CHAPTER XI

Mardarie, the penance monk, lived in a pit in the stone wall behind the altar. In ancient times this hole was a secret place where the monastery treasure was hidden from robbers, and there had been a secret passage to it direct from the altar. The stone vault from this pit had been taken away, and now it was covered with thick, wooden planks, and underneath it was built a kind of light cage with a little window in the ceiling. There was a grating with a railing around it, through which the pilgrims looked at the ascetic. In a corner was a trap-door, from which spiral steps led down to Mardarie. It made one dizzy to go down them. The pit was deep, twelve steps down, and only one ray of light fell in, and this one did not reach the bottom but melted and faded away in the damp darkness of this underground dwelling. One had to look long and steadily through the grating to see somewhere in the depths of the darkness something still darker which looked like a large rock or a mound. That was the ascetic, sitting motionless.

To go down to him the warm, odiferous dampness caught one, and for the first few seconds nothing could be seen. Then from the gloom would rise an altar and a black coffin, in which sat, bent over, a little, gray-haired old man in a dark shroud, decorated with white crosses, hilts, a reed and a lance, which lay helter-skelter and broken on his dried-up body. In the corner a round stove hid itself, and from it a pipe crawled out like a thick worm, while on the brick walls grew green scales of mildew. A ray of light pierced the darkness like a white sword, then rusted and broke apart.

On a pile of shavings the ascetic swayed back and forth as a shadow, his hands resting on his knees and fingering a rosary. His head was sunk on his breast and his back was curved like a yoke.

I remember that I went up to him, fell on my knees and remained silent. He, too, was silent for a long time, and everything about us seemed glutted with dead silence. I could not see his face, but only the dark end of his sharp nose. He whispered to me so that I could hardly hear:

"Well?"

I could not answer. Pity for this man who lay alive in his coffin oppressed and overcame me. He waited a little while, and then again asked me:

"What is it? Speak."

He turned his face toward me. It was all dark, no eyes were to be seen; only white eyebrows and a mustache and beard, which were like mildew on the agonized and motionless countenance which was effaced by the darkness. I heard the rustling of his voice:

"You argue up there. Why do you argue? You should serve God humbly. What is there to argue about with God? You should simply love God."

"I love Him," I answered.

"Well, perhaps. He punishes you, but you must make believe that you see nothing and say, 'Praise be unto thee, O Lord.' Say that always, and nothing more."

It was evident that it was difficult for him to speak, either from weakness or because he was unused to it. His words were hardly alive and his voice was like the trembling of the wings of a dying bird.

I could not ask the old man anything, for I was sorry to disturb the peace of his death-waiting, and I feared to startle something; so I stood there motionless. From above the sound of bells leaked down, rocking the hair on my head, and I desired ardently to lift up my head toward the sky and gaze at it, but the darkness pressed down heavily on my neck and I did not move.

"Pray," he said to me, "and I will pray for you."

He became silent again. All was quiet, and a terrible fear made my flesh creep and filled my breast with icy coldness. A little later he whispered to me:

"Are you still here?"

"Yes."

"I can't see. Well, go, and God be with you. Don't argue."

I went out quietly. When I reached the earth above and breathed the pure air, I was drunk with joy and my head swam. I was all wet as if I had been in a cave; and he, Mardarie, had been sitting there now the fourth year!

I was to have five interviews with him, but I kept silent through them all; I could not speak. When I went down to him he listened, and then asked me in his unnatural voice:

"Some one came--the same one as yesterday?"

"Yes. It is I."

Then he began to mumble, with interruptions:

"Don't offend God--what do you need? You need nothing. Perhaps a little piece of bread. But to offend God is a sin. That comes from the devil. The devils, they lend a hand to every one. I know them. They are offended and they are malicious. They are offended--that is why they are malicious. So don't get offended, or you will resemble the devil. People offend you, but you should say to them: 'Christ save you,' and then go. Everything is vanity. The main thing is yourself. Let them not take your soul away. Hide it, so that they cannot take it away."

He sowed his quiet words, and they spread themselves over me like ashes from a far-off fire. They were not necessary to me, and they did not touch my soul. It seemed to me I saw a black dream, which I could not understand and which wearied me very much.

"You are silent," he said thoughtfully. "That is good. Let them do what they want, but you keep quiet. Others come to me and they talk--they talk very much. But I cannot understand what they want. They even talk about women. What is that to me? They talk about everything. But what they say about everything, I cannot understand. But you are right to keep silent. I also would not speak, but the Abbot up there said: 'Console him; he needs to be consoled.' Well, all right. But I myself would much rather not talk.

"Oh, God, forgive them all! Everything was taken from me--only prayers remained to me. Whoever tortures you, take no notice of him. It is the devils who torture you. They tortured me, too. My own brother, he beat me, and my wife gave me rat's poison. Evidently I was only a rat to her. They stole all I had from me, then said that I set fire to the village. They wanted to throw me into the fire. And I sat in prison. Everything happened to me. I was judged--sat some more. God be with them. I pardoned every one--I was not guilty, yet I pardoned. That was for my own sake.

"A whole mountain of injury lay on me. I could not breathe. Then I pardoned them and it went away. The mountain was no more. The devils were offended and they went away. So you, too, pardon every one. I need nothing. It will be the same with you."

At the fourth interview he asked me:

"Bring me a crumb of bread. I will suck it. I am weak. Pardon me, in Christ's name."

My heart ached with pity for him. I listened to his ravings and I thought:

"Why is that necessary, O Lord, why?"

But he still rustled his dry tongue:

"My bones ache. Night and day they draw. If I sucked a crumb it would be better perhaps; but this way my bones itch. It disturbs me--it disturbs my prayers. It is necessary to pray every second, even in one's dreams. If not, the devil immediately reminds one. He reminds one of one's name and where one lived, and everything. There he sits on the stove. It doesn't matter to him if it is hot--sometimes red hot. He is used to it. He sits himself there, a little, gray thing, opposite me, and just sits. I cross myself and do not look at him, and he gets tired. Then he crawls on the wall like a spider, or sometimes he floats in the air like a gray rag. He can do anything, my devil. He gets bored with an old man, but he has got to watch me, he has orders to.

"Of course, it is not pleasant for him to watch an old man. I am not offended with him. The devil doesn't do it of his own free will, and I am used to him. 'Well,' I say to him, 41 am tired of you,' and I don't look at him. He is not bad or evil, only he continually reminds me of my name."

Then the old man lifted his head and said loudly:

"They called me Michail Petrov Viakhiref."

And then he sank down in his coffin again and whispered:

"Thus the devil tempts me. Oh, you devil! Are you still here, brother? Go, and God be with you."

I could have cried with anger that day. What was the use of this old man? What beauty was there in his deed? I could not understand it. All day and many days afterward I thought of him, and I felt that a devil mocked me and made grimaces at me.

The last time that I went to him I filled my pockets with soft bread, and I brought that bread to him, with pain and anger against all mankind. When I gave it to him he whispered:

"Oh, it is still warm. Oh!"

He moved in his coffin. The shavings creaked underneath him while he hid his bread, whispering:

"Oh, oh."

The darkness and the mildewed wall--everything around us moved, reechoing the low groans of the ascetic--"Oh."

Four times a week they brought him food. Of course, he was starved.

This last time he said nothing to me, only sucked the bread. He evidently had not a tooth left in his head.

I stood there for some time. Then I said:

"Well, pardon me, in Christ's name, Father Mardarie. I am going now, and I won't return again. Let me thank you."

"Yes, yes," he answered eagerly. "It is I who thank you; it is I who thank you. But don't tell the monks about the bread. They will take it away. They are jealous, the monks are. No doubt the devils know them, too. The devils know everything and everybody--say nothing about it."

Soon after this he became ill and died. They buried him with solemnity. The Bishop came from the city with all his clergy, and they held a Cathedral Mass. Afterward I heard that under the tombstone of the old man a little blue fire burns of itself at night.

How pitiful it all was and how disgraceful to man!