’t see him. … But he sees us, by heavens,” said Andrey Ivanovich, spitefully and ominously.

The road seemed to be a confused streak, like a bridge across an abyss. … Everything around was black and indistinct. Was there or was there not a light streak on the horizon? There was not a trace of it now. Was it so short a time, since we were in that noisy hut with the laughter and conversation? … Will there be any end to this night, to this field? Were we moving ahead or was the road like an endless ribbon slipping by under our feet while we remained treading in the same spot, in the same enchanted patch of darkness? An involuntary, timid joy sprang up in my soul when an unseen brook began to babble ahead of us, when this murmur increased and then died away behind us, or when a sudden breath of wind stirred the scarcely visible clumps of willows beside the road and then died away, a sign that we had passed them. …

“It’s night now all right,” said Andrey Ivanovich quietly, and this was very unusual for him. “A man’s a fool to walk the roads a night like this. And what are we after, I’d like to know. We worked during the day, rested, drank our tea, prayed—for sleep. No, I don’t like it—and then we started along the roads. It’s better for us. Here it’s midnight and we haven’t crossed ourselves yet. We certainly pray! …”

I made no answer. Thoughts of repentance seemed still to be running through the head of Andrey Ivanovich.

“Women can teach us a little,” he said sternly. “We don’t stay at home. What do we want? …”

“Why, I can’t see Avtonomov,” interrupted the plaintive voice of the young wanderer.

“Neither can I,” grunted Andrey Ivanovich.

“What a misfortune!” said the young wanderer sorrowfully. “I’ve been abandoned by my protector. …”

His voice was so filled with despair that we both looked ahead involuntarily in search of the lost Avtonomov. Suddenly, rather to one side, we heard a dull sound as if some one had stepped upon an old bridge.

“There he is!” said Andrey Ivanovich. “He went to the left.”

“The road must have turned.”

In truth the road soon forked. We also turned to the left. Ivan Ivanovich sighed from relief.

“What are you grieving so over?” asked Andrey Ivanovich. “Is he your brother or who is he? He’s a freak, begging your pardon.”

“He’s closer than a brother. I’d be lost without him; I can’t beg myself. And in our condition not to—is absolute ruin. …”

“Why do you wander around?”

The stranger was silent as if it were hard for him to answer this question.

“I’m looking for a shelter. In some monastery. … Since my youth I have been destined for the monastic life.”

“You should live in a monastery.”

“I have a weakness,” said Ivan Ivanovich, almost inaudibly and bashfully.

“You like drink.”

“Yes, that’s it. I was spoiled as a child.”

“Too bad! … The devil’s to blame for it.”

“Yes, the devil. … Of course. … Formerly, when the people were serfs, he had a lot of work: he wrestled with the monotonous life, we’ll say. … They all saw him. … And, just think, they struggled just the same. … Now it’s our weakness. … The people are all inclined to it.”

“Y-yes,” assented Andrey Ivanovich. “It’s much easier now for the impure. … He lives with us, by heavens. Lie, dear, on the stove. … We’ll come to see you and bring one another. … Only entertain us.”

The stranger heaved a deep sigh.

“That is the truth!” he said sadly. “I’ll tell you about myself,” he whispered, as if he did not wish his words to be heard by any one in the blackness along the road. “Do you know who ruined me? My own mother and my father superior!”

“Wh-what?” queried Andrey Ivanovich, also in a low tone.

“Yes! … I know it’s sinful to blame my dead mother—may she rest in peace!” He took off his hat and crossed himself. “And yet I keep thinking: if she had had me taught a trade, I might have been a man like the others. … No, she wanted her child to have an easy life, the Lord forgive her. …”

“Go on, go on!” urged Andrey Ivanovich.

“You know,” continued Ivan Ivanovich sadly, “in old times, as the books say, parents always objected and children went secretly to the monastic cell to devote themselves. … But my mother took me herself to the monastery; she wanted me to become a clerk.”

“Yes, yes!”

“And before that, I must tell you, they used to make them psalmists and so on, … but they had changed by my time!”

“That’s the rank!”

“Yes! … And mother again! stay there in the monastery. … That’s an easy life. And the superior loves you. … That’s the truth: the father superior did love me and took me as a novice under his own charge. But if a man is doomed, fortune will become misfortune. I’ll tell you the truth: I fell because of an angel … not because of the devil. …”

“What are you telling us?” said Andrey Ivanovich in surprise.

“Just the truth. … Our superior was a wonderfully kind soul, not evil, and strict. … But he had a secret weakness; at times he’d drink. Quietly, nobly. He’d shut himself up and drink for three or four days. No more than that. Then he’d all at once stop it. … He was a strong man. … But once, in that condition, he got bored. And he called me and said: ‘Dear boy, mortify yourself. Vanya, obey me and do something you don’t want to. An innocent boy, stay with me, a hardened sinner.’ Well, I did it, and sat and listened how he talked with some one and wept over that weakness of his. … I wasn’t strong, and when I got tired I fell asleep. He said: ‘Vanya, take a drop to brace you up.’ And I drank a glass of brandy. … ‘But swear to me,’ he said, ‘that you’ll never drink a drop alone without me.’ ”

“So that’s it,” drawled Andrey Ivanovich meaningly.

“Of course I swore. And he gave me another glass. … And so it went. At first a little, then—— The father superior was a strong man. No matter how much he drank, he was still steady. But, you know, after three or four glasses, my feet went. … He remembered himself and forbade me solemnly. It was too late. I didn’t drink with him and I had the keys to the chest. … I began to take a nip secretly. … Another and a larger one. … A second time I couldn’t walk. He thought at first that it was from that first drunkenness, because of my weakness. Then he looked at me steadily and said: ‘Vanyushka, do you want a glass?’ I trembled all over from my longing for it. He guessed the truth. He took his staff, caught it in my hair, and reasoned with me. … He was strong and afraid of hurting me. … It did no good. Again and again. … He saw that his weakness was ruining me. He said to me: ‘Forgive me, Vanyushka, but you must pass through temptation or you’ll be ruined. … Go and wander. … When you meet sorrow you can be healed. I will pray for you. Come back in a year,’ he said, ‘on this same date. I will receive you like the prodigal son.’ He blessed me. Began to weep. Called the rufalny, that is, the monk who had charge of the habits, and ordered him to get me ready to wander. … He himself said the prayers for a brother who is going on a journey. … And forth I went, the servant of the Lord, on the twenty-ninth of August, the day of the Beheading of St. John Baptist, for a period of wandering. …”

The narrator again stopped, drew his breath, and coughed. Andrey Ivanovich sympathetically stopped walking and the three of us stood in the dark road. Finally Ivan Ivanovich was rested and we started on again. …

“So I traveled summer and winter. It was hard work and I had many sorrows. Yes! I went to various monasteries. Some places I didn’t get into the courtyard—others I didn’t like. Our monastery was supported by the state and rich and I’d gotten accustomed to an easy life. And I couldn’t get into another state monastery, but they took me into one where all the monks lived together, that of St. Cyril of Novoye Ozero, and it was awful: we got little tea and not a bit of tobacco; the monks were all peasants. … A hard rule and a lot of work. …”

“I bet you didn’t like that after your easy life,” said Andrey Ivanovich.

“To tell the truth, I wasn’t strong enough,” sighed Ivan Ivanovich humbly. “The burden was too great. … And sanctity looked unpleasant in that garb. There was no splendor. … A lot of people and no choir. … They did make an awful noise. …”

“That’s sanctity!” said Andrey Ivanovich with conviction.

“No, let me tell you,” answered Ivan Ivanovich no less emphatically. … “You’re wrong. … That doesn’t determine the kind of monastery. A monk must be trained and have a head like a blade of grass … and hold himself up. … That makes a fine monk and there’s mighty few of them. And the simple monk is smooth and clean with a velvety voice. Benefactors and women go wild over them. But a peasant, let me tell you, is no account even there. …”

“All right. … What next?” said Andrey Ivanovich, a little surprised at the decided opinion of the expert.

“What next?” answered the wanderer sadly. “I wandered for a year. I fasted and wandered. … The worst was that my conscience bothered me; I didn’t know how to beg. I waited and waited for that year to end—to go home, home, to my poor cell. I thought of the father superior as if he were my own father; I loved him so. Finally August twenty-ninth came. I went into the courtyard, you know, and somehow I felt badly. Our attendants came to the gate. … They knew me. ‘Wanderer Ivan, have you returned?’ ‘I have,’ was my reply. ‘Is my benefactor alive?’ ‘Too late,’ was the answer. ‘He was buried some time ago. He was deemed worthy; he went away with the collect of the Resurrection. He remembered you … and wept. … He wanted to reward you. … We’ve got a new superior, … a barbarian. Don’t let him see you?’ But,” he added, plaintively, “I can’t see Avtonomov.”

His voice betrayed his terror and sorrow.