CHAPTER XIII

When my penance was finished I stood before Anthony, dressed in new clothes. I remember this period of my life from the first day to the last; everything, even to each word, was burned into my soul and cut into my flesh.

He led me to his cells quietly, and taught me in detail how and when and in what way I was to serve him.

One room was arranged with book-cases, full of worldly and religious books. "This," he said, "is my chapel."

In the center of the room stood a large table, near the window an upholstered armchair, and toward one side of the table a divan covered with rich tapestry. In front of the table there was a chair with a high back, covered with pressed leather.

A second room was his bedroom. It had a wide bed, a wardrobe filled with cassocks and linen, a wash stand with a large mirror, many brushes and combs and gaily colored perfume bottles. And on the walls of the third room, which was uninviting and empty, were two closed cupboards, one for wine and food and the other for china, pastry, preserves and sweets.

Having finished this inspection, he led me to his library and said:

"Take a seat. So, this is the way I live. Not like a monk, eh?"

"No," I answered; "not quite according to rule."

"Well, you condemn every one. I suppose you will condemn me soon, too."

He smiled, haughty as a bell tower.

I loved him for his beautiful face, but his smile was disagreeable to me.

"I do not know whether I will condemn you," I said. "I certainly would like to understand you."

He laughed low, in a base, which was offensive to me.

"You are illegitimate?" he asked.

"Yes."

"You have good blood in your veins?"

"What is good blood?" I asked.

He laughed, then answered impressively.

"Good blood is something from which proud souls are made."

The day was clear, the sun shone in through the window, and Anthony sat entirely covered by its rays. Suddenly an unexpected thought flashed through my head and pierced my heart like the bite of a snake. I jumped from my chair and stared hard at the monk. He, too, arose, and I saw that he picked up a knife from the table and played with it, asking:

"What is the matter with you?"

"Are you not my father?" I asked him.

His face became drawn, immovable and blue, as if it were carved from ice. He half closed his eyes so that the light went out of them, and said, almost in a whisper:

"I think--not. Where were you born? When? How old are you? Who is your mother?"

And as I told him how I was abandoned he smiled and put the knife back on the table.

"I was not in the district at that time," he answered.

I became embarrassed and uncomfortable. It was as if I had begged for charity and been refused.

"Well," he said, "and if I had been your father, what then?"

"Nothing," I answered.

"Exactly. That is the way I think about it. We are living together in a place where there are no fathers and no children in the flesh, only in the spirit. On the other hand, we are all abandoned on this earth--that is, we are brothers in misery, which we call life. Man is an accident in life, do you know that?"

I read in his eyes that he was making fun of me. I was still laboring under the unpleasant impression which my strange and incomprehensible question had aroused in me, and I would have liked to explain the question to him or to forget it altogether. But I made matters worse by asking:

"Why did you take that knife in your hand?" Anthony gazed at me and then laughed low:

"You are a bold questioner. I took it because I took it, and why I really do not know. I like it; it is a very pretty thing."

And he gave me the knife. It was sharp and pointed, with a design in gold laid on the steel, and a silver handle, with red stones.

"It is an Arabian knife," he explained to me. "I use it for cutting pages of books, and at night I put it under my pillow. There is a rumor abroad that I am rich and there are poor people living about me, and my cell is out of the way."

The knife as well as the hands of Anthony had a rich, peculiar perfume, which almost intoxicated me and made my head swim.

"Let us talk a little more," Anthony continued in his low, deep, soft voice. "Do you know that a woman comes to see me?"

"So I heard."

"It is not true that she is my sister. I sleep with her."

"Why do you talk of these things to me?" I asked.

"So that you will be shocked once and for all and not continue to be surprised. You like worldly books?"

"I have never read them."

He took from the book-case a little book bound in red leather and gave it to me.

"Go, prepare the samovar and read this," he said, in a tone of command.

I opened the book, and on the very first page I found a picture--a woman naked to her knees and a man in front of her, also naked.

"I will not read this," I said.

Then he turned to me and said sternly:

"And if your spiritual superior orders you to? How do you know why this is necessary? Go."

In the annex where my room was I sat down on my bed, overcome by fear and sadness. I felt as if I had been poisoned; I was weak and trembling. I did not know what to think; I could not understand. From where did the thought come that he was my father? It was a strange idea.

I remembered his words about the soul: "The soul is made of blood." And about man: "That he is an accident on earth." All this was so plainly heretical. I remembered his drawn face at my question.

I opened the book again. It was a story about some French cavalier and about women. What did I want with it?

He rang for me and called. I came in, and he met me in a friendly manner.

"Where is the samovar?"

"Why did you give me this book?"

"So that you would know what sin is."

I became happy again. It seemed to me I understood his object; he wished to educate me. I bowed low, went out, prepared the samovar eagerly and brought it back into the room, where Anthony had already prepared everything for tea. And as I was going out he said:

"Remain and drink tea with me."

I was grateful to him, for I wanted to understand something very much.

"Tell me," he said, "how you have lived and why you came here."

I began to tell him about myself, not hiding from him my most secret impulse, not a thought which I could remember. And he listened to me with half-closed eyes, so engrossed that he did not even drink his tea.

Behind him the evening looked in at the window, and against the red sky the black branches of the trees made their outline.

But I talked all the time and gazed on the white fingers of Anthony's hands, which were folded on his breast. When I had finished he poured out a little glass of dark sweet wine for me.

"Drink," he said. "I noticed you when you prayed aloud in the church. The monastery doesn't help much, does it?"

"No; but in you I place great hope. Help me. You are a learned man; you must know everything."

"I only know one thing: You go up the mountain, reach the top, and fall--you fall to the very depth of the precipice. But I myself do not follow this law because I am too lazy. Man is a worthless thing, Matvei; but why he is worthless, is not clear. Life is exquisite and the world enchanting. So many pleasures are given to man, and man is worthless. Why? This is a puzzle I cannot solve, and I do not even wish to think about it."

Vespers rang. He started and said:

"Go, and God be with you. I am tired, and I must attend service."

Had I been wiser I would have left him that very day, for then I would have preserved a pleasant memory of him. But I did not understand the meaning of his words.

I went to my room, lay down, and noticed the little book which lay at my side. I struck a light and began to read it out of gratitude for my superior. I read how the cavalier I mentioned above deceived husbands, climbing to their wives at night through the windows, and how the husbands spied on him; how they wished to pierce him with their swords and how he escaped.

And all this was very stupid and unintelligible to me; that is, I understood well enough that a young fellow might enjoy it, but I could not understand why it was written about, and I could not fathom why I had read such nonsense.

And again I began to think: "How did I suddenly come upon the thought that Anthony was my father?" This thought ate my soul as rust eats iron. Then I fell asleep.

In my dream I felt that some one touched me. I jumped up. He stood near me.

"I rang and rang for you," he said.

"Forgive me," I said, "in Christ's name. I have worked very hard."

"I know," he answered. But he did not say, "God forgive you."

"I am going to the Father Abbot. Make everything ready, as it should be. Ah, you have read the book! It is too bad you have begun it. It is not quite for you. You were right; you need another kind."

I prepared his bed. The linen was thin, the cover soft; everything was rich and new to me; and a delicate, pleasant odor emanated from all.

And so I began to live in this intoxicating world, as in a dream. I saw no one but Anthony. But even he seemed as if he were in a shadow and moved in shadows. He spoke in a friendly tone, but his eyes mocked. He seldom used the word God; instead of God he said soul; instead of devil, nature.

But for me the meaning of his words did not change. He made fun of the monks and of the church orders. He drank very much wine, but he never staggered in walking, only his forehead became a bluish-white and his eyes glowed with a dark fire, and his red lips grew darker and drier.

It happened often that he came back from the Abbot at midnight or even later, and he woke me and ordered that I bring him wine. He sat and drank, spoke to himself in his low voice long and uninterruptedly, sitting there sometimes till matins were called.

It was difficult for me to understand his words, and I have forgotten many of them, but I remember how at first they frightened me, as if they had suddenly opened some terrible abyss in which the whole face of the earth was swallowed up. Often a feeling of emptiness and misery came over me because of his words, and I was ready to ask him:

"And you, are you not the devil?"

He was gloomy, spoke in a tone of command, and when he was drunk his eyes became even more mysterious, sinking far into his head. On his face a smile twitched continually, and his fingers, which were thin and long, opened and closed and pulled at his blue-black beard. A coldness emanated from him. He was terrifying.

As I have said, I did not believe in the devil, and I knew that it was written that the devil was strong in his pride; that he fought continually; that his passion and his skill lay in tempting people.

But Father Anthony in no way tempted me. He clothed life in gray, showed it to me as something insane, and people for him were only a herd of crazy swine who were dashing to the abyss with varying rapidity.

"But you have said that life is beautiful," I said.

"Yes, if it recognizes me it is beautiful," he answered.

Only his laugh remained with me. He seemed to me to gaze upon everything from his corner as if he had been driven away from everywhere and was not even hurt at being driven away.

His thoughts were sharp and penetrating, subtle like a snake, but powerless to conquer me, for I did not believe them, although often I was ravished by their cleverness and by the great leaps of the human mind.

At times, though this happened seldom, he became angry with me.

"I am a nobleman!" he shouted. "A descendant of a great race of people! My fathers founded Russia! They are historical figures, and this lout--this dirty lout dares to interrupt me! The beautiful dies, only the worms remain, and only one man of a distinguished family among them."

His expressions did not interest me. I, too, perhaps, came from a distinguished family. But surely strength did not lie in ancestry, but in truth, and though the evening will surely not come again, the morrow comes.

He sat in his armchair and talked, his face bloodless.

"Again the monks have won from me, Matvei. What is a monk? A man who wishes to hide from his fellow men his own vileness and who is afraid of its power over him. Or, perhaps, a man who is overcome by his weakness, and flees from the world in fear, that the world may not devour him. Such monks are the better and more interesting; but the others are only homeless men, dust of the earth, or still-born children."

"What are you among them?" I asked.

I might have asked this ten times or more straight to his face, but he answered me always in this way:

"Man is a child of accident on this earth, everywhere and forever."

His God, too, was a mystery to me. I tried to ask him about God when he was sober, but he only laughed and answered with some well-known quotation.

But God was higher to me than anything that was ever written about Him.

I asked him when he was drunk how he saw God then. But even drunk, Anthony was firm.

"Ah, you are cunning, Matvei," he answered. "Cunning and obstinate. I am sorry for you."

I, too, was sorry for him, for I saw his solitude and I valued the abundance of his thoughts, and I was sorry that they were being sown at random in his cell. But though I was sorry for him, still I persisted firmly in my questions, and once he said, unwillingly:

"I no more see God than you, Matvei."

"Though I do not see God," I answered, "still I feel Him and do not question His existence, but only try to understand His laws, upon which our earth is based."

"As for the laws," he said, "look in the book on Canonical Rights, and if you feel God then--I shall congratulate you."

He poured out some wine, clinked glasses with me and drank. I noticed that, though his face was as grave as that of a corpse, the beautiful eyes of the gentleman mocked at me. The fact that he was a gentleman began to lessen my feelings for him, for he unfolded his birth to me so often that he made me boil with anger.

When he was somewhat drunk, he liked to speak about women.

"Nature," he would say, "has kept us in an evil and heavy bondage through woman, its sweetest allurement; and had we not this carnal temptation, which saps out the best from the soul of man, he could have attained immortality."

Since Brother Misha had spoken about the same theme, though more heatedly, I was disgusted by this time with such thoughts. Misha had renounced woman with hatred and defamed her furiously; but Father Anthony adjudged her without any feelings and tiresomely.

"Do you remember," he said, "I once gave you a book? If you read it you must have seen how woman in her whole make-up is cunning and full of lies, and debauched to the very bottom."

It was strange, and it hurt me to hear man, born of woman and nourished with her life, besmirch and trample upon his own mother, denying her everything but the flesh; degrading her to a senseless animal. At times I expressed my thoughts to him, though vaguely; not so distinctly. He became outraged and shouted.

"Idiot! Was I talking about my own mother?"

"Every woman is a mother," I answered.

"There are some," he shouted, "who are only loose women all their lives."

"Well," I answered, "there are some who are hunchbacked; but that is not the law for all."

"Get out of here, fool!"

Evidently the officer was not dead in him.

Several times when I asked about God, we wrangled with each other. He angered me with his sly wit, and one evening I went at him with all my might. My character grew bad, for I passed through great suffering at this time. I circled around Anthony like a hungry man around a locked pantry; he smells the bread through the door, and it only tends to madden him. And the night to which I refer, his evasions enraged me. I caught up the knife from the table and cried:

"Tell me everything you believe or I will cut my throat, come what may!"

He became frightened, grabbed my hand, wrenched the knife from me and grew very much excited--not at all like himself.

"You should be punished for this," he said, "but no punishment ever helps fanaticism."

And then he added, and his words were like nails beaten into my head:

"This is what I will tell you: only man exists. Everything else is an opinion. Your God is a dream of your soul. You can only know yourself, and even that not certainly."

His words shook me like a storm and ravaged me. He spoke for a long time, and though I did not understand everything, I felt that in this man was no sorrow or joy or fear, or sensitiveness, or pride. He was like an old church-yard priest, reading the mass for the dead, near a tomb. He knew the words well, but they did not touch his soul. His words were frightful to me at first, but later I understood that the doubt in them was without force, for they were dead.

It was May, the window was open, and the night in the garden was filled with a warm perfume of flowers. The apple trees were like young girls going to communion--a delicate blue in the silver moonlight.

The watchman beat the hours, and in the stillness the bronze resounded lugubriously.

Before me sat a man with a face of stone, calmly emitting bloodless words--words which vanished and were gray like ashes. They were offensive and painful to me, for I saw brass where I had expected gold.

"Go now," said Anthony to me.

I went into the garden, and when early mass was rung I entered the church, went into a dark corner and stood there, thinking, what need of God had a man who was half dead?

The brothers assembled. One would say it was the moonlight which broke the shadows of night into a thousand fragments and which noiselessly crawled into the temple to hide.

From this time something incomprehensible happened. Anthony began speaking to me in the tone of a gentleman, dry and crossly, and he never called me to him in a friendly way. All the books which he had given me to read he took away. One of them was a Russian history which had many surprises for me, but I got no chance to finish it. I tried to fathom in what way I had offended this gentleman of mine, but I could not.

The beginning of his speech was engraven in my memory and lived uppermost in my mind, though not troubling my other thoughts: "God is the dream of your soul," I repeated to myself. But I did not feel the necessity of debating this; it was an easy thought.

Soon a woman came to him. It was late at night. Anthony rang for me and cried:

"Quick--the samovar!"

When I brought it in I saw a woman sitting on the divan, in a wide pink dress, blonde disheveled curls hanging over her shoulders, and a little pink face, like a doll's, with light-blue eyes. She seemed to me modest and sad.

I placed the dishes on the table, and Anthony hurried me all the while.

"Do it quicker--hurry."

"He is aflame," I said to myself.

I liked his love affairs, for it was pleasant to see how skilful Anthony was even in love--a thing which is not very difficult.

As for myself, love left me cold at this time, and the looseness of the monks kept me away from it. But what kind of a monk was Father Anthony?

The woman was pretty in her way, a delicate little thing, like a new toy.

In the morning I went into the room to set it to rights. But he was not there, having gone to the Abbot. She sat on the divan, her feet under her, uncombed and half dressed. She asked me what I was called. I told her. Then she asked me if I had been in the monastery a long time, and I answered that question also.

"Don't you get bored here?"

"No," I answered.

"That's strange--if it's true."

"Why should it not be true?" I asked.

"You are so young and good-looking."

"Is the monastery only for cripples?"

She laughed and put out a bare foot from the divan. She looked at me and let herself be seen immodestly; exposed, her arms bare to the shoulder and her gown unfastened at the breast.

"You do that in vain," I thought. "You should keep your charms for your lover."

And the little fool asked me:

"Don't women bother you?"

"I don't see them," I answered. "How can they bother me?"

"What do you mean by 'how'?" And she laughed.

Anthony appeared in the door and asked angrily:

"What is this, Zoia?"

"Oh," she cried, "he is so funny--that one!" And she began to chatter and tell how "funny" I was.

But Anthony did not listen to her, and commanded me sternly:

"Go and unpack the trunks and the bags. Then take part of the provisions to the Abbot."

Even before dinner both of them had taken enough wine, and in the evening, after tea, the woman was entirely drunk, and Anthony, too, seemed more drunk than usual. They drove me from one corner to the other--to bring this, to carry that; to heat the wine, then to cool it.

I ran about like a waiter in a drinking place, and they became more and more free before me. The young lady was hot and took off some of her clothes, and the gentleman suddenly asked me:

"Matvei, isn't she pretty?"

"Pretty enough," I answered.

"But look at her well."

She laughed, drunk.

I wanted to go out, but Anthony called out, wildly:

"Where are you going? Stay here! Zoiaka, show yourself naked!"

I thought I had not heard rightly, but she pulled off a gown she had on and stood upon her feet, swaying. I looked at Anthony and he looked back at me. My heart beat loudly, for I pitied this man. Vulgarities did not quite fit him, and I was ashamed for the woman. Then he shouted:

"Get out of here, you lout!"

"You are a lout yourself!" I retorted.

He jumped up, overthrowing the bottles on the table. The dishes fell to the ground with a crash; something began to flow hastily, like a lonely stream. I went out into the garden and lay down. My heart ached like a bone that is frozen. In the stillness I heard Anthony cry out:

"Out with you!"

And a woman's voice whined:

"Don't you dare, you fool!"

Soon the harnessing of horses was heard in the courtyard, and their dissatisfied neighing and stampings on the dry earth. Doors were slammed, the wheels of a carriage rattled, and then the large gates creaked.

Anthony walked through the garden, calling low:

"Matvei, where are you?"

His tall figure moved among the apple trees and he caught at the branches and let fall the perfumed snow of flowers, muttering:

"Oh, the fool!"

And behind him, dragging along the ground, was his thick, heavy shadow.

I lay in the garden until morning, and then went to Father Isador.

"Give me back my passport. I am going away."

He was so startled that he jumped up.

"Why? Where?"

"Somewhere--in the world. I don't know where," I answered.

He began to question me.

"I will not explain anything," I said.

I went out from his cell and sat down near it on the bench underneath the old pine tree. I sat there on purpose, for it was the bench on which those who were driven away, or went of their own free will, sat, as if to announce the fact of their departure.

The brothers passed me, and looked at me sideways; some even spat at me. I forgot to say that there had been a rumor that Anthony had taken me as his lover. The Neophytes envied me and the monks envied that gentleman of mine. And they slandered both of us.

The brothers passed, saying to each other:

"Ah, they have driven him away; thanked be the Lord!"

Father Assaf, a sly and malicious old man, who acted as the Abbot's spy, and was known in the monastery as a half-witted hypocrite, attacked me with vile words, so that I said to him:

"Go away, old man. If not I will take you by the ear and put you away."

Although he was half-witted, as I said, he understood my words.

The head of the monastery called me to him and spoke in a friendly tone:

"I told you, Matvei, my son, that it would have been better to have entered the office, and I was right. Old men always know more. Do you think with your obstinate nature that you could act as a servant? Here you have shamefully insulted the revered Father Anthony."

"He told you that?"

"Who, then? You have not said anything."

"Did he tell you that he showed me a naked woman?"

The Father Abbot made a cross over me from holy fright and said, shaking his hands:

"What is the matter with you? What is the matter with you? God be with you! What kind of a woman? That is some dream of yours, coming from the flesh; a creation of the devil. Oh, oh, oh! You should think of your words. How can a woman be in a monastery of men?"

I wanted to calm him.

"Who, then, brought you the port wine, and the cheese, and the caviar last night?"

"What are you saying? Christ save you. How can you think up such things?"

It was disgusting and enough to drive one insane.