Once in holy Russia,Stonewalled mother Moscow,In the street Mestchanskaia,Two dear friends encountered,Both radiant as the sun.Low bowed Ivan Timofeyevitch,Salutes his friend, the other—Daniel Philipovitch,“Welcome to my palace,Welcome to my tableTo eat bread and salt.I have longed to hear thee sayWhat thy designs are for the Judgment Day.”
Once in holy Russia,Stonewalled mother Moscow,In the street Mestchanskaia,Two dear friends encountered,Both radiant as the sun.Low bowed Ivan Timofeyevitch,Salutes his friend, the other—Daniel Philipovitch,“Welcome to my palace,Welcome to my tableTo eat bread and salt.I have longed to hear thee sayWhat thy designs are for the Judgment Day.”
Once in holy Russia,
Stonewalled mother Moscow,
In the street Mestchanskaia,
Two dear friends encountered,
Both radiant as the sun.
Low bowed Ivan Timofeyevitch,
Salutes his friend, the other—Daniel Philipovitch,
“Welcome to my palace,
Welcome to my table
To eat bread and salt.
I have longed to hear thee say
What thy designs are for the Judgment Day.”
“Mitka, Mitka, who are they? Daniel Philipovitch and Ivan Timofeyevitch?” asked Tichon.
Taken by surprise, Mitka stopped short, bending under the weight of a large sack, his eyes expressing great amazement:—
“Don’t you know the God Sabaoth and Christ!”
“How can the Lord Sabaoth and Christ be said to meet in Mestchanskaia Street?” continued Tichon with increasing surprise.
But Mitka already realized he had said too much and went off, growling in a gloomy voice:—
“Much knowledge will make you old before your time.”
Soon after this Mitka fell ill. He had probably strained himself with lifting the heavy sacks. For days he lay in his underground room, moaning and groaning. Tichon went to see him, gave him sage-brandy to drink and rubbed him with camphorated spirit and other medicaments, obtained from a friendly German apothecary. It was damp in the cellar and Tichon removed Mitka to his own warm bright room over the main storehouse. Mitka was affectionate. He became attached to Tichon, and began to talk more openly with him.
Tichon gathered from these talks and Mitka’s songs, that at the beginning of the reign of Tsar Alexis Michailovitch, in the Murom district, before a great crowd of people, the Lord Sabaoth, surrounded by angels, archangels Cherubim and Seraphim, had come down from heaven in a fiery chariot. The angels returned to heaven, the Lord remained and entered the pure body of Daniel Philipovitch, a soldier deserter, declaring the peasant Ivan Timofeyevitch to be his Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, and they set out wandering through the world in the guise of two beggars.
Escaping from persecutors they suffered cold and hunger; they were obliged to hide themselves in pig-sties, in fetid ditches, or to sleep under haystacks. One day a peasant woman concealed them in the cellar under a cattle shed. The cattle drainage from the floor oozed through into the cellar. Daniel Philipovitch on seeing it, said to Ivan Timofeyevitch: “You will get wet,” and Ivan answered: “It is nothing, if only you, my king, remain dry.”
They spent the last years of their lives in Moscow, on the Mestchanskaia Street, in a separate house, called “Zion.” They both died there and in glory ascended into heaven.
After Ivan Timofeyevitch, the same as before him, many Christs revealed themselves, since the Lord resides nowhere more readily than in a pure human body. It is written: “Ye are the temples of the living God.” God begets a Christ whenever the world is in danger of dying. Christ accomplished His work in one body and has begun it in several others.
“This means there are many Christs?” said Tichon.
“There is one spirit, Christ, yet the bodies in which He appears are many,” replied Mitka.
“Is there a Christ now?” continued Tichon, his heart sinking in anticipation of a mystery.
Mitka assented with a nod.
“Where is He?”
“Do not question. I dare not answer. You will see for yourself, if you are found worthy.”
Mitka would say no more.
“I will not deliver your secret to the enemy,” remembered Tichon.
A few days later he was busy at his account books. It was Saturday evening. The shop was closed. A train of waggons had come, and men were carrying in the flour bags. The cold white air rushed in through the open door, footsteps sounded on the snow, the church bells were ringing. The snow-covered roofs of the weather-beaten log-houses, flushed with the evening glow, stood out against the golden purple of the sky. It was quite dark in the shop; only at the end, amidst the towering flour sacks the darkness was relieved by a lamp glimmering before the icon of St. Nicholas.
Saphiannikoff, a fat, white-haired old man, a veritable Father Christmas, and the chief clerk, Yemelian Retivoi, a corpulent red-haired, bald man, with the ugly intelligent face of a faun, were drinking hot “sbiten” and listening to Tichon’s narrative about the settlers of Kerjenetz.
“And what is your opinion, Yemelian Ivanovitch?” asked Tichon, “where can salvation be found, in the old or the new books?”
“There once lived in Russia a man called Daniel Philipovitch,” began Yemelian with a smile, “he read all the books, and finding little good in them, he gathered them all together in a bag and threw them into the Volga. Salvation lies neither in the old nor in the new books, but in
The Golden Book,The Book of Life,The Book of the Dove,The Holy Ghost Himself.”
The Golden Book,The Book of Life,The Book of the Dove,The Holy Ghost Himself.”
The Golden Book,
The Book of Life,
The Book of the Dove,
The Holy Ghost Himself.”
the last words he sang in the same rhythm Mitka used for his strange songs.
“Where is that book?” asked Tichon in a shy eager voice.
“There, look!”
He pointed to the sky through the open door.
“That is the book; the Lord God Himself writes upon it with the golden words of eternal life. Having read them, you will fathom all mysteries in heaven and on earth.”
Yemelian looked steadily at him, and Tichon felt thrilled by sudden fear, as though he had looked into some dark, transparent, bottomless pool.
Yemelian, exchanging glances with his master, suddenly stopped.
“Does this mean that salvation can be found neither in the old nor the new Church?” Tichon hastened to question, afraid lest Yemelian, like Mitka, would say no more.
“What is your Church?” Yemelian shrugged his shoulder in contempt. “An anthill, a dilapidated synagogue, a Jewish market! Its spiritual life has been lost in its rites and buildings. She used to be a spirit and a fire, but now she has become precious stones and gold, or icons and priests’ palls. God’s word has become stale, like old dry bread which breaks the teeth and cannot be chewed.”
And leaning over to Tichon, he added in a whisper:—
“Thereisa true, mysterious, new church, a bright hall of Zion, whose framework is made of cypress, barberry and anise-wood. Not dry crusts, but soft fresh cakes, straight from the oven, are served out there; words of life out of the mouths of prophets. Heavenly joy aboundsin it, and spiritual drink about which the Church sings: ‘Come! and drink from the new, incorruptible spring which flows from the tomb of the living Christ!’”
“Ah, what a drink! there is no need to sip it, to look at it is sufficient,” exclaimed Parfen Paramonitch, and raising his eyes, he began to chant in a quite unexpectedly high-pitched voice:—
God Himself has brewed the drink,The Holy Ghost has mingled it.
God Himself has brewed the drink,The Holy Ghost has mingled it.
God Himself has brewed the drink,
The Holy Ghost has mingled it.
Yemelian and Mitka chimed in, beating time with their feet, twitching their shoulders, as if eager to whirl away in a dance. All three had a Bacchantic look in their eyes.
God Himself has brewed the drink,The Holy Ghost has mingled it,The Holy Virgin tapped it,Together with God they worked;Holy angels, Cherubim,Took it round and carried it.
God Himself has brewed the drink,The Holy Ghost has mingled it,The Holy Virgin tapped it,Together with God they worked;Holy angels, Cherubim,Took it round and carried it.
God Himself has brewed the drink,
The Holy Ghost has mingled it,
The Holy Virgin tapped it,
Together with God they worked;
Holy angels, Cherubim,
Took it round and carried it.
Tichon thought he could hear the stamping of many feet, the echo of a whirling frantic dance; there was something wild, and mænad-like in this song, which robbed one’s breath and at the same time roused the longing to be ever listening to it.
All at once, as suddenly as they began, the three men stopped.
Yemelian started to look over the account books, Mitka lifted up the bag and went his way. Parfen Paramonitch passed his hand over his face, as if wiping something from it. He rose, yawned, stretched himself lazily, and crossing his mouth, said in his usual voice, as he was wont to say every night:—
“Go and have your supper, lads! the soup and kasha will be getting cold.”
And again all became ordinary and common place.
Tichon, too, had risen, but all at once, as if impelled by some power, he fell on his knees, pale and trembling, stretched out his hand and cried:—
“Friends, have compassion on me! I can endure it no longer. My soul has worn itself out with longing forthe courts of the Lord! Accept me into your holy communion, unveil to me your great mystery!”
“See, see, how impatient the lad is!” Yemelian looked at him with his cunning smile, “You are too hasty, my friend. The Father has first to be asked. Perhaps you will be found worthy, but meanwhile remain silent.”
They all went to supper, as if nothing had happened. Neither on the morrow nor on the following days was there any mention made of mysteries. Whenever Tichon ventured to allude to what had happened, the others remained silent and looked at him with suspicion. It was as if a curtain had been drawn up for a moment and then suddenly dropped again. Yet he could not forget what he had seen. He went about no longer his old self. What was said to him he did not understand; he answered wrongly and made mistakes in his accounts. The master scolded him. Tichon feared he would be dismissed.
The next Saturday, late at night, he was sitting alone in his room, when in came Mitka.
“Come,” said he, in a hurried voice.
“Whither?”
“To see the Father.”
Afraid to question, Tichon hurriedly dressed and came down. He saw his master’s sleigh waiting at the door. In it sat Yemelian and Parfen Paramonitch, the latter wrapped in a fur coat. Tichon cowered at their feet, Mitka seated himself on the box and away they sped through the dark, deserted streets. The night was calm and bright. Pellucid, pearly cloudlets covered the moon. They crossed the river on the ice and for some time wound their way along the dark narrow lanes about Samoskvosetchia. At last the dull pink walls of the Donskoi Monastery, surmounted by white pinnacles and towers, appeared through the luminous gloom.
At the corner of the Donskoi and Shakelskoi Street they got out of the sleigh, and Mitka left the horse in a court. They continued their way on foot past old wooden fences banked with snow. Then they turned into a lane where the snow came almost up to their knees. On reaching a double gate, hung on iron hinges, they knocked. Theywere only admitted after they had said who they were and whence they came. They stepped into a court surrounded by buildings. Yet with the exception of the gate-keeper nobody was visible, no light, not even the bark of a dog was heard—dead silence. On leaving the courtyard they continued their way along a narrow, well-used path, between two high banks of snow, across some back-yards: whether wastes or gardens it was difficult to say. Passing through a second gate, they entered an orchard; the apple and cheery trees in their wintry dress seemed covered by white blossoms. The silence was so intense that they might have been a hundred miles away from human habitation. At the end of the garden rose a large wooden house. They went up to the door, knocked and again they were questioned. A stern-looking lad whose dress suggested a monastic novice admitted them. In the spacious hall, the walls, chests, and benches were covered with a number of overcoats, belonging to men and women: simple sheepskins, rich fur coats, ancient Russian caps, new-fashioned hoods.
When they had taken off their coats, Yemelian thrice asked Tichon:—
“Dost thou desire, my son, to be initiated into God’s mystery?”
And Tichon thrice answered:—
“I do.”
Yemelian blindfolded him and led him by the hand.
They went along endless corridors, now going down, now going up staircases.
At last they stopped. Yemelian ordered Tichon to undress, and then put on him a long linen tunic, on his feet cotton stockings, repeating the words from Revelation:—“He that overcometh shall be clothed in white raiment.”
After this they continued their way. The last staircase was so steep that Tichon was obliged to grip with both hands Mitka’s shoulders, for fear of slipping.
They were met by a smell of damp earth, which seemed to issue from a cellar. A last door opened and they entered a heated apartment, where judging by the whispering and jostling of feet a large number were assembled. Yemelian made Tichon kneel, bow thrice to the ground and repeat the words he was whispering into his ear:—
“I swear by my soul, my God and His terrible last Judgment, to suffer the knout, the fire, the axe, the block, every torture, even death, rather than forsake the Holy Faith, and also to relate to no one, neither to my confessor nor my father, whatever I will hear or see here. I will not deliver thy secret to the enemy, nor give the kiss of Judas. Amen.”
When he ended he was led to a bench and the bandage was removed from his eyes.
He saw a large low room; holy icons stood in the corner. Before them numerous lit tapers; the whitewashed wall was marked with dark spots of damp; water penetrated through the cracks between the black tarred planks.
The air was as close as in a vapour bath. Circles of iridescent light surrounded the flames of the candles, the benches along the walls were occupied by men on one side, and women on the other, and all were wearing the same white tunics, cotton stockings and no boots.
“The Queen, the Queen,” they reverently whispered. The door opened and in came a tall, slender woman in a black dress with a white handkerchief on her head. All rose and bowed low to her.
“Akoulína Makejevna, the heavenly Queen,” Mitka whispered to Tichon. The woman went up and sat down under the icons, herself resembling an icon. All began to go up to her and bow before her, kissing her knee.
Yemelian took Tichon to her and said:—
“Baptise him, mother. He is new.”
Tichon knelt and looked at her: she was dark, no longer young, about forty, with little wrinkles in the corners near her dark eyelashes; her black thick eyebrows were almost grown together, and she had a slight black down on her upper lip, “quite like a Tzuigane or a Circassian,” he thought. But when she looked at him with her large, soft, black eyes he realized how beautiful she was.
The Queen thrice made a sign of blessing him with a lit taper, almost touching his forehead, chest and shoulders with the flame.
“In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Tichon, the servant of God, is baptised with fire and the Holy Spirit!” Then with a quick, adroit, and evidentlyaccustomed movement, she opened her dress, and he saw her beautiful naked body, fresh as a young maiden’s, amber coloured, as if carved from ivory.
Yemelian pushed him forward whispering:—
“Kiss the holy womb, the pure breasts.”
Tichon cast his eyes to the ground in confusion.
“Fear not, child!” said Akoulína, and such tenderness was in her voice that Tichon seemed to hear in it the voice of a mother, sister, and beloved all in one.
He remembered how, in the dark wood near the Round Lake, he had buried his head among the grass and kissed the earth, how looking up towards heaven, he had felt that the earth and the sky were one, and how weeping he had prayed:—
O wondrous Queen, Mother of God,Earth, thou bountiful mother of all.
O wondrous Queen, Mother of God,Earth, thou bountiful mother of all.
O wondrous Queen, Mother of God,
Earth, thou bountiful mother of all.
He reverently kissed the beautiful body thrice, like a holy image. A subtle scent rose from it; a subtle smile flitted across her lips. This scent and the smile terrified him.
But the dress closed, and again she sat before him, majestic and severe, a saint,—an icon among icons.
When Tichon returned with Yemelian to their place the whole assembly began to sing in a melancholy drawn voice:—
Send us Lord Thy Christ,Send us Lord Thy Son,Send the Holy Spirit, the Comforter.
Send us Lord Thy Christ,Send us Lord Thy Son,Send the Holy Spirit, the Comforter.
Send us Lord Thy Christ,
Send us Lord Thy Son,
Send the Holy Spirit, the Comforter.
For a moment they remained hushed; and then the singing was renewed, but this time it was merry, quick, as if for a dance; the people stamped with their feet, clapped with their hands, and their eyes had a look of ecstasy:—
On the river DonChrist dwells in our homes,With His AngelsAnd Archangels,With cherubimAnd seraphim,And the holy host of Heaven.
On the river DonChrist dwells in our homes,With His AngelsAnd Archangels,With cherubimAnd seraphim,And the holy host of Heaven.
On the river Don
Christ dwells in our homes,
With His Angels
And Archangels,
With cherubim
And seraphim,
And the holy host of Heaven.
Suddenly a venerable old man started from his seat,his ascetic face resembled Holy Sergius, as he is painted on icons; he ran out into the middle of the room and began to whirl round.
Then a young girl, about fourteen, quite a child, yet already pregnant, slender as a reed, with a neck long as the stalk of a flower, also started up and went round with the grace of a swan.
“That is Marioushka the idiot,” said Yemelian, pointing to her, “she can hardly speak, mostly lows, but when filled with the spirit she sings like a nightingale.”
The girl sang in a child-like silvery voice:—
’Tis enough for you to sit,Time has come for the birds to flit,From prison and cells,And shadowy caverns.——
’Tis enough for you to sit,Time has come for the birds to flit,From prison and cells,And shadowy caverns.——
’Tis enough for you to sit,
Time has come for the birds to flit,
From prison and cells,
And shadowy caverns.——
Her waving arms suggested wings.
Parfen Paramonitch ran up to Marioushka, took her by the hands and began to whirl her round and round, like a polar bear dancing with a snow fairy. Tichon would have never believed that this huge, portly body could dance with such ethereal lightness. Spinning round like a top he sang in his high-pitched voice:—
In the seventh heavenChrist is spinning round.Ah, friends! ah, friends!Christ has shoesMade of Saphia leather,Stitched with finest stitches.
In the seventh heavenChrist is spinning round.Ah, friends! ah, friends!Christ has shoesMade of Saphia leather,Stitched with finest stitches.
In the seventh heaven
Christ is spinning round.
Ah, friends! ah, friends!
Christ has shoes
Made of Saphia leather,
Stitched with finest stitches.
Other people rose and began to spin round.
A man with a wooden leg went round as nimbly as the rest. Tichon was told afterwards that his name was Captain Smoorigin; he had lost his leg at the storming of Azov.
A short fat lady with dignified gray curls, Princess Khovánsky, spun round like a ball. Next to her a loose-limbed cobbler was prancing, throwing his feet and arms about; he twisted and twirled himself like a huge gnat, a “Daddy-long-legs,” ejaculating from time to time:—
Dancing and burning,On we go to Zion’s hill!
Dancing and burning,On we go to Zion’s hill!
Dancing and burning,
On we go to Zion’s hill!
By this time nearly all had joined the dance, not only singly but in pairs and groups representing “walls,” “corners,” “crosses,” “David’s ship,” and “flowers,” etc.
“The various figures,” explained Yemelian to Tichon, “represent the dances of the heavenly hosts of angels and archangels round the throne of God; the waving of arms imitates the beating of angel’s wings. The heavens and the earth are one; what happens there is enacted here also.”
The dance grew more and more rapid; it seemed as if a whirlwind filled the room, and they were no longer dancing themselves, but some external power was whirling them round with such rapidity that their faces could no longer be discerned; the hair on the head stood upright, the tunics blew out like funnels, and men were transformed into white spinning columns. Some hissed, others cackled, others again screamed in frenzy, and again it seemed that not they themselves, but some external power was screaming through their mouths.
He has filled us, He has filled us,Holy, Holy Spirit,Fill us, fill us, fill us!
He has filled us, He has filled us,Holy, Holy Spirit,Fill us, fill us, fill us!
He has filled us, He has filled us,
Holy, Holy Spirit,
Fill us, fill us, fill us!
They fell on the ground in convulsions, with foaming mouths, like madmen; they prophesied, but for the most part it was impossible to make out what they meant. Some stopped short in exhaustion, their faces either crimson or deadly white. Sweat poured down them in streams; they mopped themselves with towels, wrung their drenched tunics out, making pools on the floor. And after a brief rest they recommenced their dance.
Suddenly the dancers stopped, and fell with their faces to the ground. A dead silence ensued, and again, as before the Queen’s entry, a reverent whisper passed through the room.
“The King, the King!”
In came a man, of about thirty, arrayed in a long white semi-transparent gown. He had a feminine face, like that of Akoulína Makejevna. It was not Russian, yet of singular and winning beauty.
“Who is this?” asked Tichon.
“Christ, the Lord,” answered Mitka, who lay next to him.
Tichon learnt afterwards that he was a runaway Cossack, Averian by name, the son of a Cossack and a captive Greek woman.
The King went up to the Queen, who respectfully rose before him, and embraced and kissed her three times.
Coming into the middle of the room, he stepped upon a little round platform, made of boards like those which cover springs.
Then all began to sing in a loud solemn voice:—
The seventh heaven opened,A golden chariot descended,Both golden and fiery.The Holy Ghost Himself is driving,His white horse is marvellous,The tail is of strings of pearls,Fire burns within its nostrils,Its eyes are precious stones.He descends, He descends,Holy, Holy Spirit,Come, come to us!
The seventh heaven opened,A golden chariot descended,Both golden and fiery.The Holy Ghost Himself is driving,His white horse is marvellous,The tail is of strings of pearls,Fire burns within its nostrils,Its eyes are precious stones.He descends, He descends,Holy, Holy Spirit,Come, come to us!
The seventh heaven opened,
A golden chariot descended,
Both golden and fiery.
The Holy Ghost Himself is driving,
His white horse is marvellous,
The tail is of strings of pearls,
Fire burns within its nostrils,
Its eyes are precious stones.
He descends, He descends,
Holy, Holy Spirit,
Come, come to us!
The King blessed his children, and again the dancing began, only more frenzied than ever; the Queen at the end of the room, the King in the centre of the whirling circles, alone remained motionless. From time to time the King slowly raised his arms; and every time the dance grew faster. Inhuman shrieks rose up:—
“Eva, Evoe; Eva, Evoe!”
Tichon remembered reading in old Latin commentaries of Pausanias, that the ancient Bacchantes were supposed to greet the god Dionysus with almost the same sounding cries: “Evan, Evoe!” By what miracle did the mysteries of the dead god penetrate here, filtering by channels of subterranean waters, from the summit of Mount Cithaeron into this out-of-the-way corner of Moscow?
He contemplated the white troop of whirling dancers and at times he lost consciousness. Time had stopped; everything had vanished; there was nothing but whiteness, a white abyss, into which white birds were falling. Nothing existed, he himself no longer existed. Only the white precipice,—the white death.
He recovered when Yemelian took him by the hand, saying:—“Let us go!”
Although the daylight did not penetrate into the cellar, Tichon felt that dawn was near. The burnt-down candles were smoking. The air was unbearably close and unpleasant. The pools of sweat on the floor were being mopped up with rags. The night watch had come to an end. The King and the Queen had gone out. Some of the people, groping their way towards the exit, crept along like stupefied flies. Others had fallen to the ground and lay as in a deep swoon. Others, again, hanging their heads sat on the benches with faces like drunkards taken with nausea. The white birds had fallen to earth, mortally wounded.
After that night Tichon did not miss a single meeting, Mitka taught him how to dance. At first he was shy, but he got used to it, and soon the dance became a necessity to him.
Each time new mysteries were revealed to him.
Yet it seemed that the essential and most terrible mystery was as yet concealed. From what he saw and heard he gathered that the brethren and sisters lived in carnal intercourse.
“We Cherubin and angels, live in purity of the fire,” said they. “There is no sin, when a brother and sister of the faith live together in true, christian love; but vile and sinful is the wedlock sanctified by the Church. Before God it is vile; before men insolent. A husband and wife are the abode of the devil; children are unclean brats.”
Children born of husbands not belonging to this sect were exposed by their mothers in public baths, or else strangled.
One day Mitka naïvely told Tichon that he lived with his own two sisters, both nuns; while Yemelian, a teacher and prophet, had thirteen wives.
Whoever confessed to him had become his mistress. Tichon was naturally troubled by these unspeakable revelations. For some days he avoided Yemelian, and dared not look into his face. Yemelian noticed this confusion, and said to him when alone:—
“Listen, young man, I will reveal to you a great mystery.If you wish to live, mortify for God’s sake, not only your body, but your soul, your reason, even your conscience. Free yourself of all rule and law, of all virtue, of fasting, abstinence, virginity. Discard all sanctity. Descend into yourself, as into a tomb. Then, mysteriously dead, you will rise and the Holy Spirit will dwell within you and will not leave you whatever you do.”
Yemelian’s ugly face, the faun-mask, lit up with such sly audacity that great fear possessed Tichon; he asked himself whether he was in the presence of a prophet or a madman.
“You are scandalised to see us commit what ordinary people call immorality. We know that we do not conform to your code of morality. Yet how can we help it? We have no will of our own. The spirit works in us and our most frantic actions are the mysterious results of God’s providence. To quote my own case, my conscience does not accuse me for living with women; on the contrary it fills my heart with inexpressible joy and sweetness. Should an angel come down from heaven and tell me, ‘Your life is evil, Yemelian,’ I would not listen to him. My God has justified me, and who are you to judge. You know my sin, but you ignore God’s grace towards me. You tell me ‘Repent,’ and I answer, ‘I have nothing to repent of!’ He who has reached the goal, does not trouble about the way he has come. If you banish us to Hell, we shall be saved even there; send us to Paradise, we shall not find there greater joy than here. We are immersed in the Spirit as a stone in water. Yet we have to conceal ourselves; we assume guilelessness to prevent discovery. That’s our position, my child.”
Yemelian looked at Tichon with an ambiguous smile, and the latter experienced that same sensation which the dance roused in him: the sensation of whirling flight. But whither? Whether up to God or down to the devil he knew not.
One night during the week preceding Palm Sunday, the Queen distributed small branches of palms and holy scourges, made of narrow twisted napkins. The brethren let down their tunics to the waist, the sisters lowered theirs, at the back down the waist, in front to their bosom,and they all began to spin round, beating themselves with the scourges and the palms. Some were singing:—
Serve the Lord,Despise your bodies,Serve the Lord,Despise Martha.
Serve the Lord,Despise your bodies,Serve the Lord,Despise Martha.
Serve the Lord,
Despise your bodies,
Serve the Lord,
Despise Martha.
Others chanted in a whistling tone:—
The lash whizzes through the air!We are seeking Christ!
The lash whizzes through the air!We are seeking Christ!
The lash whizzes through the air!
We are seeking Christ!
Many were beating themselves with bullets tied in rags, like slings; others were cutting themselves with knives, blood was flowing. Looking at the King, they all shouted:
“Eva, Evoe! Eva, Evoe!”
Tichon flogged himself with his scourge, and under the tender gaze of Akoulína, who appeared to be looking at him alone, the pain became more and more pleasant. Like wax before fire, so his body seemed to melt in voluptuousness; he wished to melt and burn away before the Queen, like a candle before an icon.
The lights now began to go out, one after another, as if the whirl of the dance were blowing them out. Darkness ensued, and in the darkness (as in the chapel of the “Self-burners” on the eve of the Red Death) strange whispers, rustles, kisses and sighings of love were heard. Bodies interlaced; they became in the vast darkness one immeasurable body. Eager and tenacious hands reached out after Tichon, caught hold of him and threw him down.
“Tichon, Tichon, darling, my bridegroom, my beloved Christ!” a passionate voice whispered to him. He recognised it as the Queen’s.
It seemed to him that some huge insects, male and female spiders, had rolled together and were devouring one another in loathsome lust.
He repulsed the Queen, leaped to his feet, and tried to escape. But at each turn he came upon naked persons, stepped on them, slipped, fell, and again rose. Meanwhile greedy and tenacious hands were clutching him, seeking to detain him, caressing him with obscene caresses. He grew weak and felt that he would soon sink into this terrible body of carnality, as if absorbed into the darkwarm mud of a hot swamp; that everything would be reversed, and that in this final fear he would attain ecstasy.
With desperate effort he disengaged himself, rushed forward, reached the door and caught hold of the handle. He tried to open it. It was locked. He fell to the ground exhausted. Here there were fewer persons than in the middle of the room, and he gained momentary rest.
Suddenly again, hands were touching him, little thin hands like those of a child. He heard the stuttering of Marioushka the idiot; she was vainly trying to speak. By degrees he caught several words.
“Come, come—— I will lead you out——” She dragged him by the hand. He felt a key in the hand of the girl; and followed her.
She led him along the walls to the icons. Here she stopped and made him do the same; then, raising a curtain which hung under the icon of Christ, she found a little door, a kind of trap-door, opened it, disappeared into it with the swiftness of a lizard. Tichon followed her. A subterranean passage led them to a staircase, familiar to Tichon. They ascended and entered the big room, where the worshippers changed their clothes. The moon was looking through the window and the white tunics hung on the walls resembled phantoms in its light.
When Tichon breathed the fresh air and saw through the window the blue sparkling snow and the stars, immense joy filled his soul. He pressed ecstatically the thin hand of Marioushka.
He noticed that she was no longer with child; and remembered Mitka saying a few days ago, that she had been delivered of a boy. The child was pronounced a little Christ, being born of the King by the will of the Holy Spirit, not from the flesh, nor the will of man, but by the will of God Himself.
Marioushka made Tichon sit down on a bench, placed herself next to him, and again with great effort tried to speak. But instead of words, all she could articulate was vague lowings of which he could make nothing. Finding that she could not make herself understood, she stopped and began to cry. He put his arm around her, and pressing her head against his bosom, he began to caress her softlight hair, lighter still in the moonlight. She was trembling, and it seemed to him that a captive bird was fluttering in his arms.
At last she raised to him her large, limpid, dark blue eyes, two cornflowers beaded with dew, and smiled through her tears, started as if trying to catch a sound, straightened her neck, long, thin, like the stem of a flower, and suddenly in a clear, silvery voice—the voice she used to sing with in the night watches—she warbled into his ear. The stuttering had disappeared, the words half sung, half whispered had become distinct.
“Ah, Tichon, my friend, save me from the fiends. They will kill Ivanoushka——”
“What Ivanoushka?”
“My son, my poor little boy!”
“Why should they kill him?” said Tichon in bewilderment. She seemed to be speaking in a delirium.
“In order to partake of the living blood,” she whispered, nestling to him with infinite terror. “The little Christs they say, the stainless lambs, are born in order to be killed, to give themselves for holy food to the faithful. The child, they say, is not alive; he is but an appearance, a holy icon, an imperishable body, which can neither suffer nor die—— but they lie, the accursed ones, I know it, I know it, Tichon. My son is alive. He is not a Christ, but Ivanoushka, my own darling! I will not deliver him to anybody. I would rather perish than give him up—— Oh, Tichon, save me from the enemy!”
Again the words became confused. At last she stopped, and leaning her head on his shoulder, she lost consciousness or else fell asleep.
Day began to break. Steps were heard behind the door. Marioushka started, as though ready to fly. They took leave of one another, Tichon promising to save Ivanoushka.
“Poor little fool,” he said, trying to calm himself. “She does not know what she is saying. I dare say it’s pure imagination on her part.”
A night watch had been fixed for the Thursday of Passover week. From vague allusions Tichon had gathered that some great mystery was to be enacted that night.
“Will it not be the one Marioushka spoke of?” heasked himself with horror! He sought her everywhere, but she had disappeared, maybe she had been purposely hid. The torpor of a nightmare held him. He dared not think of what was going to happen, but for Marioushka’s sake he would at once have fled.
On Thursday, about midnight, as usual they went to the night-service.
On entering the room, Tichon scanned carefully the faces of those present, and it seemed to him that the same torpor of some awful nightmare held everybody. They seemed to act against their own will.
The Queen was absent.
In came the King. His face, deadly pale, of extraordinary beauty, reminded Tichon of the image of the god Bacchus Dionysus, as he had seen it carved on stones and cameos, in the collection of antiquities belonging to James Bruce.
The night-watch service began. Never yet had the dance whirled so madly. It seemed white birds were flying in terror towards a white abyss.
To avoid rousing suspicion Tichon had also joined the dance, yet he forced himself not to surrender up to its intoxication. He often stopped and sat down on a bench, as if resting. He watched everybody, and thought about Ivanoushka.
The wildest frenzy was now beginning to possess the dancers. They cried with voices no longer their own, “He is descending!”
In spite of all his efforts Tichon felt he was growing weaker and losing control over himself. He convulsively gripped the bench he was sitting upon, in order to resist the impetuous desire to whirl away in this mad dance, growing swifter and swifter at every moment. He suddenly shrieked and felt himself lifted up and carried away by this hurricane.
A last roar of voices:—
“Eva, Evoe!”
Then suddenly all stopped and prostrated themselves on the ground as if struck by lightning, covering their faces with their hands. The white tunics on the floor resembled white wings.
“Here cometh the stainless lamb to offer himself as foodfor the faithful!” These words were said by the Queen in a sepulchral, mysterious voice from the subterranean apartment below. To Tichon it seemed to be the voice of the Earth, the Bountiful Mother of All.
The Queen appeared. She held in her hands a large silver cup, a kind of small baptismal font, in which on white swaddling clothes there lay a naked infant. He was sound asleep; some sleeping draught had probably been administered to him. Numerous burning tapers had been fixed on a hoop round the foot of the cup; the flames, coming up to the rim, surrounded the infant with a luminous aureola. He seemed to be lying in a white water lily with a fiery nimbus.
The Queen brought the cup to the King, saying:—
“What is thine is brought to thee for the salvation of all.”
The King blessed the child with the sign of the cross.
“In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost!”
Then he took him in his hand and raised a knife over him.
Tichon lay prostrate on the ground, his face hid in his hands. Yet he looked through his fingers and saw everything. It seemed to him the body of the infant was radiant as the sun, that it was not Ivanoushka but the mysterious Lamb, slain from the beginning of the world, and the face of him who held the raised knife was the face of God. He was waiting in great terror, and was wishing with an intense desire for the knife to plunge into the white body and the living blood to be shed. Then everything would be accomplished; in the final terror there would be the final ecstasy.
Suddenly the child began to cry. The King smiled, and the smile transformed the face of the god into the face of the beast.
“The beast, Satan, Antichrist!——” flashed across Tichon’s brain, and a sudden intolerable, overwhelming anguish gripped his heart. At the same moment some one seemed to rouse him and the spell was broken. He jumped to his feet, rushed upon Averian Bespaly, caught hold of his hand and averted the stab.
All jumped up and threw themselves on Tichon. Theywould have torn him to pieces, had not heavy knocks at that moment sounded at the door. It was being battered from the outside. The double doors gave way with a crash, and fell forwards. In rushed Marioushka and, after her, men in green kaftans, three-cornered hats, with drawn swords; they were soldiers. To Tichon they seemed to be angels of God.
It grew dark before his eyes.
His shoulder felt heavy. He put up his hand and touched something warm and sticky. It was blood. He had been probably wounded in the scuffle.
He closed his eyes and saw the red flames of a burning house, the Red Death. White birds were flying into the red flames. He thought, “More terrible than the Red Death is the White Death,” and fell senseless to the ground.
The case of the heretics was investigated by the newly established Holy Synod.
The runaway Cossack, Averian Bespaly, and his sister, Akoulína, were condemned to suffer death on the wheel. The rest, after being flogged and having their nostrils torn, were condemned, the men to forced labour, and the women to weaving-workshops and prison-cloisters.
Tichon, who nearly died of his wound in the prison hospital, was saved by his former protector, James Vilimovitch Bruce. Bruce took him to his house to recover, and interceded with the Bishop of Novgorod, Feofan Prokopovitch, on his behalf. Feofan became interested in Tichon; he wanted to display towards him that pastoral mercy for erring sheep which he was always preaching: “Opponents of the Church ought to be met with kindness and reason, and not as they are nowadays with hard words and alienation.” At the same time he hoped that Tichon’s abjuration of the heresy and his return to the fold of the Orthodox Church would serve as an example to other heretics and Raskolniks.
Bishop Feofan exempted Tichon from flogging and exile, and took him to Petersburg to do penance in his house.
The bishop’s residence was situated on the Aptekarski Island in a dense pine wood. The library was on the ground floor. Noticing Tichon’s love for books, Feofan gave him permission to put his library in order. It was summer and the days were hot. The windows, which looked straight into the wood, were often left open. The peace of the wood mingled with the peace of the library, the rustle of leaves with the rustle of pages. The woodpecker andcuckoo could be heard. A couple of elks were visible in the clearing of the wood; they had been brought here from the Petrovosky Island, which was wild country at that time. A green twilight filled the room. It was cool and pleasant within. Tichon spent whole days rummaging among the books. He felt as if he had returned to the library of James Bruce, and his four years of wanderings were but a dream.
Bishop Feofan was kind to him. He did not press him to return to the Church. There being no Russian catechism, he chose for Tichon’s reading some German theologians; when he was free he would talk with him about what he had read and correct the Protestant teaching according to the Greco-Russian Church. Otherwise Tichon had entire freedom to do what he liked.
Tichon gave himself up to mathematics. In the calm, cold atmosphere of reason he sought repose from those fires of madness; and the nightmares of the Red and the White Death.
He re-read the philosopher Descartes, Leibnitz and Spinoza. And the words of Pastor Glück, would often come back to him: “True philosophy, when read superficially leads away from God; when studied deeply, leads to Him.”
To Descartes God was the prime mover of the first matter. The universe was a machine. There was neither love nor mystery nor life, nothing except reason, which is reflected in all worlds, as light is reflected in the transparent crystals of the ice. Tichon was frightened by this lifeless God.
“Nature is full of life,” asserted Leibnitz in his Monadology, “I will prove that the origin of every movement is the spirit, and the spirit is a living monad, which is made up of ideas, as the centre is made up of angels.” All monads are united into a whole by the pre-established harmony of God. “The universe is God’s clock, horologium Dei.” “Again instead of life, a machine; instead of God, mechanics,” thought Tichon, and once more dread took hold of him.
But the most dreadful, because the most lucid, was Spinoza. He expressed what the others dared not say.“To assert that God took on Himself the nature of man, is as foolish as to assert that a circle had assumed the nature of a triangle or a square. ‘The word became flesh’ is an Eastern phrase, which has no meaning whatever in the light of reason. Christianity is distinguished from other religions not by faith nor by love, nor by its gifts of the Holy Spirit, but only by the fact that it is founded on a miracle, that is ignorance, which is the source of all evil, and in this way the faith itself is transformed into superstition.” Spinoza revealed the secret thought of all modern philosophers: either with Christ against reason or with reason against Christ.
One day Tichon spoke of Spinoza to Bishop Feofan.
“This philosophy is based on absurdities,” declared the bishop with a disdainful smile. “He has woven his reasoning out of contradictions and hid his lack of intelligence in pompous and sonorous words.”
This abuse neither convinced nor tranquillized Tichon. The works of the foreign theologians also helped him but little; they dismissed all ancient and modern philosophers as easily as the Russian bishop had done Spinoza.
Sometimes Feofan would let Tichon copy papers concerning the affairs of the Holy Synod. He was struck by the wording of the oath in the Ecclesiastical Regulations: “I swear to recognise as supreme judge of this College the Monarch of all the Russians, our most gracious Sovereign.” The Sovereign—the head of the Church, the Sovereign in the place of Christ!
“Magnus ille Leviathan, quae Civitas appelatur, officium artis est et Homo artificialis.” Tichon remembered reading those words in “Leviathan,” written by the English philosopher Hobbes, who asserted that the Church should be part of the Empire, a member of the great Leviathan, the gigantic automaton. “Is it not the image of the beast created in the image of the god-beast, which is spoken of in Revelation?” Tichon wondered.
The cold reasonableness of this lifeless church of a lifeless God chilled Tichon and became as unbearable to him as the fire of passionate madness, the fire of the Red and White Death.
The day had been fixed when Tichon should be solemnlyanointed with holy baptismal oils in the Troïtsa Church, as a mark of his return to the Orthodox Church.
On the eve of that day Bishop Feofan had visitors.
In his Latin letters, Feofan termed such assemblies “noctes atticae.” Pickles and fumados were served and washed down with the famous beer brewed by Father Gerasem, that stout economist. They discoursed on philosophy and the “laws of nature” in a free “liberal” tone, that is, they talked atheism.
Tichon listened to the conversation from the glazed gallery which united the dining room with the library.
“Disputes on the subject of faith can never arise between men of great intelligence,” Bruce was saying, “for an intelligent man does not question the faith of another. Be he Lutheran, Calvinist or Pagan, it is not the faith but the actions and character alone which count.”
“Ubi boni vini non est quaerenda regio, sic nec boni viri religio et patria,” replied Feofan.
“Those who condemn philosophy are either ignorant or else over-cunning priests,” remarked Basil Nikitch Tatesheff, President of the Mine Department.
Father Marcellus, a learned monk, demonstrated that many of the records of the lives of saints are without foundation in fact.
“There is much deception, much deception”; he repeated the celebrated saying of Theodosius.
“Miracles don’t happen nowadays,” agreed Doctor Blumentrost.
“I went to see a friend recently,” began Tolstoi with a malicious smile, “and there I met two non-commissioned officers. They were arguing together. One affirmed, the other denied the existence of God. The free-thinker cried, ‘Don’t waste your breath, there is no God.’ I joined in the conversation and asked, ‘Who told you that God did not exist?’ ‘Sub-lieutenant Ivanoff told it me so yesterday, at the Gostinni-Dvor.’ ‘He has chosen a nice place to announce it in, indeed,’ said I.”
All laughed.
But Tichon, again, grew afraid. He saw the end of all this. He felt certain that these men were on a road which it was impossible not to follow to that end; andthat sooner or later, they, the Russians, would reach the stage which had already been reached in Europe; and either stand with Christ against reason, or with reason against Christ.
He returned to the library and sat down at the window next to the wall, lined with books in uniform leather parchment bindings. He gazed at the sky, white over the black pines, the empty lifeless abyss of the sky, and remembered the words of Spinoza.
“There is as much in common between God and man as between the constellation of the Dog and the barking animal. Man can love God, but God cannot love man.”
And it seemed to him that in that lifeless sky there dwelt a lifeless God, incapable of love. It were better to know that God did not exist. “Perhaps He really does not exist,” he thought, and he felt the same terror as in the moment when the baby Ivanoushka cried and Averian, with his raised knife, had smiled.
Tichon fell on his knees and began to pray. Looking up to heaven he repeated one word again and again:—
“Lord, Lord, Lord!”
But the heavens remained silent. Silence was in Tichon’s heart. Infinite silence, infinite terror.
Suddenly out of the depths of this silence a voice replied and told him what had to be done.
Tichon straightway rose, went into his cell, pulled his sack out from under the bed, took from it his old monk’s habit, the leathern belt, the rosary, the hood, the little icon of St. Sophia, the Wisdom of God, given to him by the girl Sophia; he took off his kaftan and the rest of the foreign dress he wore, put on the religious habit, fastened round his shoulders the wallet, took the staff, made the sign of the cross and, unnoticed by any one, passed out of the house into the wood.
The next morning, when it was time to go to church for the rite of anointing, Tichon was called. For a long time he was vainly sought; he had disappeared, leaving no trace behind him. Had he vanished into space?
Tradition says that the Apostle Andrew, who had come from Kiev to Novgorod, crossed in a boat to the island Varlaam, in the Lake Ládoga, and planted there a stone cross. And long before the conversion of Russia to Christianity, two monks, St. Sergius and St. Herman, came to Russia from the Orient and founded a monastery on the Isle of Varlaam.
And from that day the Christian faith gleamed in the North, like a holy lamp in the arctic midnight gloom.
The Swedes, on taking possession of Lake Ládoga, several times destroyed the monastery. In 1611 they razed it to the ground. For a century the isle remained abandoned. In 1715 Tsar Peter ordered the reconstruction of the monastery. A small wooden church was built over the tombs of St. Sergius and St. Herman in honour of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, a few humble cells were erected around it, to which monks from the Kirilo Beloserski Monastery were transferred. The light of the Christian faith was lit anew. According to prophesy it would remain there until the Second Coming.
Tichon escaped from Petersburg in the company of a monk belonging to the sect of the Runners.
The Runners taught that true believers, in order to escape Antichrist, should flee from town to town, village to village, unto the ends of the earth. The monk invited Tichon to follow him to an unknown kingdom, Oponskoye. This kingdom consisted of seventy islands on the “White Waters,” where, in its one hundred and seventy-nine churches of the Assyrian tongue, the Old Faith was supposed to have remained intact. It lay beyond Gog and Magog at the ends of the earth, where the sun rose. “WithGod’s help we shall reach it walking, in ten years,” said the monk.
Tichon had no strict belief in the existence of this Oponskoye kingdom, but he went with the Runner; it was a matter of indifference to him where and with whom he went.
The pair reached Ládoga on rafts and went on board a small lake-vessel bound for Serdobal. On the way a storm overtook them. For a long time the vessel was tossed about by the waves and narrowly escaped being wrecked. At last they succeeded in entering the harbour of the Varlaam Monastery. The storm subsided towards morning, but the boat needed repairs.
Tichon went ashore.
The island was of granite, with high cliffs overhanging the water. The soil was so shallow that only small trees could grow there. On the other hand there was moss in abundance; it spread over the roots of the pines like cobwebs and hung down from the trunks in long green tufts.
The day was hot and misty. The sky, milky white, with the blue just peeping through it, merged with the glassy surface of the lake, so that it was impossible to tell where the water ended and sky began. The heavens appeared to be the lake, the lake the heavens. The quietness was absolute, even the birds were silent. Tichon’s soul was filled with infinite calm and peace by this gentle austere arctic paradise. He remembered the song he used to sing in the woods of the Banks of Mosses.