Fifty-Two Stories

THE LETTER

THE RURAL DEAN,¹ Father Fyodor Orlov, a fine-looking, well-nourished man of about fifty, imposing and stern as always, with a habitual dignified expression that never left his face, but weary in the extreme, paced his small drawing room from corner to corner and thought strenuously about one thing: when would his visitor finally go away? This thought tormented him and did not leave him for a moment. The visitor, Father Anastasy, a priest in one of the outlying villages, had come to him some three hours earlier on his own business, very unpleasant and boring, had stayed on, and now, leaning his elbow on a thick accounting ledger, sat in the corner at a small, round table, and apparently had no thought of leaving, though it was already past eight o’clock in the evening.

Not everyone knows how to stop talking at the right time and leave at the right time. It often happens that even well-bred, tactful society people do not notice that their presence is provoking in a tired or busy host a feeling not unlike hatred, and that the feeling is being strenuously hidden and covered up by a lie. Father Anastasy saw and understood perfectly well that his presence was burdensome and inappropriate, that the dean, who had served matins late at night and a long liturgy at noon,² was tired and wanted to rest; he was on the point of getting up and leaving any moment, but instead of getting up, he went on sitting as if he was waiting for something. He was an old man of sixty-five, decrepit beyond his years, bony and stoop-shouldered, with an age-darkened, haggard face, red eyelids, and a long, narrow back like a fish’s; he was dressed in a light-purple cassock, elegant but too ample for him (it had been given to him by the widow of a young priest who recently passed away), a broadcloth kaftan with a wide leather belt, and clumsy boots, the size and color of which clearly showed that Father Anastasy did without galoshes. Despite his clerical dignity and venerable age, something pathetic, downtrodden, and humiliated showed in his dull red eyes, the gray braids with a greenish tinge on his nape, the big shoulder blades on his skinny back…He was silent, did not stir, and coughed so discreetly as if he was afraid the sound of coughing would make his presence more conspicuous.

The old man had come to the dean on business. A couple of months earlier he had been forbidden to serve until further notice, and he had been put under investigation. His sins were many. He led an unsober life, did not get along with the clergy nor with the laity, neglected the parish register and the accounting—these were the formal accusations against him; but besides that there had long been rumors that he performed illegal marriages for money and sold certificates of fasting to clerks and officers who came to him from town.³ These rumors were the more stubborn in that he was poor and had nine children on his neck, who were failures just as he was. His sons were uneducated, spoiled, and sat around doing nothing, and his unattractive daughters were still not married.

Not having strength enough to be candid, the dean paced from corner to corner, saying nothing or speaking only in hints.

“So you’re not going home tonight?” he asked, stopping by the dark window and poking his little finger through the cage to the fluffed-up, sleeping canary.

Father Anastasy roused himself, coughed discreetly, and said in a quick patter:

“Home? God help me, no, Fyodor Ilyich. You yourself know that I can’t serve, so what am I to do there? I left on purpose so as not to meet peoples’ eyes. You yourself know: it’s shameful not to serve. And besides I have business here, Fyodor Ilyich. Tomorrow after breaking the fast⁴ I want to discuss something thoroughly with the father investigator.”

“So…” The dean yawned. “And where are you staying?”

“At Zyavkin’s.”

Father Anastasy suddenly remembered that in a couple of hours the dean was to serve the Easter matins, and he became so ashamed of his unpleasant, inhibiting presence that he decided to go away at once and give the weary man some peace. And the old man got up to go, but before he began to say goodbye he spent a whole minute clearing his throat and looking imploringly, with the same expression of vague expectation in his whole figure, at the dean’s back; shame, timidity, and a pathetic, forced laughter typical of people who do not respect themselves, played over his face. Waving his hand somehow resolutely, he said with a wheezing, jittery laughter:

“Father Fyodor, carry your mercy through to the end, tell them to give me before I go…a little glass of vodka!”

“This is no time to be drinking vodka,” the dean said sternly. “You should be ashamed.”

Father Anastasy became even more confused, laughed, and, forgetting his resolve to go home, sank back into the chair. The dean looked at his perplexed, embarrassed face, at his bent body, and felt sorry for the old man.

“God willing, we’ll have a drink tomorrow,” he said, wishing to soften his stern refusal. “All in good time.”

The dean believed in reforming people, but now, as the feeling of pity flared up in him, it began to seem to him that this man who was under investigation, haggard, covered with sins and ailments, was irretrievably lost for life, that there was no longer any power on earth that could unbend his back, give clarity to his gaze, restrain his unpleasant, timid laugh, which he laughed on purpose to smooth over, if only slightly, the repulsive impression he made on people.

The old man now seemed to Father Fyodor not guilty or depraved, but humiliated, insulted, wretched; the dean remembered his wife, his nine children, the dirty, beggarly beds in Zyavkin’s inn, remembered, for some reason, those who are glad to see drunken priests and exposed superiors, and he thought that the best thing Father Anastasy could do now was die as soon as possible and leave this world forever.

There was the sound of footsteps.

“Father Fyodor, are you resting?” a bass voice asked in the entryway.

“No, deacon, come in.”

Orlov’s colleague, the deacon Liubimov, came into the drawing room, an old man with a big bald spot on the top of his head, but still sturdy, dark-haired, and with thick black eyebrows, like a Georgian’s. He bowed to Father Anastasy and sat down.

“What’s the good word?” asked the dean.

“Is there any?” the deacon replied and, after a pause, went on with a smile: “Little children, little grief; big children, big grief. Such things are going on, Father Fyodor, that I can’t come to my senses. A comedy, that’s all.”

He paused again briefly, smiled more broadly, and said:

“Today Nikolai Matveich came back from Kharkov. He told me about my Pyotr. Went to see him twice, he said.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Got me worried, God help him. He wanted to give me joy, but when I thought it over, it turned out there wasn’t much joy in it. More cause for grief than joy…‘Your Petrushka,’ he says, ‘lives a high life, he’s way beyond reach now.’ ‘Well, thank God for that,’ I say. ‘I had dinner with him,’ he says, ‘and saw his whole way of life. He lives grandly,’ he says, ‘couldn’t be better.’ I’m curious, of course, so I ask: ‘And what did they serve at his dinner?’ ‘First,’ he says, ‘a fish dish, something like a soup, then tongue with peas, then,’ he says, ‘a roast turkey.’ ‘Turkey during Lent? A fine treat!’ I say. Turkey during the Great Lent. Eh?”

“That’s not so surprising,” said the dean, narrowing his eyes mockingly.

And, tucking both thumbs behind his belt, he straightened up and said in the tone in which he usually delivered sermons or taught catechism in the district high school:

“People who don’t observe the fasts can be divided into two different categories: those who don’t observe out of light-mindedness, and those who don’t out of unbelief. Your Pyotr doesn’t observe the fasts out of unbelief. Yes.”

The deacon looked timidly at Father Fyodor’s stern face and said:

“That’s not the worst of it…We talked and talked, about this and that, and it also turned out that my unbelieving boy lives with some madame, another man’s wife. She’s there in his quarters in place of a wife and hostess: pours tea, receives guests, and all the rest, as if they were married. It’s already the third year he’s been carrying on with this viper. A comedy, that’s all. Three years together, and no children.”

“Meaning they live in chastity!” Father Anastasy giggled, with a wheezing cough. “There are children, Father Deacon, there are, but they don’t keep them at home! They send them to foster care! Ha-ha-ha…” (Anastasy had a coughing fit.)

“Don’t butt in, Father Anastasy,” the dean said sternly.

“So Nikolai Matveich asked him, ‘Who is this madame who serves soup at your table?’ ” the deacon went on, looking darkly at Anastasy’s bent body. “And he says to him, ‘She’s my wife,’ he says. And the other asks, ‘Have you been pleased to be married long?’ And Pyotr replies, ‘We were married in Kulikov’s pastry shop.’ ”

The dean’s eyes lit up wrathfully, and his temples turned red. Apart from his sinfulness, he found Pyotr unsympathetic in general as a human being. Father Fyodor had what is known as a bone to pick with him. He remembered him when he was still a high school boy, and remembered him distinctly, because even then he had seemed abnormal to him. The schoolboy Petrusha was embarrassed to assist at the altar, was offended when addressed informally, did not cross himself on entering a room, and, most memorably of all, liked to talk much and heatedly, and, in Father Fyodor’s opinion, garrulousness in children was improper and harmful; besides that, Petrusha had a scornful and critical attitude towards fishing, of which the dean and the deacon were great enthusiasts. As a student Pyotr did not go to church at all, slept until noon, looked down his nose at people, and, with a sort of special defiance, liked to raise ticklish, unanswerable questions.

“What do you want?” the dean asked, going up to the deacon and looking at him crossly. “What do you want? This was to be expected! I aways knew and was sure that nothing good would come of your Pyotr! I told you and I’m telling you. You’re now reaping what you sowed! Reap, then!”

“What did I sow, Father Fyodor?” the deacon asked softly, looking up at the dean.

“And whose fault is it, if not yours? You are the parent, he is your child! It was for you to instruct him, to instill the fear of God in him. You had to teach him! Begot him, yes, you begot him, but instruct him—no, you did not. That’s a sin! Bad! Shameful!”

The dean forgot about his weariness, paced about, and went on talking. On the deacon’s bare crown and forehead small drops appeared. He raised guilty eyes to the dean and said:

“So I didn’t instruct him, Father Fyodor? Lord have mercy, am I not the father of my child? You yourself know I spared nothing for him, all my life I strove and prayed to God to give him a proper education. I sent him to school, and I hired private tutors for him, and he finished university. And if I couldn’t guide his mind, Father Fyodor, then, judge for yourself, I simply had no ability for it! He used to come here when he was a student, and I would tell him what I thought, but he didn’t listen. I tell him, ‘Go to church,’ and he says, ‘Why should I?’ I’d explain, and he says, ‘Why? What for?’ Or else he pats me on the shoulder and says, ‘Everything in this world is relative, approximate, and conventional. I don’t know anything, and you don’t know a blessed thing either, Papa.’ ”

Father Anastasy burst into wheezy laughter, had a coughing fit, and waved his fingers in the air as if he was about to say something. The dean glanced at him and said sternly:

“Don’t butt in, Father Anastasy.”

The old man laughed, beamed, and evidently enjoyed listening to the deacon, as if he was glad there were other sinful people in this world besides himself. The deacon spoke sincerely, with a contrite heart, and tears even came to his eyes. Father Fyodor felt sorry for him.

“It’s your fault, Deacon, your fault,” he said, but not so sternly and heatedly now. “If you know how to beget, you should know how to instruct. You should have instructed him while he was still a child, but now that he’s a student, just try putting him right!”

Silence ensued. The deacon clasped his hands and said with a sigh:

“And I’m the one who must answer for him!”

“There you have it!”

After a brief pause, the dean yawned and sighed at the same time, and asked:

“Who is reading the Acts?”⁵

“Evstrat. Evstrat always reads the Acts.”

The deacon got up and, looking imploringly at the dean, asked:

“Father Fyodor, what am I to do now?”

“Do whatever you like. I’m not his father, you are. You know best.”

“I know nothing, Father Fyodor! Be so kind as to teach me! Believe me, I’m sick at heart! I can’t sleep now, or sit quietly, and the holiday isn’t a holiday for me! Tell me what to do, Father Fyodor!”

“Write him a letter.”

“What am I going to write to him?”

“Write that he mustn’t do this. Write briefly but sternly and specifically, without softening or diminishing his guilt. It’s your parental obligation. You’ll write, fulfill your duty, and calm down.”

“That’s true, but what am I to write to him? In what sense? I’ll write, and he’ll answer: ‘Why? What for? How is it a sin?’ ”

Father Anastasy again laughed wheezily and moved his fingers.

“ ‘Why? What for? How is it a sin?’ ” he began shrilly. “I was once confessing a certain gentleman and told him that to trust too much in God’s mercy is a sin, and he asks: ‘Why?’ I wanted to answer him, but up here,” Anastasy slapped himself on the forehead, “up here I had nothing! Haa-ha-ha-ha…”

Anastasy’s words, his wheezing, his cackling laughter at something that was not funny, had an unpleasant effect on the dean and the deacon. The dean was about to tell the old man “Don’t butt in,” but he did not say it and merely winced.

“I can’t write to him!” sighed the deacon.

“If you can’t, who can?”

“Father Fyodor!” the deacon said, inclining his head to one side and pressing his hand to his heart. “I’m an uneducated, slow-witted man, but to you the Lord has given intelligence and wisdom. You know and understand everything, you grasp it all with your mind, while I don’t even know how to speak properly. Be so good, instruct me in the composing of this letter! Teach me what and how…”

“What is there to teach? There’s nothing to teach. Sit down and write.”

“No, do me this kindness, Father Superior! I beg you. I know he’ll be frightened of your letter and listen to your advice, because you’re also educated. Be so good! I’ll sit down, and you dictate. Tomorrow it would be a sin to write,⁶ but today is just the right time, and I’ll calm down.”

The dean looked at the deacon’s pleading face, remembered the unsympathetic Pyotr, and agreed to dictate. He sat the deacon at his desk and began:

“So, write…‘Christ is risen, my dear son…,’⁷ exclamation point. ‘Rumors have reached me, your father…’ then in parentheses…‘and from what source does not concern you…’ parenthesis…Written that?…‘that you are leading a life consistent neither with divine nor with human law. Neither the comfort, nor the mundane splendor, nor the education with which you cover yourself externally, can conceal your pagan look. In name you are a Christian, but in essence you are a pagan, as pitiful and unfortunate as all other pagans, even more pitiful, because those pagans, not knowing Christ, perish out of ignorance, while you are perishing because, though you possess the treasure, you neglect it. I will not enumerate here all your vices, which are known well enough to you, I will only say that I see the cause of your perdition in your unbelief. You imagine yourself wise, boast of your scholarly knowledge, and yet you refuse to understand that knowledge without faith not only does not elevate a man, but even reduces him to the level of a lowly animal, for…’ ”

The whole letter was in that vein. Having finished writing, the deacon read it aloud, beamed, and jumped up.

“A gift, truly a gift!” he said, looking rapturously at the dean and clasping his hands. “What a godsent gift, really! Eh? Queen of Heaven! Never in a hundred years could I come up with such a letter! Lord save you!”

Father Anastasy was also in raptures.

“Without a gift you won’t go writing like that!” he said, getting up and moving his fingers. “You won’t! It’s such rhetoric, no philosopher could write a little comma of it! A mind! A brilliant mind! If you weren’t married, Father Fyodor, you’d have been a bishop long ago, that’s the truth!”

Having poured out his wrath in the letter, the dean felt relieved. Fatigue and brokenness came back to him.

The deacon was an old acquaintance, and the dean said to him unceremoniously:

“Well, Deacon, go with God. I’ll lie down on the couch for half an hour, I need some rest.”

The deacon left and took Anastasy with him. As always happens on the eve of Easter, it was dark outside, but the whole sky shone with bright, radiant stars. In the quiet, motionless air there was a scent of spring and festivity.

“How long was he dictating?” The deacon marveled. “Some ten minutes, not more! Another man would take a month and not compose such a letter. Eh? There’s a mind for you! Such a mind, I don’t even know what to say! Astonishing! Truly astonishing!”

“Education!” sighed Anastasy, tucking the skirts of his cassock up to his waist as he crossed the muddy street. “We can’t compare with him. We’re from simple church folk, but he’s got learning. A real man, whatever you say.”

“You should hear him read the Gospel in Latin tonight during the liturgy!⁸ He knows Latin and he knows Greek…And Petrukha, Petrukha!” The deacon suddenly remembered. “Well, now he’ll rub his sores! Bite his tongue! He’ll know what’s what! Now he won’t go asking, ‘Why?’ He’s met his match, that’s what! Ha-ha-ha!”

The deacon burst into loud and merry laughter. Once the letter to Pyotr was written, he became cheerful and calmed down. Consciousness of a fulfilled parental duty and faith in the written word brought back his ready laughter and good spirits.

“Pyotr means ‘stone’ in translation,” he said as they approached his house. “My Pyotr’s not a stone, he’s a rag. That viper took him over, and he coddles her, he can’t get rid of her. Pah! There really are such women, God forgive me. Eh? Where’s their shame? She latched on to the lad, clings to him, and keeps him at her skirts…may the foul one take her where she deserves!”

“Maybe it’s not she who holds him, but he her?”

“Anyhow it means she’s got no shame! I’m not defending Pyotr…He’s going to get it…He’ll read the letter and scratch his head! He’ll burn with shame!”

“It’s a fine letter, only…better not send it to him, Father Deacon! Let him be.”

“Why so?” The deacon was alarmed.

“Just so! Don’t send it, Deacon! What’s the point? So you send it, he reads it, and…and then what? He’ll just get all upset. Forgive him, let him be!”

The deacon looked in surprise at Anastasy’s dark face, at his thrown-open cassock, resembling wings in the darkness, and shrugged his shoulders.

“How can I forgive him?” he asked. “I’ll have to answer to God for him!”

“Even so, forgive him anyway. Really! And God will forgive you for your kindness.”

“But isn’t he my son? Should I teach him or not?”

“Teach him? Why not? You can teach him, only why call him a pagan? It will hurt him, Deacon…”

The deacon was a widower and lived in a small three-window house. His older sister oversaw the housekeeping for him, an unmarried woman who had lost the use of her legs three years ago and therefore never left her bed. He was afraid of her, obeyed her, and did nothing without consulting her. Father Anastasy went home with him. Seeing his table already covered with kulichi and red-dyed eggs,⁹ he began to weep for some reason, probably remembering his own house, and to make a joke of those tears he at once laughed wheezily.

“Yes, soon we’ll break the fast,” he said. “Yes…You know, Deacon, even now it would do no harm…to drink a little glass. May I? I’ll drink it,” he whispered with a sidelong glance at the door, “so that the old woman…doesn’t hear…no, no…”

The deacon silently pushed the decanter and a glass towards him, unfolded the letter, and began to read it aloud. He liked the letter now as much as he had when the dean dictated it. He beamed with pleasure and wagged his head, as if he had tasted something very sweet.

“Now tha-a-at’s a letter!” he said. “Petrukha has never dreamed of getting such a letter. Just what he needs, so that he feels the heat…there!”

“You know what, Deacon? Don’t send it!” said Anastasy, pouring himself a second glass as if absentmindedly. “Forgive him, let him be! I tell you…in all conscience. If his own father won’t forgive him, who will? So it means he’ll live without forgiveness? And consider, Deacon: punishers will turn up even without you, but just try finding people who’ll have mercy on your own son! I…I, brother, will have…One last one…Up and write to him straight out: I forgive you, Pyotr! He’ll understa-a-and! He’ll fe-e-el it! I, brother…I know it from myself, Deacon. When I lived like other people, I didn’t mind much, but now, when I’ve lost the image and likeness,¹⁰ I want only one thing: that good people forgive me. And consider this, that it’s not the righteous who need forgiving, it’s the sinners. What should you forgive your old woman for, if she’s not sinful? No, you forgive the one it’s a pity to see…that’s what!”

Anastasy propped his head with his fist and fell to thinking.

“It’s bad, Deacon,” he sighed, obviously fighting against the wish to drink. “Bad! In sin did my mother conceive me,¹¹ in sin I’ve lived, and in sin I’ll die…Lord have mercy on me a sinner! I’m confounded, Deacon! There’s no salvation for me! And I got confounded not in life, but in old age, just before death…I…”

The old man waved his hand and had another drink, then got up and sat in a different place. The deacon, not letting go of the letter, paced from corner to corner. He was thinking about his son. Discontent, grief, and fear no longer troubled him: it had all gone into the letter. Now he only imagined Pyotr to himself, pictured his face, recalled the past years, when his son used to visit for the holiday. He thought only of what was good, warm, sad, of what he could even think about all his life without wearying. Longing for his son, he reread the letter one more time and looked questioningly at Anastasy.

“Don’t send it!” the latter said, waving his hand.

“No, anyhow…I must. Anyhow it will sort of…set him to rights. It won’t hurt…”

The deacon took an envelope from his desk, but, before putting the letter into it, sat down at the desk, smiled, and added something of his own at the bottom of the letter: “And they’ve sent us a new full-time caretaker. He’s livelier than the previous one. He’s a dancer, and a babbler, and a jack-of-all-trades, and all the Govorov girls have lost their minds over him. They say the military commander Kostirev will also retire soon. It’s high time!” And very pleased with himself, not realizing that by this postscript he had totally ruined the stern letter, the deacon wrote the address on the envelope and placed it in the most conspicuous place on the table.

1887