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A. P. Chekhov
- The Murder
I
II
III IV
V
VI
VII
II
On Annunciation Day, after the mail train had
been sent off, Matvey was sitting in the refreshment bar,
talking and drinking tea with lemon in it.
The waiter and Zhukov the policeman were listening to him.
"I was, I must tell you," Matvey was saying, "inclined to
religion from my earliest childhood. I was only twelve years old
when I used to read the epistle in church, and my parents were
greatly delighted, and every summer I used to go on a pilgrimage
with my dear mother. Sometimes other lads would be singing songs
and catching crayfish, while I would be all the time with my
mother. My elders commended me, and, indeed, I was pleased
myself that I was of such good behaviour. And when my mother
sent me with her blessing to the factory, I used between working
hours to sing tenor there in our choir, and nothing gave me
greater pleasure. I needn't say, I drank no vodka, I smoked no
tobacco, and lived in chastity; but we all know such a mode of
life is displeasing to the enemy of mankind, and he, the unclean
spirit, once tried to ruin me and began to darken my mind, just
as now with my cousin. First of all, I took a vow to fast every
Monday and not to eat meat any day, and as time went on all
sorts of fancies came over me. For the first week of Lent down
to Saturday the holy fathers have ordained a diet of dry food,
but it is no sin for the weak or those who work hard even to
drink tea, yet not a crumb passed into my mouth till the Sunday,
and afterwards all through Lent I did not allow myself a drop of
oil, and on Wednesdays and Fridays I did not touch a morsel at
all. It was the same in the lesser fasts. Sometimes in St.
Peter's fast our factory lads would have fish soup, while I
would sit a little apart from them and suck a dry crust.
Different people have different powers, of course, but I can say
of myself I did not find fast days hard, and, indeed, the
greater the zeal the easier it seems. You are only hungry on the
first days of the fast, and then you get used to it; it goes on
getting easier, and by the end of a week you don't mind it at
all, and there is a numb feeling in your legs as though you were
not on earth, but in the clouds. And, besides that, I laid all
sorts of penances on myself; I used to get up in the night and
pray, bowing down to the ground, used to drag heavy stones from
place to place, used to go out barefoot in the snow, and I even
wore chains, too. Only, as time went on, you know, I was
confessing one day to the priest and suddenly this reflection
occurred to me: why, this priest, I thought, is married, he eats
meat and smokes tobacco -- how can he confess me, and what power
has he to absolve my sins if he is more sinful that I? I even
scruple to eat Lenten oil, while he eats sturgeon, I dare say. I
went to another priest, and he, as ill luck would have it, was a
fat fleshy man, in a silk cassock; he rustled like a lady, and
he smelt of tobacco too. I went to fast and confess in the
monastery, and my heart was not at ease even there; I kept
fancying the monks were not living according to their rules. And
after that I could not find a service to my mind: in one place
they read the service too fast, in another they sang the wrong
prayer, in a third the sacristan stammered. Sometimes, the Lord
forgive me a sinner, I would stand in church and my heart would
throb with anger. How could one pray, feeling like that? And I
fancied that the people in the church did not cross themselves
properly, did not listen properly; wherever I looked it seemed
to me that they were all drunkards, that they broke the fast,
smoked, lived loose lives and played cards. I was the only one
who lived according to the commandments. The wily spirit did not
slumber; it got worse as it went on. I gave up singing in the
choir and I did not go to church at all; since my notion was
that I was a righteous man and that the church did not suit me
owing to its imperfections -- that is, indeed, like a fallen
angel, I was puffed up in my pride beyond all belief. After this
I began attempting to make a church for myself. I hired from a
deaf woman a tiny little room, a long way out of town near the
cemetery, and made a prayer-room like my cousin's, only I had
big church candlesticks, too, and a real censer. In this
prayer-room of mine I kept the rules of holy Mount Athos -- that
is, every day my matins began at midnight without fail, and on
the eve of the chief of the twelve great holy days my midnight
service lasted ten hours and sometimes even twelve. Monks are
allowed by rule to sit during the singing of the Psalter and the
reading of the Bible, but I wanted to be better than the monks,
and so I used to stand all through. I used to read and sing
slowly, with tears and sighing, lifting up my hands, and I used
to go straight from prayer to work without sleeping; and,
indeed, I was always praying at my work, too. Well, it got all
over the town 'Matvey is a saint; Matvey heals the sick and
senseless.' I never had healed anyone, of course, but we all
know wherever any heresy or false doctrine springs up there's no
keeping the female sex away. They are just like flies on the
honey. Old maids and females of all sorts came trailing to me,
bowing down to my feet, kissing my hands and crying out I was a
saint and all the rest of it, and one even saw a halo round my
head. It was too crowded in the prayer-room. I took a bigger
room, and then we had a regular tower of Babel. The devil got
hold of me completely and screened the light from my eyes with
his unclean hoofs. We all behaved as though we were frantic. I
read, while the old maids and other females sang, and then after
standing on their legs for twenty-four hours or longer without
eating or drinking, suddenly a trembling would come over them as
though they were in a fever; after that, one would begin
screaming and then another -- it was horrible! I, too, would
shiver all over like a Jew in a frying-pan, I don't know myself
why, and our legs began to prance about. It's a strange thing,
indeed: you don't want to, but you prance about and waggle your
arms; and after that, screaming and shrieking, we all danced and
ran after one another -- ran till we dropped; and in that way,
in wild frenzy, I fell into fornication."
The policeman laughed, but, noticing that no one else was
laughing, became serious and said:
"That's Molokanism. I have heard they are all like that in the
Caucasus."
"But I was not killed by a thunderbolt," Matvey went on,
crossing himself before the ikon and moving his lips. "My dead
mother must have been praying for me in the other world. When
everyone in the town looked upon me as a saint, and even the
ladies and gentlemen of good family used to come to me in secret
for consolation, I happened to go into our landlord, Osip
Varlamitch, to ask forgiveness -- it was the Day of Forgiveness
-- and he fastened the door with the hook, and we were left
alone face to face. And he began to reprove me, and I must tell
you Osip Varlamitch was a man of brains, though without
education, and everyone respected and feared him, for he was a
man of stern, God-fearing life and worked hard. He had been the
mayor of the town, and a warden of the church for twenty years
maybe, and had done a great deal of good; he had covered all the
New Moscow Road with gravel, had painted the church, and had
decorated the columns to look like malachite. Well, he fastened
the door, and -- 'I have been wanting to get at you for a long
time, you rascal, . . .' he said. 'You think you are a saint,'
he said. 'No you are not a saint, but a backslider from God, a
heretic and an evildoer! . . .' And he went on and on. . . . I
can't tell you how he said it, so eloquently and cleverly, as
though it were all written down, and so touchingly. He talked
for two hours. His words penetrated my soul; my eyes were
opened. I listened, listened and -- burst into sobs! 'Be an
ordinary man,' he said, 'eat and drink, dress and pray like
everyone else. All that is above the ordinary is of the devil.
Your chains,' he said, 'are of the devil; your fasting is of the
devil; your prayer-room is of the devil. It is all pride,' he
said. Next day, on Monday in Holy Week, it pleased God I should
fall ill. I ruptured myself and was taken to the hospital. I was
terribly worried, and wept bitterly and trembled. I thought
there was a straight road before me from the hospital to hell,
and I almost died. I was in misery on a bed of sickness for six
months, and when I was discharged the first thing I did I
confessed, and took the sacrament in the regular way and became
a man again. Osip Varlamitch saw me off home and exhorted me:
'Remember, Matvey, that anything above the ordinary is of the
devil.' And now I eat and drink like everyone else and pray like
everyone else. . . . If it happens now that the priest smells of
tobacco or vodka I don't venture to blame him, because the
priest, too, of course, is an ordinary man. But as soon as I am
told that in the town or in the village a saint has set up who
does not eat for weeks, and makes rules of his own, I know whose
work it is. So that is how I carried on in the past, gentlemen.
Now, like Osip Varlamitch, I am continually exhorting my cousins
and reproaching them, but I am a voice crying in the wilderness.
God has not vouchsafed me the gift."
Matvey's story evidently made no impression whatever. Sergey
Nikanoritch said nothing, but began clearing the refreshments
off the counter, while the policeman began talking of how rich
Matvey's cousin was.
"He must have thirty thousand at least," he said.
Zhukov the policeman, a sturdy, well-fed, red-haired man with a
full face (his cheeks quivered when he walked), usually sat
lolling and crossing his legs when not in the presence of his
superiors. As he talked he swayed to and fro and whistled
carelessly, while his face had a self-satisfied replete air, as
though he had just had dinner. He was making money, and he
always talked of it with the air of a connoisseur. He undertook
jobs as an agent, and when anyone wanted to sell an estate, a
horse or a carriage, they applied to him.
"Yes, it will be thirty thousand, I dare say," Sergey
Nikanoritch assented. "Your grandfather had an immense fortune,"
he said, addressing Matvey. "Immense it was; all left to your
father and your uncle. Your father died as a young man and your
uncle got hold of it all, and afterwards, of course, Yakov
Ivanitch. While you were going pilgrimages with your mama and
singing tenor in the factory, they didn't let the grass grow
under their feet."
"Fifteen thousand comes to your share," said the policeman
swaying from side to side. "The tavern belongs to you in common,
so the capital is in common. Yes. If I were in your place I
should have taken it into court long ago. I would have taken it
into court for one thing, and while the case was going on I'd
have knocked his face to a jelly."
Yakov Ivanitch was disliked because, when anyone believes
differently from others, it upsets even people who are
indifferent to religion. The policeman disliked him also because
he, too, sold horses and carriages.
"You don't care about going to law with your cousin because you
have plenty of money of your own," said the waiter to Matvey,
looking at him with envy. "It is all very well for anyone who
has means, but here I shall die in this position, I suppose. . .
."
Matvey began declaring that he hadn't any money at all, but
Sergey Nikanoritch was not listening. Memories of the past and
of the insults which he endured every day came showering upon
him. His bald head began to perspire; he flushed and blinked.
"A cursed life!" he said with vexation, and he banged the
sausage on the floor.
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