Sisters of the Cross

by Alexei Remizov

  So something like that flashed through Marakulin’s mind at that time and said quite clearly: “Don’t think.”

  Was it now he had to stop thinking? Yes, it was just at this very moment when, jolted out of his routine by blind chance, now, alone and with nothing to do, he had started to think—the old times had gone when there was no thinking, and he could not get those times back.

  And so the circle closed within him. He knew that thinking was futile, that there was no point in thinking, you wouldn’t be able to prove anything, and yet he couldn’t not think, he couldn’t stop trying to prove things—thinking till it hurt, his thoughts kept turning relentlessly, as though he were delirious.

  Marakulin had no difficulty moving out of his apartment; no one dragged him off to the police station, and they did not list his belongings. There was nothing to list, and the only thing he had left was his soul, which can’t be taken away. Only Mikhail Pavlovich would not shake hands, the senior janitor Mikhail Pavlovich who, if he respected anyone of middling circumstances, always shook hands with him.

  Marakulin had a memorable last day in his old home. In the morning the most wretched event occurred in the courtyard: a cat died, a smooth-haired white cat with gray whiskers. Perhaps she didn’t fall from anywhere and had no thought of falling from any roof four floors up, but she had just swallowed something by chance, a nail or a piece of glass, or maybe some kind person had fed her the glass or the nail on purpose for a joke—there are such people. She was in torment, with terrible pains; one moment she was lying on her back and rolling about on the stones, then she would turn over onto her belly, stretch out her front paws, raise her little face, as though trying to look into the windows, and she kept on meowing.

  Little children crowded around the cat. Giving up their wild fun and games, they squatted down on their haunches and fell silent. They could not take their eyes off the cat, and she went on meowing. The dark-skinned Persian masseur from the public baths also settled down next to her, rolling the whites of his eyes, while the cat went on meowing.

  Some smoky-colored tomcat jumped out of the carriage shed, and padded swiftly across the boards over the gravel in the yard, heading straight for the cat. But he came to a sudden halt about three paces away, his fur standing on end. Then he fluffed up his tail and moved off to one side. One little girl suddenly ran off to get some milk. She came back with a piece of broken pottery and placed it right under the cat’s nose. But the cat wouldn’t even look at it and kept on meowing.

  “The cat has gone out of its mind,” said one of the grown-ups, who, like Marakulin, must also have been watching the cat from one of the windows.

  “It’s our cat, Murka,” said the little girl who had run off to get milk. Her face was burning red and her voice expressed impatience and offense of some sort.

  It looked as though everyone was just waiting for the end to come. Marakulin could not leave the window; he could not tear himself away. He, too, was waiting for the cat to die. And he would have stood like that till evening, without moving, if he hadn’t felt that someone was standing behind him, shifting from one foot to the other. For some time now he had given up locking the doors of his apartment, and now someone must have come in! Yes, and so it was. There was some old man standing in front of him, a tall, disheveled-looking old man shifting from one foot to the other. Beneath his overcoat his trousers hung loosely around his legs, as though he did not have proper limbs, but just bones. His hands were pulling at his hat and at something else…some sort of envelope, yes, some sort of envelope. Of course, Marakulin had never seen an old man like him before—but what did he want?

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I’ve come to see you, Piotr Alekseevich. I’ve come from Aleksandr Ivanovich.”

  “From Aleksandr Ivanovich!”

  “From the very same. You forgot to shut the door, sir. I was standing right outside, only I was afraid to ring. Please forgive me,” said the old man, moving his lips and fiddling with his hat.

  Previously, various people had come from Glotov quite frequently—the office needed extra clerks to work in the evenings—but how could Glotov have thought to send a person to him now? After all, he knew that he had been sacked, and here he was with nothing but a five-kopeck piece in his pocket.

  “I cannot do anything to help you. I expect it’s money you’re needing…”

  The old man made a restless movement and pulled out of its envelope a crumpled quarter sheet of paper that was covered in a large uneven scribble.

  “I have written out my request for your kind attention. I was ashamed to say it, so I’ve set my plea down in writing.” The old man pushed his note toward him, keeping a fixed smile on his face as though his lips were mewing like Murka the cat’s.

  Thrusting his last five-kopeck piece on the old man, Marakulin sat down at the table and waited for one thing to happen, for the old man to leave and for the scene to come to an end.

  The old man was showing no signs of leaving, however. In one hand he gripped the five-kopeck piece and his hat, and in the other hand the envelope and the crumpled quarter sheet of paper that was covered in a large uneven scribble. His hands were shaking and his hat slipped out and fell onto the floor.

  “What news of Aleksandr Ivanovich? How is he getting along?” Marakulin asked, feeling that everything inside him was shaking and that he might not stand the strain, that he was going to shout and drive the old man away.

  The old man stretched out his neck like a bird and opened his mouth wide like a beak.

  “He’s in top form these days,” he said, his head starting to shake as if with joy. “He’s dressed very well like a senior janitor, with a tight-fitting coat and patent leather boots, just like a senior janitor. ‘You must go, Gvozdev, straight to Piotr Alekseevich on the Fontanka,’ that’s what he said. Like a senior janitor! I was at their summerhouse in Tsarskoe Selo. He kept on joking that he was in love with some madame. He kept on joking all the time: ‘You can feed a hungry man, you can make someone rich who’s poor, but once you fall in love—and if the object of your love does not respond—then for the life of me, there is nothing to be done.’ I don’t understand anything, sir. He keeps on joking all the time. He gave me the overcoat from off his own shoulders. It used to belong to the accountant Averianov, it was his and it was a bit loose on him. ‘Do you behave, Gvozdev?’ ‘Excuse me, Aleksandr Ivanovich,’ I say. ‘I’m a great one for the women.’ He keeps joking all the time.”

  The old man spoke incessantly in a muddleheaded way and, as for sitting down, he didn’t, nor did he unclench his fist or pick up his hat.

  He was a restless old man, really restless. In Petersburg he had worked as a groom with the Shakhovskois. It was a good job, but one of the horses kicked out and caught him in the chest. He went off to a monastery and from then on he went from one monastery to another. He had such a restless nature: as soon as he felt at home, he would run off straight away. A month ago he ran away from the Cheremenetsky monastery.

  “I was helped by one man I knew, who took me into his room. He pays the rent for a room on Zelenina Street, quite a small room, in fact. Koriakin is married, with a wife and a young child, a little girl. All four of us lived together. On St. Olga’s day their elder daughter came to visit them in Peter.2 We were short of space, and it was embarrassing—she was grown up, after all. I moved out to the Obvodny Canal, where I rented a corner. One and a half rubles and pickles thrown in. It was a good corner, in the corridor. You see, Piotr Alekseevich, I would even do a little bit of buying and selling, enough to keep alive, at any rate.”

  The old man spoke incessantly in a muddleheaded way, one word spluttering into another. He was a restless sort. But Marakulin’s eyes were beginning to glaze over; his eyelids felt heavy. He could no longer see anything now apart from Averianov’s wide trousers, hanging loosely over the old man’s legs or, rather, bones.

  “I’m a great one for the women…one and a half rubles with pickles throw
n in…Enough to keep alive, at any rate…”

  Marakulin sprang up from his chair.

  “But what is there to keep alive for? Tell me that!” he shouted.

  But he was by himself in the room, and there was no one else with him.

  The cat was meowing, Murka was meowing. He was by himself in the room. He had gone to sleep as they were talking. The old man had guessed and had stolen out unnoticed—just as he had come in—clutching Marakulin’s last five kopecks. His hat was no longer lying on the floor. The cat was meowing, Murka was meowing.

  And suddenly Marakulin thought quite clearly, as he had never thought so clearly before, that Murka had always been meowing, and not just yesterday, but the entire five years he had spent on the Fontanka in the Burkov flats, but that he had simply not noticed. And not only here, in the Burkov flats on the Fontanka near Nevsky; Murka was meowing in Moscow, too, in the Taganka, by the Church of the Resurrection in the Taganka, where he was born and where he grew up, wherever there is a living soul. And as clear as his thought was the firmness of his conviction that there was nowhere he could hide from that meowing, from Murka, any longer. And as firm as his conviction was the depth of his feeling that it was not outside that Murka was meowing, but right here…

  “Give me some air!” Murka was meowing as though she were pronouncing the words “Give me some air!” rolling about on the stones and gazing up at the windows.

  The children were squatting in an ever tighter circle around her. Forgetting their wild fun and games, they fell silent, looking on for something to happen. The piece of broken pottery with the milk was still standing there untouched, and the dark-skinned Persian masseur from the public baths stayed where he was, rolling his eyes.

  It was late in the evening by the time Marakulin made his way up to his new room on the fourth floor, where there had previously been a laundry. There was no one in the flat, apart from the cook Akumovna. The owner, Adoniia Ivoilovna, had not yet returned. In the summer Adoniia Ivoilovna went off on a pilgrimage, leaving Akumovna to look after the flat. The two other rooms were unoccupied.

  The first night in his new room Marakulin had a dream as though he were sitting at a table facing the stage in some sort of garden out in the country. The garden reminded him of the Aquarium restaurant, and all around were people he did not know, angry agitated faces, and all walking about, grumbling and whispering among themselves. He reasoned that he was the one they were whispering about, that their grumbling was about him, and that they were planning some evil against him, something really nasty! Fear began to seize him, more and more of them were approaching, and the circle was becoming ever tighter. They had stopped whispering, but their eyes were pointing him out. They were in agreement and were pointing toward him. There was no doubt about it. He could not stay there any longer; they would kill him. He stood up and made his way imperceptibly toward the door, but they followed him. That’s how it was—they were going to kill him. They were going to kill him, choke him to death. Where could he go? Where could he hide? Oh God! If there were only one person who would help him, just one! But they were on his heels, closer and closer. Any moment now and they would catch him. He dived into a cave, fell facedown onto the stones. And suddenly a bird came down on his back like a stone, not an eagle—this was a vulture of the kind that carries off hens—and its talons were gripping him firmly, tearing at his back, squeezing the whole of him, just as it would break the body of a hen. “Thief, thief, thief!”—striking him with its beak. He felt oppressed; the heaviness was shattering his heart, tearing it to pieces. His arms sank down, and he no longer had any doubt that he would never be able to rise and stand on his feet again. He felt bitter and oppressed and a deathly sadness.

  In the morning, when Marakulin told Akumovna about the people in the night and the vulture, she said: “A bad dream like that is what you see just before you get ill. You are bound to fall ill.”

  So it was. Sickness, disease struck him down. He was aching all over; laying back his head, he felt really ill. The next morning he could barely swallow a glass of tea and could not eat at all. It was the hottest time of the summer, but he was shivering all over, as if it were the coldest frost of the winter.

  Holy Akumovna, as they called her around the Burkov flats, was a kindly soul. She put Marakulin to bed, gave him hot raspberry juice to drink, applied mustard plasters, looked after him night and day, and brought him through. The sickness and disease left him in peace. Even so, he was laid out for two whole weeks.

  The first thing he felt when he ventured out after his illness, when he crossed the threshold of the building and found himself outside on the street, was that somehow he had begun to see and to hear everything. Even more than this, he could feel that his heart was opening up and that his soul was alive.

  One person has to betray in order—through treachery—to open up his soul and become his real self in the world. Another person has to kill in order—through killing—to open up his soul and at least die as himself. He needed somehow to write out a payment slip and give it to the wrong person in order to open up his soul and become his real self in the world, and not just any old Marakulin, but Marakulin Piotr Alekseevich—and see, and hear, and feel.

  That was the message in Marakulin’s head on the first day after his illness. That was how he found a way back into the world, that was how he proved his right to exist: just to see, just to hear, just to feel.

  He was not afraid of other people; they were not terrifying for him. And he ceased to care at all whether he was a thief or not a thief. Nor was he afraid of any misfortune. And if he had to suffer misfortunes a thousand times worse, he thought, he was ready for anything, would agree to anything, would accept everything and would endure everything. He would live through any shame and through any humiliation, seeing everything, hearing everything, feeling everything. For what purpose he himself did not know—only that he was going to live.

  Whether it was to get his own back on Ill-Fortune,3 that one-eyed evil being who is only ever happy when people grieve and weep, Marakulin exhausted his own Ill-Fortune by allowing it to wander hungry through the world, while the one-eyed one with his swollen pupil scowls down from the starry heights above the clouds, as the world turns head over heels in grief, in misery, in need, in dejection, in desolation, in anger and hatred and meows like Murka, and perhaps Marakulin will endure it for a while. No, he feasts his eyes on it. As I find you, so shall I judge you. Or whether it was to spite Woe-Misfortune,4 that thin, pinched, emaciated creature, girded with bast, covered in lime bark, with disheveled hair like that of old man Gvozdev, to spite her mockery, to get his own back on her crocodile tears when, pushing him into a pit, she would lament: “Behold the man!” Or did he glimpse some higher justice in Murka’s meowing, in Murka’s preordained mewing, punishment for some original sin on Murka’s part, something maybe trifling that she had not paid for or expiated, for it is said: “He who observes the entire law, yet errs in one detail, is guilty of everything”—and, finding his own right in age-old arbitrariness, he submitted in fear and trembling? Or were his own love of life and instinctive feeling for it, his joy of spirit as the foundation and pivot of his existence—were these his justification, did these dictate his ability to find himself, to adjust and adapt himself, without any words or proofs, were these the qualities of his soul? Or would he simply go on living, not in anger and not in spite, and not from reason, or thanks to any spiritual quality of his, but just like that—not for any reason, just as before Easter he had written out by hand his report for the director again and again, spending days and nights stubbornly tracing out one character after another, threading the letters together like beads? Is that how it was?

  So, something like that flashed through Marakulin’s mind at this point and said quite clearly: it’s not for any purpose, it’s not for any purpose, but he will live—just to see, just to hear, just to feel.

  1. A river in Petersburg.

  2. The affectionate name f
or Petersburg.

  3. An image derived from Russian folklore.

  4. An image derived from Russian folklore.

  Burkov House does not abut the wall of any other building. Opposite is the Obukhov Hospital. Between the buildings are two large enclosed areas, one belonging to Burkov House itself and one to the Belgian Society. The Belgian Society factory is on the right-hand side—four brick chimneys with lightning conductors, blackening the sky the whole day long, which is why there is black soot between the inner and outer window frames. When Akumovna cleans the rooms before a holiday she always grumbles about that soot; only for some reason she does not blame the factory’s brick chimneys, but rather the huge opal glass electric lamp that lights the factory yard.

  The moon shines in through the window, but Marakulin’s room never sees the sun. Only in summer does his room exude heat, like a scorching-hot frying pan. The sun’s rays settle together with the dust and that wearisome sound of iron hitting against stone as Petersburg renews and rebuilds itself during the summer. Nor are there many stars. All that can be seen is the evening star, and even that is visible only in the springtime when there is still light at the dead of night. On the other hand, the little light in the Obukhov Hospital is always there like a star.

  When blackened people appear in the Belgian Society yard and, like prisoners condemned to hard labor, drag black wheelbarrows filled with coal one after another from the Fontanka River, and day after day the yard grows into a black mountain, this means that summer has come to an end and winter is approaching. It is autumn. When, however, the huge mountain begins to diminish, melting and slipping away like snow, and the blackened people appear once again with their dark wheelbarrows and drag away the last black lumps in their clanging barrows, and on the thin gray dust of the yard white tents rise up, and the shorn heads and sallow features of people wearing gray hospital dressing gowns appear wandering around, and the white figures of nurses in their Red Cross uniforms, this means that winter is over and summer is approaching. It is spring.