by Rice, Anne
“Oh, Brother, how courageous you are,” I said. I put a jug of water to his lips. The mud streaked them as he drank. His head rested back in soft rubble.
“And you, child,” he said with labored breaths, turning ever so slightly from the proffered jug, “when will you have the strength to choose your earthen cell among us, your grave, and wait for Christ to come?”
“Soon, I pray, Brother,” I answered. I stepped back. I lifted the shovel.
I dug into the next cell, and soon a dreadful unmistakable stench assailed me. The priest beside me stayed my hand.
“Our Good Brother Joseph is finally with the Lord,” he said. “That’s it, uncover his face so that we may see for ourselves that he died at peace.”
The stench grew thicker. Only dead human beings reek this strongly. It’s the smell of desolate graves and carts coming from those districts where the plague is at its worst. I feared I would be sick. But I continued to dig, until at last we uncovered the dead man’s head. Bald, a skull encased in shrunken skin.
Prayers rose from the brothers behind me. “Close it up, Andrei.”
“When will you have the courage, Brother? Only God can tell you when—.”
“The courage to what!” I know this booming voice, this big-shouldered man who barrels his way down the catacomb. No mistaking his auburn hair and beard, his leather jerkin and his weapons hung on his leather belt.
“This is what you do with my son, the ikon painter!”
He grabbed me by the shoulder, as he’d done a thousand times, with the same huge paw of a hand that had beaten me senseless.
“Let go of me, please, you impossible and ignorant ox,” I whispered. “We’re in the house of God.”
He dragged me so that I fell on my knees. My robe was tearing, black cloth ripping.
“Father, stop it and go away,” I said.
“Deep in these pits to bury a boy who can paint with the skill of the angels!”
“Brother Ivan, stop your shouting. It’s for God to decide what each of us will do.”
The priests ran behind me. I was dragged into the workroom. Ikons in rows hung from the ceiling, covering all of the far wall. My Father flung me down in the chair at the large heavy table. He lifted the iron candlestick with its fluttering, protesting candle to light all the tapers around.
The illumination made a fire on his huge beard. Long gray hairs sprung from his thick eyebrows, combed upwards, diabolical.
“You behave like the village idiot, Father,” I whispered. “It’s a wonder I’m not a slobbering idiot beggar myself.”
“Shut up, Andrei. Nobody’s taught you any manners here, that’s clear enough. You need me to beat you.”
He slammed his fist into the side of my head. My ear went numb.
“I thought I’d beaten you enough before I brought you here, but not so,” he said. He smacked me again.
“Desecration!” cried the priest, looming above me. “The boy’s consecrated to God.”
“Consecrated to a pack of lunatics,” said my Father. He took a packet out of his coat. “Your eggs, Brothers!” he said with contempt. He lay back the soft leather and removed an egg. “Paint, Andrei. Paint to remind these lunatics that you have the gift from God Himself.”
“And God Himself it is who paints the picture,” cried the priest, the eldest of them, whose sticky gray hair was so soiled in time with oil that it was near black. He pushed his way between my chair and my Father.
My Father set down all but one egg. Leaning over a small earthen bowl on the table, he broke the shell of the egg, carefully gathering the yolk in one side, and letting all the rest spill into his leather cloth. “There, there, pure yolk, Andrei.” He sighed, and then threw the broken shell on the floor.
He picked up the small pitcher and poured the water into the yolk.
“You mix it, mix your colors and work. Remind these—.”
“He works when God calls him to work,” declared the Elder, “and when God calls him to bury himself within the Earth, to live the life of the reclusive, the hermit, then will he do that.”
“Like Hell,” said my Father. “Prince Michael himself has asked for an Ikon of the Virgin. Andrei, paint! Paint three for me that I may give the Prince the Ikon for which he asks, and take the others to the distant castle of his cousin, Prince Feodor, as he has asked.”
“That castle’s destroyed, Father,” I said contemptuously. “Feodor and all his men were massacred by the wild tribes. You’ll find nothing out there in the wild lands, nothing but stones. Father, you know this as well as I do. We’ve ridden plenty far enough to see for ourselves.”
“We’ll go if the Prince wants us to go,” said my Father, “and we’ll leave the ikon in the branches of the nearest tree to where his brother died.”
“Vanity and madness,” said the Elder. Other priests came into the room. There was much shouting.
“Speak clearly to me and stop the poetry!” cried my Father. “Let my boy paint. Andrei, mix your colors. Say your prayers, but begin.”
“Father, you humiliate me. I despise you. I’m ashamed that I’m your son. I’m not your son. I won’t be your son. Shut your filthy mouth or I’ll paint nothing.”
“Ah, that’s my sweet boy, with the honey rolling off his tongue, and the bees that left it there left their sting too.”
Again, he struck me. This time I became dizzy, but I refused to lift my hands to my head. My ear throbbed.
“Proud of yourself, Ivan the Idiot!” I said. “How can I paint when I can’t see or even sit in the chair?”
The priests shouted. They argued amongst one another.
I tried to focus on the small row of earthen jars ready for the yolk and the water. Finally I began to mix the yolk and the water. Best to work and shut them all out. I could hear my Father laugh with satisfaction.
“Now, show them, show them what they mean to wall up alive in a lot of mud.”
“For the love of God,” said the Elder.
“For the love of stupid idiots,” said my Father. “It isn’t enough to have a great painter. You have to have a saint.”
“You do not know what your son is. It was God who guided you to bring him here.”
“It was money,” said my Father. Gasps rose from the priests.
“Don’t lie to them,” I said under my breath. “You know damned good and well it was pride.”
“Yes, pride,” said my Father, “that my son could paint the Face of Christ or His Blessed Mother like a Master! And you, to whom I commit this genius, are too ignorant to see it.”
I began to grind the pigments I needed, the soft brownish-red powder, and then to mix it over and over with the yolk and water until every tiny fragment of pigment was broken up and the paint was smooth and perfectly thin and clear. On to the yellow, and then to the red.
They fought over me. My Father lifted his fist to the Elder, but I didn’t bother to look up. He wouldn’t dare. He kicked my leg in his desperation, sending a cramp through my muscle, but I said nothing. I went on mixing the paint.
One of the priests had come round to my left, and he slipped a clean whitewashed panel of wood in front of me, primed and ready for the holy image.
At last I was ready. I bowed my head. I made the Sign of the Cross in our way, touching my right shoulder first, not my left.
“Dear God, give me the power, give me the vision, give my hands the tutelage which only your love can give!” At once I had the brush with no consciousness of having picked it up, and the brush began to race, tracing out the oval of the Virgin’s face, and then the sloping lines of her shoulders and then the outline of her folded hands.
Now when their gasps came, they were tributes to the painting. My Father laughed in gloating satisfaction.
“Ah, my Andrei, my sharp-tongued, sarcastic, nasty ungrateful little genius of God.”
“Thank you, Father,” I whispered bitingly, right from the middle of my trancelike concentration, as I myself watched the work
of the brush in awe. There her hair, cleaving close to the scalp and parted in the middle. I needed no instrument to make the outline of her halo perfectly round.
The priests held the clean brushes for me. One held a clean rag in his hands. I snatched up a brush for the red color which I then mixed with white paste, until it was the appropriate color of flesh.
“Isn’t that a miracle!”
“That’s just the point,” said the Elder between clenched teeth. “It’s a miracle, Brother Ivan, and he will do what God wills.”
“He won’t wall himself up in here, damn you, not as long as I’m alive. He’s coming with me into the wild lands.”
I burst out laughing. “Father,” I said sneering at him. “My place is here.”
“He’s the best shot in the family, and he’s coming with me into the wild lands,” said my Father to the others, who had flown into a flurry of protests and negations all around.
“Why do you give Our Blessed Mother that tear in her eye, Brother Andrei?”
“It’s God who gives her the tear,” said one of the others.
“It is the Mother of All Sorrows. Ah, see the beautiful folds of her cloak.”
“Ah, look, the Christ child!” said my Father, and even his face was reverent. “Ah, poor little baby God, soon to be crucified and die!” His voice was for once subdued and almost tender. “Ah, Andrei, what a gift. Oh, but look, look at the child’s eyes and his little hand, at the flesh of his thumb, his little hand.”
“Even you are touched with the light of Christ,” said the Elder. “Even such a stupid violent man as you, Brother Ivan.”
The priests pressed in close around me in a circle. My Father held out a palmful of small twinkling jewels. “For the halos, Andrei. Work fast, Prince Michael has ordained that we go.”
“Madness, I tell you!” All voices were set to babbling at once. My Father turned and raised his fist.
I looked up, reached for a fresh, clean panel of wood. My forehead was wet with sweat. I worked on and on.
I had done three ikons.
I felt such happiness, such pure happiness. It was sweet to be so warm in it, so aware of it, and I knew, though I said nothing, that my Father had made it possible, my Father, so cheerful and ruddy-cheeked and overpowering with his big shoulders and his glistening face, this man I was supposed to hate.
The Sorrowful Mother with her Child, and the napkin for her tears, and the Christ Himself. Weary, bleary-eyed, I sat back. The place was intolerably cold. Oh, if there were only a little fire. And my hand, my left hand was cramped from the cold. Only my right hand was all right because of the pace at which I had done my work. I wanted to suck the fingers of my left hand, but this would not do, not here at this moment, when all gathered to coo over the ikons.
“Masterly. The Work of God.”
An awful sense of time came over me, that I had traveled far from this moment, far from this the Monastery of the Caves to which I had vowed my life, far from the priests who were my brethren, far from my cursing, stupid Father, who was in spite of his ignorance so very proud.
Tears flowed from his eyes. “My son,” he said. He clutched my shoulder proudly. He was beautiful in his own way, such a fine strong man, afraid of nothing, a prince himself when among his horses and his dogs and his followers, of which I, his son, had been one.
“Let me alone, you thick-skulled oaf,” I said. I smiled up at him to further outrage him. He laughed. He was too happy, too proud, to be provoked.
“Look what my son has done.” His voice had a telltale thickness to it. He was going to cry. And he wasn’t even drunk.
“Not by human hands,” said the priest.
“No, naturally not!” boomed my Father’s scornful voice. “Just by my son Andrei’s hands, that’s all.”
A silken voice said in my ear, “Would you place the jewels into the halos yourself, Brother Andrei, or shall I perform this task?”
Behold, it was done, the paste applied, the stones set, five in the Ikon of Christ. The brush was in my hand again to stroke the brown hair of the Lord God, which was parted in the middle and brought back behind His ears, with only part of it to show on either side of His neck. The stylus appeared in my hand to thicken and darken the black letters on the open book which Christ held in His left hand. The Lord God stared, serious and severe, from the panel, His mouth red and straight beneath the horns of His brown mustache.
“Come now, the Prince is here, the Prince has come.”
Outside the entrance of the Monastery, the snow fell in cruel gusts. The priests helped me with my leather vest, my jacket of shearling. They buckled my belt. It was good to smell this leather again, to breathe the fresh cold air. My Father had my sword. It was heavy, old, taken from his long-ago fighting against the Teutonic Knights in lands far to the east, the jewels long ago chipped out of its handle, but a fine, fine battle sword.
Through the snowy mist a figure appeared, on horseback. It was Prince Michael himself, in his fur hat and far-lined cape and gloves, the great Lord who ruled Kiev for our Roman Catholic conquerors, whose faith we would not accept but who let us keep to our own. He was decked out in foreign velvet and gold, a fancy figure fit for royal Lithuanian courts, of which we heard fantastical tales. How did he endure Kiev, the ruined city?
The horse reared up on its hind legs. My Father ran to catch the reins, and threaten the animal as he threatened me.
The Ikon for Prince Feodor was wrapped thickly in wool for me to carry.
I placed my hand on the hilt of my sword.
“Ah, you will not take him on this Godless mission,” cried the Elder. “Prince Michael, Your Excellency, our mighty ruler, tell this Godless man that he can not take our Andrei.”
I saw the face of the Prince through the snow, square and strong, with gray eyebrows and beard and huge hard blue eyes. “Let him go, Father,” he cried out to the priest. “The boy has hunted with Ivan since he was four years old. Never has anyone provided such bounty for my table, and for yours, Father. Let him go.”
The horse danced backwards. My Father pulled down on the reins. Prince Michael blew the snow from off his lips.
Our horses were led to the fore, my Father’s powerful stallion with the gracefully curved neck and the shorter gelding which had been mine before I had come to the Monastery of the Caves.
“I’ll be back, Father,” I said to the Elder. “Give me your blessing. What can I do against my gentle, sweet-tempered and infinitely pious Father when Prince Michael himself commands?”
“Oh, shut your lousy little mouth,” said my Father. “You think I want to listen to this all the way to the Castle of Prince Feodor?”
“You’ll hear it all the way to Hell!” declared the Elder. “You take my finest novice to his death.”
“Novice, novice to a hole in the dirt! You take the hands that have painted these marvels—
“God painted them,” I said in a biting whisper, “and you know it, Father. Will you please stop making a display of your Godlessness and belligerence.”
I was on the back of my horse. The Ikon was strapped in wool to my chest.
“I don’t believe my brother Feodor is dead!” the Prince said, trying to control his mount, to bring it in line with that of my Father. “Perhaps these travelers saw some other ruin, some old—.”
“Nothing survives in the grasslands now,” pleaded the Elder. “Prince, don’t take Andrei. Don’t take him.”
The priest ran alongside of my horse. “Andrei, you will find nothing; you will find only the wild blowing grass and the trees. Put the Ikon in the branches of a tree. Place it for the will of God, so that when it is found by the Tatars they will know His Divine power. Place it there for the pagans. And come home.”
The snow came down so fierce and thick I couldn’t see his face.
I looked up at the stripped and barren domes of our Cathedral, that remnant of Byzantine glory left to us by Mongol invaders, who now exacted their greedy tribute through our
Catholic Prince. How bleak and desolate was this, my homeland. I closed my eyes and longed for the mud cubicle of the cave, for the smell of the earth close around me, for the dreams of God and His Goodness which would come to me, once I was half-entombed.
Come back to me, Amadeo. Come back. Do not let your heart stop!
I spun around. “Who calls to me?” The thick white veil of the snow broke to reveal the distant glass city, black and glimmering as if heated by hellish fires. Smoke rose to feed the ominous clouds of the darkening sky. I rode towards the glass city.
“Andrei!” This was my Father’s voice behind me.
Come back to me, Amadeo. Don’t let your heart stop!
The Ikon fell from my left arm as I struggled to bridle my mount. The wool had come undone. On and on we rode. The Ikon fell downhill beside us, turning over and over, corner bouncing upon corner, as it tumbled, the swaddling of wool falling loose. I saw the shimmering face of Christ.
Strong arms caught me, pulled me upwards as if from a whirlwind. “Let me go!” I protested. I looked back. Against the frozen earth lay the Ikon, and the staring, questioning eyes of the Christ.
Firm fingers pressed my face on either side. I blinked and opened my eyes. The room was filled with warmth and light. There loomed the familiar face of my Master right above me, his blue eyes shot with blood. “Drink, Amadeo,” he said. “Drink from me.”
My head fell forward against his throat. The blood fount had started; it bubbled out of his vein, flowing thickly down onto the neck of his golden tissue robe. I closed my mouth over it. I lapped at it.
I let out a cry as the blood inflamed me.
“Draw it from me, Amadeo. Draw it hard!”
My mouth filled with blood. My lips closed against his silky white flesh so that not a drop would be lost. Deeply I swallowed. In a dim flash I saw my Father riding through the grasslands, a powerful leather-clad figure, his sword tied firmly to his belt, his leg crooked, his cracked and worn brown boot firmly in the stirrup. He turned to the left, rising and falling gracefully and perfectly with the huge strides of his white horse.