Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [146]
At last the carriage drove through the town, rumbling along the main street. All the stores except Yerakin’s were shut. Yerakin was a millionaire who was trying out the new electric lamps, and these flickered so brilliantly that a crowd had gathered round the store. There followed wide, dark, deserted streets in endless procession; then came the highway, the fields, and the smell of pines. Suddenly there rose before the Bishop’s eyes a white crenelated wall, behind it a tall bell tower flanked by five large golden cupolas on fire with moonlight. This was the Pankratievsky Monastery, where the Bishop lived. Here, too, high above the monastery there floated a silent moon lost in thought. The carriage drove through the gates, crunching over sand. Here and there dark monastic shapes hovered in the moonlight, and footsteps rang out over the flagstones.…
“Did you know, Your Eminence, that your mother came here while you were away?” A lay brother spoke to the Bishop as he entered his room.
“My mother? When did she come?”
“Before vespers. She first asked where you were, and then drove to the convent.”
“Then I must have seen her in the church. Dear Lord!”
And the Bishop laughed with joy.
“She bade me tell Your Eminence,” the lay brother went on, “that she will be coming back tomorrow. There was a little girl with her, I suppose a granddaughter. They are staying at Ovsyabnikov’s inn for the night.”
“What time is it?”
“A little after eleven.”
“Oh, what a shame!”
The Bishop sat for a while in his living room, pondering. He could scarcely bring himself to believe it was so late. His legs and arms were stiff, the back of his neck ached. He felt hot and uncomfortable. After resting a few moments he went into his bedroom, and there too he sat down and gave himself up to thoughts of his mother. He heard the lay brother walking away and Father Sisoi coughing in the next room. The monastery clock chimed the quarter.
The Bishop undressed and recited the prayers before going to sleep. He uttered those old and long-familiar words with scrupulous attention, and yet all the time he was thinking about his mother. She had nine children, and perhaps forty grandchildren. She had spent most of her life in a poor village with her husband, who was a deacon; she had lived there for a very long time, from the age of seventeen to the age of sixty. The Bishop had memories of her going back to his earliest childhood, almost from the age of three. How he had loved her! Dear, precious, unforgettable childhood! Why was it that those far-off days, which would never return, seemed brighter, gayer, and richer than they really were! How gentle and good his mother had been to him when he fell ill during childhood, and in his youth! And now his prayers mingled with memories which shone ever more luminously like a flame, and they did not hinder him from thinking of his mother.
After his prayers the Bishop finished undressing and lay down, and as soon as he became aware of being in darkness there rose before him the image of his dead father, his mother, and his native village, which was called Lyesopolye. Wheels creaking, sheep bleating, church bells on clear summer mornings, gypsies beneath the window—how sweet to dream of such things! He remembered Father Simeon, the priest at Lyesopolye, a decent, gentle, good-natured man, small and lean, with a son studying for the priesthood—the son was a huge strapping fellow with a ferocious bass voice. Once the young seminarian flew into a rage at the cook and thundered: “Jehu’s ass—that’s what you are!” And Father Simeon heard him and said nothing, ashamed because he could no longer remember where the existence of such an ass was recorded in holy scripture. The priest who followed Father Simeon at Lyesopolye was called Father Demian. Because he drank heavily and sometimes saw green snakes, this priest was sometimes called “Demian the Snake Seer.” The schoolmaster at Lyesopolye was called Matvey Nikolaich. He, too, had been a divinity student. Though kindly and intelligent, he was a drunkard. He never beat his students,