“I all but bowed to his feet from joy, and I think: ‘Rather than just closing myself behind the door and then removing it, I’d better attach it fundamentally, so that it will always be a protection for me,’ and I hung it on very secure, strong hinges, and for more safety I also attached a heavy pulley to it with a cobblestone as counterweight, and I did it all quietly in one day, before evening, and when nighttime came, I went to bed at the proper hour and slept. But what would you think: I hear him breathing again! I simply can’t believe my ears, it’s impossible, but no: he’s breathing. And not just that! That was nothing, that he was breathing, but he also pushed the door … My old door had a lock inside, but with this one, since I was relying more on its holiness, I didn’t put a lock on it, because I had no time, and so he just pushes it, and more boldly each time, and finally I see something like a muzzle poking in, but then the door swung on the pulley and knocked him back with all its might … And he backed up, evidently scratched himself, waited a little, came even more boldly, and again the muzzle, but the pulley smacks him even harder … It must have been painful, he grew quiet and stopped pushing, and I fell asleep again, but only a short time went by, and I see the scoundrel is at it again, and with new artfulness. He doesn’t butt straight on now, but gradually opens the door with his horns, brazenly pulls off the sheepskin jacket I’ve covered my head with, and licks me on the ear. I couldn’t stand this insolence any longer: I reached under the bed, grabbed an axe, and bashed him with it. I heard him grunt and drop down on the spot. ‘Well,’ I think, ‘serves you right’—but instead of him, in the morning, I look, and there’s no Jew at all. Those scoundrels, those little devils, had put our monastery cow there for me instead of him.”
“And you had wounded her?”
“I’d hacked her to death with the axe, sir! It caused a terrible stir in the monastery.”
“And you probably got into trouble on account of it?”
“That I did, sir. The father superior said I’d imagined it all because I don’t go to church enough, and he gave me a blessing that, once I was finished with the horses, I should always stand by the screen in front to light candles, but here those nasty little demons contrived things even better and thoroughly did me in. It was on the Wet Savior,41 at the vigil, during the blessing of bread according to the rite, the father superior and a hieromonk were standing in the middle of the church, and one little old woman gave me a candle and said:
“ ‘Put it before the icon of the feast, dearie.’ ”
“I went to the icon stand where the icon of the ‘Savior on the Waters’ lay, and was putting that candle in place, when another fell. I bent down to pick it up, started putting it back in place—and two more fell. I started replacing them—and four fell. I just shook my head: ‘Well,’ I think, ‘that’s bound to be my little imps vexing me again and tearing things out of my hands …’ I bent down, quickly picked up the fallen candles, and on straightening up hit the back of my head against the candle stand … and the candles just came raining down. Well, here I got angry, and I knocked all the rest of the candles off with my hand. ‘Why,’ I think, ‘if there’s such insolence going on, I’d better just throw it all down myself.’ ”
“And what did you get for that?”
“They wanted to try me for it, but our recluse, the blind elder Sysoy, who lives with us in an underground hermitage, interceded for me.
“ ‘What would you try him for,’ he says, ‘when it’s Satan’s servants who have confounded him?’
“The father superior heeded him and gave his blessing that I be put in an empty cellar without trial.”
“How long did you spend in the cellar?”
“The father superior didn’t give his blessing for a precise length of time, he simply said ‘Let him sit there,’ and I sat there all summer right up to the first frost.”
“It must be supposed that the boredom and torment in the cellar were no less than on the steppe?”
“Ah, no, how can you compare them? Here the church bells could be heard, and comrades visited me. They came, stood over the pit, and we talked, and the father bursar ordered a millstone lowered to me on a rope, so that I could grind salt for the kitchen. There’s no comparison with the steppe or anywhere else.”
“And when did they take you out? Probably with the frost, because it got cold?”
“No, sir, it wasn’t on account of the cold at all, but for a different reason: because I started to prophesy.”
“To prophesy!?”
“Yes, sir, in the cellar I finally fell to pondering what an utterly worthless spirit I had, and how much I’d endured because of it, and without any improvement, and I sent a novice to a certain teaching elder, to inquire if I could ask God to give me a different, more appropriate spirit. And the elder ordered him to tell me: ‘Let him pray as he should, and then expect what cannot be expected.’
“I did just that: three whole nights I spent on this instrument, my knees, in my pit, praying fervently to heaven, and I began to expect something else to be accomplished in my soul. And we had another monk, Geronty, he was very well read and had various books and newspapers, and once he gave me the life of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk42 to read, and whenever he happened to pass by my pit, he’d throw me a newspaper he had under his cassock.
“ ‘Read,’ he says, ‘and look for what’s useful: that will be a diversion for you in your ditch.’
“In expectation of the impossible answer to my prayer, I meanwhile began to occupy myself with this reading: once I finished grinding all the salt it was my task to grind, I’d start reading, and first I read about St. Tikhon, how our most holy Lady and the holy apostles Peter and Paul visited him in his cell. It was written that St. Tikhon then started asking the Mother of God to prolong peace on earth, and the apostle Paul answered him loudly about the sign of the cessation of peace: ‘When everyone talks of peace and stability,’ he says, ‘then suddenly will the all-destroyer come upon them.’ And I thought a long time about these apostolic words, and at first I couldn’t understand: why had the saint received these words of revelation from the apostle? Finally I read in the newspapers that at home and in foreign lands tireless voices were constantly proclaiming universal peace. And here my prayer was answered, and all at once I understood that the saying, ‘If they talk of peace, suddenly will the all-destroyer come upon them,’ was coming true, and I was filled with fear for our Russian people and began to pray and with tears exhorted all those who came to my pit to pray for the subjugation under the feet of our tsar of all enemies and adversaries, for the all-destroyer was near. And I was granted tears in wondrous abundance! … I kept weeping over our native land. They reported to the father superior that ‘our Ishmael in his cellar has started weeping a lot and prophesying war.’ For that the father superior gave me a blessing to be transferred to the empty cottage in the kitchen garden and given the icon ‘Blessed Silence,’ which shows the Savior with folded wings, in the guise of an angel, but with the Sabaoth’s eight-pointed halo, and his arms crossed meekly on his breast. And I was told to bow down before this icon every day, until the prophesying spirit in me fell silent. So I was locked up with this icon, and remained locked up there till spring and stayed in that cottage and kept praying to the ‘Blessed Silence,’ but as soon as I caught sight of a man, the spirit rose up in me again and I spoke. At that time the superior sent a doctor to me to see if my wits were addled. The doctor sat in my cottage for a long time, listened, like you, to my whole story, and spat:
“ ‘What a drum you are, brother,’ he says. ‘They beat and beat on you, and still can’t beat you down.’
“I say:
“ ‘What to do? I suppose it’s got to be so.’
“And he, having heard it all, says to the superior:
“ ‘I can’t figure him out. Is he simply a good soul, or has he gone mad, or is he a true soothsayer? That,’ he says, ‘is your department, I’m not versed in it, but my opinion is: chase him somewhere far away to g
et some air, he may have sat too long in one place.’
“So they released me, and now I have a blessing to go to Solovki and pray to Zosima and Sabbatius, and I’m on my way there.43 I’ve been all over, but them I haven’t seen, and I want to bow down to them before I die.”
“Why ‘before I die’? Are you ill?”
“No, sir, I’m not. It’s still on this same chance that we’ll soon have to go to war.”
“Sorry, but it seems you’re talking about war again?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So the ‘Blessed Silence’ didn’t help you?”
“That’s not for me to know, sir. I try my best to keep silent, but the spirit wins out.”
“What does he say?”
“He keeps exhorting me to ‘take up arms.’ ”
“Are you prepared to go to war yourself?”
“What else, sir? Certainly: I want very much to die for my people.”
“So you mean to go to war in your cowl and cassock?”
“No, sir, I’ll take the cowl off and put on a uniform.”
Having said that, the enchanted wanderer seemed to feel prophetic inspiration coming upon him anew and lapsed into quiet concentration, which none of his interlocutors ventured to interrupt with any new question. And what more could they have asked him? He had divulged the story of his past with all the candor of his simple soul, and his predictions remained in the hands of Him who conceals their destinies from the wise and prudent and only sometimes reveals them unto babes.
* Russian for “big head.” Trans.
Singlemind
I
During the reign of Catherine II,1 to a certain couple of the clerkly sort by the name of Ryzhov, a son was born named Alexashka. This family lived in Soligalich, one of the chief towns of Kostroma province, located on the rivers Kostroma and Svetitsa. Prince Gagarin’s dictionary2 mentions it as having seven stone churches, two religious schools and one secular, seven factories and mills, thirty-seven shops, three taverns, two pot-houses, and 3,665 inhabitants of both sexes. The town had two annual fairs and weekly markets; besides that, there is mention of “a rather brisk trade in lime and tar.” In our hero’s lifetime there was also a saltworks.
All this must be known in order to form an idea of how the smalltime hero of our story, Alexashka, or, later, Alexander Afanasyevich Ryzhov, known around town as “Singlemind,” could and actually did live.
Alexashka’s parents owned their own house—one of those little houses which in that forest area were worth nothing, but, anyhow, provided a roof. Apart from Alexashka, the clerk Ryzhov had no other children, or at least I was told nothing about them.
The clerk died soon after the birth of this son and left his wife and son with nothing except that little house, which, as we said, was “worth nothing.” But the clerk’s widow herself was worth a lot: she was one of those Russian women who “in trouble helps and does not fear, stops a horse that gallops off, boldly enters a hut on fire”3—a simple, sensible, sober-minded Russian woman, strong of body, valiant of soul, and with a tender capacity for ardent and faithful love.
When she was widowed, there were still pleasing qualities in her, suitable for an unpretentious everyday life, and people sent matchmakers to her, but she declined any new matrimony and busied herself with the baking of savory pies. On non-fast days her pies were stuffed with cottage cheese or liver, on fast days with kasha or peas; the widow carried them on trays to the town square and sold them for five copper kopecks apiece. On the earnings from her pie production she fed herself and her son, whom she sent to a “tutoress” for lessons; the tutoress taught Alexashka what she knew herself. Further, more serious lessons were taught him by a scribe with a braid and a leather pouch in which he kept snuff for a known use without any snuffbox.
The scribe, having “taught up” Alexashka, took a pot of kasha for his labors, and with that the widow’s son went among people to earn his keep and all the worldly blessings allotted to him.
Alexashka was then fourteen, and at that age he can be introduced to the reader.
The young Ryzhov took after his mother’s kind: he was tall, broad-shouldered—almost an athlete, of boundless strength and indestructible health. In his adolescent years he was already among the foremost strongmen, and so successfully took the lead in the “wall” during fistfights that whichever side Alexashka Ryzhov was on was considered invincible. He was capable and hardworking. The scribe’s schooling had given him an excellent, rounded, clear, beautiful handwriting, in which he wrote a multitude of memorial notices for old women4 and with that commenced his self-subsistence. But more important were the qualities given him by his mother, whose living example imparted a strict and sober disposition to his healthy soul, dwelling in a strong and healthy body. He was moderate in everything, like his mother, and never resorted to any outside help.
At the age of fourteen he already considered it a sin to eat his mother’s bread; memorial notices brought in little, and besides, this income, dependent on chance, was not steady; Ryzhov had an inborn aversion to trade, and he did not want to leave Soligalich, so as not to part from his mother, whom he loved very much. And therefore he had to provide himself with an occupation here, and provide it he did.
At that time permanent postal communication was only beginning to take shape in Russia: weekly runners were established between neighboring towns, who carried a bag of mail. This was known as the foot mail. The pay fixed for this job was not big: around a rouble and a half a month, “on your own grub and with your own boots.” But those for whom even such maintenance was attractive hesitated to take up carrying mail, because for the sensitive Christian conscience of Russian piety it seemed dubious: did such a futile undertaking as carrying paper not contain something heretical and contrary to true Christianity?
Anyone who happened to hear of it pondered to himself whether he might destroy his soul that way and for an earthly recompense lose eternal life. And it was here that common compassion arranged things for Alexashka Ryzhov.
“He’s an orphan,” they said. “The Lord will forgive him more—especially on account of his young years. If while he’s carrying he gets mauled to death on the road by a bear or a wolf, and he appears at the Judgment, he’ll answer just one thing: ‘Lord, I didn’t understand,’ and that’s all. At his age no more could be asked of him. And if he stays whole and in time grows up, he can perfectly well go to a monastery and most excellently pray it away, with no expenses for candles or incense. What better can be expected for his orphanhood?”
Alexashka himself, whom this concerned most of all, was on good terms with the world and had no bone to pick with it: with a bold hand he hoisted the mail bag, slung it over his shoulder, and began carrying it from Soligalich to Chukhloma and back. Working in the foot mail was perfectly suited to his taste and to his nature: he walked alone through forests, fields, and swamps, and thought to himself his orphan’s thoughts, as they composed themselves in him under the vivid impression of everything he met, saw, and heard. In such circumstances a poet the likes of Burns or Koltsov5 might have come of him, but Alexashka Ryzhov was of a different stamp—not poetical but philosophical—and all that came of him was a remarkably odd “Singlemind.” Neither the length of the tiring way, nor the heat, nor the cold, nor wind or rain frightened him;6 the mail bag was so negligible for his powerful back that, besides that bag, he always carried another gray canvas bag with him, in which lay a thick book of his, which had an irresistible influence on him.
This book was the Bible.
II
It is not known to me how many years he performed his job in the foot mail, constantly toting his bag and Bible, but it seems it was a long time and ended when the foot mail was replaced by horse mail, and Ryzhov was “upped in rank.” After these two important events in our hero’s life, a great change took place in his destiny: an eager walker with the mail, he had no wish to ride with it and started looking for another job—again nowhere else but there
in Soligalich, so as not to part from his mother, who by then had become old and, with dimming eyesight, now baked worse pies than before.
Judging by the fact that promotions for low-ranking postal work did not come along very often—for instance, once in twelve years—it must be thought that Ryzhov was by then about twenty-six or even a little more, and in all that time he had only walked back and forth between Soligalich and Chukhloma, and, while walking or resting, had read nothing but his Bible in its well-worn binding. He read it to his heart’s content and acquired a great and firm knowledge of it, which laid the foundation for all his subsequent original life, when he started to philosophize and to apply his biblical views in practice.
Of course, there was considerable originality in all this. For instance, Ryzhov knew by heart whole writings by many of the prophets and especially loved Isaiah, whose vast knowledge of God answered to his own state of soul and made up all his catechesis and all his theology.
An elderly man, who in the time of his youth had known the eighty-five-year-old Ryzhov, when he was already famous and had earned the name of “Singlemind,” told me how the old man recalled some “oak tree in the swamp,” where he had especially liked to rest and “cry out to the wind.”
“I’d stand,” he said, “and howl into the air:
“ ‘The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib, but my people doth not consider. A seed of evildoers, children that are corruptors! Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats. When ye come to appear before me, bring no vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. Wash you; put away the evil of your doings; learn to do well. Come now, and let us reason together: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Thy princes are rebellious, and companions unto thieves: every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards. Therefore saith the Lord, the Lord of hosts: woe to the mighty—mine enemies will not stand against my fury.’ ”7
The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories Page 31
