On Thursday he celebrated mass in the cathedral. It was the Washing of the Feet. When the service was over and the people had gone home, the warm sun was shining merrily, the water was streaming noisily in the gutters, and the perpetual trilling of larks came floating in from the fields outside the city, speaking of peace and tenderness. The trees were already awakening and smiling a welcome, and over them stretched the unfathomable, the immeasurable blue sky.
As soon as he reached home Bishop Peter drank some tea, changed his clothes, lay down on the bed, and told the lay brother to close the shutters. The bedroom grew dark. But what weariness he suffered, what pain there was in his legs and back, a heavy chilling pain, what noises in his ears! For a long time he had not slept—it seemed to him now a very long time indeed—and there was something completely nonsensical which tickled his brain as soon as he closed his eyes, preventing him from sleeping. As on the previous day, there came to him from the next room the sound of voices, the ringing sound of glasses and teaspoons.… Maria Timofeyevna was gaily recounting an anecdote to Father Sisoi, with many a quaint turn of phrase, and sometimes the old man would answer in a gruff, ill-tempered voice: “Well, and what then? Did they do that? And what next?” And once more the Bishop felt first annoyed and then hurt that in the presence of others his old mother should behave so naturally and simply, while with him, her son, she was awkward, spoke little, and did not say what she intended to say, and during all those days he was sure she had been trying to find some pretext for standing, as though embarrassed to be seated in his presence. And his father? He, too, if he had been alive, would probably have been incapable of uttering a word.…
Something in the next room crashed to the floor. Katya must have dropped a cup or saucer, for Father Sisoi suddenly rumbled and shouted angrily: “The child is an awful nuisance. Lord, forgive me my sins, but you can’t put anything in her hands!”
Then it was quiet, the only sounds coming from outside. When at last the Bishop opened his eyes, he saw Katya standing motionless in the room, gazing at him.
“Is that you, Katya?” he asked. “Who’s opening and shutting doors downstairs?”
“I can’t hear anything,” Katya said, listening.
“There, someone just walked by.”
“Uncle, that was a noise from your stomach!”
He laughed and stroked her head.
“So brother Nikolasha cuts up dead people?” he said after a while.
“Yes, he’s studying.”
“Is he good to you?”
“He’s very good, Uncle, but he drinks a terrible lot of vodka.”
“What did your father die of?”
“He felt poorly and got awful thin, and then suddenly there was something wrong with his throat. I was ill, too, and so was my brother Fedya. We all had sore throats. Papa died, but we got well.”
Her chin quivered, and tears filled her eyes and went trickling down her cheeks.
“Your Eminence!” she cried in a shrill voice, weeping bitterly. “Uncle dear, we’re all so unhappy—our mother and all of us.… Do give us a little money.… Do be good to us, Uncle dear!”
Then he too began weeping, and for a long time he was too moved to speak. He caressed her hair and patted her shoulders and said: “Very good, my child. Wait till Easter comes, and then we’ll talk about it. I’ll help you. I’ll help.…”
His mother came quietly and timidly into the room, and prayed before the icon. Seeing that he was not sleeping, she said: “Wouldn’t you like some soup?”
“No, thank you,” he answered. “I’m not hungry.”
“You don’t look well to me. You mustn’t fall ill, you know. All day on your legs, all day—God knows it makes my heart ache just to look at you. Well, Easter isn’t on the other side of the hills, as they say, and then you’ll rest, and then, God willing, we’ll have time for a talk, but now I’m not going to keep you awake with my chatter. Come along, Katenka! Let His Eminence have a bit of sleep!”
And he remembered how long ago, when he was a boy, he had spoken to high dignitaries of the Church in exactly the same way, playfully and respectfully. Only by noticing her strangely tender eyes and the troubled glance she shot at him as she left the room could anyone have guessed that she was his mother. He closed his eyes and seemed to sleep, but he could hear Father Sisoi coughing on the other side of the wall, and he heard the clock strike twice. His mother came in again, and for a long moment she gazed at him timidly. Then he heard someone driving up to the front steps either in a carriage or an open cart. Suddenly there came a knock, a door banged, the lay brother entered the bedroom.
“Your Eminence!”
“Yes, what is it?”
“The horses have come. It’s time to go to Our Lord’s Passion.”
“What time is it?”
“A quarter past seven.”
He dressed and drove to the cathedral. During the reading of the Twelve Gospels he had to stand motionless in the middle of the church, and the first gospel, which is the longest and most beautiful, he read himself. A mood of confidence and courage took hold of him. That first gospel—“Now is the Son of Man glorified”—he knew by heart, and as he read he sometimes raised his eyes and saw a perfect sea of lights all round him, and he heard the spluttering of the candles, but as happened in the past he was unable to see the people. It occurred to him that they were perhaps the same people who had been around him in the days of his childhood and youth, and they would always be there year after year until such time as God provided.
His father had been a deacon, his grandfather a priest, his great-grandfather a deacon, and perhaps his whole family from the days when Christianity first entered Russia had belonged to the Church, and his love for the holy services, for the priesthood, and for the sound of church bells was ineradicably born in him. In church, especially
