Here the Englishman stands up and says merrily:
“And what do you odd birds pray for?”
“We,” I reply, “pray for a Christian ending to our life and a good defense before the dread judgment seat.”
He smiled and suddenly pulled a green curtain open by a golden cord, and behind that curtain his English wife was sitting in an armchair, knitting on long needles by a candle. She was a fine, affable lady, and though she didn’t speak much of our language, she understood everything and had probably wanted to hear our conversation about religion.
And what do you think? When the curtain that hid her was pulled aside, she stood up at once, seemed to shudder, and came, the dear woman, to me and Luka, offered both hands to us muzhiks, and there were tears glistening in her eyes, and she pressed our hands and said:
“Goot people, goot Russian people!”
Luka and I kissed both her hands for those kind words, and she put her lips to our muzhik heads.
The storyteller stopped and, covering his eyes with his sleeve, wiped them discreetly, and murmured in a whisper: “A touching woman!” and with that he straightened up and went on again.
Having begun with these affectionate acts of hers, the Englishwoman said something to her husband in their language, which we didn’t understand, but we could tell by her voice that she was probably speaking on our behalf. And the Englishman—this kindness in his wife evidently pleased him—gazes at her, beaming all over with pride, and strokes his wife’s little head, and coos like a dove in his language: “Goot, goot,” or however they say it, only it’s clear that he’s praising her and confirming her in something. Then he goes to his desk, takes out two hundred-rouble bills, and says:
“Here’s money for you, Luka: go and look where you know for an artful icon painter of the kind you need, let him do what you need and also paint something of the same sort for my wife—she wants to give such an icon to our son—and my wife is giving you this money for all your trouble and expenses.”
And she smiles through her tears and says quickly:
“No, no, no: that’s from him, mine’s separate,” and so saying, she fluttered out the door and came back with a third hundred-rouble bill.
“My husband gave it to me for a dress, but I don’t want a dress, I donate it to you.”
We, naturally, started to refuse, but she wouldn’t even hear of it and ran away, and he says:
“No, don’t you dare refuse; take what she’s giving you,” and he turns away and says, “And get out, you odd birds!”
Naturally, we weren’t in the least offended by this expulsion, because, though the Englishman turned away from us, we saw that he did it to conceal the fact that he was deeply moved himself.
So it was, my dear sirs, that our own native people treated us unjustly, but the English nation comforted us and lent zeal to our souls, just as if we’d received the bath of regeneration!
Now from here on, my dear sirs, the second half of my story begins, and I’ll tell you briefly how, taking my silver-bridled Levonty, I set out after an icon painter, and what places we went to, what people we saw, what new wonders were revealed to us, and, finally, what we found, and what we lost, and what we came back with.
X
For a man going on a journey, the first thing is a companion; cold and hunger are easier with an intelligent and good comrade, and this blessing was granted me in that wonderful youth Levonty. We set out on foot, taking with us our shoulder bags and a sufficient sum of money, and to protect it and our own lives we took with us an old, short-bladed saber with a broad back, which we always carried in case of danger. We made our way like tradespeople, inventing errands at random as the supposed causes for our traveling, and all the while, naturally, with an eye on our business. At the very beginning we visited Klintsy and Zlynka, then called on some of our people in Orel, but did not obtain any useful results: nowhere did we find any good icon painters, and so we got to Moscow. But all I can say is: Woe to thee, Moscow! Woe to thee, most glorious queen of the ancient Russian people! We of the old belief were not comforted by thee either.
I’m not eager to say it, but it’s impossible to keep silent: we did not meet in Moscow the spirit we were thirsting for. We found that the old ways there no longer stood upon piety and love of the good, but only upon obstinacy, and becoming more and more convinced of it every day, Levonty and I began to be ashamed of each other, for we both saw things that were insulting to a peaceful follower of the faith, but, being ashamed in ourselves, we kept silent about it all with each other.
Naturally, we found icon painters in Moscow, and quite artful ones, but what use was that, since all these people were not of the spirit which the tradition of our forefathers tells us about? In olden times, pious painters, when taking up their holy artwork, fasted and prayed, and worked in the same way for big money or for little, as the honor of the lofty task demands. But these paint one slap, another dash, to last a short time, not for long years; they lay a weak ground of chalk, not of alabaster, and, being lazy, they flow the paint on all at once, not like in the old days, when they flowed on four or even five layers of paint, thin as water, which produced that wonderful delicacy unattainable nowadays. And, aside from carelessness in their art, they’re all of lax behavior, and boast before each other, and say anything at all to humiliate another painter; or, worse still, they band together, carry out clever deceptions, gather in pot-houses and drink and praise their own art with conceited arrogance, and blasphemously call other painters’ work “infernography,” and there are always junkmen around them, like sparrows around owls, who pass various old icons from hand to hand, alter them, substitute them, make fake boards, smoke them in chimneys, giving them a decrepit and worm-eaten look; they cast bronze folding icons from old molds and coat them with antiquated patina; they refashion copper bowls into baptismal fonts and put old-fashioned splayed eagles on them as in the time of Ivan the Terrible, and sell them to inexperienced buyers as genuine fonts from that period, though there’s countless numbers of these fonts going the rounds in Russia, and it’s all a shameless lie and deception. In a word, as swarthy Gypsies cheat each other with horses, so all these people do with holy objects, and they treat it all in such a way that you feel ashamed for them and see in it all only sin and temptation and abuse of faith. For those who have acquired the habit of this shamelessness, it’s nothing, and among Moscow fanciers there are many who are interested in such dishonest trading and boast that so-and-so cheated so-and-so with a Deisis, and this one stuck that one with a Nicholas, or fobbed off a fake Our Lady in some scoundrelly manner: and they all cover it up, and vie with each other in how best to hoodwink the trustful inexperienced with God’s blessing, but to Levonty and me, being of simple village piety, all this seemed unbearable to such a degree that we both even felt downcast and fear came over us.
“Can it be,” we thought, “that in these times our ill-fated Old Belief has come to this?” But, though I thought that, and I could see that he harbored the same thing in his grieving heart, we didn’t reveal it to each other, and I only noticed that my youth kept seeking some solitary place.
I looked at him once and thought to myself: “What if in his confusion he decides on something improper?” So I say: