Stories (6 page)

I
n the cheapest furnished rooms of the Hotel Lisbon, the third- year medical student, Stepan Klochkov, paced up and down and diligently ground away at his medicine. The relentless, strenuous grinding made his mouth dry, and sweat stood out on his forehead. By the window, coated at the edges with icy designs, his roommate Anyuta sat on a stool. She was a small, thin brunette of about twenty-five, very pale, with meek gray eyes. Her back bent, she was embroidering the collar of a man’s shirt with red thread. It was an urgent job … The clock in the corridor hoarsely struck two, but the room had
not yet been tidied. A crumpled blanket, scattered pillows, books, clothes, a large, dirty basin filled with soapy swill, in which cigarette butts floated, litter on the floor—it all looked as if it had been piled in a heap, purposely confused, crumpled …

“The right lung consists of three sections …” repeated Klochkov. “The boundaries! The upper section reaches the fourth or fifth rib on the front wall of the chest, the fourth rib at the side … the
spina scapulae
in the back …”

Klochkov, straining to visualize what he had just read, raised his eyes to the ceiling. Getting no clear impression, he began feeling his own upper ribs through his waistcoat.

“These ribs are like piano keys,” he said. “To avoid confusion in counting them, one absolutely must get used to them. I’ll have to study it with a skeleton and a living person … Come here, Anyuta, let me try to get oriented!”

Anyuta stopped embroidering, took off her blouse, and straightened up. Klochkov sat down facing her, frowned, and began counting her ribs.

“Hm … The first rib can’t be felt … It’s behind the collarbone … Here’s the second rib … Right … Here’s the third … Here’s the fourth … Hm … Right … Why are you flinching?”

“Your fingers are cold!”

“Well, well … you won’t die, don’t fidget. So then, this is the third rib, and this is the fourth … You’re so skinny to look at, yet I can barely feel your ribs. The second … the third … No, I’ll get confused this way and won’t have a clear picture … I’ll have to draw it … Where’s my charcoal?”

Klochkov took a piece of charcoal and drew several parallel lines with it on Anyuta’s chest, corresponding to the ribs.

“Excellent. All just like the palm of your hand … Well, and now we can do some tapping. Stand up!”

Anyuta stood up and lifted her chin. Klochkov started tapping and got so immersed in this occupation that he did not notice that Anyuta’s lips, nose, and fingers had turned blue with cold. Anyuta was shivering and feared that the medical student, noticing her shivering, would stop drawing with charcoal and tapping, and would perhaps do poorly at the examination.

“Now it’s all clear,” said Klochkov, and he stopped tapping. “You sit like that, without wiping off the charcoal, while I go over it a little more.”

And the medical student again began pacing and repeating. Anyuta, as if tattooed, black stripes on her chest, shrunken with cold, sat and thought. She generally spoke very little, was always silent and kept thinking, thinking …

In all her six or seven years of wandering through various furnished rooms, she had known some five men like Klochkov. Now they had all finished their studies, had made their way in life, and, of course, being decent people, had long forgotten her. One
of them lived in Paris, two had become doctors, the fourth an artist, and the fifth was even said to be a professor already. Klochkov was the sixth … Soon he, too, would finish his studies and make his way. The future would no doubt be beautiful, and Klochkov would probably become a great man, but the present was thoroughly bad: Klochkov had no tobacco, no tea, and there were only four pieces of sugar left. She had to finish her embroidery as quickly as possible,
take it to the customer, and, with the twenty-five kopecks she would get, buy tea and tobacco.

“Can I come in?” came from outside the door.

Anyuta quickly threw a woolen shawl over her shoulders. The painter Fetisov came in.

“I’ve come to you with a request,” he began, addressing Klochkov and looking ferociously from under the hair hanging on his forehead. “Be so good as to lend me your beautiful maiden for an hour or two! I’m working on a painting, and I can’t do without a model!”

“Ah, with pleasure!” Klochkov agreed. “Go on, Anyuta.”

“What business do I have there?” Anyuta said softly.

“Well, really! The man’s asking for the sake of art, not for some trifle. Why not help if you can?”

Anyuta began to dress.

“And what are you painting?” asked Klochkov.

“Psyche. A nice subject, but it somehow won’t come out right. I have to use different models all the time. Yesterday there was one with blue feet. Why are your feet blue? I ask. My stockings ran, she says. And you keep grinding away! Lucky man, you’ve got patience.”

“Medicine’s that sort of thing, you have to grind away at it.”

“Hm … I beg your pardon, Klochkov, but you live like an awful swine. Devil knows how you can live this way!”

“How do you mean? I can’t live any other way … I get only twelve roubles a month from the old man, and it’s a real trick to live decently on that.”

“So it is …” said the artist, wincing squeamishly, “but all the same you could live better … A developed man absolutely must be an aesthete. Isn’t that true? And here you’ve got devil knows what! The bed isn’t made, there’s swill, litter … yesterday’s kasha on a plate … pah!”

“That’s true,” said the medical student, and he became embarrassed, “but Anyuta didn’t manage to tidy up today. She’s busy all the time.”

When the artist and Anyuta left, Klochkov lay down on the sofa and began to study lying down, then accidentally fell asleep, woke up an hour later, propped his head on his fists and pondered gloomily. He remembered the artist’s words, that a developed man absolutely must be an aesthete, and his room indeed seemed
disgusting, repulsive to him now. It was as if he foresaw the future with his mental eye, when he would receive patients in his office, have tea in a spacious dining room in company with his wife, a respectable woman—and now this basin of swill with cigarette butts floating in it looked
unbelievably vile. Anyuta, too, seemed homely, slovenly, pitiful … And he decided to separate from her, at once, whatever the cost.

When she came back from the artist’s and began taking off her coat, he stood up and said to her seriously:

“The thing is this, my dear … Sit down and listen to me. We have to separate! In short, I don’t wish to live with you anymore.”

Anyuta had come back from the artist’s so tired, so worn out. She had posed for so long that her face had become pinched, thin, and her chin had grown sharper. She said nothing in reply to the medical student’s words, only her lips began to tremble.

“You must agree that we’ll have to separate sooner or later anyway,” said the medical student. “You’re good, kind, and not stupid—you’ll understand …”

Anyuta put her coat back on, silently wrapped her embroidery in paper, gathered up her needles and thread; she found the little packet with four pieces of sugar in it on the windowsill and put it on the table near the books.

“It’s yours … some sugar …” she said softly and turned away to hide her tears.

“Well, what are you crying for?” asked Klochkov.

He walked across the room in embarrassment and said:

“You’re strange, really … You know yourself that we have to separate. We can’t be together forever.”

She had already picked up all her bundles and turned to him to say good-bye, but he felt sorry for her.

“Why not let her stay another week?” he thought. “Yes, indeed, let her stay, and in a week I’ll tell her to leave.”

And, annoyed at his own lack of character, he shouted at her sternly:

“Well, why are you standing there! If you’re going, go, and if you don’t want to, take your coat off and stay! Stay!”

Silently, quietly, Anyuta took off her coat, then blew her nose, also quietly, gave a sigh, and noiselessly went to her permanent post—the stool by the window.

The student drew the textbook towards him and again began pacing up and down.

“The right lung consists of three sections …” he ground away. “The upper section reaches the fourth or fifth rib on the front wall of the chest …”

And someone in the corridor shouted at the top of his voice:

“Gr-r-rigory, the samovar!”

F
EBRUARY
1886

I
was standing on the bank of the Goltva and waiting for the ferry from the other side. Ordinarily the Goltva is a middling sort of stream, silent and pensive, sparkling meekly through the thick bulrushes, but now a whole lake was spread before me. The spring waters had broken loose, overflowed both banks and flooded far out on both sides, covering kitchen gardens, hayfields and marshes, so that you often came upon poplars and bushes sticking up solitarily above the surface of the water, looking like grim rocks in the darkness.

The weather seemed magnificent to me. It was dark, but I could still see trees, water, people … The world was lit by the stars, which were strewn massively across the sky. I do not recall ever having seen so many stars. You literally could not put a finger between them. There were some as big as goose eggs, some as tiny as hempseed … For the sake of the festive parade, all of them, from small to large, had come out in the sky, washed, renewed, joyful, and all of them to the last one quietly moved their rays. The sky was reflected in the water; the stars bathed in the dark depths and tremble
d with their light rippling. The air was warm and still … Far away on the other side, in the impenetrable darkness, a few scattered fires burned bright red …

Two steps away from me darkened the silhouette of a peasant in a tall hat and with a stout, knotty stick.

“There’s been no ferry for a long while now,” I said.

“It’s time it came,” the silhouette replied.

“Are you also waiting for the ferry?”

“No, I’m just …” the peasant yawned, “waiting for the lumination. I’d have gone, but, to tell the truth, I haven’t got the five kopecks for the ferry”

“I’ll give you five kopecks.”

“No, thank you kindly … You use those five kopecks to light a candle for me in the monastery … That’ll be curiouser, and I’ll just stay here. Mercy me, no ferry! As if it sank!”

The peasant went right down to the water, took hold of the cable, and called out:

“Ieronym! Ierony-y-ym!”

As if in answer to his shout, the drawn-out tolling of a big bell came from the other side. The tolling was dense, low, as from the thickest string of a double bass: it seemed that the darkness itself had groaned. All at once a cannon shot rang out. It rolled through the darkness and ended somewhere far behind my back. The peasant took off his hat and crossed himself.

“Christ is risen!”
¹
he said.

Before the waves from the first stroke of the bell congealed in the air, a second was heard, and immediately after it a third, and the darkness was filled with an incessant, trembling sound. New lights flared up by the red fires, and they all started moving, flickering restlessly.

“Ierony-y-ym!” a muted, drawn-out call was heard.

“They’re calling from the other side,” said the peasant. “That means the ferry’s not there either. Our Ieronym’s asleep.”

The lights and the velvety ringing of the bell were enticing … I was beginning to lose patience and become agitated, but then, finally, as I peered into the dark distance, I saw the silhou
ette of something that looked very much like a gallows. It was the long-awaited ferry. It was moving so slowly that if it had not been for the gradual sharpening of its outline, one might have thought it was standing in place or moving towards the other shore.

“Quick! Ieronym!” my peasant shouted. “A gentleman’s waiting!”

The ferry crept up to the bank, lurched, and creaked to a stop. On it, holding the cable, stood a tall man in a monk’s habit and a conical hat.

“Why so long?” I asked, jumping aboard the ferry.

“Forgive me, for the sake of Christ,” Ieronym said softly. “Is there anybody else?”

“Nobody …”

Ieronym took hold of the cable with both hands, curved himself into a question mark, and grunted. The ferry creaked and lurched. The silhouette of the peasant in the tall hat slowly began to recede from me—which meant that the ferry was moving. Soon Ieronym straightened up and began working with one hand. We were silent and looked at the bank towards which we were now moving. There the “lumination” which the peasant had been waiting for was already beginning. At the water’s edge, barrels of pitch blazed like huge bonfires. Their reflection, crimson as the rising moon, crept to meet
us in long, wide stripes. The burning barrels threw light on their own smoke and on the long human shadows that flitted about the fire; but further to the sides and behind them, where the velvet ringing rushed from, was the same impenetrable darkness. Suddenly slashing it open, the golden ribbon of a rocket soared skywards; it described an arc and, as if shattering against the sky, burst and came sifting down in sparks. On the bank a noise was heard resembling a distant “hoorah.”

“How beautiful!” I said.

“It’s even impossible to say how beautiful!” sighed Ieronym. “It’s that kind of night, sir! At other times you don’t pay any attention to rockets, but now any vain thing makes you glad. Where are you from?”

I told him where I was from.

“So, sir … a joyful day this is …” Ieronym went on in a weak, gasping tenor, the way convalescents speak. “Heaven and earth and under the earth rejoice. The whole of creation celebrates. Only tell me, good sir, why is it that even amidst great joy a man can’t forget his griefs?”

It seemed to me that this unexpected question was an invitation to one of those “longanimous,” soul-saving conversations that idle and bored monks love so much. I was not in the mood for much talking and therefore merely asked:

“And what are your griefs, my good man?”

“Ordinary ones, like all people have, Your Honor, but this day a particular grief happened in the monastery: at the liturgy itself, during the Old Testament readings, the hierodeacon Nikolai died …”

“Then it’s God’s will!” I said, shamming a monkish tone. “We all must die. In my opinion you should even be glad … They say whoever dies on the eve of Easter or on Easter day will surely get into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

“That’s so.”

We fell silent. The silhouette of the peasant in the tall hat merged with the outline of the bank. The pitch barrels flared up more and more.

“And scripture clearly points out the vanity of grief and the need for reflection,” Ieronym broke the silence, “but what makes the so
ul grieve and refuse to listen to reason? What makes you want to weep bitterly?”

Ieronym shrugged his shoulders, turned to me, and began talking quickly:

“If it was I who died or somebody else, maybe it wouldn’t be so noticeable, but it was Nikolai who died! Nobody else but Nikolai! It’s even hard to believe he’s no longer in the world! I stand here on the ferry and keep thinking his voice will come from the bank any minute. He always came down to the bank and called out to me so that I wouldn’t feel scared on the ferry. He got out of bed in the middle of the night especially for that. A kind soul! God, what a kind and merciful soul! Some people’s mothers are not to them like this Nikolai was to me! Lord, save his soul!”

Ieronym took hold of the cable, but at once turned to me again.

“And such a bright mind, Your Honor!” he said in a sing-song voice. “Such sweet, good-sounding speech! Exactly like what they’re about to sing in the matins: ‘O how loving-kind! O how most sweet is thy word!’
²
Besides all the other human qualities, he also had an extraordinary gift!”

“What gift?” I asked.

The monk looked me up and down and, as if having assured himself that I could be entrusted with secrets, laughed gaily.

“He had the gift of writing akathists
³
…” he said. “A wonder, sir, and nothing but! You’ll be amazed if I explain it to you! Our father archimandrite
⁴
is from Moscow, our father vicar graduated from the Kazan theological academy, there are intelligent hieromonks and elders among us, and yet, just imagine, not a single one of them could write akathists, but Nikolai, a simple monk, a hierodeacon, never studied anywhere and even had no external appeal, and yet he wrote! A wonder. A real wonder!”

Ieronym clasped his hands and, forgetting all about the cable, went on enthusiastically:

“Our father vicar has difficulty composing sermons; when he was writing the history of the monastery, he got all the brothers into a sweat and went to town ten times, but Nikolai wrote akathists! Akathists! A sermon or a history is nothing next to that!”

“So it’s really difficult to write akathists?” I asked.

“There’s enormous difficulty…” Ieronym wagged his head. “Wisdom and holiness won’t do anything here, if God doesn’t give you the gift. Monks who don’t understand about it reckon you only need to know the life of the saint you’re writing to, and then follow the other akathists. But that’s not right, sir. Of course, a man who writes an akathist has to know the life extremely well, to the last little point. Well, and also to follow the other akathists, how to begin and what to write about. To give you an example, the first kontakion begins every time with ‘the victorious’ or ‘the chosen’ … The f
irst ikos always has to begin with angels. In the akathist to the Most Sweet Jesus, if you’re interested, it begins like this: ‘Creator of angels and lord of hosts,’ in the akathist to the Most Holy Mother of God: ‘An angel was sent from heaven to stand before,’ to Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker:
⁵
‘An angel in appearance, but of earthly nature,’ and so on. There’s always an angel at the beginning. Of course, you can’t do without following, but the main thing is not in the life, not in the correspondence with the others, but in the beauty and sweetness. It all has to be shapely, brief
, and thorough. There should be softness, gentleness, and tenderness in every little line, so that there’s not a single coarse, harsh, or unsuitable word. It has to be written so that the one who is praying will rejoice and weep in his heart, but shake and be in awe in his mind. In the akathist to the Mother of God there are the words: ‘Rejoice, height unattainable to human reason; rejoice, depth invisible to the eyes of angels!’ In another place in the same akathist it says: ‘Rejoice, tree of the bright f
ruit on which the faithful feed, rejoice, tree of good-shading leaves in which many find shelter!’”

Ieronym, as if frightened or embarrassed at something, covered his face with his hands and shook his head.

“Tree of the bright fruit … tree of good-shading leaves …” he murmured. “He really finds such words! The Lord gave him that ability! He puts many words and thoughts into one brief phrase, and it all comes out so smooth and thorough! ‘Light-proffering
lamp to those …’ he says in the akathist to the Most Sweet Jesus. ‘Light-proffering!’ There’s no such word in our speech, or in our books, and yet he thought it up, he found it in his mind! Besides smoothness and eloquence, sir, it’s necessary that every little line be adorned in all ways, to have flowers in it, and lightning, and wind, and sun
, and all things of the visible world. And every exclamation should be composed so that it’s smooth and easy on the ear. ‘Rejoice, lily of paradisal blossoming!’ it says in the akathist to Nicholas the Wonderworker. It doesn’t say simply ‘lily of paradise,’ but ‘lily of paradisal blossoming’! It’s sweeter and smoother on the ear. And that’s precisely how Nikolai wrote! Precisely like that! I can’t even express to you how he wrote!”

“In that case, it’s a pity he died,” I said. “However, my good man, let’s get moving, otherwise we’ll be late …”

Ieronym recovered himself and rushed to the cable. On the bank all the bells were ringing away. Probably the procession was already going around the monastery, because the whole dark space behind the pitch barrels was now strewn with moving lights.
⁶

“Did Nikolai publish his akathists?” I asked Ieronym.

“Where could he publish them?” he sighed. “And it would be strange to publish them. What for? In our monastery nobody’s interested in them. They don’t like it. They knew Nikolai wr
ote them, but they paid no attention. Nowadays, sir, nobody respects new writings!”

“Are they prejudiced against them?”

“Exactly so. If Nikolai had been an elder, the brothers might have been curious, but he wasn’t even forty years old. There were some who laughed and even considered his writings a sin.”

“Then why did he write?”

“More for his own delight. Of all the brothers, I was the only one who read his akathists. I used to come to him on the quiet, so that the others wouldn’t see, and he was glad I was interested. He embraced me, stroked my head, called me tender words as if I were a little child. He would close the door, sit me down next to him, and start reading …”

Ieronym left the cable and came over to me.

“We were like friends, he and I,” he whispered, looking at me with shining eyes. “Wherever he went, I went, too. He missed me when I wasn’t there. And he loved me more than the others, and all
because I wept from his akathists. It moves me to remember it! Now I’m like an orphan or a widow. You know, in our monastery the people are all good, kind, pious, but … there’s no softness and delicacy in any of them, they’re all like low-class people. They talk loudly, stamp their feet when they walk, make noise, cough, but Nikolai always spoke quietly, gently, and if he noticed that anyone was a
sleep or praying, he would pass by like a gnat or a mosquito. His face was tender, pitiful …”