‘Unfortunately the headmaster is not here – he is unwell; but perhaps I can help you, or take a message for him.’
Mariya Vasilyevna decided to tell the scripture teacher everything.
Father Vvedensky was a widower, a graduate from the theological academy, and a man of considerable self-esteem. The previous year he had come across Smokovnikov senior at a society meeting in the course of a discussion about religious belief, in which Smokovnikov had soundly trounced him on all points and exposed him to ridicule. As a result Vvedensky had resolved to keep a watchful eye on the son, and having detected in him the same indifference to the Divine Law that his unbelieving father had displayed, he began to persecute him, and even failed him in an examination.
Having found out from Mariya Vasilyevna about young Smokovnikov’s escapade, Vvedensky could not help feeling a certain satisfaction, seeing in this incident a confirmation of his own prejudices concerning those immoral people who lacked the guidance of the Church, and he decided to make use of the incident in order, as he tried to assure himself, to reveal the dangers threatening all those who abandoned the Church and her ways – but in the depths of his soul he simply wanted to get his own back on a proud and self-confident atheist.
‘Yes, it is very sad, very sad,’ said Father Vvedensky, stroking the smooth edges of his pectoral cross. ‘I am so glad you have entrusted this matter to me: as a servant of the Church I shall naturally try to make sure that the young man is not left without moral guidance, but I shall also do my best to make his edification as gentle as possible.’
‘Yes, I shall act in a way which befits my calling,’ said Father Vvedensky to himself, thinking that he had now quite forgotten the father’s hostility towards him and that he desired nothing but the moral good and salvation of the boy.
Next day during the scripture lesson Father Mikhail told his pupils all about the episode of the forged coupon and informed them that it was a grammar-school pupil who had been responsible for it.
‘It was a vile, shameful act,’ he said, ‘but concealing it is even worse. If it was one of you who did this – which I cannot believe – then it would be better for him to own up to it than to hide his guilt.’
As he said this he was staring straight at Mitya Smokovnikov. Mitya went red and started to sweat, then he burst into tears and ran from the classroom.
When Mitya’s mother heard about these events she persuaded her son to tell her the whole truth and then hurried off to the photographic supply shop. She paid back the twelve roubles fifty to the proprietor’s wife and induced her to keep quiet about the schoolboy’s name. She then instructed her son to deny everything, and on no account to make any confession to his father.
And indeed, when Fyodor Mikhailovich heard what had happened at the grammar school, and when his son on being questioned denied it all, he went to see the headmaster and explained the whole matter to him, saying that the scripture teacher’s conduct had been deeply reprehensible and that he did not intend to let things rest there. The headmaster called in the scripture teacher and a heated exchange took place between him and Fyodor Mikhailovich.
‘A stupid woman attempted to pin something on my son and then retracted her accusation, and you could find nothing better to do than to slander the honour of a thoroughly upright boy.’
‘I did not slander him, and I will not permit you to speak to me in such a tone. You are forgetting my vocation.’
‘I don’t give a fig for your vocation.’
‘Your deluded opinions, sir,’ said the scripture teacher, his chin quivering so that his scanty little beard trembled in sympathy, ‘your deluded opinions are well known to the whole town.’
‘Gentlemen, Father,’ said the headmaster, attempting to pacify the two disputants. But to pacify them was impossible.
‘My holy vocation makes it my duty to concern myself with the moral and religious upbringing of the young.’
‘Enough of this pretence. Do you think I don’t know that you haven’t a grain of genuine religious faith in you?’
‘I consider it beneath me to continue talking to such a gentleman as you,’ declared Father Mikhail, who had been particularly offended by Smokovnikov’s last remark, since he knew that it was accurate. He had gone through the whole course at the theological academy and consequently had long since ceased to believe in what he professed and what he preached; in fact he believed only that everyone ought to make themselves believe those things which he had made himself believe.
Smokovnikov was not so much infuriated by the scripture teacher’s behaviour, as by discovering this striking example of the clerical influence which was beginning to manifest itself throughout our society, and he told everyone about the incident.
Father Vvedensky on the other hand, seeing in it a demonstration of the nihilism and atheism which had taken hold not only of the younger generation but of the older one as well, became more and more convinced of the necessity of combating them. The more he condemned the unbelief of Smokovnikov and his kind, the more convinced he became of the firm and unshakable character of his own faith, and the less need he felt to test his faith or to reconcile it with his actual way of living. His faith, acknowledged by the world around him, was for him his principal weapon in his fight against those who denied it.
These thoughts, called forth by his clash with Smokovnikov, together with the disagreeable events at the grammar school which followed in its wake – namely, a reprimand and a caution from the school authorities – impelled him to take a decision which had been tantalizing him for a long time, since the death of his wife, in fact: to take monastic vows and thus opt for a career already followed by several of his fellow-students at the academy, one of whom was already a member of the hierarchy, another the superior of a monastery, and expected soon to be made a bishop.
Towards the end of the academic year Vvedensky left the grammar school, took his monastic vows and the new name of Misail, and was very soon given the rectorship of a seminary in a town on the Volga.
XIII
Meanwhile Vasily the yardman had set out on the highroad to the south.
By day he walked, and at night the local policeman would show him to the usual quarters provided for wanderers. Wherever he went people gave him bread, and sometimes even asked him in to have supper with them. In one village in the Oryol province where he was spending the night he was told that a merchant who had leased an orchard from the landowner was looking for fit young fellows as night-watchmen. Vasily was tired of living as a beggar but he did not want to go back to his village, so he went to see the merchant with the orchard and got himself taken on as a night-watchman at a wage of five roubles per month.
Vasily found life in his watchman’s hut very pleasant, particularly when the sweet apples had begun to ripen and the other watchmen brought in huge trusses of fresh straw gathered from under the threshing-machine in the master’s shed. He would lie the whole day long on the fresh, fragrant straw beside the still more fragrant piles of spring and winter windfall apples, just keeping an eye open to make sure the children were not pilfering the apples still on the trees, and whistling and singing songs. Singing songs Vasily was really good at. He had a fine voice. The women and girls would come up from the village to get some apples. Vasily would laugh and joke with them a bit and gave more or less apples in exchange for eggs or a few copecks to whichever of them took his fancy – and then lie down again, only getting up to have his breakfast or his dinner or his supper.
Vasily possessed only one shirt, a pink cotton one full of holes, and he had nothing to put on his feet, but his body was strong and healthy, and when the porridge pot was taken off the fire Vasily would eat enough for three, so that the old man who was the chief watchman was always amazed at him. Vasily did not sleep at night and would whistle or call out to keep himself awake, and he could see a long way in the dark, like a cat. One night some big boys from the village climbed into the trees to shake the apples down. Vasily crept up and went for them; they did their best to beat him off but he sent them all flying, and took one of them back to the hut and handed him over to the master.