A. P. Chekhov
- The Bishop
I
II
III IV
II
Next day, Palm Sunday, the bishop took the
service in the cathedral in the town, then he visited the bishop
of the diocese, then visited a very sick old lady, the widow of
a general, and at last drove home. Between one and two o'clock
he had welcome visitors dining with him -- his mother and his
niece Katya, a child of eight years old. All dinner-time the
spring sunshine was streaming in at the windows, throwing bright
light on the white tablecloth and on Katya's red hair. Through
the double windows they could hear the noise of the rooks and
the notes of the starlings in the garden.
"It is nine years since we have met," said the old lady. "And
when I looked at you in the monastery yesterday, good Lord!
you've not changed a bit, except maybe you are thinner and your
beard is a little longer. Holy Mother, Queen of Heaven!
Yesterday at the evening service no one could help crying. I,
too, as I looked at you, suddenly began crying, though I
couldn't say why. His Holy Will!"
And in spite of the affectionate tone in which she said this, he
could see she was constrained as though she were uncertain
whether to address him formally or familiarly, to laugh or not,
and that she felt herself more a deacon's widow than his mother.
And Katya gazed without blinking at her uncle, his holiness, as
though trying to discover what sort of a person he was. Her hair
sprang up from under the comb and the velvet ribbon and stood
out like a halo; she had a turned-up nose and sly eyes. The
child had broken a glass before sitting down to dinner, and now
her grandmother, as she talked, moved away from Katya first a
wineglass and then a tumbler. The bishop listened to his mother
and remembered how many, many years ago she used to take him and
his brothers and sisters to relations whom she considered rich;
in those days she was taken up with the care of her children,
now with her grandchildren, and she had brought Katya. . . .
"Your sister, Varenka, has four children," she told him; "Katya,
here, is the eldest. And your brother-in-law Father Ivan fell
sick, God knows of what, and died three days before the
Assumption; and my poor Varenka is left a beggar."
"And how is Nikanor getting on?" the bishop asked about his
eldest brother.
"He is all right, thank God. Though he has nothing much, yet he
can live. Only there is one thing: his son, my grandson
Nikolasha, did not want to go into the Church; he has gone to
the university to be a doctor. He thinks it is better; but who
knows! His Holy Will!"
"Nikolasha cuts up dead people," said Katya, spilling water over
her knees.
"Sit still, child," her grandmother observed calmly, and took
the glass out of her hand. "Say a prayer, and go on eating."
"How long it is since we have seen each other!" said the bishop,
and he tenderly stroked his mother's hand and shoulder; "and I
missed you abroad, mother, I missed you dreadfully."
"Thank you."
"I used to sit in the evenings at the open window, lonely and
alone; often there was music playing, and all at once I used to
be overcome with homesickness and felt as though I would give
everything only to be at home and see you."
His mother smiled, beamed, but at once she made a grave face and
said:
"Thank you."
His mood suddenly changed. He looked at his mother and could not
understand how she had come by that respectfulness, that timid
expression of face: what was it for? And he did not recognize
her. He felt sad and vexed. And then his head ached just as it
had the day before; his legs felt fearfully tired, and the fish
seemed to him stale and tasteless; he felt thirsty all the time.
. . .
After dinner two rich ladies, landowners, arrived and sat for an
hour and a half in silence with rigid countenances; the
archimandrite, a silent, rather deaf man, came to see him about
business. Then they began ringing for vespers; the sun was
setting behind the wood and the day was over. When he returned
from church, he hurriedly said his prayers, got into bed, and
wrapped himself up as warm as possible.
It was disagreeable to remember the fish he had eaten at dinner.
The moonlight worried him, and then he heard talking. In an
adjoining room, probably in the parlour, Father Sisoy was
talking politics:
"There's war among the Japanese now. They are fighting. The
Japanese, my good soul, are the same as the Montenegrins; they
are the same race. They were under the Turkish yoke together."
And then he heard the voice of Marya Timofyevna:
"So, having said our prayers and drunk tea, we went, you know,
to Father Yegor at Novokatnoye, so. . ."
And she kept on saying, "having had tea" or "having drunk tea,"
and it seemed as though the only thing she had done in her life
was to drink tea.
The bishop slowly, languidly, recalled the seminary, the
academy. For three years he had been Greek teacher in the
seminary: by that time he could not read without spectacles.
Then he had become a monk; he had been made a school inspector.
Then he had defended his thesis for his degree. When he was
thirty-two he had been made rector of the seminary, and
consecrated archimandrite: and then his life had been so easy,
so pleasant; it seemed so long, so long, no end was in sight.
Then he had begun to be ill, had grown very thin and almost
blind, and by the advice of the doctors had to give up
everything and go abroad.
"And what then?" asked Sisoy in the next room.
"Then we drank tea . . ." answered Marya Timofyevna.
"Good gracious, you've got a green beard," said Katya suddenly
in surprise, and she laughed.
The bishop remembered that the grey-headed Father Sisoy's beard
really had a shade of green in it, and he laughed.
"God have mercy upon us, what we have to put up with with this
girl!" said Sisoy, aloud, getting angry. "Spoilt child! Sit
quiet!"
The bishop remembered the perfectly new white church in which he
had conducted the services while living abroad, he remembered
the sound of the warm sea. In his flat he had five lofty light
rooms; in his study he had a new writing-table, lots of books.
He had read a great deal and often written. And he remembered
how he had pined for his native land, how a blind beggar woman
had played the guitar under his window every day and sung of
love, and how, as he listened, he had always for some reason
thought of the past. But eight years had passed and he had been
called back to Russia, and now he was a suffragan bishop, and
all the past had retreated far away into the mist as though it
were a dream. . . .
Father Sisoy came into the bedroom with a candle.
"I say!" he said, wondering, "are you asleep already, your
holiness?"
"What is it?"
"Why, it's still early, ten o'clock or less. I bought a candle
to-day; I wanted to rub you with tallow."
"I am in a fever . . ." said the bishop, and he sat up. "I
really ought to have something. My head is bad. . . ."
Sisoy took off the bishop's shirt and began rubbing his chest
and back with tallow.
"That's the way . . . that's the way . . ." he said. "Lord Jesus
Christ . . . that's the way. I walked to the town to-day; I was
at what's-his-name's -- the chief priest Sidonsky's. . . . I had
tea with him. I don't like him. Lord Jesus Christ. . . . That's
the way. I don't like him."
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