eyes and says: “Weh-h-h! …” And this new song is liked so much in town that merchants and officials constantly send for Rothschild and make him play it dozens of times.
FEBRUARY 1894
THE STUDENT
At first the weather was fine, still. Blackbirds called, and in the nearby swamp something alive hooted plaintively, as if blowing into an empty bottle. A woodcock chirred by, and a shot rang out boomingly and merrily in the spring air. But when the forest grew dark, an unwelcome east wind blew up, cold and piercing, and everything fell silent. Needles of ice reached over the puddles, and the forest became inhospitable, forsaken, desolate. It felt like winter.
Ivan Velikopolsky, a seminary student, son of a verger, was coming home from fowling along a path that went all the way across a water meadow. His fingers were numb, and his face was burned by the wind. It seemed to him that this sudden onset of cold violated the order and harmony of everything, that nature herself felt dismayed, and therefore the evening darkness fell more quickly than it should. It was deserted around him and somehow especially gloomy. Only by the widows’ gardens near the river was there a light burning; but far around and where the village lay, some two miles off, everything was completely drowned in the cold evening darkness. The student remembered that, when he left the house, his mother was sitting on the floor in the front hall, barefoot, polishing the samovar, and his father was lying on the stove and coughing; because it was Good Friday there was no cooking in the house,1 and he was painfully hungry. And now, hunching up from the cold, the student thought how exactly the same wind had blown in the time of Rurik, and of Ioann the Terrible, and of Peter,2 and in their time there had been the same savage poverty and hunger; the same leaky thatched roofs, ignorance and anguish, the same surrounding emptiness and darkness, the sense of oppression—all these horrors had been, and were, and would be, and when another thousand years had passed, life would be no better. And he did not want to go home.
The gardens were called the widows’ because they were kept by two widows, a mother and daughter. The fire burned hotly, with a crackle, throwing light far around over the ploughed soil. The widow Vasilisa, a tall, plump old woman in a man’s coat, stood by and gazed pensively at the fire; her daughter Lukerya, small, pockmarked, with a slightly stupid face, was sitting on the ground washing the pot and spoons. Evidently they had only just finished supper. Male voices were heard; it was local laborers watering their horses at the river.
“Well, here’s winter back again,” said the student, approaching the fire. “Good evening!”
Vasilisa gave a start, but recognized him at once and smiled affably.
“I didn’t recognize you. God bless you,” she said, “you’ll be a rich man.”3
They talked. Vasilisa had been around, had once served gentlefolk as a wet nurse, then as a nanny, and her speech was delicate, and the gentle, dignified smile never left her face; her daughter Lukerya, a village woman, beaten down by her husband, only squinted at the student and kept silent, and her expression was strange, like that of a deaf-mute.
“In the same way the apostle Peter warmed himself by a fire on a cold night,” said the student, holding his hands out to the flames. “So it was cold then, too. Ah, what a dreadful night that was, granny! An exceedingly long, dreary night!”
He looked around at the darkness, shook his head convulsively, and asked:
“I expect you’ve been to the Twelve Gospels?”4
“I have,” replied Vasilisa.
“At the time of the Last Supper, you remember, Peter said to Jesus: ‘I am ready to go with you, both into prison and to death.’ And the Lord said to him: ‘I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day, before you deny three times that you know me.’ After the supper, Jesus was praying in the garden, sorrowful unto death, and poor Peter was worn out in his soul, he grew weak, his eyes were heavy, and he could not fight off his sleepiness. He slept. Then that same night, as you heard, Judas kissed Jesus and betrayed him to the executioners. He was bound and led to the high priest, and was beaten, and Peter, exhausted, suffering in sorrow and anguish, you see, not having had enough sleep, sensing that something terrible was about to happen on earth, followed after him … He loved Jesus passionately, to distraction, and now from afar he saw how they beat him …”
Lukerya abandoned the spoons and turned her fixed gaze on the student.
“They came to the high priest,” he went on, “Jesus was questioned, and the servants meanwhile made a fire in the courtyard, because it was cold, and they warmed themselves. Peter stood by the fire with them and also warmed himself, as I’m doing now. A woman saw him and said: ‘This man was also with Jesus,’ meaning that he, too, should be taken and questioned. And all the servants who were by the fire must have looked at him suspiciously and sternly, because he became confused and said: ‘I do not know the man.’ A little later someone again recognized him as one of Jesus’ disciples and said: ‘You are one of them.’ But he denied it again. And a third time someone turned to him: ‘Did I not see you today in the garden with him?’ A third time he denied it. And right after that the cock crowed, and Peter, looking at Jesus from afar, remembered the word he had said to him at the supper … Remembered, recovered, went out of the courtyard, and wept bitterly. The Gospel says: And he went out, and wept bitterly’ I picture it: a very, very silent and dark garden, and, barely heard in the silence, a muffled sobbing …”
The student sighed and fell to thinking. Still smiling, Vasilisa suddenly choked, and big, abundant tears rolled down her cheeks. She shielded her face from the fire with her sleeve, as if ashamed of her tears, and Lukerya, gazing fixedly at the student, flushed, and her expression became heavy, strained, as in someone who is trying to suppress intense pain.
The laborers were coming back from the river, and one of them, on horseback, was already close, and the light of the fire wavered on him. The student wished the widows good night and went on. And again it was dark, and his hands were cold. A cruel wind was blowing, and winter was indeed coming back, and it did not seem that in two days it would be Easter.
Now the student was thinking about Vasilisa: if she wept, it meant that everything that had happened with Peter on that dreadful night had some relation to her …
He looked back. The solitary fire flickered peacefully in the darkness, and the people around it could no longer be seen. The student thought again that if Vasilisa wept and her daughter was troubled, then obviously what he had just told them, something that had taken place nineteen centuries ago, had a relation to the present—to both women, and probably to this desolate village, to himself, to all people. If the old woman wept, it was not because he was able to tell it movingly, but because Peter was close to her and she was interested with her whole being in
