‘Well if you can’t, who can?’
‘Father Fyodor!’ said the deacon, inclining his head and putting his hand on his heart. ‘I am an uneducated man and feeble-minded, but on you the Lord bestowed intellect and wisdom. You know everything, you understand everything, you can grasp everything with your mind; I can’t say anything in words. Be generous and instruct me in the art of writing! Teach me how to do it, what to say…’
‘What’s there to teach? Nothing. You just sit down and write.’
‘Father, please help me out! I beg you. I know a letter from you would scare him and make him obey, because you are educated too. Please! I’ll sit down and you dictate to me. It would be a sin to write tomorrow, but now is just the right time, and then I can stop worrying.’
The archdeacon looked at the deacon’s imploring face, remembered the unappealing Pyotr, and agreed to dictate. He sat the deacon down at his desk and began:
‘Well, start writing… Christ is Risen, * dear son… exclamation mark. Rumours have reached me, your father… then put in brackets… the source of which is of no concern of yours… close brackets… Have you got that?… that you are leading a life which is incompatible with God’s laws and also with man’s laws. Neither the material comforts, nor the social brilliance, nor the education with which you adorn yourself outwardly can conceal your pagan nature. You are a Christian by name, but you are a heathen in essence; just as pitiful and unhappy as all other heathens, even more pitiful, for heathens who do not know Christ perish from their ignorance, while you will perish because you possess riches but you do not cherish them. I will not list your flaws here, since you are already well aware of them; I will merely say that I see your lack of faith as the reason for your perdition. You imagine yourself to be worldly wise, and you brag of your scholarly knowledge, but you choose not to understand that scholarship without faith not only does not exalt a person, but even reduces him to the level of a lowly animal, for…’
The whole letter was in that vein. After he written it, the deacon read it aloud and jumped up, grinning from ear to ear.
‘It’s a gift, a true gift to be able to write like that!’ he said, looking rapturously at the archdeacon and clasping his hands. ‘What gifts the Lord sends, eh? Holy Mother of God! I don’t think I could have written a letter like that in a hundred years! May the Lord preserve you!’
Father Anastasy was also in raptures.
‘You need talent to write like that!’ he said, getting up and twiddling his fingers. ‘Oh yes! There is such beautiful rhetoric there that any philosopher could add a comma and offer it up as his own. The product of a clear mind! If you hadn’t got married, * Father Fyodor, you would have been a bishop long ago–truly, you would!’
Having expressed his anger in the letter, the archdeacon felt some relief. His tiredness and exhaustion returned. The deacon was a close colleague, and so the archdeacon was not afraid to be frank:
‘Well deacon, go with the Lord! I am going to have half-an-hour’s nap on the couch, I need to rest.’
The deacon left and took Anastasy with him. As always on the eve of Easter Sunday, it was dark outside, but the whole sky was sparkling with bright, radiant stars.
The soft still air smelt of spring and holidays.
‘How long did it take him to dictate that?’ wondered the deacon in amazement. ‘About ten minutes, not longer! Anyone else would need at least a month to write a letter like that. Don’t you think? What a mind! I don’t even know how to put words together to describe it! Amazing! Truly amazing!’
‘Education!’ said Anastasy with a sigh, lifting the hem of his cassock up to his belt as they crossed the muddy street. ‘We can’t hold a candle to him. Our fathers were sextons, but he has had learning. Oh yes. A real specimen of a human being, he is, no doubt about it.’
‘And you just wait till you hear him read the Gospel in Latin * in mass tonight! He knows Latin, he knows Greek… Ah, Petrukha, Petrukha…’ the deacon said, suddenly remembering his son. ‘Now he’ll have something to think about! He’ll bite his tongue now! He’s going to get his just deserts! He’s not going to ask “why?” now. He’s met his match! Ha ha!’
The deacon laughed loudly and happily. After the letter to Pyotr had been written, he had cheered up and calmed down. The awareness of having fulfilled his parental duty and his great faith in the letter’s power had returned his sense of humour and bonhomie.
‘If you translate Pyotr, it means stone,’ he said as they approached his house. ‘My Pyotr though is too spineless to be a stone. A viper has settled in his bosom and he is fussing over her and can’t shake her off. Humph! God forgive me, but there are some dreadful women in the world! Don’t you think? Where is her sense of shame? She’s latched on to the lad and stuck fast; she’s keeping him on a close rein… I wish we could see the back of her!’
‘But maybe he is the one keeping her, rather than the other way around.’
‘But she still doesn’t have any shame! I’m not defending Pyotr, mind you… He’s going to get it… He’ll start scratching his head when he reads that letter! He’ll be burning with shame!’
‘The letter is wonderful, but it’s just that… Maybe you shouldn’t send it, Father! Let it be!’
‘What?’ exclaimed the deacon in alarm.
‘Really, Father, don’t send it! What good will it do? Well, if you send it, he will read it, and then… well, what then? You’ll just worry him. Forgive him and forget about it!’
The deacon looked in amazement at Anastasy’s dark face, at his billowing cassock which was flapping about in the shadows like a pair of wings, and shrugged his shoulders.
‘How can I forgive him?’ he asked. ‘I’m the one who has to answer for him to God!’
‘That may be, but you should still forgive him. Honestly! And God will forgive you for your kindness.’
‘But he’s my son. Aren’t I supposed to teach him?’
‘Teach him? No reason why you shouldn’t. It’s a good thing, but why call him a heathen? He’ll be offended by that, Father…’
The deacon was a widower and lived in a tiny house with three windows. His elder sister was in charge of the household. She was an old spinster who had lost her legs three years before and was bedridden; he was afraid of her, obeyed her wishes, and did not do anything without consulting her. Father Anastasy came inside too. When he saw the table already covered with Easter cakes and red painted eggs, he for some reason started crying, probably because he was remembering his own home, but then he immediately started laughing huskily to make light of his tears.
‘Yes, it will soon be time to break the fast,’ he said. ‘Yes… But I don’t think it would be untoward to have a little glass of vodka, would it? I’ll drink it so that the old lady doesn’t hear,’ he whispered, looking towards the door. The deacon silently pushed the bottle and a glass towards him, unfolded the letter, and started reading it out loud. He liked the letter just as much now as when the archdeacon was dictating it to him. He was beaming with pleasure and shaking his head as if he had just tasted something very sweet.
‘That’s a letter to end all letters!’ he said. ‘Petrukha couldn’t even begin to imagine anything like it. Anyway, that’s what he needs–to face the music.’
‘You know what, Father? Don’t send it!’ said Anastasy while he poured himself a second glass, as if oblivious of his actions. ‘Forgive him and just forget about it! It’s a question of conscience, Father. If his own father won’t forgive him, who will? Is he going to live without forgiveness? Think about it, Father: there are plenty of people who are going to punish him without you weighing in as well; you should be looking for people to be nice to him! I’ll… I’ll just have a little drink, my friend… Last one… Now you just take that letter and write: I forgive you Pyotr! He will understand! And he will get the message! I know he will, my friend… Father, I mean; I know from my own experience. I used to live like other people and didn’t have too many worries, but now
that I have fallen from the one true path, all I want is for kind people to forgive me. And think about it: it’s not the people who live righteously who need forgiving but the sinners. Why should you forgive your old lady here if she is not a sinner? No, you should be forgiving the people who you feel pity for… really!’
Anastasy propped his head up on his fist and became lost in thought.
‘It’s awful!’ he said with a sigh, clearly struggling with his desire for another drink. ‘Awful! I was born in sin, * lived in sin, and will die in sin… Lord, forgive me! I have lost my way, Father! There is no salvation for me! And it’s not as if I lost my way earlier in my life, but in old age, when I’m about to die… I…’
The old man waved his hand and downed another glass, then got up and settled himself in another part of the room. The deacon was walking up and down, still gripping the letter. He was thinking about his son. Dissatisfaction, sorrow, and fear no longer worried him: all that had gone into the letter. Now all he was doing was imagining Pyotr, picturing his face and remembering the olden times, when his son used to come to stay for the holidays. His head was filled with nice, warm, sad thoughts–the sorts of things you can spend your whole life thinking about without getting tired of them. Missing his son, he read the letter one more time and looked questioningly at Anastasy.
‘Don’t send it!’ said the latter, with a wave of his wrist.
‘No, all the same… I must. It really will do him some good to receive some instruction. It won’t go amiss…’
The deacon took an envelope from his desk, but before putting the letter into it he sat down, smiled, and added at the bottom of the letter: ‘They have sent us a new supervisor. He’s a bit more lively than the last one. He’s a dancer and a chatterbox, and is so good at everything that all the Govorov daughters are mad about him. Kostyrev, the army chief, is also apparently going to have to retire soon. About time!’ Very pleased with himself, and not understanding that he had ended up undoing all the severity of the letter with his postscript, the deacon wrote out the address and put the letter in the most prominent place on the table.
FORTUNE
dedicated to Y. P. Polonsky
A flock of sheep was spending the night by the wide steppe road known as the great highway. Two shepherds were watching over it. One of them, a toothless old man of about eighty with a shaking face, was lying on his stomach by the edge of the road with his elbows resting on dusty plantain leaves; the other, a clean-shaven young lad with thick black brows, his clothes made of the sort of hessian they use to make cheap bags with, was lying on his back with his hands beneath his head looking up at the sky, where right above his face stretched the Milky Way and dozing stars.
The shepherds were not alone. About a yard away from them in the shadows, blocking the road, was the dark shape of a saddled horse, and by it stood a man in high boots and a short kaftan leaning against the saddle; he looked as if he was a ranger from a nearby estate. To judge from his upright, motionless posture, his manner, and the way he behaved towards the shepherds and his horse, he was a serious, level-headed man who knew his own worth; even in the darkness you could make out traces of military bearing and the sort of graciously condescending expression that comes from frequent dealings with gentleman landowners and their stewards.
Most of the sheep were asleep. Against the grey background of the dawn’s early light, which was already beginning to fill the eastern part of the sky, you could see silhouettes of the sheep who were not sleeping; they were standing with their heads bowed, thinking about something. Their unhurried, drawn-out thoughts, stimulated only by impressions of the broad steppe and the sky, and of days and nights, probably stunned and depressed them to the point of numbness. Standing there as if rooted to the spot, they were oblivious both to the presence of a stranger and the restlessness of the sheepdogs.
In the thick sleepy air hung a monotonous noise always present on summer nights in the steppe; grasshoppers were chirring continuously, quails were craking, and about a mile away from the flock, in a gully with willows and a running stream, young nightingales were singing indolently.
The ranger had stopped to ask the shepherds for a light for his pipe. He had lit up silently and smoked his pipe to the end, and then, without uttering a word, had lent his elbow on the saddle and become lost in thought. The young shepherd paid him no attention whatsoever; he continued to lie there staring up at the sky, but the old man examined the ranger for a long time then asked:
‘You wouldn’t be Panteley from the Makarovsk estate?’
‘That’s me,’ replied the ranger.
‘Of course it is. Didn’t recognize you—means you’ll be rich. Where have you come from?’
‘From the Kovyly estate.’
‘That’s a long way off. Is the land leased?’
‘Some of it. Some of it is leased, some of it rented out, and some of it used for growing fruit and vegetables. I’m going over to the mill now.’
A large, dirty-white, shaggy old sheepdog, with clumps of fur dangling round its eyes and nose, padded calmly round the horse three times, trying to appear indifferent to the presence of strangers, then suddenly threw itself at the ranger from behind with a bad-tempered and senile growl; the other dogs could not contain themselves and leapt up from their places.
‘Be quiet, you cursed dog!’ shouted the old man, raising himself on his elbow. ‘Just shut up, you wretched creature!’
When the dogs had quietened down, the old man took up his previous position and said in a quiet voice:
‘You know that Yefim Zhmenya died in Kovyly, right on Ascension Day? Shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but he was a foul old man. Suppose you heard about it?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Yefim Zhmenya was Stepka the blacksmith’s uncle. Everyone round here knew him. Yes, he was a nasty piece of work! I knew him for about sixty years, from the time when they took Tsar Alexander *–the one who drove out the French–from Taganrog to Moscow on a wagon. We’d both set off to see the dead Tsar, but the great highway didn’t go to Bakhmut then, but from Esaulovka to Gorodishche, and there were bustard nests where Kovyly is now– nests all over the place. Even back then I noticed that Zhmenya had ruined his soul and had an unclean spirit in him. I always think it’s a bad sign when a peasant is quiet most of the time, gets involved with women’s business, and seeks to live on his own, and Yefimka, you know, was dead quiet even when he was young; he’d scowl at you, and pout and strut about, like a cock in front of a hen. He wasn’t one for going to church, hanging out with the lads, or sitting in the tavern; he would always be sitting on his own or whispering with the old women. He was young, but it was beekeeping and melon-growing that he earned his living by. Folk would come up to him to his plot, you know, and his melons and watermelons would start whistling. And then once he caught a pike in front of some folk, and it started laughing–ho ho ho! Just like that!’
‘It can happen,’ said Panteley.
The young shepherd turned on to his side and fixed his gaze intently on the old man, his black brows raised.
‘So have you heard watermelons whistling?’ he asked.
‘God mercifully spared me from it,’ said the old man with a sigh. ‘But that’s what people were saying. It’s nothing to marvel at really… If an unclean spirit wants to, it can make a stone whistle. We had a big rock humming for three days and three nights in front of us before they gave us liberty. * I heard it myself. And the pike laughed because Zhmenya caught a demon, not a pike.’
The old man remembered something. He raised himself swiftly up onto his knees; shivering as if he were cold, and thrusting his hands into his sleeves nervously, he started babbling like an old woman:
‘Lord have mercy on us! I was walking along the riverbank once to Novopavlovka. There was a storm brewing and Holy Mother of God, what a gale there was blowing… I was hurrying along as fast as I could, and between the blackthorn bushes–they were in blossom then–I saw a white ox walk
ing down the path. And so I think: who does that ox belong to? Why has an evil spirit brought it here? It was walking along switching its tail and mooing. But the thing is, though, that when I caught up with it and went up close, I saw that it wasn’t an ox, but Zhmenya. God have mercy! I made the sign of the cross, but he just looked at me with bulging eyes and muttered. I got scared, I tell you! We walked on together and I was too afraid to say a word to him–the thunder was rumbling away and lightning was slashing the sky, the willows were bent right down to the water, and then suddenly, God strike me down if I tell a lie, a hare runs across the path… It ran up, stopped, and said in a human voice to us: “Hello lads!” Oh get away, you cursed beast,’ the old man shouted at the shaggy dog, which was circling the horse again; ‘just clear off!’
‘It can happen,’ said the ranger, still leaning up against his saddle without moving; he spoke in the quiet, muffled voice of a person lost in thought.
‘It can happen,’ he said firmly and thoughtfully.
‘Ugh, he was a wretched old man!’ continued the old man with less emotion now. ‘About five years after getting our liberty, we all had him flogged at the village office, so he got his own back by setting loose a throat infection all over Kovyly. People started dying like flies, thousands of them, like when we had cholera…’
‘How could he let loose an illness?’ asked the young man after a moment of silence.
‘Well it’s obvious, isn’t it? You don’t need to be all that clever, you just need the will. Zhmenya killed people with adder’s oil. And that’s not at all like ordinary oil, people can die just from smelling it.’
‘That’s true,’ agreed Panteley.
‘The lads wanted to kill him then, but the old folk wouldn’t let them. You couldn’t kill him, though, because he knew places where there was treasure. And no one apart from him knew about them. The treasure round here has a spell on it, so you might find the places where it’s hidden, but you wouldn’t be able to see it; he saw it though. He would be walking along the riverbank or through the wood, and underneath the bushes and the rocks there would be little lights everywhere… The lights were like they were made of sulphur. I saw them myself. Everyone was waiting for Zhmenya to show us the places, or dig them up himself, but it was like he was cutting off his nose to spite his face—he went and died: he didn’t dig them up himself and he didn’t show anybody where they were.’
About Love and Other Stories Page 8