just bought it from a village peasant, he found it in the forest.” “What’s a hedgehog like?” he says, and he’s laughing now, and he begins poking his finger at it, and the hedgehog bristles up, and the girl is glad of the boy. “We’re taking it home,” she says, “we want to tame it.” “Ah,” he says, “give me your hedgehog!” And he asked her so touchingly, and no sooner had he said it than Maxim Ivanovich descended on him: “Ah! Here’s where you are! Take him!” (He was so enraged that he had run out of the house without his hat to chase him.) The boy, the moment he remembered everything, cried out, rushed to the water, pressed his little fists to his breast, looked up at the sky (they saw it, they saw it!) and—splash into the water! Well, people shouted, rushed from the ferry, tried to pull him out, but the current was swift, it carried him away, and when they pulled him out he was already dead —drowned. He had a weak chest, he couldn’t endure the water, and how much does it take for such a boy? And in people’s memories in those parts there had never yet been such a small child to take his own life! Such a sin! And what can so small a soul say to the Lord God in the other world!
This was what Maxim Ivanovich brooded over ever after. And the man changed beyond recognition. He was sorely grieved then. He took to drinking, drank a lot, but stopped—it didn’t help. He stopped going to the factory as well, and paid no heed to anybody. They say something to him—he keeps silent or waves his hand. He went about like that for a couple of months, then began talking to himself. He goes about and talks to himself. An outlying village, Vaskova, caught fire, nine houses burned down; Maxim Ivanovich went to have a look. The burnt-out people surrounded him, wailing—he promised to help and gave orders, then summoned his steward and canceled it all: “No need to give them anything,” he said, and didn’t say why. “The Lord gave me over to all people,” he says, “to trample me down like some monster, so let it be so. Like the wind,” he says, “my glory has been scattered.” The abbot himself called on him, a stern old man who had introduced cenobitic order in the monastery.12 “What’s with you?” he says, so sternly. “Here’s what,” and Maxim Ivanovich opened the book for him and pointed to the place:
“But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:6).
“Yes,” said the abbot, “though it’s not said directly about that, still it touches upon it. It’s bad if a man loses his measure—he’s a lost man. And you’ve become conceited.”
Maxim Ivanovich sat as if dumbstruck. The abbot looked and looked.
“Listen,” he said, “and remember. It is said, ‘The words of a desperate man fly on the wind.’ And also remember that even the angels of God are not perfect, but the only perfect and sinless one is Jesus Christ our God, whom the angels also serve. You didn’t want the death of that child, you were merely unreasonable. Only,” he says, “here is what I even marvel at: you’ve uttered so many worse outrages, you’ve sent so many people into poverty, corrupted so many, ruined so many—isn’t it the same as if you’d killed them? Hadn’t his sisters died even before then, all four little babies, almost in front of your eyes? Why does this one disturb you so much? For I suppose you’ve forgotten, not only to regret, but even to think about the previous ones? Why are you so frightened of this child, before whom you’re not even so guilty?”
“I see him in my dreams,” said Maxim Ivanovich.
“And what of it?”
But the man revealed no more, he sat and said nothing. The abbot wondered, but with that he left; there was nothing more to be done here.
And Maxim Ivanovich sent for the tutor, for Pyotr Stepanovich; they hadn’t seen each other since that occasion.
“Do you remember?” he says.
“I do,” he says.
“You’ve painted oil paintings for the tavern here,” he says, “and made a copy of the bishop’s portrait. Can you paint a picture for me?”
“I can do everything,” he says. “I,” he says, “have all talents and can do everything.”
“Then paint me a very big picture, over the whole wall, and first of all paint the river on it, and the landing, and the ferry, and so that all the people who were there will be in the picture. The colonel’s wife, and the little girl, and that hedgehog. And paint me the whole other bank as well, so that it’s seen as it was—the church, the square, the shops, and the cab stand—paint it all as it was. And there by the ferry, paint the boy, just over the river, on that very spot, and he must have his two fists pressed to his breast, to both nipples. That without fail! And open up the sky before him on the other side over the church, and have all the angels in the heavenly light come flying to meet him. Can you satisfy me or not?”
“I can do everything.”
“I could invite the foremost painter from Moscow, or even from London itself, instead of a bumpkin like you, only you remember his face. If it comes out not like or a little like, I’ll only give you fifty roubles, but if it comes out very much like, I’ll give you two hundred. Remember, blue eyes . . . And the painting should be very, very big.”
They prepared everything; Pyotr Stepanovich started painting, then suddenly he comes:
“No,” he says, “it’s impossible to paint it like that.”
“How so?”
“Because this sin, suicide, is the greatest of all sins. So how would angels come to meet him after such a sin?”
“But he’s a child, he’s not responsible.”
“No, he’s not a child, but already a boy; he was eight years old when this happened. He has to give at least some sort of answer.”
Maxim Ivanovich was still more terrified.
“But,” says Pyotr Stepanovich, “here’s what I’ve thought up: we won’t open the sky or paint the angels; but I’ll bring a ray of light down from the sky as if to meet him; one bright ray of light: it will be as if there’s something all the same.”
So they brought down the ray of light. And I myself saw this painting afterwards, much later, and that same ray, and the river stretched across the whole wall, all blue; and the dear young boy right there, both hands pressed to his breast, and the young miss, and the hedgehog—he did it all satisfactorily. Only Maxim Ivanovich didn’t show the painting to anybody then, but locked it up in his study, away from all eyes. And they really were eager to have a look at it in town. He ordered everybody to be chased away. There was a lot of talk. And Pyotr Stepanovich was as
