rr-i( '

BILINGUAL COLLECTIOi J

blstoy
ostHyevsky
Garshin
N^^^in-Sibiry^k
Leskov

RUSSIAN
["

Edited and Introduced by

MAURICE FRJEDBERG
VOLUME ONE
 $6.95
':.
R.S.S.
R.H.

RUSSIAN
SHORT STORIES
A Bilingual Collection

"Quite aside from the truism that good Hter-

ature is ageless,
an undisputed fact that
it is

Russians today show, on the whole,

a
greater attraction for the literary
heritage
bequeathed to them by the nineteenth-
century masters than for the bulk of
new
Soviet Hterature. The tales in this anthology
represent, therefore, some
the most of
widely read authors in Russia. Their art,
thought and language (aside from some
neologisms, Russian has not changed
ap-
preciably in the last century or so)
should
provide American readers of this bilingual
book with pleasurable reading and also
good practice in studying the language."

from the Introduction

by Professor Friedberg

H5f!V'

Jacket design by Muriel Nasser

 Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2011

http://www.archive.org/details/bilingualcollectOOfrie
 A
Bilingual Collection
of

RUSSIAN
SHORT STORIES
-
«:
 A
Bilingual Collection
of

RUSSIAN
SHORT STORIES
Edited and Introduced by

MAURICE FRIEDBERG

Random House
NEW YORK
 "The Christmas Tree and the Wedding" is printed according to
the text of the story in F. M. Dostoevskii, Sobranie sochinenii v
desiati tomakh, Vol. I, Moscow, 1956, pp. 579-87; "The Tale of
the Squint-eyed, Left-handed Smith of Tula and the Steel Flea"
according to N. S. Leskov, Sobranie sochinenii v odinnadtsati
tomakh. Vol. VII, Moscow, 1958, pp. 26-59; "Wintering Station
on Chill River" according to D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak, Sobranie
sochinenii v desiati tomakh. Vol. X, Moscow, 1958, pp. 46-58;
"The Red Flower" according to V. M. Garshin, Sochineniia,
Moscow-Leningrad, i960, pp. 184-99; "Father Sergius," accord-
ing to L. N. Tolstoi, Sobranie sochinenii v dvenadtsati tomakh.
Vol. XII, Moscow, 1959, pp. 52-94.

SECOND PRINTING

© Copyright, 1964, by Random House, Inc.

All rights reservedunder International and Pan-American Copy-

right Conventions. Published in New York by Random House,
Inc., and simultaneously in Toronto, Canada, by Random House
of Canada, Limited. Manufactured in the United States of
America by Waldon Press, Inc.

Designed by Jeanette Young

,y(f^ Library of Congress catalog card number: 64-12002

 Contents

Introduction

LEO TOLSTOY
Father Sergius »i
TRANSLATED BY ROBERT A. MaGUIRE

FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
The Christmas Tree and the Wedding 151
TRANSLATED BY JOHN H. C. RiCHARDSON

VSEVOLOD GARSHIN
The Red Flower 177
TRANSLATED BY BERNARD GumBERT GUERNEY

DMITRI MAMIN-SIBIRYAK
Wintering Station on Chill River 225
TRANSLATED BY BERNARD GuiLBERT GUERNEY

NIKOLAI LESKOV
The Tale of the Squint-eyed, Left-handed
Smith of Tula and the Steel Flea 275
TRANSLATED BY BERNARD GuiLBERT GUERNEY
 Introduction

The Russian short story and novella antedate the ad-

vent of the great nineteenth-century Russian novel
by some two decades. In the early i8oos the old
countess in Pushkin's Queen of Spades was, indeed,
surprised to learn that Russian novels of any land
had existed at all. In fact, the modern Russian novel
was born out of more or less loosely connected com-
pilations of short stories, such as Pushkin's Tales of
Belkin, Lermontov's A Our Time, and Tur-
Hero of
genev's Sportsman's However, the short
Sketches.
story and the novella— there is no wholly satisfactory
rendition of the Russian term povest'—hdiwe remained
immensely popular ever since, both with the Russian
writers and with their readers. Russia's two greatest
novelists, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, as well as her
greatest playwright, Chekhov, were attracted to the
short-story genre. Indeed, to millions of Russians,
Chekhov remains first and foremost a short-story
writer: their national playwright is Ostrovsky, a writer
little known in the West for a variety of reasons. In
the twentieth century, too, some of Russian litera-
ture's greatest achievements are to be found in the
domain of the short story and the novella: suffice
it mention the young Maxim Gorky, as well as
to
Ivan Bunin ( Russia's first recipient of the Nobel Prize
for literature), Leonid Andreyev, Isaac Babel and
Mikhail Zoshchenko. At the present time, too, among
the young generation of Soviet writers that have come
to the fore since Stalin's death, the most solid achieve-
ments to date and the brightest promise for the fu-
8 / Introduction

ture are in the realm of the short story. We may yet

hear more of Yurii Kazakov, Vladimir Tendriakov,
Yurii Nagibin and Alexander Yashin.
Thus, some of the best Russian writing is to be
found in the short story and the novella. In addition,
there was another consideration. The decision to have
the present bilingual edition contain several short
items rather than a single long work was prompted
by the belief that shorter works are of superior value
as reading material for those with an imperfect com-
mand Such readers normally prefer to
of Russian.
finish acomplete work in a foreign language within a
reasonable span of time rather than linger over a
longer piece indefinitely.
The problem of the choice of material was com-
plex. Should one include tales solely on the basis of
their artistic merit, or strive instead to achieve a de-
gree of "representativeness" of the Russian reader's
literary fare? Should one omit stories already famil-
iar to the or, on the con-
English-speaking public,
trary, reproduce them here in the belief that there
was some merit in our ancestors' method of studying
foreign languages, which consisted in reading paral-
lel texts of Biblical passages? The compromise solu-
tion reached is reflected in the contents of the pres-
ent selection. In addition to novellas by Tolstoy and
Dostoyevsky, there are tales by three writers Httle
known abroad but familiar to every literate Russian—
namely, Leskov, Garshin and Mamin-Sibiryak. The
works also vary thematically and stylistically. They
include a religious-moralistic novella, a story of "so-
cial protest," a picaresque contej a psychological
study, and a children's tale of adventure.
Leo Tolstoy's "Father Sergius," one of his best-
known was written, at intervals, in the
later works,
1890s, that is, same time as his famous attack
at the
on the organized Church, The Kingdom of God Is
 Introduction / 9

Within You. In a letter to V. G. Chertkov, an intimate

friend, Tolstoy wrote regarding his novella: "The
struggle against lust is here but an episode, or more
precisely the first level [of the tale] . More important
is the struggle with something else—human ambition."
The hero of "Father Sergius," a young aristocrat dis-
appointed in love, retires to a monastery; but even
monastic life seems to him too full of worldly dis-
tractions, and he becomes a hermit. What follows is
a reworking of medieval tale. A society woman wants

to seduce him, and Father Sergius, fearing that he

might succumb to temptation, chops off one of his
fingers with an ax, in order to kill desire with pain.
Tolstoy then proceeds with a description of Father
Sergius' valiant but unsuccessful struggle with a far
mightier temptation— namely, his inability to suppress
within himself the feelings of ambition and pride, to
a monk two deadly sins: the desire to excel in mo-
nastic lifemuch as he had once excelled in the mili-
tary, to "succeed" as a monk as he has once been a
success in high society. And succeed Father Sergius
does. He has in the meantime acquired the reputa-
tion of a holy man and a worker of miracles; pilgrims
and those afflicted with various ills flock to him from
all corners of Russia for help, as do the idle rich
driven by ordinary curiosity. With his characteristic
sarcasm Tolstoy demonstrates how
the Church di-
vides its and stepchildren. Even
flock into favorites
within the monastic walls Orthodox Christians are not
accorded equal treatment. The rich pilgrims and
prominent visitors are treated with deference, while
contempt and indifference are the lot of the pious
poor. Father Sergius begins to realize that he is be-
ing overpowered by the demon of pride, the im-
placable foe of Christian humility. Nevertheless,
the final resolution to leave the monastery comes
only when the old "devil" of sexual desire vanquishes
10 / Introduction

him again: Father Sergius allows himself to be se-

duced by a rich pilgrim's daughter who had been
brought to him for a miraculous heahng. Completely
disenchanted with monasticism, Fatlier Sergius leaves
his cell and ultimately becomes a simple laborer in
Siberia.
"Father Sergius" reflects the older Tolstoy's suspi-
cious attitude toward the Church in general and mo-
nasticism in particular. It is sufficient to compare Fa-
ther Sergius to the Elder Zosima in Dostoyevsky's
Brothers Karamazov. Most reveahng in this respect is

the ending of Tolstoy's story where we are told in effect

that a humble laborer's life is infinitely more godly
than the mechanical prayers of a renowned and proud
hermit. In fact, Tolstoy's "Father Sergius" bears strong
resemblance to an old Jewish folk tale, better known
as I. L. Peretz's story "If Not Higher," in which a
saintly Rabbi, instead of chanting prayers before the
High Holy Days, and
disguises himself as a peasant
chops wood widow.
for a poor
Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "The Christmas Tree and the
Wedding," one of the novelist's early works, was first
pubhshed in 1848, i.e., before the author's arrest and
subsequent exile to Siberia. Incidentally, the story's
protagonist, Juhan Mastakovich, had already been
described (under the same name) in Dostoyevsky's
earlier short piece "Petersburg Annals," where he
had appeared as a middle-aged man about to marry
a girl of seventeen, yet unwilling to relinquish his
present mistress, a charming young widow.
In "The Christmas Tree and the Wedding" Dosto-
yevsky employs a device that has been used by a
number of Russian writers for comical effect, namely,
the portrayal of customary Russian attention to rank,
social position and wealth when such attention is
clearly inappropriate. This can be seen, for example,
in Pushkin's "Coffin Maker," one of the Tales of
 Introduction / 11

Belkin, where decaying corpses are shown strictly ob-

serving the rules of social and official hierarchy, the
poor kowtowing to the rich, and ordinary corpses elect-
ing the corpse of a general to be their spokesman
(an almost identical situation is to be found in an-
other of Dostoyevsky's own tales, "Bobok"). Similar-
ly, Dead Souls, deceased serfs are more
in Gogol's
expensive during their lifetimes, they were noted
if,

for unusual skills and sobriety; in Gogol's Inspector

General gullible provincials are awed by an impostor's
nonexistent rank and influence in St. Petersburg; and

so forth. In "The Cliristmas Tree and the Wedding"

Dostoyevsky achieves both comic and tragic eJBFect by
depicting little boys and girls at play as painfully
conscious of their parents' social stations and behav-
ing, accordingly, like "grownups," i.e., treating each
other with either haughtiness, obsequiousness or hy-
pocrisy. "The Christmas Tree and the Wedding" thus
belies the widely held image of Dostoyevsky as a
grim, humorless writer. Too often we tend to forget
the flashes of lively wit that are to be found even
in hismost "solemn" works; too often we mistakenly
equate Dostoyevsky 's undisputed *igh seriousness"
with an allegedly unrelieved solemnity.
"The Christmas Tree and the Wedding" is, in a
way, a story of "social protest," as were most of Dosto-
yevsky 's early writings, which have for a time en-
deared him to the radical Russian intelHgentsia, but
the story has nevertheless a characteristic Dostoyev-
skian twist, foretelling, as it were, the flavor of his
later works. Money, to Dostoyevsky, is here the source
of suffering— not only the lack of money, as most
writers of "social protest" would have it, but posses-
sion of money as well.Money is the source of mis-
fortune to the rich as much as it is to the poor. The
little boy, the governess' son, is mistreated because
his mother has no money. Conversely, the little girl
12 / Introduction

is forced into a loveless marriage— the marriage is de-

cided upon, we feel, at the children s party— precisely
because her parents are wealthy. Were the little girl

penniless, Julian Mastakovich would have been less

interested in her and she might have ultimately mar-
ried a man her own
age, possibly even of her own
choice. There grim humor in Julian Mastakovich*s
is

repeated orders to the poor little boy— his rival for

the girl's aflFection— to "go and play with those of your
own age," whereas it is, of course, he, Julian Mas-
takovich, who ought to go to women his own age.
Equally sarcastic is Dostoyevsky's comment at the
beginning of the story that "children's parties" are
not only arranged by grownups, but for grownups as
well; children serve merely as the excuse for adult
gatherings. In their awareness of serious problems of
life and their reactions to them, the children in "The

Christmas Tree and the Wedding" anticipate the im-

ages of children which Dostoyevsky was to create
later in his major novels. They are all somehow
strangely reminiscent of the portraits of Infant Jesus
on old Russian icons, where He is invariably shown
not as a real child, but merely a small adult, with an
expression of adult suffering on His face.
In "The Christmas Tree and the Wedding" Julian
Mastakovich is not drawn by the little girl's money
alone. The story hints at a perverted sexual attraction
of a middle-aged adult to a child, a foretaste of Dosto-
yevsky 's fascination with this problem as depicted in
his later works {e.g., Svidrigailov in Crime and Pun-
ishment)— this, more than a century before the ad-
vent of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.
Vsevolod Garshin ( 1855-88 ) is little known abroad.
Of artistocratic descent, he enlisted in the army dur-
ing thewar with Turkey in order to share the ordeal
that was the lot of the drafted Russian peasants. A
 Introduction / 12

victim of severe fits of depression, he committed sui-

cideby jumping down a stairwell.
Garshin's output was very small, altogether some
twenty tales; but his stories, immensely popular with
the Russian readers when first published, are still of
considerable interest today. They are noted for their
tightness of construction, an all-pervading atmos-
phere of sadness and gloom, as well as for their in-
cisive psychological analysis of events, which makes
them resemble the better works of Leonid Andreyev.
Garshin is best remembered for his allegorical tales
dealing with the "accursed' —as the Russians call them
—questions of human condition, so prominent in the
works of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, and so studiously
avoided by the greatest master of the Russian short
story, Chekhov, who considered such themes immod-
est and too presumptuous for a writer to tackle. Among
the problems discussed by Garshin are an individu-
al's responsibility for the collective ("The Signal," a

story about a railroad switchman who risks his own

life to save the hves of passengers on a train threat-

ened by derailment) and of the choice between free-

dom and happiness, a dilemma made famous by Dos-
toyevsky ("Attalea Princeps," a tale about a palm tree,
unhappy in a crowded hothouse, yet unable to with-
stand the freezing air outside its confines ) Other bet-
.

ter-known works of Garshin are "Four Days," which

describes a wounded Russian soldier who lies, im-
mobile, next to the decaying body
dead Turk,
of a
and "The Officer and the Orderly," a gloomy pano-
rama of drab army hfe.
"The Red Flower" (1883) is the work of a writer
with a distinct premonition of madness. Frequently
compared with another story about a nineteenth-cen-
tury Russian psychiatric hospital, Chekhov's "Ward
No. 6," Garshin's tale of a madman's burning desire
14 / Introduction

to crush the red poppies growing in the asylum's

courtyard, is more than a chronicle of the hallucina-

tions of a diseased mind. It is a modern variant of

the Prometheus legend, or of the story of Christ will-
ing to die for the salvation of mankind. The portray-
als of the psychiatrist, orderlies, medical treatments,
and of the patient's ravings alternating with occa-
sional flashes of sanity, are all convincingly drawn.
In spite of occasional naive touches, "The Red Flow-
er" is one of the important tales of Russian letters, and
its theme of struggle v/ith universal evil continues
to attract the Russian reading public.
Almost totally unknown outside of Russia is Dmitri
Mamin-Sibiryak (1852-1912). D. S. Mirsky's classic
History of Russian Literature dismisses him with ex-
actly one sentence. Yet among his compatriots Mamin-
Sibiryak is a writer of considerable fame. Between
1918 and 1957 his works appeared in fifty languages,
in a total of twenty-three million copies— almost four
times the figure for Dostoyevsky. A son of a country
priest,he was educated in a theological seminary
where he came in contact with revolutionary ideas.
This, incidentally, was by no means uncommon in
nineteenth-century Russia. Many Russian radicals of
that period, including some who were to achieve
later world-wide renown— Stalin and Mikoyan, to
mention but bvo— were also students in theological
schools preparing to enter priesthood. Mamin-Sibiryak
was a "PopuHst" writer, closely identified with the
Narodnik movement. This fact, incidentally, frequent-
ly causes discomfort to his Soviet biographers who are
why this merciless critic of nascent
at a loss to explain
Russian capitalism failed to join the Marxist move-
ment, and particularly its Leninist wing. No great
styHst, Mamin-Sibiryak's novels, particularly Bread
and Privalovs Millions, bear a certain thematic re-
semblance to Emile Zola's and, to a lesser extent.
 Introduction / 15

Balzac's. Mamin-Sibiryak described the nithlessness

of Russian industrial entrepreneurs, particularly in
the forests and mines of the Urals. It is not these
that assure him a place in Russian literature, but
rather his charming fairy tales set in the same region,
many of them widely anthologized for school use, as
well as his stories of loneliness of man and beast in
the sub-Arctic forests, not unlike those of Jack Lon-
don, a perennial favorite with Russian readers. Of
these, 'Wintering Station on Chill River" (1892) is

one of the best known. No literary masterpiece, it is

included here as an example of "popular" Russian
prose of mass appeal, one of the mainstays of Rus-
sian juvenile fiction.
Of all the great Russian writers, Nikolai Leskov
(1831-95) has been, for a long time, the most ne-
glected by his countrymen, and still enjoys this sad
distinction abroad. Leskov's unpopularity with his
contemporaries has been due partly to the traditional
narrow-mindedness of the bulk of Russian literary
criticism which has, on the whole, been unworthy of
the literature it judged, much as Russia's theater has
rarely had much native repertory to match its stature.
To the utilitarian, social-centered Russian critics Les-
kov was but a jester unworthy of serious considera-
tion—certainly not as valuable as many of the pedes-
trian, but solemn chroniclers of Russia's social ills. To
make matters' worse, he was not a radical in his so-
cial views, although he was hardly a reactionary. In-
deed, some of his works (No Way Out; At Daggers
Drawn) were misinterpreted as attacks on the revo-
lutionary intelligentsia, while others (e.g.. Cathedral
Folk) dealt with such "unprogressive" themes as the
life of the clergy. These factors, incidentally, have
subsequently played no small part in Leskov's almost
total neglect in the U.S.S.R. until the 1940s— the period
of revival of Russian nationalism and a more tolerant
16 / Introduction

attitude toward the Orthodox Church. On the other

hand, Russian conservatives eyed suspiciously Leskov's
generally irreverent attitude toward organized
gion, his mockery of tsarist bureaucracy, his pleas
-
for religious tolerance in general and particularly his
almost single-handed, among Russian men of letters,
defense of the Jews ( e.g., "Tale of Theodore the Chris-
tian and Abraham the Hebrew," and the remarkable
pamphlet The Jews in Russia Like the French Count
.

Mirabeau, Leskov was too revolutionary for the mon-

archy and to monarchist for the revolution.
Yet it is to this most Russian of all Russian writers,
as Leskov has sometimes been called, that one should
turn for a unique vision of Russia and, if one reads
Russian, for an incomparable artistry in the use of
all the resources of that language, from Church Sla-

vonicisms, to racy puns, proverbs and sayings. Unhke

the Russia of Pushkin and Chekhov, Turgenev and
Tolstoy, Leskov's Russia is not peopled by Western-
ized, bored gentlefolk and primitive peasants deserv-
ing of compassion. His is a Russia of cunning petty
tradesmen, skillful artisans, pious procuresses, ath-
letic deacons, cheerful pilgrims, corrupt clerks, in-
sane holy men, jacks-of-all-trades and ne'er-do-wells.
"The Tale of the Squint-eyed, Left-handed Smith
of Tula and the Steel Flea" (1882), long a despair
of translators, derives much of its sparkling humor
from popular Russian corruptions of foreign words
assimilated into Russian, particularly since Peter the
Great's reforms in the eighteenth century. The Ger-
manic and Romance antecedents of English make
similar words sound less strange to a semihterate
Englishman or American than to their Russian coun-
terpart, and the corruptions cannot, therefore, be
easily translated— although Mr. Guerney has made
some exceptionally interesting attempts in his trans-
lation of this story. Furthermore, certain types of ele-
 Introduction / 17

mentary grammatical mistakes are characteristic of

uneducated speakers of one language and cannot be
readily duplicated in another. Thus, the English **I

says so but he don't" could not possibly be reproduced

in Russian. And, conversely, the Russian's difficulties
with seemingly simple words of Greek or Latin or-
igin puzzle the EngHsh speaker. Laughter, hke cui-
sine, bears the unmistakable stamp of national char-
acter and the nation's climate, both in the hteral and
figurative sense. Thus, the humor of another people,
though may at first appear strange, is worth ex-
it

ploring. We may discover a world of dehghts which

will more than compensate for our initial effort.
Long regarded by the Russian readers as one of the
most hilarious creations in their tongue, "The Left-
handed Smith" is no museum rehc. Nearly a century
after its pubhcation— to paraphrase an observ^ation of
which the Soviet critics are inordinately fond— it ac-
quires an ever greater significance. At the risk of ag-
gravating even further the already strained Soviet-
Western relations, I submit that Leskov's conte tells,

mutatis mutandis, a stor\' strikingly reminiscent of

present-day Soviet-Western diplomatic and cultural
exchanges, provides (as American Sovietologists would
say) an excellent illustration of basic continuity in
old Russian and modern Soviet behavior, and ( as the
social psychologists might say) offers a key to the
understanding of the mysterious Russian soul.
The basic theme of Leskov's tale— the trials and
tribulations of a patriotic inventor whose efforts to
promote his country's welfare are frustrated by ob-
stinate bureaucrats whose self-interests are being
threatened— was taken up and set in Soviet conditions
just a few years ago by Madimir Dudintsev in his
novel Not By Bread Alone, one of the most famous
works of the post-Stalin literary "thaw."
The two Emperors and their entourage in Leskov's
18 / Introduction

work—not unlike Stalin and Khrushchev of our days—

repeatedly fluctuate between disdain for Western
ways and envy of Western technological progress,
between nationalistic isolationism and the desire to
emulate the West and, indeed, beat it at its own game.
Russia's rulers' visits to Western factories in the nine-
teenth century had their counterpart in mid-1950s.
Also, Leskov shows us a famiUar source of puzzle-
ment for Western students of Russian affairs— namely,
how the criminal mistreatment of the Russian citizen
by his government does not affect his love for his
country and his concern for that country's future.
Further, we observe with fascination the Russian
craftsmen of a century ago who could produce a
mechanism infinitely more delicate ( though complete-
ly useless to Russia, except in matters of international
prestige) than the British did, yet were unable to
make it work because of the Russians' ignorance of
elementary mathematics and physics. Is this not some-
what reminiscent in Soviet economy today which,
while capable of creating the best earth satellites,
still cannot manufacture decent shoes or produce

enough meat and milk?

Then, we follow the left-handed Russian smith as
he admires the free and prosperous life of the British
workmen, and yet refuses to "defect," as we would
say today. We smile as we observe Britain's counter-
intelligence service trying to discover whether the
Russian visitor is not taking back to Russia any in-

formation of strategic value. Indeed, plus change,

plus est la chose. . . .

Quite aside from the truism that good literature

is ageless, it is an undisputed fact that Russians to-

day show, on the whole, a greater attraction for the

hterary heritage bequeathed to them by the nine-
teenth-century masters than for the bulk of new So-
viet literature. The tales in this anthology represent.
 Introduction / 19

therefore, some most widely read authors in

of the
and language (aside from
Russia. Their art, thought
some neologisms, Russian has not changed appreci-
ably in the last century or so) should provide Amer-
ican readers of this bilingual book with pleasurable
reading and also good practice in studying the lan-
guage.
The Russian texts of the stories are based on re-
cent Soviet scholarly editions.
Three stories (Leskov, Garshin and Mamin-Sibi-
ryak) were translated by the veteran editor and
translator Bernard Guilbert Guerney. The Dostoyev-
sky story was translated by Mr. John H. C. Richard-
son, the translator of the recent editions of the two
best comic novels in Soviet literature, Ilf and Petrov's
Twelve Chairs and The Golden Calf. Professor Robert
A. Maguire of Columbia University translated the
Tolstoy novella. The entire Russian text was stressed,
and some suggestions of the editor's notes to the Les-
kov story were made by Professor Andrej Kodjak of
the University of Pennsylvania. To all of these, and
to Dr. Morris Philipson of Random House, the editor
of this volume wishes to express his gratitude.

MAURICE FRIEDBERG
 LEO TOLSTOY

Father Sergius

Translated by

ROBERT A. MAGUIRE
 ..

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 *
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L. iV. TOLSTOY

Father Sergius

In Petersburg during the forties an event occurred

which surprised everyone: a handsome young man, a
prince, commanding officer of a Squadron of Life
Guards in a Cuirassiers regiment, a man for whom
everyone was predicting a court-adjutancy and a bril-
Hant career under Emperor Nicholas I, broke off his
engagement a month before his marriage to a beauti-
ful young lady-in-waiting who enjoyed the particular
favor of the Empress, put in for retirement, turned
his modest estate over to his sister, and went off to a
monastery with the intention of becoming a monk.
The event seemed extraordinary and inexplicable to
people who did not know the deep-lying reasons for
 ,-
24 /

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,
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 Father Sergius / 25

it; but for Prince Stepan Kasatsky himself it all hap-

pened so naturally that he could not possibly imagine
how he could have acted in any other way.
Stepan Kasatsky 's father, a retired Guards colonel,
died when his son was twelve. Painful as it was for
his mother to send her son away from home, she did
not dare to disregard the wishes of her late husband,
who had stipulated that in the event of his death his
son was not to be kept at home but was to be en-
rolled in the cadet corps, and so she enrolled him in
the cadet corps. The widow herself, with her daughter
Varvara, moved to Petersburg so that she could be
where her son was and have him home for holidays.

The boy was distinguished by brilliant talents and

immense self-esteem, as a result of which he stood
first both in his studies— especially in mathematics, for
which he had a particular passion— and in drill and
horsemanship. Despite his height, which was above
the average, he was handsome and agile. Further-
more, he would have been an exemplary cadet in
deportment as well if it had not been for his violent
temper. He did not drink or run around with women,
and he was remarkably truthful. The one thing that
kept him from being exemplary were the fits of rage
to which he was subject and during which he com-
pletely lost control of himself and became like a wild
animal. Once he almost threw out the window a
cadet who had started making fun of his mineral col-
lection. On another occasion he all but came com-
pletely to grief: he flung a whole dish of cutlets at
the steward, fell on the officer and, people said,
struck him because he had broken his word and told
a bare-faced lie. He would undoubtedly have been
reduced to the ranks if the director of the corps had
not hushed up the whole affair and dismissed the
steward.
26 /

. --
-.
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,
, ,
.
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-
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,.
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. , -.
, -

, . --
— ,
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,,: ,-
,
. .
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.
 Father Sergius / 27

At the age of eighteen he was commissioned an

officerand assigned to an aristocratic Guards regi-
ment. Emperor Nicholas Pavlovich had known him
while he was still in the cadet corps and showed a
special interest in him later in the regiment as well,
so that people were predicting a court-adjutancy for
him. Kasatsky had his heart set on it too, not merely
from ambition but chiefly because ever since his cadet
days he had passionately, yes passionately, loved
Nicholas Pavlovich. At every visit of Nicholas Pav-
lovich to the corps— and he came to see them fre-
quently—when that tall figure in a military tunic—
with the thrust-out chest, the aquiline nose above the
moustaches, and the close-cropped side-whiskers— en-
tered with a brisk step and exchanged greetings with
the cadets in a powerful voice, Kasatsky felt the rap-
ture of a man in love, the same kind of rapture he
felt later whenever he met a woman he loved. Ex-
cept that his rapturous love for Nicholas Pavlovich
was stronger: he had a desire to demonstrate his
limitless devotion to him, to sacrifice something, his
whole being, to him. And Nicholas Pavlovich knew
that he aroused this feeling of rapture and tried de-
liberately to evoke it. He toyed with the cadets, sur-
rounded himself with them, behaving toward them
sometimes with easy, unaffected camaraderie, some-
times as an intimate friend, sometimes with lofty and
solemn majesty. After Kasatsky 's recent brush with
the Nicholas Pavlovich said nothing to Kasat-
officer,

sky, but when the young man came up to him he

waved him away theatrically, frowned, and shook his
finger at him; and later, when he was leaving, he said:

"Bear in mind that everything is known to me,

but there are some things I do not wish to know.
Yet they are here.*'

He pointed to his heart.

28 /

,, ,
,
,
, , , ,
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,
.
,,
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-
-
,

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, -, , -
,, , ,
., -
. , ,,, -
.
, , ,
,
,
, ;, , --
-
, ,.,,
, -
 Father Sergius / 29

But when the newly-commissioned cadets appeared

before him, he did not mention this again. He said,
as always, that they all could turn to him directly,
that they should serve him and the fatherland faith-
fully, and that he would always remain their best
friend. All, as usual, were moved, and Kasatsky shed
tears, remembering the past, and vowed to serve his
beloved Tsar body and soul.
When Kasatsky began his service in the regiment,
his mother moved with her daughter first to Moscow
and then to the country. Kasatsky turned over half
his fortune to his sister. What remained was just
enough for him to support himself in the luxurious
regiment in which he served.
On the surface Kasatsky appeared to be just an
ordinary brilliant young Guards officer making a
career for himself. But within him a complex and in-
tensive activity was From early childhood
at work.
this activity had to all appearances been very varied,
but essentially it was always the same, namely, an
attempt to achieve, in everything that came his way,
a perfection and a degree of success that would evoke
people's praise and astonishment. Whether it was drill
or his studies, he set about them and worked until
he was praised and held up as an example to others.
After he had mastered one thing, he took up some-
thing else. In this way he attained first place in his
studies. Similarly, while still in the corps, he once
happened to notice a certain awkwardness in his
French conversation and he worked until he had as
fluent a command of French as he did of Russian.
Similarly, when he took up chess a little later, he
succeeded in becoming an excellent player while still
in the cadet corps.

Besides his chief vocation inlife, which was service

to Tsar and fatherland, he always had some particu-

30 /

-
,
- ,
, ,

.
.,
, , , .
,
-* -

, ,
. ,, . ,,
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-

.
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:
,
2)
;,, , -
-
.
1)

, ;
3)
, -

. . --
-
* Stresses on capital vowels
4)

do not appear throughout the

text — ^for technical reasons.
 Father Sergius / 31

lar goal before him, and, no matter how unimportant

it might be, he devoted himself to it entirely and
hved for it alone until he had reached it. But as
soon as he had reached the predetermined goal, an-
other promptly rose up in his mind and replaced the
previous one. His whole life was filled with this drive
to distinguish himself and to reach— for the sake of
distinguishing himself— an established goal. Thus, on
receiving his commission, he set himself the goal of
reaching the greatest possible perfection in knowledge
of the service, and he very quickly became a model
officer, though again with the same weakness of vio-

lent, uncontrollable temper that led him, in the serv-

ice too, into actions that were ugly and prejudicial
to his success. Next, feeling a deficiency in his gen-
eral education on one occasion during a social con-
versation, he resolved to fill in the gaps, sat down at
the books, and succeeded in achieving what he want-
ed. Then he made up his mind to attain a brilliant
position in high society. He learned to dance very
well indeed and quickly reached the point where he
was being invited to all the balls in high society and
to some of their soirees. But this position failed to
satisfy him. He was accustomed to being first, and
here he was far from that.

High society then consisted— indeed, I think it al-

ways and everywhere consists— of four kinds of peo-
ple: (1) people who are rich and close to Court; (2)
people who are not rich but who have been born
and brought up in Court circles; (3) rich people
who are currying favor with those close to Court; (4)
people without wealth or Court connections who are
currying favor with those in the first and second
groups. Kasatsky did not belong to the first two
groups. Kasatsky was readily received in the other
32 /

.
- ,— -
, .
, -
,
,, ,
, , ; ,-
-,
—
.
.
.
,., ,. -
.,,,,
, —

,,
,
.
, ,.
-
-
-

,
, -. , .
, ,
.
 Father Sergius / 33

two circles. Even when he was just beginning to en-

ter society he resolved fonn a Haison with a so-
to
ciety woman, and, unexpectedly for himself, he quick-
ly succeeded. But he soon perceived that the circles
in which he was moving were lower circles, that high-
er circles existed, and that in those higher Court cir-
cles, even though he was received there, he was out

of place. They were pohte to him, but their whole

manner showed that there were those who belonged
to that set and that he was not one of them. And
Kasatsky began yearning to be one of them. For that
it was necessary either to be a court-adjutant— and

he was anticipating that— or to marry v^dthin this cir-

cle. And he decided he would do that. And he chose

a girl who was beautiful and close to Court, who not

only belonged to the society he wanted to enter, but
whose friendship was coveted by all the people most
highly and securely placed in the very highest
circle. This was the Countess Korotkova. Kasatsky

began to court Korotkova not just for the sake of his

career; she was unusually attractive, and he quickly
fell in love with her. At first she was extremely cool

toward him, but then everything suddenly changed,

she became aflEectionate, and her mother kept urging
him to visit them.
Kasatsky proposed and was accepted. He was sur-
prised by the ease with which he had attained such
happiness, and also
by something peculiar, something
strange in themanner of both the mother and the
daughter. He was very much in love and very much
bUnded and therefore had not become aware of what
practically everyone in the city knew: that his fiancee,
a year previously, had been the mistress of Nicholas
Pavlovich.
34 /

. ..
. -

, , . -
-
, .,
,
,
,, ,, -
, -
,, ,. -

,
,
,
,., ,
,---
,
.
—

.
-,-
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-
 Father Sergius / 35

Two weeks before the day set for the wedding Ka-
satsky was in Tsarskoe Selo, visiting his fiancee at her
summer place. It was a hot day in May. The engaged
couple had taken a turn around the garden and were
seated on a bench in a shady avenue of lime trees.
Mary looked especially lovely in a white musHn dress.
She seemed to be the embodiment of innocence and
love. She sat, now inchning her head, now glancing
up at the very tall, handsome young man who was
talking to her with particular delicacy and tact, as if
fearing, by every gesture and every word, to offend
and sully the angehc purity of his fiancee. Kasatsky
.

was one of those people of the forties, of a kind no

longer seen these days, who, while consciously allow-
ing and inwardly condoning impurity in matters of
sex for themselves, required in their wives an ideal,
celestial purity; and such celestial purity they took
for granted in every girl who belonged to their cir-
cle, and treated her accordingly. There was much

that was false and harmful in such a view, certainly

in the hcentiousness the men permitted themselves;
but with regard to the women, such a view— differing
so radically from the view held by the young people
of today, who see in every girl merely a female seek-
ing a mate for herself— such a view was, I think,
healthy.^ The girls, perceiving such idolization, did
indeed make an effort to be goddesses, more or less
successfully. Such was Kasatsky 's view of women too,
and such was the way he looked upon his fiancee.
He felt particularly in love that day and did not
experience the shghtest twinge of sensuality toward
his fiancee; on the contrary, he looked on her with
tender adoration, as something unattainable.

1 Literally: "useful" (Ed.).

36 /

,
. ,.
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,—
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,
-

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—

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.—
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, ,,
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.
.

.
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...
 Father Sergius / 37

He rose, drew himself up to his full height, and

stood before her, resting both hands on his saber.
"I've only now begun to know all the happiness a
man can feel. And it's you, it's you, [my darling],"
he said, timidly smiling, "who've given me this!"^

He was in that phase of their relationship when

endearments had not yet become habitual, and since
he looked up to her with a sense of moral inferiority',
he felt terrified about addressing this angel in such
an intimate manner.
"I've come to know myself because of you . . . my
darUng . . . I've learned that I'm better than I

thought."
"I've known that for a long time. That's just why
I've come to love you."
A nightingale began to chirp away nearby; the
fresh foHage began to stir from a sudden breeze.
He took her hand and kissed it, and tears sprang

to his eyes. She understood that he was expressing

had come to
his gratitude to her for sa\ing that she
love him. He walked back andfew times, with- forth a
out saying anything, then he came toward her and
sat down.

'Tou know . . . my darUng ( oh, well! ) . . . my

darhng, I sought your friendship not entirely with
unselfish motives. I wanted to estabhsh connections

with high society, but then How unimportant aU. . .

that became in comparison with you, my darhng,

when I got to know you. You aren't angry with me
for that?"

2 Russian has a familiar and a formal form of "you," as do the

Romance languages and German, but as English does not. The
translator was forced to convey the transition from the formal to
the intimate "you" by addition of the expression "my dajling"
(Ed.).
38 /

., : ,». «,
i

,
—,
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... —
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-

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.,
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«,
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—

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...
—
—,
, . ...
, ?
,
, -

.?
—
?
—
— ?
.
.
 Father Sergius / 39

She did not reply, and only touched his hand with
hers.
He understood that this meant: "No, Im not
angry/'
you just said"—he faltered; this seemed to
**Yes,

him impudent— "you said you Ve come to love

too
me, but— forgive me for saying it— I believe you, but
there must be something else that's troubling and dis-
turbing you. What is it?"
"Well, now or never," she thought. "He'll find out
anyway. But he won't leave me now. Oh, if he should
leave, that would be terrible!"
And with a loving glance she took in all of his tall,
noble, powerful figure. She loved him now more than
Nicholas, and were it not for the fact that Nicholas
was Emperor, she could never have preferred him to
Kasatsky.
"Listen, I can't be untruthful. I must tell every-
thing. You ask me what it is? It's that I've loved some-
one.
She placed her hand on his with an imploring ges-
ture.
He said nothing.
"Do you want to know who it was? It was he, the
Emperor."
"We all love him. I imagine that while you were
at school. ."
. .

"No, it was later. It was an infatuation, but then

it passed. But I must tell you. . .
."

"Well, what then?"

"No, I can't say it just like that."
She covered her face with her hands.
"What? You gave yourself to him?"
She said nothing.
"You were his mistress?"
She said nothing.
 ,
,, ,
40

, ,
.
/

-
,.!
—
— , . - ,
!
—
.
,
. ? ... — ,.
.
-

, .,
—
,, -- —
,
.
,

, ,. -,
.,
., ,
,
, -
.
., , -
-
-

,, , , ,
, - .
, .
,
.
 Father Sergius / 41

He jumped up and stood before her, pale as death,

his cheeks trembhng. He recalled now how Nicholas
Pavlovich, meeting him on the Nevsky, had congratu-
lated him affectionately.
"My God, what have I done, Stival"^''

"Don't touch me, don't touch me. Oh, how painful

it IS I

He turned and began to walk toward the house. In

the house he encountered her mother.
"What's the matter. Prince? I. . .
." Seeing his face,
she became silent. The blood had suddenly rushed
to his face.
"You knew that and wanted to use me to screen
them. If you weren't women ." he shouted, raising
. .

his huge fist over her, and, whirling about, he ran off.

If the man who was his fiancee's lover had been

a private citizen, he would have killed him, but he
was the beloved Tsar.
The following day he put in for leave and retire-
ment, announced that he was ill so that he would not
have to see anyone, and went to the country.
The summer he spent in his village, putting his
affairs in order. And when
the summer ended, he
did not return to Petersburg but went off to a monas-
tery and entered as a monk.
His mother wrote, trying to dissuade him from
such a drastic step. He replied that a calling from
God stood above all other considerations and that
he felt this calling. Only his sister, who was as proud
and ambitious as her brother, understood him.
She understood that he had become a monk in or-
der to stand above those who wanted to show him
that they stood above him. And she understood him

3 Diminutive of Stepan (Trans.).

.
42

,,,,
/

. , ,
, , ,,,-- -

, ,(), --
.

,
?
, — , ,
.
, -
.

, --
,.,, ,,-,---
.
,
,.
. , ,
-
--
,
, ,,
 Father Sergius / 43

correctly. By life he was showing

entering monastic
that he scorned everything thatseemed so important
to others and had indeed seemed so to him when he
was in the service, and that he was ascending to a
new height from which he could look down on those
people he had formerly envied. But it was not just
thisfeehng, as his sister Varenka^ thought, that guided
him. Within him there was another feeling that
Varenka knew nothing about, a genuinely reHgious
feehng, intertwined with a feeling of pride and the
desire to excel, which guided him. The disillusion-
ment with Mary (his fiancee), whom he had im-
agined to be such an angel, and the feehng of per-
sonal aflFront were so strong that they brought him to
despair; and despair led him where?— to God, to the
faith of his childhood, which had never been de-
stroyed in him.

Ill

Kasatsky entered the monastery on the Feast of the

intercession of the Holy Virgin.
The Abbot of the monastery was a nobleman, a
learned writer, and an Elder, that is to say, he be-

longed to that succession of monks deriving from Wal-

lachia, who subordinate themselves unquestioningly
to the guide and teacher they have chosen. The Abbot
had been a disciple of the famous Elder Ambrosius,
who had been a disciple of Makarius, who had been
a disciple of the Elder Leonid, who had been a dis-
ciple, of Paissy Velichkovsky. Kasatsky submitted him-
self to this Abbot as his Elder.
Besides the awareness of his superiority over others
which Kasatsky felt in the monastery, Kasatsky found
in the monastery too— just as he had in all the things
he used to do while in the world— joy in attaining

3 Diminutive of Varvara (Trans.).

,
44

,,,
/

.- -
,
:
,
,,
,^
. ,
, , -
- ,
,

.
,
.,, : -
- , ,
,
,
, .
,
-
. -

, ,
,.. ,, ,
«, ,
, , -
».
,
—
,
—
,
. ,-
.
-
, .
 Father Sergius / 45

the greatest possible outer and inner perfection. Just

as in the regiment he had been not only an irre-

proachable who did more than was

officer, but one
required and constantly set new standards of per-
fection, so now as a monk he tried to be perfect too:
always industrious, abstemious, humble, meek, pure
not only in deed but in thought as well, and obedient.
In particular this last qualit\', or perfection, made
his life easier. If many requirements of monastic Life
in a monaster\' which was near the capital and very
much \isited did not please him because of the temp-
tations invohed, all that was cancelled out by the
rule of obedience. "It is not my business to reason,
my business perform the act of obedience that
is to
has been prescribed, whether it is standing by the
reUcs, singing in the choir, or keeping the accounts
in the guest house." Any possibilit}' of doubt about
amthing was dispelled by this rule of obedi-
at all
ence to the Elder. If it had not been for the rule

of obedience, he would have felt oppressed by both

the length and tlie monotony of the church serNices,
by the constant stir of visitors, and by the unpleasant
characteristics of the brethren; but now all tliat was
not only borne joyfuUy, but gave comfort and sup-
port to liis hfe. "I don't know \^-hy it's necessary to
hear the same prayers several times a day, but I do
know that it is necessar)'. And since I know it is

necessar}', I find joy in them." The Elder told him

that just as material food is necessar}' to the main-
tenance of hfe, so spiritual food— the prayers of the
Church— is necessar)- to the maintenance of spiritual

life. He this, and it was true that the

believed in
church services for wliich he sometimes had such dif-
ficulty getting up in the morning did give him an

undeniable sense of peace and joy. Joy was given,

too, by an awareness of humiht)- and of the right-
46

. ,
,
/

,-
-
-
.- ,
. ,-
, , .
,
-
,. -
,
, ,
. , .
.-
,
, .
^ ,,,
., ,
. , -
, , ,
, -
, ,
..
,
—
,-

, ,,,
—
.
— ,
-
 Father Sergius / 47

ness of his actions, all of which had been prescribed

by the Elder. But the real interest of his hfe lay not
only in a greater and greater subjugation of his will,
in a greaterand greater humbling of himself, but also
in the attainment of all the Christian virtues,which
at first seemed to him easily attainable. He had
turned his estate over entirely to the monastery and
he did not regret it. There was not a trace of sloth
in him. Humbling himself before inferiors was not
only easy for him, it afforded him great joy. Even
victory over the sin of lust— of greed as well as of
lechery— came easily to him. The Elder used to cau-
tion him in particular about this sin, but Kasatsky
rejoiced that he was free of it.

The only thing him was the mem-

that tormented
ory of his fiancee. And not only the memory, but also
a vivid image of what might have been. Involun-
tarily he used to see in his mind's eye an acquaintance
of his, a favorite of the Emperor, who subsequently
married and became an excellent wife and mother.
And her husband had an important assignment, as
well as power, respect, and a good repentant wife.
In better moments these thoughts did not disturb
Kasatsky. When he recalled all this in better mo-
ments, he rejoiced that he had rid himself of these
temptations. But there were moments when suddenly
everything he lived by grew dim before his eyes,
when he did not exactly cease to beheve in what he
lived by, but did cease to perceive it clearly and was
unable to summon it up within himself, when he was
gripped by the memory of his conversion and— ter-
rible to say— great regret for it.

In this situation salvation lay in obedience: work

and prayer the whole day long. He prayed in the
usual ways, he made deep bows, he prayed even
more than usual, but he prayed with his body: his
48

,
-,
, . ..
/

-
,
.
,
,. , -,,
,,
-
.
, ,.-
.
.
--
,
^; ,
,, .-
,
,., . , -
, . ,
,
-
-
,
. — , ,
-
.. .-
,
 Father Sergius / 49

soul was not in it. And

went on for a day, some-
this
times two days, and then passed by itself. But these
one or two days were terrible. Kasatsky felt that he
was neither in his own power nor in God's but in
someone else's. And all he could do and did do
during these periods was what the Elder advised:
stand firm, undertake nothing at such a time, and
wait. Generally speaking, during this whole period
Kasatsky lived not by his own will but by that of
the Elder, and in this rule of obedience he found
particular tranquility.
In this way Kasatsky lived seven years in the first
monastery he entered. At the end of the third year
he took the tonsure and was ordained to the priest-
hood under the name of Sergius. The tonsure was an
important event in Sergius 's inner life. Even before,
he used to experience great consolation and spiritual
uplift whenever he received Communion, but now,
whenever he himself said Mass, the performance of
the Preparatory Rite created in him an exalted and
blissful state. But then this feeling became increas-
ingly dulled, and when on one occasion he chanced to
say Mass in this depressed state of mind he often
found himself in, he felt that this exaltation would
pass too. And in fact this feeling did weaken, but the
habit remained.

Generally speaking, by the seventh year of his life

in the monastery, Sergius had become bored. Every-

thing there was to learn, everything there was to ac-
complish, he had accomplished, and there was nothing
more to do.
But at the same time the state of spiritual hypnosis
was growing ever stronger. During this time he
learned of the death of his mother and the marriage
of Mary. Both pieces of news he took with indif-
50 /

.,
,
.
,,, .-
- ,-

., ,.. . --

, .
, ., -
. , -- -

. ,
.
,-
,
,
,
, ,
,.-
-
,

,
,
, , , - -
,
. . ,, - -
 Father Sergius / 51

ference. All this attention, all his interests were fo-

cused on his inner life.

During the fourth year of his priesthood the Bishop

was especially kind to him, and the Elder told him
that he ought not to refuse if he were appointed to
higher duties. And then monastic ambition, that very
thing he found so repugnant in other monks, rose up
in him. He was assigned to a monastery close to the
capital. He wanted to refuse, but the Elder ordered
him to accept the assignment. He accepted the assign-
ment, took leave of the Elder, and transferred to the
other monastery.
This transfer to the monastery near the capital was
an important event in Sergius's hfe. There were many
temptations of every kind, and all Sergius's strength
was directed to meeting them.
In the monastery female temptation had hard-
first

ly troubled Sergius at all, but here this temptation

arose with terrifying strength and reached the point

where it even took on a definite form. There was a
lady noted for her frivolous behavior who began
making up to Sergius. She started to chat with him
and asked him to visit her. Sergius sternly refused,
but he was horrified by the definiteness of his de-
sire. He became so alarmed that he wrote about it

to his Elder, but in addition, to keep himself in

check, he summoned his young novice, and, con-
quering his shame, confessed his weakness to him,
and asked him to keep an eye on him and not let
him go anywhere except to services and to his duties.
In addition to that, a great temptation for Sergius
lay in the fact that the Abbot of this monastery, a
worldly, cunning man who was making a spiritual
career for himself, was antipathetic to Sergius in the
highest degree. No matter how much Sergius strug-
gled with himself, he could not overcome this antipa-
52 /

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 Father Sergius / 53

thy. He tried to humble himself, but in the depths

of his soul he could not stop condemning him. And
this hostile feeling suddenly flared up.
This was in the second year of his residence in the
new monastery. And it happened this way. On the
eve of the Feast of the Intercession of the Blessed
Virgin, the Vesper service was in progress in the big
church. There was a large crowd of visitors. The Ab-
bot himself was officiating. Father Sergius was stand-
ing in his usual place and praying, that is, he was
in that state of struggle he always found himself in
during services, particularly in the big church, when
he himself was not officiating. The struggle consisted
in his being irritated by the visitors— the gentlemen,
and especially the ladies. He was trying not to see
them, not to notice all that was going on: not to
seehow a soldier ushered them in, shoving the com-
mon people aside, how the ladies were pointing the
monks out one another—very often himself and
to
a monk who was well-known for his good looks. By
putting his attention in blinders, as it were, he tried
not to see anything except the glitter of the candles
at the iconostasis, the icons,and the ministrants; not
to hear anything except the words of the prayers that
were being sung and spoken, and not to experience
any other feeling except that self-oblivion in an
awareness of the fulfillment of duty which he always
experienced while he was listening to and repeating
in advance the prayers he had so often heard.

So he stood, bowing and crossing himself where it

was appropriate, and struggling, yielding alternately
to a feeling of cold condemnation and to a consciously
induced extinction of thoughts and feelings, when the
sacristan. Father Nikodim, who for Father Sergius
was also a great temptation to sin— Nikodim, whom
he could not help reproaching for sycophancy and
54 /

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 Father Sergius / 55

toward the Abbot— came up to him and, malt-

flattery
ing a deep bow from the waist, said that the Abbot
was summoning him to his presence in the sanctuary.
Father Sergius adjusted his mantle, put on his head-
dress,* and began to make his way carefully through
the crowd.
**Lise, regardez d droite, est lui**^ he heard a

??
woman's voice say.
nest pas tellement beau"^
He knew that they were saying this about him.
He heard them, and, as always in moments of temp-
tation, he repeated the words: "And lead us not into
temptation"; and, with his head and eyes lowered, he
moved by the ambo, and, stepping around the canons
in surphces who at that moment were passing the
iconostasis, he went through the north doors. On en-
tering the sanctuary he bowed before the icon, cross-
ing himself and bending deeply from the waist, as
was the practice. Then he raised his head and, with-
out turning directly, glanced at the Abbot, whose
form he saw out of the corner of his eye next to
another form that glittered with something.
The Abbot was standing by the wall in his vest-
ments. He had freed his small puffy hands from under
the chasuble that was draped over his fat body and
belly, and, fingering the piping on his chasuble, he
was saying something with a smile to a military man
in the uniform of a general of the Imperial suite,
with monograms and shoulder-knots which Father
Sergius immediately recognized with his practiced
military eye. This General was the former commander
of their regiment. Now he obviously occupied an im-

* Actually, klobuk: a cylindrical hat worn by Russian monks,

which widens toward the top and is draped on three sides by
a veil (Trans.).
6 "Liza, look to the right, it's he."
6 "Where? Where? Oh, he's not so terribly handsome."
56

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 Father Sergius / 57

portant position, and Father Sergius noticed at once

that the Abbot was aware of this and was pleased
by it, and that was why and bald
his red, fat face
pate were beaming so. Father Sergius and
felt oflFended
vexed, and this feeling grew even stronger when he
heard from the Abbot that he had been summoned
for no other reason than to satisfy the general's curi-
osity to see his former colleague, as he put it.
"I'm very glad to see you in an angelic guise,"
said the General, extending his hand. "I hope you
haven't forgotten your old comrade."
All this— the Abbot's face, red and smiling amidst
the gray hair, expressing approval, so it seemed, of
what the General was saying; the General carefully
groomed face with its complacent smile; the smell
of wine from the General's mouth and of cigars from
his sidewhiskers— all this incensed Father Sergius. He
bowed once again to the Abbot and said:
"Your Reverence was pleased to send for me?"
And he stopped, the whole expression of his face and
posture asking: "What for?"
The Abbott said: "Yes, to meet the General."

"Your Reverence, I withdrew from the world to

escape temptations," he said with twitching lips, turn-
ing pale. "Why then are you exposing me to them
here? During prayers and in God's temple?"

"Go, go," the Abbot said, flushing with anger and

frowning.
The following day Father Sergius asked forgive-
ness of theAbbot and the brethren for his pride; but
at the same time, after a night spent in prayer, he
decided that he must leave this monastery, and he
wrote a letter about it to his Elder, begging his per-
mission to return to the Elder's monastery. He wrote
58

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 Father Sergius / 69

that he felt his weakness and his inability to struggle

against temptations alone, without the Elder's help.
And he expressed repentance for his sin of pride.
With the next mail there came a letter from the
Elder, in which he wrote Sergius that his pride was
the cause of everything. The Elder indicated that his
outburst of anger was due to the fact that in refusing
all clerical honors he had humbled himself not for
the sake of God, but for the sake of his own pride,
saying: *'This is way I am; I have no need of
the
anything." That was why he had been unable to tol-
erate the Abbot's action. "Ihave scorned everything
for God," he had said, now I am being shown
"and
off hke a wild animal." "If you had scorned vanity
for God," the Abbot wrote, "you would have borne
it. Worldly pride is not yet extinguished in you. I
have been thinking about you, Sergius my child, and
praying, and this is what God has inspired in me
concerning you: Hve as before, and subjugate your-
self. And at just this time became known that the
it

hermit Ilarion, of holy had died in a hermitage.

life,

He had Hved there for eighteen years. The Abbot at

Tambino has inquired whether or not there is a
brother who would like to live there. And now your
letter has come. Go to the Tambino monastery, to
Father Paissy; I shall write to him, and you will ask
permission to occupy Ilarion's cell. Not that you could
ever replace Ilarion, but you need solitude in order
to humble your pride. May God bless you."

Sergius obeyed the Elder, showed his letter to the

Abbot, and, after obtaining his permission and turn-
ing his cell and all his possessions over to the mon-
astery, he left for the Tambino hermitage.
In the Tambino hennitage the Abbot, an excellent
and efficient man from a merchant family, received
Sergius simply and calmly and placed him in Ilarion's
,
60

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 Father Sergius / 61

cell, at first assigning a lay brother to him, but then,

at Sergius*s wish, leaving him alone. The cell was a
cave dug into the side of a hill. There Ilarion was
buried. In the back part Ilarion was buried, in the
front part there was a niche for sleeping, with a straw
mattress, a small table, and a shelf with icons and
books. By the outer door, which was fastened, there
was a shelf; once a day a monk brought food from
the monastery and placed it on this shelf.
And Father Sergius became a hermit.

IV

At Shrovetide during the sixth year of Father Ser-

gius's life in seclusion a merry party of rich people,
men and women from the neaarby town, got to-
gether to go troika-riding, after having pancakes and
wine. The party was made up of two lawyers, one
rich landowner, an officer, and four women. One was
the officer's wife, another the landowner's, the third
was an unmarried woman, the landowner's sister,
and the fourth was a divorcee, a beautiful, rich and
eccentric woman who used to astonish and shock the
town with her escapades.
The weather was splendid, the road was as smooth
as a floor. They drove some seven miles^ out of
town, then stopped, and a conference began as to
where they should go: back to town or further on.
**Well, where does this road lead?" asked Makov-
kina, the beautiful divorcee.
"To Tambino. It's eight miles^ from here," said
the lav^er, who was courting Makovkina.
"And after that?"
by way of the monastery."
"After that to L.,
**Where that Father Sergius lives?"

^Literally, "ten versts." One verst (versta) equals 3500 feet

(Trans.).
8
"Twelve versts" (Trans.).
62

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 Father Sergius / 63

"Kasatsky? That handsome hermit?'*

"Yes/'
**Mesdames\ GentlemenI Let's go visit Kasatsky.
We'll rest and have a snack in Tambino."
"But we'll never get home in time for bed."
"No matter, we'll spend the night at Kasatsky 's."
"All right, let's say we do: there's a guest house
at the monastery and it's very comfortable there. I

stayed there when I was defending Makhin."

"No, I'm going to spend the night at Kasatsky 's."
"Huh, even with all your omnipotence that's im-
possible."
"Impossible? I'll bet you."
*Tou're on. If you spend the night at his place, I'll

give you whatever you want."

"A discretion"^
"But the same goes for you tool"
"Well of course. Let's go."
They handed the drivers some wine. For themselves
the members of the party got out a box containing
meat patties, wine, and sweets. The ladies wrapped
themselves up in white dogskin coats. The drivers got
into an argument about which one of them was to
go in front; and one of them, a young fellow, jauntily
seated himself sideways, flourished the long handle
of his whip, gave a shout— and the bells began to
tinkle and the runners began to creak.
The sleighs quivered and swayed hardly at all, the
trace-horse trotted evenly and briskly, its tight-bound
tail above the decorated breech-band, the even road,

smooth as butter, flowed out rapidly behind, the driver

flicked the reins smartly now and then. The lawyer
and the officer, who sat opposite one another, were
chattering about something with Makovkina's neigh-

9 "Unconditionally."
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 Father Sergius / 65

bor, but Makovldna herself, wrapped up snugly in

her fur coat, was sitting motionless and thinking:
"Everything's always the same and everything's nasty:
the red sleek faces smelling of wine and tobacco, the
same old talk, same old thoughts, and everything
the
eternally revolving around this same nastiness. And
all of them are content and convinced that it must

be so, and that they can go on living this way until

they die. I can't. For me it's boring. I need some-
thing that would throw all this out of kilter and turn
it all upside down. For instance, like those people-

in Saratov, I think it was— who went out for a drive

and froze to death. I wonder what our bunch here
would do? How would they act? Pretty contempt-
ibly, no doubt. Everyone would be for himself. And
I would act contemptibly too. But at least I'm good-

looking. And they know that. And what about that

monk? Can it really be that he no longer understands
that sort of thing? It's not true. That's one thing they
do understand. Like last fall with that cadet. And
."
what a fool he was. . .

"Ivan Nikolaich!" she said.

"What is your command?"
"Tell me, how old is he?"
"Who?"
**Why, Kasatsky."
"I think he's over forty."
"And do you suppose he receives everyone?"
"Everyone, though not at all times."
"Cover my legs. Not that way. Oh, you're so clumsy!
More, more, that's it. And you needn't bother to
squeeze my legs."
And so they came to the forest where the cell was.
She got out and told them to drive on. They tried
to persuade her to change her mind, but she grew
angry and told them to be on their way. Then the
 ..
66

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 Father Sergius / 67

sleighs drove off, and she, dressed in her white dog-

skin coat, began towalk along the path. The lawyer
got out of the sleigh and stayed behind to watch.

Father Sergius was living his sixth year in seclu-

sion.He was forty-nine years old. His life was hard.
Not because of hardships of fasting and prayer— these
were not hardships—but because of an inner struggle
which he had not in the least anticipated. The sources
of struggle were two: doubt and lust. And both en-
emies always rose up together. It seemed to him
that these were two different enemies, whereas they
were one and the same. As soon as doubt was ex-
tinguished, so was lust. But he thought that these
were two different devils, and he struggled them sep-
arately.
"Oh God! My Godl" he thought. "Wherefore dost
Thou not give me faith? Lust—yes, of course. Saint
Anthony and others struggled with that, but faith—
they had that. Yet with me there are minutes, hours,
days when it does not exist. Why does the whole
world and all its fascinations exist if it is sinful and
must be renounced? Why hast Thou created this
temptation? Temptation? But is it not a temptation
that I want to abandon the joys of the world and
that I am preparing something in a place where there
is nothing, perhaps?" he said to himself, and was

horrified and filled with loathing of himself. "You

slimy, disgusting creaturel^^ And you want to become
a saintl" he started reviling himself. And he began
to pray. But no sooner had he begun praying when
he had a vivid image of himself as he had been in
the monastery: a majestic figure in tall headdress and
mantle. And he shook his head. "No, that's not it at

10 Literally: "Reptile! Reptile!" (Trans.).

».
68

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 Father Sergius / 69

all. That's a deception. I can deceive others but not

myself and not God. I am no majestic person but

only a pitiful and ridiculous one." And he drew back
the skirts of his cassock and looked at his pitiful little
legs clad in underpants. And he gave a smile.
Then he dropped the skirts of the cassock and be-
gan reading the prayers, crossing himself and bow-
ing. "Can it be that this couch will be my bier?" he
read. And he seemed to hear some devil suddenly
whisper to him: "A solitary couch is itself a bier.
FalsehoodI" And he glimpsed in his imagination the
shoulders of a widow with whom he had lived. He
shook himself and continued reading. Having read
the precepts, he took the Gospels, opened them and
came upon a place which he had often repeated and
which he knew by heart: *1 believe, Lord, help my
unbelief." He put aside all the doubts that had arisen.
Just as people try to steady an object of unstable
equilibrium, so he once again steadied his faith on
a swaying pedestal and carefully stepped away from
it so as not to jog it and knock it over. The blinders

again moved into place, and he grew calm. He re-

peated his childhood prayer: "Lord, take me, take
me," and he felt not only lighthearted, but buoyant
and elated. He crossed himself and lay down on his
meager bedding on the small narrow bench, his light
summer cassock under his head. And he fell asleep.
In his light sleep it seemed to him that he heard
sleigh bells. He did not know whether he was awake
or dreaming. But then he was aroused from sleep
by a knock. He got up, not believing his senses. But
the knock was repeated. Yes, it was a knock close
by, at his door, and there was a woman's voice.

"Oh Lord! Is what I have read in the lives of the

saints really true, that the devil takes on the form

of a woman? . . . Yes, that is the voice of a woman.
70

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 Father Sergius / 71

And such a delicate, timid, sweet voice. PthI" And

he spat to drive the devil away. "No, it's just my
imagination," he said, and went over to the corner
where a small lectern stood, and dropped to his knees
with that practiced, precise movement in which, by
itself, he found comfort and pleasure. He sank down,
his hair hanging in his face, and pressed his already
bald forehead to the damp, cold strip of drugget.
(There was a strong draft on the floor.)
He was reciting a psalm which— so old Father
Pimen had told him—helped against temptation. He
raised his light, emaciated body easily on his strong
sinewy legs and tried to go on reciting. He did not
do so, however, but instead began to strain his ears,
quite involuntarily, in order to hear. He wanted to
hear. It was completely quiet. Drops of water con-
tinued to fall from the roof into the small tub that
had been placed beneath the edge. Outside there was
a mist, a fog eating away the snow. It was quiet,
very quiet. And suddenly there was a rustling sound
at the window, and quite distinctly a voice— that same
tender, timid voice, the kind of voice that could be-
long only to an attractive woman— said:
"Let me in. In Christ's name. . .
."

And his blood seemed to rush to his heart and

stop there. He could not draw a breath. "Let God
."
arise and his foes disperse. . .

"Look, I'm not the devil," and the lips which said
this could be heard smiling, "I'm not the devil, I'm
just a sinful woman.
gone astray— not in the
I've
figurative but the literal sense (she gave a little
laugh ) I'm frozen through and I'm asking for shelter."
,

He pressed his face to the window pane. The icon

lamp reflected in it and suffused the whole pane with
its light. He
put the palms of his hands to both sides
of his face and peered out. Fog, mist, a tree, and there.
, ,,
72

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 Father Sergius / 73

to the right— she. Yes, she, a woman in a coat of

long white fur wearing a hat, with a sweet, sweet
kindly frightened face, standing there, four inches^^
from his face, leaning toward him. Their eyes met
and they recognized one another. Not thai, they had
ever seen each other before— they had never met—
but in the look they exchanged, they (and particu-
larly he) sensed that they knew and understood each
other. After this look it was impossible to doubt that
this was the devil, and not a simple, kindly, sweet,
timid woman.
"Who are you? What have you come for?" he said.
"Do open
wilfull voice.
I ve lost my way."
"
the door," she said in a petulant and
frozen through. telling you,

"But I'm a monk, a hermit."

"Come on, please open the door. Or do you want
me to freeze to death under your window while you re
saying your prayers?"
"But how did you . . .
?"

"I m not going to eat you up. For heavens sake, let
me in. I'm completely numb."
She really was beginning to feel frightened. She
said this in an almost whining voice.
He moved away from window, and glanced at
the
the icon of Christ wearing the crown of thorns. "Oh
Lord, help me, oh Lord, help me," he said, crossing
himself and bowing from the waist; and he went up
to the door and opened it into the small entryway.
In the entryway he felt for the hook and began trying
to Hft it back. From the other side he heard steps.
She was walking from the window to the door, "Oh!"
she suddenly cried. He reahzed that she had stepped
into the puddle that had collected at the threshold.

11 Literally: "two vershka." A vershok equals 14 inches

( Trans. )
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 Father Sergius / 75

His hands were trembling and he could not manage

to lift the hook, which was stretched tight by the
door.
"What are you doing, oh please, let me in. I m
soaked to the skin. frozen to death. You re think-
ing of the salvation of your soul while freezing to
death."
He pulled the door toward himself, hfted the hook
and then, miscalculating the effort needed, gave the
door such a strong shove outwards that he bumped
her.
"Oh, pardon he said, suddenly reverting com-
pletely to his once-habitual manner with ladies.

She gave a smile on hearing this "pardon me.*'

"Well, he's not all that terrible," she thought.
"It's nothing at all, nothing. You 11 forgive me," she
said, moving by him, "I would never have presumed.
But this is such a special case."
"Please comehe said, letting her pass. He was
in,"

struck by the strong odor of delicate perfume, long

unfamiliar to his smell. She went through the entry-
way into the main room. He banged the outer door
shut, without replacing the hook, went through the
entryway, and entered the main room.
"Oh Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy
on me, a sinner, oh Lord, have mercy on me, a sin-
ner," he prayed steadily, not just to himself, but out-
wardly too, involuntarily moving his lips.

"Pleasecome in," he said.

She stood in the middle of the room, water drip-
ping from her onto the floor while she scrutinized
him. Her eyes were laughing.
"Forgive me for disturbing your solitude. But you
see what a position in. This all happened because
, ,, .,,
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 Father Sergius / 77

we went out of town for a drive and I made a bet

that I could walk to town from Vorobyovy alone, but
I went and lost my way, and if I hadn't come on
your cell, well .
." she began lying. But his face
.

embarrassed Jier, so that she could not continue,

and she fell silent. She had expected him to be quite
different from the way he was. He was not so hand-
some as she had imagined him, but he was beautiful
in her eyes. She was struck by his curly hair and
beard, streaked with gray, his straight fine nose and
his eyes which glowed like coals when he looked
ahead.
He saw that she was lying.
"Yes, all right," he said, glancing at her and again
lowering his eyes. "I'll go in here, and you make your-
self comfortable.'*

And, taking down the lamp, he lit a candle. Mak-

ing a low bow to her, he went into the little room
behind the partition, and she heard him beginning
to move something in there. "He must be barricading
himself off from me with something," she thought with
a smile, and throwing off the white dogskin cloak,
she began to remove her fur hat, which had become
entangled in her hair, and the knitted kerchief under
it. She had not gotten wet at all while she was stand-

ing beneath the window; she mentioned it only as

a pretext to get him to let her in. But at the door she
had indeed stepped into the puddle, and her left
leg was wet up to the calf, and her shoe and boot
were full of water. She sat down on his cot—it was
just a board, although covered with a thin rug— and
began to remove her shoes. This little cell seemed
charming to her. The small narrow room, perhaps
seven feet wide and nine long,^^ was as clean as a

12 Literally: "three arshins wide and four long." An arshin

equals 28 inches (Trans.).
78

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 Father Sergius / 79

piece of glass. In the room there was only the cot

on which she was and above it a small shelf
sitting,

with books. In the corner stood a small lectern. By

the door there were nails, a fur coat, and a cassock.
Above the lectern was an icon of Christ wearing
the crown of thorns, and a small icon lamp. There
was a strange smell of oil, sweat, and earth. Every-
thing pleased her. Even that smell.
Her wet feet, one of them especially, made her
uneasy, and she hastily began to remove her shoes,
continuing to smile and feeling happy not so much
because she had achieved her object as much as be-
cause she saw she had disconcerted him, this charm-
ing wonderful, strange, attractive man. "So he didn't
answer—well, what of it," she said to herself.

"Father Sergius! Father Sergius! Is that what you're

called?"
"What do you want?" a quiet voice replied.
do hope you will forgive me for disturbing your
"I
solitude. But really, I couldn't do anything else. I
would simply have gotten sick. And even now I'm
not so sure. I'm all wet and my feet are like ice."
"Forgive me," the quiet voice replied, "I can t be
of service in any way at all."
"I wouldn't have troubled you for anything in the
world. I'd like to stay just until dawn."
He did not answer. And she heard him whispering
something. Evidently he was praying.
"You're sure you won't come in here now?" she
asked with a smile. "Because I have to get undressed
to dry myself out."

He did not answer, but continued reciting prayers

in an even voice on the other side of the wall.
*Tes, there's a real person," she thought, trying
with difficulty to pull off her squelchy boot. She gave
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 Father Sergius / 81

it a tug but could not, and this struck her as amusing.

And she laughed, barely audibly, but, aware that he
was Hstening to her laughter and that this laughter
would act on him in just the way she wanted it to,
she began to laugh more loudly, and this laughter-
merry, natural, kind— did indeed act on him and in
just the way she wanted it to.

"Yes, one could fall in love with such a person.

Those eyes. And and— no matter
that simple, noble,
how many mumbles— that passionate face!"
prayers he
she thought. "You can't deceive us women. The mo-
ment he pressed his face to the window pane and
caught sight of me, he understood, he knew. Some-
thing flashed in his eyes and was stamped there. He
fell in love with me and began to desire me. Yes,
desire," she said, finally getting the boot and the
shoe off, and then starting to work on her stockings.
To remove them, these long stockings with garters,
she had to raise her skirts. She felt ashamed and said:
"Don't come in."

But there was no reply from behind the wall. The

steady murmuring continued, and there were more
sounds of movement. "He must be bowing down to
the ground," she thought. "But he can't bow his way
out of it," she said. "He's thinking about me. In just
the same way that I'm thinking about him. He's
thinking about these legs with the same feehng I

have about him," she said, stripping off the wet stock-
ings, stepping barefoot over the cot and then sitting
with her feet tucked under her. She sat for a while
in this position, grasping her knees with her hands
and staring ahead pensively. "Oh, this wilderness,
this silence. And nobody would ever find out. . .
."

She rose, carried her stockings over to the stove

and hung them on the damper. The damper was of
some pecuHar kind. She gave it a twist and then re-
82

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 Father Sergius / 83

turned to the cot, stepping lightly in her bare feet,

and again sat on it with her feet under her. Behind
the wall it had become perfectly quiet. She looked
watch that hung around her neck. It was
at the tin)-
two "Our crowd should be back here around
o'clock.
three." No more than an hour remained.
"What, am I going to sit here alone like this all
that time? What nonsense! I won't. I'm going to call
him right now."
"Father Sergius I Father Sergius! Sergei DmitrichI
Prince Kasatsky!"
Behind the door all was quiet.
"Listen, this is cruel, I wouldn't call you if I didn't
need to. I'm sick. I don't know what's the matter
with me," she began to speak in a voice full of suf-
fering."Oh, oh," she started to groan, falling on the
cot. And strange to say, she actually did feel that her
strength was ebbing away, ebbing away entirely, that
everything was aching and that she was trembling
with chills and fever.

"Listen, help me. I don't know what's wrong with

me. Oh, oh!" She unfastened her dress, opened it at
the bosom and threw back her arms which were
bare to the elbow. "Oh, oh!"
All this time he was standing in his little room and
praying. Since he had recited all the evening prayers
he now stood without moving, his eyes fixed on the
tip of his nose, saying a mental prayer, repeating all
in one breath: "Oh Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God,
have mercy on me."
But he heard everything. He heard how she rustled
the silk fabric as she was taking off her dress, how
she stepped in her bare feet over the floor; he heard
how she rubbed her feet with her hand. He felt
that he was weak and that he could perish at any
moment and therefore he prayed steadily. He was
 ,., , , -
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 Father Sergius / 85

feeling something similar to what must have been

felt by who had to go on
that hero in the fairy tale
and on without looking around. So it was that Sergius
too heard and sensed that danger and ruin were
present, above him, around him, and that he could
save himself only by not turning for a single moment
to look at it. But suddenly he was seized by the de-
sire to take a look. At that same instant she said:

"Listen, this is inhuman. I might die."

**Yes, I shall go, but like that Father who laid one
hand on the harlot and placed the other in a brazier.
But there any brazier here." He looked around.
isn't

The lamp. He extended his fingers over the flame and

gave a frown, preparing himseK to endure it, and
for rather a long time it seemed to him that he felt
nothing, but suddenly— he had not yet decided
whether it was painful and to what extent, when he
grimaced and snatched his hand away, waving it in
the air. "No, I can't."

"For God's sake! Ah, come to me! dying, oh!"

"Shall I really perish, then? No, I shall not."

"11 come to you in just a moment," he said, and,
opening his door, he walked past without looking
at her, through the door into the entryway where he
chopped his firewood, felt around for the block on
which he chopped the wood, and the axe, which was
propped against the wall.

"Just a moment," he said, and, taking the axe in

his right hand, he placed the index finger of his left
hand on the block, swung the axe and struck his
finger just below the second joint. The finger flew
off more easily than wood of the same thickness,
flipped over and smacked against the edge of the
block and then onto the floor.
86 /

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 Father Sergius / 87

He heard this sound before he felt the pain. But

before he had time to feel surprised at the lack of
pain, he suddenly felt a burning pain and the warmth
of the blood that came pouring out. He quickly
wrapped up the stump in the skirts of his cassock,
and pressing it against his hip, went back through
the door, stopped opposite the woman, with his eyes
lowered, and asked quietly:
"What do you want?"
She looked at his face, which had turned pale,
its left cheek trembling, and suddenly she felt
ashamed. She jumped up, snatched the fur coat, threw
it over her, and wrapped herself up in it.

*Tes, I was in pain ... I have caught cold ... I

."
. . . Father Sergius . . . I. . .

He raised his eyes, shining with a quiet, joyous

light, toher face and said:
"Dear sister, why did you wish to destroy your
immortal soul? Temptations must enter the world, but
woe to him through whom temptation enters . . .

Pray that God may forgive us."

She listened and looked at him. Suddenly she heard
drops of liquid falling. She looked and saw blood
flowing from his hand over his cassock.

"What have you done to your hand?" She remem-

bered the sound she had heard, and seizing the icon
lamp, she ran into the entryway, and on the floor
she saw the bloody finger. She returned even paler
than he, and tried to say something to him; but he
quietly went back into the tiny room and fastened
the door behind him.
"Forgive me," she said. "How can I redeem my sin?"

Go away.
"Let me bandage your wound."
88 /

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 Father Sergius / 89

"Go away from here."

She dressed quietly and hastily. And when she was
ready she sat in her fur coat, waiting. From the yard
sleigh bells were heard.
"Father Sergius. Forgive me."
"Go away, God will forgive."
"Father Sergius. I will change my life. Don't aban-
don me."
"Go away."
"Forgive me and bless me."
"In the name of the Fatherand of the Son and of
the Holy Spirit," was heard from behind the parti-
tion."Go away."
She began to sob and went out of the cell. The
lawyer came to meet her.
"All right, I've lost, it can't be helped. Where will
you sit?"
"It doesn't matter."

She took her seat and all the way home she did
not say one word.

A year later she entered a convent as a novice and

lived an austere life there under the direction of the
hermit Arsenius, who wrote her letters from time to
time.

VI
Father Sergius lived in seclusion for another seven
years. At first Father Sergius accepted much of what
people brought him: tea, and sugar, and white bread,
and milk, and clothing, and firewood. But as more
and more time went on, he organized his life with
increasing austerity, refusing everything that was not
absolutely necessary,and finally he reached the point
where he no longer accepted anything except black
bread once a week. Everything else that was brought
to him he distributed to the poor who visited him.
90

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 Father Sergius / 91

Father Sergius spent all his time in his cell at

prayer or in conversation with his visitors, who were
becoming more and more numerous. Father Sergius
left his cell only to go to church about three times
a year, and to fetch water and firewood, when there
was need of those things.
After five years of this kind of
life there occurred

the incident with Makovkina, which quickly became

known everywhere—her nocturnal visit, the change
that took place in her subsequently, and her entry
into the convent. From that time on Father Sergius's
fame began to increase. More and more visitors be-
gan arriving, monks settled near his cell, a church
and a guest house were built. The talk about Father
Sergius spread further and further, exaggerating his
feats in the process, as is always the case. People
began to flock to him from afar and to bring the sick
to him, asserting that he had the power of heahng
them.
The heahng took place in the eighth year of
first

his Hfe in seclusion. This was the healing of a four-

teen-year-old boy, whose mother had brought him
to Father Sergius, insisting that he place his hand on
him. It had never even entered Father Sergius's mind
that he had the power of healing the sick. He would
have regarded such a thought as a great sin of pride;
but the mother who had brought the boy kept up
her entreaties relentlessly, prostrating herself at his
feet, saying:why was it that he who healed others
did not want to help her son; she was asking him in
Christ's name. To Father Sergius's insistence that only
God was asking him only to
heals she said that she
lay on hand and say a prayer. Father Sergius
his
refused and went back into his cell. But the next
day (this was in autumn, and the nights were al-
ready cold), on going out of his cell for water, he
,, ,,
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 Father Sergius / 93

again saw this same mother with her son, a pale,

emaciated fourteen-year-old boy, and heard the same
entreaties. Father Sergius recalled the parable of the
unjust judge, and, though before this he had had
no doubts that he ought to refuse, he now began to
feel doubt, and once he had felt doubt, he began
to pray, and he prayed until a decision had formed
itself in his mind. His decision was that he ought to

accede to the woman's request, that her faith could

save her son, but that he. Father Sergius, was in
this matter no more than an insignificant instrument
chosen by God.
And, going out to the mother. Father Sergius did
what she wished: he placed his hand on the boy's
head and began to pray.
The mother departed with her son, and in a month
the boy had recovered his health completely, and
talk about the holy healing power of the Elder
Sergius, as he was now called, spread throughout
the district. From that time on a week did not go
by that sick people did not come to Sergius, walking
or riding. And, since he did not refuse some, he
could not refuse others either, and he laid his hand
on many and prayed, and many were healed, and
Father Sergius's fame spread further and further.
In this way nine years passed in the monastery
and thirteen in seclusion. Father Sergius had the ap-
pearance of an Elder: his beard was long and gray,
but the hair on his head, though sparse, was still
black and curly.

VII
For several weeks now Father Sergius had been
living with one unrelenting thought: had he done the
right thing in submitting to that position in which
he had not so much placed himself but had been
placed by the Archimandrite and the Abbott? This
94

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 Father Sergius / 95

began after the visit of the fourteen-year-old boy

who regained his health. From that time on, with
every passing month, week, day. Father Sergius felt
his inner life crumbling away and being replaced by
his outer life. It was as if he were being turned in-
side out.
Sergius now saw that he was a means of attracting
visitors and donors to the monastery and that the
monastery authorities therefore were arranging things
in such a way that he might be as useful as possible.
For instance, he was no longer given the opportunity
to do any work at all. He was supplied with every-
thing he might need, and they requested of him only
that he should not refuse his blessing to those visitors
who came to see him. For his convenience they ap-
pointed days on which he would receive. They es-
tablished a reception room for men and an area which
was railed off so that the women visitors who rushed
up to him would not knock him off his feet— a place
where he could bless those who came. If they said
that he was needed by the people, that, fulfilling
Christ's law of love, he could not refuse people's
demands to see him, that withdrawal from these
people would be a cruelty, he could not help but
agree; but the more he yielded to this kind of Hfe, the
more he felt that what was internal was becoming
external, that the source of living water within him
was drying up, that what he was doing he was doing
more and more for people and not for God.

Whether he was preaching to people, or simply

blessing them, or praying for the ailing, or giv-
ing people advice about the direction of their
lives, or lending ear to expressions of gratitude

from people he had helped either by healing, as

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 Father Sergius / 97

they told him, or by precepts, he could not fail to

rejoice over this, he could not be concerned
fail to
about the results of his activity, his influence on
people. He thought of himself as a burning lamp, and
the more he came to feel that, the more he felt a
weakening, a dimming of the divine light of truth
that burned within him. "In how far is what I am
doing for God and in how far is it for people?" That
was the question constantly tormenting him, which
he was not so much unable to answer as unwilling
to face. He felt in the depths of his soul that the
devil had supplanted all his activity for God with
activity for people. He felt this because, just as it

had formerly been hard for him

be torn from his
to
solitude, so now his soUtude in itself was hard for
him. He felt oppressed by his visitors, he grew weary
from them, but in the depths of his soul he was glad
of their presence, glad of the eulogies they showered
on him.
There was even a time when he decided to go
away, to hide himself. He had even carefully con-
sidered how he would do this. He prepared a peasant
shirt, trousers, caftan, and cap for himself. He ex-

plained that he needed all this to give to supplicants.

And he kept this garb in his cell, planning how he
would put it on, cut his hair, and go away. At first
he would go away on the train, travel two hundred
miles,i3 gQf- qQ^ ^j^^ begin to walk from village to
village. He questioned an old man who had been a
soldier about the way he did his tramping, about
the way people gave alms and shelter. The soldier
told him how and where the best alms and shelter
were given, and this was exactly the way Father
Sergius wanted to do it. Once he even dressed him-
self at night and was on the point of going, but he

12 Literally; "three hundred versts" (Trans.).

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 Father Sergius / 99

could not decide which was best: to remain or to

flee.At first he was in great indecision, but then his
indecision passed, he yielded to habit and submitted
to the devil, and the peasant clothing only served
to remind him of his thoughts and feehngs.
With every passing day more and more people
came to him and less and less time remained for the
renewal of spiritual strength and for prayer. Some-
times, in brighter moments, he reflected that he had
become hke a place where there had once been a
spring. "There used to be a feeble spring of hving
water that quietly flowed from me, and through me.
That was genuine life, when *she' tried to tempt me
(he always recalled that night with her— now Mother
Agnes— with a feeling of rapture). She tasted of that
pure water. But since then the water barely has had
time to collect again before thirsty people have come,
crowding together and pushing one another aside.
And they have trampled everything, and nothing is
left but mud.'* So he thought in his rare lucid mo-
ments; but his usual state of mind was weariness and
an affecting self-pity for this weariness.

It was spring, the eve of the mid-Pentecostal feast.

Father Sergius was officiating at Vespers in his little

church in the cave. As many people as could be ac-
commodated—about twenty— were present. They were
all gentlefolk and merchants— rich people. Father
Sergius admitted anyone, but a selection was made
by the monk who had been assigned to look after
him, and by the monk on duty, who was sent from
the monastery to his hermitage every day. A crowd
of people, some eighty pilgrims, most of them peasant
women, had gathered outside, awaiting Father
Sergius's appearance and his blessing. Father Sergius
meanwhile continued the service inside, and when he
100 /

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 Father Sergius / 101

went back, singing the Gloria, to the grave of his

predecessor in the rear cave, he staggered and would
have fallen if he had not been caught by the merchant
standing behind him and the monk, acting as deacon,
who was standing behind the merchant.
"What's the matter with you? Father dear! Father
Sergius! Dear man! Oh Lord!" began the voices of
the women. "You're as white as a sheet!"
But Father Sergius recovered at once, and though
very pale, he waved the merchant and the deacon
aside and continued to chant. Father Serapion, the
deacon, the acolytes, and Sofia Ivanovna, a lady who
always lived near the hermitage and looked after
Father Sergius's needs, began begging him to end
the service.
"It's nothing, nothing at all," Father Sergius said,
smiling barely perceptibly beneath his moustaches,
"don't break off the service."
"Yes, that is the way he thought.
saints act,"
"A Saint! An angel of God!" he heard behind him
at the same moment the voice of Sofia Ivanovna and
also of the merchant who had helped support him.
He gave no heed to the attempts to dissuade him,
and continued the service. Again crowding together,
everyone moved through the narrow corridors back
into the Httle church, and there Father Sergius com-
pleted the Vesper service, although he did shorten
it somewhat.

Immediately after the service Jb'ather Sergius blessed

the people who were there and went out to a small
bench beneath the elm tree at the entrance to the
caves. He wanted to rest a bit and have a breath of
fresh air; he felt that he needed it very much; but
no sooner had he emerged when the crowd of people
rushed up to him asking his blessing and beseeching
advice and help. Among them were pilgrim women,
,
102

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 Father Sergius / 103

who were constantly wandering from one holy place

to another, from Elder to Elder, always dissolving in
tears before every holy object and every Elder. Father
Sergius knew common, extremely unreligious,
this
cold, conventional type. Here too were pilgrims most-
lyfrom the ranks of retired soldiers, old men who
had long ago broken completely away from a settled
existence, now living in utter poverty and for the
most part addicted to the bottle, tramping from mon-
astery to monastery merely to be fed. Here too were
drab peasant men and women with their egotistic
demands for healing or for the resolution of their
doubts about the most practical matters: marrying
oflF a daughter, renting a small shop, purchasing land,

or atoning for the sin of a smothered or an illegiti-

mate child. All this had long been familiar and un-
interesting to Father Sergius. He knew that he would
learn nothing new from these faces, that these faces
would arouse no him at all, but
religious feeling in
he liked them as a crowd to which he, his
to see
blessing and his word were necessary and precious,
and therefore, while he felt oppressed by this crowd,
it was at the same time a source of pleasure to him.

Father Serapion was on the point of sending them

away, saying that Father Sergius was tired, but
Father Sergius, recalling just at that moment the
words of the Gospel "Suffer them [the little chil-
dren] to come unto me," and thrilling with a sudden
glow of benevolence toward himself at the recollec-
tion, said that they were to be admitted.

He went up to the railing around which they

rose,
had crowded, and began to bless them and reply to
their questions in a voice whose very feebleness pro-
duced a throb of self-pity in him. Yet despite his
desire to do so, he was not able to receive them all:

again everything went dark before his eyes, he stag-

..
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 Father Sergius / 105

gered and grasped the railing. Again he felt the

blood rush to his head, and he first grew pale and
then suddenly flushed.
"Yes, it is evident that I must break off until to-
morrow. I cannot continue just now," he said, and,

giving a general benediction to them all, he began

to walk toward the bench. The merchant again sup-
ported him, led him by the arm, and sat him down.
"Father!" voices were heard in the crowd. "Father
Father dear! Don't abandon us. Without you we are
lost."

The merchant, having seated Father Sergius on

the bench beneath the elm, took on himself the func-
tions of a policeman and resolutely began chasing the
people away. True, he spoke softly, so that Father
Sergius could not hear him, but he nonetheless spoke
decisively and angrily:
"Beat it, clear out! He's given his blessing, what
more do you want? Get going. Or else I swear I'll

beat the living daylights out of you. Come on, come

on! You, lady, you with the black leg wrappings,
move on, move on! Where do you think you're shov-
ing to? It's all over, you've been told. What happens
tomorrow God will decide, but for now he's all
through."
"Father dear, oh, just to take a peek at his won-
derful face!" said the old woman.
peek you! Where are you shoving to?"
"I'll

Father Sergius noticed that the merchant seemed

to be acting very harshly, and in a feeble voice he
told the lay brother not to let him turn the people
away. Father Sergius knew that he would chase them
away in any case, and he did want very much to
be left alone and to rest a bit, but he sent the lay
brother to say this in order to create an impression.
**A11 right, all right, I'm not chasing them away,
106

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 Father Sergius / 107

I'm just trying to make them feel ashamed," the

merchant repUed. "Why, they're perfectly glad to
torment a person to death. Why, they haven't any
pity at all, they think only of themselves. No, you've
been told. Go on. Tomorrow."
And the merchant chased them all away.
The merchant put his whole heart into it because
he liked order, he liked chasing people away and
lording it over them, and most of all, because he
needed Father Sergius. He was a widower, and he
had an only daughter, a sick girl who had never mar-
ried, and he had brought her a distance of nearly a
thousand miles^* to Father Sergius so that he might
cure her. During the two years of her illness he had
taken his daughter to many different places for treat-
ment. First of all to the clinic in a provincial uni-
versity town: they could not help her. Then he took
her to a peasant in Samara Province: her condition
improved very slightly. Then he took her to a Moscow
doctor and paid out a great deal of money, but he
was of no help at all. Then he had been told that
Father Sergius was able to cure people, and so he
had brought her here. And so when the merchant
had chased all the people away, he approached Father
Sergius, and suddenly falling on his knees, without
any preliminaries, he said in a loud voice:
"Oh holy Father, bless thou my ailing offspring,
that she may be cured of the pain of her malady. I
make bold to fall at thy holy feet." And he placed
one hand upon the other, palms up. All this he did
and said in such a way as if he were doing some-
thing that was clearly and firmly fixed by law and
custom, as if it were precisely in this way and no
other that one must and should petition for the heal-
ing of one's daughter. He did this with such assurance

14 Literally: "fourteen hundred versts" (Trans.).

108

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 Father Sergius / 109

that it seemed even to Father Sergius that all this

should be said and done precisely in this way. Never-
theless he bade him to get up and tell him what the
trouble was. The merchant told how his daughter,
an unmarried girl of twenty-two, had taken sick two
years previously, after the sudden death of her mother.
She had given a moan, as he put it, and ever since
then had just not been the same. And so he had
brought her a distance of nearly a thousand miles,
and now she was waiting in the guest house until
Father Sergius should command her to be brought
to him. She did not go out during the day; she was
afraid of the light; she could go out only after sunset.
"What, is she very weak?" Father Sergius said.

"Oh, no, she has no particular weakness, and she's

pretty husky, she's just neuras-teth-nic, as the doc-
tor was saying. If Father Sergius would order her
to be brought right now, I'd fly like the wind. Oh
holy Father, revive the heart of a parent, restore his
blood line, save with your prayers his ailing off-

spring."
And the merchant again plumped down on his
knees, and resting the side of his head on his two
upturned palms, he remained absolutely still. Father
Sergius again bade him get up, and, with a thought
of how burdensome his duties were, and how, despite
that, he submissively bore them, he gave a heavy
sigh, and after a few seconds of silence said:

"All right, bring her in the evening. I shall pray

for her, but now I am tired." And he closed his eyes.
"I will send for her then."
The merchant went off, stepping over the sand on
tiptoe, from which his boots only creaked the louder,
and Father Sergius was left alone.

Father Sergius's whole life was full of church serv-

,
110

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 Father Sergius / 111

ices and visitors, but this had been an especially dif-

ficult day. In the morning an important dignitary had
arrived and had had a long conversation with him.
After him there came a lady with her son. This son
was a young professor, a non-believer, brought here
by his mother, an ardent believer devoted to Father
Sergius, who had prevailed on Father Sergius to have
a talk with him. The conversation was very unpleas-
ant. It was evident that the young man did not wish
to enter into a discussion with a monk, and agreed
with him on everything, as if he were a feeble-minded
person, but Father Sergius saw that the young man
did not believe and that nevertheless he felt happy,
untroubled and serene. Father Sergius now recalled
this conversation with displeasure.
"Have a bite to eat. Father," said the lay brother.
"All right, bring me something."
The lay brother went over to a small cell that
had been built ten steps from the entrance to the
caves, and Father Sergius was left alone.
The time had long since passed when Father
Sergius lived alone and did everything for himself
and sustained himself only on the Communion wafer
and on bread. He had long ago been persuaded that
he had no right to neglect his health, and he was
provided with lenten but nourishing dishes. He took
them sparingly, yet much more than before, and he
often ate with particular pleasure, not, as before, with
disgust and a consciousness of sin. He took a bit of
gruel, drank a cup of tea, and ate half a white loaf.

The lay brother went off and he was left alone on

the bench beneath the elm tree.
It was a splendid May evening, the birches, aspens,
and oaks had just burst into leaf.
elms, wild cherries
The wild cherry bushes behind the elm were in full
112

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 Father Sergius / 113

bloom and had not yet begun to shed. Nightingales,

one very close by and two or three others in the
bushes below by the river, were chirping and then
bursting into full song. From the river the singing
of laborers, returning undoubtedly from work, could
be heard distantly. The sun had dropped behind the
forest and its refracted rays splashed through the
greenery. All the nearer side was light green; the
other side, with the elm in it, was dark. Beetles flew,
plopped against the foliage, and fell.
After supper Father Sergius began saying a mental
prayer: "Oh Lord, Jesus Christ, son of God, have
mercy on us"; and then he began to read a psalm,
and suddenly, in the middle of the psalm, coming
from heaven knows where, a sparrow flew from the
bush onto the ground, and hopped up to him, chirp-
ing as it came, but then took fright at something and
flew off. He was reciting a prayer in which he was
speaking of his renunciation of the world, and he
hastened to finish reciting it as quickly as he could
so that he might send for the merchant with the sick
daughter: she interested him. She interested him be-
cause this was a diversion, a new face, because both
her father and she regarded him as a holy man, a
man whose prayers were always answered. He tried
to deny this, but in the depths of his soul he too con-
sidered himself to be such a person.
He amazement at how it had happened
often felt
that he, Stepan Kasatsky, had come to be such an
extraordinary holy man, a veritable miracle-worker,
but there was not the slightest doubt that this was
what he was. He could not fail to believe the miracles
he himself had seen, beginning with the feeble sickly
boy right up to the most recent instance, an old wo-
man who had regained her sight after his prayer.
No matter how strange this seemed, it was none-
114 /

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 Father Sergius / ll5

theless so. And therefore the merchant's daughter in-

terestedhim because she was a new face, because
she had faith in him, and also because there would
be with her the opportunity of again confirming his
power of heahng and his reputation. "They come from
hundreds of miles away,^^ the newspapers write about
it, the Emperor knows, people in Europe know, in

unbelieving Europe," he thought. And suddenly he

felt very much ashamed of his vainglory, and he be-
gan again to pray to God. "Oh Lord, Heavenly King,
Comforter, Soul of Truth, come and enter into us
and cleanse us of all befoulment, and save, oh Blessed
One, our souls. Cleanse me from the befoulment of
men's praise, which agitates my soul," he repeated,
and he recalled how often he had prayed for this
and how vain had been his prayers in this regard
so far: his prayers worked miracles for others, but
for himself he was unable to win from God freedom
from this petty passion.
He recalled his prayers in the early period of his
seclusion, when he used to pray that purity, humility
and love might be granted him. He recalled how it
had seemed to him then that God had heeded his
prayers; he had remained pure and had lopped off
his finger. And he raised the stump of his finger,
which was gathered in wrinkles, and kissed it. It
seemed to him that he had also been humble then,
when he appeared loathsome to himself because of his
sinfulness. And, when he recalled the rush of affec-
tion with which he had then greeted an old man, a
drunken soldier who had come to him asking for
money, and her, it seemed to him that he had also
had love within him then. But now? And he asked
himself: did he love anyone, did he love Sofia Iva-
novna. Father Serapion, did he experience any feel-

15 Literally: "from a thousand versts away" (Trans.).

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 Father Sergius / 117

ing of love toward thise people who had just been

with him, toward that learned young man with whom
he had conversed so didactically, concerned onlv
with shoN^ing off his own intelligence and the fact
that he had not fallen behind the times in learning?
Love from them was pleasing and necessan.- to him,
but toward them he did not feel anv lo\e. There was
no love in him now, nor was there anv humility*, nor
was there puriiy.
He had been pleased to learn that the merchant's
daughter was tsvent\--t\\-o. and he wondered whether
she was good-looking or not. And in asking about
her weakness he wanted to know whether she
had feminine charms or not.
"Have I really fallen so low?'' he thought. "Oh
Lord, help me, restore me. Lord and God of mine."
And he folded his hands and be^an to prav. The
nightingales poured out their son^. A beetle flew
against him and be^an to crawl over the back of
his neck. He brushed it off. "But does God reallv
exist? What if I am knocking at the door of a house
which is locked from the outeide. The lock is
. . .

on the door and I would be able to see it. This lock

is the nightingales, the beetles, nature. The voung

man was right, perhaps." .And he bes^an to prav loud-

ly, and he prayed for a lonc^ time, until these thoughts

had vanished and he felt himself acjain serene and

confident. He rangr his little bell and told the lav
brother who appeared to have that merchant and his
daughter come now.
The merchant came leading his daughter by the
arm, ushered her into the ceU, and immediately left.
The daughter was fair-haired, extraordinarilv white,
pale, plump, an extraordinarily meek girl, with a
frightened cliild's face and a \en.* well-de\eloped
womanlv fi^nre. Father Serdus remained on the
118 /

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 Father Sergius / 119

bench at the entrance. When the girl was passing

by and then stopped beside him and he blessed her,
he was aghast at himself for the way he examined
her body. She went on, and he felt as if he had been
stung. By her face he saw at once that she was
sensual and weak-minded. He rose and went into the
cell. She was sitting on a low stool waiting for him.

When he entered she stood up.

"I want to go back to Daddy," she said.
"Don't be afraid," he said. "What is it that hurts

"Everything hurts me," she said, and suddenly

her face ht up with a smile.
**You will be well," he said. "Pray."

"What's the use of praying. I have been praying,

nothing helps." And she continued to smile. "Why
don't you say a prayer and put your hands on me?
I saw you in a dream."
"How did you see me?"
"I saw you putting your hand on my chest
this." She took his hand and pressed it to her breast.

"Right here."
He gave her his right hand.
"What's your name?" he asked, trembling all over
and feehng that he was vanquished, that lust had
already gone beyond control.
And what about it?"
"Maria.
She took his hand and kissed it, and then put one
arm around his waist and began pressing him against
herself.
"What are you doing?" he said. "Maria. You are a
devil."
"Oh, well, what's the difference. . .
."

And embracing him, she sat down on the bed with

him.
 «
120

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 Father Sergius / 121

At dawn he went out onto the stoop.

"Can all this really have happened? Her father
will come. She will tell. She's a devil. Oh, what am
I to do? Here it is, here's the axe I cut off my finger

with." He snatched up the axe and went into the cell.

The lay brother met him.
"Would you like some firewood cut? Here, let me
have the axe."
He handed the axe over. He went into the cell.
She was lying asleep. He looked at her with horror.
He went on into the cell, took down the peasant
clothing, put it on, took a pair of scissors, cut off his
hair, and went along the path down the hill toward
the river, where he had not been for four years.
road ran along the river. He started walking
A
along it and kept walking until midday. At midday
he went into a field of rye and lay down. Toward
evening he came to a village on the river. He went
not into the village but to the steep high river bank.
It early morning, about half an hour before
was
sunrise.Everything was gray and gloomy, and a cold
pre-dawn wind was blowing from the west. ''Yes,
I've got to end it. There is no God. How am I to
put an end to it? Jump into the river? I know how to
swim. You won't drown that way. Hang myself? Yes,
my sash, on a branch." This seemed so possible and
so imminent that he was horrified. He wanted to say
a prayer, as is usual in moments of despair. But
there was no one to pray to. God did not exist. He
was lying with his chin resting on his hand. And sud-
denly he felt such a need for sleep that he could
no longer support his head with his hand, and he
stretched out his arm, laid his head on it, and imme-
diately fell asleep. But this sleep lasted only a mo-
ment: he immediately awoke and began half -dream-
ing, half-reminiscing.
122

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 Father Sergrius / 123

And he saw himself ahnost as a child in his mother's

house in the country. And a carriage drove up to theii
house, and out of the carriage stepped uncle Nicholas
Sergeevich, with an enormous black beard shaped
like a spade, and with him a very thin Httle girl,
Pashenka, with big gentle eyes and a pitiful timid
face. And this Pashenka was brought into their boys'
society. And they had to play with her, but it was

boring. She was stupid. It ended by their making

fun of her. They forced her to demonstrate how she
could swim. She lay down on the floor and went
through the motions. And everyone guffawed and
made an utter fool of her. And she saw this and
blushed in red patches and became pitiable, so piti-
able that it was shameful, and it was impossible ever
to forget this crooked, kindly, submissive smile of
hers. And Sergius remembered when he had seen her
after this. He had seen her long afterward, just be-
forehe became a monk. She was married to some
landowner who had squandered all her fortune and
who beat her. She had two children, a son and a
daughter. The son died while still a boy.

Sergius remembered having seen her in a very

wretched Then he had seen her in the mon-
state.
astery when she was a widow. She was the same—
not so much stupid as drab, insignificant, and piti-
able. She had come with her daughter and the
daughter's fiance. And they were already poor. Then
he had heard that she was living somewhere in a
district town and that she was very poor. "And why am
I thinking about her?" he kept asking himself. But

he could not stop thinking about her. "Where is she?

How is she getting along? Is she still just as miser-

able as she was when she was demonstrating how to

swim on the floor? But why should I be thinking
about her? What am I doing? I must end it."
124

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 Father Sergius / 125

And again he became frightened, and again, in

order to escape this thought, he began thinking about
Pashenka.
He lay this way for a long time, thinking now about
his necessary death, now about Pashenka. Pashenka
seemed to him a meansof salvation. Finally he fell
asleep. And he saw an angel who came
in his sleep
to him and said: "Go to Pashenka and learn from
her what you must do, in what your sin lies, and in
what your salvation lies."
He awoke, and concluding that this had been a
vision from God, he rejoiced and resolved to do
what had been told him in the vision. He knew
the town where she was living— it was some two
hundred miles away^^— and he set out for it.

mm
Pashenka had long ceased to be Pashenka. She
was now old, withered, wrinkled Praskovia Mikhailov-
na, the mother-in-law of a failure, the drunken civil
servant Mavrikiev. She lived in the same district
town where her son-in-law had had his last job, and
there she fed her family: her daughter, her ailing
and neurotic son-in-law, and her five grandchildren.
And she fed them by giving music
lessons to mer-
chants' daughters for fifty kopecks an hour. Some-
times there were four, sometimes five such hours a
day, so that about sixty roubles could be earned a
month. This was what they were living on for the
present, while waiting for a job to open up. Praskovia
Mikhailovna had sent letters to all her relatives and
acquaintances with requests for a job, among them
Sergius. But this letter had never reached him.

It was Saturday, and Praskovia Mikhailovna was

bread which
herself mixing batter for the sweet raisin

16 Literally: "three hundred versts" (Trans.),

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 Father Sergius / 127

her father's serf cook long ago used to make so well.

Praskovia MikhailoMia wanted to give her grand-
children a treat for the hohday tomorrow.
Masha, her daughter, was busy with the smallest
child; the oldest, a boy and a girl, were in school.
As for the son-in-law, he had not slept during the
night and had just fallen off. Praskovia Mikhailovna
had not been able to get to sleep for a long time
the night before, because she was tr)-ing to softer
her daughter's anger at her husband.
She saw that her son-in-law was a weak creature,
that he could not speak or Hve in any other way,
and she saw that his wife's reproaches were of no
help, and she used all her efforts to moUif)' them,
so that there would be no more reproaches or mahce.
She was almost physically unable to bear unkind re-
lationships between people. It was quite clear to her
that such relationships could not improve anything,
but only made everything worse. But she did not
even put this into thoughts, she simply suffered at
the sight of anger as she would from an unpleas-
ant smell, a harsh sound, or blows on the body.
She was showing Lukeria, with some sense of
just
satisfaction, how
to mix the leavened dough, when
Misha, the six-year-old grandson, in an apron and
with darned stockings on his crooked httle legs, ran
into the kitchen with a frightened face:
"Grandma, there's a scary old man looking for you."
Lukeria peered out the window.
**That's right, some pilgrim, ma'am."
Praskovia Mikhailovna rubbed her thin elbows one
against the other, wiped her hands on her apron,
and was about go into the main part of the house
to
for her purse to give him five kopecks when she sud-
denly remembered that there was nothing smaller
than a ten-kopeck piece, and she decided to give
, ,
128

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 Father Sergius / 129

him some bread instead, and went back to the cup-

board. But suddenly she blushed, remembering that
she had grudged the money; and telling Lukeria to
cut off a chunk of bread, she herself went to get the
ten-kopeck piece in addition. "There's your punish-
ment," she said to herself, "now give twice as much."
All apologies, she gave both the bread and the
coin to the pilgrim; and while she was doing this
she not only felt no pride at all in her own generosity,
but quite the contrary, was ashamed to be giving so
little. The pilgrim had such a distinguished appear-

ance.

Even though he had walked two hundred miles as

a beggar in Christ'sname and had become tattered,
thin and darkened from wind and sun, even though
his hair had been cropped and he was wearing a
peasant hat and boots, even though he bowed humbly,
Sergius nonetheless still retained that same distin-
guished appearance which so attracted people to him.
But Praskovia Mikhailovna did not recognize him. In-
deed, she could not have recognized him, not having
seen him for nearly thirty years.
"Don't judge me harshly, dear friend. Perhaps you
would like a bite to eat?"

He took the bread and the money. And Praskovia

Mikhailovna was surprised that he did not go, but
instead kept looking at her.
"Pashenka. I've come to you. Take me in."

And his wonderful black eyes looked at her in-

tently and pleadingly and suddenly glistened with
the tears that sprang to them. And beneath his gray-
ing moustaches his lips twitched piteously.
Praskovia Mikhailovna clasped her withered bosom,
opened her mouth, and stood petrified, staring down
at the pilgrim's face.
., ,,! !,!.
130 /

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 Father Sergius / 131

"But it can t be! Styopa!" SergiusI Father SergiusI"

'Tes, none other," Sergius said softly. "Only not

Sergius, not Father Sergius, but the great sinner
Stepan Kasatsky, a great sinner who is lost. Take me
in,help me."
"But it can t be! Why, how is it that you Ve hum-
bled yourself so? But let's go in."

She held out her hand, but he did not take it, and
followed behind her.
But where was she to take him? Their quarters
were small. At first a tiny room, almost a closet, had
been set aside for her, but then she had given this
closet up to her daughter too. And now Masha was
sitting there rocking the baby.
"Sit down here for now," she said to Sergius, in-
dicating a bench in the kitchen.
Sergius sat down and with a gesture that
at once,
had evidently become habitual by now, removed his
knapsack first from one shoulder and then from the
other.
"My Lord, my Lord, how you have humbled your-
self, dear Father! What fame and suddenly such. ."
. .

Sergius did not answer, but only smiled meekly,

arranging his knapsack beside him.
"Masha, do you know who this is?"
And Praskovia Mikhailovna told her daughter in
a whisper who Sergius was, and together they car-
ried both the bed and the cradle out of the tiny
room, emptying it for Sergius.
Praskovia Mikhailovna led Sergius into the room.

"Here you can rest. Don't judge me harshly, but

I must go."
"Where?"
17 Diminutive of Stepan (Trans.).
 ,
132 /

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 Father Sergius / 133

"I have lessons here, ashamed to say— I teach

music."
"Music— that's fine. There's just one thing. You see,

Praskovia Mikhailovna, IVe come to you for some-

thing specific. Where can I have a talk with you?"
"I'll consider it an honor. Will this evening be all

right?"
"Yes, all right, but Ihave one more favor to ask
of you: don't say anything about me, who I am. I've
revealed myself only to you. Nobody knows where
I've gone. That's the way it must be."
"Oh, heavens, I've told my daughter."
"Well, ask her not to mention it."
Sergius removed his boots, lay down, and at once
fell asleep after a sleepless night and a walk of more
than twenty miles.^^

When Praskovia Mikhailovna returned, Sergius was

sitting in his little room awaiting her. He would not
come out for dinner, but ate some soup and gruel
which Lukeria brought to his room.
"How is it that you've come back earlier than you

said you would?" Sergius said. "Can we have a talk

now?"
"What have I done to deserve such happiness, hav-
ing such a guest? I've let one lesson go. I'll see to it
later . I've been constantly thinking about visiting
. .

you. I wrote you, and suddenly such good fortune."

"Pashenkal The words I'm going to speak to you
now please take as a confession, as words I'm utter-
ing before God at my last hour. Pashenkal I am not a
holy man, I'm not even a simple ordinary man: I am
a sinner, a dirty, nasty, errant, proud sinner— whether
worse than everyone else I don't know, but certainly
worse than most extremely bad people."
^8 Literally: "forty versts" ( Trans. )
 ,;-
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134

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 Father Sergius / 135

Pashenka at first looked at him in utter astonish-

ment: she did not know whether to beUeve him or
not. Then, when she became fully convinced that he
meant what he said, she touched his hand with hers,
and smiling compassionately, said:
"Stiva,^^ you're perhaps exaggerating?"
"No, Pashenka, a fornicator, a murderer,
I'm a blasphemer and a deceiver."
"My Lord! How can that be?" Praskovia Mikhailov-
na exclaimed.
"But life must be lived. And I, who thought I knew
everything, who was trying to teach others how to
live— I don't know anything, and I ask you to teach
me.
"Oh, come now, Stiva. You're joking. Why are you
always laughing at me?"
"All right, have it your way: I'm laughing. But
just tell me how you live and how you've spent your
Hfe."
"I? Why, I've lived the most rotten, vile kind of
life, and now God is punishing me, and it serves me
."
right. I live so badly, so badly. . .

"How did you happen to get married? How was

your lifewith your husband?"
"It was all bad. I got married because I'd fallen
in love in the nastiest possible way. Papa didn't want
it. I paid no attention to anything, I just got married.
And once I was married, instead of helping my hus-

band I tormented him with jealousy, which I couldn't

overcome in myself."
"I heard that he drank."
"Yes, but somehow I couldn't give him any peace.
Iused to reproach him. But this after all is a disease.
He couldn't keep away from drink, but I remember

19 Diminutive of Stepan (Trans.).

,
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 FatKer Sergius / 137

now how I used to refuse to let him have it. We had

terrible scenes."
And she looked at Kasatsky with her wonderful
eyes which expressed suffering at the thoughts she
was recalling.

Kasatsky remembered he had been told that Pa-

shenka's husband used to beat her. And Kasatsky
now saw, looking at her thin, shrivelled neck with
the veins standing out prominently behind the ears
and a tuft of sparse half-gray, half-red hair, he
seemed to see how that could have happened.
"Then I was left alone with two children and with-
out any money at all."
"But after you had your estate."
all,

"That we sold while Vasya was still alive, and

everything we squandered. We had to live, but
. . .

I didn't know how to do anything—like all of us

well-bred young ladies. But I was especially stupid
and helpless. And so while we were running through
the last of was teaching the children and I learned
it I

a bit myself. But then Mitya got sick while he was

still only in the fourth grade and God took him.

Manechka^^ fell in love with Vanya, my son-in-law.

Well, he's a good man, just unfortunate. He's sick."
"Mama," her daughter interrupted her account,
"take Misha, I can't be everywhere at once."
Praskovia Mikhailovna gave a start, got up, and,
moving quickly in her down-at-the-heel shoes, went
out the door and immediately returned with a two-
year old boy in her arms, who threw himself back
and grabbed her kerchief with his little hands.
"All right, where did I stop? Oh yes: he had a
good job here, and his superior was so nice, but Van-
ya couldn't do the work and he retired."

^°A further diminutive of Masha. Both are diminutives of

Maria (Trans.).
 ,
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138

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 Father Sergius / 139

'What's he sick with?"

"Neurasthenia— it*s a terrible disease. We thought
of consulting someone, but we would have had to
make the trip, and there's just no money. But I keep
hoping that it will pass by itself. He has no particu-
."
lar pains, but. . .

"Lukeria!" his voice, angry and feeble, was heard.

"They always send her off somewhere just when
she's needed. Mama!"
"Coming!" Praskovia Mikhailovna again interrupted
herself."He hasn't had his dinner yet. He can t eat
with us."
She went out, did something in the next room,
and returned, wiping her thin, sunburnt hands.
"And so that's how I hve. And we constantly com-
plain,and are constantly dissatisfied, but the grand-
children, thank the Lord, are all wonderful and
healthy, and so hfe is still possible. But why talk
about me?"
"But what do you live on?"
"I manage to earn a bit. To think I used to be
bored with music, and now it's come in so handyl"
She was resting her small hand on the chest of
drawers beside which she was sitting, and drumming
her thin fingers as if she were doing exercises.
"What do they pay you for your lessons?"
"Some pay a rouble, some fifty kopecks, and there
are some who pay thirty kopecks. They are all so
kind to me."
"And do they make any progress?" Kasatsky said,
his eyes smiling ever so slightly.
Praskovia Mikhailovna at first found hard to be-
it

lieve that his question was serious, and she looked

inquiringly into his eyes.
"Some are making progress. There's one wonder-
ful girl, the butcher's daughter. A land, good girl.
, . . ,,
140 /

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 Father Sergius / 141

You know, if rd been a woman of good sense then

naturally I'd have been able to find a position for
my son-in-law, through Papa's connections. But I

didn't know how to do anything, and so, as you see,

I've brought them all to this."

**Yes, yes," said Kasatsky, incHning his head. "Ah,

and what about church Hfe— do you take part in it,
Pashenka?" he asked.
"Oh, don't speak of itl I'm really so bad that way.
I've letit go so badly. I keep the fasts with the chil-

dren and sometimes I go to church, but otherwise

I don't go for months on end. I send the children."

"But why is it you don't go yourself?"

"Well, to tell the truth, I feel ashamed in the sight
of my daughter and grandchildren to go in rags, and
I haven't a thing that's the sUghtest bit new. But
really I'm just lazy."
"But do you pray at home?"
"I do, but what kind of praying is it? It's just me-
chanical. I know that isn't the way it should be done,
but there's no real feeling, there's just the fact that
you're aware of all your own nastiness. . .
."

"Yes, yes, that's so, that's so," Kasatsky said, in a

way that suggested approval and encouragement.
"I'm coming, I'm coming," she replied to her son-
in-law's call, and straightening up the meager little
plait of hair on her head, she went out of the room.
This time it was long before she returned. When
she did return, Kasatsky was sitting in the same po-
sition, his elbows resting on his knees, his head low-
ered. But his knapsack was already slung on his back.
When she came in carrying a small tin lamp with-
out a glass on it he raised his wonderful tired eyes
to her and gave a deep, deep sigh.
"I didn't tell them who you are," she began timidly.
"I only said that you're a pilgrim of noble birth, and
142

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 Father Sergius / 143

that I used to know you. Let's go into the dining room

and have some tea. . .
!*
"
"No
"All right, ril bring it here."
"No, need anything. God preserve you,
I don't
Pashenka. on my way. If you have pity for me,
don't tell anyone that you've seen me. By the living
God I anyone. My thanks to
implore you: don't tell

you. I would bow down

your feet, but I know it
to
would just embarrass you. Thanks. Forgive me, in
Christ's name."
"Give me your blessing."
"God will bless you. Forgive me, in Christ's name."
And he was about to go, but she would not let
him until she had brought him bread, hard rolls,^^
and He took everything and went out.
butter.
was dark, and he had not moved more than
It

two houses oflE when she lost him from sight; and
she knew that he was on his way only because the
archpriest's dog began to bark at him.

"So that's what my dream meant. Pashenka is just

what I should have been and what I haven't been.
I have lived for people on the pretext that it's been

for God, but she hves for God, imagining that she's
living for people. Yes, one kind deed, a cup of water
given without any thought of recompense is worth
more than all the benefactions I have showered on
people. But was there after all a particle of sincere
desire to serve God?" he asked himself, and the an-
swer was: 'Tes, but all that was sullied, overgrown
with man's praise. Yes, there is no God for one who
has lived, as I have, for man's praise. I will seek Him."
And he began to walk, as he had done before

^^Baranka: "bagel": a hard roll shaped like a doughnut

( Trans. )
.,
144

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 Father Sergius / 145

coming to Pashenka, from village to village, meeting

and parting from pilgrims and pilgrimesses and ask-
ing for bread and lodging in Christ's name. Sometimes
a bad-tempered housewife would abuse him, or a
peasant who had had a drop too much would curse
him, but for the most part people gave him food,
drink, and even something to take along with him.
His genteel bearing disposed some people in his favor.
Some on the contrary, seemed to rejoice at the sight
of a gentleman who had also come to such poverty.
But his meekness won everyone over.
Often, on finding a copy of the Gospels in a house,
he would read from it, and people always and every-
where were greatly moved and surprised; they
listened to it as something new and at the same time
something long familiar.
If he sometimes managed to be of service to peo-
ple either with advice, or with reading and writing,
or by reconciling people who were quarrehng, he
saw no gratitude because he would go away. And
little by little God began to show forth in him.

On one occasion he was walking with two old

women and a soldier. They were stopped by a gentle-
man and lady in a gig harnessed to a trotter, and a
man and woman on horseback. The husband of the
lady was riding with his daughter on horseback, and
riding in the gig were the lady and a man who was
evidently a French traveler.
They stopped to show him les pelerins^^ who, ac-
cording to a superstition indigenous to the Russian
people, tramped from place to place instead of work-
ing.

They were speaking French, imagining that they

would not be understood.

22 The pilgrims.
146

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Demandez leur, —
sont bien surs de ce que leur i>elerinage est ag-
reable a dieu.^
— s'ils

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II
, qu'il dit? II
un serviteur de dieu.*^
dit qu'il est
,-
ne repond pas.^

..
— Cela doit etre un fils de pretre. II a de la
race. Avez-vous de la petite monnaie?^
-
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,
Mais dites leur que

,— , — ,
n'est pas
cierges que je leur donne, mais pour qu'ils se re-
galent de the;^
vous, men vieux/^

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 Father Sergius / 147

"Demandez leur,"^^ said the Frenchman, Vik sont

hien stirs de ce que leur pelerinage est agreable
dieu,"^'^

They asked the pilgrims. The old women replied:

God sees fit. With our
"It's as legs we've done what
we could; we hope we'll do the same with our
hearts."
They asked the soldier. He said that he was alone,
and that he had no place to go.
They asked Kasatsky who he was.
"A servant of God."
"Quest ce qu'il dit? II ne repond pas"^^
"II dit qu4l est un serviteur de dieu^^^

"Cela doit etre un fib de pretre. II a de la race.

Avez-vous de la petite monnaie?''^'^
The Frenchman happened to have some change.
And he gave them all twenty kopecks each.
"Mais dites-leur que ce riest pas pour des cierges
que je leur donne, mais pour qu'ils se regalent de the
—tea, tea," (smiling) "pour vous, vieux*'^^ he
said, tapping Kasatsky on the shoulder with his gloved
hand.
"May Christ preserve you," Kasatsky replied, not
putting on his hat and bowing his bald head.
And this encounter gave Kasatsky special joy, be-
cause he had scorned the opinion of people and
had done the most trivial, the most easy thing— he
had humbly taken twenty kopecks and had given
23 Theerrors in French are in the original [Ed.].
2* "Ask them if they are quite sure that their pilgrimage is
pleasing to God."
25 "What does he say? He doesn't answer."
26 "He says that he's a servant of God."
27 "He must be the son of a priest. He has breeding. Do you

have some small change?"

28 "But tell them that Vm not giving them this for candles,
but for them to treat themselves to tea . For you, old man."
. .
.
148

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 Father Sergius / 149

them to a comrade, a blind beggar. The less im-

portance he attached to the opinion of men, the
more strongly he felt the presence of God.
Kasatsky spent eight months in this way. In the
ninth month he was arrested in a provincial town in
a shelter where he was spending the night with some
pilgrims, and, not having a passport, he was taken
to the police station. To questions of where his pass-
port was and who he was, he rephed that he had
no passport and that he was a servant of God. He
was classed as a tramp, tried, and sent to Siberia.
In Siberia he settled on the holding of a rich
peasant and he lives there today. He works in the
master's garden, and gives lessons to the children,
and looks after the sick.
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

The Christmas Tree

and the Wedding

Translated by

JOHN H. RICHARDSON
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F. . DOSTOYEVSKY

The Christmas Tree

and the Wedding

A few days ago I saw a wedding. But no I had betterI

tellyou about the Christmas tree. The wedding was

a good one and I enjoyed it very much, but the other
event is more interesting. I don't know how I came
to remember the Christmas tree as I watched the
wedding. This is how it all happened. Exactly five
years ago, on New Year's Eve, Iwas invited to a
children's party. The person who invited me was a
well-known businessman with connections, acquain-
tances, and various schemes afoot so there was reason
to suppose the children's party was an excuse for the
parents to get together and discuss different matters
 ,
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154

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 The Christmas Tree and the Wedding / 155

in an innocent and casual way. I was an outsider;

I had no such matters to discuss, and so I spent the
evening largely by myself. There was another gentle-
man there who did not seem to have any kith or kin,
but like me just happened to be at the family gather-
ing.i He was the first person to catch my eye. He was

a tall lean man, quite serious-looking and quite well-

dressed. But he was clearly not at all in the mood for
fun and family festivity. ^ Whenever he went away
into a corner, he immediately stopped smiling and
knitted his thick, black brows. Apart from the host,
he knew absolutely no one at the party. He was ob-
viously bored to tears, although he bravely kept up
to the end his role as a guest who was thoroughly
enjoying himself.2

I learned later that he was a man from the provinces

who had come on a highly important^
to the capital
and involved matter and had brought the host a let-
ter of introduction; the host was by no means enter-
taining him with enthusiasm and had only invited him
to the children's party out of politeness. No one was
playing cards, he was not offered a cigar, nobody
made conversation to him—perhaps having spotted
the bird from its feathers— and so the man was forced
to spend the whole evening stroking his sidewhiskers
just to have something to do with his hands. But he
stroked them so assiduously that, watching him, you
might have thought that the sidewhiskers had come
into being first and that the man had then been at-
tached to them to do the stroking.

1 Literally: "family happiness" (Ed.).

2 Literally: "the role of a thoroughly distracted and happy
an" (Ed.).
3 Literally: "some sort of decisive" (Ed.).
156 /

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 The Christmas Tree and the Wedding / 157

Apart from this person, who thus participated in

the host's party^ ( the host had five chubby little boys )
there was another man to whom I took a Hking. But
this fellow was quite a different type. He was a per-
sonage. His name was Julian Mastakovich. From the
very first glance you could see that he was the guest
of honor and that his relationship with the host was
the same as between the host and the man with side-
whiskers. The host and hostess paid him endless com-
pliments, attended to all his needs, brought him
drinks, made a great fuss of him^ and brought over
other guests to be introduced to him rather than vice-
versa. I noticed a tear glisten in the host's eye when
Julian Mastakovich said he had seldom enjoyed an
evening as much.^ I felt somewhat awestruck in the
presence of such a person and so, having watched the
children for a while, I retired to a small drawing-
room, which was completely empty, and took a seat
in the flower-filled conservatory which took up al-
most half the room.

The children were all unbelievably charming and

definitely wanted to avoid being hke the grownups,
despite all the admonition of their governesses and
mammas. They had the Christmas tree stripped in
an instant, down to the past piece of candy, and
even managed to break half the toys before they
found out which was intended for whom. I particu-
larly liked one boy with black eyes and curly hair
who kept trying to shoot me with his wooden gun.
But it was his sister who drew most of the attention;
she was a girl of about eleven, as enchanting as a
* Literally: "family happiness" (Ed.).
^5 "caressed him" (Ed.).
Literally:
e Literally: "seldom spends his time in such a pleasant man-
ner" (Ed.).
,
158

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 The Christmas Tree and the Wedding / 159

cupid, quiet, pensive, and pale, with large, dreamy,

protruding eyes. At one point the other children
hurt her feelings and she came into the room where
I was sitting and began playing with her doll in the

corner. The guests were respectfully motioning toward

a wealthy contractor, the little girl's parent, and
someone remarked in a whisper that a dowry of
three hundred thousand rubles had been put aside
for her. I turned round to see who could be so inter-
ested in this fact and my gaze fell on Julian Mastako-
vich who, with his hands behind his back and his
head slightly on one side, was listening most intent-
ly to the idle chatter of the guests. Later on I could
not help admiring the wisdom of the hosts when the
time came to hand out the presents. The little girl with
the three-hundred-thousand rouble dowry was given a
very lavish doll. Then came more modest presents,
their value declining with the status of the parents
of the fortunate children. The a boy of
last child,
about ten, small, thin, red-haired and covered with
freckles, merely got a book of tales dealing with
the marvels of nature, tears of sympathy, and other
such things, without any pictures or even a frontis-
piece. He was the son of the children's governess, a
poor widow, and was a very subdued and timid boy.
He was wearing a jacket made of inferior nankeen.
Having received his book, he wandered round for a
long time looking at the other toys; he wanted so
much to play with the other children, but did not
dare. He clearly already felt and understood his
place. I love watching children. Their first inde-
pendent actions in Hfe are so extraordinarily interest-
ing. I saw that the red-haired boy was so fascinated
by the expensive toys of the other children, especial-
160

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 The Christmas Tree and the Wedding / 161

ly model theater in which he obviously wanted

a
to take some particular part, that he forced himself
to play up to them. He kept grinning and looking
meaningfully at the other children; he gave his apple
to a bloated boy who already had a handkerchief
full of gifts, and even went as far as giving one a
piggy-back so that they would not drive him away
from the theater. But a moment later some brat or
other gave him a thorough trouncing. The child did
not dare cry. At this point his mother, the governess,
appeared and told him not to interfere with the other
children's games. Then he went into the drawing
room where the little girl was. She made no attempt
to drive him away, and they both busily began dress-
ing the lavish doll.
I had been
sitting in the ivy-woven conservatory
for half an hour and had almost dozed off Hstening
to the chatter of the httle beauty with the three-
hundred-thousand ruble dowry and the red-haired
boy when suddenly Julian Mastakovich came into the
room. He had taken advantage of the outrageous
quarrel among the children and left the ballroom
unobserved. I noticed that a minute earlier he had
been heatedly discussing the merits of different jobs
with the father of the wealthy future bride, who
had just been introduced to him. Now he was stand-
ing lost in thought and seemed to be working some-
thing out on his fingers.
"Three hundred . . . Three hundred," he was
whispering. "Eleven, twelve, thirteen, and so on. Six-
teen in five years! Let's say at four per cent, that's
twelve, and times five, that's sixty . . . And with that
sixty . . . well, anyway, in all that makes four hun-
dred in five years' time. But let's see No, he
. . .

doesn't keep it at four per cent, the crook! He may

make it eight or nine. Well, that's five hundred, let's
162

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 The Christmas Tree and the Wedding / 163

say five hundred thousand. That much is certain at

least. And the rest on the trousseau J Hm. ..."

He finished his pondering, blew his nose and was

about to leave the room when he suddenly glanced
at the httle girl and stopped. He didn t see me be-
hind the pots of greenery. He seemed to be extreme-
ly worked up. Either the calculations had aflFected
him, or else some other matter, but he kept rubbing
his hands and could hardly keep still. His excitement
reached a pitch as he stopped and threw a determined
look at the future bride. He began to move forward,
having first glanced round. Then, walking on tiptoe
as though feeling guilty, he went over to the child.
He approached her with a smile, bent down and
kissed her on the head. Not expecting the attack, the
little girl let out a screech.

"And what are you doing, dear child?" he asked

in a whisper, looking round and patting the girl on
the cheek.
"We re playing. . .
."

"What? With him?" Julian Mastakovich gave the

boy a sidelong glance.
"Why don't you go into the other room, sonny?"
he said to him.
The boy was
silent and looked at him with wide
eyes. JulianMastakovich again glanced round and
again bent down toward the girl.
"And what's this you have, a dolly, dear child?"
he asked.
"A dolly," replied the girl frowning and losing
some of her confidence.

"A dolly . . . And do you know, dear child, what

your dolly is made of?"

^Literally: "rags" (Ed.).

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 The Christmas Tree and the Wedding / 165

"Don t know . .
/' replied the little girl in a whisper,
staring at the ground.
"It's made of rags, my dear. You'd better go in the
other room, my boy, where children your own age
are," said Julian Mastakovich, looking sternly at the
boy. The girl and boy both frowned and clutched
hold of one another. They did not want to be sep-
arated.
"And do you know why you were given this dolly?"
asked Julian Mastakovich, speaking more and more
softly.
"Don't know. ."
. .

"Because you've been a good, well-behaved httle

girlthe whole week."
Here Julian Mastakovich, agitated to the extreme,
looked round and lowering his tone more and more,
finally asked in a voice barely audible with excite-
ment and impatience:

"And are you going to love me, dear girl, when I

come to visit your parents?"
Having said Juhan Mastakovich tried to kiss
this,
the little girl once again, but seeing she was about
boy seized her by
to burst into tears, the red-haired
the hand and began whimpering out of the purest
sympathy for her. Julian Mastakovich became ex-
tremely angry.
"Get out of here! Get outl" he said to the boy.
"Leave the roomi Go and join children your own age!"

"No, he needn't. He needn't. You go away!" cried

the little girl. "Leave him alone!" she cried, almost
sobbing.
Someone was heard coming through the door.
Juhan Mastakovich straightened his majestic figure
in alarm. But the red-haired boy was even more
166

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 The Christmas Tree and the Wedding / 167

alarmed than Julian Mastakovich; he left the girl,

and hugging the wall, quietly made his way to the
dining-room next door. So as not to arouse suspicion
Julian Mastakovich also went into the dining room.
He was as red as a lobster and, taking a look in the
mirror, seemed be embarrassed by his own appear-
to
ance. Perhaps he was annoyed at his own quick-
temper and impatience. Perhaps he was so startled
by his calculations^ and so tempted and carried away
by them that, despite his good repute and dignity,
he had resolved to act, like a schoolboy, and make a
direct play for the object of his interest, although
the object might not become a real one for five
years. I followed the reputable gentleman into the
dining-room and beheld an extraordinary sight. Julian
Mastakovich, flushed with frustration and annoyance,
was hounding the red-haired boy, who kept mov-
ing further and further away from him, not know-
ing where to run in his fright.

"Go away! What are you doing in here? Go away,

you useless brat! Why are you steahng fruit? Get
away, you snotty-nosed boy! Go and play with chil-
dren your own age!"

In desperation the terrified boy tried to crawl un-

der the table. Then his pursuer, seething with fury,
took out a long cambric handkerchief and began
flicking under the table at the boy, now completely
it

cowed. should be mentioned that Julian Mastako-

It

vich was on the portly side. He was a chubby, ruddy-

faced, squat Httle man with a paunch and fleshy
thighs, or as they say, a *ardy type," as round as
a nut. He perspired, panted and grew terribly red

^ Literally: "calculations on his fingers" (Ed.).

168

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 The Christmas Tree and the Wedding / 169

in the face. Finally he reached the stage of complete

exasperation, so great was his indignation and pos-
sibly (who knows?) his jealousy. I let out a roar of
laughter. Julian Mastakovich turned around and was
covered in confusion. At thismoment the host came
through the opposite door. The boy crawled out from
under the table and dusted his knees and elbows.
Julian Mastakovich hastily raised to his nose the hand-
kerchief he had been holding by one end.

The host stared at the three of us in puzzled sur-

prise, but being a man of the world^ who approached
life seriously, he immediately took advantage of the
fact he had found his guest alone.

"That's the one," he said, pointing to the red-haired

boy. "The boy I had the honor to ask you about.'*

"What's that?" said Julian Mastakovich, who had

not quite recovered himself.
"He's the son of my children's governess," contin-
ued the host in an imploring tone. "A poor woman,
a widow. The former wife of a conscientious official.
That's why, Julian Mastakovich, if it's possible. ."
. .

"Oh, no, no," cried Julian Mastakovich hurriedly.

"No, I'm sorry, Philip Alekseyevich, but it's absolutely
out of the question. I've made inquiries. There are
no vacancies and even if there were, there are already
ten applicants far more deserving than he is . . .

Very sorry, very sorry."

"A pity," repeated the host. "The boy is modest
and well-behaved. ."
. .

"A mischievous brat, as far as I can see," answered

Julian Mastakovich, his mouth twisting hysterically.

^ Literally: "a man who knows life" (Ed.).

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 The Christmas Tree and the Wedding / 171

"Go away, boyi What are you standing there for?

Go and join children your own age!" he added, turn-
ing to the boy.
At this point it seems he was no longer able to
restrain himself and he squinted at me out of the
corner of his eye. I could not restrain myself either,
and I burst out laughing straight to his face. He im-
mediately turned round and, obviously for my bene-
fit, asked the host who the peculiar young man was.

They began whispering and left the room. Then I

saw Julian Mastakovich shaking his head incredulous-
ly as he Hstened to the host.

Having had a hearty laugh, I went back to the

ballroom. There, the great man, surrounded by fathers
and mothers, and the host and hostess, was busily
explaining something to a lady who had just been
introduced to him. The lady was holding hands Mdth
the little girl with whom Julian Mastakovich had
had the encounter in the drawing room ten minutes
before. Now he was lavishly praising and admiring
the beauty, gifts, grace and good manners of the
dear child. He was clearly trying to ingratiate him-
self with the mother. The woman was listening to
him also with tears of delight in her eyes. The
father was smiling. ^^ The host was enchanted with
the universal feeling of exuberance. Even the guests
shared the delight, even the children's games were
stopped so as not to disturb the conversation. The
whole atmosphere was one of reverence. Then I
heard the mother of the little girl, touched to her
heartstrings, request Julian Mastakovich in carefully
chosen words to accord her a special favor and grace
her house with his presence; I heard Julian Mastako-
vich accept the invitation with genuine enthusiasm,
and then I heard the guests, gathering in httle groups

1° Literally: "the father's lips were smiling" (Ed.).

172

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 The Christmas Tree and the Wedding / 173

as decorum demands, heap praises on the contractor,

and especially JuHan Mastako-
his wife, the Httle girl,
vich.
"Is the gentleman married?" I loudly asked a friend
of mine who was standing closest of all to Julian
Mastakovich. Julian Mastakovich threw me a search-
ing and vicious look.

"No," replied my friend, thoroughly disconcerted

by my tactlessness,^ ^ which was intentional.

was recently passing the church at N. The crowds

I

of people and number of carriages astonished me.

Around about people were talking about a wedding.
The day was a cloudy one and sleet had begun to
fall. I pushed my way through the crowd into the

church and caught sight of the groom. He was a

small, rotund, chubby man with a paunch, all dressed
in finery. He was running about busily giving in-
structions. After a while the rumor went round that
the bride had arrived. I squeezed through the crowd
and caught sight of an exquisitely beautiful girl, bare-
ly in the first bloom of her youth. But she was pale
and sad. Her mind seemed to be elsewhere. It even
looked as though her eyes were red from recent
weeping. The classic conformity of all her features
gave her beauty dignity and solemnity. But tlirough
the conformity and solemnity, through the sadness,
there glimmered still the first innocent gaze of child-
hood; in it was something extremely naive,
there
unformed and youthful, something that seemed, by
itself and in silence, to beg for mercy.

People around me were saying that she was only

just sixteen. Looking hard at the groom, I suddenly
1^ Literally: "clumsiness" (Ed.).
174

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 The Christmas Tree and the Wedding / 175

recognized it was Julian Mastakovich, whom I had

not seen for exactly five years. looked at her
I . . .

Good God! I began pushing through the church as

quickly as possible. People in the crowd were ex-
plaining that the bride was wealthy and had a dowry
of five hundred thousand rubles, with so much for the
the trousseau.
"So he calculated well!" I thought, as I made my
way into the street.

»
VSEVOLOD GARSHIN

The Red Flower

Translated by

BERNARD GUILBERT GUERNEY

In memoriam
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev
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F. . GARSHIN

The Red Flower

"In the name of His Imperial Majesty Peter the First

I proclaim this madhouse open for inspection!"

These words were uttered in a loud, harsh, resonant

voice. The clerk of the hospital, who was registering
the patient in a large tattered record book on a desk
splashed all over with ink, could not refrain from a

smile.However, the two young men who were ac-

companying the patient were not laughing: they
could hardly keep on their feet after two days and
nights without sleep, spent all alone with the mad-
man whom they had just brought by rail. At the sta-
180 /

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 The Red Flower / 181

tion before the last one had intensified;

his raptus
they had gotten hold somewhere or
of a straitjacket
other and, after calling in a conductor and a gendarme
to help, had put it on the patient. That was how they
had brought him into town, and that, too, was how
they delivered him at the hospital.
He was frightening. Over his drab clothes, which
had been torn into tatters during his paroxysm, a
jacket of coarse sailcloth with a deep vee in front
swathed his torso; the long sleeves held his arms
crossed tightly against his chest and were fastened
in back. His enflamed staring eyes (he had not slept
for ten days) burned with a fixed ardent glitter; a
tic twitched the corner of his lower lip; his matted
curly hair fell in a shock over his forehead; with
quick heavy strides he kept pacing the office from
corner to corner, peering at the old closets that held
the papers and at the chairs covered with oilcloth,
and glancing every now and then at the men who
had brought him here.^
"Take him to the ward. It's to the right."
*T know, I know. IVe already visited your place,
last year. We were inspecting this hospital. I know
everything, and it will be hard to fool me," said the
patient.
He turned toward the door. The attendant opened
it for him; with the same rapid, heavy and resolute
walk, with his insane head held high, he went out
of the room and set out, almost at a run, toward
the right, to the psychopathological ward. Those ac-
companying him could barely keep up with him.
"Ring the bell. I can't. You have bound my hands."
The porter opened the door and the three entered
the hospital proper.
This was an extensive stone structure of an anti-

1 Literally: "at his traveling companions" (Ed.).

 ,
182

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 The Red Flower / 183

quated governmental order of architecture. The

ground floorwas taken up by tvvo large halls— one a
mess-hall, the other a ward for the non-violent cases,
a wide corridor with a glass door that led into a
garden with a hothouse, and a score or so of individual
rooms occupied by patients; on this floor, too, were
two large dark rooms, one padded with mattresses,
the other paneled with boards, both intended for the
confinement of violent cases, and an enormous, som-
ber, vaulted chamber housing the baths. The upper
floor was given over to female patients. A confused
noise, punctuated by howls and wails, issued thence.
The hospital had been designed for eighty patients,
but since it was the only one serving several sur-
rounding provinces it held up to three hundred. There
were four and even five beds in each of its cubicles;
in wintertime, when the patients were not allowed to
go out into the garden and all the windows behind
their iron-barred gratings were tightly closed, the
interior of the hospital became unbearably stuEFy.

The new was led to the room with the

patient
baths. Since would have made a painful impres-
it

sion on even a normal person, it was bound to affect

a disturbed imagination all the more painfully. It
was a large vaulted room the stone floor of which
was viscid with sHme, its Hght coming from a single
window set in a corner; walls and vaults were calso-
mined a dark red; two stone baths were sunk into
the dirt-darkened floor, on a level with it, two
oval, water-filled pits. An enormous brass furnace
with a cyhnder for heating water and a whole system
of copper pipes and faucets took up the corner op-
posite the window; ever^'thing bore an unusually
grim and fantastic character to a deranged mind,
184

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 The Red Flower / 185

and the guard in charge of the bathroom, a stout,

perpetually taciturn Ukrainian, intensified the impres-
sion by his grim physiognomy.
And when the new patient was brought into this
frightful room to be bathed, and when, in accord-
ance with the therapeutic system of the chief physi-
cian of the hospital, they attempted to apply a large
vesicatory plaster to the nape of his neck, he be-
came terrified and frenzied. Preposterous thoughts,
each more monstrous than the one before, whirled
through his head. What was this— the Inquisition?
A dock of secret execution, where his enemies had
decided to put an end to him? Was it Hell itself,
perhaps? Finally the idea came into his head that
this was some sort of torture. They stripped him,
despite his desperate resistance. With strength re-
doubled by his derangement he easily escaped the
clutches of several keepers, so that they went sprawl-
ing to the floor; finally four of them felled him and,
seizing him by his arms and legs, lowered him into
the tepid water. It seemed scalding to him and an
incoherent, fragmentary thought about torture with
scalding water and red-hot iron flashed through his
disordered head. Spluttering, and convulsively thresh-
ing his arms and legs which were held fast by the
keepers, he gasped yetwent on screaming incoherent
words which would have been inconceivable unless
one actually heard them. There were pleas among
them, and there were curses. He kept screaming un-
til he became exhausted and at last softly, tears
flowing from his eyes, he uttered certain phrases
which had no connection whatsoever with his fore-
going words: "Great Protomartyr Georgel Into thy
hands do I put my body. But my spirit— never, oh,

neverl"

The keepers were still restraining him, even though

., , ,
186

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 The Red Flower / 187

he had calmed down. The tepid water, and the ice-

bag placed on his head, had proven effective. But
when they had taken him out of the water, almost
unconscious, and had seated him on a tabouret for
the appHcation of the vesicatory plaster, the rem-
nant of his strength and his insane thoughts seemed
to make him erupt anew.

'What's this for? What's this for?" he screamed. "I

wished ill to no one. Why should I be killed? O-o-oh!
Oh, Lord! Oh, all of you who have been tortured
before me— it is you whom I implore: deliver mel"
The burning sensation against the nape of his neck
compelled him to struggle in desperation. The at-
tendants were not able to subdue him and did not
know what to do.

"No help for it,'' said the soldier who was applying
the blistering agent. "We'll have to wipe it off."

These simple words made the patient shudder.

"Wipe it off! Wipe off what? Wipe out whom? Why,
me!" the thought came to him and, in deathly ter-
ror, he closed his eyes. The soldier took a rough
towel by its ends and, bearing down upon it, drew
it quickly across the nape of the patient's neck, tear-
ing off with both plaster and epidermis and leav-
it

The pain of this operation,

ing a red, raw excoriation.
which would have been unbearable even for a normal
and undisturbed person, seemed to the patient the
end of everything. In desperation he lunged with all
his body, tore loose from the arms of the keepers,
and his body went rolling over the flagstones. He
thought that they had lopped off his head. He wanted
to cry out— and could not. He was carried off to his
cot in a state of unconsciousness, which passed into a
profound, dead sleep that lasted a long time.
 ,
188 /

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II

He came to during the night. Everything was quiet;

one could hear the breathing of the patients sleep-
ing in the big room next door. Somewhere, a long
way off, a patient who had been placed in a dark
cell for the night was talking to himself in a monoto-
nous voice, while above, in the female ward, a hoarse
contralto was singing some wild song or other. The
patient listened intently to these sounds. He felt
weakness and lassitude in
frightful all his limbs; his
neck pained him intensely.
"Where am What's happening to me?" the
I?
thoughts came to him. And suddenly, with extraordi-
nary vividness, his imagination pictured the last
month of his life, and he understood that he was ail-
ing and what his ailment consisted of. A succession
of incongruous thoughts, words and actions came
back to his mind, making all his being shudder.
"But that's over— glory be, it's all overl" he uttered
in a whisper and fell asleep again.

The open window with its iron bars looked out on a

small dead end between the main buildings and the
stone enclosure; no one ever came there and it was
all grown over with some nondescript brushwood and
lilac bushes— the latter were in magnificent flower at

this time of the year. A high enclosure showed dark-

ly beyond these bushes, directly opposite the win-
dow; on the other side of the enclosure one could
glimpse the towering treetops of an extensive gar-
den, flooded and permeated by the moonlight. To
the right reared the white structure of the hospital,
its iron-barred windows ht from within; to the left
was the white, vividly moonlit blank wall of the mor-
tuary. The moonlight came through the window into
the room, falling on the floor and lighting up part of
the bed and the tortured pale face of the patient,
 ,
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190

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 The Red Flower / 191

with the eyes closed; now there was nothing insane

about him. His was the profound heavy sleep of a
torture-spent man, without any dream-visions, with-
out the least movement, and almost v/ithout breath.
For a few moments waking he was in his
after his
full senses, apparently normal— only, when morning
came, to get out of bed as much of a madman as
he had been before.

Ill

"How do you feel?" the doctor asked him the next

day.
The patient, who had just awakened, was still lying
under his blanket.
"Excellentlyl"he said, springing up, putting on his
slippers and snatching his bathrobe. "Splendidly!
There is one thing, though— right here!" He indicated
the nape of his neck. "I can t turn my neck without
pain. However, that isn't anything. Everything is fine
if one understands what it is— and I do understand."

"Do you know where you are?"

"Of course, doctor! I am in a madhouse. But, if

one understands, it makes absolutely no difference.
Absolutely none."
The doctor was looking intently into the other's
eyes.The doctor's handsome well-groomed face, with
a superbly kempt aureate beard, and calm eyes of
blue gazing through gold-rimmed glasses, was stony
and impenetrable. He was observing.
"Why do you look at me so intently? You won't
read that which is in my soul," the patient went
on, *ut I am reading clearly what is in yours! Why
are you committing evil? Why
have you gathered in
this throng of unfortunates and are keeping them
here? To me it makes no difference: I understand
 ?
192

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 The Red Flower / 193

everything and am calm—but what about them? Why

all these tortures? To one who has attained to harbor-
ing within his soul a great idea, a universal idea, it

makes no where he is to live, what he is

diflFerence
to feel. Even whether he is to live or not to hve.
That is so, isn t it?'*

"Could be,*' answered the doctor, seating himself

on a chair in a corner of the room in such a way as
to keep sight of the patient who was rapidly pacing
from corner to corner, his enormous slippers of horse-
hide flapping and the broad skirts of his robe, of
cotton with broad red stripes and flowers of large
design, flapping about. The doctor's assistant and the
supervisor, who were making the rounds with the
doctor, were standing at attention near the doorway.
"And I do have that ideal" exclaimed the patient.
"And when I had found it I felt myself reborn. My
sensations became more acute, my brain works as
never before. That which formerly was attained
through a long course of syllogisms and surmises I
now I have attained pragmat-
perceive intuitively.
ically that which had been worked out painfully by
philosophy. I am experiencing by my own self the
great ideas that space and time are nothing but fic-
tions. I am living in all the ages. I am Hving minus
space, everywhere or nowhere, whichever term you
prefer. And hence it makes no difference to me wheth-
er you keep here or let me go free, whether I am at
hberty or fettered. I have noticed that there are
several more individuals here who are just the same
sort as I. But for the rest of the horde such a situa-
tion is dreadful. Why don t you give them their lib-
erty? Who finds it necessary—"
"You said," tne doctor
broke in on him, "that you
are living outside of time and space. However, one
can't help but agree that you and I are in this room,
194

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 The Red Flower / 195

and that it is now—" the doctor took out his watch—

'1£ past ten, on the sixth of May, in the year so
and so of the nineteenth century. What do you think
of that?"
"Nothing. makes no difference to me where I
It
may happen to be or at what time I may be Hving.
If that makes no difference to me, doesn t that mean
that I am everywhere and at all times?"
The doctor smiled a Httle. "That is rare logic,"
said he, standing up. "Perhaps you're right. Goodbye.
Would you care for a cigar?"
thank you." The patient paused, took the cigar
"I
and nervously bit off the end. "This helps one to
think," he remarked. "This is a universe, a microcosm.
At this end you have the alkaHs, at the other the
acids. Even such is the equilibrium of the universe,
in which opposed beginnings are neutralized. Fare-
well, Doctor!"

The doctor set out on his rounds again. The pa-

tients for the most part were expecting him, drawn
up at attention by their cots. No others in authority
enjoy such respect from those subjected to them as
the physician-psychiatrist does from his lunatics.
As for the patient, once he was left to himself, he
resumed pacing impetuously from corner to comer
of his cell. They brought him tea; without sitting
down he drained the large mug in two gulps and
consumed the big slice of white bread almost in-
stantaneously. Then he left his room and for several
hours, without ever stopping, walked with his quick
and heavy stride from one end of the building he
was in to the other. The day was rainy and the pa-
tients were not allowed to go out into the garden.

When the assistant doctor started looking for the new

patient the others directed him to the end of the cor-
ridor; he was standing there with his face pressed
196

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 The Red Flower / 197

against the glass of the glass door leading to the gar-

den and was intently gazing at a flower-bed. His at-
tention had been attracted by an unusually bright
red flower, belonging to one of the species of the
poppy.
"Please come to get weighed," said the assistant
doctor, tapping him on the shoulder.
And when the other turned his face to him, the
assistant doctor almost staggered back in fright, so
much was there of savage rancor and hatred blazing
in the insane eyes. But, upon seeing who it was, the
patient immediately changed the expression on his
face and submissively followed him without having
uttered a word, as if he were plunged in deep reflec-
tion. They made their way into the doctor's study;
the patient himself stepped on the platform of the
small decimahzed scale: the assistant doctor, having
weighed him, made the entry of 109 lb. opposite his
name in a book. The next day his weight was 107
pounds; the day after that, 106.
"If things go on this he wont live through
this," the doctor remarked, and gave orders to feed
him as well as possible. But, despite this and the pa-
tient's inordinate appetite, he got tliinner with every

day, and every day the assistant doctor entered an

ever decreasing number of pounds in the book. The
patient went practically without sleep and passed
days on end constantly on the go.

IV
He realized that he in a madhouse; he even
was
reahzed that he was not well. Occasionally, even
as on his first night here, he would awaken amid the
stillness after an entire day of tumultous motion,
feeling a nagging pain in all his hmbs and a fright-
ful heaviness in his head, yet in a state of full aware-
198 /

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 The Red Flower / 199

ness. Perhaps the absence of impressions amid the

and half-light of the night, perhaps the weak
stillness
functioning of the brain in one who had just awak-
ened, tended at such a moment to make him clearly
understand his situation and feel apparently normal.
But day would come; together with light and the
awakening of life in the hospital impressions lashed
over him anew in a wave; the ailing brain could not
cope with them and, anew, he was insane. His con-
dition was a strange mixture of correct judgments
and absurdities. He understood that all those around
him were ill, yet at the same time he perceived in
each one of them some face or other that was seeking
to hide itself in secret or a face already hidden which
he had known previously or which he had read about
or had heard of.
The was peopled by persons of all times
hospital
and all Here were both the quick and the
lands.
dead. Here were the renowned and the mighty of
the world, and soldiers who had been slain in the
last war and had become resurgent. He saw himself
in some magic, bewitched circle which had gathered
within itself all the potency of the world and, in a
proud frenzy, regarded himself as the center of this
circle. All of them, his fellow inmates in the hospital,
had gathered here in order to carry out a great deed;
his eyes saw it vaguely as a gigantic undertaking the
aim of which was the annihilation of evil upon earth.
He did not know what that undertaking would con-
sist of, yet felt sufficient strength within himself for
its fulfillment. He was able to read the thoughts of
others; when it came to inanimate objects, he could
perceive their entire history; the great elms in the
hospital garden told him legends upon legends of
what they had lived through; the hospital, which in
reality had been built quite a long while ago, he
200

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 The Red Flower / 201

considered to be a structure erected by Peter the

Great and felt certain that this Tsar had Hved in it
during the epoch of the Battle of Poltava. He had
readthis upon the walls, upon chips of fallen plaster,
upon the fragments of bricks and of carvings which
he kept finding in the garden: the entire history of
the building and the garden was inscribedupon them.
He peopled the tiny building of the mortuary with
scores and hundreds of persons who had died long
since, and peered intently into the small window
which looked out of the basement of the mortuary
upon a small coign of the garden, perceiving in the
uneven reflection of light on the old, iridescent, dirt-
covered pane famihar features which he at some time
in his life had seen in reahty or on portraits.

In the meantime clear, fine weather had set in;

the patients spent whole days out of doors, in the
garden. Their section of the garden, small but thickly
grown with trees, had flowers planted in every avail-
able space. The supervisor put who were
all those
in any degree capable of labor to working in the gar-
den; for days on end they swept and sanded the paths;
they weeded and watered the beds of flowers, cu-
cumbers, watermelons and cantaloupes, beds which
they had also cultivated with their own hands. One
corner of the garden was taken up by a thicket of
closely planted cherry trees; paths flanked by elms
traversed it lengthwise; in the middle, on a small
artificial hillock, the most beautiful flower-bed in the

whole garden had been arranged; bright flowers

formed the border of the bed's upper terrace, while
in its center a great dahlia of a rare variety flaunted
the beauty of its large yellow flowers maculated with
red. It constituted the center of the entire garden
as well, rearing over it, and one could notice that
many of the patients attributed some sort of mys-
202

MOM

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 The Red Flower / 203

terious significance to it. To the new patient it also

appeared as something not altogether ordinary, as
some sort of palladium of garden and building.
The borders of all the paths had also been planted
by the hands of the patients. Here were all possible
sorts of flowers, such as one comes upon in the small
gardens of the Ukraine: tall roses, bright petunias,
clumps of tall tobacco with small pink blossoms, mint,
velvet-leaf, nasturtiums and poppies. Here, too, not
far from the front entrance, grew three small clumps
of poppy, of some peculiar variety, considerably
smaller than the ordinary kind and distinguished
therefrom by the extraordinary brightness of its crim-
son hue. And
was precisely one of these flowers
it

which had struck the new patient when, on the first

day of his admission into the hospital, he had been
looking out into the garden through the glass door.
On his first emergence into the garden, before do-
ing anything else, without even descending the steps
of the front entrance, he looked at these vivid flowers.
There were but two of them; they chanced to be
growing apart from the others and on an unweeded
patch, so that they were surrounded by thickly grow-
ing goose-foot and some sort of bushy field-weeds.
The patients were coming out one by one through
the door, where a keeper was stationed and issuing
toeach one a thick white cowl of knitted cotton with
a red cross in front. These cowls had been to the
war and had been bought up at auction. But it hard-
ly need be said that the new patient attributed a
peculiar, mysterious significance to this red cross. He
took off the cowl and looked at the cross, then at
the poppy flowers. The flowers were more vivid.

"The flower is gaining the victory," said the new

patient. "However, we shall see."
And he came down the steps. Having looked about
 , . ,,
204 /

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 The Red Flower / 205

him but failing to notice the keeper who was stand-

ing behind him, he stepped over the border of the
flower-bed and extended his hand toward the flower,
but could not summon the resolution to pluck it. He
feltheat and a tingling sensation in his extended
hand, and then throughout his body, as though some
powerful current were emanating from the red petals
and penetrating his whole body. He edged nearer
and stretched out his hand to the very flower, but
the flower, as it seemed to him, was defending itself,
emitting a poisonous, lethal breath. His head began
to swim; he made a last desperate effort and had al-
ready seized the stalk, when suddenly a heavy hand
was laid on his shoulder. The keeper had caught him.
"Mustn't pick the flowers,*' said the old Ukrainian.
"And be walking on the flower-bed. There's
don't
lots of you mad folk to be found hereabouts— if each
one picks a flower they'll strip the whole garden," said
he reasoningly, still holding the other by his shoulder.
The patient looked him in the face, silently freed
himself from the other's grasp and, greatly agitated,
started down a garden path. "Oh, you miserable ones!"
he was thinking. "You do not perceive; you have be-
come bhnded to such an extent that you are pro-
tecting the flower. But, whatever may befall, I will
put an end to it. If not today then tomorrow we will
pit our strength against each other. And, should I
perish, what difference would that make?"

He roamed the garden until the very evening,

forming acquaintances and engaging in peculiar con-
versations with them, in which each of the speakers
heard only the answers, expressed in preposterously
mysterious terms, to his own insane ideas. The new
patient walked now with one, now with another, of
his fellow inmates, and toward the end had become
still more convinced that "everything was set," as he
 ,,
206 /

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 The Red Flower / 207

put to himself. Soon— soon!— the gratings of iron

it

bars would fall apart, all those immured in here

would emerge and speed away to the very ends of
the earth, and all the universe would shudder, would
cast off its time-worn husk and present itself in new,
wondrous beauty. He had all but forgotten about the
flower but, as he was leaving the garden and going
up the front steps, he caught sight anew, amid the
thick, darkened and already dewy grass, of what
seemed to him for all the world like two red embers.
Thereupon the new patient fell back from the crowd
of others and, taking a position behind the keeper,
bided an opportune moment. No one saw him as
he leapt over the border of the flower-bed, seized
the flower and hurriedly hid it inside his shirt, next
When the fresh, dewy leaves touched
to his breast.
he turned as pale as death and his eyes
his flesh
opened wide in horror. Cold sweat broke out on his
forehead.

Lamps were lit in the hospital. While awaiting sup-

per the patients for the most part lay down on their
cots, with the exception of several disturbed cases
who were hurriedly pacing the corridor and the main
halls.The patient with the flower was one of these.
He was walking about with his arms convulsively
crossed on his breast: it seemed as if he wanted to
crush, to disintegrate the plant he secreted there.
Upon encountering other patients he gave them a
berth, fearful of touching them with the hem of his
clothing. "Don't come near me— don't come near mel"
he kept calling out. There were but few in the hos-
pital who paid any attention to such outcries. He
walked faster and faster, making his strides longer
and longer; he walked for an hour, for two hours, in
some sort of obdurate frenzy.
"I will tire you out. I will strangle youl" he kept
208 /

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 The Red Flower / 209

saying in a muffled and rancorous voice. At times he

gnashed his teeth.
Supper was served in the mess-hall. Wooden bowls,
gilt and lacquered, filled with a watery gruel of wheat,

were placed on each of the big bare tables; the pa-

tients seated themselves on benches; a slice of black
bread was given to each patient. They ate with wood-
en spoons, eight persons to each bowl. Some, who
had the benefit of a better diet, were served individu-
ally. Our patient, having been called into his room

by a keeper who had also served him his portion,

had gulped it down and, still unsatisfied, went to
the general mess-hall.

"Permit me to take a seat here," he told the super-

visor.

"Why, haven't you had supper?" the supervisor

asked him, ladling out additional portions of gruel
into the bowls.
"I'm very hungry. And I have to fortify myself a
great deal. Food is the only thing keeping me up; you
know that I do not sleep at all."
"Eat hearty, my dear fellow. Taras, give him a
spoon and some bread."
The patient sat down at one of the bowls and sup-
plemented his supper by consuming an enormous
quantity of the gruel.
"There, that's enough, that's enough," the super-
visor said at last,when all had finished their supper
but our patient still sat over his bowl, spooning up
the gruel with one hand while he held the other
tight against his breast. "Youll overeat."
"Eh, you only knew what strength I need—what
if

strengthl Goodbye, Nikolai Nikolayevich," said the

patient, getting up from the table and squeezing the
superintendent's hand hard. "Goodbyel"
. ... , -,
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 The Red Flower / 211

"But where are you going?" the supervisor asked

with a smile.
"I? No place. staying on. But perhaps we won't
get an opportunity to see each other tomorrow. I
thank you for your kindness.*' And once more he
squeezed the superintendent's hand hard. His voice
was quavering; tears came to his eyes.
"Calm down, dear fellow— calm down," the super-
visor responded. "What's the use of such gloomy
thoughts? Go, lie down and have yourself a real good
snooze. You ought to sleep more; if you'll sleep well,
why, you'll get better soon."
The patient was sobbing. The supervisor turned
away to issue orders to the keepers to hurry with
clearing away the remnants of the supper. Half an
hour later the whole hospital was asleep, save for
one man who, still clothed, was lying on his cot in
the corner room. He was shivering as if in a fever
and was convulsively clutching his breast, all satu-
rated (as it seemed to him) with a deadly, unheard-
of venom.
V
He all night. He had plucked this
did not sleep
saw such an action as an exploit
flower because he
which he was bound to perform. At his first glance
into the garden through the glass door the crimson
petals had drawn
his attention and it had seemed
to him from that moment on he had attained to
that
knowledge of what he had to consummate on earth.
In this vivid red flower had collected all the evil of
the universe. He knew that opium is made from pop-
pies;perhaps it was this thought, expanding and tak-
ing on monstrous forms, which had compelled him
to conjure up a frightful fantastic spectre. The
flower was, in his eyes, an incarnation of all evil;
it had absorbed in itself all the blood shed by the
),,
212

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 The Red Flower / 213

innocent (that was precisely why it was so red), all

tears, all of humanity's bile. This was a mysterious
frightful being, the antithesis of God; this was Ahri-
man, who had donned a demure and innocent
guise. Itwas necessary to pluck the flower and
slay it. That was not enough, however; it was neces-
sary to prevent it, as it expired, from pouring forth
all its evil into the universe. That was precisely why

he had hidden it upon his breast. He was hoping

that toward morning the flower would lose all its
power. It evil would pass into his breast, into his
soul, and there it would be overcome or would over-
come, whereupon he himself would perish, would die
—but die like a true champion, and as the first
champion of humanity, inasmuch as up to this time
no one had ventured upon an immediate contest
against all the evil of the universe.
"They did not perceive it. I perceived. Can I al-
low it to live on? Better deathi"
And he lay there, agonizing in a spectral, non-
existent struggle, yet for all that his agony was real
enough.
In the morning the doctor found him barely alive.
But, despite this, after a certain time excitement got
the upper hand; he leapt out of bed and, as before,
started racing through the hospital, talking to the pa-
tients and to himself more loudly and incoherently
than ever. They would not let him out into the gar-
den; the doctor, perceiving that his weight was de-
creasing, but that he still did not sleep and kept
constantly on the go, ordered an injection of a large
dose of morphine to be administered to him. The
patient did not resist; fortunately at this point, his
insane thoughts in some way coincided with this op-
eration. He fell asleep shortly; his frenzied mobihty
ceased and the loud motifj created out of his im-
. ,
214 /

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 The Red Flower / 215

petuous steps and which constantly accompanied

him, vanished from his ears. He became comatose
and ceased thinking of all things— even of the sec-
ond flower, which it was necessary to pluck.
Pluck it he did, just the same— three days later,
before the very eyes of a keeper who had not been
quick enough in forestalling him. The keeper set out
in pursuit of him. With a ringing scream of triumph
the patient dashed into the hospital and, darting into
his cell, hid the plant in his bosom.
"What's the idea of you picking the flowers?" the
keeper who had come running after him wanted to
know. But the patient, who was already lying on
the cot in his habitual position with his arms crossed,
began spouting such nonsense that the keeper mere-
ly removed without a word the cowl with the red
cross which the other in his hurried flight had for-
gotten to hand over, and went out. And the spectral
struggle began anew. The patient felt that evil was
coiling out of the flower in long, crawling currents
that resembled serpents; they were entangling him,
constricting and crushing limbs and saturating
his
all his body with their dreadful content. He wept

and prayed to God in the intervals between the curses

he directed at his foe. Toward evening the flower
wilted. The patient trampled the blackened plant to
shreds, picked up what was left of it from the floor
and bore it the room with the baths. After
off into
tossing the formless little clump of greenery into the
furnace, which was red hot from its anthracite fuel,
he contemplated for a long while his foe hissing,
writhing, and at last turning into a delicate snowy-
white little clump of ash. He blew upon it, and it all
vanished.
The next day the patient worsened. Frightfully
pale, with sunken cheeks, with blazing eyes that had
,,
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216 /

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 The Red Flower / 217

receded deep within their sockets, frequently stum-

bling and in a walk that was by now staggering,
he kept on with his frenzied pacing and talked, talked
without end.
"I wouldn't want to resort to force," the senior doc-
tor remarked to his assistant.

"But it is necessary to put an end to these exer-

tions of his. As of today his weight is ninety-three
pounds. If things go on hke this hell be dead in
two days."
The senior doctor fell into thought. "Morphine?
Chloral?" he spoke half questioningly.

"Yesterday morphine no longer had any effect on

him."
"Give orders to put him under restraint. However,
I doubt that he will survive."

VI

And so they had put the patient under restraint.

He was lying in a straitjacket, tied fast by broad
bands of canvas to the iron slats of his bed. How-
ever, the frenzy of his movements had not abated
but, if anything, had increased. For many hours he
strained stubbornly to free himself from his bonds.
Once, after a powerful lunge, he at last tore one of
the ties, freed his feet and, after slipping out from
under the other restraints, took to pacing the room,
his arms still bound, ranting wildly, incomprehen-
sibly.
"Oh, may the Devil take youl" shouted the keeper
as he came in [lapsing into Ukrainian in his excite-
ment]. "What fiend is giving you a helping hand?
Hrytsko! Ivan Come quick as you can, for he's worked
I

himself loose!"
All three fell upon the patient and there began a
218 /

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 The Red Flower / 219

long struggle, exhausting to the attackers and excru-

ciating to the man defending himself, who was ex-
pending the remnant of his spent strength. Finally
they felled him to the cot and bound him tighter
than ever.
'*You dont understand what you're doingi" the
gasping patient was screaming. 'Tfou are perishingl
I saw a third [flower], which has barely opened . . .

now it is in full readiness. . . . Let me finish my

task! It must be killed— killed, killed! Then every-
thing will be over— everything will be saved. I would
send you, except that the only one who can
carry this out. You would die from its mere touch—"
"Keep quiet, young gentleman— keep quiet," said the
old keeper, who had remained on duty by the bed-
side.

The patient abruptly fell silent. He had

decided to
outwit his keepers. He was kept under restraint
throughout the day and was left thus for the night.
Having fed him his supper, the keeper made a bed
of sorts on the floor near the patient's cot and lay
down. A minute later he was fast asleep; as for the
patient, he fell to work.
He twisted his whole body in such a way as to reach
the metal slat that ran from the head of his bed to
its foot and, having groped until he found it with a
hand confined in the long sleeve of the straitjacket,
began rubbing that sleeve rapidly and hard against
the metal. After some time the stout sailcloth gave in
and he freed an index finger. After that matters went
faster.With a dexterity and suppleness utterly im-
probable in a normal person he untied the knot be-
hind him which made the sleeves taut and unlaced
the jacket, after which he hstened long and closely
to the keeper's snoring. However, the old man was
sound asleep. The patient took off the jacket and un-
.
220

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 The Red Flower / 221

tied himself from the bed. He was free. He tried the

door: itwas locked on the inside and the key was
probably safe in the keeper's pocket. Fearing to awak-
en him he did not dare to search his pockets and de-
cided to leave the room by way of the window.
It was a quiet, warm and dark night; the window
was open; the stars ghmmered against the black sky.
He watched them, distinguishing the familiar constel-
lations and rejoicing because they, as it seemed to
him, understood him and sympathized with him. As
he blinked, he beheld the endless rays which they
were sending him, and his insane resolve increased.
It was necessary to bend aside a bar of the iron
grating, to crawl through the narrow opening into the
dead end grown over with brushwood, to clamber
over the high enclosure. There the last contest would
take place and, after that, let even death come.
He attempted to bend aside a thick bar with his
bare hands, but the iron would not give. Thereupon,
after twisting the stout sleeves of the straitjacket to-
gether, he caught the end of this improvised rope on
the spear-head forged at the end of one of the rods
and hung upon it with all his body. After desperate
exertions, which all but exhausted the remnant of
his strength, the spear-head bent; a narrow passage
was opened. He wriggled through it, scraping his
shoulders, elbows and exposed knees, made his way
through the bushes and came to stop before the wall.
Everything was quiet; the night-lights lit from v^dthin
the windows of the enormous hospital building— there
was no one to be seen in them. No one would notice
him; the old man on duty by his bedside was, prob-
ably, still fast asleep. The stars were slyly winking
with their rays which penetrated to his very heart.
*Tm coming to you," he uttered in a whisper as he
gazed at the sky.
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 The Red Flower / 223

Having lost his grip and fallen after his first at-
tempt at the wall, with his nails torn, his hands and
knees all in blood, he began searching for a hkely
place to climb. There, where the enclosure joined the
wall of the mortuary, several bricks had fallen out
both from the enclosure and the wall. The patient
found these hollows by groping and availed himself
of them. He clambered upon the enclosure, seized
the branches of an elm growing on the other side
and quietly cUmbed down the tree to the ground.
He darted toward the famihar spot near the front
steps. The small head of the flower, with its petals
folded, showed darkly and stood out clearly against
the dewy grass.

"The last one!" the patient got out in a whisper.

"The last! This day will bring either victory or death.
But by now all this makes no difference to me. Wait,"
said he, looking up at the sky, "I will be with you
soon."
He tore the plant out of the ground, rent it to shreds,
crumpled it and, clutching it, retraced the way to his
room. The old man was asleep. The patient barely
reached his bed, keeled over on it in unconsciousness.
In the morning they found him dead. His face was
serene and radiant; the emaciated features, the thin
lips,and the closed eyes deeply sunken in their sock-
ets, allbore an expression of a certain proud happi-
ness. As they were placing him on a stretcher they
tried to unclench his hand and take away the red
flower. But the hand had stiffened, and he bore his
trophy with him to his grave.
 DMITRI
MAMIN-SIBIRYAK

Wintering Station
on Chill River

Translated by

BERNARD GUILBERT GUERNEY

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D. N. MAMIN-SIBIRYAK

Wintering Station
on Chill River

The old man, covered with an old long coat of much-

worn deerskin, was lying on his small bench near the
oven. He had no idea whether the hour was early or
late, and besides there was no way of his knowing,

because daybreak came late, while the sky had been

overcast with low clouds ever since the evening be-
fore. He did not feel like getting up: it was cold in
theJittle hut, and both his back and had
his legs
been aching for several days. He did not feel sleepy,
either, but kept on lying there just to kill time. And
also, where did he have to hurry to? He had been
, .,
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 Wintering Station on Chill River / 229

awakened by a cautious scratching at the door: it was

Muzgarko, a small husky of the Vogul breed with a
spotty coat, who was begging to be let in; he had
been Hving in this small hut for ten years.
"There, 11 you, Muzgarko,'' the old man fell

to grumbling as he muffled himself in the deerskin

coat, head and all. "You just keep on scratching—"
For a time the dog stopped scraping at the door
with his paw, and then broke into a sudden howl, pro-
longed and piteous.
"Ah, may the wolves eat you up I" the old man
swore, getting up from his bench.
He walked over to the door in the dark, opened
it— and understood everything: why his back ached
and why the dog had up a howl. Everything the
set
eye could make out through the partly open door was
covered with snow. Yes, he now saw clearly the liv-
ing network of soft downy snowflakes swirling in the
air. It was dark within the hut but the snow lent

visibility to everything: to the saw-toothed wall of

the forest rearing on the other bank of the river, and
the river itself, swollen and darkened, and the stony
cape, jutting out into the river in a rounded ledge.
The wise dog was squatting before the open door
and was gazing at his master with eyes that spoke
and held great wisdom.
"Well, now, this means the endl'* the old man an-
swered the mute question in the dog's eyes. "Nothing
we can do about it, brother— time to quit I"
The dog wagged his tail and whimpered softly in
that whimper which he reserved as a greeting for
his master alone.
it's time to quit— sure, what can we do, Muz-
"Sure,
garko? Our summer, dear and fair, has whirled by,
and now we'll bed down in our den [for the winter]—"
Muzgarko followed up these words with a light
230 /

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 Wintering Station on Chill River / 231

leap and found himself inside the hut before his

master.
"You don't like the winter, eh?" the old man kept
talking to the dog, readying and lighting the field-

stone oven. "You don t like it, do you?"

The flame flickering in the forepart of the oven lit
up the short bench on which the old man slept and
a whole corner of the small hut. Out of the darkness
there emerged the logs of the wall, logs coated with
soot and blotched with mildew, a net hung up in the
corner, a half -woven pair of bast sandals, a few squir-
rel-skins dangling on a wooden hook and, in the very
foreground, the old man himself, hunched of back,
white of hair, with a face that stirred one to horror.
This face looked just as if it had been slued all to

one hard that the left eye had oozed out and
side, so
then been covered over by its swollen upper lid. How-
ever, this hideousness was somewhat softened by the
white beard. But as far as Muzgarko was concerned
the old man was neither good-looking nor bad-look-
ing.

While the old man was getting the oven going,

daybreak had come. The gray winter morning had
begun, having as difficult a time of it as if the un-
seen sun were finding it painful to shed its light.
Within the small hut one could scarcely make out
the further wall along which extended the broad sleep-
ing ledges, constructed of heavy wooden blocks. The
only window, half of it paned with fish-bladders [in-
stead of glass] , barely let in the light. Muzgarko was
squatting near the threshold, wagging his tail every
now and then and patiently watching his master.
But there can be an end even to a dog's patience and
Muzgarko again gave a faint whimper.
"Right away— don't be impatient," the old man
232 /

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 Wintering Station on Chill River / 233

answered him, moving a cast-iron pot with water near-

er the fire. "You'll get there in good time/*
Muzgarko lay down and, putting his pointy-muz-
zled head on his forepaws, would not take his eyes
off his master. When the old man had thrown a short
holey canvas jacket over his shoulders the dog broke
into joyous barking and dashed for the door.
"No wonder the small of my back has been aching
for the third day by now," the old man explained to
the dog as they went along. "That showed the weather
would worsen, it turns out. Look at how fast the
dear snow is coming down."
Everything around and about had changed entirely
in a single night: the forest appeared to be nearer,
the river seemed to have become narrower, while the
low wintry clouds crawled over the very ground, all
but catching at the tips of the firs and silver firs. In
general, the view was a most woebegone one, and
the downy flakes of snow kept swirhng in the air and
fell without a sound on an earth stilled in death.

The old man looked back at his Httle hut: beyond it,
receding into the distance, lay a rust-covered swamp,
barely reheved by stunted bushes and sharp reeds.
With short breaks this swamp stretched along for
more than thirty miles and isolated the hut from all
the living world. And how tiny it appeared now to
the old man, this hut, just as if, overnight, it had
grown into the ground.
A funny [a boat which is so much of a cockleshell
that the Russians call it destroyer-of-souls] was
moored close to the riverbank. Muzgarko was the
first to jump into it; he propped his forepaws against
the gunwale and looked sharply up the river, toward
where the cape jutted out, and whimpered faintly.
"What are you so overjoyed about ahead of time?"
the old man called out to the dog. "Hold on; maybe
there's nothing at all there."
234 /

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But the dog knew that there was something there

and whimpered again: he saw the submerged floats
of the tackle lowered into a stretch of deep still water.
The boat flew off upstream, close to the very bank.
The old man was standing and poling the boat on-
ward. He, too, knew by the dog's whimper that there
would be a catch. The tackle had actually sunk from
the weight at its very middle and, as the boat came
near, the wooden floats were drawn downward.
'We Ve got something, Muzgarko—
The tackle consisted of atowHne with leaders of
stout cord and horsehair. Every leader terminated in
a sharply barbed hook. Upon reaching one end of the
tackle the old man began hauhng it cautiously into
the boat. The catch was a good one: two big
gwyniads, several sanders, a pike and no less than
five sterlets. The pike happened to be a big one and
there was a great deal of fuss with it. The old man
cautiously drew it close to the boat and, first off,
stunned it with his barge-pole, and only after that
did he pull it out. Muzgarko was squatting at the
prow and attentively watching the work going on.
"You're fond of a Uttle sterlet, eh?" the old man
teased, holding up the fish for the dog to see. "And
yet you don't know how to catch it! Wait, we'll sure
cook up a mess of fishchowder today. Fish go more
for a hook when it's coming on for bad weather.
They're shoaling now in deep still water for their
winter sleep, and that's where we'll be fishing them
out of— they'll be all ours. We'd best be getting along,
though. There, now let's head for homel Well hang
up them gwyniads, dry them and then sell them to
the traders—"
The oldman had been storing up fish ever since
spring; some he cured in the sun, others he dried in
the hut, while the scraps he dumped into a deep pit,
236

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 Wintering Station on Chill River / 237

something like a well: these went to feed Muzgarko.

He never lacked for fresh fish throughout the year;
the only thing was, he hadn't salt enough to salt the
fish down, and at times ran short of flour, as was the
case right now. The supplies left for him were sup-
posed to last from one winter to the next.
"The sled-train will be here soon," the old man ex-
plained to the dog. "They'll bring not only flour for
you and me but salt and gunpowder. Only thing is,

that little hut has all but fallen apart, Muzgarko."

An autumn day is short. The old man kept walking
around his Httle hut all the time, fixing now one thing,
now another, so's to hole in as best he could against
the winter. In one spot the moss had come out of the
chinks between the logs, in another a log had rot-
ted a bit, in a third a corner of the hut had sagged
altogether— first thing you knew it would fall away.
A new hut should have been put up long ago, but
then you couldn't do anything all by yourself, no mat-
ter what.
"Maybe I'll pull through the winter, somehow or
another," the old man was thinking aloud, tapping
away with his ax at a wall. "But when the sled-train
comes, why, then—"
The fallen snow brought all of the old mans
thoughts around to the sled-train, which used to come
along with the first snow that made sledding possible,
when the rivers froze over. Once a year— that's the
only time he ever saw any human beings. There was
plenty to think about. Muzgarko had an excellent un-
derstanding of his master's every word, and at the
mere phrase sled-train looked upstream and yelped
if by way of an answer: there, now, that's
for joy, as
where that there sled-train will come from— from
around that cape, nowl
A quite roomy, lean-to of rough-hewn logs had been
238

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 Wintering Station on Chill River / 239

put up against the hut; in the summer this lean-to

served as a storehouse and, in the winter, as a bar-
racks for the carters to sleep in. In order to protect
the horses against the inclement weather of winter,
the old man beginning of autumn would con-
at the
struct a large enclosure of young, downy, silver firs.
The horses would get all tuckered out by the hard
going, would break out in a sweat, and yet the wind
blew cold, especially from the quarter where the sun
rises. Ah, what the wind would be like! Even a tree

couldn't bear up under it and would turn its branches

toward a quarter where there was warmth, whence
every kind of bird came flying in the spring.
Having done with his tasks the old man set down
on a tree-stump under the window of the hut and
fell into deep thought. The dog squatted at his feet

and placed his intelligent head on his master's knees.

What was the old man thinking about? The first snow
always both rejoiced him and brought on wearisome
thoughts, reminding him of old matters, of that which
had been left behind there, beyond those mountains
out of which Chill River issued. There he had had a
house of his own, and a family, and kindred too, but
now there was nary a soul left. He had outlived them
all, and this was where God had brought him to to

finish out his days: he would die, and there would be

none to close his eyes. Oh, heavy is the loneliness of
the old, but here you also had the forest all around
you, the stillness was eternal, and never a body to
say a word to! One solace alone was left to him—his
dog. And, sure enough, the old man loved him far
more than folks love one another. Why, the dog meant
everything to him and loved him in his turn. It had
happened more than once that, while out hunting,
Muzgarko had offered up his doggy hfe for his master,
and by now he had been twice mauled by bears for
his devil-may-care bravery.
240

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 Wintering Station on Chill River / 241

"Come now, but you Ve gotten old, Muzgarko," the

old man was saying as he stroked the dog's back.
"There, even your back has become all straight, like

a wolf's, and your teeth have dulled, and there's a

dimness in your eyes. Eh, old fellow, old fellow, but
the wolves will make a meal of you this winterl It's
time for you and me to be turning up our toes, it looks
like."

The dog was willing to die, too, if it came to that.

He merely snuggled closer to his master with all his
body and blinked piteously. But his master sat there
and kept on staring at the darkened river, at the im-
penetrable forest receding in a [green] wall for hun-
dreds of miles over there, toward the icy sea, toward
the barely perceptible glimmering mountains on the
upper reaches of Chill River—he stared and never
stirred, gripped by his oppressive old-man thoughts.

This was what the old man was thinking about:

He had been born and had grown up in the tiny,
godforsaken forest village of Chalpan, which had
squatted down by the Kolva River. It was a godfor-
saken, forest-bound spot; grain would not grow there,
and some of the muzhiks went in for hunting, other
for rafting lumber, others still for fishing. The village
was a poverty-stricken one, as almost all the villages
in the Cherdyn region were, and many of the villagers
betook themselves in this direction or that to earn a
living: to the salt-works at Ussolie, to the places where
the lumber-rafts started out over Vishera River and
where the lumbermen built enormous barges, to the
pig-iron foundries along Kama River.
He who was an old man now had at that time been
altogether a young lad, and in his village they called
him Yeleska Shishmar—his whole family consisted of
Shishmars. His father won his bread by hunting and
Yeleska, while still a boy, had covered all of the River
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 Wintering Station on Chill River / 243

Kolva region with him. They went after hazel grouse,

and after squirrels, and martens, and deer— whatever
came their way. They would leave home for two or
three weeks at a time. Later on Yeleska grew up,
married and started hving in his own house in Chal-
pan, while he himself followed hunting for a Hving,
just as before. Little by little a family of Yeleska's own
started growing up— two boys and a girl; the fine
youngsters were growing up, and would have been of
help to their father in his old age. But it pleased God
to will things otherwise: during the year of cholera
Yeleska's family died off. This calamity had come in
the autumn, when he had gone with a band of other
hunters after deer in the mountains. When Yeleska
had he was a family man, but when he had come
left

back he was all by his lonesome. Half the folk in

Chalpan died off at that time: the cholera had come
over to Kolva River from the Kama, where the muzhiks
of Chalpan used to go work on the timber-rafts. And
it was they who had carried back the frightful plague

which mowed down people like so much grass.

For a long while did Yeleska grieve, yet he did not
remarry: it was too late to start a new family. And

thus he had remained all by his lonesome, and took

to hunting harder than ever. Things were blithe in
the forest, and besides Yeleska had grown much too
used to such a life. Only here, too, a great misfortune
befell him. He had come upon and thoroughly scouted
a bear's lair, had spied out that the beast was a good-
ly one, and had already calculated beforehand that
he would get all of five roubles for that bear's skin
in Cherdyn. It wasn't the first time that Yeleska had
gone out against such a beast with spear and knife,
but this time he muffed it: his foot slipped and the
bear got him down. The infuriated beast mauled the
hunter almost to death and, with one swipe of its
244 /

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 Wintering Station on Chill River / 245

paw, slued his whole face to one side. It was all

Yeleska could do to crawl home from the forest, and

here the medicine man of the village treated him for
all of half a year:he remained alive— the only thing
was, he had become a monster of hideousness. He
couldn't go ofiF into the forest for any great distance,
as before, when he used to follow the slot of a moose
for fifty miles on skis, he couldn't follow his calling
on equal terms with other hunters— in short, inescapa-
ble misfortune had moved in on him.
There was nothing for Yeleska to do in his village;
to live on the alms of the community was something
he wasn't keen on doing, and so he set out for the
town of Cherdyn to see some traders he knew, to
whom he had hitherto been selling his hunter's spoils.
Perhaps the well-to-do traders would manage to find
some berth or other for Yeleska. And find one they did.
"Ever been on the portage between the Kolma and
the Pechora?" the buyers-up asked him. "There's a
wintering station on Chill River— so you'll be the care-
taker there. There'swork there only in the winter: to
meet the sled-trains and see them o£F, and after that
you can have a good time all to yourself the year
round. We're going to give you provisions, and cloth-
ing, and everything you need for hunting— you can
hunt right near the wintering hut."
"It's kind of far, your honor," Yeleska hesitated.
"There's nobody any direction
for sixty-five miles in
from that wintering place, and in the summertime
there's really no way of getting through to it."

'Well, now, that's up to you; choose which you

like: starving at home or living like your own lord
and master at the wintering station—"

Yeleska thought it over and agreed; as for the

traders, they sent him shipments of provisions and

clothing only the first year. After that Yeleska had to
246 /

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 Wintering Station on Chill River / 247

buy everything with his own money, earned by

hunting and fishing at the wintering station. And
that's how he lived in the forest. Year after year went
by. Yeleska grew old and feared but one thing: that
his hour of death would come and there would be no
one around to bury him.

II

Before the coming of the sled-train, while the riv-

ers were still not frozen over the old man managed
to go hunting several times. The hazel grouse had
reached their prime long since, but it wasn't worth
while killing the birds—because they would rot any-
way while it was warm. The clerk in charge of the
sled-train always bought the hazel grouse from the
old man with particular satisfaction, since these lo-
calities produced firm-fleshed and white birds which
would keep a long while, a point of the utmost im-
portance because the grouse killed on Chill River
winged their way as far as Paris. They were bought
up by the traders of Cherdyn and then sent on to
Moscow, while from Moscow the birds were shipped
abroad in huge batches. The old man knew every
tree for fifteen miles around his hut and, beginning
with summer, made a note of all the hazel grouse
broods: the nests where they were hatched, where
they congregated, and where their feeding grounds
were. When the broods matured he knew how many
birds there were in each, but wouldn't kill one bird
for himself, since this was his most valuable product
and he received for it the most valuable supplies gun- :

powder and birdshot.

That season's hunting had been unusually lucky,
so that the old man had readied thirty brace even
before the coming of the first sled-train, and there
was only one thing he feared: being caught by a
248 /

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 Wintering Station on Chill River / 249

sudden thaw. Such a thaw happened but rarely on

Chill River, yet happen it could, at that.
'Well, now, me and you have gotten enough for
the supplies," the old man explained to the dog, whom
he always talked to as if Muzgarko were a human
being. "And whilst the sled-train is on its way with

flour to the Pechora, we'll work things so's to get us

some grub as well. Main thing is to get as much salt
asone can. If we had us some salt, why, there wouldn't
be anyone richer than ourselves from here all the way
to Cherdyn itself."

*'Ah, if only there were salt!" the old man was for-
ever saying. "Wewouldn't be just making out to live
but life would be paradise for fair!" Now he caught
only enough fish for himself, while what was left over
he dried— but how much did such dried fish fetch?
But, if there were salt, he would salt the fish down,
just as the Pechora fishermen did, and would get
twice as much it now fetched. Salt came
for his fish as
high, however, would have been necessary
and yet it

to put in a supply of something like six hundred

pounds—but where was a body to get as huge a sum
as that would take, when he was hard put to it to
make enough for grub and clothing? The old man
was especially grieved whenever, during summertime,
just before St. Peter's fast-day, he happened to kill a
deer; fresh meat spoiled quickly: he'd eat venison for
a couple of days, and then you might as well throw
it out! For jerked venison is just like wood.
Chill River, too, froze over. For a long spell the
cold mountain water would not freeze over, and when
it did the ice would be riddled all over with patches
of open water. A sign, this, of springs welling up from
the riverbed. The old man was now storing up fresh
well— you could freeze it right off, just the way
fish as

you did with the hazel grouse. The worst trouble was
 . ,
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 Wintering Station on Chill River / 251

that there just wasn't time enough. First thing you

knew would be right there.
the sled-train
**Our grub will be getting here soon, Muzgarko."
As a matter of fact, the old man had run out of
flour even before the early frosts and was eking out
the scrapings of rye meal with fish pemmican. You
just couldn t eat meat or fish all by itself. In three
days you'd get so fed up with either that you wouldn't
be able to take the one or the other into your mouth
for a long while afterward. The Samoyeds and the
Voguls, of course, subsisted on nothing but fish— well,
they were used to that, but a Russian was a bread-
eater and couldn't be following their ways.
The sled-train arrived altogether unexpectedly. It
was during the night and the old man was asleep
when there came the creaking of the sleds and he
heard the hail: "Hi, there, grandpa—you still amongst
the living? Welcome your guests—we ain't seen each
other for a long timel"
What astonished the old man most of all was that
Muzgarko had been caught napping at his post and
had given no warning of the dear expected guests.
Usually he sensed them whenever the sled-train was
still more than a mile away, but this time he hadn't

heard a thing. He did not even jump out of doors

to bark a bit at the horses but bashfully hid himself
under his master's bench and did not make a sound.
**Why, Muzgarko, are you in your right mind?" the
old man voiced his surprise. "You slept through the
coming of the sled-train— ah, but that's bad I" The dog
crawled out from under the bench, licked his mas-
ter's hand and hid again—he himself felt that he was

at fault. "Eh, but he's grown old— he's lost his scent,"
the old man remarked. "And he hears but poorly with
his left ear."
The sled-train consisted of some fifty carts mounted
252

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 Wintering Station on Chill River / 253

on runners. The traders of Cherdyn were sending to

the Pechora, over the first sundry
snow, flour, salt,

provisions and fishing tackle, and would bring back

fresh fish from there. The business called for the ut-
most haste, so as to obtain Pechora fish ahead of
other traders— there was a run of Pechora salmon,
which always brought high prices. The sled-train had
to break a trail in a fortnight, and the carters slept
only during the halts for feeding and resting the
horses. They were in particular hurry on the way
back— and then hardly a chance turned up to do
any sleeping. And yet the road along this portage
was a difficult one, especially the traverse through the
mountains. A
road abominable, stone-strewn; the run-
ners were not bound with iron, while everywhere
along the rivers there were washouts and treacherous
ice. Many good had perished here, and as for
horses
the men, they work as no men worked else-
had to
where: to drag the sleds uphill by themselves, to fish
them out of the water, to pull them back when they
skidded off the road. And it was only the carters of
the Kolva who
tackled such accursed work, inasmuch
as it was need which drove them to the Pechora.
bitter
At the wintering hut on Chill River the sled-train
took a breathing spell: instead of a two-hour halt for
feeding, the horses were allowed all of four hours to
rest up as well. The old man had heated the barracks
beforehand and the carters, having unharnessed the
horses for feeding, keeled over on the broad ledges
to sleep the dead sleep of carters. It was only the
traders* young clerk who did not sleep: this was his
first trip to the Pechora. He was sitting in the old

man's hut and talking.

"And aren't you afraid in the forest, grandpa?'*
"Why, Christ be with us, what's there to be afraid
of? It's something we're used to. We grew up in the
forest."
254

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 Wintering Station on Chill River / 255

"But how can a body help but be afraid— all by

oneself in the forest—"
", I've got me a little hound. And that's how
the two of us spend the time. There, of winters, the
wolves get to be too much for me; well, he tells me
beforehand when they're coming to pay me a visit.
He senses them. And, puny as he is, he himself stirs
up the wolves. They start going after him and I blaze
away at them with my gun. The smartest of any dog
there is— only thing is, he can't speak up hke a human
being. I talk to him all the time— for otherwise, Hke
as not, a body could forget for fair that he ever learned
to talk."
"But where did you ever get a dog hke that, grand-
pa?"
"\\, it was sent me by God. It ain't fitting to say
a thing hke that about a hound, but that's what it

looks like. A long time ago, this was—ten years back,

you might now, one winter, just around
say. Well,
Christmas, was tracking moose up in the mountains.
I

I had me a httle dog— I'd brought him with me aU

the way from Kolva. Well, he weren't a bad httle

hound, all that a dog should be; he went after wild
hfe, and searched out fowl, and squirrels— all fit and
proper. Well, tlien, I was going through the forest
with him when all of a sudden this here Muzgarko
ups and jumps straight at me. Scared me, for a fact.
It ain't usual for our hunting dogs to be making up

to a stranger as if to a master, but this one had simply

rushed to me. That's when I saw that somethincr was
wrong, somehow. But that hound were sort of look-
ing at me, ever so knowingly, and leading me on and
on all the time. And what do you think, my friend-
he brought me to where he had wanted me to go,
after all! What do I see, standing in a hollow, but a

small wickiup of pine branches, and there was just

,
256

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 Wintering Station on Chill River / 257

a wisp of vapor coming out of it. I walked up to it.

There was a Vogul lying in the wickiup— he was sick,
you see, and had fallen behind his fellow hunters. To
put it real straight to you, the man was dying. Illness
had overcome him while on a hunt— the others couldn't
wait. When he saw me he was glad— yet he himself
could barely move his tongue. Explained everything
in sign language for the most part. Well, then, it was
him that gave me this little hound, by way of his
blessing. And he died before my eyes, poor soul, and
it was me that buried him in the snow, piling dead-

wood over him and putting a log on top of every-

thing to press it down, so's the wolves wouldn't de-
vour his body. As for Muzgarko, he became mine,
you see. And so I named him just that, after the river
close to where Vogul lay dying. Muzgarko is
that
what they called that river— well, then, I gave the
dog the same name. And a smart little hound he is,
at that. When you go through a forest you won't find
anything he overlooked— not if you was to sweep up
with a crude broom. You think he don't understand
right now it's him we're talking about? He under-
stands everything—"
"But why is he lying there under that bench?"
"Why, ashamed of himself, on account
he's feeling
of he weren't watchful enough about the sled-train.
He's grown old. He saved me twice from bears: each
time, when the bear went for me, why, he brought
him up short. Before, when I still had my strength,
I used to go for bear with a spear, but ever since
one of them fixed me up real proper, I aim to bring
the creature down with a gun. You've got to know
how to get the best of him, at that; he's the cunning-
est of all beasts."

"Well, now, come winter— I guess it must be weari-

some to sit cooped up in your little hut?"
,
, . .,.
258

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 Wintering Station on Chill River / 259

"Matter of getting used to it. Only thing is, when

hohdays come around, it does get sort of wearisome.
The good folk are all in church, but IVe got the
wolves howling a mass for me. Well, at times like that
I set a taper to glowing warmly before a holy image,

and sing a service by myself. And I pray and I cry, at

that.''

A fine fellow was and so young a man,

this clerk,
and he had to know everything. Yeleska was over-
joyed to see a living person and kept on telling about
his lonely Hfe in the forest.

"Come spring, I have me a holiday, young fellow,

when the birds come winging from beyond the warm
sea. And how many of them come flying— clouds upon
clouds of them! All of Chill River looks as if it were
covered with them in heaps. Every sort of bird: there's
ducks, and geese, and snipe, and gulls, and loons.
When you come out at dawn why, there's a great
moan, sort of, soaring over Chill River. And there's
no better creature than your migratory bird— it's God's
own creature. Thousands upon thousands of miles it
flies; it's bound to get tired, to get thin, and glad

it is to find a spot for itself. It has flown here, taken

a brief day's breathing spell, and right off starts con-
triving a nest for itself. But me, I walk about and
look on— God has sent me guests. And the way those
birds talk amongst themselves I You Hsten and listen,
and you can't help tears coming to your eyes. A
right pleasant creature, is the migratory bird. I don't
touch it, seeing as how it's a toiler before the Lord.
And when those birds are building their nests, isn't
it at God's own behest? No man can contrive things
the way the birds do. And then the mother ducks
swim out into Chill River with their ducklings— that's
beauty, that's joy. They swim, they splash about, they
quack. There's never an end to migratory birds here-
260

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 Wintering Station on Chill River / 261

abouts. All the dear summer whirls by like a holiday,

but toward fall the birds start gathering in small flocks:
time to be on their way. And so they gather, the way
people do. They gabble in their own language, they
bustle about, they teach their young, and they're up
and away. Early in the morning they've taken oflF,
with a leader flying at their head. But there's also
them that stay behind: one may turn out to be faihng
in health, or else there's young ones that was late in
hatching. It's a pity just to look at them. They call
loudly, the poor things, when flock after flock goes
flying past them. They keep hanging around Chill
River all the time. They swim and they swim, until
ice forms along the banks; then they keep going
around and around in the patches of open water. Well,
them I knock over out of pity. What's the use of a
bird like that struggling along and suffering— it's
bound to perish anyway. I've got swans weaving their
nests in the swamp here. There's a God's behest all
its own for every creature— there's a hmit set for each
one. There's but one thing I lack, dear man: how
many years have I been begging the carters to bring
me a cockerel. The nights are longer in winter, you
see— there's no end to a winter night, but a Uttle
rooster would tell me what the hour is out of doors."
"Next trip I'll bring you the throatiest rooster there
is, grandpa: he'll bawl for you like any deacon."
"Ah, my
own, you sure would pleasure an old man.
We sure would
start Hving high, the three of us. It's
wearisome when a dead silence falls over everything,
but if there were a rooster around, why, just one
look at him and he'd cheer us up. It's no ordinary
creature, at that, a rooster isn't; there's not another
such for telling the hours. It was for man's good
that the rooster was created."
The clerk was called Flegont. He left not only
,
262

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 Wintering Station on Chill River / 263

flour for Yeleska but salt, and a new shirt, and gun-
powder. And on his way back from the Pechora he
brought him a present.
"I've brought you your clock, grandpa,'' said he
gaily, handing him a sack that held a rooster.
**Ah, my provider— ah, dear man! But come, how
am I to thank you? There, may God send you what-
ever you yourself desire. Like as not you have an eye
on a bride for yourself somewhere— well, in that case,
may there be love and good counsel—"
"There is a httle vanit)' of that sort, grandpa,"
Flegont answered gaily, with a toss of his ruddy curls.
"There's a pair of radiant eyes in Cherdyn— they gave
me but one look and have cast a spell over me. Well,
remain in God's keeping."
put by a sable skin for your bride against next
"Ill
faU, when
you'll be heading for the Pechora again.
I've got my eye on a particular one."

The sled-train went oflF on its return trip and the

old man remainedwith the httle rooster. And what
gladsomeness there was, to be sure! It was a mottled
little rooster, its comb small and red; it strutted about
the httle hut, its every bit of a feather aglow with
color. And, at night, how it would crow! There was
gladsomeness and solace for you! Yeleska got into
the way of talking to his httle rooster each morning,
and Muzgarko would be Hstening to the two of them.
"Well, are you feehng jealous, old timer?" Yeleska
teased the dog. "Barking— that's all there is to your
trade— well, now, hear you sing out like a rooster!"
let's

The old man noticed that Muzgarko had fallen into

low spirits. He went about so cast down, sort of. The
dog was coming down with something. One might
think the carters had put the evil eye on him.
'What's come over you, Muzgarushko? Where does
it hurt you?"
264

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 Wintering Station on Chill River / 265

Muzgarko lay there under the bench, with his head

down between his forepaws, and all he did was blink.
The old man was alarmed: an unexpected calamity
had come upon him. But Muzgarko kept lying there;
he wouldn't eat, he wouldn't drink, and there was
nary a sound out of him.
"Muzgarushko, my dear onel''
Muzgarko gave a wag of his tail, crawled over to
his master, licked his hand and let out a low howl.
Oh, but things were in a bad wayl

III

The wind roamed over Chill River; it swept the

snow into drifts taller than any man; it howled in
the forest just like a ravening wolf; Yeleska's small
hut was sunk entirely under the snow: about all that
stuck up out of the snow was the chimney, with a
streamlet of blue smoke coming out of it.
It was two weeks by now that the blizzard-witch

had been howling; it was two weeks now that the old
man hadn't set foot out of his little hut and has been
sitting over the sick dog. As for Muzgarko, he just
lay there and was barely breathing: Muzgarko's death
had come to claim him.
"My provider," the old man wept and kissed his
faithful friend. "Come, now, my dear one— where does
it hurt you?"
Muzgarko didn't respond— he always had, up to
now. He had long since sensed the coming of his
death and was keeping silent. The old man wept,
crushed by his grief, yet there was nothing he could
do: there's no medicine against death. Ah, what a
cruel woe had come crashing down upon him! The
old man's last hope died with Muzgarko, and nothing
—nothing— was left him save death. Who would now
go seeking out squirrels, whose barking would flush
a mountain-cock, who would track down a deer?
2G6 /

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 Wintering Station on Chill River / 267

Death would come without Muzgarko, a dreadful

death through starvation. The supply of flour would
last until Epiphany, but after that one would have to
lie down and die. . . .

The blizzard-witch howled, while the old man re-

called how he had lived with Nfuzgarko, how he had
gone hunting and brought down his quarr>'. W^at
would he do without a dog?
And then there were the wolves. They had sensed
that misfortune was afoot, had made they way to the
httle hut and broken into their howHng chorus. All
night long they would keep howhng like that, wrench-
ing one's \'er\' soul. There's wasn't anyone to throw
a scare into them, to deafen them with barking, to
entice them near enough for a shot. The old man re-
called the time when a bear— a stray—had been get-
tincr the best of him. Stravs— that's what thev call those
bears who have failed to crawl into their lairs at
autumn for and who keep roaming
hibernation
through the forest. A stray Hke that is the most dan-
gerous of beasts. Well, then, this bear had gotten
into the habit of hangrin^ around the httle hut: he
had sniffed out that the old man had supphes stored
away. Soon as it was night, the bear was right there.
Twice he had clambered up on the roof and scraped
the snow away with his paws. Then he had wTcnched
off the door to the barracks and hauled off a whole
mound of fish that the old man had stashed away.
The upshot was that he plagued Yeleska so much that
there was no putting up with it any longer. He got
Yeleska's dander up so \^'ith his mischievousness that
the old man loaded his rifle with a bullet and made a
sortie with Muzgarko. The bear simply made a rush

for the old man and would have crushed him under
with his weight for sure before the hunter would
have time to fire at him, but Muzgarko had saved
268 /

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 Wintering Station on Chill River / 269

him. The dog sank his teeth into the beast's haunch
and brought him down squatting— and Yeleska's bul-
let didn'tknow what missing was. But then, was
. . .

there any lack of instances when the dog had saved

the old man?
Muzgarko pegged out right before Christmas,
when the frost was crackhng through the forest. It
happened at night. Yeleska was lying on his bench
and dozing. Suddenly something went through him,
just as if he had been pricked. He sprang off the
bench, blew up the embers, lit a rushlight and walked
over to the dog: Muzgarko was lying there dead.
An icy chill went through Yeleska: this meant his
own death.

"Muzgarko, Muzgarko," the unfortunate old man

kept saying as he kissed his dead friend. "What am
I going to do without you?"

Yeleska would not have the wolves devouring the

dead Muzgarko and he buried him in the barracks.
For three days he kept hacking at the frozen ground,
made a small grave and, all in tears, buried his faith-
ful friend therein. There remained only the httle
rooster who, even as before, woke the old man at
night. Yeleskawould awake and at once recall Muz-
garko, and grievous would he feel and weary unto
death. There was no one to talk to. Of course, the
cockerel was a diverting bird but, after all, it was
no more than a bird and couldn't understand a thing.
"Eh, Muzgarkol" Yeleska would repeat several times
a day, as he felt that everything was slipping through
his fingers.

Poor folk are forced to forget their woe at their

work. And thushappened in this case. The sup-
it

pUes of flour were coming to an end and it was time

for Yeleska to give some thought to his own head.
270

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 Wintering Station on Chill River / 271

But, mainly, it now seemed wearisome to him to stay

on in his httle hut.
"Eh, I'm going to drop everything; I'll go home

to Kolva, or else I'll make my way to Cherdynl" the

old man decided.
He put to rightshis skis on which, when he had
stillbeen young, he had gone after deer, made him-
self a knapsack [of birchbark], took along five days*
supplies for the road, bade farewell to Muzgarko's
grave and set out. It was a pity to leave the cockerel
to shift for himself and Yeleska took him along: he
put the bird in his knapsack and carried him thus.
The old man went as far as the stony cape, looked
back at his dwelling and burst into tears: he felt
sorry about the warm spot where he had roosted so
long.
"Goodbye, Muzgarko—
Toilsome was the way that led from his wintering
place to Kolva. At first it had been necessary to go
on skis along Chill River. This had been easy, but then
the mountains began and the old man
soon became
exhausted. Formerly, mind you, he had raced upon
the mountains Hke a very deer, but this time, having
covered only a dozen miles or so, he discovered all
his strength was gone. Might as well lie down and
die. He
hollowed out as deep a pit as he could in
the snow, lined it with pine needles, got a small fire
going, ate of that which he had in his knapsack and
lay down for a rest. And he covered the cockerel over
with the knapsack. He was so tired that he soon fell
asleep. No telling how long he slept— it may have
been for a long spell or a short, but he was awakened
by a cockcrow. "Wolves—" the thought flashed through
his head.

He did not feel like getting up, nor could he, just
as if someone had bound him with ropes. He could
272

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 Wintering Station on Chill River / 273

not as much as open his eyes. The rooster crowed once

more and fell silent: he was dragged out of the pit
by a wolf, knapsack and all. The old man wanted to
get up on his feet; he made a frightful exertion and
suddenly heard a familiar barking— just as if Muz-
garko had started barking underground. Yes, Muz-
garko it was. .Nearer, still nearer— the dog was
. .

following a scent, with nose close to the ground.

There, he was altogether near, at the very edge of
the pit. Yeleska opened his eyes— and saw Muzgarko,
sure enough, and, together with Muzgarko, that very
Vogul, Muzgarko's first master, whom Yeleska had
buried in the snow.
'Tou here, grandfather?" the Vogul asked him, and
he was laughing the while. "IVe come to fetch you—"
There was a gust of cold wind; it snatched clods
of snow off the firs and silver firs, and the snow came
powdering down on dead Yeleska; toward morning
there wasn't as much as a trace left of his small pit.
 NIKOLAI LESKOV

The Tale of the

Squint-eyed, Left-
handed Smith of Tula
and the Steel Flea

Translated by

BERNARD GUILBERT GUERNEY

This translation is dedicated to Professor
Roy Heckler, as a mark of the translator's admiration
for his rare skills and exceptional
understanding of the psychology of our
(theoretically) lesser brethren.
 «

(
1
..

, -
. ,-
-

- -
 N. S. LESKOV

The Tale of the Squint-eyed.

Left-handed Smith of Tula
and the Steel Flea

When the Emperor Alexander Pavlovich got all done

with the Council of Vienna/ why, he felt Hke taking
him a ride through Europe and having a look-see at
the wonders in all them different realms. So he went
round and about in all them lands, and everywhere,
on account of the kindliness that was in him, he al-
ways held the heartiest of heart-to-heart talks with
iMore correctly, theCongress of Vienna (1814-1815), which
resulted in the Holy Alliance. Alexander Pavlovich is Alexan-
der I, who began with liberal tendencies and wound up as a
reactionary and a religious maniac (Trans.).
,. , , -
278 /

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(soap factories) and
.
from
(saw
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Ed.
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 279

all sorts and conditions of men, and all of them

aroused his wonderment in one way or another, and
they all done their best to dispose him in their favor;
however, he was companied by Platov, that Don Cos-
sack,2 who weren't any too keen on any such in-
disposition overcoming his Sovereign and, being him-
self homesick for his own homestead, was forever
coaxing him to be heading for home. And no sooner
would he notice that his Sovereign was getting far
too interested in something of a foreign nature than,
even though all of the Sovereign's retinue might be
[standing around him and] keeping mum, he would
up and come right out with something Hke: "Be that
as it may, but we, too, got things not a smitchin
worse back home," and, one way or another, but he
would get his Sovereign away from there.
The Britishers was aware of all this, and by the
time the Emperor was due to arrive they had thought
up sundry cunning devices, so's to captivate him with
their outlandish ways and wean him from the Rus-
sians, and in many cases they got what they was
after, especially at great assembhes, since Platov
wasn't able to speak French quite well, seeing as how
he were a married man and considered all them French
parleyvooings just so much stuff and nonsense, not
worth giving a second thought to. But when the
Britishers took to inviting the Emperor to all them
guild-houses of theirs, and their ordnance plants and
soap-and-rope factories, so's to show their superiority
to us in all things and to glorify themselves thereby,
Platov said to himself: "Well, that there is the last
straw. Up to now I've been patient, but this can't go

2 Count Matvei Ivanovich Platov, Ataman of the Don Army;

popular hero who took an exceedingly active part in practically
all the main battles against Napoleon, from 1812 (when he
came within a frog's whisker of capturing Napoleon himself at
Malo-Yaroslavets) to 1815 (Trans.).
, :
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(Ed.).
3

(Ed.).
, ,
Corruption of
museum or collection of unusual objects

crooked, literally "humpbacked"

•*

tive

seater)
,
,
and
vodka made from grapes in the city of Kizliar.
The corruption stems from the word's similarity to the adjec-

6 Literally:
sour (Ed.).
"morning

(to
is wiser than night" (Ed.).
coined by Leskov from
sit down) —Ed.
(two
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 281

on. Whether can have my say or no, I'm not in-

I

tending to go back on my own people."

No sooner had he said that to himself, though, than
the Emperor said to him: "This, that, and the other,
but tomorrow you and I are going to take a look at
their mihtary museum. There," said he, "youll see
such kinds of perfection that at the mere sight of
them you'll give over argufying any more that we
Russians amount to anything to signify much."

Platov, he made no answer to the Emperor; he just

buried his great humped nose in his shaggy felt cloak,
and when he got to his quarters he bade his orderly
him a flask of Caucasian Kizlyar grape-brandy
to fetch
[he called it kislyarka, or sour stuff] out of the cellar-
ette, scoffed off a brimming tumblerful of it, prayed to
God before a folding case of holy images, covered
himself with his felt cloak and fell to snoring so hard
that never a Britisher in the house could possibly
get a wink of sleep that night.
Morning, he figured, brings counsel.

II

Next day the Emperor and Platov set out for the
arsenal-museum. The Emperor didn't take any other
Russian along, since they had sent him only a two-
seat carriage.
They drove up to a building that was ever so huge

I
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in le?'::- r;-it:t:;-:: -^,* an
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- ; - : z : - : («^>-bL
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: : 1- fjMff (lamcoat)—Ed.
: :
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-t ^ ^ 1- Ed.).
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 283

—you just couldn't describe the front entrance, there

was no end to the corridors, whilst the chambers was
all uniform and, to top everything off, in the most
important hall of all there was all sorts of enormous
lustre-clusters and, spang in the centre, standing un-
der a baldychin, was Apail-o'-Bellybeer himself.
The Emperor gave a look over his shoulder at
Platov to see if maybe he were struck all of a heap
and what he might be looking at, but the other was
just ambling along with his eyes cast down, as though
he weren't seeing a thing; all he was doing was
twisting his mustachios into loops.
The Britishers pitched right in, showing different
things for to astonish the Emperor with and explain-
ing just what each thing was for in case of military
need: sea stormo-meters, capes of camel's woolsey
for the infantry and tarred waterproofs for the cav-
alry. The Emperor was delighted by all them things;
everything seemed ever so right to him, but Platov
still maintained his you've-got-to-show-me air, as
much as to say that all these things, now, meant
nothing atall to him.

"How can you possibly be so lacking in sensibihty?^

the Emperor spoke up. "Is there really nothing here
that strikes you?"
-
284

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15 An archaic expression in lieu of ,
an allusion
armies (Ed.).
le The name
to resemble the
to the

,
multinational composition of Napoleon's

of Calabria, an Italian province,

word
is

candelabrum (Ed.)-
thus made
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 285

But all the answer Platov made was: "The only

thing that strikes me is
all this stuff is some-
that
thing that my fine Don
done all their fighting
lads
without, yet somehow put [Boney and all his] twelve-
tongued nations to rout."
"That," said the Emperor, "makes no sense."
"I don't know what to apply your remark to," an-
swered Platov. "But argue I durst not and am bound
tokeep silent."
But the Britishers, seeing the Emperor going in for
such an exchange of remarks, led him right off up
to Apail-o'-Bellybeer himself, and took down the mor-
timer-gun he was holding in one hand and the pisto-
letto he was holding in his other.

"There," said they, "that's the sort of handiwork

we turn out," and they offered him the gun. The
Emperor gave the gun the once-over calmly enough,
seeing as how he had others like it in his Tsarskoye
Selo, but then they handed him the pistoletto and told
him: "The craftsmanship of this pistol is that of some
unknown, inimitable master— one of our admirals
snatched it out of the sash of a robber ataman in
Candelabria."

The Emperor gave one look at that there pistoletto

and just couldn't give over admiring it. He took to
oh'ing and ah'ing something awful. "Ah, ah, ahl" he
declared. "How could anyone how could anyone
. . .

possibly turn out such exquisite workl" Then, he

turned around and said to Platov in Russian: "There,
if I had but one such master craftsman in Russia,
 4
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17 Should be , bend (Ed.),
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 287

why, itwould make me right happy and Td take pride

in it, and as for such a master himself, Td make him
one of the nobility right off."
But Platov, the minute he heard them words, he
shoved his right hand into his huge ballooning trou-
sers and dragged out a gun-turnscrew. "That weapon
cant be took apart," the Britishers told him, but he
paid them no mind but went on tinkering with the
lock. He turned it once, he turned it twice— and that
lock came right out. Platov, he showed the hammer
to the Emperor— and, just where the curve came, there
was an engraved superscription in Russian: Ivan Mosk-
vin, in ye Towne of Tula.
Them Britisherswas dumbfounded and nudging
one another, as much as to say: "Oh, my, we sure
went off half-cocked that timel"
But the Sovereign, he said toPlatov, kind of
grieved: 'What for did you have go and upset them
to
like that? I feel right sorry for them now. Let*s go."
They got into that same two-seat carriage again
and drove off. And the Emperor attended a ball that
same day, but as for Platov, he done away with a
still bigger tumblerful of Kislyar brandy and fell into

the sound sleep of a Cossack.

He mighty glad he had brought them Britishers
felt

down few pegs and at the same time revealed

quite a
the master craftsman of Tula for all the world to
see, yet he had reason to feel vexed, too: why had
the Sovereign felt so sorry for the Britishers in a cir-
cumstance like this? "How come the Sovereign to be
aggrieved?" Platov kept thinking. "Can't understand
itat all I" And, whilst mulling over this, he got up a
couple of times and kept crossing himself and drink-
ing vodka until at last he forced himself to fall into
sound slumber.
288

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 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 289

At this very time, though, them Britishers wasn't

asleep, neither, because they'd gotten their dander
up, too. Whilst the Emperor was making merry at
the ball they cooked up something new for to aston-
ish him with, of such a nature that it knocked all of
Platov's fanciful notions galley-west.

Ill

Next day, when Platov presented himself to the

Sovereign to wish him good morning, the latter up
and said to him: "Let's have that there two-seated
carriage harnessed right away and we'll go to look
over some more museums."
Platov actually ventured to remark as how hadn't
they had enough, now, of inspecting foreign products,
and mightn't it be better to be getting ready to head
back home to Russia, but the Sovereign said: "No,
I'm still wishful for to see other novelties; I've heard
praises of the way they make sugar of the best sort
here."
So they set out.
The Britishers showed everything to the Emperor,
whatever products of the first sort they had, but
Platov, he just looked and looked and then he said,
all of sudden: "Suppose you let us see the molvow

sugar they turn out in your refineries?"

But them Britishers, they hadn't even a notion of
what kind of thing this molvow was. They whispered
amongst themselves and they exchanged winks and
kept repeating "Molvow, molvow," to one another,
but they just couldn't grasp that it was a kind of
sugar we turned out in Russia and they were com-
pelled to own up that they had all kinds of sugar
but none of this same molvow.
"Well, if that's the case, you haven't a thing to
brag about," Platov told them. *'You pay us a visit—
 .
290 /

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18
19
20
Corruption of
Corruption of
An adjective formed from ,
(Ed.).
(Ed.).
jacket (Ed.).
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula /291
we'll give you your fill of tea with genuine molvow
from the Bobrinsky refinery ."^
The Sovereign, however, tugged at his sleeve and
told him, quiet like: "Don t you go upsetting my poli-
tics, please/'
After which the Britishers gave the Emperor an in-
vite to visit the very last of their museums, where
they had collected mineral stones and noomphosoria*
from all over the world, beginning with the most huge-
ous Egyptium peeramid down to a chigger, so small
you can't see it with the naked eye, and when it gets
down to biting it's between your skin and your flesh.
The Emperor took a ride there.
They looked over the peeramids and all sorts of
stuffed creatures and were on their way out, with
Platov thinking to himself: "There, glory be to God,
everything's gone well— the Emperor weren't struck
all of a heap by nothing."

But no sooner did they reach the last chamber of

all than they came upon some of those craftsmen of

theirs standing there in their everyday weskits and

aprons, and holding a salver on which there weren't
anything at all. So then the Emperor was downright
surprised, because they was offering him just a tray
with not a thing on it.
"Just what is the meaning of this?" he asked.
But the Britisher mastercraftsmen answered him:
"This is our most humble offering to Your Majesty."

'What is it, then?"

"Why," said they "would you deign to notice that
there tiny mote of a speck of dust?"
The Emperor, he gave a look, and then he saw:
3 Ya. N. Molvow owned a sugar refinery near St. Petersburg;
Count A. A. Bobrinsky had one in the province of Kiev ( Trans. )
^Noomphosoria—nymphosoria, or Leskovian for infusioria
(Trans.).
292 / ^ -
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22

made
(Ed.).
From
The
the French denser, to dance (Ed.).
first syllable of the foreign
to resemble the Russian adjective
word
, is thus
small, petty
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 293

sure enough, there was the most minutest mite of a

mote on that there tray.
of a speck of dust lying
"Please deign to wet one of your fingers with spit,
pick up that tiny mote of a speck of dust, and then
place it on your palm—"
'Why, what would I be wanting with that tiny mote
of a speck of dust?"
"This," they answered him, "is no tiny mote of a
speck of dust, but a noomphosorium."
"Is it alive?"

"By no means," they answered him. "It ain't alive,

but was wrought by us out of British steel, the same
being unalloyed, into a representation of a flea, and
in the middle of it there's a spring that can be wound
up. Please deign to turn the little winding key and
the flea will go into a dansant right off."

The Emperor became really curious, and he asked:

"But where is that little key?"
And the Enghshmen answered him: "The key is

right there too, before your very eyes."

"How come, then," asked the Emperor, "that I don't
see it?"
"That's because one has to put it under a micky-
scope in order to see it."
They handed him a mickyscope, and the Emperor
saw, sure enough, that there actually was a little key
lying on the salver, right alongside the flea.

"Please deign to place that there flea on your dainty

palm," they told him. "It's got a tiny opening for to
wind it up in its little tummy, whilst the key can
make seven turns, and then the flea will go into its

dansant.**
294

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23

the
24
The
Russian ,,
foreign

Corruption of
word is thus
"most likely" (Ed.)-
quadrille (Ed.).
made to resemble
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 295

It was allEmperor could do to grab a hold of

the
that there tiny key, and it was all he could do to
grip it betwixt finger and thumb, whilst he took the
little flea betwixt the finger and thumb of his other

hand, but no sooner had he put the tiny key in than

he felt it starting to twitch its tiny whiskers, then it

took to jiggling with its teensy-weensy legs, and at

last it made a sudden leap and at one flight sashayed
straight ahead, made a veriation of two steps to one
side, then to the other, and thus, in three veriations
altogether, went through an entire quadreel.

Right then and there the Emperor commanded that

the Britishers were to be given a million in whatever
moneys they might wish: if they wished they could
have it in silver five-kopeck pieces, or in Russian gov-
ernment obligations in small denominations, if that
was the way they wished it.
The Britishers requested for the million to be is-
sued to them in silver, seeing as how they couldn't
make head nor tail of our paper money ,5 and right
on top of that they showed their cunning in another
way: they proffered the flea as a gift, but they hadn't
brought along any case for it, yet you couldn't keep
either flea or tiny key without a case, since both
would get lost and wind up by being thrown out with
the rubbish. Yet they had made a case out of a solid
diamond as big as a walnut— and right in the center
of it there was a snug place hollowed out to hold
both flea and key. This they hadn't proffered, seeing
as how the case (so they said), was government prop-
erty, sort of, and when it came to government prop-
erty, now, their laws were stiict— they couldn't let
tlie case go, not even for no Emperor.

6 A more or less sly dig at the Tsarist parallel to the French

assignats or printing-press money; the Russian government obli-
gations were, at the time of the story, worth about one-third of
the silver currency (Trans.).
:
296

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 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 297

Platov, he got mighty angry, on account of, said

he, "What's all this swindling for! They made us a
and they got a milHon for it, and still that's not
gift,

enough for them! The case," he said, "always goes

with every object."

But the Sovereign said to him: "Drop it, please, it's

no skin oflF your nose— don't go upsetting my politics
for me. It's an old British custom." And then he asked:
"What's the price of the diamond walnut that there
flea comes in?"

So the Britishers slapped on another five thousand.

"Pay them," said Emperor Alexander Pavlovich and
he himself lowered the little flea, and the tiny key that
went with it, into the diamond walnut and, so's not to
lose that walnut itself, he popped it into his gold snuff-
box and, in its turn, he ordered the snuff-box to be
placed in his traveling casket, which was all inlaid
with mudder-of-pearl and narwahl ivyry. As for the
British master craftsmen, the Emperor dismissed them
with all due honor and told them: 'Tou're the fore-
most master craftsmen in all the world, and my peo-
ple can't even hold up a candle to you."
They were most gratified at this, but as for Platov,
he couldn't get a word out against the Sovereign's
speech. All he done was to take that mickyscope and,
without saying a thing, slip it into his pocket, since,
as he said to himself, "That's just where it belongs,
seeing as how you've took enough money off of us
even without that."

The Sovereign knew nothing of this right up to his

arrival in Russia, for they had lost no time in taking
their departure, seeing as how the Sovereign had fallen
into melancholy on account of his military affairs and
298 /

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26 This sentence is absolute nonsense, probably inserted to

illustrate Platov's pseudo-profundity and his passion for
"learned" words. A literal translation would run roughly as
follows: "And he represented to the sovereign, that the
English craftsmen have for all that different rules of life,

science, and food, and that among them every man has all

the absolute circumstances in front of himself, and for this

reason he has an altogether different sense."
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 299

he got wishful for to go to confessional to Father

Fedot^ in Taganrog. There was mighty little pleasant
chit-chat His Majesty had with Platov whilst they
were on their way, inasmuch as they had come to
altogether differing opinions: to the Sovereigns way
of thinking the Britishers had no peers when it came
to the arts and whereas Platov argufied that
crafts,

our master craftsmen, too, could do everything after

just one look at anything— only they had no useful in-
struction. And he pointed out to the Sovereign that
the Britisher master craftsman had altogether differ-
ent rules when it came to everything— life, learning,
victuals, and every man amongst them had all the
absolute circumstances right before him, and because
of that he signified something else entirely.
The Sovereign didn't like to listen' to that line of
talk for long and Platov, perceiving this, stopped ex-
erting himself. And so they rode along in silence;
Platov, however, kept getting out at every posting-
station and, because of his vexation, would toss off a
pint-mug of vodka, send a small salted cracknel after
it, light up his briar-root pipe (it took a whole twelve

ounce packet of Zhukov's Best"^ to load its bowl) and

then taking his seat in the carriage again, would sit

6 "Father Fedot" is not woven out of thin air: the Emperor

Alexander Pavlovich, before his demise in Taganrog, made con-

fession to the priest Alexei Fedot-Chekhovsky, who was there-
after styled His Majesty's Father Confessor and was exceedingly
fond of bringing this utterly chance occurrence to everybody's
attention. And so this very Fedot-Chekhovsky is, evidently, none
other than the legendary "Father Fedot." Author.
'^
According to those who have smoked it, there never was any-
thing to equal the superb, fragrant Latakia pipe tobacco of
Vasihi Zhukov's St. Petersburg factory. Even the poorest sort
(No. IV) was claimed to be better than the best mixture con-
cocted by any Fifth Avenue or Regent Street tobacconist; "Zhu-
kov" was a synonym for the utmost in tobacco, and the name
runs like a leit-motif through Russian literature of the 19th
century (Trans.).
300 /

.
. , ,
.
—,— , ,. — -

27 .^^. -

,, ,. -
, -
,
— ,. ,
—
,
, -
. ,-
, —

- — ,

, ,
,
27 Should be couch; disappointing
(Ed.).
28 Incorrect Russian, a noun formed by Leskov from the
verb to stop (Ed.).
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 301

side by side with the Tsar, saying nary a word. The

Sovereign kept looking one side, whilst Platov
off to

would thrust his long-stemmed chibouque out of the

other window and send billows of smoke into the
wind. And that's how they reached Petersburg at last.
And when it came to calling on Father Fedot, the
Sovereign wouldn't take Platov along at all, at all.
"You," he told him, "are unrestrained when it comes
to discussing spiritual things, and you smoke such an
awful lot that my head is clogged up with soot from
your smoke."
Platov, he stayed behind, in a huff, and stayed to
home, lying on his grouch-couch, and he lay thus all
the time and kept smoking Zhukov's Best with never
a let-up.

IV

That amazing flea of chilled British steel remained

in Alexander Pavlovich's casket inlaid with narwhal
ivyry, until he passed away in Taganrog, after giving
it to FatherFedot to be handed over to the Empress
when he, the Emperor, would be at rest for all time.
The Empress Elizaveta Alexeyevna watched the flea's
veriations for a spell and smiled a little, but wouldn't
put herself to any bother about it. "Mine is a widow's
lot now," said she, "and I'm not fascinated by any
amusements whatsoever," and on her return to Peters-
burg she passed this curiosity on with all the other
precious effects to the new Emperor.

The Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich^ at first didn't pay

any attention whatsoever to the flea either, seeing

8 As a tyrant Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich ( or Nicholas I ) is

surpassed in monstrosity only by loann the Awesome (usually
but erroneously anglicized as Ivan the Terrible) and Mad Paul
(Trans.).
302

, , ,-
,-
/

-
-

, .
.
—
,!
:, - . ^^
,,
—

, ,: :
». «-

,?,, .:,,,
—
^^, -

, .
,. ,
,
,
. — ,
—

29

instead of
30 Old
,,
Improper word.

form of
means repulsive; used here
across the street (Ed.).
cold (Ed.).
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 303

as how there had been some trouble^ on his ascension

to the th-one; but then one day he started looking

through the casket which had come down to him from
his brother, and took out of it the snuff-box and, out
of the snuff-box, the diamond walnut, and in the last
he came upon the steel flea, which hadn't been wound
up in a long while and so was inactive but just lying
there as if it were froze stiff.
The Sovereign took one look and became curious.
"What sort of a trifling doodad is this, and what for
was my brother treasuring it so?"
The courtiers wanted to throw it out, but the Sov-
ereign told thim: "No, this must signify something
or other."
So they called in a chemist from the apothecary's
shop which is across the way from the Anichkin
Bridge, which chemist was used to weighing poisons
on the most delicate scales, and they showed him the
flea; well, he picked it up at once, placed it on his

tongue and said: "Feels chill, like hard metal." And

next he tried it a little with his teeth and declared:
"Say what you will, yet this is no real flea but a

noomphosorium, and it's wrought out of metal, and

its workmanship ain't ours— it ain't of Russian work-

manship."
The Sovereign issued orders right off for an investi-
gation: Whence had this thing come from, and just
what might it There was a rush to look
signify?
through sundry transactions and inventories, but there
was nary a record of the thing to be found in them
transactions. They started in questioning this one and
that one— no one knew anything. But luckily Platov,
that Don Cossack, was still amongst the living, and

^The abortive Decembrist Uprising, December 14th (26th,

New Style), 1825 (Trans.).
 ,
304

. :
,
/

-
? ,
: ,
,, -
—

,, -,
,
—
—

,
,
,, ,,:,-
,

,
—
—
— -
,

. ,
-
, , ,,--
:— , — —
,

— ,
, ,
-
,,—
-
.
: , -
-
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 305

even still lying grouch-couch and still puffing

on his
away at his pipe. as he heard that there was
Soon
such a to-do at the palace he got up ofiE of his grouch-
couch, put aside his pipe and, wearing all his deco-
rations, presented himself to the Sovereign.
"What would you be needing from me, you grand
old man?" the Sovereign asked him.
But Plato V, he answered him: "There ain't nothing.
Your Majesty, I would be needing for myself, seeing
as how I got all I want to eat and drink, and am
content with everything; but," said he, "I have come
to inform you concerning that there noomphosorium
which you have found at last. The way it all came
about," he said, "was thus and so, and here is what
took place in England, to all of which I was an eye-
witness, and there's a little key goes with that there
flea, and I have the Britishers' own mickyscope

through which you can see the little key, and with
that same key you can wind up this noomphosorium
through its little tummy, and it will leap any distance
you like and perform veriations to this side and that."
They wound the flea up, and off it went, hoppity-
skip, whilst Platov kept on: "It's true enough. Your
Majesty," he said, "that the workmanship is very fine
and interesting, only it behooves us not to regard it
in amazement and with feelings of nothing but rap-
ture, for what we really ought to do is to submit it
to inspections by Russians, in Tula or in Sesterbek
(at that time Sestroretsk was still called Sesterbek),
to see if our master craftsmen mightn't surpass it, so's

Britishers won't be exalted to such heights above Rus-

sians."

The Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich had the utmost con-

fidence in his Russian folk and didn't like to play sec-
ond fiddle to any furriner, and so he answered Platov
according:
, ,
306

—
/

, ,. -

,-
. , . 632
,
^!

^, ,, -
,
. , . --
-

—
:,:, ?- , ,
,-
,
^ ,,, ,. ,
— ,
-

31 The river Don is known as "quiet" or "silent." See, e.g.

the title of Sholokhov's novel Silent Don (Ed.).
32 Literally, internecine (Ed.).
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 307

"What you say, you grand old man, is right,

and I entrust you with seeing this business through.
I have no need of this httle snufiE-box anyway,
what with all the cares burdened with right
now, so you just take it along, and don t He down
on your grouch-couch no more but betake yourself
to the quiet Don and when you are there get into
heart-to-heart talk with my men of the Don about
and loyalty, and the things they like. And
their life,
when you'll be going through Tula, show my Tula
master craftsmen this here noomphosorium, and let
them devote some thought to it. Tell them from me
that my brother was struck by wonder at this thing
and that he praised above all others the outlanders
who wrought this noomphosorium, whereas I place
my trust in my own folk, believing that they don t
take second place to nobody. They won't let my words
go unheeded and will accomplish something or other."

V
So Platov took the steel flea and, as he was passing
through Tula on his way to the Don, showed it to
the Tula gunsmiths, and passed on to them the Sov-
ereign's words, and after that he asked them; **What
are we to do now, good folk?"

"We feel the Sovereign s words deeply, father of

ours," the gunsmiths answered him, "and can never
forget them, seeing as how he places his trust in his
own folk; but when it comes as to what we are to
do in the present case, that's something we can't tell
you this minute, on account of the British nation, too,
is nobody's fool, and is even quite shrewd, and its

craftsmanship is of great import. Taking this thing

,—
,
,
,
308 /

.
,.,
—
, ,, --
, --
,,- .: ,- -
,
,
.: - ; ,,
-

-
,,
: , ,
,
. -
—
,.
, ,:,,, .-
— ,-;, ,, , —
,,-
—
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 309

on/* they told him, "calls for much thought and God's
blessing. But you will be so gracious, if you, even
if

as our Sovereign, have faith in us, betake yourself

to your homestead on the quiet Don but leave this
little flea with us, just like she is, in her case, and the

case in the Tsar's little snuflF-box. Have yourself a

good time up and down the Don and heal the wounds
you received for the fatherland, but when you'll be
coming back through Tula, stop over and send for
us— by that time, God willing, we'll think up some-
thing."

Platov weren't altogether satisfied with the men of

Tula demanding so much
time and, on top of that,
not saying clearly just what, precisely, they were hop-
ing to contrive. He tried this way and that way and
all manner of ways to pump them and to talk them
over in sly Don fashion, but the Tulaks weren't a
frog's whisker's breadth behind him when it came to
slyness, seeing as how they had struck on such a no-
tion that they couldn't as much as hope to have even
Platov believe them but were aiming to carry out
the bold flight of their imagination straight off and
hand over their project only afterwards.

"Even we ourselves don't know yet what we'll cook

up," they told him. "The only thing we can do is to
place our trust and hope in God and then, maybe,
perhaps and who knows, the Tsar won't be put to
shame because of the kind things he has said about
us.

And that's how Platov wriggled, thinking to out-fox

them Tulaks, and the Tulaks was handing him the
same treatment. Well, Platov wriggled and he wrig-
gled, but then he seen that he'd never be the one to
out-fox any Tulak, handed the snuff-box with the
noomphosorium over to them and: "Well, there's no
,
, , ,,
310 /

,,, .: -
—
-
-
—

,,:
,,
. , —

-
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— —
-
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,
,, ,^ .- ,, --
, ," .
,
,-,
,

.
,

-
help for
know you
it,"

for
said he,
what you
*
The Left-handed Smith of Tula

it your
and notwith-
are, but
own way,
still
/

then; I
311

standing there's no help for it— I trust you. However,

don't you go switching that there diamond and don t
spoil that fine British workmanship— and don t fuss
around too long, for I travel fast: before a fortnight
passes 11 be turning my back on the quiet Don and
heading for Petersburg again— that's when I absolute-
ly must have somewhat to show the Sovereign."

The gunsmiths set his mind quite at rest: "We

won't do no harm to the fine workmanship," they told
him, "and we won't go switching the diamond, and
as for time— a fortnight will be plenty enough for us
and, furthermore, against the occasion of your return,
we'll have somewhat ready for you, worthy of presen-
tation to our magnificent Sovereign."

But what, precisely, that somewhat was they never

did get around to telling him.

VI

he left Tula; as for the gunsmiths, three of

Platov,
them, the most skilled of all— and one of the three
a squint-eyed, left-handed fellow, with a big red birth-
mark on one cheek and bald at the temples on ac-
count of the hair there having been yanked out during
his apprenticeship— these three bade farewell to their
cronies and families and, without breathing a word
to any living soul, got out their knapsacks, put therein
whatever victuals they needed and disappeared from
town. The only thing folks noted about them was
that they had headed not for the gates through which
you pass on your way to Moscow, but in an opposite
direction leading to Kiev, and they figured that the
three had set out for Kiev to worship at the shrines
of the meritorious saints laid away at rest there, or
to seek counsel from one or another of Kiev's living
.,
312 /

-
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,, .
»,
«
, .«»,-
-
, . -
.
—
,

, ,,,
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, - .
- -
., -
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 313

holy men, of which article that town always has

plenty and to spare.
However, the townsfolk had merely come close to
the truth but had not hit on the truth itself. Neither
time nor distance would have allowed these master
craftsmen of Tula to go afoot to Kiev in three weeks
and also have time afterwards to carry out the work
that would put the British nation to shame. They
might have done better by going to Moscow to say
their prayers there, for Moscow was a mere "two-and-
sixty" miles away, and as for meritorious and right-
eous saints, there was no shortage of them, either,
laid away at their final rest in that town. And if the
three had gone in another direction, to Oryol, there
would have been the same "two-and-sixty" miles, and
then, beyond Oryol, another three hundred and thirty
and three miles, at least, to Kiev. You can t cover a
stretch Hke that in a short while and, even when you
have covered it, you wouldn't rest up after it so fast
—for a long spell afterwards your legs will feel like
they was made of glass and your hands will keep
shaking.
Some folks even got to thinking that the master
craftsmen had bragged their heads off before Platov
but then, when they came to their senses, why, they'd
gotten cold feet and by now had high-tailed it out of
town for good, carrying off with them the Tsar's gold-
en snuff-box as well as the diamond and, encased
therein, the British flea of steel— that same flea which
had brought so much worriment upon them.
However, such a supposition was likewise alto-
gether unfounded and undeserved by the men of skill
upon whom the hope of the nation now rested.
 ,.,
814 /

---
« ^^,;
,

, , . ,, »,
-
--
,, , ,— -

»
.
. «--
,
, ,, , , - .

, , -
33 sing with "tricks" (Ed.).
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 315

vn
The men of Tula, clever and knowing folk when
it came to working in metals, were also noted as the

foremost judges in matters of religion. Not only theii

native land but even holy Athos^^^ rang with their
fame in this respect; they were masters not only at
chanting with babylons [going in for all sorts of fancy
trimmings and grace-notes, that is], but also knew
how an Evening Angelus holy image ought to be
limned, and whenever any one of them became a
dedicant to the Great Service and turned monk, why,
such a one would prove the best of monastery stew-
ards, for such was the repute of the men of Tula, and
they also turned out to be the most capable collectors
of contributions.Upon holy Athos they know that
Tulaks are most useful folk, and were it not for them
sundry dark nooks of Russia would most probably not
see very many of the sanctified objects of the remote
East, while Athos itself would have to do without
many a goodly offering tendered by Russian open-
handedness and piety. Nowadays "Athos Tulaks" cart
sanctified objects all over our native land and in
masterly fashion collect contributions even in places
where there's nary a thing to be gotten. A Tulak run-
neth over with churchly devoutness and is a great
practician at this business, and hence those three mas-
ter craftsmen who had undertaken to come to the aid
of Platov and of all Russia with him were quite right
in not heading for Moscow but bent their steps south-
ward. They weren't going to Kiev at all but to Mtsensk,
a district center in the Oryol province, standing in

^^ A headland,
6,300 feet high, on a narrow peninsula jutting
out into the Aegean, in Salonica Province, Greece. In 1961 this
Holy Mountain of the modem Greeks had a population of 2,867
(all male, since no female creature, not even a hen, is tolerated)
and, in 1955, no fewer than twenty monastic institutions— a de-
cline of two since 1925 (Trans.).
»,
^ ,
« »,,
316 /

-
»«
^*.
—
« »,
«-
-

, «,»., -- ».;: -
«-

.,
, , .,
«6;» ,

-
, . - ,
. -, ,
—

,; ,
3-* There were many such legends, particularly after the fall
of Constantinople to the Turks (1453), when Russia began
to claim for itself the honor of being the center of Eastern
Christendom (Ed.).

36 Old form of ,
35 Literally, "gilded with silver" (Ed.).
at night (Ed.).
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 317

which town there is an ancient hewn-stone icon of St.

Nikolai which had come floating there in most ancient
times upon a cross, hkewise of stone, up the river
Zusha. This icon is "awesome and most fearsome"
to view; the great Saint of Myra in Lycia^^ is shown
thereon at "full stature," he is clad entirely in raiment
of silver-gilt, while his face is of sombre hue; on the
palm of one hand he holds a temple and, clasped in
the other, a swoid— the force of arms. And it was
precisely in this force that the meaning of the thing
lay: St. Nikolai is, in general, the patron of trade and
soldiering, while the Nikolai of Mtsensk icon was
particularly so, and it was to him and none other
that the men of Tula had gone, to bow down before
him. They held a service right at the icon itself, fol-
lowed by another near the stone cross, returned home
"in the dead of night" and, without telling a thing
to anybody, tackled their work in dread secrecy. They
gathered, all the three, in one little house, which was
the left-handed smith's, locked the doors, closed the
window-shutters tight, got a lampad to glowing warm-
ly before a holy image of Nikolai and began their
labors.
One day, and another, and a third, did they stay
there and never ventured out anywhere— all the time
tap-tapping away with their little hammers. They
were hammering out something or another, but what
they was hammering away at not a soul could tell.
Everybody felt curious, yet nobody could find out
a thing, seeing as how the men at work weren't say-
ing a thing and never showed themselves outside. All

11 In south-west Asia Minor, where Nikolai the Thaumaturge

had been Archbishop (Trans.).
318

,
..,,,,
/

-
-

, —
,, —
-
;: -

— ,
., , ,, , —

.
,, ,
., :-
, -

Bbie37
-
-
37 Combination of (herald) and (to
whistle)—Ed.
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 319

sorts of people went over to the little house, knock-

ing at the door with this excuse or that, to ask for a
light or a little salt, but the three men of surpassing
skill wouldn't open up no matter what or how they

was asked, and no one knew what they were doing

for food, even. The busybodies tried to throw a scare
into them, making believe the house next door was
on fire, figuring the three would jump out, frightened
out of their wits, and then, maybe, whatever it was
they had hammered out would become common
knowledge. But there was no taking in these crafty
masters. Only once did the left-handed smith thrust
himself out the window, but only as far as his shoul-
ders, and shouted at them: "You go right ahead and
burn, but we got no time for that," drew his plucked
head in again, slammed window and shutters to, and
went back to his work.
The only thing they could see through certain tiny
cracks was the gleam of a little fire inside the house,
and the only thing they could hear was the tap-tapping
of their fine little hammers against the ringing anvils.
In a word, the whole business was carried on in
such frightful secrecy that there was no finding out
anything and, furthermore, all this went on right up
to Platov the Cossack's return from the quiet Don on
his way back to the Sovereign, and in all that time
the master gunsmiths never saw, or got into talk with,
anybody.

VIII

Platov was traveling ever so fast and in style; he

himself sat in the carriage, whilst up on the box two
orderlies-disorderlies with quirts would take their
seats, one on each side of the driver, and simply lace
it into him without any mercy so's to make him go
320

,
/

.
. --
,
,

. , ,
, .
, ,, — -
.
,. , -- -

,
,,
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. ,
,,-
. —
,-
-
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 321

at a gallop. But happen either them Cossacks

of
dozed oflF, Platov himself would kick him from his
seat in the carriage, and the carriage would dash away
at a still fiercer clip. These measures of encourage-
ment worked so well that nowhere, at not even one
posting-station, was it possible to rein in the horses,
for they always galloped a hundred lengths beyond
the spot where they were supposed to stop. There-
upon one of the Cossacks would again go to work
on the driver, only in reverse order, and the horses
would back up to the front steps.
And that's how they tooled along all the way to
Tula: here, too, they at first flew a hundred lengths
beyond the gates where the road to Moscow began,
whereupon one of the Cossacks went to work on the
driver with his quirt, in reverse, and they halted at
the front steps of the posting-station for a relay of
fresh horses. Platov, however, didn't leave the carriage,
but merely ordered one of his orderlies-disorderlies
to fetch as fast as ever he could the master gun-
smiths with whom he had left the flea.

So this orderly-disorderly sprinted away to tell the

master gunsmiths to come as fast as ever they could
and bring to Platov their handiwork, with which they
were to put the Britishers to shame, but this orderly-
disorderly had run hardly any distance when Platov
started sending others to follow him, one after the
other, so's to speed up things as much as possible.

Then, having packed off all his orderlies-disorder-

lies, he took to sending ordinary folks from amongst
the curious pubHc, and was actually getting ready to
step out of the carriage, wanting to hurry over him-
self, he was that impatient, and simply gnashing his

teeth, since all this to-do still didn't seem to be get-

ting matters any forrader fast enough for him.
For that's how strictly and punctually things were
322 / & -
^.

,. ,, -

, , ,.,
-

, ,,- ,
, ,,-
, ,
. - -
. ,-
,
: .
— , -, , ,
38 Literal translation of the sentence: "Thus in those times
everything was required just so and with speed, so that not
a single minute should be lost for Russia's usefulness."
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 323

up at that time, so*s not to lose even a minute

insisted
where the good of Russia might be involved.
IX
The master craftsmen, who were doing this amazing
work, were at that point just finishing their labors.
The orderlies-disorderlies came running to them all

out of breath; as for the ordinary folk from among

the curious public, they never did get there at all be-
cause, being unused to running, their legs caved in
and they keeled over and afterwards, being scared
to face Platov, they hot-footed it for home and hid
themselves as best they could.
But the orderlies-disorderlies, soon as they ran up,
started in yellingand then, seeing as how the gun-
smiths wouldn't open up for them, took to yanking
away at the window-shutters without standing on cere-
mony, but the bolts were that strong they wouldn't
budge even a mite; so they fell to tugging at the
door—but the door was barred on the inside with a
cross-bar of oak. So the orderlies-disorderlies picked
up a great log off the street, prized up the main roof-
beam, the way firemen do, and pried the whole roof
off the little house. But no sooner had they took that
there roof off than they themselves was bowled over,
on account of the master gunsmiths, cooped up in
their cramped little room, had worked up such a
spiralling sweat and all that in the atmosphere
during their never-resting labors that a person fresh
from the great outdoors couldn't take even one whiff
of it.

"What are you up to, you so-and-sos, you low-down

trash?" the messengers started yelling at them. "And
on top of that you've got the nerve to knock us off
324 /

:,:, -
! !
—
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—
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—
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—

.
—
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.
,;-—
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 325

of our feet with such spiralling sweat! Or have you no

fear of God in you— doing a thing like that there!"
But the others answered: "We'll be through right
away; we're driving in the last tiny nail and, when
weVe driven it home, we'll bring our work out.'*
But the messengers told them: "By the time you
get through Platov will eat us up alive and won't
leave enough of our souls to say a mass over."
However, the master gunsmiths made answer: "He
won't have time even to swallow you, for whilst you
were standing here and talking we've driven that last
nail home. Run along and tell him we're bringing the
thing right away."
The orderlies -disorderlies started running, but they
weren't feeling any too sure— they were thinking the
master craftsmen would fool them and for that rea-
son they ran on and on yet kept looking back; how-
ever, the master craftsmen were coming right behind
them, and they were in such great haste to catch up
with the others that they hadn't even finished dress-
ing in a manner quite suitable to appearing before
a person of importance, but were fastening the hooks
of their kaftans on the go. Two of them were empty-
handed, but the third, the same being the left-handed
fellow, was carrying, under a cover of green baize,
the Tsar's casket containing the steel flea of British
make.

X
The orderlies-disorderlies ran up to Platov and re-
ported: "Here they are, their own selves!"
Platov at once turned to the master gunsmiths: "All
done, now?"
"Everything," they answered him, "is all done."
"Hand it over."
They handed it over.
The equipage and horses, now, were all ready, and
326

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 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 327

the driver and outrider were in their places. The Cos-

sacks at once seated themselves with the driver be-
tween them and, swinging their quirts up, kept them
raised over the driver's head.
Platov snatched off the green cover, opened the
casket, took the golden snuff-box out of its cotton-
wool and, out of the snuff-box, the diamond walnut,
and what did he see but the British flea lying there
just the same as it had always been, but outside of
that there weren't another thing.
"And just what may this be?" Platov asked them.
"But where's your work, with which you were after
pleasuring the Sovereign?"
"That's our work, right there," the gunsmiths an-
swered him.
"What does it consist of, then?" asked Platov.
But the gunsmiths answered: "What's the use ex-
plaining it? It's all there, right before your eyes— and

just bear that in mind."

Platov shrugged and then yelled at them: "Where's

the key to that there flea."
"Why, it's right there," they answered him. "Where
the flea is there's the key, too—both in the same nut."
Platov wanted to grasp the key, but his fingers was
all thumbs— he tried but just couldn't catch hold of
either the flea or the little key to wind the spring in
its belly, nohow, and sudden he got angry
all of a
and started cursing in Cossack words, in the Cossack
way. "Why, you low-down villains I" he yelled at them.
'Tou haven't done a thing and, on top of that, have
spoiled the thing, like as noti I'll make each of you a
head shorter!"
But the men of Tula made answer to him: "Ifs all
for nothing that you're wronging us like that; since
you're the Sovereign's emissary we're obliged to en-
, ,,:,
328 /

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39 Corruption of
40 Corruption of
, poodle (Ed.).
(Ed.).
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 329

dure all sorts of wrongs; howsomever, just because you

have doubted us and thought us the sort to go in for
hornswoggling even where the Sovereign's name is in-
volved, we won't tell you the secret of our work
just now; however deign to take it with you to the
Sovereign— hell see what sort of folk he's got in us,
and if he has been put to shame on our account."
But Platov, he yelled at them: "Well, now, you're
lying, you low-down villains; I'm not parting with you
just like that, for one of you will have to go to Peters-
burg with me, and there I'll sweat out of him what
crafty schemes you're up to!"
And with that he stretched out his hand, his fingers
that were all thumbs grabbed the coat-collar of the
squinting, left-handed gunsmith so hard that all the
little hooks on his cossackeen flew oflF, and tossed him

into the carriage at his feet.

"You'll squat there," said he, "all the way to Peters-
burg, like a poodle or something— you'll be answer-
able to me for the whole pack of you. As for you," he
told the orderlies-disorderlies, "get going, full speed
aheadi No napping, now— see to it that I'm in Peters-
burg day after tomorrow, in the presence of my Sov-
ereign."
The only word the master gunsmiths ventured to
put in for their mate was: "Come, now, how can you
be taking him away from us just like that, without no
doggyment? He'll never be able to get back here!"
But Platov, by way of answer, just shoved them his
fist— such a frightful fist, all knobby and hacked to
pieces, the wounds on it healed together just any-
how; and, having threatened the master craftsmen
with it: "There's your doggyment!" he told them. As
for the Cossacks, he bade them: "Get going, lads!"
, ,,
330

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 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 331

The Cossacks, the drivers and the steeds— they all

went to work right then and and carry-

there, racing
ing oflF the left-handed gunsmith without any patch-
port-doggyment and, on the day set, just the way
Platov had ordered it, that's how they rolled up to
the Sovereign's palace with him and, having worked
up a right proper gallop, even drove right past all them
colyums.
Platov stood up, pinned his orders and decorations
on himself, and went to see the Sovereign; as for the
squint-eyed, left-handed gunsmith, he ordered his
Cossack orderlies-disorderlies to keep him under
guard near the front entrance.

XI
Platov was afraid to show his face to the Sovereign,
seeing as how was awful observant
Nikolai Pavlovich
and had an awfully long memory—he never disremem-
bered nothing. Platov knew he would ask him about
the flea, without fail. And so, for all that there weren t
any foe in all the world he were scairt of, he did get
cold feet this time: into the palace he went with that
little casket and, ever so stealthily, placed it behind

the oven in the main hall. Having hid the casket,

Platov presented himself to the Sovereign in his study
and, losing no time, began informing the Sovereign
of what were going on amongst
heart-to-heart talks
the Cossacks along the quiet Don. What he had in
mind was diverting the Sovereign therewith and later,
should the Emeperor himself call the flea to mind
and mention it, Platov would have to proffer it and
report thereon, but if the Sovereign didn't make any
mention of it, why the old Cossack would pass the
matter over in silence, bidding the chamberlain in
charge of the Sovereign's study to put the casket away
safely, and as for the left-handed master gunsmith of
Tula, he'd have him put on ice indefinitely in a for-
.
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 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 333

tress casement and let him cool there until such time
as he might be needed.
However, Nikolai Pavlovich, the Sovereign, never
disremembered nothing, and hardly had Platov done
with telling him about them heart-to-heart talks than
he asked him right off: "Well, now, how have my
master craftsmen of Tula vindicated themselves as
against the British noomphosorium?"
Platov answered according to how things looked to
him. "The noomphosorium. Your Majesty," said he,
"takes up the same space as ever, and I've brought it
back, but the master craftsmen of Tula wasn't able to
achieve anything astonishing."

**You are a grand old man," the Sovereign answered

him, *ut as to that which you're reporting to me, it
just can't be possible."
him and told him
Platov started trying to convince
how whole business had gone— and as soon as
this
he came to the point of how the Tulaks had begged
him to show the flea to the Sovereign, Nikolai Pav-
lovich clapped him on the shoulder and said: "Let's
have that flea here. I know that my own folk ain't
capable of deceiving me. They've done something
here that's above comprehending."

XII

They brought the casket out from behind the oven,

took the baize cover off of it, opened the golden snuff-
box and the diamond walnut and there was that flea
lying in that there walnut, same as ever it was lying
in the self -same position as before.

The Sovereign gave one look at it and said: "What

sort of a come-uppance is this!" But his faith in Rus-
sian master craftsmen did not abate; instead, he or-
334 /

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43 Incorrect for ,,
Archaic word for fingers (Ed.).
hair (Ed.).
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 335

dered them to his beloved daughter, Alexandra Niko-

layevna, to come to him, and he bade her: "You Ve
got slim fingers on them hands of yours— take that
tiny bit of a key and, quick as you can, wind up the
machinery in the belly of noomphosorium."
this

The little key and the

Princess took to turning the
flea started twitching its tiny whiskers right off but
didn't as much as budge its legs. Alexandra Niko-
layevna wound up the whole spring tight but just the
same the noomphosorium didn't go off into no dansont
and didn't go through a single one of those veriations,
the way it used to do.
Plato V, he turned all green and started yelling: "Ah,
the doggone scamps! Now I understand why they
didn't want to tell me a thing whilst I was there. It's
a good thing, now, that I fetched one of those fools
along with me."
With them words he ran out on the front steps,
caught the left-handed gunsmith by the hair and
started giving it such a thorough dry shampoo that
tufts of it flew every which way. But the other, soon
as Platov gave over beating him, set himself to rights
and spoke up: "All my hair was tore out anyway dur-
ing my apprenticeship, and I don't know, now—where's
the need for giving me that sort of shampoo all over
r^
again.
"That," Platov told him, "is on account of I placed

my and went surety for the whole pack of

trust in
you, but you all went and spoiled a most rare object."
"We are greatly gratified," the left-handed gunsmith
answered him, "for that you went surety for us; but
as for spoiling anything, that's something we didn't
do: take the object and look at it through a most

powerful mickyscope."
336

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 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 337

Platov started back at a run to tell about the micky-

scope, but as for the left-handed master craftsman,
he merely threatened him: "You'll get plenty more
from me," he told him, "you so and sol"
And with that he ordered his orderlies-disorderlies
to twist the left-handed gunsmith's elbows still fur-
ther back, whilst he himself went up the steps, puf-
fing and reciting to himself the prayer "Most pure and
pure, Blessed Mother of the Blessed King," and so on,
all fitting and proper. But as for the Tsar's courtiers,
who were standing along the steps, they turned away,
thinking: "There, Platov has got himself in a jam,
and they'll be chasing him out of the palace any
minute now—" seeing as how they just couldn't stand
him on account of his valor.

XII

Soon as Platov had brought the left-handed fellow's

words to the Sovereign's notice, the latter at once said
with joy: "I know that my Russian folk would never
deceive me." And he ordered the mickyscope to be
brought him on a cushion.
That same instant the mickyscope was brought to
him, and the Sovereign took the flea and laid it under
the lens, at first with its tiny back showing, then side-
ways, then with its little tummy up— to put it in a
word, it were turned every which way, yet there was
nary a thing to be seen. Yet even then the Sovereign
did not lose his faith, but merely said: "Bring that
gunsmith to me right away—you'll find him down-
stairs."

"He ought to be dressed up a little," Platov informed

the Sovereign. "He was took here in the clothes he
stood in and is now of a most evil appearance."
But the Sovereign answered: "It don't matter—bring
him in the way he is."
338 /

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 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 339

"There, now, you so and so," Platov told the left-

handed gunsmith, "go yourself to face the Sovereign,
and give an account of yourself."
But the other answered: "Well, what of it— 111 go
and I'll give an account of myself."
He went in the clothes he stood in: in his rags
and one pants-leg thrust in his boot, the other
tatters,
flapping around loose, whilst the miserable little kaf-
tan on him was ever so old, its small hooks refusing
to fasten or else missing, and its collar all torn; but
that didn't matter—it didn't faze him none. "Well,
what of it?" he was thinking. "If it pleases the Sov-
ereign to see me, I am bound to go; and happen I
have no doggyment on me, why, I'm no way to blame
for that and will tell the Sovereign how come things
fell out that way."
I Soon as the left-handed master had come up and
bowed low before the Sovereign, the latter asked him,
right off: "Well, now, dear man, what the meaning
of all this? We've looked at the thing this way, and
we've looked at it that way, and we put it under the

mickyscope, yet can't perceive anything remarkable."

"Did Your Majesty deign to look at it in the proper
way?" the left-handed fellow asked, by way of an
answer.
The very important persons there were making
signs to him, as much as to say "That's no way to
talk!"— but he don't catch on to the proper courtier
lingo, with its flattery or guile, but spoke in all sim-
plicity.

"Stop showing off how wise you are at his expense,*'

the Sovereign told them. "Let him answer as best he
can." And he at once explained things to the master
gunsmith: "Here's the way we positioned it," he said,
and he placed the flea under the mickyscope. "Look
,,:,..,
340 /

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 Tlie Left-handed Smith of Tula / 341

for yourself," said he. "There's nary a thing to be

seen/*
*Why, that way, Your Majesty," the left-handed
master artisan answered, "it actually is impossible to
see a thing, on account of our handiwork is consider-
ably finer than the power of that mickyscope can
show."
"But how should it be looked at?" the Sovereign
wanted to know.
"You should," said the left-handed gunsmith, *ring
only one of its tiny feet, in detail, into the entire
field of the mickyscope, and examine all by itself each
of the tiny heels it moves about on."
"Mercy me— do telll" said the Sovereign. "Why, that
that sure is mighty small!"
'Well, what can a body do," answered the
else
left-handed master, that's the only way one
"when
can as much as notice our handiwork? Do that, and
then all the astonishing part of our handiwork will
reveal itself."

They placed the flea the way the left-handed smith

toldthem to, and as soon as the Sovereign took one
look through the top lens, why, his face all Ht up—
he took that left-handed fellow, just as he was, all
dusty, unkempt, unwashed, and embraced and kissed
him, and then turned around to all his courtiers and
said:

"There, you see, I knew better than everybody that

my Russian folk would never let me down. Look, if
you please— why, the scamps, they ve took that British
flea and shod it with horseshoes!"

XIII

They all took to walking up and taking a look: sure

enough, the flea was shod, with a real horseshoe on
342

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 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 343

each of its feet; as for the left-handed gunsmith, he

up and informed them that even this weren't all that
was astonishing.
"If you had a better mickyscope," said he, "one that
would magnify five million times, why" he said, "you
would then see, may it please you, that a master gun-
smith's name has been put on each tiny horseshoe, to
show just which Russian master turned out that par-
ticular one."
"And your name there too?" asked the Sovereign.
is

"By no manner of means," answered the left-handed

master. "My name is the only one that just isn't there."
Why, how come?"
"Well, thisis how," said the other. "It's because my

handiwork was on a smaller scale than them tiny

I horseshoes: I forged the wee nails that was used to
fasten them tiny horseshoes— and that's where no
mickyscope whatsomever can take hold."
"But where's the mickyscope," asked the Sovereign,
"which enabled all of you to bring forth this won-
derwork?"
To which the left-handed fellow answered: "We
poor folk, and owing to our poverty don't have no
mickyscope, but are trained to take aim just so, with
the naked eye."
That was when all the other courtiers, perceiving
that the left-handed master craftsman had brought
the thing off, fell to bussing him; as for Platov, he
gave him a hundred rubles and said: "Forgive me,
dear man, for barbering your hair in such style."
"God will do the forgiving," the left-handed fellow
answered. time I've had such a bUz-
"It ain't the first
zard about my head."
And after that he any more talk,
didn't go in for
and besides that he have the time to get into
didn't
talk with anybody, seeing as how the Sovereign gave
344

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 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 345

orders for that there noomphosorium to be packed

and sent on its way toEngland right off— as a present,
sort of, so's to let them understand over there that
this weren't anything to astonish us with. And the
Sovereign commanded that this flea was to be carried
by a special courier, who was learned in all tongues,
and that the left-handed master was to go with him,
so that he himself might be able to show them British-
ers his handiwork and what kind of master artificers
we had in Tula.
Platov made the sign of the cross over him: "Let
there be a blessing upon you," said he, "and I'll send
you some of my own sour brandy to drink on the way.
Don't drink too Httle, don't drink too much, but
drink in moderation." And that's just what he done-
he sent him the brandy.
And Count Kisselvrode^^ himself issued orders for
the left-handed master to be scrubbed at the Tulak
Public Baths, to be sheared at a high-class barber
shop, and clad in a formal costume that had been a
court chorister's, to make it look as if the Tula artifi-

cer, too, were favored with some rank or other.

When they'd gotten him into shape, had drenched

him, by way of a stirrup-cup, with tea and Platov's
sour-stuff brandy, and had drawn a leather belt about
his middle as tight as tight could be so's his guts
wouldn't lollop around, they started off with him

^2 Sic transit and so forth: the generality has a not altogether

unpraiseworthy way of granting current immortality to passe

thunderers only as wearables or edibles. The name of the Iron
Chancellor is heart-bumingly remembered only as an eviscer-
ated, decapitated, acerbent herring; Count Karl Vassilievich
Nesselrode ( 1780-1862), Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chancellor
of the Empire, and yes-man to Mettemich, lingers (even as
Napoleon ) upon the tongues of men only as an over-rich pastry.
Leskov was unerring in his folk-etymology: "Kisselvrode" may
be translated as Cranberry-sauce, sort of (Trans.).
346 /

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44 is common interjection in Russian songs;
the second part of the sentence is French c'est tres joli, "it is

very pretty" (Ed.).

 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 347

for London. And from that point on the left-handed

fellow's perlustrations abroad began.

XIV
The and the left-handed gunsmith traveled
courier
so very fast that they made no stop-overs anywhere
all the way from Petersburg to London, but all they

did, every time they came to a posting-station, was

to tighten their belts another notch so's their guts
wouldn't get all tangled up with their lungs; but
since, after the left-handed master's presentation to
the Sovereign, Platov had ordered the Treasury to
issue to him all the rations of spirits he might de-
sire, he went without eating and sustained himself
on a liquid diet exclusively, and kept singing Russian
songs for all of Europe to hear: only thing was, he
made the catches sound foreign and frenchified, sort
of: Hey, golly, golly, est all so trey jolly!
No sooner had the courier brought him to London
then he presented himself to the proper authorities
and handed the casket over; as for the left-handed
fellow, he planted him in a hotel room. However,
it didn't take him long to get bored there, and be-

sides he got to hankering for food. So he pounded

on the door and when a servitor showed up he point-
ed to his own mouth and the other at once brought
him down to the victualhng room.
He took his seat there and there he sat, but when
it came to asking for anything in English, why, he
just didn't know how. But then he hit on the same
idea he'd had in his room: he'd simply rap on the
table with his knuckles and then point to his mouth;
the Britishers caught on and brought him food— only
it weren't always what he wanted; however, he'd just

pass by whatever didn't suit him. They served him a

.,^5 ,
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resemble the Russian
- pudding, which was thus
jelly (Ed.)-
made to

,
46 Conjunction of (public, adj.) and
(police, adj.). Leskov is probably referring to The Police
gazette.
47 Combination of (slander) and feuil-
leton, a short newspaper article, often humorous in tone (Ed.).
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 349

plum puddling all hot and in

of their preparation,
flames: "I don't know," he told them, "if a body can
eat anything like that," and wouldn't as much as
taste it, so they took it away and placed another dish
before him. Likewise, he wouldn't be bothered drink-
ing their vodka, seeing as how it was green— like it
were hocussed with copperas, sort of—but chose some-
thing that was the nearest thing to a natural drink,
and waited for the courier, taking things cool and
easy over a small flask of the stuff.

As for those persons to whom the courier had

handed over the noomphosorium, they didn't lose a
moment in inspecting it through the most powerful
mickyscope and rushed a description of that flea right
off to all the gassyettes, so's there might be a foolyston
on it no later than tomorrow, for the information of all
and sundry.
"But as for this master artificer himself," said they,
"we want to see him right now."
The courier escorted them to the hotel room, and
from there to the victualling hall, where our left-
handed fellow had by now managed to get rather
well fried, and informed them:
"Here he is!"
The Britishers right off took to back-slapping him
and shaking hands with him as their peer. "Comrade,"
they told him, "comrade, you're an excellent master;
we'll be having a talk with you later, all in good
time, but right now let's drink to your prosperity."
350 /

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49 Should be
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siphon bottle (Ed.)-
a dream-book (Ed.).
-
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 351

They called for a lot of liquor, and the first noggin

they oflEered to the left-handed artificer, but out of
politeness and wouldn't drink first— could be they were
after poisoning him, just out of spite. "No," said he,
"that ain't right; even in Poland the host comes first.

You start/'
The Britishers tasted all the drinks before his eyes
and then started pouring for him. He stood up, crossed
himself with his left hand and then drank to all their
healths. They noticed that he was crossing himself
with the left hand, and they asked the courier; "Is he
a Lutheran, or a Protestant?"
"No," answered the courier. "He's no Lutheran and
no Protestant, but of the Russian faith."
"Why does he cross himself with his left hand,
then?"
"He's left-handed," the courier told them, "and does
everything with his left hand."
The Britishers got to wondering still more at him
and took priming both the left-handed fellow and
to
the courier with drink, and that's how things went
on for all of three days, and then the Britishers said:
"That's enough for now."

They each drank off a symphon of fizz water

physicked with some stuff to sober up on and then,
all freshened up, started questioning the left-handed
gunsmith: Where had he learned, and what, and how
farhad he gone in arithmetic?
"Our learning is simple," the left-handed artificer
answered. "Our schoolbooks were the Psaltery and a
Half-Asleep Dream Book, and as for arithmetic, we
haven't the least notion of that same."
The Britishers, they looked at one another and
said: "This is amazing 1"
352

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60 (although, popular form) —Ed.
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 353

But the left-handed master answered them: "That's

the way it is with us, throughout our land."
"And what sort of a thing/' they asked, "is this Half-
Asleep Book you Russians use?"
"It's a book," he told them, "that we turn to if

Tsar David fails to reveal some point of divination

clearly enough in his Psalms, in which case we use
the Half-Asleep Dream Book to round out the in-
terpretation."

"It's a pity," said they. "If you knew at least the

four rules in artithmetic it would be of considerably

more you than the Half -Asleep Dream Book

benefit to
in its entirety. Such knowledge would have enabled
you to grasp the fact that the force of every machine
is calculated; but as it is, even though your hands are

exceedingly skilled, you failed to grasp that the force

of such a tiny mechanism as that in the noomphosori-
um is calculated with the most accurate exactitude
and cannot carry its tiny horseshoes. That's why the
noomphosorium neither leaps about now nor dances
its dansant"

"There's no disputing that we haven't gone far in

the sciences," the left-handed master agreed, ^ut just
the same we are loyal and devoted to our fatherland."

"You stay with us," the Britishers told him. "Well

give you a grand education, and you'll make an
amazing master artificer."

But the left-handed fellow wouldn t agree to that.

"I've got my parents home," he told them.
The Britishers volunteered to send money to his
parents, but he wouldn't take them up. "We're partial
to our native land," he told them, "and my daddy is
a little old man by now, whilst the mother who bore
 ,
354 /

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51 Corruption of
52 Corruption of
53 Combination of
, forefathers (Ed.).
descendants (Ed.).
(agreeable to God) and
(miracle-working). Leskov's creation means liter-
ally "God-working" (Ed.).
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 355

me is a little old woman and used to going to the

church in her own parish, and I,too, would be very
low in spirits was I to be all alone here, seeing as
how I m still in the state of singleness."
**Youll get used to things here," they told him.
"will take to our ways^ and well marry you oflE."
*'That," answered the left-handed fellow, "can never
be."
'Why not?"
"Because," he answered, "our Russian faith is the
soundest and, even as our forefathers beheved, so
also must we their oflFspring beheve."

**You have no knowledge of our faith," the Britishers

told him. *We
hold to the same laws of Christ and
abide by the same Gospel."
"True enough," the left-handed gunsmith answered,
"the Gospel is the same for all; only thing is, our
books are thicker when stacked up against yours, and
our faith has more body to it."
"How can you form such a judgment?"
"We have all the evident proofs as to that," he an-
swered.
**What proofs?"
"Why, these," he told them. "We have God-created
icons, and skulls that shed tears, and the bones of
saints, whereas you have nary a thing of that sort and
actually, unless you count Sunday as one, you have
no special holidays. And another thing— I wouldn't
feel at ease Hving with no Enghshwoman, even was
I married to her in lawful wedlock."
 — .
:.:. -
356 /

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54
, , -
French rendez-vous (Ed.).
65 Lefty's attempt to use "formal" language ends as dis-
astrously as did the earlier one by Platov. The translation of
the sentence would be approximately as follows: "Among us,
when a man wishes to display a circumstantial intention re-
garding a he sends a conversational woman, and after
girl,

she makes the preposition, then one goes to the house politely,
and observes the girl not secretly, but in the presence of all
kinship" (Ed.).
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 357

"But why so?'' they questioned him. "Don t be turn-

ing up your nose: our women also dress neatly and
make good housewives."
But the left-handed gunsmith
quainted with them."
said: " not ac-

"That's not so difficult a matter," the Britishers an-

swered. "You can get acquainted with them—well ar-
range a grandevoo for you."
The left-handed fellow turned bashful: "Why
bother the young ladies all for nothing?" said he,
and he backed out. "A grandevoo, now," said he, "is
something for grand folk, but it ain't fitting for our
sort, and was they to find out about it back home, at
Tula, they would make no end of fun of me."
The Britishers became curious: "But if there is no
grandevoo," said they, "what do you do in cases hke
that, so's there might be an agreeable choice?"

The left-handed artificer explained where we stood

on such matters. "Amongst us," he told them, "when
a man wants to reveal his honorable intentions con-
cerning some girl, he sends a knowing woman to talk
things over, and after she's made the proposal all
go in a body to the girl's house, with all due courtesy,
and they look her over, by no means on the sly but
in the presence of all the kin."

The others caught on, but replied that they had

,:
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 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 359

no such parleying women amongst them, and that

they hadn't any custom like that, but the left-handed
fellow said: "That's all the more suitable, for if a

man goes in for any such business as that it ought

to be with honorable intentions, but since I don't en-
tertainany feeling like that for one of a nation that's
not my own, why go putting the young women to
such bother, and all for nothing?"
These judgments of his also proved to the liking of
the Britishers, so that they again fell to slapping his
back and patting his knees to show their amiability,
yet questioning all the while. "Still and all," said
him
they, "we'd like to know, but only out of sheer curi-
osity, what black marks you have marked against our
misses, and why you're giving them such a wide
berth?"
When it come to that, the left-handed Tulak an-
swered them frankly enough: "I'm not writing them
off at all; the only thing I don't like about them is
that their clothes flap around, somehow, and there's
no making out just what it is they have on and what
it's for; they've got something or other here, but low-

er down there's something else pinned on, whilst on

their hands they wear some sort of mittens that look
like Httle fish-nets. And they go in for long-tailed
plush mantles with fringes that make them look al-
together like those monkeys they call the capuchins."^^
The Britishers laughed at that, and said: "Why,
what sort of an obstacle would that be to you?"
"As for an obstacle," the left-handed fellow an-
swered, "there's none; the only thing I'm afeard of is
that I'd feel ashamed looking on and biding my time

13 1 have ventured to use the more familiar name, instead of

Leskov's sapajou, to avoid the latter precise term being inadvert-
ently yet not unnaturally taken for one of the author's coinages
or puns (Trans.).
,. ,
360 /

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 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 361

when she comes to wresthng her way out of all that

stuflF."

"Come," they asked, "is it possible that your fashion

is any better?"
"Our Tula he answered, "is a simple one:
fashion,"
every womanwears her pretty laces— and our laces
is something even grand ladies go in for."
The Britishers also brought him along to their ladies,
so's they might have a look at him, and the ladies
poured tea for him, but had to ask him: "Why are
you puckering?"
"On account of we're not trained to anything too
sweet," he answered. So they ofiFered him some lump
sugar for to suck his tea through, Russian style. It
seemed them that the tea wouldn't taste so good
to
that way, but "To our taste that tastes better," he
told them.
TheBritishers couldn't win him over, nohow, to
entice him to their way of life; all they managed was
to talk him into being their guest for a short spell,
and during that time they would be taking him
through their various plants and showing him all their
arts and crafts.

"After which," said they, "we'll bring him over on

one of our own ships and get him back to Petersburg
alive''

That he agreed to.

XV
The Britishers took the left-handed fellow in hand;
as for the Russian courier, they packed him off to
Russia. Even though that courier had a rank and was
learned in sundry tongues, they wasn't interested in
him; the one they was interested in was the left-
handed fellow— it was the left-handed fellow they
started taking here and there and showing him every-
. ,,
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56

57

58
Should be
Should be
Corruption of
the Russian word
,
,
,
boots (Ed.).
with beatings (Ed.).
(table)
to
which makes
cram (Ed.).
it resemble
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 363

thing. He had a look at all their industries: the metal

and their
plants as well as the soap-and-rope factories;
ways managing things were very much to his liking,
of
especially when it came to maintaining their work-
ers. Every worker amongst them is always well-fed;

none goes around raggedy, but each one has a com-

fortable wesldt for everyday wear and is shod in
thick-soled footgear tipped with metal, so's the feet
wont get caught against anything and get injured;
he don't work under a club but gets training and has
an understanding of his own. Each has a multiplica-
tion stable hanging in plain view before him and a
small slate lying handy—no matter what job one of
their master artisan is at work on, hell keep his eye
on that stable and check his work against it with un-
derstanding, and then write something on his slate,
and rub out something else, and gets things down to
a t: whatever is wrote down in them figgers, that's
what youll really get. And whenever a holiday rolls
around each workman takes a little cane in his hand,
calls for his lady friend, and off they go, two by two,
for a promenade, all fair and square, as is befitting.
The left-handed master had his full of observing
their ways of life and their works, but most of all

he turned his attention to a certain matter which puz-

zled the Britishers very much. He weren't taken up
so much with how they tiurned out their new guns,
but the condition in which they maintained their old
ones. He'd make all the rounds and praise everything,
and then say: *We can do as well as that."
But whenever he came upon some old gun, he'd
thrust his finger down the muzzle, run it over the
rifling and heave a sigh. "This," he would say, "is of
364

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59 Corruption of Mediterranean (Ed.)-
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 365

incomparably greater excellence than the ones we

turn out."
The Britishers couldn't figger out, nohow, just what
the left-handed master was making a note of, but
he would ask: "Could you tell me," he'd say, "whether
our generals ever inspected this or no?"

"Those who have been here," they'd tell him, "most

probably did inspect it."

"And how were they dressed?" he'd ask. **Were they

wearing gloves or no?"
"Your generals," they told him, "are all for spit-
and-polish; they always go about in gloves, which
means that they must have been wearing them here
as well."
The left-handed fellow didn't say anything. But a
restless melancholy come over him, sudden like. He
got homesick, mighty homesick, and he told the Brit-
ishers: "I'm humbly grateful to you for all your en-
tertainment, and I'm ever so gratified with every-
thing about you, and everything that I had to see
I've already seen, but now I want to get home as
fast as ever I can."
They couldn't detain him any further, nohow.
They couldn't let him go overland, on account of he
couldn't speak all tongues, and as for traveling by
water, that weren't so good, seeing as how it was
autumntime, stormy, but he wouldn't give over: "Let
me go!"
"We had a look at the stormometer," they told him.
"There's a storm coming up—you may get drownded;
why, this ain't the same Finland—
as your Gulf of
this here an honest-to-goodness Firmiterranean Sea."
is

"It don't make no difiFerence," he answered, "where

—,, .,,
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366 /

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, corruption of
,
(with chimes) which

,
makes the foreign
tremble (Ed.).

,
«1 Should be
«2 Should be
word resemble the Russian

tarpaulin (Ed.).
bay (Ed.).
to
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 367

one dies; it's all one, all is as God wills; but me, Im
wishful to get to the place of my birth, for otherwise
h'able to fall into a sort of madness/'
They didn't detain him by him
force; they fattened
up, gave him a money award, presented him with a
threepeter watch of gold for a remembrance and, to
ward off the chill of the sea during the late fall
journey, gave him a frieze overcoat with a cowl
against the wind. Dressed him most warmly, they
did, and drove the left-handed fellow to a ship that
was bound for Russia. Here they got him the best
of accommodations, he was a real gentleman,
only he felt awkward and didn't like sitting cooped
up with other folk, but would go up on deck, seat
himself under a tarpawHng and ask somebody:
'Which way lies our Russia?"
The Britisher to whom he might have put that
question would point out the direction tohim with
hishand or a toss of his head, and then the master
gunsmith would face that way and stare impatiently
toward his native land.
Soon as they come out of the bight and into the
Firmiterranean Sea his yearning for Russia got so
fierce that there was no pacifying him. The vessel
took to shipping seas that were something terrible,
but the left-handed Tulak still wouldn't go down to
his cabin—he kept on sitting there under the tar-
pawhng with his cowl shoved down over his fore-
head and staring toward his fatherland.
The Britishers came, lots of times, to call him to
come down to where it was warm, but he, so's they
wouldn't annoy him, actually took to kicking out at
 —,
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64
65
, Should be
literally means "sea
Should be
Should be (bet)—Ed.
sea sickness.
piglet" (Ed.).
deputy skipper (Ed.).
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 369

them. "No/' he informed them, "it's better for me

here, out in the open; otherwise, with a ceiling over
me, I'm going to get maul-the-mare, the way this
ship is lollopping around and all."

And that's how he carried on all the time, and

just wouldn't go down unless for a particular occa-
sion, and because of that same stubbornness one of
the mates took a special liking to him— and, as our
left-handed fellow's ill-luck would have it, this mate
knew how speak Russian. He couldn't give over
to
wondering: here was a Russian landlubber, and yet
he could stand all sorts of weather in such fashion.
"Good lad, Russ!" said he. "Let's have a drinki"
The left-handed gunsmith had him a drink.
So the mate said: "Have another I"
The left-handed Tulak had him another, and by
and by the both of them got high.
That's when the mate up and asked him: "What
government secret of ours are you taking back to
Russia?"
"That," the other answered him, "is my business."

"Well, if that's the case," the mate came back at

him, "let's you and me make a British wager."
"What sort of a wager?" asked the left-handed
master.
"Why, this sort— not to drink anything by one's
lonesome, but to drink everything together, drink for
drink: what one drinks the other must drink like-
wise, without fail, and whichever outdrinks the other

takes the pot."

"The clouds are prowling," the left-handed fellow
370

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Archaic for (Negro) —
^Ed.
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 371

thought to himself, "and my belly is growling; every-

thing is mighty boresome, and the way is long and
lonesome, and the place of my
is not to be
birth
seen for the waves— after Hven things up
all, it will
a bit, to make that wager." 'Well and good!" said
he. "It's a go!"
"Only thing is, it's got to be all fair and above-
board."
"That," the other told him, "is something you
needn t worry your head about."
They agreed and shook hands on it.

XVI
Their wager had begun whilst they were still on
the Firmiterranean Sea, and they kept drinking all
the way Dinaminde Fortress [which is at Riga]
to the
but they had kept at it neck and neck and neither

would give in to the other, and so very even were

they that when one of them, happening to look out to
sea, saw a devil coming up out of the water, the
same thing appeared to the other; only difference was,
that the devil the mate saw was red-headed, whilst
the left-handed master maintained that his devil was
dark-complectioned, any blackamoor.
"Cross yourself and turn your head away," said the
left-handed gunsmith. "That's the devil from out of
the deep!"
But the mate argued that it were nothing but a
deep-see diver. **Would you like me to toss you over-
board?" he asked. "Don t be afeard, now—hell hand
you right back to me."

"In that case," the left-handed gunsmith answered,

"go right ahead and toss me over."
 ,
372

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 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 373

The mate picked him up, piggy-back, and started

carryinghim to the side of the ship. The sailors
seen stopped the two and reported the matter
this,

to the captain, and the captain gave orders for the

both of them to be locked up below-decks and that
they were to get rum and wine and cold victuals, so
that they might not only eat and drink but keep up
with their wager, but that they weren't to be served no
flaming plum puddhng, on account of the spirits in
their innards might catch on fire.

And that's how they were brought, under lock and

key, to Petersburg, with neither havingwon the wager
from the other; and here they were laid flat on dif-
ferent carts, and the Britisher was took to the Am-
bassador's mansion on the British Quay, whilst the
left-handed fellow was carted off to the precinct jail.
From that point on their fates went worlds apart.

XVII

For the Britisher, soon as he was brought to the

Ambassador's mansion, they summoned a doctor and
an apothecary. The doctor ordered the mate to be
placed in a warm bath in his presence, whilst the
apothecary, without losing any time, rolled a rubber
pill and with his own hand shoved it into the mate's

mouth, and after that both doctor and apothecary

took him and put him on a featherbed and covered
him over with a fur coat, to let him work up a sweat
and, so's nobody might disturb him, a notice was is-
sued to everybody in the embassy that no one should
dast as much as sneeze. The doctor and the apothe-
cary waited until the mate had fallen alseep, and
tlien they prepared another rubber pill for him, placed
it on a little table near the head of his bed, and left.

But as for the left-handed gunsmith, they dumped

him on the floor at the precinct jail and started in
374

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 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 375

questioning him: **Who may you be and where you

from and have you a patchport or a doggyment of
one sort or another?"
But he, because of his illness, because of his hard
drinking and the long rolling and pitching of the
ship, had become so weak that he didn't answer a
word—all he could do was moan. So they frisked him
where he lay, and his fancy clothes was whisked
away, and so was his threepeter watch of gold, and
all the money he had on him; as for the left-handed

man himself, the inspector ordered that he was to

be given a free ride to a horsepital by the first-met
cabby.
A patrolman led ofF the left-handed gunsmith to
put him in the first sleigh they might chance on, but
for long time they couldn't nab one, seeing as how
all cabbies run from the police. And all that while

the left-handed Tulak was lying there on them cold

front steps, until the patrolman managed to nab a
cabby at last, only this cabby didn't have no fox-
skin lap-robe, for in such cases they hid the lap-
robes under themselves, so's the police will freeze
their feet all the sooner. And that's how they carried
the left-handed master along, all uncovered, and every
time they had to shift him from one cabby to another
they would him fall, and each time when
let it came
to Hfting him up they would yank at his ears, to
bring him back to consciousness.
They brought him to one horsepital— there they
weren't taking nobody in without he had some doggy-
ment; they brought him to another— there they weren't
taking nobody in, neither, and it was the same thing
with a third horsepital, and a fourth: they kept drag-
ging him until the very morning through all the out-
lying, crooked byways, and all this time they kept
376

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68
Should be
Corruption of , (Ed.).
with rice (Ed.)-
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 377

shifting him from sleigh to sleigh, so that he got all

banged up. At last one assistant doctor told the
patrolman to drive him to the Axbuttwhisky^* Horse-
pital, where they took in all unidentified folk of un-
identifiable status to die.
There they issued a receipt [to the police for one
sick prisoner, delivered]; as for the left-handed fel-
low, they ordered him to be put on the floor, out in
the hallway, until they got around to investigating
him.
But as for the British mate, next day, even whilst
all this was going on, he got out of bed, gulped the
second rubber pill down into his gizzards, put away
a chicken with rice by way of a light breakfast, chased
it down with a physic that sobered him up, and said:

"Where's my Russian comrade? going out to look

for him.*'
He dressed himself and dashed off.

XVIII

In an astonishing way the mate somehow or an-

other found the left-handed master in a very short
time, only they hadn't put him in a bed as yet and,
as he lay on the floor out in the hallway, he kept
complaining to the Britisher: "There's a word or two
I've got to say to the Sovereign, without fail," he said.
The Britisher dashed off to see Count Kleinmichel^^
and raised a fuss: "How can such things be allowedl
His clothes," said he, "they are mighty poor, but his
soul human, and that's for surel"
is

The
Britisher was thrun out on his ear, right then
and there, for such an opinion, to teach him not to

^^This is an attempt to approximate Leskov's "'!-

skaya." The correct name is Obukhovskaya Lechebnitsa, or Hos-
pital (Trans.).
^^An all-powerful dignitary under Nikolai I; in supreme au-
thority over all communications and public buildings ( Trans. )
378

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6» , Corruption of apoplexy (Ed.)-

 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 379

dast mention the human soul. But later on somebody

told him: **Youd do better by going to Platov the
Cossack— he's got feelings the same as the rest of us."
The Britisher got to see Platov, who was now again
lying on his grouch-couch. Platov heard him out and

dear man," said he.

tionship with
"
remembered the left-handed master. **Why of course,
on very close terms of rela-
him—I even pulled his hair out for
him; only thing is, don t know how to help him
I
out of the unfortunate fix he's in, on account of I'm
altogether out of the running by now and have had
me a full stroke of popoffplexy; I'm no longer held
in any esteem—but you might run over, fast as ever
you can, to Commandant Skobelev^^—he's in power
now and besides that he's experienced in such matters:
he'll do something or another."

The mate betook himself to Skobelev, too, and told

him everything: what the left-handed fellow's ailment
was, and how it had come upon him. "That's an ail-
ment I can understand; only thing is, our German
doctors can't treat it, for what you really need here
is a doctor that comes from a family of priests, seeing

as how such doctors grew up among cases that

and are able to help; I'll send Martyn-Solsky, a Rus-
sian doctor, right over."

But, by the time Martyn-Solsky arrived, the left-

handed master was breathing his last, seeing as how
he had split the base of his skull against the front
steps of the precinct jail, and the only thing he could
get out clearly was: "Tell the Sovereign that the Brit-
go in for scouring the insides of their
ishers don't
guns with brick-dust; let our men, too, keep from
scouring the insides of theirs, for, in case of war—

i^A General who, under Nikolai I, was for many years the
Commandant of the notorious Fortress of SS Peter and Paul, the
Russian Bastille (Trans.).
.
,-
380

,,
, ,:
—
/

: ,— —
.
,
-
-
.
, -

,-
., -

, :
, ,
.- :
—
, ,"^^
—

, .
», —
—
« -
.
70 Conjunction of

French plaisir (Ed.).

, clyster-pipe, and the
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 381

which may God preserve us from— them guns won t

be fit for firing/'
And with that proof of loyalty the left-handed
master gunsmith crossed himself and died.
Martyn-Solsky drove off at once to report on this
to Count Chernyshev/'^ so that the latter might inform
the Sovereign, but Count Chernyshev started yelling
at the doctor: **You stick to your vometics and your
relaxatives/' he told him, *ut don't go shoving your
nose into what's none of your business: that's what
we got Generals for in Russia."
So in the end they didn't tell a thing to the Sov-
ereign, and scouring the insides of guns with brick-
dust went on right up to the Crimean Campaign.
When it come time to load the guns, why, the bul-
lets just kept sloshing around in them, seeing as how
the rifling had been all scoured away with brick-dust.
That was when Marty-Solsky reminded Chernyshev
about the left-handed master gunsmith, but Count
Chernyshev told the doctor: "Go to the devil, you
clyster-shyster— don't go shoving your nose into what's
none of your business, or else I'll get out of it by
saying I never heard a word of all this from you—
and you and none other will be the one to get hell for
it."

"And get out of it he will, sure enough," Martyn-

Solsky bethought himself— and so said nothing.
But, had he brought the left-handed gunsmith's
words to the Sovereign's notice at the right time, the
war against the enemy in Crimea would have taken
an entirely different turn.

17
Alexander Ivanovich Chernyshev (1785-1857): Minister of
War and Chairman of the Imperial Council. Leskov refers to him
throughout as Count; he became a Grand Duke in 1 84 1 ( Trans. )
 ^!
« ,,-
382 /

» « . »---
;
,
,, -- -
, ,- ., , --
,
., : -
,, --
,
, ,, .-
.,
».,
71
-
The concluding chapter of
«
the story
written in conventional literary Russian.
is the
-
only one
 The Left-handed Smith of Tula / 383

XIX
By now whole story belong to "matters of
this
days gone by" and to "traditions of antiquity"— even
though that antiquity is not remote; nonetheless, we
need be in no rush to forget these traditions, despite
the fable-like formulation of this legend and the epic
character of its chief hero. The proper name of the
left-handed fellow, like the names of many of the
greatest geniuses, has been lost to posterity for all
time, but as a myth which is a personification of folk
fantasy he is interesting, while his adventures can
serve as a reminder of an epoch the general spirit of
which has been caught neatly and faithfully.
Such master craftsmen as the fabulous left-handed
artificer are, naturally, not to be found in Tula now-
adays: machines have equahzed the inequality of tal-
ents and gifts, and genius no longer strains itself in
the struggle against assiduity and accuracy. While
favoring a rise in earnings, machines do not favor
artistic derring-do, which at times surpassed all meas-
ure, inspiring folk fantasy to the creation of fabulous
legends, such as the present one.
Workers can, of course, appreciate the gains pre-
sented to them by the practical applications of the

same time, an epos with a very *

science of mechanics, but they recall the days of yore
with pride and love. That is their epos and, at the
soul."
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 About the Editor
In charge of the Russian Division at Hunter
College, which he had himself established
in 1955, ProfessorMaurice Friedberg holds
a doctorate in Slavic languages and litera-
turesfrom Columbia University. He has also
taught at Brooklyn College, Middlebury
College and, most recently, at Columbia
University. He is a former associate of the
Russian Research Center at Harvard
University.
Professor Friedberg has written exten-
sively on Russian literature, particularly its
modern peHod, and has contributed to The
New Leader, The Reporter, Saturday Re-
view, as well as to numerous American and
European scholarly journals, anthologies
and encyclopedias. His book Russian Clas-
sics in Soviet Jackets evoked controversial
comment in Soviet literary periodicals.

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