Stories

we can talk, and I won’t bother you with my talk now. Let’s go, Katechka, let His Grace sleep.”

And he remembered how, a long, long time ago, when he was still a boy, she had spoken with a rural dean in just the same jokingly deferential tone … Only by her extraordinarily kind eyes and the timid, worried glance she cast at him as she left the room, could one see that she was his mother. He closed his eyes and it seemed he slept, but twice he heard the clock strike and Father Sisoy cough on the other side of the wall. His mother came in once more and gazed at him timidly for a moment. Someone drove up to the porch in a coach or a carriage, judging by the sound. Suddenly there came a knock, the bang of a door: the attendant came into his bedroom.

“Your Grace!” he called.

“What?”

“The horses are ready, it’s time to go to the Lord’s Passion.”⁹

“What time is it?”

“A quarter past seven.”

He dressed and drove to the cathedral. He had to stand motionless in the middle of the church through all twelve Gospel readings, and the first Gospel, the longest, the most beautiful, he read himself. A vigorous, healthy mood came over him. The first Gospel— “Now is the Son of Man glorified”¹⁰—he knew by heart; and as he read, he raised his eyes from time to time and saw on both sides a whole sea of lights, heard the sizzle of candles, but, as in previous years, he was unable to see the people, and it seemed to him that they were the same people as in his childhood and youth, that they would be the same every year, but for how long—God only knew.

His father had been a deacon, his grandfather a priest, his great-grandfather a deacon, and all his ancestry, perhaps since the time when Russia embraced Christianity,¹¹ had belonged to the clergy, and the love for church services, the clergy, the ringing of bells, was innate in him, deep, ineradicable; in church, especially when he celebrated the office himself, he felt active, vigorous, happy And so he did now. Only when the eighth Gospel had been read, he felt that his voice had weakened, even his coughing had become inaudible, his head ached badly, and he was troubled by a fear that he was about to fall down. And indeed his legs had gone quite numb, so that he gradually ceased to feel them, and it was incomprehensible to him how and on what he was standing, and why he did not fall down …

When the service ended, it was a quarter to twelve. Returning home, the bishop undressed at once and lay down, without even saying his prayers. He was unable to speak, and it seemed to him that he would now be unable to stand. As he pulled the blanket over him, he suddenly had a longing to be abroad, an unbearable longing! He thought he would give his life only not to see those pathetic, cheap blinds, the low ceilings, not to breathe that oppressive monastery smell. If there had been just one person to whom he could talk, unburden his soul!

For a long time he heard someone’s footsteps in the next room and could not remember who it was. At last the door opened and Sisoy came in, holding a candle and a teacup.

“In bed already, Your Grace?” he asked. “And I’ve come because I want to rub you with vodka and vinegar. If you rub it in well, it can be of great benefit. Lord Jesus Christ … There … There … And I’ve just been to our monastery … I doan like it! I’ll leave here tomorrow, Your Grace, I want no more of it. Lord Jesus Christ… There …”

Sisoy was unable to stay long in one place, and it seemed to him that he had been living in St. Pankraty’s Monastery for a whole year by then. And, above all, listening to him, it was hard to understand where his home was, whether he loved anyone or anything, whether he believed in God … He did not understand himself why he was a monk, and he did not think about it, and the time of his tonsuring had long been erased from his memory; it looked as if he had simply been born a monk.

“I’ll leave tomorrow. God bless the lot of them!”

“I’d like to talk with you … I never can get around to it,” the bishop said softly, forcing himself. “I don’t know anyone or anything here.”

“So be it, if you like I’ll stay till Sunday, but no longer. I want none of it! Pah!”

“What sort of bishop am I?” the bishop went on softly. “I should be a village priest, a deacon … or a simple monk … All this oppresses me, oppresses me …”

“What? Lord Jesus Christ … There … Well, go to sleep, Your Grace! … No point! Forget it! Good night!”

The bishop did not sleep all night. And in the morning, around eight o’clock, he began to have intestinal bleeding. The cell attendant became frightened and ran first to the archimandrite, then for the monastery doctor, Ivan Andreich, who lived in town. The doctor, a stout old man with a long gray beard, examined the bishop for a long time, and kept shaking his head and scowling, then said:

“You know, Your Grace, you’ve got typhoid fever.”

Within an hour the bishop became very thin from the bleeding, pale, pinched, his face shrank, his eyes were now big, he looked older, smaller, and it seemed to him that he was thinner, weaker, more insignificant than anyone, that all that had once been had gone somewhere very far away and would no longer repeat itself, would not be continued.

“How good!” he thought. “How good!”

His old mother came. Seeing his shrunken face and big eyes, she became frightened, fell on her knees by his bed, and started kissing his face, shoulders, hands. And to her, too, it seemed that he was thinner, weaker, and more insignificant than anyone, and she no longer remembered that he was a bishop, and she kissed him like a child very near and dear to her.

“Pavlusha, my darling,” she said, “my dear one! … My little son! … What makes you like this? Pavlusha, answer me!”

Katya, pale, stern, stood nearby and did not understand what was the matter with her uncle, why there was such suffering on her grandmother’s face, why she was saying such touching, sad words. And he could no longer say a word, he understood nothing, and imagined that he was now a simple, ordinary man, walking briskly, merrily across the fields, tapping his stick, and over him was the broad sky, flooded with sunlight, and he was free as a bird and could go wherever he liked!

“My little son, Pavlusha, answer me!” said the old woman. “What’s the matter with you? My dear one!”

“Don’t trouble His Grace,” Sisoy said crossly, passing through the room. “Let him sleep … there’s no point…