CHAPTER XVII

I also went to nunneries for a week or two, and in one of them, on the Volga, I hurt my foot with an ax one day while chopping wood. Mother Theoktista, a good little old woman, nursed me.

The monastery was not large, but rich, and the sisters all had a prosperous and dignified appearance. They irritated me, with their sweetness and their honied smiles and their fat crops.

Once, as I stood at vespers, I heard one of the women in the choir sing divinely. She was a tall young girl, with a flushed face, black eyes, stern looking, her lips red, and her voice was sure and full. She sang as if she were questioning something, and angry tears mingled with her voice.

My foot became better and, as I was already able to work, I was preparing to leave the place. While I was shoveling the snow from the road one day I saw the girl coming. She walked quietly, but stiffly. In her right hand, which was pressed against her breast, she carried a rosary; her left hung by her side like a whip. Her lips were compressed, she frowned and her face was pale. I bowed to her, but she threw her head backward and looked at me as if I had done her harm at some time. Her manner enraged me. Moreover, I could not bear the sight of this young nun.

"Well, my girl," I said, "it is not easy to live." She started and stopped.

"What did you say?" she asked.

"It is hard to master one's self," I said.

"Oh, the devil!" she said suddenly in a low voice, but with great anger. And with that her black figure disappeared quickly, like a cloud on a windy day.

I cannot explain why I said that to her. At that time many such thoughts jumped into my head and flew out like sparks into any one's eyes. It seemed to me that all people were liars and hypocrites.

Three days later I saw her again on another road. She angered me still more. Why did she cover herself all in black? From what was she hiding? When she passed me I said to her:

"Do you wish to escape from here?"

The girl trembled, threw back her head and remained standing, straight as an arrow. I thought she would cry out, but she passed me, and then I heard her answer distinctly:

"I will tell you to-night."

I was terrified, but I thought perhaps I had not heard correctly. Still, though she had spoken low, her words came as clearly to me as from a bell. At first they amused me; then I became confused, and later I calmed myself, thinking that perhaps the bold hussy was joking with me.

When I had hurt my foot, they had brought me into the infirmary and I occupied a little room under the staircase, and that room I occupied all the time I stayed at the monastery. That night as I lay in my cot I thought it was time I stopped my wandering life, and that I ought to go to some city and there work in a bakery. I did not wish to think about the girl.

Suddenly some one knocked very low. I jumped up, opened the door, and an old woman bowed and said:

"Follow me, if you please."

I understood where, but I asked nothing and went, threatening her inwardly.

"Is that the way it is, my dear? You will see how I will surprise your soul."

We crossed corridors and came to the place. The old woman opened a door and pushed me forward, whispering, "I will come to take you back."

A match flared up for a moment and in the darkness a familiar face lit up, and I heard her voice say:

"Lock the door."

I locked it.

I felt along the wall till I reached the stove, leaned up against it and asked:

"Will there be no light?"

The girl gave a little laugh. "What kind of a light?" she asked.

"Oh, you wanton!" I thought to myself, but remained silent.

I could hardly make out the girl. She was in the dark, like a black cloud in a stormy sky.

"Why don't you speak?" she asked. Her voice was masterful.

She must be rich, I thought, and I collected myself and said:

"It is for you to speak."

"Were you serious when you asked me about my running away from here?"

I stopped to think how I could best insult her, but then, like a coward, I answered quietly:

"No. It was only to test your piety."

Again she lit a match. Her face stood out clearly and her black eyes gazed boldly. It was unpleasant for me.

I got used to the darkness and saw that she stood, tall and black, in the middle of the room, and her bearing was strangely straight.

"You need not test my piety," she whispered hotly. "I did not call you here for that, and if you do not understand, go away from here."

Her breast heaved and there was something serious in her voice--nothing loose.

In the wall opposite me was a window, and it looked like a path which had been cut out of the darkness into the night. The sight of it was disagreeable to me.

I felt uncomfortable, for I understood that I had made a mistake, and it became more and more painful to me, so that my limbs trembled.

She continued talking.

"I have nowhere to run away to. My uncle drove me here by force, but I can live here no longer. I shall hang myself."

Then she became silent, as if lost in an abyss.

I lost myself entirely, but she moved nearer to me and her breath came with difficulty.

"What do you wish?" I asked her.

She came up to me and put her hand on my shoulder. It trembled, and I, too, shook all over. My knees became weak and the darkness entered my throat and stifled me.

"Perhaps she is possessed," I thought to myself.

But she began to sob as she spoke, and her breath came hot on my face.

"I gave birth to a son, and they took him away from me and drove me here, where I cannot live. They tell me that my child is dead. My uncle and aunt say it, my guardians. Perhaps they have killed him. Perhaps they abandoned him. What can one know, my dear friend? I have still two years to be in their power before I reach my majority, but I cannot remain here."

The words came from her inmost heart, and I felt guilty before her. I was sorry for her, and also a little afraid. She seemed half insane. I did not know whether to believe her or not.

But she continued her whispering, which was broken by sobs:

"I want a child. As soon as I am with child, they will drive me away from here. I need a child, since the first one died. I want to give birth to another, and this time I will not let them take it away from me, nor let them rob my soul. I beg pity and help from you. You, who are good, aid me with your strength, help me get back that which was taken from me. Believe me, in Christ's name, I am a mother, not a loose woman. I do not want to sin, but I want a child. It is not pleasure I seek, but motherhood."

I was in a dream. I believed her. It was impossible not to believe when a woman stood on her rights and called a stranger to her, and said openly to him:

"They have forbidden me to create man. Help me."

I thought of my mother, whom I had never known. Perhaps it was in this same way that she threw her strength into the power of my father. I embraced her and said:

"Pardon me. I have judged you wrongly. Forgive me in the name of the Mother of God."

While lost in self-forgetfulness in accomplishing the holy sacrament of marriage, an impious doubt arose in my mind.

"Perhaps she is deceiving me, and I am not the first man with whom she is playing this game."

Then she told me her life story. Her father was a locksmith and her uncle was a machinist's apprentice. Her uncle drank and was cruel. In summer he worked on steamboats, in 'winter on docks. She had nowhere to live, for her father and mother were drowned while there was a fire on a boat, and she became an orphan at thirteen. At seventeen she became the mother of a child by a young nobleman.

Her low voice flowed through my soul, her warm arms were around my neck, and her head rested on my shoulder. I listened to her, but the serpent of doubt gnawed at my heart.

We have forgotten that it was a woman who gave birth to Christ and followed him humbly to Golgotha. We have forgotten that it was woman who was mother of all the saints and of all the heroes of the past. We have forgotten the value of woman in our vile lust and have degraded her for our pleasure and turned her into a household drudge. And that is why she no longer gives birth to saviors of life, but only bare, mutilated children, the fruit of our own weakness.

She told me about the monastery. She was not the only one who was sent in there by force. Suddenly she said to me, caressingly:

"I have a good friend here, a pure girl, from a rich family. And, oh, if you would only know how difficult it is for her to live here. Perhaps you could make her with child also. Then they would drive her forth from here and she would go to her godmother."

"Good God!" I thought, "another one in misery!"

And again my faith in the omniscience of God and the righteousness of his laws was broken into. How could one place man in misery that laws might triumph?

Christa whispered low in my ear: "If only you could help her also!"

Her words killed my doubts and I was ready to kiss her feet, for I understood that only a pure woman, who appreciated the value of motherhood, could speak like that.

I confessed my doubts to her. She pushed me from her and wept low in the darkness, and I dared not comfort her.

"Do you think I had no qualms or shame in calling you?" she said to me reproachfully. "You, who are so strong and handsome? Was it easy for me to beg a caress from a man as if it were alms? Why did I go to you? I saw a man who was stern, whose eyes were serious, who spoke little and had little to do with young nuns. Your temples are gray. Moreover, I do not know why, I believed you to be true and good. But when you spoke to me that first time so unkindly, I wept. 'I was mistaken,' I thought to myself. But later, thank God, I decided to call you."

"Forgive me," I said to her.

She kissed me. "God will forgive you."

Here the old woman knocked on the door and whispered:

"It is time to part. They will ring matins soon." When she led me along the corridors she said:

"Will you give me a ruble?"

I could have struck her.

I lived about five days with Christa. It was impossible to stay longer, for the choir singer and the neophyte began to bother me too much. Besides, I felt the need of being alone to reflect on this incident.

How could they forbid women to bear children if such was their wish, and if children have been and always will be the harbingers of a new life, the bearers of new strength?

There was another reason for my having to fly. Christa showed me her friend. She was a slim young girl, with blonde curly hair and blue eyes and resembled my Olga. Her little face was pure, and she looked out upon the world with profound sadness. I was drawn toward her, and Christa urged me on.

But this was a different matter. Christa was no longer a girl; but Julia was innocent, and her husband should also be innocent.

I had no longer faith in my purity nor did I know what I really was. It did not matter with Christa, but with the other my self-doubt had the power to interfere. Why, I do not know, but it had that power.

I said good-by to Christa. She wept a little and asked me to write to her; said she would want to let me know when she was with child, and I gave her an address. Soon after I wrote her. She answered with a letter of good news, and I wrote her again. She was silent.

About a year and a half later, in Zadona, I received a letter. It had lain a long time in the post-office. She told me that she gave birth to a child, a son; that she called him Matvei; that he was happy and healthy; that she lived with her aunt, and that her uncle was dead. He had drunk himself to death.

"Now," she wrote, "I am my own mistress, and if you will come you will be received with joy."

I had a desire to see my son and my accidental wife, but by this time I had found a true road for myself and I did not go to her.

"I cannot now," I wrote. "I will come later."

Afterward she married a merchant who sold books and engravings, and went to live in Ribinsk.

In Christa I saw for the first time a person who had no fear in her soul and who was ready to fight for herself with all her strength. But at that time I did not appreciate the great value of this trait.

After the incident with Christa I went to work in the city; but life there was distasteful to me. It was narrow and oppressive. I did not like the artisans. They gave their souls nakedly and openly into the power of the masters. Each one seemed to cry out by his action:

"Here, devour my body! Drink my blood! I have no room on this earth for myself!"

It was unpleasant for me to be with them. They drank, they swore at each other over a bagatelle, they sang their sad songs and burned at their labor night and day, and their masters warmed their fat marrows by them.

The bakery was close and dirty; the men slept there like dogs, and vodka and passion were their only pleasures. When I spoke to them about the false arrangement of our life they listened, grew sorrowful and agreed with me. But when I said that we had to seek God, they sighed and my words flowed past them.

At times, for some unknown reason, they made fun of me, and did it with malice.

I do not like cities. The incessant noise and traffic are unbearable to me, and the city people, with their insane business, remained strangers.

There were drinking places enough, and a superabundance of churches. The houses rose like mountains, but to live in them was difficult. The people were many, but each one lived for himself; each one was tied to his work, and his life ran along on one thread, like a dog on a string.

I heard weariness in every sound. Even the chimes rang out without hope, and I felt in my whole soul that things were not created for this. It was not right.

At times I laughed at myself. What kind of a leader is this that has arisen among you? But though I laughed, it was not with joy, for I saw only error in everything, and since I could not understand, it was all the more oppressive to me. I sank into the depths.

At night I remembered my wandering and freer life, especially my nights in the open fields. In the fields the earth is round and clear and dear to your heart. You lie on her as in the palm of a hand, small and simple like a child, clothed in a warm shadow and covered by the starry sky, floating with it past the stars. You feel your tired body filled with a strong perfume of plants and flowers, and it seems to you that you lie in a cradle, and that an unseen hand rocks it and puts you to sleep. The shadows float past and brush the tops of the plants, there is a murmuring and whispering around you, and somewhere a marmot comes out from its hole and whispers low.

Far off on the horizon a dark form arises. Perhaps it is a horse in the night. He stands for a second, then vanishes into the sea of warm darkness. Then something else arises, now in another place, another form. And so the whole night long, the guardians of earthly sleep, the loving shadows of the summer nights, silently come and go in the fields.

You feel that near you, in the whole sphere, all life has drawn back, resting in a light slumber. And your conscience hurts. Yet you continue to crush the plants with the weight of your body. A night-bird flies noiselessly, a piece of earth is broken off and becomes alive, and winged with its desires, seeks to fulfil them. Mice rustle through the grass; sometimes a small, soft thing runs quickly across your hand. You start, and you feel still deeper the abundance of life; that the earth itself is alive underneath you, is near to you and closely related to you. You hear her breathe, and you wonder what is the dream she is having, and what strength is quietly being born in her breast. How will she look upon the sun to-morrow? In what way will she rejoice him, his beautiful and beloved one?

You lie on her breast and your body grows and you drink the warm, perfumed milk of your dear mother, and you see yourself completely and forever the child of the earth. With gratitude you think of her, "Oh, my beloved earth!"

Unseen torrents of wholesome strength pour from the earth and streams of spicy perfumes float in the air. The earth is like a censer to the heavens, and you both the fire and the incense. The stars burn ardently that they may show all their beauty before the rising of the sun, and love and sleep fill and caress you. The bright light of hope passes warmly through your soul. "Somewhere there exists a sublime God."

"Seek and thou shalt find." That is well said, and we should not forget these words, for in truth they are worthy of the human mind.