by Maxim Gorky
The faith for which they, with satisfaction and great self-complacency, were ready to suffer is incontestably a strong faith, but it resembles well-worn clothes, covered with all kinds of dirt, and for that very reason is less vulnerable to the ravages of time. Thought and feeling become accustomed to the narrow and oppressive envelope of prejudice and dogma, and although wingless and mutilated, they live in ease and comfort.
This belief founded on habits is one of the most grievous and harmful manifestations of our lives. Within the domains of such beliefs, as within the shadows of stone walls, anything new is born slowly, is deformed, and grows anaemic. In that dark faith there are very few of the beams of love, too many causes of offense, irritations, and petty spites which are always friendly with hatred. The flame of that faith is the phosphorescent gleam of putrescence.
But before I was convinced of this, I had to live through many weary years, break up many images in my soul, and cast them out of my memory. But at the time when I first came across these teachers of life, in the midst of tedious and sordid realities, they appeared to me as persons of great spiritual strength, the best people in the world. Almost every one of them had been persecuted, put in prison, had been banished from different towns, traveling by stages with convicts. They all lived cautious, hidden lives.
However, I saw that while pitying the “narrow spirit” of the Nikonites, these old people willingly and with great satisfaction kept one another within narrow bounds.
Crooked Pakhomie, when he had been drinking, liked to boast of his wonderful memory with regard to matters of the faith. He had several books at his finger-ends, as a Jew has his Talmud. He could put his finger on his favorite page, and from the word on which he had placed his finger, Pakhomie could go on reciting by heart in his mild, snuffling voice. He always looked on the floor, and his solitary eye ran over the floor disquietingly, as if he were seeking some lost and very valuable article.
The book with which he most often performed this trick was that of Prince Muishetzki, called “The Russian Vine,” and the passage he best knew was, “The long suffering and courageous suffering of wonderful and valiant martyrs,” but Petr Vassilitch was always trying to catch him in a mistake.
“That’s a lie! That did not happen to Cyprian the Mystic, but to Denis the Chaste.”
“What other Denis could it be? You are thinking of Dionysius.”
“Don’t shuffle with words!”
“And don’t you try to teach me!”
In a few moments both, swollen with rage, would be looking fixedly at one another, and saying:
“Perverter of the truth! Away, shameless one!”
Pakhomie answered, as if he were adding up accounts:
“As for you, you are a libertine, a goat, always hanging round the women.”
The shopman, with his hands tucked into his sleeves, smiled maliciously, and, encouraging the guardians of the ancient religion, cried, just like a small boy:
“Th—a—at’s right! Go it!”
One day when the old men were quarreling, Petr Vassilitch slapped his comrade on the face with unexpected swiftness, put him to flight, and, wiping the sweat from his face, called after the fugitive:
“Look out; that sin lies to your account! You led my hand into sin, you accursed one; you ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
He was especially fond of reproaching his comrades in that they were wanting in firm faith, and predicting that they would fall away into “Protestantism.”
“That is what troubles you, Aleksasha—the sound of the cock crowing!”
Protestantism worried and apparently frightened him, but to the question, “What is the doctrine of that sect?” he answered, not very intelligibly:
“Protestantism is the most bitter heresy; it acknowledges reason alone, and denies God! Look at the Bible Christians, for example, who read nothing but the Bible, which came from a German, from Luther, of whom it was said: He was rightly called Luther, for if you make a verb of it, it runs: Lute bo, lubo luto![1] And all that comes from the west, from the heretics of that part of the world.”
Stamping his mutilated foot, he would say coldly and heavily:
“Those are they whom the new Ritualists will have to drive out, whom they will have to watch,—yes, and burn too! But not us—we are of the true faith. Eastern, we are of the faith, the true, eastern, original Russian faith, and all the others are of the west, spoiled by free will! What good has ever come from the Germans, or the French? Look what they did in the year 12—.”
Carried away by his feelings, he forgot that it was a boy who stood before him, and with his strong hands he took hold of me by the belt, now drawing me to him, now pushing me away, as he spoke beautifully, emotionally, hotly, and youthfully:
“The mind of man wanders in the forest of its own thoughts. Like a fierce wolf it wanders, the devil’s assistant, putting the soul of man, the gift of God, on the rack! What have they imagined, these servants of the devil? The Bogomuili,[2] through whom Protestantism came, taught thus: Satan, they say, is the son of God, the elder brother of Jesus Christ, That is what they have come to! They taught people also not to obey their superiors, not to work, to abandon wife and children; a man needs nothing, no property whatever in his life; let him live as he chooses, and the devil shows him how. That Aleksasha has turned up here again.”
[1] From Lutui which means hard, violent.
[2] Another sect of Old Believers.
At this moment the shopman set me to do some work, and I left the old man alone in the gallery, but he went on talking to space:
“O soul without wings! O blind-born kitten, whither shall I run to get away from you?”
And then, with bent head and hands resting on his knees, he fell into a long silence, gazing, intent and motionless, up at the gray winter sky.
He began to take more notice of me, and his manner was kinder. When he found me with a book, he would glance over my shoulder, and say:
“Read, youngster, read; it is worth your while! It may be that you are clever; it is a pity that you think so little of your elders. You can stand up to any one, you think, but where will your sauciness land you in the end? It will lead you nowhere, youngster, but to a convict’s prison. Read by all means; but remember that books are books, and use your own brains! Danilov, the founder of the Xlist sect, came to the conclusion that neither old nor new books were necessary, and he put them all in a sack, and threw them in the water. Of course that was a stupid thing to do, but——And now that cur, Aleksasha, must come disturbing us.”
He was always talking about this Aleksasha, and one day he came into the shop, looking preoccupied and stem, and explained to the shopman:
“Aleksander Vassiliev is here in the town; he came yesterday. I have been looking for him for a long time, but he has hidden himself somewhere!”
The shopman answered in an unfriendly tone:
“I don’t know anything about him!”
Bending his head, the old man said:
“That means that for you, people are either buyers or sellers, and nothing more! Let us have some tea.”
When I brought in the big copper tea-pot, there were visitors in the shop. There was old Lukian, smiling happily, and behind the door in a dark corner sat a stranger dressed in a dark overcoat and high felt boots, with a green belt, and a cap set clumsily over his brows. His face was indistinct, but he seemed to be quiet and modest, and he looked somewhat like a shopman who had just lost his place and was very dejected about it.
Petr Vassilich, not glancing in his direction, said something sternly and ponderously, and he pulled at his cap all the time, with a convulsive movement of his right hand. He would raise his hand as if he were about to cross himself, and push his cap upwards, and he would do this until he had pushed it as far back as his crown, when he would again pull it over his brows. That convulsive move
ment reminded me of the mad beggar, Igosha, “Death in his pocket.”
“Various kinds of reptiles swim in our muddy rivers, and make the water more turbid than ever,” said Petr Vassilich.
The man who resembled a shopman asked quietly and gently:
“Do you mean that for me?”
“And suppose I do mean it for you?”
Then the man asked again, not loudly but very frankly:
“Well, and what have you to say about yourself, man?”
“What I have to say about myself, I say to God—that is my business.”
“No, man, it is mine also,” said the new-comer solemnly and firmly. “Do not turn away your face from the truth, and don’t blind yourself deliberately; that is the great sin towards God and your fellow-creatures——”
I liked to hear him call Petr Vassilich “man,” and his quiet, solemn voice stirred me. He spoke as a good priest reads, “Lord and Master of my life,” and bending forward, got off his chair, spreading his hands before his face:
“Do not judge me; my sins are not more grievous than yours.”
The samovar boiled and hissed, the old valuer spoke contemptuously, and the other continued, refusing to be stopped by his words:
“Only God knows who most befouls the source of the Holy Spirit. It may be your sin, you book-learned, literary people. As for me, I am neither book-learned nor literary; I am a man of simple life.”
“We know all about your simplicity—we have heard of it—more than we want to hear!”
“It is you who confuse the people; you break up the true faith, you scribes and Pharisees. I—what shall I say? Tell me—”
“Heresy,” said Petr Vassilich. The man held his hands before his face, just as if he were reading something written on them, and said warmly: “Do you think that to drive people from one hole to another is to do better than they? But I say no! I say: Let us be free, man! What is the good of a house, a wife, and all your belongings, in the sight of God? Let us free ourselves, man, from all that for the sake of which men fight and tear each other to pieces—from gold and silver and all kinds of property, which brings nothing but corruption and uncleanness! Not on earthly fields is the soul saved, but in the valleys of paradise! Tear yourself away from it all, I say; break all ties, all cords; break the nets of this world. They are woven by antichrist. I am going by the straight road; I do not juggle with my soul’; the dark world has no part in me.”
“And bread, water, clothes—do you have any part in them? They are worldly, you know,” said the valuer maliciously.
But these words had no effect on Aleksander. He talked all the more earnestly, and although his voice was so low, it had the sound of a brass trumpet.
“What is dear to you, man? The one God only should be dear to you. I stand before Him, cleansed from every stain. Remove the ways of earth from your heart and see God; you alone—He alone! So you will draw near to God; that is the only road to Him. That is the way of salvation—to leave father and mother—to leave all, and even thine eye, if it tempts thee—pluck it out! For God’s sake tear yourself from things and save your soul; take refuge in the spirit, and your soul shall live for ever and ever.”
“Well, it is a case with you, of the dog returning to his vomit,” said Petr Vassiliev, rising, “I should have thought that you would have grown wiser since last year, but you are worse than ever.”
The old man went swaying from the shop onto the terrace, which action disturbed Aleksander. He asked amazedly and hastily:
“Has he gone? But—why?”
Kind Lukian, winking consolingly, said:
“That’s all right—that’s all right!”
Then Aleksander fell upon him:
“And what about you, worldling? You are also sewing rubbishy words, and what do they mean? Well—a threefold alleluia—a double——”
Lukian smiled at him and then went out on the terrace also, and Aleksander, turning to the shopman, said in a tone of conviction:
“They can’t stand up to me, they simply can’t! They disappear like smoke before a flame.”
The shopman looked at him from under his brows, and observed dryly:
“I have not thought about the matter.”
“What! Do you mean you have not thought about it? This is a business which demands to be thought about.”
He sat for a moment in silence, with drooping head. Then the old men called him, and they all three went away.
This man had burst upon me like a bonfire in the night. He burned brightly, and when he was extinguished, left me feeling that there was truth in his refusal to live as other men.
In the evening, choosing a good time, I spoke about him excitedly to the head icon-painter. Quiet and kind Ivan Larionovich listened to what I had to say, and explained:
“He belongs to the Byegouns,[1] a sort of sect; they acknowledge no authority.”
“How do they live?”
“Like fugitives they wander about the earth; that is why they have been given the name Byegoun. They say that no one ought to have land, or property. And the police look upon them as dangerous, and arrest them.”
Although my life was bitter, I could not understand how any one could run away from everything pleasant. In the life which went on around me at that time, there was much that was interesting and precious to me, and Aleksander Vassiliev soon faded from my mind.
[1] Byegouns, or wanderers, still another sect of Old Believers.
But from time to time, in hours of darkness, he appeared to me. He came by the fields, or by the gray road to the forest, pushed his cap aside with a convulsive movement of his white hands, unsoiled by work, and muttered:
“I am going on the straight road; I have no part in this world; I have broken all ties.”
In conjunction with him I remembered my father, as grandmother had seen him in her dream, with a walnut stick in his hand, and behind him a spotted dog running, with its tongue hanging out.
CHAPTER XIII
The icon-painting workshop occupied two rooms in a large house partly built of stone. One room had three windows overlooking the yard and one overlooking the garden; the other room had one window overlooking the garden and another facing the street. These windows were small and square, and their panes, irisated by age, unwillingly admitted the pale, diffused light of the winter days. Both rooms were closely packed with tables, and at every table sat the bent figures of icon-painters. From the ceilings were suspended glass balls full of water, which reflected the light from the lamps and threw it upon the square surfaces of the icons in white cold rays.
It was hot and stifling in the workshop. Here worked about twenty men, icon-painters, from Palekh, Kholia, and Mstir. They all sat down in cotton overalls with unfastened collars. They had drawers made of ticking, and were barefooted, or wore sandals. Over their heads stretched, like a blue veil, the smoke of cheap tobacco, and there was a thick smell of size, varnish, and rotten eggs. The melancholy Vlandimirski song flowed slowly, like resin:
How depraved the people have now become;
The boy ruined the girl, and cared not who knew.
They sang other melancholy songs, but this was the one they sang most often. Its long-drawn-out movement did not hinder one from thinking, did not impede the movement of the fine brush, made of weasel hair, over the surface of the icons, as it painted in the lines of the figure, and laid upon the emaciated faces of the saints the fine lines of suffering. By the windows the chaser, Golovev, plied his small hammer. He was a drunken old man with an enormous blue nose. The lazy stream of song was punctuated by the ceaseless dry tap of the hammer; it was like a worm gnawing at a tree. Some evil genius had divided the work into a long series of actions, bereft of beauty and incapable of arousing any love for the business, or interest in it. The squinting joiner, Panphil, ill-natured and malicious, brought the pieces of
cypress and lilac-wood of different sizes, which he had planed and glued; the consumptive lad, Davidov, laid the colors on; his comrade, Sorokin, painted in the inscription; Milyashin outlined the design from the original with a pencil; old Golovev gilded it, and embossed the pattern in gold; the finishers drew the landscape, and the clothes of the figures; and then they were stood with faces or hands against the wall, waiting for the work of the face-painter.
It was very weird to see a large icon intended for an iconastasis, or the doors of the altar, standing against the wall without face, hands, or feet,—just the sacerdotal vestments, or the armor, and the short garments of archangels. These variously painted tablets suggested death. That which should have put life into them was absent, but it seemed as if it had been there, and had miraculously disappeared, leaving only its heavy vestments behind.
When the features had been painted in by the face-painter, the icon was handed to the workman, who filled in the design of the chaser. A different workman had to do the lettering, and the varnish was put on by the head workman himself Ivan Larionovich, a quiet man. He had a gray face; his beard, too, was gray, the hair fine and silky; his gray eyes were peculiarly deep and sad. He had a pleasant smile, but one could not smile at him. He made one feel awkward, somehow. He looked like the image of Simon Stolpnik, just as lean and emaciated, and his motionless eyes looked far away in the same abstracted manner, through people and walls.
Some days after I entered the workshop, the banner-worker, a Cossack of the Don, named Kapendiukhin, a handsome, mighty fellow, arrived in a state of intoxication. With clenched teeth and his gentle, womanish eyes blinking, he began to smash up everything with his iron fist, without uttering a word. Of medium height and well built, he cast himself on the workroom like a cat chasing rats in a cellar. The others lost their presence of mind, and hid themselves away in the corners, calling out to one another:
“Knock him down!”
The face-painter, Evgen Sitanov, was successful in stunning the maddened creature by hitting him on the head with a small stool. The Cossack subsided on the floor, and was immediately held down and tied up with towels, which he began to bite and tear with the teeth of a wild beast. This infuriated Evgen. He jumped on the table, and with his hands pressed close to his sides, prepared to jump on the Cossack. Tall and stout as he was, he would have inevitably crushed the breast-bone of Kapendiukhin by his leap, but at that moment Larionovich appeared on the scene in cap and overcoat, shook his finger at Sitanov, and said to the workmen in a quiet and business-like tone: