III. Peasant Women Who Believe

Below, by the little wooden gallery built onto the outer side of the wall, there was a crowd this time of women only, about twenty peasant women. They had been told that the elder would come out at last, and they had gathered and were waiting. The Khokhlakovs, landowners, who were also waiting for the elder, but in the room set aside for visitors of gentle birth, came out onto the gallery too. There were two of them: mother and daughter. Mrs. Khokhlakova, the mother, a wealthy lady always dressed with taste, was still a rather young and very pretty person, a little pale, with very lively and almost black eyes. She was no more than thirty-three and had been a widow for some five years. Her fourteen-year-old daughter suffered from paralysis of the legs. The poor girl had not been able to walk for half a year now, and she was wheeled about in a long, comfortable chair on wheels. She had a charming little face, a little thin from illness, but merry. Something mischievous shone in her large dark eyes with their long lashes. Since spring her mother had been meaning to take her abroad, but in the summer they were held up by arrangements on the estate. They had been living in our town for about a week now, more on business than on pilgrimage, but they had already visited the elder once, three days before. Now they had suddenly come again, though they knew the elder could hardly receive anyone at all anymore, and pleading insistently, they had begged once more for “the happiness of beholding the great healer.”

While waiting for the elder to come out, the mamma sat on a chair beside her daughter’s wheeled chair, and two steps from her stood an old monk, not from this monastery, but a visitor from a remote, little-known religious house in the north. He too wished to receive the elder’s blessing. But when the elder appeared on the gallery, he went first straight to the people. The crowd pressed toward the three-step porch that connected the low gallery with the field. The elder stood on the top step, put on his stole, and began to bless the women crowding toward him. A shrieker was pulled toward him by both hands. As soon as she caught sight of the elder, she suddenly began to hiccup, with some sort of absurd shrill squeals, and shook all over as if in a convulsion. Laying the stole on her head, the elder read a short prayer over her, and she at once grew quiet and calm. I do not know how it is nowadays, but as a child I often had occasion to see and hear these shriekers in villages and monasteries. They were brought to the liturgy, they squealed or barked like dogs so that the whole church could hear, but when the Holy Gifts were carried out and they were led up to the Gifts, the “possession” would stop at once, and the sick women would always grow calm for a while. As a child I was very struck and amazed by this. But at the same time, in answer to my questions, I heard from some of the landowners, and especially from my teachers in town, that this was all shamming to get out of work, and that it could always be rooted out by proper severity, and various anecdotes were told to confirm it. But later I learned with astonishment from medical specialists that there is no shamming in it whatever, that it is a terrible female illness, found, it seems, chiefly among us in Rus, which bears witness to the hard lot of our village women, an illness that comes from exhausting work too soon after difficult, abnormal births without any medical help; and besides, from hopeless grief, from beatings, and so on, which some female natures, after all, cannot bear, however common the example. And the strange and instantaneous healing of the possessed and struggling woman as soon as she was led up to the Gifts, which was explained to me as shamming and, what is more, as a trick arranged by the “clericals” themselves, very likely also came about in the most natural way: the women who led her up to the Gifts, and above all the sick woman herself, fully believed, as an established truth, that the unclean spirit that had taken possession of her could never bear it if she were led up to the Gifts and bowed before them. And so there always occurred (and was bound to occur) in a nervous woman, a woman, of course, mentally ill as well, an inevitable shock, as it were, of her whole organism at the moment of bowing before the Gifts, a shock called forth by the expectation of the inevitable miracle of healing and by the most complete faith that it would take place. And it did take place, if only for a minute. In just the same way it took place now, as soon as the elder covered the sick woman with his stole.

Many of the women crowding around him were dissolved in tears of tenderness and rapture called forth by the effect of the moment; others strained to kiss at least the hem of his garment, and some were wailing something. He blessed them all, and talked with some. The shrieker he knew already; she had been brought from not far away, from a village only about six versts from the monastery, and she had been brought to him before.

“And here is one from far away!” He pointed to a woman who was not at all old yet, but very thin and haggard, her face not so much sunburned as blackened all over. She was on her knees, gazing at the elder with a fixed look. There was something frenzied, as it were, in her look.

“From far away, Father, from far away, three hundred versts from here. From far away, Father, from far away,” the woman said in a singsong voice, swaying her head gently from side to side and propping her cheek on her palm. She spoke as if lamenting. There is among the people a grief that is silent and long-suffering; it withdraws into itself and is silent. But there is also a grief that has been strained past bearing: it breaks out once in tears, and from that moment it goes off into lamentation. This is especially so with women. But it is no easier than silent grief. Lamentations soothe here only by rubbing the wound raw and straining the heart still more. Such grief does not even want consolation; it feeds on the sense of its own unquenchableness. Lamentation is only the need to keep irritating the wound.

“You are of the townspeople, I suppose?” the elder went on, looking at her with curiosity.

“Town folk, Father, town folk, we’re peasants by station, but town folk, we live in the town. I came to see you, Father. We’ve heard of you, Father, we’ve heard. I buried my little son, my baby, and went to pray to God. I’ve been to three monasteries, and they told me: ‘Go there too, Nastasyushka,’ to you, that is, my dear, to you. I came, I was at the vigil yesterday, and today I’ve come to you.”

“What are you weeping for?”

“I’m sorry for my little son, Father, he was three, just three months short of three years old. I’m tormented for my little son, Father, for my little son. He was the last little son left to us, we had four, Nikitushka and I, but our little children don’t stay with us, they don’t stay, my dear, they don’t stay. The first three I buried, and I didn’t grieve for them so very much, but this last one I buried and I can’t forget him. It’s as if he’s standing right here in front of me, he won’t go away. He’s dried up my soul. I look at his little things, his little shirt or his little boots, and I howl. I lay out all he left behind, every little thing of his, I look and I howl. I say to Nikitushka, my husband: let me go, master, let me go on a pilgrimage. He’s a coachman, we’re not poor, Father, not poor, we drive on our own account, everything’s our own, the horses and the carriage. But what’s our goods to us now? He’s taken to drink without me, my Nikitushka has, that’s for certain, and he did even before: the moment I turn my back, he gets weak. But now I don’t even think about him. It’s the third month now I’ve been away from home. I’ve forgotten, I’ve forgotten everything and I don’t want to remember; and what would I do with him now? I’m done with him, done, I’m done with all of them. And I wish I’d never look at my house and my goods again, I wish I’d never see anything at all!”

“Listen, mother,” said the elder, “once, in ancient times, a great saint saw in a church a mother weeping just like you, and also for her baby, her only one, whom the Lord had also called away. ‘Do you not know,’ the saint said to her, ‘how bold these little ones are before God’s throne? There is no one bolder than they in the kingdom of heaven: You gave us life, Lord, they say to God, and we had only just glimpsed it when you took it back from us. And so boldly do they beg and ask that the Lord at once gives them the rank of angels. And therefore,’ said the saint, ‘you too rejoice, woman, and do not weep: your little one is now with the Lord in the host of his angels.’ That is what the saint said to the weeping woman in ancient times. And he was a great saint, and could not have told her an untruth. So know this too, mother: your little one, too, surely stands now before the throne of the Lord, and rejoices, and is glad, and prays to God for you. And so you too may weep, but rejoice.”

The woman listened to him, propping her cheek on her hand and looking down. She sighed deeply.

“That’s just how Nikitushka comforted me, word for word like you, he said: ‘You foolish woman,’ he says, ‘what are you crying for, our little son is surely with the Lord God now, singing with the angels.’ He says it to me, and he’s crying himself, I can see, crying just like me. ‘I know, Nikitushka,’ I say, ‘where else would he be, if not with the Lord God, only he’s not here, with us, Nikitushka, not near us now, sitting the way he used to!’ If only I could look at him just once, only once more could I see him again, I wouldn’t go up to him, I wouldn’t say a word, I’d hide in a corner, only to see him for one little minute, to hear him playing in the yard, the way he’d come in and call in his little voice: ‘Mama, where are you?’ If only I could hear him walk across the room on his little feet just once, just once, his little feet going tap-tap, so quick, so quick, I remember how he used to run to me, shouting and laughing, if only I could hear his little feet, I’d hear them, I’d know them! But he’s gone, Father, he’s gone, and I’ll never hear him again! Here’s his little sash, but he’s gone, and I’ll never see him now, never hear him!…”

She took out from her bosom her boy’s little braided sash, and as soon as she looked at it she shook with sobs, covering her eyes with her fingers, through which tears suddenly gushed in a stream.

“That,” said the elder, “that is the ancient ‘Rachel weeping for her children, and she will not be comforted, because they are no more,’ and such is the lot laid down for you mothers on earth. And do not be comforted, you need not be comforted; do not be comforted, but weep, only each time you weep, remember steadfastly that your little son is one of God’s angels, that he looks down on you from there and sees you, and rejoices at your tears, and points them out to the Lord God. And for a long while yet you will have this great weeping of a mother, but in the end it will turn into quiet joy for you, and your bitter tears will be only tears of quiet tenderness and of the heart’s purification, which saves from sin. And I will remember your little one for the repose of his soul; what was his name?”

“Alexei, Father.”

“A lovely name. After Alexei, the man of God?”

“Of God, Father, of God, Alexei, the man of God!”

“What a saint he was! I will remember him, mother, I will remember him, and I will remember your sorrow in my prayers, and I will remember your husband for his health. Only it is a sin for you to leave him. Go to your husband and take care of him. Your little boy will see from there that you have abandoned his father, and he will weep for you both; why do you disturb his blessedness? He is alive, you know, alive, for the soul lives forever; he is not in the house, but he is near you, unseen. How can he come into the house if you say you have come to hate your house? To whom will he come, if he does not find you together, his father and his mother? Now you dream of him and you are tormented, but then he will send you gentle dreams. Go home to your husband, mother, go today.”

“I’ll go, dear one, at your word I’ll go. You’ve read my heart. Nikitushka, my Nikitushka, you’re waiting for me, my dear, you’re waiting!” the woman began to lament, but the elder had already turned to a little old woman, dressed not as a pilgrim but as a townswoman. One could see by her eyes that she had some business and had come to tell something. She said she was the widow of a noncommissioned officer, not from far away, from our own town. She had a son, Vasenka, who served somewhere in the commissariat, and he went off to Siberia, to Irkutsk. He wrote twice from there, and now for a year he had stopped writing. She had made inquiries about him, but to tell the truth she did not know where to make them.

“And the other day Stepanida Ilyinishna Bedryagina, she’s a merchant’s wife, a rich one, says to me: take your son, Prokhorovna, she says, and write him down in the book of remembrance, take it to the church, and have him remembered for the repose of his soul. His soul will grow restless, she says, and he’ll write a letter. ‘And that,’ says Stepanida Ilyinishna, ‘is perfectly sure, it’s been tried many times.’ Only I’m in doubt… You’re our light, is it true or isn’t it, and would it be right to do it?”

“Do not even think of it. It is shameful even to ask. How can it be possible for a living soul, and by his own mother too, to be remembered for the repose of the dead! It is a great sin, like sorcery; it is forgiven only because of your ignorance. Better pray to the Queen of Heaven, our swift intercessor and helper, for his health, and that she may forgive you too for your wrong thinking. And this is what I will tell you as well, Prokhorovna: either he himself will soon come back to you, your son, or he will surely send a letter. Know that. Go, and from now on be at peace. Your son is alive, I tell you.”

“Our dear one, God reward you, our benefactor, you who pray for all of us and for our sins…”

But the elder had already noticed in the crowd two burning eyes straining toward him, the eyes of an exhausted, consumptive-looking, though still young, peasant woman. She looked in silence, her eyes begged for something, but she seemed afraid to come closer.

“What have you come with, my dear?”

“Absolve my soul, dear Father,” she said softly and unhurriedly, knelt, and bowed down at his feet.

“I have sinned, dear Father, I am afraid of my sin.”

The elder sat down on the bottom step; the woman came closer to him, without getting up from her knees.

“I’ve been a widow two years now, going on three,” she began in a half whisper, as though shuddering. “It was hard being married, he was old, he beat me badly. He was lying sick, and I thought, looking at him: and if he gets well, gets up again, what then? And then that very thought came to me…”

“Wait,” said the elder, and he put his ear right to her lips. The woman continued in a soft whisper, and almost nothing could be made out. She soon finished.

“Going on three years?” asked the elder.

“Going on three. At first I didn’t think of it, but now I’ve started ailing, the anguish has taken hold of me.”

“Have you come from far?”

“Five hundred versts from here.”

“Did you tell it at confession?”

“I told it, I told it twice.”

“Were you admitted to communion?”

“I was. I’m afraid; I’m afraid to die.”

“Do not be afraid of anything, and never be afraid, and do not grieve. So long as repentance does not grow scant in you, God will forgive everything. There is no sin, and there can be no sin on all the earth, that the Lord will not forgive one who truly repents. Nor can a man commit so great a sin as to exhaust God’s infinite love. Or can there be a sin that would exceed God’s love? Think only of repentance, unceasing repentance, and drive fear away altogether. Believe that God loves you as you cannot even imagine, loves you even with your sin and in your sin. And it was said long ago that there is more joy in heaven over one who repents than over ten righteous. Go, then, and do not be afraid. Do not be bitter against people, do not be angry at wrongs. Forgive the dead man in your heart everything with which he offended you, be truly reconciled with him. If you repent, then you love. And if you love, you are already God’s… With love everything is bought, everything is saved. If I, a sinful man just like you, have been moved over you and have pitied you, how much more God will. Love is so priceless a treasure that you can buy the whole world with it, and redeem not only your own sins but the sins of others as well. Go, and do not be afraid.”

He made the sign of the cross over her three times, took a small icon from around his neck, and put it on her. She bowed down to the ground before him in silence. He rose a little and looked cheerfully at a healthy peasant woman with a nursing baby in her arms.

“From Vyshegorye, dear Father.”

“Six versts, though, from here, you wore yourself out with the baby. What do you want?”

“I came to have a look at you. I’ve been to you before, or have you forgotten? Your memory’s not much if you’ve forgotten me already. They said back home that you were poorly, so I thought, well, I’ll go and see him myself: and here I see you, and how are you poorly? You’ll live another twenty years, really, God be with you! And there are plenty praying for you, how could you be poorly?”

“Thank you for everything, my dear.”

“And by the way, I’ve a little request, not a big one: here’s sixty kopecks, give them, dear, to some woman poorer than me. I was coming here and thinking: better give it through him, he’ll know which one to give it to.”

“Thank you, my dear, thank you, my good woman. I love you. I will do it without fail. Is that a little girl in your arms?”

“A little girl, our light, Lizaveta.”

“The Lord bless you both, you and little Lizaveta. You have gladdened my heart, mother. Goodbye, my dear ones, goodbye, my dear, kind ones.”

He blessed them all and bowed low to them all.