The peasant went down to the water's edge, seized the ferry rope, and yelled:
'leronim! leron-i-m!'
As though in answer to his shout, a long peal from a great bell came to us from the other bank. The peal was rich and deep, like the thickest string on a double-bass: it was as though the darkness itself had given a hoarse cough. Immediately a shot rang out from a cannon. It rolled away in the darkness and petered out somewhere far behind me. The peasant took off his hat and crossed himself.
'Christ is Risen!' he said.
Hardly had the waves from the firstpeal of the bell died on the air, when a second one resounded, hard on it a third, and suddenly the darkness was filled with a continuous, vibrant din. Beside the red fires new ones blazed up, and they all started moving together and flickering restlessly.
'leroni-m!' came a long echoing cry.
'They're shouting for him from the other bank,' said the peasant. 'So the ferry's not there either. He's fallen asleep, our leronim.'
The fires and the velvety tolling of the bell were calling me ... I was beginning to get impatient and fidgety. Finally, though, peering into the dark distance, I saw the silhouette ofsomething very similar to a gallows. It was the long-awaited ferry. It was approaching with such slowness that had it not been for the gradual sharpening of its outlines, one might have thought it was standing still, or, indeed, going towards the other bank.
'Come on, leronim!' shouted my peasant. 'There's a gendeman waiting!'
The ferry crept up to the bank, lurched, and creaked to a halt. On it, holding the rope, stood a tall man in a monk's cassock and a conical cap.
'What kept you?' I asked him, leaping onto the ferry.
'Forgive me for the Lord's sake,' replied leronim quietly. 'Anyone else?'
'No, just me . ..'
leronim grasped the rope with both hands, bent himself into the shape of a question-mark, and let out a groan. The ferry creaked and lurched. The silhouette of the peasant in the tall hat began slowly to recede from me: so the ferry was under way. Soon leronim straigh- tened up and began to work the rope with one hand. We gazed silently at the bank iowards which we were floating. There the 'luminations' the peasant was waiting for had already begun. At the water's edge barrels of tar were blazing like enormous bonfires. Their reflections, as ruddy as a rising moon, crept out towards us in long wide strips. The burning barrels lit up their own smoke and the long shadows of people flirting about by the fires, but the area to either side of the barrels and beyond them, whence came the velvety tolling of the bell, was all dense black gloom still. Suddenly, slashing the dark^s, a rocket shot up to the sky in a golden streamer; it described an arc., and as ifsmashingagamst thesky disintegrated in a crackle of sparks. A roar went up from the bank, like a distant 'hurrah'.
'Beautiful!' I said.
'Yes, beaunful beyond words!' sighed leronim. 'It's that kind of night, sir! Another time and we wouldn't even pay any arrention to rockets, but tonight we rejoice at every vain thing. And where might you be from?'
I told him.
'Mmm. . .it's a joyful day today . . .' continued leromm in a sighmg lirrle high-pitched \'oice like that of someone recovering from an illness. '^ta sky rejoices, and the earth, and all that is under the earth. All creation is celebrating. Only tell me, sir: why is it that even in the midst ofgreatrejoicinga man cannot forget hissorrows?'
I was afraid that this unexpected question was inviting me to join m one of those protracted. uplifting discussions that monks who are idle and bored are so partial to. I was not much disposed to conversa- tion, so I merely asked:
'\'hat sorrows do you have, father?'
'Usually the same as everyone else's, your honour, good sir, but this day a particular sorrow has befallen the monastery: at the liturgy itself, during the lessons, Nikolay the monk died . ..'
'Well, it's God will!' I said, affecting the monastic tone. 'We all must die. Shouldn't you rather be rejoicing? . .. They say that anyone who dies at Easter, or during Eastertide, is sure to go to the kingdom of heaven.'
'That's true.'
We fell sdent. The silhouerre of the tall-harred peasant merged with the features of the bank. The tar barrels blazed higher and higher.
'The scriptures make clear to us the vanity of sorrow, as does contemplation,' leronim broke the silence. 'But why will the soul still grieve and not listen to reason? Why d^ one want to weep so bitterlv ?'
Ieronim shrugged his shoulders, turned to me, and spoke rapidly:
'Ifit was me had died, or someone else, perhaps no one would have so much as noticed, but it was Nikolay who died! Nikolay, of all people! It's hard to believe, even, that he's no longer in the world! I stand here on the ferry and I keep thinking to myself that his voice is going to call out to me from the bank. So that I wouldn't be scared on my own on the ferry, he would always come down to the riverbank and hail me. He would get out of bed every night specially. A kind soul he was! God knows, how kind and considerate! Many a mother's not as kind to her own children as Nikolay was to me! The Lord save his soul!'
leronim took hold of the rope, but immediately turned to me again.
'Oh, and what a brilliant mind, your honour!' he said liltingly. 'What sweet and melodious speech! It was just as they'll be singing soon at the mass: "O how loving-kind! O most sweet is Thy voice!" And apart from all his other human qualities, he had an extraordi- nary gift!'
'What was that?' I asked.
The monk eyed me carefully, then, as if persuaded that I could be trusted with a secret, he chuckled.
'He had the gift of writing canticles . ..' he said. 'It was a miracle, sir, no less! You'll scarcely believe it if I tell you. Reverend Father, our archimandrite, is from Moscow, our Father Vicar graduated from the Kazan Academy, and we have learned monks in orders here, and elders, but let me assure you, sir, there isn't one of them who could write things himself - yet Nikolay, a simple monk, a mere deacon, who hadn't studied anywhere and was nothing at all to look at, he could! It was a miracle, a veritable miracle!'
leronim clasped his hands and forgetting all about the rope, con- tinued excitedly:
'Our FatherVicar finds it difficult putting sermons together, when he was writing the history of our monastery he made our lives a misery and had to drive into town a dozen times. Nikolay, though, could write canticles! Canticles! That's a different matter from a sermon or a history!'
'Are canticles so hard to write, then?' I asked.
'V-ery hard .. .' said leronim with a roll of the head. 'It doesn't matter how wise or saintly you are, ifGod hasn't given you the gift. Monks who don't know what they're talking about reckon all you have to do is know the life of the saint you're writing it to, and model it on nll the other canticlcs. But that's not correct, sir. Of course, anyone who writes a canticle has to know thc saint's life inside out, down to the last minutest detail. He must consult the other canticlcs, too, to know how to begin and what to write about. To give you an example, the first collect-hymn always hegins with the words "Most High Elect" or "The Chosen One" . . . The first ikos must always begin with an angel. I don't know if you're interested, but in the canticle to Jesus the Most Sweet the ikos bcgins like this: "Angels' Creator and Lord of Hosts!", in the canticle to the Most Holy Mother ofGod it's "An Angel was sent down from the Heavens to be a Messenger", and to St Nicholas the Miracle-Worker - "Angel in form, though in substance an Earthly Being", and so on. It always begins with an angel. Of course, you do have to consult the other canticles, but it isn't the saint's life or how the canticle compares with other ones that maners - it's the beauty and sweetness of the thing. Everything in it must be graceful, brief, and pregnant with meaning. Every tiny line must breathe a softness, a gentleness, a tcnderness; there mustn't be a single word that's coarse, harsh, or out of place. You must write in such a way that the worshipper re|oices in his heart and weeps, and his mind is shaken and he's all a-tremble. In the canticle to the Holy Mother ofGod there are the words: "Rejoice, O Thou too high for the mind of man to scale: rejoice, O Thou too deep for the eyes of Angels to fathom!" Elsewhere in the same canticle it says: "Rejoice, O Tree of fairest Fruit that nourishest the faithfuclass="underline" rejoice, O Tree of benign Canopy that shelterest the multitudes!" '