It really was an outrage about that honey! Had it been worthwhile to slave away all year, and run the risk of getting stung by the bees?
It’s true that Father Makarucha never went near the beehives without a net over his face or without wearing gloves and an apron. In this get-up he looked like the high priest of some heretical sect. But in certain circumstances he liked to emphasize the danger he faced in his bee-keeping work. All the more so since he faced no great danger in the course of his pastoral duties. Father Sydir Makarucha made no secret of the fact that he favoured the bees over those meek, mangy sheep, his parishioners. True, these sheep did not sting, but neither did they produce any honey. Nor did they make any payment for christenings, weddings or burials. Christenings, especially, were a limited source of joy for Father Makarucha; every second married couple was childless. But it was common knowledge that the Hutsuls were doing penance for the French sins of their forefathers. And while the virtues of his parishioners brought the priest of Czernielica little income, for their greatest virtue was poverty—who knows, perhaps it was indeed their only virtue—so, likewise, he gained little from their sins. People did not want to get married; they lived in sin and, what is more, they did not give birth to any children.
Sins, sins. How could one make a living from the sins of others in such an indigent, infertile parish? It was hardly surprising, then, that Father Makarucha stuck to his honey, being—if one may be permitted to say so—attached body and soul to his beehives. The more so because, although he was not a Hutsul, God had not deigned to give him children either. The sweet honeycombs, those masterpieces of insect architecture, were of greater interest to him than the sweet balm with which he was obliged to heal wounds in the Hutsuls’ souls. From this wax, his wife made excellent candles for use at home and in the church. She also supplied the candles she made to neighbouring parishes, making a tidy profit.
Not infrequently, the honey flowed over from the beekeeping to the priest’s actual profession. Whenever he mentioned the land of milk and honey in his sermons, those of the faithful who were endowed with a more lively imagination knew that Father Makarucha had in mind his own honey. It was indeed excellent honey. The priest never adulterated it by adding sugar.
He hated vodka drinkers. Interpreting the meaning of the Promised Land, he would say: “So you can see, dear brothers and dear sisters, that God did not promise the Jews a land flowing with milk and vodka, only with milk and honey.” Once, during Easter meditation, he even committed a bad slip of the tongue, declaring that “We receive the body and blood of Christ in the form of bread and honey.” He corrected this to “wine” only when it was too late and the church was filled with suppressed laughter like the buzzing of a beehive.
To toll the bells or not to toll? That was the question that continued to trouble the priest long after the gendarme had left. A further inhibition was secretly troubling the priest; if the rumour turned out to be false, the tolling of the bells would entail a grave danger. Father Makarucha recalled with horror his colleagues who had been hanged in the northern districts. He was loyal, no Muscovite sympathizer. But could all the officers of the Imperial and Royal Army be aware of that? All those Germans, Hungarians, Croats and Czechs? Only the locals know of it. The chairman of the council in Śniatyn knew as well. But he had probably already moved the council offices to some safer location. To toll or not to toll? The deacon had been enlisted in the army and there never had been a sacristan, so if it came to anything there would be no one else to blame. Since the deacon had been enlisted, Father Makarucha himself had usually been the bell-ringer. Now that it was a matter of the peace of the soul, not of any old parishioner, but of the Pope of Rome himself, was he really supposed to have someone else stand in for him? Quite inappropriate. Father Sydir Makarucha was no coward, so he didn’t want to look as if he was, even in his own eyes. So he decided to toll. But when he grasped the rope that was supposed to toll the two heavy bells, he could not rid himself of a persistent delusion that this rope was strangling him.
His self-confidence was bolstered by his imagination, which revived in Father Makarucha’s soul the infamous long-standing feud between the Empire and the papacy. The priest of Czernielica now engaged in a kind of battle over the Investiture, which was not, however, resolved in Canossa. He revolted against the state’s supremacy over the church and, although he valued his own life, he was prepared to sacrifice it for the faith.
All right, let them suspect him, but God in heaven knows that Sydir Makarucha is innocent; he is fulfilling his sacred duty.
He sensed the great power of his soul. His thoughts went out to all the martyrs he knew of, his thoughts went out to all the innocent Ruthenian priests who had been hanged, and with the palm of his own martyrdom before his eyes he tugged at the rope. He set both bells in motion, informing the parish of the unconfirmed death of the Holy Father Pius X.
Not long after that the bells tolled in the neighbouring parishes. So it was true; the Pope had indeed passed away. Father Makarucha felt deeply relieved, but at the same time he was loath to see himself relinquishing the role of martyr. His palm had withered before it had time to germinate.
Soon the bells—purchased with parishioners’ contributions or with generous donations from devout ladies of landed families, and the well-to-do who had recovered from their illnesses—were resounding throughout the district of Śniatyn. They resounded from church to church, from village to village, and their tones traced invisible circles in the clear, bright sky.
The Pope of Rome has died! Oh, our Pope, our Pope of Rome, of Rome, has died!
All the cardinals were mourning him, all the bishops and suffragans, the prelates and canons, the monks in their monasteries and the little sisters, all the saints in heaven and the devout on earth who had heard the news. The Metropolitan of Lwów himself, Count Szeptycki, a great man, a Polish nobleman who had resigned from the Imperial cavalry to serve God, who had renounced the Latin rites of the gentry in order to lead the Ruthenian people on the road to salvation wearing the Greek golden tiara, was mourning the Pope of Rome. And all the clerics and all the seminarists were mourning him, and the priests, deacons and sacristans were singing for him, and Father Sydir Makarucha, parish priest of Czernielica, tolled away.
Meanwhile in Rome eight Swiss Guards were at this moment bearing the body of the Pope into the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament. The coffin was followed by a funeral procession consisting of a body of armed guards, all the courtiers and twenty-two cardinals led by Chamberlain della Volpe.
Piotr Niewiadomski was greatly surprised to hear the tolling of the bells. In those days the church bells rang only on Sundays, after the service. So was it a funeral?
No, when there is a funeral they only ring in the parish of the deceased, but now the bells were heard not only in Czernielica; the clearest echoes came from the distant bells of Horbacz and Nyrków on the Czeremosz. So if it was not a funeral, then what was it? Perhaps it was marking the departure of the last cohorts of the reserve militia? Were they bidding them farewell with the tolling of bells as if we were no longer among the living?
News of the Pope’s death was first brought by Magda. She also brought provisions for the journey—a kilo of pork fat, two loaves of whole-grain bread and some cheese. With her own money she had bought a packet of cheap shag. She had been unable to get hold of goose fat anywhere (Piotr was very partial to goose fat). She was dropping by in a great hurry. She had to return to the haymaking. That was where she earned her money. She would come to the station in the evening to see him off.