|
|
|
Chekhov
- The Bishop
I
II
III IV
IV
On Thursday he celebrated mass in the
cathedral; it was the Washing of Feet. When the service was over
and the people were going home, it was sunny, warm; the water
gurgled in the gutters, and the unceasing trilling of the larks,
tender, telling of peace, rose from the fields outside the town.
The trees were already awakening and smiling a welcome, while
above them the infinite, fathomless blue sky stretched into the
distance, God knows whither.
On reaching home his holiness drank some tea, then changed his
clothes, lay down on his bed, and told the lay brother to close
the shutters on the windows. The bedroom was darkened. But what
weariness, what pain in his legs and his back, a chill heavy
pain, what a noise in his ears! He had not slept for a long time
-- for a very long time, as it seemed to him now, and some
trifling detail which haunted his brain as soon as his eyes were
closed prevented him from sleeping. As on the day before, sounds
reached him from the adjoining rooms through the walls, voices,
the jingle of glasses and teaspoons. . . . Marya Timofyevna was
gaily telling Father Sisoy some story with quaint turns of
speech, while the latter answered in a grumpy, ill-humoured
voice: "Bother them! Not likely! What next!" And the bishop
again felt vexed and then hurt that with other people his old
mother behaved in a simple, ordinary way, while with him, her
son, she was shy, spoke little, and did not say what she meant,
and even, as he fancied, had during all those three days kept
trying in his presence to find an excuse for standing up,
because she was embarrassed at sitting before him. And his
father? He, too, probably, if he had been living, would not have
been able to utter a word in the bishop's presence. . . .
Something fell down on the floor in the adjoining room and was
broken; Katya must have dropped a cup or a saucer, for Father
Sisoy suddenly spat and said angrily:
"What a regular nuisance the child is! Lord forgive my
transgressions! One can't provide enough for her."
Then all was quiet, the only sounds came from outside. And when
the bishop opened his eyes he saw Katya in his room, standing
motionless, staring at him. Her red hair, as usual, stood up
from under the comb like a halo.
"Is that you, Katya?" he asked. "Who is it downstairs who keeps
opening and shutting a door?"
"I don't hear it," answered Katya; and she listened.
"There, someone has just passed by."
"But that was a noise in your stomach, uncle."
He laughed and stroked her on the head.
"So you say Cousin Nikolasha cuts up dead people?" he asked
after a pause.
"Yes, he is studying."
"And is he kind?"
"Oh, yes, he's kind. But he drinks vodka awfully."
"And what was it your father died of?"
"Papa was weak and very, very thin, and all at once his throat
was bad. I was ill then, too, and brother Fedya; we all had bad
throats. Papa died, uncle, and we got well."
Her chin began quivering, and tears gleamed in her eyes and
trickled down her cheeks.
"Your holiness," she said in a shrill voice, by now weeping
bitterly, "uncle, mother and all of us are left very wretched. .
. . Give us a little money . . . do be kind . . . uncle darling.
. . ."
He, too, was moved to tears, and for a long time was too much
touched to speak. Then he stroked her on the head, patted her on
the shoulder and said:
"Very good, very good, my child. When the holy Easter comes, we
will talk it over. . . . I will help you. . . . I will help you.
. . ."
His mother came in quietly, timidly, and prayed before the ikon.
Noticing that he was not sleeping, she said:
"Won't you have a drop of soup?"
"No, thank you," he answered, "I am not hungry."
"You seem to be unwell, now I look at you. I should think so;
you may well be ill! The whole day on your legs, the whole day.
. . . And, my goodness, it makes one's heart ache even to look
at you! Well, Easter is not far off; you will rest then, please
God. Then we will have a talk, too, but now I'm not going to
disturb you with my chatter. Come along, Katya; let his holiness
sleep a little."
And he remembered how once very long ago, when he was a boy, she
had spoken exactly like that, in the same jestingly respectful
tone, with a Church dignitary. . . . Only from her
extraordinarily kind eyes and the timid, anxious glance she
stole at him as she went out of the room could one have guessed
that this was his mother. He shut his eyes and seemed to sleep,
but twice heard the clock strike and Father Sisoy coughing the
other side of the wall. And once more his mother came in and
looked timidly at him for a minute. Someone drove up to the
steps, as he could hear, in a coach or in a chaise. Suddenly a
knock, the door slammed, the lay brother came into the bedroom.
"Your holiness," he called.
"Well?"
"The horses are here; it's time for the evening service."
"What o'clock is it?"
"A quarter past seven."
He dressed and drove to the cathedral. During all the "Twelve
Gospels" he had to stand in the middle of the church without
moving, and the first gospel, the longest and the most
beautiful, he read himself. A mood of confidence and courage
came over him. That first gospel, "Now is the Son of Man
glorified," he knew by heart; and as he read he raised his eyes
from time to time, and saw on both sides a perfect sea of lights
and heard the splutter of candles, but, as in past years, he
could not see the people, and it seemed as though these were all
the same people as had been round him in those days, in his
childhood and his youth; that they would always be the same
every year and till such time as God only knew.
His father had been a deacon, his grandfather a priest, his
great-grandfather a deacon, and his whole family, perhaps from
the days when Christianity had been accepted in Russia, had
belonged to the priesthood; and his love for the Church
services, for the priesthood, for the peal of the bells, was
deep in him, ineradicable, innate. In church, particularly when
he took part in the service, he felt vigorous, of good cheer,
happy. So it was now. Only when the eighth gospel had been read,
he felt that his voice had grown weak, even his cough was
inaudible. His head had begun to ache intensely, and he was
troubled by a fear that he might fall down. And his legs were
indeed quite numb, so that by degrees he ceased to feel them and
could not understand how or on what he was standing, and why he
did not fall. . . .
It was a quarter to twelve when the service was over. When he
reached home, the bishop undressed and went to bed at once
without even saying his prayers. He could not speak and felt
that he could not have stood up. When he had covered his head
with the quilt he felt a sudden longing to be abroad, an
insufferable longing! He felt that he would give his life not to
see those pitiful cheap shutters, those low ceilings, not to
smell that heavy monastery smell. If only there were one person
to whom he could have talked, have opened his heart!
For a long while he heard footsteps in the next room and could
not tell whose they were. At last the door opened, and Sisoy
came in with a candle and a tea-cup in his hand.
"You are in bed already, your holiness?" he asked. "Here I have
come to rub you with spirit and vinegar. A thorough rubbing does
a great deal of good. Lord Jesus Christ! . . . That's the way .
. . that's the way. . . . I've just been in our monastery. . . .
I don't like it. I'm going away from here to-morrow, your
holiness; I don't want to stay longer. Lord Jesus Christ. . . .
That's the way. . . ."
Sisoy could never stay long in the same place, and he felt as
though he had been a whole year in the Pankratievsky Monastery.
Above all, listening to him it was difficult to understand where
his home was, whether he cared for anyone or anything, whether
he believed in God. . . . He did not know himself why he was a
monk, and, indeed, he did not think about it, and the time when
he had become a monk had long passed out of his memory; it
seemed as though he had been born a monk.
"I'm going away to-morrow; God be with them all."
"I should like to talk to you. . . . I can't find the time,"
said the bishop softly with an effort. "I don't know anything or
anybody here. . . ."
"I'll stay till Sunday if you like; so be it, but I don't want
to stay longer. I am sick of them!"
"I ought not to be a bishop," said the bishop softly. "I ought
to have been a village priest, a deacon . . . or simply a monk.
. . . All this oppresses me . . . oppresses me."
"What? Lord Jesus Christ. . . . That's the way. Come, sleep
well, your holiness! . . . What's the good of talking? It's no
use. Good-night!"
The bishop did not sleep all night. And at eight o'clock in the
morning he began to have hemorrhage from the bowels. The lay
brother was alarmed, and ran first to the archimandrite, then
for the monastery doctor, Ivan Andreyitch, who lived in the
town. The doctor, a stout old man with a long grey beard, made a
prolonged examination of the bishop, and kept shaking his head
and frowning, then said:
"Do you know, your holiness, you have got typhoid?"
After an hour or so of hemorrhage the bishop looked much
thinner, paler, and wasted; his face looked wrinkled, his eyes
looked bigger, and he seemed older, shorter, and it seemed to
him that he was thinner, weaker, more insignificant than any
one, that everything that had been had retreated far, far away
and would never go on again or be repeated.
"How good," he thought, "how good!"
His old mother came. Seeing his wrinkled face and his big eyes,
she was frightened, she fell on her knees by the bed and began
kissing his face, his shoulders, his hands. And to her, too, it
seemed that he was thinner, weaker, and more insignificant than
anyone, and now she forgot that he was a bishop, and kissed him
as though he were a child very near and very dear to her.
"Pavlusha, darling," she said; "my own, my darling son! . . .
Why are you like this? Pavlusha, answer me!"
Katya, pale and severe, stood beside her, unable to understand
what was the matter with her uncle, why there was such a look of
suffering on her grandmother's face, why she was saying such sad
and touching things. By now he could not utter a word, he could
understand nothing, and he imagined he was a simple ordinary
man, that he was walking quickly, cheerfully through the fields,
tapping with his stick, while above him was the open sky bathed
in sunshine, and that he was free now as a bird and could go
where he liked!
"Pavlusha, my darling son, answer me," the old woman was saying.
"What is it? My own!"
"Don't disturb his holiness," Sisoy said angrily, walking about
the room. "Let him sleep . . . what's the use . . . it's no
good. . . ."
Three doctors arrived, consulted together, and went away again.
The day was long, incredibly long, then the night came on and
passed slowly, slowly, and towards morning on Saturday the lay
brother went in to the old mother who was lying on the sofa in
the parlour, and asked her to go into the bedroom: the bishop
had just breathed his last.
Next day was Easter Sunday. There were forty-two churches and
six monasteries in the town; the sonorous, joyful clang of the
bells hung over the town from morning till night unceasingly,
setting the spring air aquiver; the birds were singing, the sun
was shining brightly. The big market square was noisy, swings
were going, barrel organs were playing, accordions were
squeaking, drunken voices were shouting. After midday people
began driving up and down the principal street.
In short, all was merriment, everything was satisfactory, just
as it had been the year before, and as it will be in all
likelihood next year.
A month later a new suffragan bishop was appointed, and no one
thought anything more of Bishop Pyotr, and afterwards he was
completely forgotten. And only the dead man's old mother, who is
living to-day with her son-in-law the deacon in a remote little
district town, when she goes out at night to bring her cow in
and meets other women at the pasture, begins talking of her
children and her grandchildren, and says that she had a son a
bishop, and this she says timidly, afraid that she may not be
believed. . . .
And, indeed, there are some who do not believe her.
NOTES
Pankratievsky Monastery: named for St. Pancras, first bishop of
Sicily, martyred A. D. 60
Jehud's ass: possible reference to Jehu, who was notorious for
driving fast and recklessly (II Kings 9:20)
Betula Kinderbalsamica Secuta: fractured Latin and German for
"twigs children-healing flogger"
read the names: in the Orthodox Russian Church parishioners pass
notes with names of those needing prayers
archimandrite: monk who is head of a monastery
war among the Japanese: the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895
Montenegrins: South Slavic people allied with Russian against
Turks
suffragan bishop: a bishop in charge of only one town (a
diocesan bishop is in charge of more than one town, and thus
above a suffragan bishop)
five, a four, and sometimes even a three: an "A" "B" or "C"
the Bridegroom who comes at midnight: cf. Matthew 25:6
Now is the Son of Man glorified: John 13:31
Christianity had been accepted in Russia: around 988, when
Vladimir, Grand Prince of Kiev, was converted
|
|
|
