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The Requiem
IN the village church of Verhny Zaprudy mass was
just over. The people had begun moving and were trooping out of church. The
only one who did not move was Andrey Andreyitch, a shopkeeper and old
inhabitant of Verhny Zaprudy. He stood waiting, with his elbows on the railing
of the right choir. His fat and shaven face, covered with indentations left by
pimples, expressed on this occasion two contradictory feelings: resignation in
the face of inevitable destiny, and stupid, unbounded disdain for the smocks and
striped kerchiefs passing by him. As it was Sunday, he was dressed like a
dandy. He wore a long cloth overcoat with yellow bone buttons, blue trousers
not thrust into his boots, and sturdy goloshes — the huge clumsy goloshes only
seen on the feet of practical and prudent persons of firm religious
convictions.
His torpid eyes, sunk in
fat, were fixed upon the ikon stand. He saw the long familiar figures of the
saints, the verger Matvey puffing out his cheeks and blowing out the candles,
the darkened candle stands, the threadbare carpet, the sacristan Lopuhov
running impulsively from the altar and carrying the holy bread to the
churchwarden. . . . All these things he had seen for years, and seen
over and over again like the five fingers of his hand. . . . There
was only one thing, however, that was somewhat strange and unusual. Father
Grigory, still in his vestments, was standing at the north door, twitching his
thick eyebrows angrily.
“Who is it he is winking
at? God bless him!” thought the shopkeeper. “And he is beckoning with his
finger! And he stamped his foot! What next! What’s the matter, Holy Queen and
Mother! Whom does he mean it for?”
Andrey Andreyitch looked
round and saw the church completely deserted. There were some ten people
standing at the door, but they had their backs to the altar.
“Do come when you are
called! Why do you stand like a graven image?” he heard Father Grigory’s angry
voice. “I am calling you.”
The shopkeeper looked at
Father Grigory’s red and wrathful face, and only then realized that the
twitching eyebrows and beckoning finger might refer to him. He started, left
the railing, and hesitatingly walked towards the altar, tramping with his heavy
goloshes.
“Andrey Andreyitch, was it
you asked for prayers for the rest of Mariya’s soul?” asked the priest, his
eyes angrily transfixing the shopkeeper’s fat, perspiring face.
“Yes, Father.”
“Then it was you wrote
this? You?” And Father Grigory angrily thrust before his eyes the little note.
And on this little note,
handed in by Andrey Andreyitch before mass, was written in big, as it were
staggering, letters:
“For the rest of the soul
of the servant of God, the harlot Mariya.”
“Yes, certainly I wrote it,
. . . ” answered the shopkeeper.
“How dared you write it?”
whispered the priest, and in his husky whisper there was a note of wrath and
alarm.
The shopkeeper looked at
him in blank amazement; he was perplexed, and he, too, was alarmed. Father
Grigory had never in his life spoken in such a tone to a leading resident of
Verhny Zaprudy. Both were silent for a minute, staring into each other’s face.
The shopkeeper’s amazement was so great that his fat face spread in all
directions like spilt dough.
“How dared you?” repeated
the priest.
“Wha . . . what?”
asked Andrey Andreyitch in bewilderment.
“You don’t understand?”
whispered Father Grigory, stepping back in astonishment and clasping his hands.
“What have you got on your shoulders, a head or some other object? You send a
note up to the altar, and write a word in it which it would be unseemly even to
utter in the street! Why are you rolling your eyes? Surely you know the meaning
of the word?”
“Are you referring to the
word harlot?” muttered the shopkeeper, flushing crimson and blinking. “But you
know, the Lord in His mercy . . . forgave this very thing,
. . . forgave a harlot. . . . He has prepared a place for
her, and indeed from the life of the holy saint, Mariya of Egypt, one may see
in what sense the word is used — excuse me . . . ”
The shopkeeper wanted to
bring forward some other argument in his justification, but took fright and
wiped his lips with his sleeve
“So that’s what you make of
it!” cried Father Grigory, clasping his hands. “But you see God has forgiven
her — do you understand? He has forgiven, but you judge her, you slander her,
call her by an unseemly name, and whom! Your own deceased daughter! Not only in
Holy Scripture, but even in worldly literature you won’t read of such a sin! I
tell you again, Andrey, you mustn’t be over-subtle! No, no, you mustn’t be
over-subtle, brother! If God has given you an inquiring mind, and if you cannot
direct it, better not go into things. . . . Don’t go into things, and
hold your peace!”
“But you know, she,
. . . excuse my mentioning it, was an actress!” articulated Andrey
Andreyitch, overwhelmed.
“An actress! But whatever
she was, you ought to forget it all now she is dead, instead of writing it on
the note.”
“Just so, . . . ”
the shopkeeper assented.
“You ought to do penance,”
boomed the deacon from the depths of the altar, looking contemptuously at
Andrey Andreyitch’s embarrassed face, “that would teach you to leave off being
so clever! Your daughter was a well-known actress. There were even notices of
her death in the newspapers. . . . Philosopher!”
“To be sure,
. . . certainly,” muttered the shopkeeper, “the word is not a seemly
one; but I did not say it to judge her, Father Grigory, I only meant to speak
spiritually, . . . that it might be clearer to you for whom you were
praying. They write in the memorial notes the various callings, such as the
infant John, the drowned woman Pelagea, the warrior Yegor, the murdered Pavel,
and so on. . . . I meant to do the same.”
“It was foolish, Andrey!
God will forgive you, but beware another time. Above all, don’t be subtle, but
think like other people. Make ten bows and go your way.”
“I obey,” said the
shopkeeper, relieved that the lecture was over, and allowing his face to resume
its expression of importance and dignity. “Ten bows? Very good, I understand.
But now, Father, allow me to ask you a favor. . . . Seeing that I am,
anyway, her father, . . . you know yourself, whatever she was, she
was still my daughter, so I was, . . . excuse me, meaning to ask you
to sing the requiem today. And allow me to ask you, Father Deacon!”
“Well, that’s good,” said
Father Grigory, taking off his vestments. “That I commend. I can approve of
that! Well, go your way. We will come out immediately.”
Andrey Andreyitch walked
with dignity from the altar, and with a solemn, requiem-like expression on his
red face took his stand in the middle of the church. The verger Matvey set
before him a little table with the memorial food upon it, and a little later
the requiem service began.
There was perfect stillness
in the church. Nothing could be heard but the metallic click of the censer and
slow singing. . . . Near Andrey Andreyitch stood the verger Matvey,
the midwife Makaryevna, and her one-armed son Mitka. There was no one else. The
sacristan sang badly in an unpleasant, hollow bass, but the tune and the words
were so mournful that the shopkeeper little by little lost the expression of
dignity and was plunged in sadness. He thought of his Mashutka, . . .
he remembered she had been born when he was still a lackey in the service of
the owner of Verhny Zaprudy. In his busy life as a lackey he had not noticed
how his girl had grown up. That long period during which she was being shaped
into a graceful creature, with a little flaxen head and dreamy eyes as big as
kopeck-pieces passed unnoticed by him. She had been brought up like all the
children of favorite lackeys, in ease and comfort in the company of the young
ladies. The gentry, to fill up their idle time, had taught her to read, to
write, to dance; he had had no hand in her bringing up. Only from time to time
casually meeting her at the gate or on the landing of the stairs, he would
remember that she was his daughter, and would, so far as he had leisure for it,
begin teaching her the prayers and the scripture. Oh, even then he had the reputation
of an authority on the church rules and the holy scriptures! Forbidding and
stolid as her father’s face was, yet the girl listened readily. She repeated
the prayers after him yawning, but on the other hand, when he, hesitating and
trying to express himself elaborately, began telling her stories, she was all
attention. Esau’s pottage, the punishment of Sodom, and the troubles of the boy
Joseph made her turn pale and open her blue eyes wide.
Afterwards when he gave up
being a lackey, and with the money he had saved opened a shop in the village,
Mashutka had gone away to Moscow with his master’s family. . . .
Three years before her
death she had come to see her father. He had scarcely recognized her. She was a
graceful young woman with the manners of a young lady, and dressed like one.
She talked cleverly, as though from a book, smoked, and slept till midday. When
Andrey Andreyitch asked her what she was doing, she had announced, looking him
boldly straight in the face: “I am an actress.” Such frankness struck the
former flunkey as the acme of cynicism. Mashutka had begun boasting of her
successes and her stage life; but seeing that her father only turned crimson
and threw up his hands, she ceased. And they spent a fortnight together without
speaking or looking at one another till the day she went away. Before she went
away she asked her father to come for a walk on the bank of the river. Painful
as it was for him to walk in the light of day, in the sight of all honest
people, with a daughter who was an actress, he yielded to her request.
“What a lovely place you
live in!” she said enthusiastically. “What ravines and marshes! Good heavens,
how lovely my native place is!”
And she had burst into
tears.
“The place is simply taking
up room, . . . ” Andrey Andreyvitch had thought, looking blankly at
the ravines, not understanding his daughter’s enthusiasm. “There is no more
profit from them than milk from a billy-goat.”
And she had cried and
cried, drawing her breath greedily with her whole chest, as though she felt she
had not a long time left to breathe.
Andrey Andreyitch shook his
head like a horse that has been bitten, and to stifle painful memories began
rapidly crossing himself. . . .
“Be mindful, O Lord,” he
muttered, “of Thy departed servant, the harlot Mariya, and forgive her sins,
voluntary or involuntary. . . . ”
The unseemly word dropped
from his lips again, but he did not notice it: what is firmly imbedded in the
consciousness cannot be driven out by Father Grigory’s exhortations or even
knocked out by a nail. Makaryevna sighed and whispered something, drawing in a
deep breath, while one-armed Mitka was brooding over something. . . .
“Where there is no
sickness, nor grief, nor sighing,” droned the sacristan, covering his right
cheek with his hand.
Bluish smoke coiled up from
the censer and bathed in the broad, slanting patch of sunshine which cut across
the gloomy, lifeless emptiness of the church. And it seemed as though the soul of
the dead woman were soaring into the sunlight together with the smoke. The
coils of smoke like a child’s curls eddied round and round, floating upwards to
the window and, as it were, holding aloof from the woes and tribulations of
which that poor soul was full.
1886.
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