when he was conducting the service, he felt vividly alive, vigorous, and happy. So it was with him now. Only when the eighth gospel had been read, he felt his voice had grown weak, even his coughing had become inaudible. His head was aching horribly, and he was overwhelmed by the fear of a sudden collapse. His legs had grown quite numb, all the feeling gradually going out of them, and he could not imagine how he was able to stand or what he was standing on, and why he did not fall down.…
It was a quarter to twelve when the service came to an end. As soon as he reached home the Bishop undressed and went to bed without even saying his prayers. He could not speak, and he was sure he could not stand. When he pulled the blanket over him, he felt a sudden longing to be abroad, a deep and passionate longing. He imagined he would give his whole life not to see those cheap pitiful shutters, the low ceilings, not to breathe the overwhelming smell of the monastery. If only there was one person he could talk to, and to whom he could unburden his soul!
For a long time he heard footsteps in the next room, and could not tell whose they were. At last the door opened and Father Sisoi came in with a teacup in one hand and a candle in the other.
“So you’re in bed already, Your Eminence?” Father Sisoi said. “I’ve come to rub you down with vodka and vinegar. A thorough rubbing will do you good! Lord Jesus Christ! There! There! I’ve just come from our monastery.… I don’t like it a bit!… I’ll be leaving tomorrow, Your Eminence, because I’ve had enough of it. Lord Jesus Christ! Well, that’s how it is!…”
Father Sisoi could never stay long in one place, and he felt as though he had been a whole year in the Pankratievsky Monastery. It was hard to tell from what he said where his home was, whether there was anyone or anything he loved, whether he believed in God. He did not know himself why he had become a monk, but he never thought about it, and the time when he took his vows had long since faded from his memory. Perhaps he had been born into the monastery.
“I’m leaving them tomorrow, and may God have them!” Father Sisoi said.
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” the Bishop said. “I never seem to have the time.” His voice came in whispers, and he was making a great effort. “I don’t know anyone or anything here.”
“Then I’ll stay till Sunday if you like. So be it, but no longer. I have to leave that place.…”
“What sort of bishop am I?” the Bishop went on in a very faint voice. “I should have been a village priest or a deacon or just a simple monk. All this is choking me—choking me …”
“What? Oh, Lord Jesus Christ! There, go to sleep now, Your Eminence. What’s up with you? What’s it all about, eh? Well, good night!”
All night the Bishop lay awake. In the morning at eight o’clock he began to hemorrhage from the bowels. The lay brother was alarmed and ran first to the archimandrite and then to Ivan Andreyich, the monastery doctor, who lived in the town. The doctor, a stout old man with a long gray beard, gazed for a long while at the Bishop, shook his head, frowned, and said: “Do you know, Your Eminence, you are suffering from typhus?”
For about an hour the Bishop continued to hemorrhage. He grew paler, thinner, was visibly wasting away. His face was covered with wrinkles and his eyes were enormous: it was as though he was grown old and shriveled. He felt that he was becoming thinner and weaker and more insignificant than anyone in the world, and it seemed to him that everything that had ever happened in the past was vanishing into the distance and would never come back again.
“How good!” he thought. “Oh, how good!”
His old mother came into the room. Seeing his wrinkled face and enormous eyes, she was frightened and fell on her knees by the bed and began to kiss his face, his shoulders, and his hands. And to her it seemed that he had grown thinner, weaker, and more insignificant than he had ever been, and she forgot he was a bishop, and she kissed him as though he were a child very close and dear to her.
“Little Paul, my dearest,” she said. “How dear you are to me! My son, my son!… What has happened? Pavlusha, talk to me!”
Katya, pale and serious, stood beside her, and she could not understand what was happening to her uncle or why there was such a look of suffering on her grandmother’s face or why she said such heart-rending things. The Bishop could no longer formulate words, and no longer understood what was happening around him. He imagined he was a simple, ordinary fellow striding joyfully across the fields, swinging his cane, free as a bird to wander wherever he pleased under the broad spaces of the sunlit sky.
“Pavlusha, my darling, talk to me!” the old woman was saying. “What has happened? My dear boy, my son …”
“You shouldn’t disturb His Eminence,” Father Sisoi exclaimed angrily, striding up and down the room. “Let him sleep! There’s nothing we can do now.…”
Three doctors came, went into consultation, and took their leave. The day grew unbelievably long, and was followed by an excruciatingly long night. Toward dawn on Saturday the lay brother went up to the old woman, who was lying on a couch in the sitting room, and bade her go into the bedroom. The Bishop was dead.
The next day was Easter. There are forty-two churches and two monasteries in the town; and from morning to evening the deep, happy notes of the church bells hovered over the town, never silent, quivering in the spring air. Birds were singing, and the bright sun was shining. The great market square was full of noise: seesaws were swinging, barrel organs were playing, concertinas were screaming, and there was a roar of drunken voices. In a word, everything was lighthearted and frolicsome, just as it had been during the previous year and as it doubtless would be in the years to come.
A month later a new bishop was installed, and no one gave a thought to Bishop Peter. Soon he was completely forgotten. His old mother, who is living today in a remote little country town with her son-in-law the deacon, goes out toward evening to bring her cow in, and sometimes she will pause and talk with the other women in the fields about her children and grandchildren and her son who became a bishop, and she speaks very softly and shyly, afraid that no one will believe her.
And indeed there are some who do not believe her.
T
I
IT was about ten o’clock in the evening, and a full moon was shining over the garden. In the Shumins’ house
