Fifty-Two Stories

A NIGHTMARE

A PERMANENT MEMBER of the local committee on peasant affairs, Kunin, a young man of about thirty, who had just come back from Petersburg to his native Borisovo, first of all sent a mounted messenger to the village of Sinkovo for the priest there, Father Yakov Smirnov.

Five hours later Father Yakov appeared.

“Very glad to make your acquaintance!” said Kunin, meeting him in the front hall. “I’ve been living and serving here for a year now, I think it’s time we became acquainted. Kindly come in! But…you’re so young!” Kunin was surprised. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight, sir…,” Father Yakov replied, weakly shaking the proffered hand and blushing for some reason.

Kunin took the guest to his study and began to examine him.

“What a crude, peasant woman’s face!” he thought.

In fact, there was in Father Yakov’s face a good deal of the “peasant woman”: an upturned nose, bright red cheeks, and big gray-blue eyes with sparse, barely visible eyebrows. Long red hair, dry and smooth, descended to his shoulders like straight sticks. His moustache was just beginning to take the shape of a real masculine one, and his little beard belonged to that good-for-nothing sort that seminarians, for some reason, call “skippish”: sparse, quite transparent; it could not be smoothed or combed, it could only be plucked…All this meager vegetation sat there unevenly, in clumps, as if Father Yakov, deciding to make himself up as a priest and starting by gluing on a beard, was interrupted halfway through. He was wearing a cassock the color of weak chicory coffee with large patches on both elbows.

“A strange specimen…,” thought Kunin, looking at his mud-splashed skirts. “He comes to the house for the first time and can’t dress more decently.”

“Have a seat, Father,” he began, more casually than affably, moving an armchair to the desk. “Have a seat, please!”

Father Yakov coughed into his fist, lowered himself awkwardly onto the edge of the chair, and placed his palms on his knees. Undersized, narrow-chested, his face sweaty and flushed, from the first moment he made a very unpleasant impression on Kunin. Previously Kunin simply could not have conceived of there being such unrespectable and pathetic-looking priests in Russia, and he saw in Father Yakov’s pose, in this holding his palms on his knees and sitting on the edge, a lack of dignity and even obsequiousness.

“I have invited you on business, Father…,” Kunin began, settling against the back of his armchair. “It has fallen to my lot to have the pleasant duty of assisting you in your useful undertaking…The thing is that, on coming back from Petersburg, I found a letter on my desk from our marshal of the nobility.¹ Egor Dmitrievich proposes to me that I take under my trusteeship the parish school that is about to open in your Sinkovo. I’m very glad, Father, with all my heart…Even more: I am delighted to accept this proposal!”

Kunin stood up and began to pace the study.

“Of course, it is known to Egor Dmitrievich, and probably to you, that I have no great means at my disposal. My estate is mortgaged, and I live only on my salary as a permanent member. Which means that you cannot count on great help from me, but that I will do everything in my power…And when do you think of opening your school, Father?”

“When there’s money…,” Father Yakov replied.

“Do you have any means at your disposal now?”

“Almost none, sir…The peasant assembly decided to pay thirty kopecks annually for every male soul,² but that’s only a promise! At least two hundred roubles are needed to get started…”

“Hm…yes…Unfortunately, I don’t have such a sum now…” Kunin sighed. “I spent all I had on my trip and…even went into debt. Let’s try to think something up together.”

Kunin started thinking out loud. He gave his views and watched Father Yakov’s face, seeking approval or agreement in it. But that face was passionless, immobile, and expressed nothing except timidity and uneasiness. Looking at it, one might have thought that Kunin was talking about such abstruse things that Father Yakov did not understand them, listened only out of delicacy and at the same time fearing that he might be accused of not understanding.

“The fellow is obviously not very bright…,” Kunin thought. “Much too timid and a bit simple-minded.”

Father Yakov became slightly more animated and even smiled when a servant came into the study bringing a tray with two cups of tea and a plate of cookies. He took his glass and immediately began to drink.

“Shouldn’t we write to the bishop?” Kunin went on reasoning aloud. “As a matter of fact, it was not the district council, not us, but the high clerical authorities who raised the question of parish schools. It is really they who should specify the means. I remember reading that there was even a certain sum of money allocated for that purpose. Do you know anything about it?”

Father Yakov was so immersed in tea-drinking that he did not answer this question at once. He raised his gray-blue eyes to Kunin, thought a little, and, as if recalling his question, shook his head negatively. An expression of pleasure and of the most ordinary, prosaic appetite was spreading over his unattractive face from ear to ear. He was drinking and relishing every gulp. Having drunk it all to the last drop, he set his glass on the table, then picked it up again, studied the bottom, and set it down again. The expression of pleasure slipped from his face. Then Kunin saw his guest take a cookie from the plate, bite off a little piece, then turn it around in his fingers and quickly stick it in his pocket.

“Well, that is entirely un-clerical!” thought Kunin, shrugging squeamishly. “What is it, priestly greed or childishness?”

Having let his guest drink a cup of tea and accompanied him to the front hall, Kunin lay down on the sofa and surrendered himself entirely to the unpleasant feeling evoked in him by Father Yakov’s visit.

“What a strange, uncouth man!” he thought. “Dirty, slovenly, coarse, stupid, and probably a drunkard…My God, and this is a priest, a spiritual father! A teacher of the people! I can imagine how much irony there must be in the deacon’s voice as he intones before every liturgy: ‘Bless, master!’ A fine master! A master who doesn’t have a drop of dignity, ill-bred, hiding cookies in his pocket like a schoolboy…Ugh! Good Lord, where was the bishop looking when he ordained this man? What do they think of the people, if they give them such teachers? What’s needed here is people who…”

And Kunin began to think about what Russian priests should be like…

“If I, for instance, were a priest…A well-educated priest who loves what he does can achieve a great deal…I’d have opened a school long ago. And sermons? If a priest is sincere and inspired by love for his work, what wonderful, fiery sermons he could give!”

Kunin closed his eyes and began mentally composing a sermon. A little later he was sitting at his desk and quickly writing it down.

“I’ll give it to that redhead, let him read it in church…,” he thought.

The next Sunday, in the morning, Kunin was riding to Sinkovo to finish with the question of the school and incidentally become acquainted with the church, where he was considered a parishioner. In spite of the muddy season, the morning was glorious. The sun shone brightly, and its rays cut into the sheets of residual snow showing white here and there. The snow, bidding farewell to the earth, shimmered with such diamonds that it was painful to look at, and next to it the young winter rye was hurriedly turning green. Rooks sedately circled over the earth. A rook flies, then descends to the ground and, before coming to a standstill, hops several times…

The wooden church that Kunin rode up to was dilapidated and gray; the little columns on the porch, once painted white, had peeled and were now completely bare and resembled two ugly shafts. The icon over the door looked like a single dark spot. But this poverty touched and moved Kunin. Modestly lowering his eyes, he entered the church and stopped by the door. The service had just begun. An old, crook-backed sexton was reading the hours in a hollow, indistinct tenor. Father Yakov, who served without a deacon, went around censing the church. If it had not been for the humility Kunin felt on entering the beggarly church, the sight of Father Yakov would certainly have made him smile. The undersized priest was wearing a wrinkled and much-too-long vestment of some shabby yellow fabric. The lower edge of the vestment dragged on the ground.

The church was not full. Glancing at the parishioners, Kunin was struck at first by a strange circumstance: he saw only old people and children…Where were those of working age? Where were youth and manhood? But, having stood there longer and looked more attentively at the old people’s faces, Kunin saw that he had mistaken the young ones for old. However, he ascribed no special significance to this small optical illusion.

The inside of the church was as dilapidated and gray as the outside. On the iconostasis and on the brown walls there was not a single spot that had not been blackened and scratched by time. There were many windows, but the general coloration was gray, and therefore it was dusky in the church.

“For the pure in soul, it’s good to pray here…,” thought Kunin. “As in St. Peter’s in Rome one is struck by the grandeur, so here one is touched by this humility and simplicity.”

But his prayerful mood scattered like smoke when Father Yakov entered the altar and began the liturgy. A young man, ordained to the priesthood straight from the seminary, Father Yakov had had no time to adopt a definite manner of serving. While reciting, it was as if he were choosing what sort of voice to use—a high tenor or a flimsy bass; he bowed clumsily, walked quickly, opened and closed the Royal Doors abruptly…³ The old sexton, obviously sick and deaf, heard his exclamations poorly, which did not fail to result in minor misunderstandings. He would start to sing his part before Father Yakov had finished his, or else Father Yakov would have finished long ago and the old man would still be trying to hear him and would be silent until he was pulled by the cassock. The old man had a hollow, sickly voice, short-winded, trembling and lisping…To crown the unseemliness, the sexton was joined by a very young boy, whose head was barely visible over the rail of the choir loft. The boy sang in a high, shrill soprano and as if deliberately out of tune. Kunin stood for a while listening, then stepped outside to smoke…He was already disappointed and looked at the gray church almost with hostility.

“They complain about the decline of religious feeling among people…,” he sighed. “What else! Why don’t they stick us with more priests like this one!”

Kunin went into the church three more times after that, and each time was strongly drawn back out into the open air. Having waited for the end of the service, he went off to Father Yakov’s. The priest’s house from the outside was no different from the peasant cottages, only the thatching on the roof was more evenly laid and there were white curtains in the windows. Father Yakov led Kunin into a small, bright room with a clay floor and walls hung with cheap wallpaper. Despite some attempts at luxury, like framed photographs and a clock with scissors tied to its weights, the setting was striking in its penury. Looking at the furniture, you might think that Father Yakov had gone around the courtyards and collected it piecemeal. In one place they gave him a round table on three legs, in another a stool, in a third a chair with a back sharply tilted backwards, in a fourth a chair with a straight back but a sagging seat, and in a fifth they generously gave him some semblance of a divan with a flat back and a latticework seat. This semblance had been painted a dark red and smelled strongly of the paint. Kunin first wanted to sit on one of the chairs, but thought better of it and sat on the stool.

“Is this the first time you’ve been to our church?” Father Yakov asked, hanging his hat on a big, ugly nail.

“Yes, the first. I tell you what, Father…Before we get down to business, give me some tea, my soul is completely dry.”

Father Yakov blinked, grunted, and went behind the partition. There was some whispering…

“Must be with his wife…,” Kunin thought. “I’d be interested to see what sort of wife the redhead’s got…”

A little later Father Yakov came from behind the partition, red-faced, sweaty, and, forcing a smile, sat facing Kunin on the edge of the divan.

“The samovar will be started presently,” he said, without looking at his guest.

“My God, they haven’t started the samovar yet!” Kunin was inwardly horrified. “I must kindly wait now!”

“I’ve brought you the draft of the letter I’ve written to the bishop,” he said. “I’ll read it after tea…Maybe you’ll find something to add…”

“Very well, sir.”

Silence ensued. Father Yakov cast a frightened glance at the partition, smoothed his hair, and blew his nose.

“Wonderful weather, sir…,” he said.

“Yes. Incidentally, I read something interesting yesterday…The district council of Volsk has decreed the handing over of all the schools to the care of the clergy. That’s just like them.”

Kunin got up, started pacing the clay floor and voicing his reflections.

“That doesn’t matter,” he said, “if only the clergy is up to its calling and clearly understands its responsibilities. To my misfortune, I know priests who in their development and moral qualities aren’t fit to be army clerks, to say nothing of priests. You must agree that a bad teacher does much less harm to a school than a bad priest.”

Kunin glanced at Father Yakov. He sat hunched over, thinking hard about something, and was apparently not listening to his guest.

“Yasha, come here!” A woman’s voice was heard from behind the partition.

Father Yakov roused himself and went behind the partition. There was more whispering.

Kunin longed desperately for tea.

“No, I won’t get any tea here!” he thought, glancing at his watch. “It seems I’m not entirely a welcome guest. The host hasn’t deigned to say a single word to me, he just sits and blinks.”

Kunin took his hat, waited for Father Yakov, and said goodbye to him.

“I just wasted the whole morning!” he fumed on the way back. “A blockhead! A dolt! He’s as interested in the school as I am in last year’s snow. No, I can’t get anywhere with him! Nothing will come of it! If the marshal knew what sort of priest we’ve got here, he’d be in no hurry to bother with a school. First we have to see about a good priest, and then about the school!”

Kunin almost hated Father Yakov now. The man, his pathetic caricature of a figure in its long, wrinkled vestment, his peasant woman’s face, his manner of serving, his style of life and clerkish, timid deference offended that small bit of religious feeling that still remained in Kunin’s breast and quietly flickered there along with other old wives’ tales. And it was hard for his vanity to bear the coldness and inattention with which the priest met Kunin’s sincere, fervent concern for his own cause…

In the evening of that same day, Kunin paced his room for a long time and thought, then resolutely sat down at his desk and wrote a letter to the bishop. Having requested money for the school and his blessing, he candidly explained, among other things, as a spiritual son should, his opinion about the Sinkovo priest. “He is young,” he wrote, “not sufficiently developed, seems to be leading a drunken life, and generally does not satisfy the requirements which over the centuries have developed among the Russian people regarding their pastors.” Having written this letter, Kunin sighed with relief and went to bed with the consciousness that he had done a good deed.

On Monday morning, while he was still lying in bed, he was told that Father Yakov had come. He did not feel like getting up, and he told them to say he was not at home. On Tuesday he left for the assembly and, returning on Saturday, he learned from the servants that during his absence Father Yakov had come every day.

“Well, so he really liked my cookies!” thought Kunin.

On Sunday, towards evening, Father Yakov came. This time not only the hem of his cassock, but even his hat was spattered with mud. Just as on his first visit, he was red-faced and sweaty, and he sat, as then, on the edge of the armchair. Kunin decided not to start discussing the school, not to cast pearls.

“I’ve come, Pavel Mikhailovich, to bring you a little list of school manuals…” Father Yakov began.

“Thank you.”

But by all tokens it could be seen that Father Yakov had not come for the sake of the little list. His whole figure expressed deep embarrassment, but at the same time resolution was written on his face, as on a man upon whom an idea has suddenly dawned. He was struggling to say something important, extremely necessary, and was now trying to overcome his timidity.

“Why is he silent?” Kunin thought angrily. “Sitting around here! As if I have time to bother about him!”

In order to smooth over the awkwardness of his silence somehow and conceal the struggle that was going on in him, the priest began to force a smile, and this smile, prolonged, squeezed out through the sweat and redness of his face, conflicting with the fixed gaze of his gray-blue eyes, made Kunin turn away. He was disgusted.

“Excuse me, Father, I have to leave…,” he said.

Father Yakov roused himself, like a sleepy man who has just been punched, and, without ceasing to smile, began in his embarrassment to wrap the skirts of his cassock around him. Despite all his revulsion at this man, Kunin suddenly felt sorry for him, and he wanted to soften his cruelty.

“Please, Father, another time…,” he said, “and before you go I have a request to make of you…I recently felt inspired, you know, and wrote two sermons…I give them to you for your consideration…If they’re suitable, deliver them.”

“Very well, sir…,” Father Yakov said, covering Kunin’s sermons, which lay on the table, with his palm. “I’ll take them, sir…”

He stood for a moment, hesitated, still trying to close his cassock, and then suddenly stopped forcing a smile and resolutely raised his head.

“Pavel Mikhailovich,” he said, obviously trying to speak loudly and clearly.

“What can I do for you?”

“I’ve heard that you were pleased…sort of…to fire your clerk and…and are now looking for a new one…”

“Yes…Do you have someone you can recommend?”

“You see, I…I…Couldn’t you give this post to…me?”

“So you’re abandoning the priesthood?” Kunin was amazed.

“No, no,” Father Yakov said quickly, turning pale for some reason and trembling all over. “God save me from that! If you doubt me, then never mind, never mind. I meant it sort of in my spare time…to increase my dividends…”

“Hm…dividends!…But I pay my clerk only twenty roubles a month!”

“Lord, and I’d take ten!” Father Yakov whispered, glancing over his shoulder. “Ten’s enough! You’re…you’re amazed…and everybody’s amazed. Greedy, money-grubbing priest, what does he do with all his money? I myself feel I’m greedy…I accuse myself, condemn myself…I’m ashamed to look people in the eye…To you, Pavel Mikhailovich, in all conscience…I call the true God as my witness…”

Father Yakov paused to catch his breath and went on:

“On the way here I prepared a whole confession for you, but…I forgot it all, I can’t find the right words now. I get a hundred and fifty roubles a year from the parish, and everybody…wonders what I do with this money…But I’ll explain it all to you honestly…I pay forty roubles a year to the seminary for my brother Pyotr. He gets room and board, but paper and pens are on me…”

“Ah, I believe you, I believe you! Well, why all this?” Kunin waved his hand, feeling terribly oppressed by his guest’s candor and not knowing where to hide from the tearful glistening of his eyes.

“And then, sir, I have yet to pay off my debt to the chancery. They charged me two hundred roubles for this post, to be paid off ten roubles a month…Judge for yourself now, what’s left? And besides that I have to give Father Avramy at least three roubles a month!”

“What Father Avramy?”

“Father Avramy who was the priest in Sinkovo before me. He was removed from the position on account of…weakness, but he lives in Sinkovo even now! Where can he go? Who will feed him? He’s old, but still he needs a corner, and bread, and some clothes! I can’t allow that he, with his holy order, should go begging! It would be my sin if something happened! My sin! He…owes money to everybody, but it’s my sin if I don’t pay for him.”

Father Yakov tore from his place and, staring madly at the floor, began pacing from corner to corner.

“My God! My God!” he muttered, now raising his arms, now lowering them. “Lord, save us and have mercy! And why did you take such an order upon yourself, if you’re of little faith and have no strength? There’s no end to my despair! Queen of Heaven, save me.”

“Calm down, Father,” said Kunin.

“We’re starving, Pavel Mikhailovich!” Father Yakov went on. “Kindly forgive me, but it’s beyond my strength…I know if I ask, if I bow my head, everyone will help me, but…I can’t! I’m ashamed! How am I going to ask from peasants? You work here, you know…How can I hold out my hand and ask from beggars? And I can’t ask from those who are richer, from the landowners! Pride! I’m ashamed!”

Father Yakov waved his arm and scratched his head nervously with both hands.

“Ashamed! God, how ashamed! I’m proud, I can’t stand it that people see my poverty. When you visited us, we simply had no tea, Pavel Mikhailovich! Not a speck of tea, but my pride kept me from telling you! I’m ashamed of my clothes, of these patches…Ashamed of my vestments, of my hunger…And is pride a proper thing for a priest?”

Father Yakov stopped in the middle of the study and, as if not noticing Kunin’s presence, began reasoning with himself.

“Well, let’s say I can bear with the hunger and the shame, but, Lord, I also have a wife! I took her from a good family! She’s not used to hard work, she’s sensitive, she’s used to tea, and white bread, and bedsheets…She played the piano in her parents’ house…She’s young, not yet twenty…No doubt she would like to dress up, and frolic a bit, and go visiting…And with me…she’s worse off than any kitchen maid, she’s ashamed to show herself outside. My God, my God! The only pleasure she has is when I come home from my visits with an apple or a little cookie…”

Father Yakov again began to scratch his head with both hands.

“And as a result what we have isn’t love, it’s pity…I can’t see her without compassion! And, Lord, what’s going on in the world. If somebody writes about it in the newspapers, people won’t believe it…And when will there be an end to it all!”

“Enough now, Father!” Kunin almost cried out, frightened by his tone. “Why look at life so darkly?”

“Kindly forgive me, Pavel Mikhailovich…,” Father Yakov muttered, as if drunk. “Forgive me, it’s all nothing, pay no attention…And I only blame myself and will go on blaming myself…I will!”

Father Yakov glanced over his shoulder and began to whisper:

“Early one morning I was walking from Sinkovo to Luchkovo; I look, and there’s a woman standing on the riverbank doing something…I come closer and don’t believe my eyes…Terrible! Doctor Ivan Sergeich’s wife is there rinsing laundry…A doctor’s wife, who finished boarding school! It means she went early in the morning and half a mile from the village, so that people wouldn’t see her…Invincible pride! When she saw I was near her and had noticed her poverty, she blushed all over…I was taken aback, frightened, I ran up to her, wanted to help, but she tried to hide the laundry from me so that I wouldn’t see her tattered undershirts…”

“This is all somehow even unbelievable…,” said Kunin, sitting down and looking at Father Yakov’s pale face almost with horror.

“Precisely unbelievable! It’s never happened before, Pavel Mikhailovich, that doctors’ wives rinsed their linen in the river! Not in any country! As a pastor and a spiritual father, I should not have allowed her to do it, but what can I do? What? I myself always try to be treated by her husband free of charge. You were right to be so good as to declare it unbelievable! The eyes refuse to believe it! You know, during the liturgy I sometimes peek out from the altar, and when I see all my public, the hungry Avramy and my wife, and remember the doctor’s wife, her hands blue from the cold—believe me, I’m at a loss and stand there like a fool, oblivious, until the sacristan calls to me…Terrible!”

Father Yakov started pacing again.

“Lord Jesus!” He waved his arms. “Saints alive! I can’t even serve…There you’re telling me about the school, and I’m like a wooden idol, I understand nothing and can only think about food…Even before the altar…But…what am I doing?” Father Yakov caught himself. “You have to leave. Excuse me, it’s just that I’m so…Forgive me…”

Kunin silently shook Father Yakov’s hand, accompanied him to the front hall, and, going back to his study, stood by the window. He saw Father Yakov come out of the house, put on his shabby broad-brimmed hat, and, his head hanging, as if embarrassed by his own candor, slowly walk down the road.

“I don’t see his horse,” thought Kunin.

The thought that the priest had been coming to him on foot all these days frightened Kunin: Sinkovo was five or six miles away, and mud made the roads impassable. Then Kunin saw the coachman Andrei and the boy Paramon, leaping over puddles and splashing Father Yakov with mud, run up to him to receive his blessing. Father Yakov took off his hat and slowly blessed Andrei, then blessed the little boy and stroked his head.

Kunin wiped his hand over his eyes, and it seemed to him that his hand became wet from it. He stepped away from the window and passed a clouded gaze around the room, in which he could still hear the timid, stifled voice…He glanced at his desk…Fortunately, Father Yakov in his haste had forgotten to take his sermons…Kunin ran to them, tore them to shreds, and flung them under the desk in disgust.

“And I didn’t know!” he moaned, collapsing on the sofa. “I, who for more than a year have been serving here as a permanent member, an honorary justice of the peace, a member of the high school board! A blind puppet! A fop! Quickly come to their aid! Quickly!”

He thrashed about painfully, pressed his temples, and strained his mind.

“I’ll receive my salary of two hundred roubles on the twentieth…On some plausible pretext I’ll give some to him and to the doctor’s wife…I’ll invite him to offer a prayer service, and I’ll feign an illness for the doctor…That way their pride won’t be offended. And I’ll help Avramy…”

He counted his money on his fingers and was afraid to admit to himself that these two hundred roubles would barely be enough to pay the steward, the servants, the peasant who delivered meat…He could not help remembering the recent past, when he senselessly wasted his father’s wealth, when, still a twenty-year-old milksop, he gave expensive fans to prostitutes, paid the coachman Kuzma ten roubles a day, offered gifts to actresses out of vanity. Ah, how useful they would be now, all those squandered roubles, three roubles, ten roubles!

“Father Avramy can eat on only three roubles a month,” thought Kunin. “For a rouble the priest’s wife can make herself an undershirt and the doctor’s wife can hire a washerwoman. But anyhow I’ll help them! I’ll certainly help them!”

Here Kunin suddenly remembered the denunciation he had written to the bishop, and he cringed all over as if from a sudden blast of cold. This memory filled his whole soul with a sense of oppressive shame before himself and before the invisible truth…

Thus began and ended the sincere impulse towards useful activity of one of those well-intentioned but all-too-sated and unreasoning human beings.

1886