Sisters of the Cross

by Alexei Remizov

  “What you should do, my dear Ulianushka, is this,” she says to Akumovna as though she were choking back her tears. “First of all you must boil some perch as long as you can and then put the sturgeon in—and you’ll get the most delicious soup.”

  And she was quite right; the fish soup was very tasty. Not only the kitchen, but all four rooms were filled with the deeply experienced, sumptuous aroma of rich sturgeon on the boil, and Marakulin could hardly sit still and wait for that blissful moment when it would be time for him to walk to the eating house on Zabalkansky Prospekt.

  Adoniia Ivoilovna knew how to eat well.

  She would sit the whole winter without stirring. She was so fixed in the one place that people simply called her and her room “the smithy’s.” But as soon as the spring came she was not to be seen in Petersburg—she would spend the whole summer traveling from one holy place to another.

  Adoniia Ivoilovna loved the blessed and the holy fools, the elders, the brothers in Christ, and the prophets. She went to visit one raving elder near Kishiniov and listened to his terrifying tales about the Day of Judgment, the torment of sinners and such terrible things that some of the pilgrims went on their way in confusion and succumbed to a frenzy, while others died on the spot from fear of the torments of hell—so terrifying were the tales. She also made a visit to the Urals to see the elder Makary. The old monk lives in a hen run. He walks after a bird and talks to it, and all the livestock submit to him. If he stands to pray at sunset, then the animals will stand turning their horned or bearded heads toward where the monk’s prayers are directed. They will stand there without moving, without emitting a sound or jingling their little bells. She spent time also in Verkhotur’ie with Fedotushka Kabakov, whose prayer could call down a voice from heaven, and she also visited that elder who can touch you and with his touch impart to you the purity of angels and bring you to a state of paradise. She had also visited the Chinese prophet, the monk who gives you his tongue to suck. He pushes it out, you suck it and you become saintly; you will enter a state of bliss. And in her time she had visited many other holy men, both in the Bogodukhovsky monastery where the elder drives out unclean spirits, mortifying the flesh through coition, and with Bosoi, the elder of the Ivanovsk monastery, and the elder Damian, and with Foka Skopinsky, who burned himself on a funeral pyre.

  Adoniia Ivoilovna loved the blessed and the holy fools, the elders, the brothers in Christ, and the prophets. She would have listened forever to their incomprehensible conversations, their parables, and their words. And she would have prayed in their cells, where the icon lamps light of their own accord like a Jerusalem candle. But she was really grieved that they didn’t speak to her; to her alone they would say nothing. Was it because she was getting on in years or because she couldn’t hear, or was it simply not given to her to hear? Only sister Parasha said to her:

  “The ships will sail, so many of them, far, far away.”

  And often in the winter, sitting alone in her airless room, Adoniia Ivoilovna repeats to herself:

  “Ships, ships, so many of them!” but she can make no sense of the words, and her tears flow like pearls.

  Adoniia Ivoilovna’s resemblance to a seal is remarkable—she is the very image of a Murmansk seal.

  Adoniia Ivoilovna loves the blessed and the holy fools, the elders, the brothers in Christ, and the prophets. She has another passion that is just as invincible: the sea—she adores the sea. She has been around all the seas of Russia and has traveled on the Murman coast along the Arctic Ocean where the whales live—and, finally, she has seen the Mediterranean.

  Often in the winter, sitting alone in her airless room on the Fontanka, she remembers both the White Sea, where she spent her early years, and the Black Sea, and the warm emerald sea of the Mediterranean and, as she remembers the sea, she repeats Parasha’s prophetic words: “Ships, ships, so many of them!” but she can make no sense of the words, and her tears flow like pearls.

  During the nights Adoniia Ivoilovna is at the mercy of dreams. She has dreams of many colors. She may dream of the land where she was born and of the rivers she knew so well, the Onega River, the Dvina River, the Pinega River, the Mezen and Pechora rivers. She remembers the heavy brocade of the old Russian costumes, white pearls, and the pink pearl of Lapland, whales and seals, Laplanders, Samoyed people, fairy stories and epic tales, the long winter nights and the midnight sun, the Solovetsky monastery, and round dances. She dreams of hornless Kholmogorov cows, a whole herd of them, and the cows have human eyes: it’s as though they were making up to her, rubbing their backs against her, and then one cow comes out from the herd, giving her a hoof as though it were a hand and says: “Adoniia Ivoilovna, teach me how to speak!” And then another one comes out, and so it goes on, cow after cow, each one offering a hoof as though it were a hand and making the same plea: “Adoniia Ivoilovna, teach me how to speak!” She dreams of scorpion chameleons, all as it were dressed in frock coats. They have scattered along the walls, waving their tails about, now emerald green, now purple, like an icy sunset, and they are just looking at her. Already the whole wall is covered with scorpion chameleons, they are everywhere, covering the icons and behind the icons, and one tail, made up of a thousand tails, is waving to her, enticing her, now emerald green, now purple like an icy sunset. Then she’ll have a ridiculous dream as though she is eating a cheesecake and, no matter how much she eats, she is still hungry and the cheesecake never gets any smaller.

  Every day Akumovna explains her dreams and over tea in the evenings she tells fortunes from playing cards. Akumovna can read the future from willow branches and carriage candles, and in the wintertime from the pattern of frost on windowpanes, but most reliably from cards.

  It is an evening in the autumn. Outside, the fine rain of Petersburg is falling. The muffled sound of water pouring from the gutters over the stones merges with the howling of a dog. In the Belgian Society factory the electric lamp seems to swing like a moon through the mist and smoke. There is one light shining in a window of the Obukhov Hospital.

  In the end room, Adoniia Ivoilovna’s airless room, the samovar is singing—it’s impatient, it’s full of hot water, the steam is hissing out of it; the singer has begun to play its game, and you can hear the samovar’s song throughout all the rooms.

  Akumovna is not in the kitchen; she is telling fortunes from playing cards in Adoniia Ivoilovna’s room. The samovar comes off the boil, its song is less insistent, and Akumovna’s voice becomes quieter and quieter: “For the house. For the heart. For what will be. For how things will end. How things will abate. How things will astonish. Tell the whole truth with an open heart. What will be will be.”

  But the card came out corrupt, indifferent, obscure.

  Adoniia Ivoilovna is crying. Yes, and how could she not weep? They had buried her husband in the Smolensk Cemetery, while she had wanted to place his body in the Aleksandr Nevsky Monastery. His relatives had insisted and would not listen to her. He had been so kind to everyone and helped them greatly, but they did not like him. She was the only one who loved him, and they would not listen to her. And in the cemetery the ground was giving way under him and collapsing.

  Again Akumovna’s voice can be heard, but even more muted: “For the house. For the heart. For what will be. For how things will end. How things will abate. How things will astonish. Tell the whole truth with an open heart. What will be will be.”

  But the cards remain just the same. Adoniia Ivoilovna is weeping. And she is shedding the same tears. She was the only one who loved him, and they would not listen to her. The ground was giving way under him and collapsing.

  “Nobody should be blamed,” Akumovna says suddenly.

  It is an evening in the autumn. Outside, the fine rain of Petersburg is falling. The muffled sound of water pouring from the gutters over the stones merges with the howling of a dog. In the Belgian Society factory the electric lamp seems to swing like a moon through the mist and smoke. There is one light shining in a window
of the Obukhov Hospital.

  In the end room, in Adoniia Ivoilovna’s airless room, there are three icon lamps, which never go out. Adoniia Ivoilovna is a long time at her prayers. In the kitchen, too, heavy with the smell of sturgeon soup and dried mushrooms, Akumovna has three lamps that never go out. Akumovna is long at her prayers.

  “Ships, ships,” a voice can be heard at night through tearful snoring.

  The voice is answered by the muffled sound of another from the far end of the building: “Nobody should be blamed.”

  And a third voice can be heard, coming through the wall of the artistes’ flat: “We must shake ourselves free of all this!”

  But Marakulin shrinks into himself without any joy, all hushed into silence and on his guard. He continues to repeat over and over again one and the same idea, and that to no good purpose: unsubmissive, he can no longer avoid thinking, he can no longer avoid hearing his own thoughts, far removed from any sense of tranquility.

  Holy Akumovna’s passport shows her to be a spinster aged thirty-two, but from her own assurances—which would have been obvious in any case—she is not thirty-two, but fifty years of age for sure. She is from Pskov, “the maid of Pskov,” as she is dubbed by the artistes, whom she often calls in on to divine their fortunes from the cards. She would be quite prepared to spend a whole day doing that for Sergei Aleksandrovich, yes, and there was his “slave” Kuzmovna, too, who was a kind of godmother to her, for all that she reminded Akumovna of some fish, or a frozen chicken from the Hay Market.

  Akumovna was small, with black hair and a very dark complexion, a beetle, but she smiles and looks at you from time to time as might a holy fool, not directly, but from some other place with her head cocked a little to one side. She is meek and she never becomes angry with anybody. She moves quickly, although it doesn’t look so much that she is running, as that her feet are moving up and down on the spot and she only appears to be running. She is nimble, too, and will get everything done on the spot, only beware: if you are sending her out to get something urgently, then it’s hopeless—you won’t live to see the day. She’s up on the fourth floor, her legs are old; she may manage to run down to the street, but if she starts to go upstairs, then she starts missing her footing. Her feet are quite willing to move, Akumovna would like to get there as soon as possible, but she hasn’t got the strength now, and she just teeters on the spot.

  Akumovna lives by day and by night, just like Adoniia Ivoilovna. She has multifarious dreams: she sees fires—the house is on fire; she sees robbers—the robbers are running and chasing after her; she sees a naked man—naked on the shore, washing himself with soap, no less; she sees a spotted reptile—the reptile is biting her and in her dream she is eating berries—red bilberries, big bunches, as big as the tail of a sheep. But more often than this, very often in fact, she dreams that she is flying, flying always to one and the same place, toward Ostashkov, to the monastery of St. Nil Stolobensky.

  “You take a long jump and then you are flying,” Akumovna would say. “I fly up and, moving my arms as I would in water, everything becomes easy and I keep flying forward like a bird.”

  For a long time Akumovna has been promising herself to go to the monastery, to the remains of St. Nil Stolobensky, but she has not fulfilled her promise and has never been there even once. That is why often, so very often, she flies to Ostashkov at night.

  Around the flats people love Akumovna: holy Akumovna. She always has children crowding into her kitchen. She knows how to play with them, and she loves doing that and chattering with children. She visits everywhere. If she has money, she will give it out and people take it and never pay it back. In every corner people are glad to see her. There is only one thing she is afraid of: that is when they start fighting outside in the yard.

  Sergei Aleksandrovich Damaskin has overcome all the laws of nature—he is a circus artiste. Akumovna is just such a person, too—she knows what life is like in the next world. That is what they say about her around the Burkov flats.

  Akumovna has been in the next world; in the next world she has been in hell.

  There, in the next world she was shown everything—only she does not know who and how many were guiding her.

  “I entered…” thus Akumovna would begin her tale of how she witnessed the torments, “I entered some sort of building, some gigantic chamber; in places the floor was rotten, the supporting beams had collapsed; instead of earth there was filth, and on the floor were lying disgusting rotten fish of various kinds, meat and skulls; everything was horrible, bad things were lying there, and dead people—nothing but bone, and human limbs, and dead animals were lying around, everything rotten and horrible.”

  And they led her around the chamber and showed her everything! And the chamber stretched out in front of her—she could see no end to it. It was wide, and yet she felt she was hemmed in. In front of her there were people, many, many people, and behind her and all around her, everywhere there were people, walking or standing still. And there were some creatures in the corners, not human—that she could understand—and there were many of them also.

  “I felt torment, and I was repeating a prayer, but they would not answer me; they had the tail and legs of a cow, the claws of a dog. ‘Let me go!’ I begged them. One of them says straight out: ‘Not yet, let her look at it all,’ and after him another one says: ‘She must wait a while, let her see everything.’ So they led me on.”

  And they led her through the chamber and showed her everything. Everything was horrible, bad things were lying there, rotten things, nothing but carrion; everything had rotted away, everything was disgusting, the dead people and the dead animals, bones, skulls, and filth.

  “ ‘If God will only allow me to accept His holy truths,’ I think to myself, ‘I will get out of this sinful place.’ So I keep on praying: ‘Lord, Lord, allow me to take communion. I am racked with torment.’ Then I see that we have already left the chamber.”

  They led her uphill, and on top of the hill there are three faces, three persons are standing there, all in bright coats and their faces shining with radiance. They are taking communion. Only instead of the communion vessel there is a slop-basin, and there is no ladle—they take communion just like that. Then there is a host of people, all coming up and all taking communion. Next they bring her up. She wants to make the sign of the cross, but it is difficult for her to cross herself; they are hindering her.

  “He himself took the wafer and gave it to me dry, not soaked in wine. But I could not swallow their gift. I felt ill and choked on it. ‘Lord, Lord, I beseech Thee, holy saints and angels. Lord, Thou hast tormented me enough.’ Those creatures are laughing. One of them says: ‘You’ll have to wait a while, you are going to do some more walking!’ And another one says after him: ‘Yes, we need to take her around again.’ They are laughing, they have the tails and legs of a cow, the claws of a dog. So they led me on again.”

  And they led her down from the hill to a lake. But past them a whole crowd is rushing, overtaking them, just like people hurrying along Nevsky Prospekt. They are running and running, dragging their long tails behind them. They all rush down from the hill and into the lake. And there in the lake they turn into doves, a flock of doves, like an enormous cloud.

  “The doves came down onto the water and began to drink, and I said: ‘Shall we be going there, too?’ ‘Yes,’ comes the answer, ‘we shall.’ And one of them says: ‘Yes, now you will soon meet your end.’ And we come closer and closer to the lake. I start to cough, I cannot swallow their gift. ‘Lord, I beseech Thee. Thou hast tormented me enough.’ Suddenly children are running around me and I take refuge with the children; will they not save me? ‘My guardian angel, protect me; anybody, preserve me, have mercy on me!’ The whole lake is covered with doves. The water is muddied and dirty. And I waded into it knee-deep…‘Now it will soon be the end of you.’ I could hear the voice, but I had no idea where the one who had been leading me had gone.”

  Thus did Akumovna visi
t the next world. This was her path through its torments.

  She was still quite well in herself. Her heart was healthy, only Akumovna suffered from stomach pains. And, indeed, a great deal of suffering had come her way; this was the whip she had been lashed with.

  Akumovna’s father had been rich and well-known. Her mother had died before she was even ten. She had seven brothers, all older than she. She was a healthy girl, even though she was badly hurt when she was still a baby; she was asleep in her cradle, and the bigger children were rocking it, when the cradle came loose and she crashed to the ground in it. She bawled night and day, and even the solace of her mother’s breast would not help. But then it all passed, and she completely recovered. She was a bright girl. Just before her mother died, she had given her fifty rubles, wrapped up in a bit of cloth. And no one knew about that money except her father. And when her father was in need, she would take what he wanted out of the cloth and give it to him. He would pay it all back to her later, and she would wrap it up again without a word to anyone. Her brother’s wife knew nothing about it. Her father was living with his daughter-in-law, who did not like Akumovna. When they were eating, it used to happen that she would find fault with the girl, take her by the hand and lead her away from the table. She used to beat the poor girl terribly. The father was living with his daughter-in-law. Once one of Akumovna’s cousins came to see her father, who had promised some time ago to give him money; now he had come to collect it. But for some reason Akumovna’s father got angry and would not give it to him. All the same, Vasíly needed the money desperately and felt hurt: why had he promised it to him? Vasily just started to weep. The girl heard him. She was tenderhearted and unhappy herself, so she caught Vasily and wanted to give him some of what she had wrapped up in the cloth, only on the strict condition that he absolutely must pay it back. Well, naturally her cousin rejoiced and swore he would do so: “If I don’t give it back, may my house burn down and may I never have children.” And she gave him, kopeck for kopeck, the sum that her father had promised him, twenty rubles. But when the time came for him to give the money back, he did not return it. He kept on saying that he hadn’t any money; just let her wait a little. Yes, she would have waited, but the money wasn’t the problem. Just supposing her father were to ask her, what was she going to say? And, as luck would have it, just at that time her father fell ill. He had drunk some beer, his legs had gone blue, he was really feeling very bad. They gathered the village around, and her cousin Vasily came. They all sat around and waited. The father asked the girl to bring the cloth with the money. She was frightened and did not know what to say. She tried to blame the keys, saying that she had lost them. Then the daughter-in-law said: “You’re saying you’ve lost the keys. All right.” So she took an axe, went to the barn, broke open the box and brought in the cloth. They started to count the money—there were twenty rubles missing. The father asked the little girl: “Where is the money?” She was silent. And he asked her again, “Where’s the money?” Again she said nothing. Then he fell mortally ill, and he began to give his last blessing to his children. He blessed his sons, her elder brothers, until it came to her turn. She started to cry and asked quietly that Vasily should confess about the money. But Vasily, the scoundrel, said “no” and “no” again: “I know nothing about it; I didn’t take the money,” as though he had never borrowed it. And she had stopped crying now—when things are really bad, people don’t cry. She was looking at her father, just gazing at him. The father says to the girl: “I give you my blessing.” He stopped and thought for a moment. “May you wander around the whole wide world like a rolling stone!” he said, gnashing his teeth, and died.