"Forgive me, for Christ's sake!" he said, beginning to tremble all over. "Forgive me, grandfather!"
"Go away!"
Once more Kuzma cast a rapid glance at the sky, the trees, the cart with the icon, and then sank at Yefrem's feet. In his terror he mumbled incoherently, struck the ground with his forehead, clasped the old man's feet, and wept aloud like a child.
"Granddaddy! Kinsman! Uncle! Man of God!"
At first Yefrem recoiled from him perplexed, and pushed him away, but then he himself started glancing fearfully at the sky. He was frightened, and he felt pity for the thief.
"Stop, brother, listen!" he said persuasively to Kuzma. "Listen to what I tell you, you fool! Eh, he blubbers like a woman! Listen, if you want God to forgive you: as soon as you get home, go to the priest right away • . . D'you hear me?"
Yefrem began to explain to Kuzma what to do to atone for his sin: he must confess to the priest, lay a penance on his soul, then get together the money he had stolen and drunk up and send it to Malinovtzy, and in future he must lead a quiet, honest, sober, Christian life. Kuzma heard him out, calmed down little by little, and appeared to have forgotten his trouble completely. He teased Yefrem, and began chattering again. Without stopping for a moment, he went on talking about peo- ple who lived at ease, about the lockup and the German there, about prison, in a word, about all the things of which he had talked the previous day. He guffawed, struck his hands together, recoiled reverently, and alto- gether behaved as though he were recounting some- thing new. He spoke smoothly, like a man who had been around, peppering his talk with saws and sayings, but it was painful to listen to him, because he repeated himself and often stopped to recall a suddenly forgotten thought, and then he would knit his brow, spin about like a top and wave his arms. And how he bragged, how he lied!
At noon, when the cart stopped at Telibeyevo, Kuzma disappeared in the pot-house. Yefrem rested for about two hours and all that time Kuzma stayed in the pot-house. One could hear him swearing in there and bragging, pounding the bar with his fist, and the drunken peasants jeering at him. And when Yefrem was leaving Telibeyevo, a brawl had started in the pot-house, and Kuzma was shrilly threatening someone and shouting that he would send for the police.
1887
The Letter
A
RCHDEACON Fyodor Orlov, a presentable, L well-nourished man of fifty, with an expression of self-importance, severity, and dignity that never left his face, but now looking exceedingly weary, was pacing his small living room from one end to the other and thinking hard about the same thing: "When would his visitor finally leave?" This thought fretted him and stayed with him all the time. The visitor, Father Anas- tasy, whose parish was a village not far from the city, had come to call on him some three hours before on a very unpleasant and tedious business of his own, had stayed on and was now seated at a small round table in the comer with his elbow on a thick account book, ap- parently with no thought of leaving, although it was al- ready past eight in the evening.
Not everyone knows how to stop talking in good time and how to leave in good time. Not seldom it happens that even tactful, well-bred people who have had a secular education fail to notice that their presence is arousing a feeling resembling hatred in a tired or busy host and that this feeling is being laboriously concealed and covered up with a lie. Yet Father Anastasy per- ceived plainly that his presence was burdensome and out of place, that the archdeacon, who had officiated at a night service and at a long noonday Mass, was now tired and longing for rest; every moment he meant to get up and go, but he didn't get up, he sat on, as though waiting for something. He was an old man of sixty-five, prematurely decrepit, stooped and bony, with a senile, dark-skinned, emaciated face, red eyelids, and a long, narrow back like that of a fish. He wore a fashionable cassock, pale lilac in color, but too large for him (it had been presented to him by the widow of a recently de- ceased young priest), a cloth jacket with a broad leather belt, and clumsy boots the size and color of which showed plainly that Father Anastasy got along without galoshes. In spite of his rank and advanced years, there was a suggestion of something pitiful, humbled, and crushed about his red, clouded eyes, the thin greenish- gray plaits of hair on his nape, the prominent shoulder blades of his lean back . . . He held his peace, did not move, and coughed with caution, as if afraid that the noise of his coughing would render his presence more noticeable.
The old man had come to the archdeacon several times on business. Some two months previously he had been forbidden to officiate till further notice and been subjected to judicial investigation. His transgressions were numerous. He was addicted to drink, was on bad terms with the clergy and the laity, was negligent in re- cording vital statistics and keeping the church accounts —these were the formal charges against him. In ad- dition, it had long been rumored that he performed jllegal marriages for a consideration and sold certificates of the performance of religious duties to officials and army officers who came to him from the city. These ^mors persisted all the more stubbornly since he was poor and had nine children who depended on him and were failures like himself. His sons were spoiled, unedu- cated, and without occupation, and his homely daugh- ters could find no husbands.
Lacking the force to be frank, the archdeacon paced the room from one end to the other, was silent, or else threw out hints:
"So you are not driving home tonight?" he asked, stopping at the dark window and poking his little finger into the cage where a canary was asleep with its feathers fluffed up.
Father Anastasy gave a start, coughed cautiously and spoke hurriedly:
"Home? No, I'm not going there, Fyodor Ilyich. You know yourself, I cannot officiate, so what am I to do there? I went away on purpose, so as not to have to look people in the face. You know yourself, it is a disgrace not to be allowed to officiate. Besides, I have business here, Fyodor Ilyich. Tomorrow after breaking fast I want to have a long talk with the Father who is investi- gating my case."
"So . . ," the archdeacon yawned. "And where are you stopping?" "At Zyavkin's."
Father Anastasy suddenly recalled that in about two hours the archdeacon was to officiate at the Easter mid- night service and he felt so keenly ashamed of his dis- agreeable, embarrassing presence that he decided to leave at once and give the tired man a rest. And the old man got up to leave, but before starting to say his fare- wells, he stood a while clearing his throat and looking inquiringly at the archdeacon's back with the same air of indefinite expectation in his entire frame; his face was contorted with shame, timidity, and the pathetic forced smile of people who do not respect themselves. With a resolute wave of his hand and a husky, jarring laugh he brought out:
"Father Fyodor, let your graciousness go a little further: have them give me at parting . . . just a little wee gla& of vodka!"
"This isn't the time to drink vodka," said the arch- deacon sternly. "One must have a sense of propriety."
Father Anastasy was greatly embarrassed. He gave a laugh and, forgetting his decision to leave, sat do-wn again. The archdeacon glanced at his abashed, embar- rassed face and his stooped body and felt sorry for the old man.
"Please God, we will drink tomorrow," he said, wish- ing to soften his harsh refusal. "Everything in good time."
The archdeacon believed that people could reform, but now, as a feeling of pity rose within him, it seemed to him that this disreputable, hollow-cheeked old man, caught in a network of sins and infirmities, was lost be- yond all hope, that there was no power on earth that could straighten his back, give serenity to his look, check the disagreeable timid laugh that he laughed on pur- pose, in order to counteract at least a little the repulsive impression he made on people. Already the old man seemed to Father Fyodor not guilty and vicious, but humiliated, insulted, unfortunate; he recalled the man's wife, his nine children, the dirty beggarly bed at Zyav- kin's; for some reason he also recalled the people who take pleasure in seeing priests drunk and officials con- victed of crimes, and it occurred to him that the best thing Father Anastasy could do now was to die as soon as possible and to depart this life forever.