Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [145]
Formerly in moments of depression he had consoled himself with the first argument that came into his head, but now all such arguments were foreign to him. He felt a deep compassion for her, and desired to be tender and sincere.…
“Don’t cry, my darling,” he said. “You’ve cried enough. Now let us talk, and we’ll think of something.…”
Then they talked it over for a long time, trying to discover some way of avoiding secrecy and deception, and living in different towns, and being separated for long periods. How could they free themselves from their intolerable chains?
“How? How?” he asked, holding his head in his hands. “How?”
And it seemed as though in a little while the solution would be found and a lovely new life would begin for them; and to both of them it was clear that the end was still very far away, and the hardest and most difficult part was only beginning.
1899
The Bishop
I
VESPERS were being sung on the eve of Palm Sunday in the Old Petrovsky convent. When they began distributing the pussy willows, it was nearly ten o’clock, the candles were shedding only a dim light and the wicks wanted snuffing out: it was like being in a fog. In the twilight of the church the crowd heaved like a sea, and to His Eminence Bishop Peter, who had been ill for three days, it seemed that all those faces—men and women, old and young—were exactly the same, and all those who came up to receive the pussy willows had the same expression in their eyes. He could not see the doors through the haze, the crowd kept moving, and it looked as though there was no end to it and there would never be an end to it. A choir of women’s voices was singing, and a nun was reading the prayers of the day.
How hot and close the air was! The service seemed interminable. The Bishop was tired. His breathing was labored, dry, and rapid, his shoulders ached with weariness, his legs were trembling. He was also unpleasantly disturbed by one of God’s fools who kept screaming from the gallery. Suddenly, as though in a dream or in delirium, the Bishop thought he saw Maria Timofeyevna, his own mother, whom he had not seen in nine years, coming up to him in the crowd, or perhaps it was only an old woman who resembled his mother. She took a pussy willow from him, gazing joyfully after him, a sweet and gentle smile on her lips, until she was lost in the crowd. For some reason tears began to flow down his cheeks. His soul was at rest, everything was at peace, while he kept gazing fixedly at the choir on the left, where the prayers were being read and where amid the evening shadows it was impossible to distinguish any human beings at all; and as he looked, he wept. The tears glistened on his cheeks and on his beard. Soon someone near him began to weep, and then someone farther away, and then still others wept, and gradually the whole church was full of the soft sound of weeping. After about five minutes the nuns’ choir began singing, there was no more weeping, and everything went on as before.
Soon afterward the service came to an end. The Bishop got into his carriage and drove home, listening to the joyous and harmonious chimes of the heavy church bells, which he loved and which filled the whole garden in the moonlight. White walls, white crosses on the tombs, white birches and black shadows, and the moon afar off, yet hanging directly over the convent roof—all these things seemed to be living their own lives, remote and incomprehensible, and very close to mankind. It was early in April, but it had turned chilly after the warm spring day, with a light frost falling. The breath of spring could still be felt in the soft cool air. The road from the convent to the town was sandy, and the horses were obliged to go at a walking pace. Bathed in a clear and peaceful moonlight, the pilgrims were trudging home through the sand on both sides of the carriage. All were silent, deep in thought. Everything around looked familiar and friendly and young—trees and sky and even the moon itself—so that one longed to believe it would endure forever.