“What can I do? I don’t want to lie to you—it was very sad at first; but then I got used to it, I grew patient—I came not to mind; there are some people who are even worse off.”
“In what way?”
“Some people haven’t even anywhere to go! And some are blind or deaf! But I, praise be to God, I can see beautifully and I can hear everything, everything. If a mole burrows underground—even so, I hear him. And I can smell every smell, even the faintest there are! If buckwheat blossoms in the field, or lime in the garden—you needn’t tell me: I’m always the first to know. So long as only a breath of wind comes from there. No, why anger God?—there are many worse off than I. For example, someone who’s well can sin very easily; but even sin itself has left me. The other day Father Alexei, the priest, came to give me communion, and said: ‘I need not confess you: how can you sin in your condition?’ And I answered him: ‘But what about sin in thought, Father?’ ‘Well,’ he says and laughs, ‘that’s not a big sin.’ And even in this sin of thought I couldn’t be much of a sinner,” continued Lukerya, “because I’ve taught myself not to think and, more important still, not to remember. Time passes quicker like that.”
I was, I confess, surprised. “You’re quite alone all the time, Lukerya; then how can you prevent thoughts coming into your head? Or do you sleep all the time?”
“Oh, no, master! I can’t always sleep. Although I have no big pains, it nags me here, inside me, and in my bones, too; it doesn’t let me sleep as I ought to. No . . . I just lie by myself, I lie and lie—and I don’t think; I feel that I’m alive and breathing—and that all of me is here. I look and I listen. The bees in the garden will buzz and bumble away; the pigeon will sit on the roof and start cooing; the mother-hen will look in with her chickens to pick up the crumbs; or else a sparrow will fly in, or a butterfly—I enjoy it so much. The year before last some swallows even built a nest over there in the corner and hatched a family. How funny it was! One of them would fly in, drop into the nest, feed the chicks—and away. You’d look again, and the other would already be there inside. Sometimes they wouldn’t fly in, but just swoop past the open door. And at once the chicks—how they’d squeak and open their beaks! . . . I thought they’d come the next year, too, but they say that some sportsman hereabouts shot them with his gun. What good can it have done him? A whole swallow is no bigger than a beetle. How cruel you are, you sporting gentlemen!”
“I don’t shoot swallows,” I hastened to observe.
“Then, once,” began Lukerya again, “I had a great joke! A hare ran in, really he did! The hounds were after him, but he came lolloping straight in at the door! . . . He sat right close to me—sat for quite a while—kept moving his nose and twitching his whiskers—a regular officer! And how he looked at me. He must have understood that he’d nothing to fear from me. At last he got up, hop-hop to the door, looked round from the threshold—what a one he was! Such a funny one!”
Lukerya looked up at me . . . as if to say, isn’t it amusing? To please her, I laughed. She bit her dried-up lips.
“Well, in winter, of course, I’m worse off, because it’s dark; it would be a pity to light a candle, and what for? Although I know my letters and was always fond of reading, what is there to read? There are no books here at all, and, even if there were, how am I going to hold one? Father Alexei brought me a calendar to occupy my mind; then he saw that it was no good, and he went and took it away again. But even when it’s dark, there’s always something to hear; a cricket chirrups, or somewhere a mouse starts scratching. Then, too, the best plan is not to think!
“Or else I say prayers,” continued Lukerya after a short rest. “Only I don’t know many of them, these prayers. And why should I go and bother the Lord God? What can I ask Him for? He knows better than I do what I need. He has sent me a cross—it means He must love me. That’s how we are told to understand it. I say ‘Our Father’ and ‘Mother of God’ and the prayer for all that suffer—and then I just go on lying again without a thought in my head. And I don’t mind!”
Two minutes passed. I didn’t break the silence and didn’t stir on the narrow little cask which served me for a seat. The cruel, stony immobility of the unfortunate living creature lying before me communicated itself to me, too: I, too, was as if benumbed.
“Listen, Lukerya,” I began at length. “Listen, I’m going to suggest something to you. Would you like me to arrange for them to take you to hospital, a good hospital in town? Who knows, perhaps they could still cure you? In any case you won’t be alone . . .”
Lukerya just moved her eyebrows. “Oh, no, master,” she said in a worried whisper, “don’t move me to hospital, don’t touch me. I’ll only get more suffering out of it. What’s the use of treating me now! . . . Why, once a doctor came here: he wanted to look at me. I said to him: ‘Don’t bother me, for the Lord Christ’s sake.’ What was the good of asking him! He started turning me over, moved my arms and legs, bent them about; he said: ‘I’m doing this for science’s sake; you see, I’m in the service of science! and you,’ he said, ‘can’t resist me, because for my troubles I’ve had an Order given me, and I try my best for fools like you.’ He pulled me about, and pulled me about, he told me the name of my illness—a learned sort of name—and with that he went away. And for a whole week afterwards all my bones ached. You say I’m alone, always alone. No, not always. I get visitors. I’m quiet—not in anyone’s way. Peasant-girls will come to me and gossip: a pilgrim-woman will look in and start telling of Jerusalem and Kiev and the holy cities. And it’s not as if I was frightened to be alone. I’m even better off, I promise you . . . Master, don’t touch me, don’t take me to hospital . . . Thank you, you’re kind, but don’t touch me, my dear.”
“Well, as you like, Lukerya. I just thought that, for your own good . . .”
“I know, master, that it was for my own good, but, master, dear master, who can help anyone else? Who can get inside someone else’s soul? Let everyone help himself! You won’t believe me—but sometimes I lie alone like this . . . and it’s as if there was no one in the whole world but me. I’m the only one alive! And it seems to me, it sort of dawns on me . . . ideas come to me—and such strange ones!”
“What are they about, Lukerya, these ideas of yours?”
“That, master, I can’t tell you either: you’d never make it out. And I forget them afterwards. It will come, like a little cloud, it will burst, it will be all fresh and good, but what it was—you’ll never understand! Only it seems to me that if there were people near me, none of this would happen, and I’d feel nothing except my own unhappiness.”
Lukerya sighed painfully. Her chest was doing its work no better than the rest of her body.
“I can see by looking at you, master,” she began again, “that you feel very sorry for me. But don’t feel too sorry, don’t indeed! Listen, I’ll tell you something: even now, sometimes, I . . . well, you remember how gay I used to be in my time? Such a lively one! . . . Well, do you know what? Even now I sing songs.”
“Songs? . . . You?”
“Yes, songs, old songs, round songs, carols, songs of all sorts! You see, I used to know many of them and I’ve not forgotten. Only I don’t sing dance songs. As I am now, there wouldn’t be any point.”
“So you sing them . . . to yourself?”
“To myself, and aloud. I can’t sing loudly, but loud enough to understand. I told you about the girl who comes to see me. An orphan, so she’s an understanding sort. Well, I’ve taught her; she’s already caught four songs from me. Don’t you believe it? Wait, now I’m going to . . .”
Lukerya collected her strength . . . The thought that this half-dead creature was getting ready to sing horrified me in spite of myself. But, before I could say a word, there trembled in my ears a drawn-out, scarcely audible, but pure and true note . . . and after it followed another, then another. Lukerya was singing “In the meadows.” She sang with no play of expression on her petrified face; even her eyes were fixed. But so
touchingly did her poor, forced little voice sound, wavering like a wisp of smoke; so hard did she strive to pour out her whole soul . . . It was no longer horror that I felt: an indescribable pity gripped my heart.
“Oh, I can’t!” she said suddenly. “I haven’t the strength . . . I’ve been so pleased to see you.”
She closed her eyes.
I put my hand on her tiny, cold fingers . . . She looked up at me—and her dark eyelids, trimmed with golden lashes, like those of an ancient statue, closed again. After a moment they glittered in the twilight . . . A tear had moistened them.
I sat there motionless as before.
“Just look at me!” said Lukerya suddenly, with unexpected force and, opening her eyes wide, tried to wipe the tears from them. “Oughtn’t I to be ashamed? What do I want? This hasn’t happened to me for a long time . . . not since the day when Vasily Polyakov was here last spring. As long as he was sitting talking to me—I didn’t mind—but when he went away—I fairly cried away to myself! Where did it all come from? . . . But tears cost nothing to girls like us. Master,” added Lukerya, “I expect you’ve got a handkerchief . . . Don’t be put off, wipe my eyes.”
I hastened to carry out her wish, and left her the handkerchief. At first she refused it . . . “What do I want with such a present?” she said. The handkerchief was very plain, but clean and white. Then she seized it in her weak fingers and did not loosen them again. I had grown used to the darkness in which we both were, and could make out her features clearly, could even discern a faint ruddiness, showing through the bronze of her face, could descry in that face, or so at least I thought, the traces of her former beauty.
“You asked me, master,” began Lukerya again, “if I sleep. I certainly don’t sleep much, but every time, I dream—good dreams! I never dream about myself as ill: I’m always well and young, in my dreams . . . The only pity is that I wake up—and I want to have a good stretch—but it’s as if I was all in chains. Once I had such a marvellous dream! Would you like me to tell you? Well, listen. I was standing in a field and all round was rye, so tall, and ripe like gold! . . . And with me there was a red dog, fierce, very fierce—trying all the time to bite me. And in my hands I had a sickle, not just an ordinary sickle, but absolutely like the moon, when it’s like a sickle. And with this moon I had to cut down the rye, every stalk of it. Only I was very tired from the heat, and the moon dazzled me, and laziness came over me; and around me cornflowers were growing, such big ones! and they all had their heads turned towards me, and I thought: I’ll pick these cornflowers, Vasya promised to come—so I’ll make a garland for myself first . . . I’ve still got time for reaping. I began to pick the cornflowers, but they melted between my fingers, and melted, and there was nothing I could do! So I couldn’t make my garland. But then I heard someone coming towards me, quite near, and calling: ‘Lusha! . . . Lusha! . . .’ Oh, I thought, what a shame—I haven’t finished! Never mind, I’ll put this moon on my head instead of the cornflowers. I put on the moon, just like a head-dress, and at once I seemed to be all aglow. I lit up the whole field around. I looked, and over the very tops of the ears of rye comes sweeping quickly towards me, not Vasya, but Christ himself! And how I knew that it was Christ, I can’t say—He was not as He is in pictures—yet it was Him! Beardless, tall, young and in white, but with a golden belt—and He stretches out His hand to me. ‘Never fear,’ He says, ‘my well-adorned bride, but follow Me; you will lead the dances in My Heavenly Kingdom and play the music of Paradise.’ And how I clung to His hand!—my dog at once went for my legs . . . But away we whirled! He was ahead . . . His wings spread out over all the sky, long, like a seagull’s—and I went after Him! And the dog had to stay behind. It was only then that I understood that this dog was my illness, and that there would be no place for it in the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Lukerya was silent for a minute.
“And then I had another dream,” she began again—“or perhaps this one was a vision . . . I don’t know. It seemed to me that I was alone in this cabin and that my dead parents came to me—my father and mother—and bowed low to me, but said nothing. And I asked them: ‘Why are you bowing to me, father and mother?’ ‘Why,’ they said, ‘because you’re suffering so much in this world that you’ve not only lightened your own soul’s burden, but you’ve taken a heavy weight off us as well, and it’s got much easier for us in the other world. You’ve already finished with your own sins; now you’re overcoming ours.’ And, so saying, my parents bowed to me again—and I could see them no longer: the walls were all I could see. I wondered very much afterwards what it was that had come over me. I even told the priest in confession. But he thinks that it couldn’t have been a vision, because visions come only to those of the priestly calling.
“Then I had another dream,” Lukerya went on. “I was sitting by a high-road, under a willow tree, holding a peeled stick, with a bundle on my shoulder and my head wrapped in a kerchief—a regular pilgrim-woman! And I had to go somewhere far, far away, on a pilgrimage. And pilgrims kept on going past me; quietly they’d go, as if against their will, always the same way: they had sad faces, all very much like one another. And I saw, winding her way amongst them, a woman a head taller than the others, wearing a strange dress, not like ours in Russia. And her face was strange, too, a stern, fasting sort of face, and all the others seemed to keep away from her; and suddenly she turned—and came straight for me. She stopped and looked at me; her eyes were like a falcon’s, yellow, big, and oh, so bright. And I asked her: ‘Who are you?’ and she said to me: ‘I am your death.’ I ought to have been afraid, but on the contrary I was glad, so glad, I crossed myself! And this woman, my death, said to me: ‘I’m sorry for you, Lukerya, but I can’t take you with me.—Good-bye!’ Lord! how sad I was then! . . . ‘Take me,’ I said, ‘mother, dearest one, take me!’ And my death turned around me, began to talk to me . . . I understood that she was telling me my hour, but darkly, as if in riddles . . . ‘After St. Peter’s,’ she said . . . With that I woke up . . . That’s the sort of strange dreams I have!”
Lukerya looked up . . . reflected . . .
“Only my trouble is this: it happens that a whole week goes by and I don’t go to sleep once. Last year a lady drove by, saw me, and gave me a bottle with some medicine against sleeplessness; she told me to take ten drops at a time. It helped me a great deal and I slept. Only now the bottle has been finished long ago . . . D’you know what medicine that was, and how to get it?”
The passing lady had clearly given Lukerya opium. I promised to get her just such a bottle, and again could not refrain from admiring her patience aloud.
“Eh, master!” she rejoined. “What are you saying? What is this patience of mine? Simeon on the Pillar really did have great patience: he stood on his pillar for thirty years! And another martyr ordered himself to be buried in the ground up to his chest and the ants ate his face. And once, someone who had read many books told me that there was a certain country, and this country had been conquered by the heathen, and they tortured or put to death all the people in it; and try as the people of the country might, they couldn’t free themselves. And then there appeared among those people a saintly virgin: she took a great sword, she put on herself clothes weighing seventy pounds, went out against the heathen, and drove them all out beyond the sea. And only after she had driven them out, she said to them: ‘Now burn me, because such was my promise, to die by fire for my people.’ And the heathen took her and burned her, and her people have been free ever since! There was a great deed for you! and what have I done?”
I marvelled to myself at this far-flung version of the Joan of Arc legend, and, after a pause, I asked Lukerya how old she was.
“Twenty-eight . . . or twenty-nine . . . less than thirty. But why count them, the years? I’ll tell you something more . . .”
Lukerya suddenly coughed dully and groaned.
“You’re talking a great deal,” I remarked to her. “It can do you harm.”
“Tru
e,” she whispered, in a hardly audible voice, “it’s the end of our talk, but no matter. Now, when you go away, I shall have all the silence I want. At least, I have got a lot off my mind . . .”
I started saying good-bye to her, repeated my promise to send her the medicine, and asked her to think carefully once more and tell me whether there was nothing she needed.
“I need nothing; I’m absolutely content, praise be to God,” she pronounced, with extreme effort, but also with emotion. “May God grant health to everyone! And you, master, please speak to your mother—the peasants here are poor—if she would only bring down their rent, just a little! They haven’t enough land, they make nothing out of it! . . . They would pray to God for you . . . but I need nothing, I’m absolutely content.”
I gave Lukerya my word to carry out her request, and was already making for the door when she called me back.
“D’you remember, master,” she said, with a wonderful brightening of her eyes and lips, “what hair I had? D’you remember—right down to my knees! For a long time I couldn’t make up my mind . . . Such hair it was! . . . But how could I comb it! In my condition! So I cut it off . . . yes . . . Well, good-bye, master! I can’t say more . . .”
The same day, before setting out to shoot, I had a talk about Lukerya with the local constable. I learned from him that in the village she was called “the Live Relic,” also that she caused no trouble; there was not a grumble to be heard from her, not a complaint. “She asks nothing for herself, on the contrary she’s grateful for everything; she’s as quiet as quiet can be, that I must say. She’s been smitten by God,” so the constable concluded, “for her sins, no doubt; but we don’t go into that. As for condemning her, for example, no, we certainly don’t condemn her. Let her be!”
A FEW WEEKS LATER I heard that Lukerya was dead. Death had come for her after all . . . and “after St. Peter’s.” The story went that on the day of her death she kept hearing the sound of bells, although it is more than five versts from Alexeyevka to the church, and it was on a weekday. Besides, Lukerya said that the sound came, not from church, but “from above.” Probably she did not venture to say—from Heaven.
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