The Little Devil and Other Stories

by Alexei Remizov

  They laid Savva on the rug on the side of the narthex.

  The liturgy began.

  The demons, not noticing but sensing one another, were bored, hiding in the corners in the circle of those accompanying him: such anguish, his eyes swimming, such piercing pain forced open his lips but furrowed and clenched his brow.

  Badgered Savva listened, hidden away.

  The Cathedral was packed, and everything was prayerfully calm, even the children did not cry out, and it was only during the sanctification of the gifts that it broke through and suddenly there was shuddering and it started.

  Warbling, quacking, dog howling, and cuckoo sighing—“will you understand—do you understand—remember?”—Savva was thrown up to the crystal chandelier and his head was slammed against the window—the shards rang in a high tone, helplessly, and as Savva fell back to the rug, he shouted as if his chest would burst:

  “Stepanida!”

  The voice was filled with blood—a bleeding hand with torn skin rising from his throat.

  And he lay, half-dead, flat on his back until the Cherubim prayer.

  There is something enchanting in the music of the Cherubim hymn. I see a dissolving castle and the door is wide open, look at the tempting meadow, the blue forget-me-nots, it will lead you away, pull you in—up to your waist, up to your throat, and leave only your eyes, look: how terrifying is this world of God, “we who mystically represent the Cherubim.”

  The noise came up again from the hidden corners of the heated, rampaging souls. And of all the whoops and cries, the clearest and creepiest were the toads hissing like snakes.

  Everything visible and invisible, everything vegetative, stone, and blood burbled through, above and below, up and down. And above all the voices, from afar but audible to everyone, yes, everyone heard it! Unfamiliar and imperious, not in ordinary speech but in a high church way:

  “Savvo! Savvo! Rise and come to my church!”

  And Savva, awakened by the inexorable call, easily rose from the rug and firmly stepped on the crackling juniper, and walked through the whole church. He stopped before the icon of the Mother of God whose radiant eyes shone with pity for the whole suffering world, for all of us, ailing in God’s world and not knowing for what or why, and he inhaled his soul, as if sucking it in along with the air.

  With the dry straw-like crack of the torn heavenly vault, a thousand-pealing cast-iron thunderclap exploded over Moscow. This was even louder than if all the bells from the Nikolsky and Varvarsky belfries and the Simov, Donsky, Novospassky, and Androniev monasteries encircling Moscow crashed to the ground ringing in vain.

  And from the top of the church’s ceiling, tumbling in the air, came a piece of paper—look!—and it fell at Savva’s feet. Savva bent down and picked it up; it was familiar! From his father’s trading book. Amazingly: there were no curlicues or swirls of a signature, it was erased, smoothed out—a clean sheet of paper.

  Here Savva was surrounded by the tsar’s synod, and Streshnev grabbed the piece of paper to show the tsar.

  The tsar and the patriarch took Savva’s writing and turned it every which way, holding it up to the light and then bringing it close to their eyes.

  “The sheet is clean!” said the tsar.

  “Clean paper!” said the patriarch.

  And Savva heard the words familiar from childhood:

  Who would not praise you

  Holy Virgin …

  “Brother Savva, do you remember me?” And took his hand quietly.

  Savva came to: eyes glowing with the light of blue flowers were looking right into his soul.

  “Semyon Letoprovodets!” exclaimed Savva, but it was as if they were in the next world.

  “And we will leave this world!” Tears sparkled in the glowing eyes.

  They walked through the entire church to the door, the holy fool and the possessed. The holy fool stopped in the door, turned toward the icons, and cuckooed. This farewell to the world imbued the angelic chorus of “holy-holy” in the clouds with such bitterness.

  The demonic forces rushed headlong from the church.

  Viktor was in front of them.

  He turned out to be so little: a child’s body, a milky mouth. Or was he presenting himself that way? Hopping on one foot, raking the air before his chest with his arm. The elbow is close, but you can’t bite it!

  This degenerate of humankind with a quail-like clank of chains is an insurmountable wall. He is a demon of demons: he vanquished the fear and pain man cannot vanquish, and compared to him, what is some devil, even the very first one?

  __________________________

  1. September 1, commemorating Semyon, is the official first day of the church calendar year; from the mid-fourteenth century until 1700, it was the secular New Year’s Day.

  2. Black affliction was a term for extreme melancholia. Prince Dmitri Pozharsky, who led the troops that saved Moscow from the Polish-Lithuanian forces in 1611–1612, died in a state of profound depression in 1642.

  12

  ABOUT PYOTR AND FEVRONIA OF MUROM

  REMIZOV RETELLS THE TALE OF SAINTS PYOTR AND FEVRONIA, WHO DIED IN 1228, IN THE CITY OF MUROM IN RUSSIA’S NORTH. THEY WERE CANONIZED IN 1547 AND ARE CONSIDERED THE PATRON SAINTS OF MARRIAGE. RIMSKY-KORSAKOV’S OPERA THE INVISIBLE CITY OF KITEZH AND THE MAIDEN FEVRONIYA IS BASED ON THIS LEGEND. IN 2008, THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT DECLARED THEIR SAINTS DAY A HOLIDAY OF FAMILY LOVE TO COUNTER THE GROWING POPULARITY OF THE WESTERN CELEBRATION OF ST. VALENTINE’S DAY.

  Murom is a city in the Russian land, on the Oka. The high left bank. As you sail from Bolgar from the Volga, in the distance you see churches—white strawberry flowers in the blueness of the forests. The stone white Cathedral of the Birth of the Mother of God stands on Voyevoda Mountain; outside the city is the Exaltation of the Cross Convent. The city was ruled by Prince Pavel of Murom. A fiery flying Serpent came to his wife, Olga.

  I

  How this happened, Olga could not understand. She remembered that she fell asleep, shining light cut through her cloudy dream, she awoke and could see it weaving passionately, circling, a wing reaching for her—it embraced her hotly, and she saw the white wings and that the face was Pavel’s.

  For all her insensibility she sensed and told herself: “It’s not Pavel,” but she was not afraid. And this was not in her sleep and not a daydream: his mark was on her and her lips were moist. When he left her, she did not tidy herself—but fell asleep, almost unconscious. Day was the expectation of night. But whence such longing? Or were love and pain inseparable? Or was the curse to dare at all?

  And now in the middle of the day: she recognized him by the rustle of his wings and how overjoyed she was. And he tormented her all day. And since then he had been with her every day.

  Did anyone else see him the way she saw him or was he different for others—Pavel?

  She noticed that when he was with her, the servants lowered their gaze and moved away or looked without seeing: a husband can do anything he wants, but when people are there, it’s like French kissing in the metro.

  Before everyone’s eyes, she melts away with every day.

  The chamberlain reports to the prince:

  “The princess is not well: melting like snow day after day …”

  Pavel replied:

  “Feed her all she wants.”

  Pavel is a huntsman: he prefers the field to the house. Simple people live in cramped quarters, but princes—you can’t even find the doors from one room to the next: the husband lives in his rooms, the wife in her half, the husband comes into the wife’s rooms whenever he wants, the wife can’t go a step outside hers.

  As the birds flew off, he thought of his full-throated wife and unexpected, appeared in Olga’s room. Horror struck her at the sight of her husband. She confessed everything, as if in church. Her words burned, crackling: the branches of love and the bitter branch of unfaithfulness.

  Pavel was confused: the fiery Serpent, he knew, came to widows, but it was unheard
of for it to come to a married woman.

  “When did it happen?”

  “On Krasnaya Gorka, the first Sunday after Easter.”

  He thought back: the last time he was with her was on Easter week, so it happened after.

  “And what do you do?”

  She looked up—pure! And guiltily lowered her eyes.

  “But that is a great sin.”

  And at the word sin she shuddered from the rattle of the word she spoke in response—and her voice vanished.

  “Measures must be taken,” he said, his voice not his own, quiet and menacing even without words, such that his hand went up, but did not strike.

  Upset, he left.

  It was not animals and birds that raced and fluttered in his hunting thoughts but the ringed fiery Serpent rustling its white wings.

  “But why?” and he was saddened: it would end badly. Animals can’t avoid the sling, and there are snares for birds, but how do you catch the Serpent? He sees her with the Serpent, and everything in him howls like an animal: how could you allow it near you?—but he does not blame himself for anything: he is a huntsman, he can take down a bear.

  There was a homeless child in Murom; they called him Laska-Alexei. Nesterov would picture the Radonezh youth in a birch forest beneath a fresh branch, hands tightly folded, azure in his eyes, ready to rise from the earth and fly away. Laska looks through azure from his soul as if he had eyes even deeper that, say, an adult couldn’t have—that’s what grows in the forests in the Russian land. You can’t go past him without calling: Laska! What tales he told and where did he get such words! About animals and birds, the forest hidden from our eyes, and about miracles and signs and stars. Summers in the forest; winters the nuns at the Exaltation of the Cross sheltered him. He had been in the kremlin at the prince’s court: Olga liked to hear him talk and she learned about the Serpent, fiery and flying, from him. The Serpent, paper wings—a marvelous tale!

  Pavel met Laska in the forest.

  “He is a man of God,” thought Pavel, “I will ask about my wife.”

  “She needs her freedom,” Laska said. “You keep her in a dungeon. Take her with you.”

  “It’s not done,” Pavel said. “And she has nothing to complain about at home: she has a garden and pond, beavers and swans.”

  “She has no freedom.”

  “What do you know about the fiery Serpent?”

  “The fiery Serpent flies toward longing. White wings, the Dragon has green ones and is as green as the leaves; Yegory the Brave on icons struck him in the belly with his lance.”

  “What about the fiery one—where is his death?”

  “How do I know! Let him tell you himself.”

  Straight from the hunt, without stopping in his rooms, Pavel slipped unnoticed into Olga’s room.

  She sat with her legs spread and smiled, while her eyes filled with tears. Suddenly seeing Pavel, she stood, trembling.

  Pavel looked at her with disgust.

  “Stop it, listen to me. You have to put an end to this. People will hear of it: his wife is sleeping with the Serpent. A man told me the fiery Serpent is not a Dragon; you can’t jab him in the belly with a lance, but he will tell you where his death awaits him. Hear me. You will cuddle up to him and ask him: what will cause your death?”

  She listened, looking around: she was looking for the other Pavel, the one she did not fear.

  “It’s a grave sin. And I am responsible for you before God.”

  “I will ask,” she said indifferently, black rings rolling out of her eyes.

  The next day was the eve of the birth of the Mother of God, the Murom feast day. He did not tell her to come to the vigil, but went to the Cathedral alone. He thought of her with disgust and impatiently awaited the answer. He saw her cuddling and questioning—and he shut his eyes, took deep breaths, and then prayed dully, asking for protection: he was not at fault. In the morning, having stood through the service, he couldn’t wait and rushed to Olga. After a fiery night—and on such a holiday!—she was sleeping soundly. He shoved her awake. She stared, her eyes rolling: she believed it—but which Pavel was this?

  “What did he say?”

  She understood and opening her mouth like bird, the words fluttered on her tongue, but would not form, tormenting her.

  “What did he say?” Pavel repeated.

  Biting her lips, she replied with her belly, a muted voice, not her own, a stranger’s, in rhyme:

  “My death will land when Agrik’s sword is in Pyotr’s hand.”

  Pavel was proud: he knew the secret of the death—but what did Agrik, Agrik’s sword mean? He did not know. The name Agrik dug its claws into his serpentine thought, dampening the ringed fire of the flying Serpent.

  The memory of Agrik lived on in Murom.

  The old-timers said, “We know, we remember, we heard from our fathers a hundred years back: Agrik and his brother Rurik came from Novgorod to Murom. As for the sword, which the dwarf Kotopa forged, they didn’t say anything precisely, trusting to Krapiva. But Krapiva remembers nothing.”

  Others recalled Ilya, their own, from Murom, and the bogatyrs’ outpost, they remembered that among the Russian bogatyrs there were two brothers, Agrikans, both cross-eyed: one looked this way, the other that way.

  When all the bogatyrs were killed and only one Agrikan, he took the swords and hid them in a cave, and gave his own to Dobrynya.

  Other healers said, “Exactly, Agrik’s sword went to Dobrynya. He used that sword to kill Tugarin Zmeyevich. And he buried that sword: when a bogatyr appears again on Russian soil, the sword will reveal itself. No one knows where it’s buried.” And they put it on Krapiva, and Krapiva replied for the first time: The Agrik sword! For God’s sake, don’t know about it: they’ll exhaust you with demands.

  The Agrik sword exists, but where is the bogatyr who can wield it?

  Pavel had a brother, Pyotr. On the name day of Pyotr and Pavel he came at the last bird song, when the lullaby’s refrain is “oi lado,” at the end.

  Pyotr did not take after Pavel, you would not call him a huntsman, he didn’t have the spirit to scare a bird from a bush, he was timid and mild. The boyars had him in mind: when Pavel dies, it will be so easy under Pyotr—each man could be his own prince!

  Pyotr came to visit Pavel every day. They lived honoring the brothers Boris and Gleb, famed in the Russian land. After Pavel he went to see Olga. Pyotr’s modesty brought light to Olga’s eyes, like a meeting with Laska.

  Pyotr noticed the change, but did not dare ask. Olga and Pavel were hiding it from the brother.

  When Pavel learned the secret of the Serpent’s death: “Agrik’s sword in Pyotr’s hand” he was stunned to hear his brother’s name, and he opened up to Pyotr.

  “I’ll kill him!” cried Pyotr—you would not recognize his voice, determination and bravery was not his way: he raised his hand in a vow and wrath sharpened it into a sword.

  But where would he find the sword?

  When the priest brought out the cross, Pyotr was at the icon in the Exaltation convent. Agrik’s sword kept appearing before his eyes as they raised the cross—the width and length of the cross. His will to protect his brother raised him high above the earth with the cross.

  The vigil service ended. The church was empty. Pyotr, fastened by the cross’s hoop, stood alone by the cross. “Agrik’s sword” his weakened lips whispered—“give me the sword! Send me the sword!” and his arm went up like a sword: “Agrik’s sword!”

  The candles were snuffed out and the last nuns crawled from the church like black snakes. Twilight deeper than night enveloped the church and the flowers by the cross breathed their fragrance more sharply and the air was thick with flowers.

  An explosion of light struck his eyes—Pyotr awoke: Laska stood at the pulpit holding a candle and beckoned to him. He went to the light.

  “I’ll show you Agrik’s sword,” said Laska, “follow me!” He led Pyotr into the altar.

  When they entered the
altar, Laska raised the candle high above his head. “Look here,” he pointed to the wall, “see anything?”

  In the altar wall, between the bunches of branches brought as offerings, something made of metal was sticking out of a crack. Pyotr reached out and the sword was in his hand; rust hung from the handle and stuck to his fingers—the curved self-swinging sword.

  And that was the Agrik sword.

  Not letting go of the sword, Pyotr spent the night by the convent walls: he was afraid to go home, he had to go through the fields, and it would be taken away. The autumn night lit the earth with the freshness of slivers of scattered shards, but he was hot: the Serpent burned him—how and where could he catch the Serpent? Finding no peace in freedom, he hid behind the towers, looking out from cover at the ringed night—not night but the Serpent. Only the blue dawn dispelled the vision and the bells called to him: time to come to us!

  He did not remember getting through matins, the hours, and liturgy. No singing—there was hissing in his ears—and the eyes—black nails, of course, everyone was surprised to see Prince Pyotr with a sword; he was looking for Laska, all black nails. He pressed his teeth to the cold gold cross and left burned.

  Pavel had just returned from the Cathedral when Pyotr came to his rooms with his find.

  “The Agrik,” Pyotr said, laying it down before his brother.

  Pavel regarded the rusty weapon with doubt.

  Leaving the sword with his brother, he left to greet Olga as was customary.

  Not stopping to chat with others and without looking into the side room, Pyotr entered Olga’s chamber. He was amazed: Olga was not alone: Pavel was with her.

  Pyotr bowed to her, but she did not respond, there were tears in her eyes but she was not crying, she was smiling and tapping her heels: as if she were about to speak in singsong or twirl in a dance. Pyotr had never seen her like that. And how did Pavel come to be here, when he had just left him? Had Pavel passed him?