Sisters of the Cross

by Alexei Remizov

  “Verochka,” he was calling, “Verochka,” looking into the eyes of each woman, not missing a single one, and something dark and cold enveloped his heart like a snake.

  It was despair that enveloped his heart.

  And death, with its twisting devious ways, was already approaching his door.

  All night he wandered in despair and mortal anguish, looking into the eyes of each woman, not missing a single one. He stopped on Anichkov Bridge and stood there, letting them all pass by before his eyes—and they stepped around him, as they had the policeman in his white uniform, walking with stately assurance, as though taking part in some ancient ceremonial dance, from the Znamenskaia Church to the Admiralty, and from the Admiralty back to the Znamenskaia Church.

  Then, when the sun came up and all those dark figures had vanished somewhere, there was not a single person left clothed in black, absolutely no one remained on Nevsky Prospekt, apart from the policemen in white. Marakulin turned off along Liteiny Prospekt in the direction of the Finland Station.

  He had suddenly decided—somehow it seemed to happen automatically—that he would go to the dacha in Tur-Kilia to see Vasily Aleksandrovich, Vera Nikolaevna, and Anna Stepanovna—after all, they had rescued him so many times, they would rescue him again now, they would give him some milk—he was hungry—after all he was only twelve years old!—yes, they would give him some milk.

  It was Trinity Saturday, the eve of Trinity Day, and the little trees for that festival were already being taken along Liteiny Prospekt; the street was filled with cartloads of curly green boughs—the boughs of tiny young birch trees, as green as green could be.

  There were no trains running as yet from the Finland Station, and he would have to wait; but Marakulin did not feel like sitting in the station, so he started to walk along the sleepers, but when he had gone a little way, he stepped off the railway track at a bridge, sat down in a ditch and fell asleep.

  And he slept most soundly, no doubt as Plotnikov did for two whole days after his cruel, ill-fated drinking bout.

  When Marakulin woke up, however, it was already evening—Saturday was coming to an end. Once more he was struck by the oppressive thought that Saturday was his last day, and he went as cold as ice. He did not want to believe his dream, and yet he did believe it and, since he believed, he was condemning himself to death.

  Man is born into the world and is already condemned; all are condemned from the day of their birth. People live under sentence, but completely forget about it, because they do not know the hour when it will come. But when the day is pronounced, when the time is measured out, and the term is laid down, when Saturday is indicated—no: that is more than man’s God-given strength can endure. For when God endowed men with life, He condemned them, but concealed from them what would be the hour of their death.

  Saturday had dawned, and now Saturday was coming to its end; the term had been reached, and the hour was approaching.

  And now on his path so straight and even, where even the last shadow and trace of hope had vanished, the dark, evil forces of despair had already begun their work, quiet and clinging like little worms, gnawing away and untethering him from life, eating away at his last links with the firm foundation of his existence.

  It was hard for him to tear himself away from life.

  Perhaps, after all, dreams are just dreams. When put to the test they may not come true at all. Why then did he have such belief in his dream? And should one really believe some dream like that? God knows what doing so might lead to! And why had he not told Akumovna about his gloomy dream? Well, let Akumovna work it out. She was holy, after all; she would say whether it was true or not.

  Marakulin became agitated and rushed to get on a tram. He had already sat down, but when he remembered that he had no money, having spent his last remaining ten-kopeck piece in the beer saloon, he jumped off and rushed off to the Fontanka, almost overtaking the tram.

  He ran to the Fontanka as far as the Burkov flats, but it was difficult for him to get into his flat. He felt he had been ringing for at least half an hour, and no one answered or uttered a sound. He stopped ringing and started to knock on the door. But there was no reply to his knocking. Everything was quiet in the flat, except the sound of the wind whistling through the cracks. The pipes of the stoves must have been left open, and the wind was whistling in an eerie way.

  Marakulin rang once more, knocked again, stood for a moment waiting and then went down into the janitors’ lodge, but there was no sign of Nikanor, who had gone off to the shop. Nikanor’s son, Vaniushka, had no idea what had happened; he had seen Akumovna that morning, but had not gone up to her since. Akumovna was at home, but the boy kept on laughing for some reason.

  But then if she was at home, why did she not answer and open the door? After all, he had been ringing for a good half hour and had been knocking for no less time. Could it be that the old woman had died?

  Then he went out into the lane, came back in through the gate and approached the back door. It was strange: as he went up the stairs, he could suddenly hear the bells ringing for the evening service at the Church of the Resurrection in the Taganka, and his heart began to beat in apprehension.

  The door into the kitchen turned out to be unlocked. Akumovna was sitting by the stove, and her hair was bound up in white; she was wearing a white kerchief. “Your mother will be dressed in white”: he remembered the words of his dream the previous night. Akumovna had two eggs in front of her in a saucer and was eating a third. The word “pound” flashed through Marakulin’s mind. “So that’s what they meant by a ‘pound’!”

  Akumovna was not smiling, and her eyes looked strange and protruding somehow. It wasn’t Akumovna who was sitting by the stove. No! It was some woman who looked like Akumovna. Marakulin was seized with terror.

  “Sir! Master!”—Akumovna suddenly stood up. But she said this not in her own voice, but in a hoarse, drunken voice that only resembled hers.

  Feeling that he had lost all his strength, Marakulin clutched at the doorpost and groaned.

  “Sir! Master! The Lord be with you, master of mine, Piotr Alekseevich! I’ll bring the samovar right away, this very minute!”—and the real Akumovna began to really bustle about. Abandoning her egg, she seized hold of the Zhuravliovs’ red samovar and began to tap its chimney pipe in place.

  Marakulin sat down on Akumovna’s stool, but he couldn’t say anything; his throat was tight, and his lips were trembling.

  “Sir! Master!”—Akumovna was fussing around the samovar. “Something happened to me today, but the Lord took pity and saved me.”

  It was absolutely true that something had happened to Akumovna; how it was she had not gone out of her mind was really only through the grace of God, who had taken pity on her. Indeed, it was no wonder that she had heard neither the bell nor Marakulin’s knocking. And it was amazing that she was able to recognize Marakulin and that she had enough strength to utter a word! The eggs might help her, and she was eating them so as to speak in even a hoarse voice and not to moo like a cow; anyone would moo like a cow, if they had gone through what she had gone through!

  In the morning Akumovna had gone up to the attic; some washing of hers was hanging there, and she had gone up to take it off the line, so as to get it ironed in time for the Trinity evening service—but someone had played a trick on her and locked her in the attic. She had begun to shout, and shouted for quite a long time, but there was no one to hear her; all the flats around her were empty—everyone had gone away to their dachas. No one needed to go up into the loft; not a single cook or maid would come there—there was no one around. She knew it was no good shouting, but she did shout all the same. How could she help shouting? Was she to stay up in the attic? Till when? Until the autumn? When people came back from their dachas? Or when they would take pity on her, whoever had locked her in? They might come and let her out. But could she count on that? After all, they might get caught up in their own affairs and forget about her, who knows what
might happen? She just could not remain up in the attic forever. And she no longer had any voice left. Then she started crawling around in the dark, feeling for a broken window. She remembered that somewhere right up under the roof there was a window. She groped and scrabbled about—and felt a crack: she had found the window. She got hold of it to pull it out, but the planks were quite firmly fixed. No matter how much she struggled they would not give way, and the crack was very small, hardly enough for a mouse to get through. But she applied all her strength, got both hands around the plank and pulled it out. Thank God! There was the light of day. She crossed herself, climbed out onto the roof, and in panic crawled along to the other end, where the main entrance facing the barracks was. She crawled because she was afraid to walk—her foot might slip—and she began to shout. She crawled along to a chimney stack, stood up by the chimney, took her shoes off and threw them down into the street. Some little children picked up the shoes and carried them off. So there she was, standing by the chimney stack, barefoot, holding onto the chimney and shouting. But she knew that simply shouting wouldn’t be enough; they would not hear her. She was shouting that her master had come back and was ringing the bell, and that she couldn’t open the door to him. Besides that, all the noise on the Fontanka, the steamers, the car horns would drown out any shouting. As she didn’t have her shoes on, she would not slip, so she stepped away from the chimney and made her way back along the roof, shouting out her message: “My master has come back and he is ringing, but I can’t open the door to let him in!” Some house painters heard her; they were painting the roof of the next house. “What’s the use of shouting, woman? Jump across to us,” they laughed. But how was she going to jump across to them? They wouldn’t give her a ladder; they were using all the ladders. She couldn’t jump like a cat, after all. However, she got over her first fright. At least she had heard a human voice. She got used to the situation and worked out what to do. The best thing would be for her to go to the other end, to cross over to where the back entrance was, and from there go down the drainpipe into the yard. If you climb up a drainpipe, your hands can go numb, but if you climb down a drainpipe and your hands don’t let go of the pipe, then it is quite easy—that way you will slide down. She thought things over, remembered and walked to the other end to where the back entrance was and over to the drainpipe (luckily she had a head for heights). Yes, so she grasped the top of the pipe with both hands, began to lower her feet and grasped the pipe with her legs….

  “Stop, woman!” shouts Nikanor. “Don’t climb down! I’ll go and open it up,” and he’s laughing. Well, at that point she went back over the whole roof, in through the window and into the attic.

  “For six hours I suffered, master, and nearly died. But God took pity on me and saved me in the end!”

  In the meantime the samovar had started boiling. The red Zhuravlyov songster was puffing away, getting ready for the tune it sang in the evenings. Marakulin had calmed down as he listened to her story and went off into his own room.

  Perhaps that whole gloomy dream was not intended for him at all, but really referred to Akumovna. Or was it really impossible to have a dream in someone else’s place? But why shouldn’t you have dreams like that?

  All the same, Saturday was not over yet; night was moving on, his last hours were setting in. The time was approaching when he must find answers. He must answer himself and demand answers back.

  Akumovna had brought in the samovar. She ate up the eggs to improve her voice and came back to Marakulin with the cards in her hands. But Marakulin refused the cards; he didn’t want any fortune-telling. He wanted to tell her the dream he had had on the Thursday before Trinity, if only she would tell him the truth.

  So he started to narrate his gloomy dream, in order and in its entirety. He could remember every detail with clarity, so he told her about the snub-nosed, naked woman with the prominent teeth who had set Saturday as the end of his life; and also he talked about his mother with the cross on her forehead and how she had started to weep.

  “What does this dream mean, Akumovna?”

  Akumovna was silent. She was smiling and looking at him from time to time as might a holy fool, from some other place.

  Seized again by the sudden gloomy thought that his time would be up on Saturday, he went as cold as ice.

  “So,” he thought, “it’s all true—and why doesn’t Akumovna say anything? So is it true that in a few minutes my span will be at an end and my time will be up?”

  Man is born into the world and is already condemned; all are condemned from the day of their birth. People live under sentence, but completely forget about it, because they do not know the hour when it will come. But when the day is pronounced, when the time is measured out, and the term is laid down, when Saturday is indicated—no: that is more than man’s God-given strength can endure. For when God endowed men with life, He condemned them, but concealed from them what would be the hour of their death.

  “Akumovna, so is it true or not?”

  “I am just an ignorant person, I don’t know anything,” Akumovna replied, smiling and looking at him from time to time as might a holy fool, from some other place.

  And now the clock in the kitchen began to wheeze and slowly count out the hours: one by one. And it struck twelve. Saturday had come to an end, and Sunday had begun.

  “Akumovna, did it strike twelve?” Marakulin asked timidly.

  “Twelve o’clock, sir, exactly midnight.”

  “Has Sunday started?”

  “Sunday, yes, sir, it’s Sunday now. Sleep peacefully. The Lord be with you.” And Akumovna left the tuneful Zhuravlyov samovar behind and retired to her kitchen to sleep.

  But can he really sleep? Marakulin waited till Akumovna had quietened down, and he shut off the samovar. Then he took a pillow and placed it on the windowsill, as the tenants of Burkov flats do when they are spending the summer in Petersburg. He laid his head on the pillow and then, holding onto the windowsill, he transferred his weight to it and stretched himself out to sleep. But no: he would not go to sleep; all night long he will not sleep; Saturday is over and Sunday has begun!

  Outside, the yard was empty; there was not a single person about, and no one to be seen at the windows, just him. Then suddenly he saw on the rubbish heap and the bricks near the peddlers’ storage booths, from the channel for slops and the rubbish pit to the carriage shed, an abundance of green birch trees; the whole area of the Burkov yard was covered with little birch trees; they were so green and covered in little green leaves. And he felt that his former happiness was slowly rolling toward him and approaching, that earlier extraordinary joy that he had lost. That extraordinary intense happiness was bubbling up like a spring from somewhere beneath his heart, growing with great fervor to fill his heart and his entire being. Now he could no longer see anything any more, only the birch trees, and along the birch trees, herself like a birch tree, the real Vera, Verushka, Verochka, and her hands were intertwined with the leaves, from one leaf to another she was making her way toward the carriage shed, as though she was floating in the air and as though the earth was closing over her footprints as she passed by. Now Marakulin’s heart overflowed and took flight, drawing the whole of him outside; he stretched right out, extending his arms and no longer holding onto anything except his pillow, he flew down from the windowsill….

  And Marakulin heard someone speaking, as it were, through a little trumpet from the bottom of a deep well:

  “The times are ripe, the cup of sin is full, punishment is at hand. That’s how it is with us; lie there! That’s one less of you, and you will not rise again. Bonehead!”

  On the stones in front of the Burkov flats in a pool of blood lay Marakulin with his skull shattered.

  1. A spa town in Russian Transcaucasia, now part of Georgia.

  2. Also known as the Mikhailovsky Castle, built for Tsar Paul I and the place of his murder in 1801.

  3. Built for the Grand Duke Mikhail, the son of Paul I, and now home t
o the collections of the Russian Museum.