I had just squeezed in, when a wave surged up from the front and hurled me back. Before me passed a ta!l, portly deacon holding a long red candle; behind him hurried the archimandrite, grey-haired, wearing a gold mitre, and swinging his censer. Once they had disap- peared, the crowd pushed me back to my previous place. But in !ess than ten minutes another wave surged and again the deacon appeared. This time he was followed by the Father Vicar, the very one whom leronim had described as writing the history of the monastery.
Merging with the crowd and infected by the universal jubilation and excitement, I felt unbearable piry for leronim. Why would no one rdieve him? Why couldn't somwne less feeling and less impres- sionable be sent to the ferry?
'Cast thine eyes about thee, O Zion, and behold!' they were singing in the choir. 'For lo! from the West and from the Nonh, and from the Sea and from the East, as to a light by God illumined, have thy children assembled unto thee . . .'
I looked at the faces. They were all radiant with triumph; but nota single person was listening to and taking in what was being sung, and none of them was feding his 'breath taken away'. Why would no one relieve leronim? I could imagine this leronim standing humbly somewhere by the wall, hunched up and snatching greedily at the beaury ofeach sacred phrase. All that was now glancing past the ears of those standing about me, he would have drunk in thirstily with his sensitive soul, he would have drunk himself into ecstasies - till his breath was taken away - and there would not have been a happier man in the whole building. Now, though, he was plying back and fonh on the dark river and grieving for his dead brother and friend.
Behind me another wave surged forward. A stout, smiling monk fiddling with a rosary and looking over his shoulder squeezed past me sideways, clearing the way for a lady in a hat and velvet cloak. Behind the lady, holding a chair above our heads, hurried a monas- tery servant.
I came out of the church. I wanted to have a look at the dead N'ikolay, the unacclaimed writer of canticles. I strolled round the precinct, where a row of monks' cells stretched along the monastery wall, I looked in through several windows, and, seeing nothing, turned back. Now I do not regret not havingseen Nikolay; goodness knows, perhaps if I had seen him I should have lost the image that my imagination now paints ofhim. I picture this attractive, poetical man who would come out at night to call to leronim, who-besprinkled his canticles with flowers, stars and sunbeams, and was completely alone and not understood, as shy, pale, with soft, meek and sad features. As well as intelligence, his eyes surely glowed with affection and that barely restrainable childlike rapture that I had heard in leronim's voice, when he quoted to me pieces from the canticles.
When we emerged from the church after mass, the night was already gone. Morning was breaking. The stars had faded and the sky was now a sombre greyish-blue. The cast-iron slabs, the tomb- stones and the buds on the trees were coated with dew. It was distinctly fresh. Beyond the monastery wall there was no longer the animation that I had seen at night. The horses and people looked weary, sleepy, they scarcely moved, whilst all that was left of the tar barrels was a few heaps of black ash. When a person feels weary and wants to sleep, he thinks that nature is experiencing the same state. It seemed to me that the trees and the young grass were sleeping. It seemed that even the bells were not ringing so loudly and cheerfully as in the night. The turmoil was over and of the excitement only a pleasant languor remained, a craving for warmth and sleep.
Now I could see the river and both its banks. Above it, here and there, drifted humps of thin mist. A grim chill wafted from the river. When I jumped onto the ferry, someone's britchka was already standing on it, and a couple of dozen men and women. The rope, which was damp and, it seemed to me, sleepy, stretched away far across the broad river and disappeared in places in the white mist.
'Christ is Risen! Anyone else?' asked a quiet voice.
I recognised Ieronim's voice. Now the darkness of the night no longer prevented me from making out the monk's appearance. He was a tall, narrow-shouldered man of about thirty-five, with large rounded features, half-closed, listlessly-peering eyes, and an unkempt little spade beard. He looked extremely sad and weary.
'Haven't they relieved you yet?' I asked in surprise.
'Me?' he asked back, turning his numbed, dew-covered face to me, and smiling. 'There's no one to take my place now till morn. They'll all be going to the father archimandrite soon to break the fast.'
He and a strange linle peasant in an orange fur hat resembling one of the limewood tubs they sell honey in, applied themselves to the rope, gave a groan in unison, and the ferry moved off.
We floated across, disturbing on our way the lazily rising mist. Everyone was silent. Ieronim worked the rope mechanically with one hand. For a long time his meek, bleary eyes roamed all over us, then he brought his gaze to rest on the rosy, black-browed face of a young merchant's wife, who was standing on the ferry next to me, hunched up silently in the enveloping mist. He did not take his eyes off her face the whole way.
There was linle that was masculine in that prolonged gaze. In the woman's face I feel Ieronim was searching for the soft and loving features of his late-lamented friend.
The Little ]oke
Noon, on a clear winter's day . . . The frost is hard, the air crackles, and silvery crystals cover the curls on Nadenka's brow and the light down on her hp. She is holding my arm. We are Standing at the top of a hilclass="underline" from our fcet to the ground below stretches a smooth incline, like a mirror in which the sun is looking at itself. Beside us is a little toboggan, covered in bright red cloth.
'Come on, let's go down, Nadezhda Petrovna!' l implore her. 'Just once! No harm'll come to us, I assure you, we shall be quite safe.'
But Nadenka is afraid. The whole distance from her little over- shoes to the bottom of the hill of ice seems to her a terrible, unfathomable abyss. She catches her breath, she can't breathe when she looks down, when I so much as suggest sining on the toboggan. And whatever will it be like if she dares to fly down into the abyss! She will die, she will go mad.
'Please, please!' I say. 'You mustn't be afraid! It's sheer cowar- dice!'
In the end, Nadenka yields, although I can see from her face that she still yields in fear of her life. I seat her pale and trembling on the toboggan, I put my arm around her, and together we hurtle into the abyss.
The toboggan goes like a bullet. It slices through the air and the wind beats in our faces, roars, whistles in our ears, tears at us, and mps us painfully in its rage, as though it wanted to wrench our heads off. The blast is so strong we can't even breathe. It is as though the devil himself had got us in his clutches and was dragging us roaring down to hell. Everything round us merges into one long strip rushing by ... Another moment, it seems, and we shall perish!
'I love you, Nadya!' I say under my breath.
The toboggan runs quieter and quieter now, the roar ofthe wind and the hiss of the runners are no longer so terrible, we can breathe freely again, and finally we are at the bonom. Nadenka is neither dead nor alive. She is pale, scarcely able to breathe ... I help her to get up.
'I shall never ever do that again!' she says, looking at me wide-eyed with terror. 'Not for anvthing in the world! I nearly died!'
After a while, however, she comes to herself again and looks me questioningly in the eyes: did I say those four words, or did she just think she heard them, in the rushing wind? I stand beside her, smoking, and am carefully examining my glove.
She takes my arm and for a long rime we walk about the bonom of the hill. The mystery obviously gives her no peace. Were those words said or not? Yes, or no? Yes, or no? Thc question is one that touches her self-esteem, her honour, her life, her happiness, it's a question of life and death, the most important question in the whole world. Nadenka looks impatiently, sadly, penetratingly into my face and answers my questions haphazardly, waiting to see if I will speak first. Oh, the emotions that play across that dear face! I can see that she is struggling with herself, she desperately wants to say something, to ask something, but she can't find the words, she feels awkward, scared, her very joy prevents her ...