XII
My return trip with the icon painter Sevastian went quickly and, arriving at the construction site at night, we found everything there in good order. After seeing our own people, we appeared at once before the Englishman Yakov Yakovlevich. Curious as he was, the man was interested in seeing the icon painter at once, and he kept looking at his hands and shrugging, because Sevastian’s hands were huge as rakes, and dark, inasmuch as he himself had the look of a swarthy Gypsy. Yakov Yakovlevich finally says:
“I’m surprised, brother, that you can paint with such huge hands.”
And Sevastian replies:
“How so? What’s unsuitable about my hands?”
“You can’t trace anything small with them,” he says.
“Why?” the man asks.
“Because the finger joints aren’t flexible enough to allow it.”
But Sevastian says:
“That’s nonsense! How can my fingers allow or not allow me something? I’m their master, and they’re my servants and obey me.”
The Englishman smiles.
“So,” he says, “you’ll copy the sealed angel for us?”
“Why not?” the man says. “I’m not one of those masters who fears work, it’s work that fears me. I’ll copy it so you can’t tell it from the real one.”
“Very well,” says Yakov Yakovlevich, “we’ll immediately set about getting hold of the real one, and in the meantime, to convince me, you show me your artistry: paint an icon for my wife of the ancient Russian sort, and one that she’ll like.”
“Of what type?”
“That I don’t know,” he says. “Paint what you know how, it makes no difference to her, so long as she likes it.”
Sevastian pondered a moment and then asked:
“And about what does your spouse pray to God the most?”
“I don’t know, my friend,” he says, “I don’t know what, but I think most likely about the children, that the children grow up to be honest people.”
Sevastian pondered again and replied:
“Very well, sir, I can satisfy that taste as well.”
“How will you satisfy it?”
“I’ll paint it so that it will be contemplative and favorable to the increase of your wife’s prayerful spirit.”
The Englishman ordered that he be given all comfort in his own upstairs rooms, but Sevastian would not work there, but settled by the window in the attic above Luka Kirilovich’s room and went into action.
And what he did, sirs, was something we couldn’t imagine. As it had to do with children, we thought he would portray the wonderworker Roman, whom people pray to about infertility, or the slaughter of the innocents in Jerusalem, which is always pleasing to mothers who have lost children, for there Rachel weeps with them for their little ones and will not be comforted;27 but this wise icon painter, realizing that the Englishwoman had children and poured out her prayers not about the having of children, but about the rightness of their morals, went and painted something completely different, still more suitable to her purposes. He chose for it a very small, old board of a hand’s length in size, and began to exercise his talents upon it. First of all, naturally, he gave it a good priming with sturdy Kazan alabaster, so that the priming came out smooth and hard as ivory, and then he divided it into four equal spaces, and in each space he marked out a separate little icon, and he reduced each of them still more by placing borders of gold leaf between them, and then he started painting. In the first space he painted the nativity of John the Baptist—eight figures, the newborn baby, and the chamber; in the second, the nativity of our most holy Lady, the Mother of God—six figures, the newborn baby, and the chamber; in the third, the most pure nativity of our Savior, the stable, the manger, Our Lady and Joseph standing, and the God-guided Magi prostrating, and the wise-woman Salomé, and various kinds of livestock: oxen, sheep, goats, and asses, and the dry-legged heron, which the Jews are forbidden to eat,28 included to signify that this comes not from Judaism, but from God, the creator of all. And in the fourth section was the nativity of St. Nicholas, and here again was the saint in infancy, and the chamber, and many standing figures. And the point here was that you see before you the raisers of such good children, and with what art it was done, all the figures the size of a pin, yet you can see their animation and movement! In the nativity of the Mother of God, for instance, St. Anne, as prescribed by the Greek original, lies on her bed; before her stand maidens with timbrels, and some hold gifts, and others sun-shaped fans, and others candles. One woman supports St. Anne by the shoulders; Joachim looks into the upper chamber; the wise-woman washes the Mother of God, who is in a font up to her waist; another girl pours water from a vessel into the font. The chambers are all laid out with a compass, the upper chamber is greenish blue and the lower crimson, and in this lower chamber sit Joachim and Anne on a throne, and Anne holds the most holy Mother of God, and around them there are stone pillars dividing the chambers, the curtains are red, and the surrounding fence is white and ochre … Wondrous, wondrous was all that Sevastian depicted, and in each miniature face he expressed divine contemplation, and he inscribed the image “Good Childbearing,” and brought it to the Englishmen. They looked, started examining, and just threw up their hands: “Never,” they say, “did we expect such fantasy, and such fineness of meagroscopic depiction is unheard-of.” They even looked through a meagroscope and found no mistakes, and they gave Sevastian two hundred roubles for the icon and said:
“Can you do still finer work?”
Sevastian replies:
“I can.”
“Then make a copy of my wife’s portrait for a signet ring.”
But Sevastian says:
“No, that I cannot do.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” he says, “first of all, I’ve never tried that kind of work, and, second, I cannot humiliate my art for the sake of it, lest I fall under the condemnation of our forefathers.”
“That’s rubbish!”
“By no means is it rubbish,” he replies. “We have a statute from the good times of our forefathers, and it is confirmed by patriarchal decree, that ‘If anyone is found worthy to undertake this sacred work, which is the painting of icons, then let this artist be of goodly life and paint nothing except holy icons!’ ”
Yakov Yakovlevich says:
“And if I give you five hundred roubles for it?”
“Though you promise me five hundred thousand, all the same they will remain with you.”
The Englishman beamed all over and said jokingly to his wife:
“How do you like that? He considers painting your face a humiliation for him!”
And he added in English: “Oh, goot character.” But in the end he said:
“Watch out, brothers, we now undertake to bring this whole thing off, and I see you’ve got your own rules for everything, so make sure nothing’s omitted or forgotten that could hinder it all.”
We replied that we foresaw nothing of the kind.
“Well, watch out, then,” he says, “I’m beginning.” And he went to the bishop with the request that he wanted out of zealousness to gild the casing and embellish the crown on the sealed angel. The bishop said neither yes nor no to that: he neither refused nor ordered it. But Yakov Yakovlevich did not give up and persisted; and we were now waiting like powder for the match.
XIII
With all that, let me remind you, gentlemen, that since this affair began, no little time had passed, and Christmas was at the door. But don’t compare Christmas in those parts with ours here: the weather there is capricious, and one time this feast is celebrated in the winter way, but another time who knows how: in rain, in wetness. One day there’s a light frost, on the next it all melts away; now the river’s covered with sheet ice, then it swells and carries off the broken ice, as in the high water of spring … In short, the most inconstant weather, and in those parts it’s not called weather, but simply snow-slush—and snow-slush it is.