Fifty-Two Stories

Anastasy’s words, his wheezing, his cackling laughter at something that was not funny, had an unpleasant effect on the dean and the deacon. The dean was about to tell the old man “Don’t butt in,” but he did not say it and merely winced.

“I can’t write to him!” sighed the deacon.

“If you can’t, who can?”

“Father Fyodor!” the deacon said, inclining his head to one side and pressing his hand to his heart. “I’m an uneducated, slow-witted man, but to you the Lord has given intelligence and wisdom. You know and understand everything, you grasp it all with your mind, while I don’t even know how to speak properly. Be so good, instruct me in the composing of this letter! Teach me what and how…”

“What is there to teach? There’s nothing to teach. Sit down and write.”

“No, do me this kindness, Father Superior! I beg you. I know he’ll be frightened of your letter and listen to your advice, because you’re also educated. Be so good! I’ll sit down, and you dictate. Tomorrow it would be a sin to write,⁶ but today is just the right time, and I’ll calm down.”

The dean looked at the deacon’s pleading face, remembered the unsympathetic Pyotr, and agreed to dictate. He sat the deacon at his desk and began:

“So, write…‘Christ is risen, my dear son…,’⁷ exclamation point. ‘Rumors have reached me, your father…’ then in parentheses…‘and from what source does not concern you…’ parenthesis…Written that?…‘that you are leading a life consistent neither with divine nor with human law. Neither the comfort, nor the mundane splendor, nor the education with which you cover yourself externally, can conceal your pagan look. In name you are a Christian, but in essence you are a pagan, as pitiful and unfortunate as all other pagans, even more pitiful, because those pagans, not knowing Christ, perish out of ignorance, while you are perishing because, though you possess the treasure, you neglect it. I will not enumerate here all your vices, which are known well enough to you, I will only say that I see the cause of your perdition in your unbelief. You imagine yourself wise, boast of your scholarly knowledge, and yet you refuse to understand that knowledge without faith not only does not elevate a man, but even reduces him to the level of a lowly animal, for…’ ”

The whole letter was in that vein. Having finished writing, the deacon read it aloud, beamed, and jumped up.

“A gift, truly a gift!” he said, looking rapturously at the dean and clasping his hands. “What a godsent gift, really! Eh? Queen of Heaven! Never in a hundred years could I come up with such a letter! Lord save you!”

Father Anastasy was also in raptures.

“Without a gift you won’t go writing like that!” he said, getting up and moving his fingers. “You won’t! It’s such rhetoric, no philosopher could write a little comma of it! A mind! A brilliant mind! If you weren’t married, Father Fyodor, you’d have been a bishop long ago, that’s the truth!”

Having poured out his wrath in the letter, the dean felt relieved. Fatigue and brokenness came back to him.

The deacon was an old acquaintance, and the dean said to him unceremoniously:

“Well, Deacon, go with God. I’ll lie down on the couch for half an hour, I need some rest.”

The deacon left and took Anastasy with him. As always happens on the eve of Easter, it was dark outside, but the whole sky shone with bright, radiant stars. In the quiet, motionless air there was a scent of spring and festivity.

“How long was he dictating?” The deacon marveled. “Some ten minutes, not more! Another man would take a month and not compose such a letter. Eh? There’s a mind for you! Such a mind, I don’t even know what to say! Astonishing! Truly astonishing!”

“Education!” sighed Anastasy, tucking the skirts of his cassock up to his waist as he crossed the muddy street. “We can’t compare with him. We’re from simple church folk, but he’s got learning. A real man, whatever you say.”

“You should hear him read the Gospel in Latin tonight during the liturgy!⁸ He knows Latin and he knows Greek…And Petrukha, Petrukha!” The deacon suddenly remembered. “Well, now he’ll rub his sores! Bite his tongue! He’ll know what’s what! Now he won’t go asking, ‘Why?’ He’s met his match, that’s what! Ha-ha-ha!”

The deacon burst into loud and merry laughter. Once the letter to Pyotr was written, he became cheerful and calmed down. Consciousness of a fulfilled parental duty and faith in the written word brought back his ready laughter and good spirits.

“Pyotr means ‘stone’ in translation,” he said as they approached his house. “My Pyotr’s not a stone, he’s a rag. That viper took him over, and he coddles her, he can’t get rid of her. Pah! There really are such women, God forgive me. Eh? Where’s their shame? She latched on to the lad, clings to him, and keeps him at her skirts…may the foul one take her where she deserves!”

“Maybe it’s not she who holds him, but he her?”