Then spake Christ, the heavenly King:Glory to thee, merciful wife of Alleluja,Go, tell My will to all My faithful ones!Let them throw themselves into the fire for love of Me!Let them cast in also their innocent children.
Then spake Christ, the heavenly King:Glory to thee, merciful wife of Alleluja,Go, tell My will to all My faithful ones!Let them throw themselves into the fire for love of Me!Let them cast in also their innocent children.
Then spake Christ, the heavenly King:
Glory to thee, merciful wife of Alleluja,
Go, tell My will to all My faithful ones!
Let them throw themselves into the fire for love of Me!
Let them cast in also their innocent children.
Nevertheless here and there voices against self-burning could be heard.
“Dearly beloved brethren,” entreated Father Missail, “it is well to be zealous for the Lord, yet there should be a measure in all things! Self-immolation is not acceptable before God. Christ’s is the only way. Let those who can, flee; those who are taken must suffer. But do not seek out death intentionally. Calm down your terrors, my poor children!”
The frantic Father Triphilius agreed with the meek Father Missail.
“We arenotmere brands for burning, to no purpose. Are you going to troop together, like pigs in a sty; and then set yourselves on fire?”
“What ignorance!” Father Hierotheus shrugged his shoulders, in sheer disdain for the doctrine and martyrization.
Moreover, Mother Golendoukha, who had already sought death once in the flames, but had been pulled out in time, purposely terrified everybody with her description: how the bodies are contorted in the flames, head and legs shrink together and the blood boils and foams like food in a pot; and how after the fire the bodies lay about, bloated and baked, smelling like roast meat. Some had remained whole, yet at a touch fell to pieces; dogs roamed about, with muzzles grimed with smoke, eating the corpses. A horrid stench spread around; none could pass by without holding his nose. At the time of the burning two black devils with bats’ wings appeared above the flames, rejoicing, clapping their hands and crying, “These are ours!” And for many years on that spot voices were heard at night lamenting, “We are lost, lost!”
Finally the opponents of self-burning approached Cornelius triumphantly: “Why did you not burn yourself? If it is as righteous as you say, you teachers ought to set the example. But no! You persuade poor novices into the fire. You are all alike, you teachers of self-burning. You praise it for others, not for yourselves. Are you not afraid of God’s wrath? You have burnt enough human beings, spare the remainder.”
Then, stung by the taunt, and at a sign from the old monk, Kirucha, a frantic adherent came forward. He brandished his axe, and called out in a loud voice:—
“He who is against self-burning let him come out with his axe, we two will fight it out! A trial by combat! If I am killed, the burning is not acceptable before God; should I kill, then—all we—on to the flames!”
Nobody accepted the challenge.
Then old Cornelius, coming forward, said, “All those for burning stand forth to the right; against, to the left!”
The crowd divided. One part surrounded the old monk, the other stood aside. Those who desired to be burntnumbered about eighty; those who refused about a hundred.
The old man lifted his pectoral cross and blessed those who had chosen the burning with the sign of it, and lifting his eyes to heaven prayed in a solemn voice: “For Thy sake, O Lord, and Thy faith, for the Love of God’s only begotten Son, we die. We do not spare ourselves. We return our souls to Thee. Joyfully we accept this second baptism by fire that we may not lose our faith; we seek the flames for the hate of Antichrist, dying for the love of Thee.”
“Burn, burn, begin,” the frenzied crowd again shouted. Tichon felt that he also would lose his senses if he stayed any longer among this maddened crowd.
He fled into the forest. He ran till he could no longer hear the shouting. A narrow path brought him to the glade grown with high grass and surrounded with impenetrable pines, where he had once prayed to the “Fertile Mother Earth.”
The evening glow was dying away on the tree tops. Golden cloudlets floated over the sky. The thicket exhaled a fresh resinous perfume. The stillness was intense.
He threw himself on the ground, buried his head in the grass, and again, as on that day near the Round Lake, he kissed the earth and prayed to her as if he knew that she alone could save him from this fiery delirium of the Red Death:—
Wondrous Queen, Mother of God,Earth, thou fertile Mother of all!...
Wondrous Queen, Mother of God,Earth, thou fertile Mother of all!...
Wondrous Queen, Mother of God,
Earth, thou fertile Mother of all!...
Suddenly he felt a hand laid on his shoulder; he turned round and saw it was Sophia.
She was bending over him and regarding him silently, intently. He too remained silent, and looked up at her. The young girl’s face under the black shawl stood out against the gold and azure sky like the icon of a saint upon the golden background. Pale, with lips red and fresh, like a newly opened flower, with innocent eyes, deep as the lake, her face was so beautiful that his heart stopped beating as in sudden fright.
“So you are here, brother!” she said at last. “And Cornelius searching for you everywhere cannot thinkwhither you have disappeared. Come up! Let us go. Be quick!”
She was excited, joyous, as if great happiness had befallen her.
“No, Sophia,” he said in a calm firm voice, “I will not return there again. Really, I have had enough of it; I have seen and heard sufficient. I shall leave the monastery for good.”
“And you will not endure martyrdom?”
“No.”
“You will go without me?”
He looked at her entreatingly.
“Sophia, dearest, do not listen to those madmen. There is no need to burn. God never willed it. It is a sin, a temptation of the devil. Let us go away together, loved one.”
She bent lower still over him with a subtle, tender smile, her face almost touched his; he felt her burning breath.
“You shall not go,” she murmured in a passionate whisper. “I won’t let you go.”
She suddenly took his head between her hands and kissed him on the lips.
“Sister, sister, what are you doing? This is not allowed. We might be seen.”
“Let them see us! Everything is permitted now! the fire will purge it all! Only say you will burn. Do you will it?” she asked in a faint whisper, clinging closer and closer to him.
Denuded of thinking-power, strength or will, he whispered:
“I will.”
The last glow was dying away on the tree tops; the golden clouds had become grey as ashes. A balmy freshness breathed in the air. The forest sheltered them with the dense shade, earth covered them with her tall grass.
And it seemed to Tichon as though the forest, grass, earth, air and sky were all burning with the last fire which should destroy the world. But he no longer feared. He believed that the Red Death was fairer than the brightness of the sun.
The monastery was abandoned. The monks had fled like ants from their ruined hillock.
In the chapel, which stood on a mound apart, the Self-burners had assembled. Thence they could observe the approach of the soldiers.
It was an ancient building made of dry logs, so constructed as to give no opportunity for escape from the flames. Instead of windows there were narrow slits; while the doors were so narrow that it was difficult for a man to pass through them. The porch and staircase had been demolished. Strong bolts had been fastened to the doors and thick planks nailed over the windows.
The preparation for the burning began; hemp, flax, straw, pitch and bark were piled up, the walls smeared with tar, and in the wooden troughs which surrounded the building gunpowder was placed, a few pounds of it being reserved for strewing on the floor at the last moment. Two sentinels watched on the roof by day and night.
All worked cheerfully as though preparing for a feast. The children helped their elders, the elders became children; every one was intoxicated with joy. Petka Jisla was the merriest of all. He worked with the energy of five. His withered hand with the “mark of the Beast” gradually got cured; he was able to move it. Old Father Cornelius ran about like a spider in his web. His eyes, as luminous in the darkness as those of a cat, had a heavy, kindly look in them, a strange charm which compelled obedience.
“Work away, friends!” he cheerily said to those who were going to die with him. “I, the old horse, you, the young colts, together we will gallop towards heaven, like Elias in his chariot of fire.”
When all was ready, the door and windows, except one—thenarrowest—were nailed up. The strokes of the hammer were listened to in silence; they felt as though their coffin lid was nailed over them while they were alive.
Only John the Simpleton went on singing his interminable song;
A coffin of pine wood tree,Stands ready, stands ready for me.Within its narrow wallI’ll wait the judgment call!
A coffin of pine wood tree,Stands ready, stands ready for me.Within its narrow wallI’ll wait the judgment call!
A coffin of pine wood tree,
Stands ready, stands ready for me.
Within its narrow wall
I’ll wait the judgment call!
To those who wished to confess and be shriven old Cornelius said, “Why trouble, children! what need have you to confess? You are now like God’s angels, and more than angels; in the words of David I say: ‘Ye are gods.’ You have overcome the power of the Evil One. Sin has no longer dominion over you; you cannot sin. Even though there were one among you who had slain his father or sinned against his mother, even he will be holy and righteous. The flames purge everything.”
The monk ordered Tichon to read in a loud voice a passage in the Revelation of St. John, which is always omitted in Russian church services.
“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write, for these words are true and faithful. And he said unto me: It is done.”
Tichon, in reading this aloud, experienced his familiar presentiment of the end of all things, more powerfully than ever before. He felt as though those frail wooden walls had already shut them off from the converse of the living, as the sides of a ship keep out water. Outside, time still continued its course; here it had already stopped, and the end had come; it was fulfilled.
“I see, I see, I see, beloved!” cried Kilikeya, interrupting the reading, her face pale and shrivelled, a fixed look in her dilated eyes.
“What do you see?” asked the old monk.
“I see that great city, the Holy Jerusalem, descending from heaven, like unto a precious stone, a jasper stone, clear as crystal, an emerald, a topaz and a sapphire. Thetwelve gates are twelve pearls; and the street of the city is pure gold, transparent as glass. And the city has no sun, for the glory of God illumines it. I am afraid! I am afraid! O my friends! I see His face more radiant than the sun. Here He is, here He is. He is coming to us!”
And they who listened to her believed they saw it also.
When the night came and the candles were lit they all knelt and sang:—
“Behold, the Bridegroom cometh at midnight and blessed is the servant who is awake. Watch, my soul, be not heavy with sleep, lest the doors of the Kingdom be closed upon thee, and thou be delivered unto death, but awake and cry, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord. The Holy Virgin have mercy upon us.’ Remember the terrible day. O my soul, trim thy lamps with oil, for no one knows when the cry will be made: ‘Behold, the bridegroom cometh.’”
Sophia, standing next to Tichon, held his hand. He felt the trembling pressure of her hand, and saw the smile of shy joy on her face; so does the bride smile at her bridegroom before the altar. And his soul was filled with responsive joy. Now he believed that the Red Death was God’s will while his previous fear was Satan’s temptation. “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for My sake and the Gospel’s sake shall find it.”
They expected the soldiers that night, but they did not come. In the morning they were as heavy as after a severe drinking bout.
The monk’s vigilant eye was everywhere. To those who grew despondent and timid, he gave little balls of dark scented paste (which most likely contained a stupefying poison). Swallowing these caused a sort of mad ecstasy; the weakest no longer dreaded the fire, but raved about it as heavenly bliss.
To give themselves courage they told each other tales about the voluntary death of starvation, which was supposed to be much more terrible than death by fire.
These martyrs were placed in an empty hut, without doors and windows, furnished only with benches. To prevent their killing themselves all garments were takenfrom them, even the belt and cross. They were let into the hut through the roof, and the hole was fastened up so that no one could escape. Guards armed with clubs were posted around the hut. Their torments lasted three to six days; they wept, praying, “Give us to drink,” they bit their own bodies and cursed God. Once twenty people were locked up thus in a threshing barn; weary of waiting they succeeded in breaking one of the boards and crept out; but the guards knocked them on the head with their clubs and killed two; then closing the opening up, they reported what had happened to the leading monk, asking what they had better do. He ordered straw to be put round the barn and then kindled.
“The Red Death is infinitely easier,” concluded the speakers, “it is so quick that there is no feeling.”
But a small girl of seven, who had been sitting quietly on the bench and listening attentively, suddenly began to tremble, and jumping up, rushed to her mother, caught hold of her skirt, and cried in a piercing voice:—
“Mamma, mamma, come, come away! I don’t want to be burned!”
The mother tried in vain to quiet her, but she continued crying louder still:—
“I don’t want to burn, I don’t!”
And such animal terror was in that scream that all shuddered, realizing the horror of what was about to happen.
The child was petted, threatened, punished, yet she continued to scream till at last, almost black in the face and breathless, she fell to the ground in convulsions. Father Cornelius bent over her, blessed her with the sign of the cross, beat her with his rosary and recited an exorcism:—
“Go forth, go forth, thou evil spirit!”
Nothing did any good: he then lifted her in his arms, opened her mouth and forced her to swallow one of the balls of dark paste. He began to stroke her hair gently and whisper into her ear. The little girl grew calmer, she seemed to have dozed off, but her eyes remained open, her pupils dilated with a fixed stare, as in delirium. Tichon listened to the man’s whisper. He was telling her about the Heavenly Kingdom, the Garden of Eden.
“Uncle, will there be any raspberries there?” asked Akoulína.
“Yes, dear, there will. Very large berries, the size of an apple, and so sweet, so sweet!”
The little girl smiled, she evidently rejoiced at the idea of these heavenly raspberries. The old man continued to fondle and lull her with almost motherly tenderness. Yet to Tichon there appeared something insane, pathetic, hungry, in the monk’s luminous eyes. “Like a spider sucking in a fly,” thought he.
The second night came; but there was no sign of the soldiers.
During the night, one of the old nuns made her escape. When all were asleep, even the guards, she crept out on the roof, and tried to let herself down with a rope of neckerchiefs she had tied together, but they gave way and she fell. For a long time her moanings were heard under the windows, but at last they ceased; maybe she had crept away, or passers-by had picked her up.
There was little room in the chapel. The victims slept on the floor close to one another, the men on the right, the women on the left. Yet—were they dreams or demons?—shadows stealthily flitted from the right to the left, from the left to the right.
Tichon woke up and listened. A nightingale was singing in the distance and her song echoed the moonlit night, the freshness of a dewy meadow, the perfume of a pine forest, freedom, voluptuousness, the bliss of life. And as in response to the nightingale’s song, strange whispers, rustles, sighs, resembling sighs and kisses of love, rose from the chapel floor. Plainly the fiend was still striving in man. Human passions were not quenched, but fanned, by the imminence of death.
Cornelius did not sleep. He was praying and neither saw nor heard anything, or if he did, he pardoned “his poor children.”
“God alone is without sin, man is weak; like dust he falls and rises like an angel. Not he who goes wrong with a maid or a widow is a sinner, but he who errs in his faith. We do not sin when our body takes liberties; but the church sins when it tolerates heresy.”
Suddenly Tichon felt that somebody was embracing and clinging to him. It was Sophia. He was frightened, but it flashed upon him, “The flames will purify all,” and feeling through the black habit the warmth and freshness of the innocent body, their ardent lips met.
And the caresses of these two children in the dark building, that common coffin, were as innocent as those of Daphnis and Chloe of old on the sunny plain of Lesbos.
Meanwhile, John the Simpleton, squatting on his heels, a candle in his hands waiting for the dawn, swayed gently to and fro and sang endlessly:—
You hollowed oaks will prove,Fit house for us.
You hollowed oaks will prove,Fit house for us.
You hollowed oaks will prove,
Fit house for us.
The nightingale sang on of liberty, voluptuousness, and the bliss of life. Her song seemed a delicate mockery of the song of the Simpleton.
Tichon recalled a distant pale, white night, a group of people on a raft upon the glassy surface of the Neva, between two skies, two abysses, and the gentle languid music wafted across from the Summer Garden, kisses and sighs from the kingdom of Venus:
’Tis time to cast thy bow away.Cupid! we all are in thy sway.Thy golden love-awaking dartHas reached and wounded every heart.
’Tis time to cast thy bow away.Cupid! we all are in thy sway.Thy golden love-awaking dartHas reached and wounded every heart.
’Tis time to cast thy bow away.
Cupid! we all are in thy sway.
Thy golden love-awaking dart
Has reached and wounded every heart.
Before dawn, Minei, a man eighty years old, tried to escape. Kirucha caught him, they had a fight. Minei nearly killed Kirucha with his axe. The old man was seized by the throat and locked in a closet, where he went on screaming and reviling Cornelius with all his might.
At daybreak Tichon looked out to see whether the soldiers had arrived; he saw nothing but the empty glade flooded with sunshine, the dreamy, friendly, but gloomy pines, and dewdrops sparkling in iridescent hues. He felt the fresh perfume of the pinewood, the gentle warmth of the rising sun, the peace of the blue heavens; and again all that was going on in the chapel seemed a madman’s delirium.
Another long summer’s day began. The weariness of waiting grew unbearable. Famine threatened. Therewas but little water and bread: a bag of rye biscuits, and two baskets of sacramental loaves.
On the other hand there was a quantity of red wine. They drank it eagerly. Some one, being drunk, suddenly started a coarse song. It sounded sadder than the wildest moan.
The people began to murmur, they whispered together in corners and looked angrily at old Cornelius. What if the soldiers do not appear at all. Will they have to die of hunger? Some demanded that the door should be opened and bread sent for. Yet their eyes expressed but one thought, escape. Others wished to burn at once without waiting for the persecutors. Others prayed, but their face proclaimed they would rather have blasphemed. Others again, having eaten the dark balls, which the monk distributed more and more freely, raved, laughing and weeping. One lad in a fit of madness seized a candle burning before an icon and began to set the straw on fire. It was quenched with difficulty. Some sat for hours without a word in a kind of waking trance, not daring to look into one another’s eyes.
Sophia, sitting near Tichon, who lay on the ground, exhausted by sleeplessness and famine, sang a melancholy song which the Chlisti sang at their meeting, a song about the loneliness of a human soul, forsaken in life as in a dark wood. The song ended in a sob:—
Thrice holy mother of God,Implore thy Son for us!On earth are many sinners;On the moist earth, our mother,Our nurse supreme.
Thrice holy mother of God,Implore thy Son for us!On earth are many sinners;On the moist earth, our mother,Our nurse supreme.
Thrice holy mother of God,
Implore thy Son for us!
On earth are many sinners;
On the moist earth, our mother,
Our nurse supreme.
Nobody saw them. Sophia rested her head on Tichon’s shoulder, and cheek to cheek with him she wept.
“I am grieved for you, Tichon, my darling,” she whispered in his ear, “I have led you into perdition, wretch that I am! Will you escape? I will get you a rope. Or stay, I will beg Cornelius; there is a subterranean path leading into the wood, he will let you go out.”
Tichon, exhausted, remained silent, smiling at her like a child half awake. His senses wavered. Through hismind floated idly distant memories, as in some delirium; abstract mathematical definitions, to the graceful and severe beauty of which—their icy transparency and regularity—he was now specially sensitive. Well had old Pastor Glück compared mathematics to music, to the crystal music of the spheres! He remembered also the discussion between Glück and James Bruce over Newton’sCommentaries on the Apocalypse, he could hear the dry, short, wooden laughter of Bruce, and his words, which had at the time echoed in Tichon’s soul with such alarming presentiment. Bruce had said, “At the very time that Newton was writing his Commentaries, here at the other extreme of the world, here in Muscovy, wild fanatics, named Raskolniks, were also commenting in their rude, uninstructed way upon the Apocalypse, and drawing conclusions almost identical with those of Newton. The Raskolniks daily expect the end of the world; some of them sleep in coffins, and sing funeral hymns; others burn themselves alive. How extraordinary this coincidence of imaginations! That the extreme West and the extreme East, the greatest enlightenment and the greatest ignorance, should meet in a single Apocalyptic conception! A fact which in itself is enough to make one believe that the end of the world is drawing nigh; that weshallall go to the devil very soon!” Newton’s prophecy as repeated by Glück assumed a new and vivid significance, “Hypotheses non fingo! I don’t make hypotheses! Like a moth to the fire, a comet rushes to the sun. From the fusion of these the heat of the sun will so increase, that the earth will be consumed. It is written in the scriptures: ‘The heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be consumed.’ Then will be fulfilled the two prophecies; that of the man of science who knew, and that of the ignorant who had faith.” Tichon also recalled the old octavo, No. 461, of Bruce’s library; gnawed by the mice, bearing the illiterate Russian inscription, “Lionardo D’Avinci’s ‘Treatise on Painting,’ in German.” A portrait of Leonardo, which had an odd look, also, of Prometheus or Simon Magus, had been slipped into the book. And beside Leonardo, Tichon thoughthe saw another face, likewise terrible, the face of a giant clad in a Dutch skipper’s leather jacket, whom he had once met in Petersburg in the Troïtsa square, near the “Four Frigates” coffee house. It was the face of Peter, once, he thought, so hateful to him, now suddenly admired, beloved. The two faces had something in common, something similar and yet opposed: Da Vinci stood for thoughtful Contemplation; Peter for reason in Action. And both these faces seemed to exhale on Tichon a delicious cool air, such as snow-clad mountains waft to a wanderer exhausted by the heat of the dales.
“O Physics! save me from Metaphysics!” He remembered Newton’s words, so often repeated by the drunken Glück. In these two faces lay the sole salvation from the fiery heaven of the Red Death—in both homage to Earth, the “fertile mother of all.”
Then all grew confused and Tichon fell asleep. He dreamt he was flying over some visionary city: either the old legendary town Kitesh, or the New Jerusalem, or perhaps Stockholm, or else the Glass City, “like unto clear glass and a jasper stone, clear as crystal.” A music which was at the same time mathematics filled the luminous city.
He suddenly awoke. All around him were bustling about with joyous faces.
“The soldiers, the soldiers have come!”
Tichon looked out and saw afar off, on the borders of the wood, in the evening twilight, men around a fire wearing three-cornered hats, green coats with red lapels, and brass buttons. These were the soldiers. “The soldiers have come. Kindle! friends! God is with us!”
Captain Pirsky had received the following instructions from the Bishop of Nishni-Novgorod.
“The haunt of the Raskolniks is to be approached secretly, lest the people set themselves on fire. Should they shut themselves up in their monastery or chapel the soldiers must surround them in close order, and watch their shelter carefully night and day. At all costs prevent a fire. Try and persuade them to surrender, and give them hope that they will all be freely pardoned. And when they surrender make a list of their names, put them into footstocks or chains to make flight impossible, and send them with all their goods under guard to Nijni. But if, unmoved by your persuasions, they refuse to surrender, stubbornly remaining shut in, you must get them out as best you can by siege and famine; catching the ringleaders that their heresy may not spread. Take them prisoners by force or starvation, butavoid bloodshed. Should they set their robbers’ den or chapel on fire, you must flood it with water, and hacking away windows and doors, drag them out alive.”
Captain Pirsky, a brave old retired soldier, who had been wounded at Poltava, considered the destruction of monasteries, a “cunning invention of the army of long-haired popes,” and would have preferred to have encountered the severest fire of the Swedes or Turks, than to meddle with the Raskolniks. They chose to burn themselves and he always received the blame! “The captain and other lay officers should exercise more caution and skill, for it is obvious that the Raskolniks seek death in the flames for fear of the Captain.” Pirsky explained that the Raskolniks were driven to death, not by fear but by their stubborn hate of the world. “They are filled with anger against us,whom they consider apostates, and would rather suffer death than accept the new faith, so inflated and stubborn are they over minutest trifles.” But these explanations were not listened to at the bishop’s palace and the remonstrances continued.
With regard to the “Bank of Mosses,” he made up his mind to act with great caution and prudence. In the evening, ordering his troops to retire into the wood and not to stir, he approached the chapel alone, unarmed, carefully inspected the place and knocked at the window, repeating a prayer after the manner of the Raskolniks.
“Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon us!”
No one replied. All was quite as the grave in the chapel, nobody could be seen. The tree tops gently rustled. The fresh night breeze was rising. “If they set themselves on fire we are done for,” thought the captain; he knocked again and repeated:—
“Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon us.”
Again silence, troubled only by the marsh crickets and a dog howling in the distance. A falling star flashed across the dark sky in a fiery curve and dispersed in sparks. He felt terrified as though he really were knocking at a grave.
“Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon us,” he uttered for a third time.
The shutter at the window moved. A light fell through the chink. At last the window slowly opened and Cornelius’ head peered through it.
“What do you want? Who are you, and why have you come?”
“By his Majesty Tsar Peter’s decree we have come to exhort you to tell us who you are, of what rank, what name, how long you have lived in these woods, what permission you had to leave your houses and by what decree you live here? If you have any doubts as to Holy Church and her sacraments, you should describe them in writing and send your teachers to deliberate with the chiefs of the clergy, without fear or mistrust.”
“We peasants and commoners have assembled here in the name of Jesus Christ, and we will do what is right by our wives and children,” replied the old man in a slow,measured, solemn tone. “We desire to die in the flames for our ancient Faith and we will not give ourselves into your hands; you are persecutors, and your Faith is new. Should any of you desire to be saved let him join us in the flames. We shall be with Christ to-day.”
“Enough, friend,” replied the captain in a kindly voice, “the Lord be with you. Put away this seditious project, disperse to your houses and no one will hurt you. You may return to live happily in your villages. You will pay a double tax; and that’s all.”
“Ah captain, tell that to children in arms; we folks know what we have to expect. Fine talk, and there it ends.”
“I swear, upon my honour, to let every one of you go free without hurt,” exclaimed Pirsky. He spoke the truth; he really had decided to let them off, contrary to the decree, on his own responsibility, if they would only surrender.
“But why should we waste our strength in shouting, our voices might give way.” “I am getting hoarse,” he added with a smile. “The window is so high I can scarcely hear. Look here! Drop a leather line and I will fasten myself to it and you can pull me up through the window, but a wider one than this. I could not get through this one. I am alone, you are many; there is nothing for you to fear. We will talk, and with God’s help we may come to an understanding.”
“To what purpose should we talk? How can we, destitute beggars, vie with such as you,” answered Cornelius, sarcastically revelling in his power and superiority, “between us and you there is a great gulf fixed; none of our people, if he wished, could go to you, none of yours could join us. I would advise you, Captain, to go back. We shall light up directly.”
The window was flung to. Again silence ensued, only the wind rustled in the tree tops, and the crickets chirped from the swamps.
The captain returned to his soldiers and treated each man to a glass of vodka. “We will not fight with them,” he said, “there are but few men among them, mostly women and children. We will break open the door and catch them without any weapons.”
The soldiers prepared ropes, hatchets, ladders, pails and barrels full of water, and long poles each ending with an iron hook, to haul the human beings out of the flames. At last when it was quite dark the men approached the chapel along the border of the wood, then across the glade on all-fours, hiding in the tall grass and behind bushes like sportsmen beating their game.
Arrived at the chapel, which was still as the grave, they began to put up their ladders.
Suddenly, the window opened and Cornelius cried:—
“Back! When the powder and saltpetre take fire the falling beams will kill you!”
“Surrender,” cried the captain; “we will take you somehow, see we have muskets and pistols—”
“You have pistols, we have the club of Christ,” replied a voice from within.
Behind the soldiers a priest appeared with a cross and began to read the bishop’s missive.
“He who kills himself unlawfully is a lost man, he loses his temporal life, and draws upon himself everlasting torment.”
The muzzle of an old cannon appeared in the window, a blank cartridge was fired, not to kill but to intimidate the persecutors.
The priest hid himself behind the soldiers, while old Cornelius brandishing his fist yelled:—
“Hell’s torches! Ashes of Sodom! Sands of the ruined tower of Babylon! give me only time, dogs, you won’t escape me. I will treat you better yet. The Lord Jesus Christ will soon come and fight you, all will be fulfilled, thrones will crumble, and your bones will be thrown to the dogs like Jezebel’s! We shall burn in earthly fire, you will burn in the flames everlasting! Forge then innumerable blades, prepare then the most cruel torments, invent terrible deaths, our joy will only be the keener! Kindle, friends! the Lord is with us!”
Women’s sarafans and garments, coats, skirts, shirts, men’s tunics were thrown out of the window:—
“Here, persecutors, take them, cast lots, we need nothing. Naked we came into the world; naked we will return to the Lord!”
“Spare at least your children, you damnable crew!” cried the captain in despair.
A funeral chant, soft and low, arose within the chapel.
“Force the door!” ordered the captain.
All was ready within. The firing was prepared. The hemp, flax, pitch, straw and bark were piled in large heaps. The wax candles before the icons were so slightly fixed that the least vibration would cause them to drop into the troughs of gunpowder. This was purposely arranged to make self-burning look less like suicide. The children were seated on benches, to which their garments had been nailed so that they could not run away, their hands and feet were bound to prevent their struggling, their mouths were tied round with handkerchiefs to stifle their cries. On the floor a quantity of frankincense in clay vessels had been lit, so that the children should be suffocated before their elders and not see the real terror of the conflagration.
A woman had just been delivered of a baby girl. She was laid on the bench to be baptized with fire.
Then having taken off their clothes they all put on new white shrouds, and on their heads crowns adorned with eight-branched crosses in red ink, they knelt in rows, tapers in hand, to meet the Bridegroom.
Old Cornelius lifting up his hands prayed in a loud voice:—
“Lord God accept us, Thy unworthy servants! We are weak and powerless, and dare not fall into the hands of our enemies. Protect this chosen flock, which follows Thee, the good Shepherd, fleeing the cruel wolf—Antichrist. Save and be gracious unto us. Thou knowest the destinies of all, make us firm and steadfast to bear the suffering. Have mercy upon us O Lord, have mercy upon us. Holy Virgin, we implore thee, have pity upon us; we die for Thy pure love’s sake!”
All repeated after him.
“We die for Thy pure love’s sake!”
Most pathetic was this human cry to God!
At this moment the soldiers, having surrounded the church, and climbed the ladders, began to demolish with their axes the thick log walls, the windows frames and doors.
The walls shook. The tapers fell, but every time chancedto miss the gunpowder troughs. Then at a sign from the old monk, Kirucha seized a bundle of tapers, burning before the icon of the Virgin, threw them into the gunpowder and jumped aside. The powder exploded, the fuel blazed up, streams of fire spread along the floor and walls. Thick smoke, first white, then black, filled the chapel, it choked the flames. Then fiery tongues alone pierced the smoke and hissing, like darts of serpents, approached the people, licked them and retreated as in play.
Terrible screams burst out. And through the groans of the sufferers, through the noise of the flame, continued the song of triumphant joy:—
“The Bridegroom cometh at midnight.”
Only two or three minutes passed between the kindling of the fire and Tichon losing his consciousness, yet what he saw, nothing could erase from his memory.
The old monk seized the newly-born infant, blessed it in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and threw her into the flames—the first victim.
John the Simpleton stretched his hands out towards the fire, as if to meet the coming Lord, whom he had been expecting all his life long.
Kilikeya’s shroud had caught fire, her hair was ablaze, surrounding her head like a crown of flames, she felt no pain and remained immovable; her eyes wide open; in the fire no doubt she saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, descending from the heavens.
Petka Jisla stooped and running forward threw himself into the fire head foremost, like a gay swimmer diving.
Tichon also beheld something joyous and intoxicating in the terrible glare and noise. He remembered the song.
Green grass is growing at her feet,Starred with florets blue and sweet.
Green grass is growing at her feet,Starred with florets blue and sweet.
Green grass is growing at her feet,
Starred with florets blue and sweet.
He seemed to recognise these flowers in the transparent blue heart of the flames. Their celestial colour promised ineffable bliss, but the way to it lay through the Red Death.
The besiegers succeeded in removing several logs. The smoke escaped through the opening. Soldiers with the help of poles were hauling the victims out and pouringwater over them. Mother Theodulia, a centenarian, was dragged out by her legs; Vitalia caught hold of her and was also rescued, but she died the next moment, her body was one wound. Father Spiridon, when pulled out, cut his throat. He lived four hours longer, crossed himself continually after the manner of the Raskolniks, reviled the Niconians and rejoiced, as the captain stated in his report, at having mortally wounded himself.
Others, after the first contact with the flames, of their own accord rushed to the opening, trampling upon one another, and climbing over the pile of bodies, cried to the soldiers:
“Help! help! we burn!”
Animal fear took the place of angelic ecstasy. Those who remained endeavoured to hold back the fleeing. An old man had clutched with both hands the edge of the opening, ready to jump out, but his grandson, a boy of seventeen, knocked a stick across his hands, so hard that he let go and the grandfather fell back into the flames. A woman was escaping with her little boy, but the father caught hold of the child’s legs, swung him in the air and dashed out his brains against a beam. The porter of the monastery, a stout man, who had fallen into a pool of burning pitch, writhed and leapt as in a dance. “Like a fish in a frying pan,” thought Tichon with sinister irony, and closed his eyes so as not to see.
The heat and smoke were stifling him. Purple harebells on a blood-red field were beckoning to him and ringing plaintively. He felt that Sophia was nestling up and embracing him. And under her shroud, her young, innocent body was fresh as some flower, blossoming in the furnace. And still living voices continued to chant amid the groans of the dying.
“Lo, the Bridegroom cometh!”
“My Bridegroom, my beloved Christ!” whispered Sophia into Tichon’s ear. He felt that the fire which consumed him inwardly was more intense than the flames of the Red Death. They dropped together, as in one embrace the bride and bridegroom lie down upon the nuptial couch.
The burning woman, arrayed with the sun and winged with fire, carried him away into the flaming abyss.
The heat was so intense that the soldiers had to stand back; two were scorched, one had fallen in the chapel and perished.
The captain was angry.
“Fools, accursed fools! I’d rather fight the Swede or the Turk than have to do with these beggars!”
The old man’s face was paler than when he lay wounded on the battlefield of Poltava.
Fanned by the wind the flame rose higher and higher with a noise like thunder. Burning brands flew about like fiery birds. The whole chapel was a furnace, and in this furnace as in the fiery pit of hell, writhed a pile of contorted human bodies. Skins were bursting, the blood bubbled, the fat boiled, an atrocious odour filled the air. Suddenly the logs of the roof fell. A column of fire shot into the sky like a gigantic torch.
Earth and sky were lit up by the red glow, as though the last fire which was to consume the world were already blazing.
Tichon recovered consciousness in the wood, on the fresh dewy grass.
He learnt afterwards that at the last moment, when he had swooned, Cornelius and Kirucha had taken him up in their arms and rushed into the sanctuary. Under the altar was a trap-door, which led into a secret chamber and thence, following a subterranean passage, they reached the wood, a thicket where the persecutors could not find them.
Almost all the preachers of “Self-burning” acted in this way: they let the others perish, but they and their closest disciples ran away in order to continue their teaching.
Tichon had taken a long time to recover. The monk and Kirucha sprinkled him repeatedly with water; they thought he would die, though his burns were not severe.
At last he opened his eyes and asked:—
“Where is Sophia?”
The monk looked at him with his lucid, kindly eyes.
“Do not fret, my child, do not sorrow for your bride. Her soul is in heaven, together with the holy martyrs.”
And lifting his eyes to heaven he crossed himself and said with joyful accents:—
“Eternal remembrance be to God’s servants, who of their own accord sought death by flames. Rest, beloved, until the day of Resurrection, and pray for us; we too will drink the cup when our time comes. It has not come yet, we must go on labouring for Christ. You too, my son, have passed through the test of fire,” he continued, turning to Tichon, “you are dead to the world, and have risen in Christ. Endeavour then to live this second life not for yourself, but for God. Put on the armour of light, rise and walk, be a soldier of Christ, a preacher of the Red Death.”
And he added with cheerfulness:—
“We will go to the Ocean, to the border land: there also we will kindle fires, but we will be bold, we will burn innumerable brethren. God will bless our zeal and the whole of Russia will blaze up, and after Russia the whole world.”
Tichon said nothing, he had closed his eyes. The monk thinking he had again fallen asleep, went to the hut to prepare herbs for curing burns. Then Tichon, left to himself, turned away from the still bloody sky, and pressed his face against the ground.
The moist earth eased his pain, and he felt that the Earth had heard his prayer, that she had saved him from the Red Death, and that he was coming forth from her womb anew, like a babe, like a dead man resuscitated. And he flung his arms over her, kissed her as though she were alive, praying:—