Chekhov
- The Black Monk
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V
Glad that he had been so successful in the
part of peacemaker, Kovrin went into the park. Sitting on a
garden seat, thinking, he heard the rattle of a carriage and a
feminine laugh -- visitors were arriving. When the shades of
evening began falling on the garden, the sounds of the violin
and singing voices reached him indistinctly, and that reminded
him of the black monk. Where, in what land or in what planet,
was that optical absurdity moving now?
Hardly had he recalled the legend and pictured in his
imagination the dark apparition he had seen in the rye-field,
when, from behind a pine-tree exactly opposite, there came out
noiselessly, without the slightest rustle, a man of medium
height with uncovered grey head, all in black, and barefooted
like a beggar, and his black eyebrows stood out conspicuously on
his pale, death-like face. Nodding his head graciously, this
beggar or pilgrim came noiselessly to the seat and sat down, and
Kovrin recognised him as the black monk.
For a minute they looked at one another, Kovrin with amazement,
and the monk with friendliness, and, just as before, a little
slyness, as though he were thinking something to himself.
"But you are a mirage," said Kovrin. "Why are you here and
sitting still? That does not fit in with the legend."
"That does not matter," the monk answered in a low voice, not
immediately turning his face towards him. "The legend, the
mirage, and I are all the products of your excited imagination.
I am a phantom."
"Then you don't exist?" said Kovrin.
"You can think as you like," said the monk, with a faint smile.
"I exist in your imagination, and your imagination is part of
nature, so I exist in nature."
"You have a very old, wise, and extremely expressive face, as
though you really had lived more than a thousand years," said
Kovrin. "I did not know that my imagination was capable of
creating such phenomena. But why do you look at me with such
enthusiasm? Do you like me?"
"Yes, you are one of those few who are justly called the chosen
of God. You do the service of eternal truth. Your thoughts, your
designs, the marvellous studies you are engaged in, and all your
life, bear the Divine, the heavenly stamp, seeing that they are
consecrated to the rational and the beautiful -- that is, to
what is eternal."
"You said 'eternal truth.' . . . But is eternal truth of use to
man and within his reach, if there is no eternal life?"
"There is eternal life," said the monk.
"Do you believe in the immortality of man?"
"Yes, of course. A grand, brilliant future is in store for you
men. And the more there are like you on earth, the sooner will
this future be realised. Without you who serve the higher
principle and live in full understanding and freedom, mankind
would be of little account; developing in a natural way, it
would have to wait a long time for the end of its earthly
history. You will lead it some thousands of years earlier into
the kingdom of eternal truth -- and therein lies your supreme
service. You are the incarnation of the blessing of God, which
rests upon men."
"And what is the object of eternal life?" asked Kovrin.
"As of all life -- enjoyment. True enjoyment lies in knowledge,
and eternal life provides innumerable and inexhaustible sources
of knowledge, and in that sense it has been said: 'In My
Father's house there are many mansions.' "
"If only you knew how pleasant it is to hear you!" said Kovrin,
rubbing his hands with satisfaction.
"I am very glad."
"But I know that when you go away I shall be worried by the
question of your reality. You are a phantom, an hallucination.
So I am mentally deranged, not normal?"
"What if you are? Why trouble yourself? You are ill because you
have overworked and exhausted yourself, and that means that you
have sacrificed your health to the idea, and the time is near at
hand when you will give up life itself to it. What could be
better? That is the goal towards which all divinely endowed,
noble natures strive."
"If I know I am mentally affected, can I trust myself?"
"And are you sure that the men of genius, whom all men trust,
did not see phantoms, too? The learned say now that genius is
allied to madness. My friend, healthy and normal people are only
the common herd. Reflections upon the neurasthenia of the age,
nervous exhaustion and degeneracy, et cetera, can only seriously
agitate those who place the object of life in the present --
that is, the common herd."
"The Romans used to say: Mens sana in corpore sano."
"Not everything the Greeks and the Romans said is true.
Exaltation, enthusiasm, ecstasy -- all that distinguishes
prophets, poets, martyrs for the idea, from the common folk --
is repellent to the animal side of man -- that is, his physical
health. I repeat, if you want to be healthy and normal, go to
the common herd."
"Strange that you repeat what often comes into my mind," said
Kovrin. "It is as though you had seen and overheard my secret
thoughts. But don't let us talk about me. What do you mean by
'eternal truth'?"
The monk did not answer. Kovrin looked at him and could not
distinguish his face. His features grew blurred and misty. Then
the monk's head and arms disappeared; his body seemed merged
into the seat and the evening twilight, and he vanished
altogether.
"The hallucination is over," said Kovrin; and he laughed. "It's
a pity."
He went back to the house, light-hearted and happy. The little
the monk had said to him had flattered, not his vanity, but his
whole soul, his whole being. To be one of the chosen, to serve
eternal truth, to stand in the ranks of those who could make
mankind worthy of the kingdom of God some thousands of years
sooner -- that is, to free men from some thousands of years of
unnecessary struggle, sin, and suffering; to sacrifice to the
idea everything -- youth, strength, health; to be ready to die
for the common weal -- what an exalted, what a happy lot! He
recalled his past -- pure, chaste, laborious; he remembered what
he had learned himself and what he had taught to others, and
decided that there was no exaggeration in the monk's words.
Tanya came to meet him in the park: she was by now wearing a
different dress.
"Are you here?" she said. "And we have been looking and looking
for you. . . . But what is the matter with you?" she asked in
wonder, glancing at his radiant, ecstatic face and eyes full of
tears. "How strange you are, Andryusha!"
"I am pleased, Tanya," said Kovrin, laying his hand on her
shoulders. "I am more than pleased: I am happy. Tanya, darling
Tanya, you are an extraordinary, nice creature. Dear Tanya, I am
so glad, I am so glad!"
He kissed both her hands ardently, and went on:
"I have just passed through an exalted, wonderful, unearthly
moment. But I can't tell you all about it or you would call me
mad and not believe me. Let us talk of you. Dear, delightful
Tanya! I love you, and am used to loving you. To have you near
me, to meet you a dozen times a day, has become a necessity of
my existence; I don't know how I shall get on without you when I
go back home."
"Oh," laughed Tanya, "you will forget about us in two days. We
are humble people and you are a great man."
"No; let us talk in earnest!" he said. "I shall take you with
me, Tanya. Yes? Will you come with me? Will you be mine?"
"Come," said Tanya, and tried to laugh again, but the laugh
would not come, and patches of colour came into her face.
She began breathing quickly and walked very quickly, but not to
the house, but further into the park.
"I was not thinking of it . . . I was not thinking of it," she
said, wringing her hands in despair.
And Kovrin followed her and went on talking, with the same
radiant, enthusiastic face:
"I want a love that will dominate me altogether; and that love
only you, Tanya, can give me. I am happy! I am happy!"
She was overwhelmed, and huddling and shrinking together, seemed
ten years older all at once, while he thought her beautiful and
expressed his rapture aloud:
"How lovely she is!"
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