Family Happiness and Other Stories Page 20

  So he stood, crossing and prostrating himself when necessary, and struggled with himself, now giving way to cold condemnation and now to a consciously evoked obliteration of thought and feeling. Then the sacristan, Father Nicodemus—also a great stumbling-block to Sergius who involuntarily reproached him for flattering and fawning on the abbot—approached him and, bowing low, requested his presence behind the holy gates. Father Sergius straightened his mantle, put on his biretta, and went circumspectly through the crowd.

  “Lise, regarde à droite, c’est lui!” he heard a woman’s voice say.

  “Où, où? Il n’est pas tellement beau.”16

  He knew that they were speaking of him. He heard them and, as al-ways at moments of temptation, he repeated the words, “Lead us not into temptation,” and bowing his head and lowering his eyes went past the ambo and in by the north door, avoiding the canons in their cassocks who were just then passing the altar screen. On entering the sanctuary he bowed, crossing himself as usual and bending double before the icons. Then, raising his head but without turning, he glanced out of the corner of his eye at the abbot, whom he saw standing beside another glittering figure.

  The abbot was standing by the wall in his vestments. Having freed his short plump hands from beneath his chasuble he had folded them over his fat body and protruding stomach, and fingering the cords of his vestments was smilingly saying something to a military man in the uniform of a general of the imperial suite, with its insignia and shoulder-knots which Father Sergius’s experienced eye at once recognized. This general had been the commander of the regiment in which Sergius had served. He now evidently occupied an important position, and Father Sergius at once noticed that the abbot was aware of this and that his red face and bald head beamed with satisfaction and pleasure. This vexed and disgusted Father Sergius, the more so when he heard that the abbot had only sent for him to satisfy the general’s curiosity to see a man who had formerly served with him, as he expressed it.

  “Very pleased to see you in your angelic guise,” said the general, holding out his hand. “I hope you have not forgotten an old comrade.”

  The whole thing—the abbot’s red, smiling face amid its fringe of grey, the general’s words, his well-cared-for face with its self-satisfied smile and the smell of wine from his breath and of cigars from his whiskers—revolted Father Sergius. He bowed again to the abbot and said:

  “Your reverence deigned to send for me?”—and stopped, the whole expression of his face and eyes asking why.

  “Yes, to meet the general,” replied the abbot.

  “Your reverence, I left the world to save myself from temptation,” said Father Sergius, turning pale and with quivering lips. “Why do you expose me to it during prayers and in God’s house?”

  “You may go! Go!” said the abbot, flaring up and frowning.

  Next day Father Sergius asked pardon of the abbot and of the brethren for his pride, but at the same time, after a night spent in prayer, he decided that he must leave this monastery, and he wrote to the starets begging permission to return to him. He wrote that he felt his weakness and incapacity to struggle against temptation without his help, and penitently confessed his sin of pride. By return of post came a letter from the starets, who wrote that Sergius’s pride was the cause of all that had happened. The old man pointed out that his fits of anger were due to the fact that in refusing all clerical honors he humiliated himself not for the sake of God but for the sake of his pride. “There now, am I not a splendid man not to want anything?” That was why he could not tolerate the abbot’s action. “I have renounced everything for the glory of God, and here I am exhibited like a wild beast!” “Had you renounced vanity for God’s sake you would have borne it. Worldly pride is not yet dead in you. I have thought about you, Sergius my son, and prayed also, and this is what God has suggested to me. At the Tambov hermitage the anchorite Hilary, a man of saintly life, has died. He had lived there eighteen years. The Tambov abbot is asking whether there is not a brother who would take his place. And here comes your letter. Go to Father Païssy of the Tambov Monastery. I will write to him about you, and you must ask for Hilary’s cell. Not that you can replace Hilary, but you need solitude to quell your pride. May God bless you!”

  Sergius obeyed the starets, showed his letter to the abbot, and having obtained his permission, gave up his cell, handed all his possessions over to the monastery, and set out for the Tambov hermitage.

  There the abbot, an excellent manager of merchant origin, received Sergius simply and quietly and placed him in Hilary’s cell, at first assigning to him a lay brother but afterwards leaving him alone, at Sergius’s own request. The cell was a dual cave, dug into the hillside, and in it Hilary had been buried. In the back part was Hilary’s grave, while in the front was a niche for sleeping, with a straw mattress, a small table, and a shelf with icons and books. Outside the outer door, which fastened with a hook, was another shelf on which, once a day, a monk placed food from the monastery.

  And so Sergius became a hermit.

  III

  At carnival time, in the sixth year of Sergius’s life at the hermitage, a merry company of rich people, men and women from a neighboring town, made up a troyka party, after a meal of carnival pancakes and wine. The company consisted of two lawyers, a wealthy landowner, an officer, and four ladies. One lady was the officer’s wife, another the wife of the landowner, the third his sister—a young girl—and the fourth a divorcee, beautiful, rich, and eccentric, who amazed and shocked the town by her escapades.

  The weather was excellent and the snow-covered road smooth as a floor. They drove some seven miles out of town, and then stopped and consulted as to whether they should turn back or drive farther.

  “But where does this road lead to?” asked Makovkina, the beautiful divorcee.

  “To Tambov, eight miles from here,” replied one of the lawyers, who was having a flirtation with her.

  “And then where?”

  “Then on to L——, past the monastery.”

  “Where that Father Sergius lives?”

  “Yes.”

  “Kasatsky, the handsome hermit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mesdames et messieurs, let us drive on and see Kasatsky! We can stop at Tambov and have something to eat.”

  “But we shouldn’t get home tonight!”

  “Never mind, we will stay at Kasatsky’s.”

  “Well, there is a very good hostelry at the monastery. I stayed there when I was defending Makhin.”

  “No, I shall spend the night at Kasatsky’s!”

  “Impossible! Even your omnipotence could not accomplish that!”

  “Impossible? Will you bet?”

  “All right! If you spend the night with him, the stake shall be whatever you like.”

  “A discrétion!”17

  “But on your side too!”

  “Yes, of course. Let us drive on.”

  Vodka was handed to the drivers, and the party got out a box of pies, wine, and sweets for themselves. The ladies wrapped up in their white dogskins. The drivers disputed as to whose troyka should go ahead, and the youngest, seating himself sideways with a dashing air, swung his long knout and shouted to the horses. The troyka bells tinkled and the sledge runners squeaked over the snow.

  The sledges swayed hardly at all. The shaft-horse, with his tightly bound tail under his decorated breechband, galloped smoothly and briskly; the smooth road seemed to run rapidly backwards, while the driver dashingly shook the reins. One of the lawyers and the officer sitting opposite talked nonsense to Makovkina’s neighbor, but Makovkina herself sat motionless and in thought, tightly wrapped in her fur. “Always the same and always nasty! The same red shiny faces smelling of wine and cigars! The same talk, the same thoughts, and always about the same things! And they are all satisfied and confident that it should be so, and will go on living like that till they die. But I can’t. It bores me. I want something that would upset it all and turn it upside down. Supp
ose it happened to us as to those people—at Saratov was it?—who kept on driving and froze to death.... What would our people do? How would they behave? Basely, for certain. Each for himself. And I too should act badly. But I at any rate have beauty. They all know it. And how about that monk? Is it possible that he has become indifferent to it? No! That is the one thing they all care for—like that cadet last autumn. What a fool he was!”

  “Ivan Nikolayevich!” she said aloud.

  “What are your commands?”

  “How old is he?”

  “Who?”

  “Kasatsky.”

  “Over forty, I should think.”

  “And does he receive all visitors?”

  “Yes, everybody, but not always.”

  “Cover up my feet. Not like that—how clumsy you are! No! More, more—like that! But you need not squeeze them!”

  So they came to the forest where the cell was.

  Makovkina got out of the sledge, and told them to drive on. They tried to dissuade her, but she grew irritable and ordered them to go on.

  When the sledges had gone she went up the path in her white dogskin coat. The lawyer got out and stopped to watch her.

  It was Father Sergius’s sixth year as a recluse, and he was now forty-nine. His life in solitude was hard—not on account of the fasts and the prayers (they were no hardship to him) but on account of an inner conflict he had not at all anticipated. The sources of that conflict were two: doubts, and the lust of the flesh. And these two enemies always appeared together. It seemed to him that they were two foes, but in reality they were one and the same. As soon as doubt was gone so was the lustful desire. But thinking them to be two different fiends he fought them separately.

  “O my God, my God!” thought he. “Why dost thou not grant me faith? There is lust, of course: even the saints had to fight that—Saint Anthony and others. But they had faith, while I have moments, hours, and days, when it is absent. Why does the whole world, with all its delights, exist if it is sinful and must be renounced? Why hast thou created this temptation? Temptation? Is it not rather a temptation that I wish to abandon all the joys of earth and prepare something for myself there where perhaps there is nothing?” And he became horrified and filled with disgust at himself. “Vile creature! And it is you who wish to become a saint!” he upbraided himself, and he began to pray. But as soon as he started to pray he saw himself vividly as he had been at the monastery, in a majestic post in biretta and mantle, and he shook his head. “No, that is not right. It is deception. I may deceive others, but not myself or God. I am not a majestic man, but a pitiable and ridiculous one!” And he threw back the folds of his cassock and smiled as he looked at his thin legs in their underclothing.

  Then he dropped the folds of the cassock again and began reading the prayers, making the sign of the cross and prostrating himself. “Can it be that this couch will be my bier?” he read. And it seemed as if a devil whispered to him: “A solitary couch is itself a bier. Falsehood!” And in imagination he saw the shoulders of a widow with whom he had lived. He shook himself, and went on reading. Having read the precepts he took up the Gospels, opened the book, and happened on a passage he often repeated and knew by heart: “Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief!” —and he put away all the doubts that had arisen. As one replaces an object of insecure equilibrium, so he carefully replaced his belief on its shaky pedestal and carefully stepped back from it so as not to shake or upset it. The blinkers were adjusted again and he felt tranquillized, and repeating his childhood’s prayer: “Lord, receive me, receive me!” He felt not merely at ease, but thrilled and joyful. He crossed himself and lay down on the bedding on his narrow bench, tucking his summer cassock under his head. He fell asleep at once, and in his light slumber he seemed to hear the tinkling of sledge bells. He did not know whether he was dreaming or awake, but a knock at the door aroused him. He sat up, distrusting his senses, but the knock was repeated. Yes, it was a knock close at hand, at his door, and with it the sound of a woman’s voice.

  “My God! Can it be true, as I have read in the Lives of the Saints, that the devil takes on the form of a woman? Yes—it is a woman’s voice. And a tender, timid, pleasant voice. Phui!” And he spat to exorcise the devil. “No, it was only my imagination,” he assured himself, and he went to the corner where his lectern stood, falling on his knees in the regular and habitual manner which of itself gave him consolation and satisfaction. He sank down, his hair hanging over his face, and pressed his head, already going bald in front, to the cold damp strip of drugget on the draughty floor. He read the psalm old Father Pimon had told him warded off temptation. He easily raised his light and emaciated body on his strong sinewy legs and tried to continue saying his prayers, but instead of doing so he involuntarily strained his hearing. He wished to hear more. All was quiet. From the corner of the roof regular drops continued to fall into the tub below. Outside was a mist and fog eating into the snow that lay on the ground. It was still, very still. And suddenly there was a rustling at the window and a voice—that same tender, timid voice, which could only belong to an attractive woman—said:

  “Let me in, for Christ’s sake!”

  It seemed as though his blood had all rushed to his heart and settled there. He could hardly breathe. “Let God arise and let his enemies be scattered . . .”

  “But I am not a devil!” It was obvious that the lips that uttered this were smiling. “I am not a devil, but only a sinful woman who has lost her way, not figuratively but literally!” She laughed. “I am frozen and beg for shelter.”

  He pressed his face to the window, but the little icon lamp was reflected by it and shone on the whole pane. He put his hands to both sides of his face and peered between them. Fog, mist, a tree, and—just opposite him—she herself. Yes, there, a few inches from him, was the sweet, kindly frightened face of a woman in a cap and a coat of long white fur, leaning towards him. Their eyes met with instant recognition: not that they had ever known one another, they had never met before, but by the look they exchanged they—and he particularly—felt that they knew and understood one another. After that glance to imagine her to be a devil and not a simple, kindly, sweet, timid woman, was impossible.

  “Who are you? Why have you come?” he asked.

  “Do please open the door!” she replied, with capricious authority. “I am frozen. I tell you I have lost my way.”

  “But I am a monk—a hermit.”

  “Oh, do please open the door—or do you wish me to freeze under your window while you say your prayers?”

  “But how have you . . .”

  “I shan’t eat you. For God’s sake let me in! I am quite frozen.”

  She really did feel afraid, and said this in an almost tearful voice.

  He stepped back from the window and looked at an icon of the Savior in his crown of thorns. “Lord, help me! Lord, help me!” he exclaimed, crossing himself and bowing low. Then he went to the door, and opening it into the tiny porch, felt for the hook that fastened the outer door and began to lift it. He heard steps outside. She was coming from the window to the door. “Ah!” she suddenly exclaimed, and he understood that she had stepped into the puddle that the dripping from the roof had formed at the threshold. His hands trembled, and he could not raise the hook of the tightly closed door.

  “Oh, what are you doing? Let me in! I am all wet. I am frozen! You are thinking about saving your soul and are letting me freeze to death . . .”

  He jerked the door towards him, raised the hook, and without considering what he was doing, pushed it open with such force that it struck her.

  “Oh—pardon!” he suddenly exclaimed, reverting completely to his old manner with ladies.

  She smiled on hearing that pardon. “He is not quite so terrible, after all,” she thought. “It’s all right. It is you who must pardon me,” she said, stepping past him. “I should never have ventured, but such an extraordinary circumstance . . .”

  “If you please!” he uttered, an
d stood aside to let her pass him. A strong smell of fine scent, which he had long not encountered, struck him. She went through the little porch into the cell where he lived. He closed the outer door without fastening the hook, and stepped in after her.

  “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner! Lord, have mercy on me a sinner!” he prayed unceasingly, not merely to himself but involuntarily moving his lips. “If you please!” he said to her again. She stood in the middle of the room, moisture dripping from her to the floor as she looked him over. Her eyes were laughing.

  “Forgive me for having disturbed your solitude. But you see what a position I am in. It all came about from our starting from town for a sledge drive, and my making a bet that I would walk back by myself from the Vorobyovka to the town. But then I lost my way, and if I had not happened to come upon your cell . . .” She began lying, but his face confused her so that she could not continue, but became silent. She had not expected him to be at all such as he was. He was not as handsome as she had imagined, but was nevertheless beautiful in her eyes: his greyish hair and beard, slightly curling, his fine, regular nose, and his eyes like glowing coal when he looked at her, made a strong impression on her.

  He saw that she was lying.

  “Yes . . . so,” said he, looking at her and again lowering his eyes. “I will go in there, and this place is at your disposal.”

  And taking down the little lamp, he lit a candle, and bowing low to her went into the small cell beyond the partition, and she heard him begin to move something about there. “Probably he is barricading himself in from me!” she thought with a smile, and throwing off her white dogskin cloak she tried to take off her cap, which had become entangled in her hair and in the woven kerchief she was wearing under it. She had not got at all wet when standing under the window, and had said so only as a pretext to get him to let her in. But she really had stepped into the puddle at the door, and her left foot was wet up to the ankle and her overshoe full of water. She sat down on his bed—a bench only covered by a bit of carpet—and began to take off her boots. The little cell seemed to her charming. The narrow little room, some seven feet by nine, was as clean as glass. There was nothing in it but the bench on which she was sitting, the book-shelf above it, and a lectern in the corner. A sheepskin coat and a cassock hung on nails by the door. Above the lectern was the little lamp and an icon of Christ in his crown of thorns. The room smelt strangely of perspiration and of earth. It all pleased her—even that smell. Her wet feet, especially one of them, were uncomfortable, and she quickly began to take off her boots and stockings without ceasing to smile, pleased not so much at having achieved her object as because she perceived that she had abashed that charming, strange, striking, and attractive man. “He did not respond, but what of that?” she said to herself.