The Abyss and Other Stories (Alma Classics) Page 4
Perhaps someone had caught it with their foot when they were picking up the corpse, or by accident with their fingernail?
But thinking about the details of Vera’s death for long was terrible, and Fr. Ignaty would move on to the portrait’s eyes. They were black and beautiful, with long lashes, from which fell dense shadow, making the whites seem especially bright, and it was as if both eyes were enclosed in black mourning frames. They had been given a strange expression by the unknown, but talented, artist – as if between the eyes and what they were looking at lay a thin, transparent film. It was a little like the black lid of a grand piano, onto which the summer dust has settled in a thin, imperceptible layer, softening the shine of the polished wood. And however Fr. Ignaty placed the portrait, the eyes persistently followed him, yet they did not speak, but were silent – and this silence was so clear that it seemed it could be heard. And Fr. Ignaty gradually began to think that he could hear the silence.
Every morning, after the Liturgy, Fr. Ignaty would come to the drawing room, take in at a single glance the empty cage and all the familiar furnishings of the room, sit down in an armchair, close his eyes and listen to the house being silent. It was something strange. The cage was quietly and gently silent, and in this silence could be sensed sorrow, and tears, and distant laughter that had died. The silence of his wife, softened by the walls, was obstinate, heavy, like lead, and terrible – so terrible that on the very hottest day Fr. Ignaty would grow cold. Long and cold, like the grave, and enigmatic, like death, was the silence of his daughter. It seemed as if this silence was agonizing for itself, and it passionately desired to turn into a word, but something strong and obtuse, like a machine, kept it motionless and stretched it out like a wire. And somewhere, at its far end, the wire would begin to oscillate and ring, quietly, timidly and plaintively. Fr. Ignaty would catch that nascent sound with joy and terror and, resting his hands on the arms of the chair, with his head stretched forward, would wait for the sound to approach him. But the sound would be cut short and fall silent.
“Nonsense!” Fr. Ignaty would say angrily, and get up from the chair, still erect and tall.
Through the window he could see the sunlit square, paved with flat, round stones, and, opposite, the stone wall of a long shed without windows. On the corner stood a cabman, looking like a clay statue, and it was unclear why he was standing there when, for hours on end, not a single passer-by would appear.
III
Outside the house, Fr. Ignaty was obliged to talk a lot: with the parish clergy and parishioners, in the performance of religious rites and sometimes with the acquaintances with whom he played preference; but when he returned home, he thought he had been silent all day. This happened because with none of these people could Fr. Ignaty talk about what was for him the main, the most important thing, over which he pondered every night: why had Vera died?
Fr. Ignaty did not want to understand that it was impossible to find out about this now, and thought it was still possible to do so. Every night – and they had all become sleepless for him now – he pictured to himself the moment when he and his wife had stood by Vera’s bed in the dead of the night and he had begged of her: “Tell us!” And when in his memories he was coming to those words, he imagined what followed differently to the way it had been. His closed eyes, which preserved in their gloom a vivid, unfading picture of that night, saw Vera raising herself on her bed, smiling and saying… But what was she saying? And this unspoken word of Vera’s which would resolve everything seemed so near at hand that, if you cocked your ear and stopped the beating of your heart, you would hear it at any moment, and at the same time so hopelessly far away. Fr. Ignaty would rise from his bed, stretch out his clasped hands and, shaking them, beg:
“Vera!…”
And the reply he got was silence.
One evening, Fr. Ignaty came to Olga Stepanovna’s room, where he had not been by then for about a week, sat down by the head of the bed and, turning away from the obstinate, heavy gaze, said:
“Mother! I want to have a talk with you about Vera. Do you hear?”
The eyes were silent, and Fr. Ignaty, raising his voice, began to speak sternly and imperiously – the way he did with confessants.
“I know you think I was the cause of Vera’s death. But think: did I really love her less than you? Your reasoning’s strange… I was strict, but did that actually prevent her doing what she wanted? I disregarded a father’s dignity, I bent my head submissively when she showed no fear of my curse and went… to that place. And you – you, old woman, didn’t you beg her to stay and didn’t you cry until I bade you be silent? Did I produce one so cruel? Did I not tell her over and over again about God, humility, love?”
Fr. Ignaty glanced quickly into his wife’s eyes – and turned away.
“What could I do with her if she didn’t want to reveal her woe? Order her? I did. Beg her? I did. Well then, should I, in your view, have got down on my knees in front of a slip of a girl and cried like an old woman? In her head… How do I know what’s in her head? Cruel, heartless daughter!”
Fr. Ignaty struck his fist on his knee.
“She had no love – that’s the thing! There’s no point talking about me, it’s a well-known fact that I’m… a tyrant… But did she love you? You, who cried… and humiliated yourself?”
Fr. Ignaty burst into soundless laughter.
“Oh yes, she loved you! And that’s why she chose a death like that: to comfort you. A cruel, shameful death. She died on the sand, in the dirt… like s-some dog that gets kicked in the face.”
Fr. Ignaty’s voice began to sound quiet and hoarse.
“I’m ashamed! I’m ashamed to go out! I’m ashamed to leave the altar-space! I’m ashamed before God! Cruel, unworthy daughter! I could curse you in your grave…”
When Fr. Ignaty glanced at his wife, she was unconscious, and she came round only after several hours. And when she did, her eyes were silent, and it was impossible to tell whether she remembered what Fr. Ignaty had said to her or not.
That same night – it was a moonlit July night, quiet, warm and soundless – Fr. Ignaty went up the stairs, on tiptoe so that his wife and the sick-nurse would not hear, and into Vera’s room. The window in the mezzanine had been unopened ever since Vera’s death, and the air was dry and hot, with a faint smell of burning from the iron roof which had heated up during the day. There was an unlived-in and abandoned sort of feel to the room from which people had so long been absent, and where the wood of the walls, the furniture and other objects emitted a subtle smell of incessant decay. The light of the moon fell in a bright strip onto the window and floor and, reflected by the well-washed white floorboards, illumined the corners with a crepuscular half-light, and the clean white bed with two pillows, large and small, seemed spectral and made of air. Fr. Ignaty opened the window, and into the room in a broad stream poured fresh air smelling of dust, the nearby river and a linden tree in blossom, and barely audibly came the sound of collective song: people must have been out boating and singing. With his bare feet treading inaudibly, looking like a white spectre, Fr. Ignaty went up to the empty bed, bent his knees and fell face down onto the pillows, embracing them, onto the spot where Vera’s face should have been. He lay like this for a long time, the song grew louder and then fell silent, but still he lay, and his long black hair spilt over his shoulders and the bed.
The moon had moved and the room become darker when Fr. Ignaty raised his head and started to whisper, putting into his voice all the strength of a love long contained and long unacknowledged, and listening intently to his own words, as though it were not he listening but Vera:
“My daughter, Vera! Do you understand what that means: daughter? Daughter dear! My heart, and my blood, and my life. Your old… poor old father, already grey, already weak…”
Father Ignaty’s shoulders began to tremble, and his entire bulky figure began to heave. Su
ppressing the trembling, Fr. Ignaty whispered tenderly, as if to a little child:
“Your poor old father… is begging you. No, Verochka, imploring. He’s crying. He’s never cried. Your woe, little child, your sufferings – they’re mine too. More than my own.”
Fr. Ignaty shook his head.
“More, Verochka. What’s death to me, an old man? But you… I mean, if you only knew how delicate and weak and timid you are! Remember how you pricked your finger and a drop of blood fell, and you started crying? My little child! And you do love me – you love me a lot, I know. Every morning you kiss my hand. Tell me, tell me what it is your little head’s agonizing over, and I, with these here hands, I’ll throttle your woe. They’re still strong, Vera, these hands.”
Fr. Ignaty’s hair shook.
“Tell me!”
Fr. Ignaty fixed his eyes on the wall and stretched out his hands.
“Tell me!”
The room was quiet, and flying in from the far distance came the protracted and intermittent whistling of a steam engine.
Casting his widened eyes around, as though the terrible spectre of a mutilated corpse had arisen before him, Fr. Ignaty slowly raised himself from his knees and, with an uncertain movement, brought a hand, its fingers spread wide and tensely straightened, up to his head. Having retreated to the door, Fr. Ignaty whispered abruptly:
“Tell me!”
And the reply he got was silence.
IV
The next day, after an early and solitary lunch, Fr. Ignaty set off for the graveyard, for the first time since his daughter’s death. It was hot, deserted and quiet, as though this hot day were just an illuminated night, but, out of habit, Fr. Ignaty diligently straightened his back, looked sternly from side to side and thought he was exactly the same as before; he did not notice either the new and terrible weakness in his legs or the fact that his long beard had turned completely white, as if struck by a cruel frost. The way to the graveyard was down a long, straight street which climbed slightly upwards, and at the end of it was the white arch of the graveyard gates, looking like a black mouth, eternally open, fringed with shining teeth.
Vera’s grave was to be found in the depths of the graveyard, where the sand-strewn paths came to an end, and Fr. Ignaty was to spend a long time getting lost in the narrow tracks that wound between little green mounds, forgotten by all and abandoned by all. Encountered in places would be crooked monuments grown green with age, broken railings and large, heavy stones that had sunk into the earth and were pressing down on it with an old man’s sullen sort of malice. Nestling up to one such stone was Vera’s grave. It was covered with new turf that had turned yellow, but around it all was green. A rowan and a maple had intertwined, and over the grave a wide, spreading hazel bush was stretching out its whippy branches with their rough, downy leaves. Having settled and had a rest on the neighbouring grave, Fr. Ignaty looked around, threw a glance at the cloudless, desolate sky, where the scorching disc of the sun hung in utter immobility – and only then sensed the incomparably profound quietness that reigns in graveyards when there is no wind and the deadened foliage is not rustling. And once again the idea occurred to Fr. Ignaty that this was not quietness but silence. It was spreading right to the brick walls of the graveyard, ponderously creeping over them and flooding the town. And the end to it was only there – in the grey eyes, stubbornly and obstinately silent.
Fr. Ignaty flexed his chilled shoulders and dropped his eyes down towards Vera’s grave. He looked for a long time at the short little stalks of yellowed grass, torn out of the earth from some wide, windswept field, which had not had time to mesh with the foreign soil – and he was unable to picture that there, beneath that grass, two arshins* away from him lay Vera. And this proximity seemed inconceivable and introduced confusion and strange alarm into his soul. The one whom Fr. Ignaty had grown accustomed to think of as having disappeared for ever into the dark depths of the infinite was here, nearby… and it was hard to comprehend that she was, nonetheless, not here, and never would be. And Fr. Ignaty imagined that if he said some word, which he could almost sense on his lips, or made some movement, Vera would emerge from the grave and stand up just as tall and beautiful as she used to be. And not just she alone would rise – so would all the dead people, who were so terribly palpable in their solemnly cold silence.
Fr. Ignaty removed his black broad-brimmed hat, smoothed his wavy hair and said in a whisper:
“Vera!”
He began to feel awkward because someone else might hear him, and, standing up on the grave, Fr. Ignaty glanced over the tops of the crosses. There was no one there, and, loudly now, he repeated:
“Vera!”
This was Fr. Ignaty’s old voice – dry and demanding – and it was strange that a demand uttered with such force was left unanswered.
“Vera!”
The calling of the voice was loud and insistent, and as it was falling silent, it seemed for a minute or so that somewhere down below there was the sound of an indistinct reply. And after looking around once again, Fr. Ignaty pushed his hair back from his ear and lay his ear down on the rough, prickly turf.
“Vera, tell me!”
And Fr. Ignaty felt with horror that something as cold as the grave was pouring into his ear and chilling his brain, and that Vera was speaking – but speaking still by means of that same long silence which becomes ever more alarming and terrible; and when, with an effort, Fr. Ignaty tugs his head, as pale as a dead man’s, away from the earth, it seems to him that the roaring silence is making all of the air tremble and quiver, as though a wild storm had arisen on this terrible sea. The silence is suffocating him; it rolls over his head in icy waves and stirs his hair; it breaks on his chest, which groans beneath the blows. With his entire body trembling, casting sudden, sharp glances from side to side, Fr. Ignaty slowly rises, and with a long, agonizing effort tries to straighten his back and impart a proud bearing to his trembling body. And in this he succeeds. With deliberate slowness Fr. Ignaty brushes down his knees, puts on his hat, makes the sign of the cross over the grave three times and walks off with an even, firm gait, but does not recognize the familiar graveyard and loses his way.
“I’m lost!” Fr. Ignaty laughs, and stops at a fork in the track.
But he stands for one second, then turns, without thinking, to the left, because he cannot stand and wait. The silence drives him on. It is rising from the green graves; the doleful grey crosses are breathing it; it is emerging in slender, stifling currents from all the pores of the earth, impregnated with corpses. Fr. Ignaty’s steps become ever quicker. Stunned, he goes in circles along ever the same paths, leaps over graves, stumbles into railings, catches his arms on prickly tin wreaths, and the soft material is ripped to shreds. There remains in his head just the one thought of getting out. He rushes around, to and fro, and in the end he noiselessly runs, tall and extraordinary in a fluttering cassock with his hair floating through the air. Anyone would have been more scared than of an actual dead man risen from the grave on encountering this wild figure of a man running, jumping and waving his arms about, on seeing his mad, contorted face and hearing the muffled wheezing coming from his open mouth.
Fr. Ignaty leapt out at full tilt into the open space at the end of which was the graveyard’s squat, white church. Dozing on a low bench by the west porch was a little old man – by the look of him a pilgrim from far away – and beside him were two old beggar women, arguing, cursing and going for each other.
As Fr. Ignaty approached his house it was already getting dark, and a light was burning in Olga Stepanovna’s room. Without taking off any clothes or his hat, dusty and ragged, Fr. Ignaty went quickly through to his wife and fell to his knees.
“Mother… Olya… take pity on me, do!” he sobbed. “I’m losing my mind.”
And he banged his head on the edge of the table and sobbed wildly, agonizingly, like a man who never
cries. And he raised his head, certain that a miracle would now come to pass and his wife would start speaking and take pity on him.
“My dear!”
With the whole of his large body he reached towards his wife – and encountered the gaze of the grey eyes. In them there was neither pity nor rage. Perhaps his wife forgave and pitied him, but in her eyes there was neither pity nor forgiveness. They were mute and silent.
* * *
And silent was the entire dark, empty house.
1st–5th May 1900
ONCE UPON A TIME
THERE LIVED
I
A rich, single merchant, Lavrenty Petrovich Kosheverov, had come to Moscow for medical treatment, and, since his illness was an interesting one, he was admitted to the university clinic. He left his fur coat and the suitcase with his things downstairs at the porter’s lodge, and upstairs, where the ward was, he had his black cotton two-piece suit and linen removed, and was given in exchange a grey hospital gown, clean linen with “Ward 8” marked in black and slippers. The shirt proved too small for Lavrenty Petrovich, and the nurse went to look for a new one.
“You really are very large!” she said, leaving the bathroom where the changing of patients’ clothes was carried out.
Half-naked, Lavrenty Petrovich waited patiently and submissively and, bending his large, bald head, examined with a fixed stare his high breast, hanging loose like an old woman’s, and his swollen stomach, resting on his lap. Every Saturday Lavrenty Petrovich was at the bathhouse and saw his body there, but now, pale and covered in goosebumps from the cold, it seemed to him new and, for all its evident strength, very pitiful and sick. And as a whole he had seemed not to have belonged to himself from the moment he had had his customary dress removed from him, and he was ready to do everything he was told. The nurse returned with the linen, and although Lavrenty Petrovich still had strength enough left to have been able to strike the nurse dead with one finger, he obediently allowed her to dress him and awkwardly poked his head through into the shirt, gathered in the form of a horse’s collar. He waited with the same submissive awkwardness, his head thrown back, while the nurse tied the tapes at the neck, and then set off after her into the ward. And he stepped with his ursine out-turned feet as irresolutely and cautiously as do children being led who knows where by their elders – perhaps for punishment. The shirt had proved too tight for him all the same – it pulled at the shoulders as he walked and sounded close to splitting – but he could not make up his mind to declare this to the nurse, although one stern glance from him at home in Saratov would make dozens of people rush around convulsively.