Fifty-Two Stories

Father Anastasy suddenly remembered that in a couple of hours the dean was to serve the Easter matins, and he became so ashamed of his unpleasant, inhibiting presence that he decided to go away at once and give the weary man some peace. And the old man got up to go, but before he began to say goodbye he spent a whole minute clearing his throat and looking imploringly, with the same expression of vague expectation in his whole figure, at the dean’s back; shame, timidity, and a pathetic, forced laughter typical of people who do not respect themselves, played over his face. Waving his hand somehow resolutely, he said with a wheezing, jittery laughter:

“Father Fyodor, carry your mercy through to the end, tell them to give me before I go…a little glass of vodka!”

“This is no time to be drinking vodka,” the dean said sternly. “You should be ashamed.”

Father Anastasy became even more confused, laughed, and, forgetting his resolve to go home, sank back into the chair. The dean looked at his perplexed, embarrassed face, at his bent body, and felt sorry for the old man.

“God willing, we’ll have a drink tomorrow,” he said, wishing to soften his stern refusal. “All in good time.”

The dean believed in reforming people, but now, as the feeling of pity flared up in him, it began to seem to him that this man who was under investigation, haggard, covered with sins and ailments, was irretrievably lost for life, that there was no longer any power on earth that could unbend his back, give clarity to his gaze, restrain his unpleasant, timid laugh, which he laughed on purpose to smooth over, if only slightly, the repulsive impression he made on people.

The old man now seemed to Father Fyodor not guilty or depraved, but humiliated, insulted, wretched; the dean remembered his wife, his nine children, the dirty, beggarly beds in Zyavkin’s inn, remembered, for some reason, those who are glad to see drunken priests and exposed superiors, and he thought that the best thing Father Anastasy could do now was die as soon as possible and leave this world forever.

There was the sound of footsteps.

“Father Fyodor, are you resting?” a bass voice asked in the entryway.

“No, deacon, come in.”

Orlov’s colleague, the deacon Liubimov, came into the drawing room, an old man with a big bald spot on the top of his head, but still sturdy, dark-haired, and with thick black eyebrows, like a Georgian’s. He bowed to Father Anastasy and sat down.

“What’s the good word?” asked the dean.

“Is there any?” the deacon replied and, after a pause, went on with a smile: “Little children, little grief; big children, big grief. Such things are going on, Father Fyodor, that I can’t come to my senses. A comedy, that’s all.”

He paused again briefly, smiled more broadly, and said:

“Today Nikolai Matveich came back from Kharkov. He told me about my Pyotr. Went to see him twice, he said.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Got me worried, God help him. He wanted to give me joy, but when I thought it over, it turned out there wasn’t much joy in it. More cause for grief than joy…‘Your Petrushka,’ he says, ‘lives a high life, he’s way beyond reach now.’ ‘Well, thank God for that,’ I say. ‘I had dinner with him,’ he says, ‘and saw his whole way of life. He lives grandly,’ he says, ‘couldn’t be better.’ I’m curious, of course, so I ask: ‘And what did they serve at his dinner?’ ‘First,’ he says, ‘a fish dish, something like a soup, then tongue with peas, then,’ he says, ‘a roast turkey.’ ‘Turkey during Lent? A fine treat!’ I say. Turkey during the Great Lent. Eh?”

“That’s not so surprising,” said the dean, narrowing his eyes mockingly.

And, tucking both thumbs behind his belt, he straightened up and said in the tone in which he usually delivered sermons or taught catechism in the district high school:

“People who don’t observe the fasts can be divided into two different categories: those who don’t observe out of light-mindedness, and those who don’t out of unbelief. Your Pyotr doesn’t observe the fasts out of unbelief. Yes.”

The deacon looked timidly at Father Fyodor’s stern face and said:

“That’s not the worst of it…We talked and talked, about this and that, and it also turned out that my unbelieving boy lives with some madame, another man’s wife. She’s there in his quarters in place of a wife and hostess: pours tea, receives guests, and all the rest, as if they were married. It’s already the third year he’s been carrying on with this viper. A comedy, that’s all. Three years together, and no children.”

“Meaning they live in chastity!” Father Anastasy giggled, with a wheezing cough. “There are children, Father Deacon, there are, but they don’t keep them at home! They send them to foster care! Ha-ha-ha…” (Anastasy had a coughing fit.)

“Don’t butt in, Father Anastasy,” the dean said sternly.