This was the beginning of the most difficult action—the unsealing.
They gave the icon painter a hat, he immediately tore it in half on his knee and, covering the sealed icon with it, shouted:
“Give me the hot iron!”
On the stove, at his orders, a heavy tailor’s iron had been heated burning hot.
Mikhailitsa picked it up with tongs and gave it to him, and Sevastian wrapped the handle with a cloth, spat on the iron, and passed it quickly over the scrap of hat! … An evil stench arose from the felt at once, and the icon painter did it again, and pressed, and snatched it away. His hand flew like lightning, and a column of smoke already rose from the felt, but Sevastian went on scorching: with one hand he turned the felt a little, with the other he worked the iron, and each time more slowly and pressing harder, and suddenly he set both the iron and the felt aside and held the icon up to the light, and it was as if the seal had never been: the strong Stroganov varnish had held out, and the sealing wax was all gone, only a sort of fiery red dew was left on the image, but the whole brightly divine face was visible …
Here some of us prayed, some wept, some tried to kiss the painter’s hands, but Luka Kirilovich did not forget what he was about and, treasuring every minute, handed the painter his forged icon and said:
“Well, finish quickly!”
The man replies:
“My action is finished, I’ve done everything I promised.”
“What about placing the seal?”
“Where?”
“Why, here on the face of this new angel, like on the other one.”
Sevastian shook his head and replied:
“Oh, no, I’m no official, I wouldn’t dare do such a thing.”
“Then what are we to do now?”
“That I don’t know,” he says. “You ought to have had an official or some German on hand, but since you failed to supply them, you’ll have to do it yourselves.”
Luka says:
“What? We wouldn’t dare do that!”
And the icon painter replies:
“I don’t dare either.”
And in those brief moments of great turmoil, Yakov Yakovlevich’s wife suddenly comes flying into the cottage, all pale as death, and says:
“Aren’t you ready yet?”
“Ready and not ready,” we say. “The most important thing is done, but the paltry one we can’t do.”
And she babbles in her language:
“What are you waiting for? Don’t you hear what’s going on outside?”
We listened and turned paler than she was: amidst our cares, we had paid no attention to the weather, but now we heard the noise: the ice was moving!
I sprang outside and saw it had already covered the whole river—block heaving upon block like rabid beasts, whirling into each other, and crashing, and breaking up.
Forgetting myself, I rushed to the boats, but there wasn’t a single one left: they had all been swept away … My tongue went stiff in my mouth, I couldn’t move it, and my ribs sank one after another, as if I was going down into the earth … I stand there, and don’t move, and don’t give voice.
But while we were rushing around in the dark, the Englishwoman stayed in the cottage alone with Mikhailitsa, found out what had caused the delay, snatched up the icon and … a moment later rushed out to the porch with it, holding a lantern, and cried:
“Here, it’s ready!”
We looked: the new angel had a seal on his face!
Luka immediately put both icons in his bosom and shouted:
“A boat!”
I let on that there were no boats, they’d been swept away.
And the ice, I tell you, came thronging like a herd, smashing against the icebreakers and shaking the bridge, so that even the chains, for all that they were thick as good floorboards, could be heard rattling.
The Englishwoman, when she understood that, clasped her hands, shrieked “James!” in an inhuman voice, and fell as if dead.
And we stand there, all feeling the same thing:
“What of our word? What will happen to the Englishman now? What will happen to old Maroy?”
Just then the bells in the monastery bell tower rang for the third time.
Uncle Luka suddenly roused himself and exclaimed to the Englishwoman:
“Come to your senses, lady, your husband will be safe, and maybe our old Maroy will just have his decrepit hide torn by the executioner and his honest face dishonored by a brand, but that will happen only after my death!” And with those words he crossed himself, stepped out, and left.
I cried out:
“Uncle Luka, where are you going? Levonty perished, and you’re going to perish!”—and I rushed after him to hold him back, but he picked up an oar that I thrown down when we came and, brandishing it at me, cried:
“Away, or I’ll strike you dead!”
Gentlemen, I have rather openly confessed my faintheartedness to you in my story, how I abandoned the late youth Levonty on the ground that time and climbed a tree, but really and truly I say to you, this time I would not have feared the oar and retreated before Uncle Luka, but—believe it or not, as you like—at that moment, just as I remembered Levonty’s name, the youth Levonty appeared in the darkness between me and him and shook his hand at me. This terror I couldn’t bear, and I drew back. Meanwhile, Luka was already standing at the end of the chain and, having set his foot firmly on it, suddenly said through the storm:
“Start singing!”
Our choir director, Arefa, was standing right there and obeyed at once and struck up “I will open my mouth,” the others joined in, and we shouted out the hymn, fighting against the howling of the storm, and Luka, fearless of this deadly terror, walked along the chain of the bridge. In one minute he had walked the first span and descended into the next … And further on? Further on the darkness enveloped him, and we couldn’t see whether he was still walking or had already fallen and the cursed blocks of ice had whirled him into the abyss, and we didn’t know whether to pray for his safety or weep for the repose of his firm and honor-loving soul.
XV
Now, sirs, what was happening on the other bank? His grace the bishop, according to his rule, was celebrating the vigil in the main church, knowing nothing about the robbery being carried out at the same time in the side chapel. With his permission, our Englishman, Yakov Yakovlevich, stood in the chapel sanctuary, and, having stolen our angel, sent it out of the church, as he had intended, in his overcoat, and Luka raced off with it. Meanwhile old Maroy, keeping his word, remained outside by the same window, waiting till the last moment, so that, in case Luka did not come back, the Englishman could retreat, and Maroy would break the window and get into the church with a crowbar and a chisel, like a real villain. The Englishman didn’t take his eyes off him, and he saw that old Maroy was standing strictly by his duty, and the moment he saw the Englishman press his face to the window so as to see him, he nodded at once, meaning, “I’m here to answer for the theft—I’m here!”