The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

“And you probably got into trouble on account of it?”

“That I did, sir. The father superior said I’d imagined it all because I don’t go to church enough, and he gave me a blessing that, once I was finished with the horses, I should always stand by the screen in front to light candles, but here those nasty little demons contrived things even better and thoroughly did me in. It was on the Wet Savior,⁴¹ at the vigil, during the blessing of bread according to the rite, the father superior and a hieromonk were standing in the middle of the church, and one little old woman gave me a candle and said:

“ ‘Put it before the icon of the feast, dearie.’ ”

“I went to the icon stand where the icon of the ‘Savior on the Waters’ lay, and was putting that candle in place, when another fell. I bent down to pick it up, started putting it back in place—and two more fell. I started replacing them—and four fell. I just shook my head: ‘Well,’ I think, ‘that’s bound to be my little imps vexing me again and tearing things out of my hands …’ I bent down, quickly picked up the fallen candles, and on straightening up hit the back of my head against the candle stand … and the candles just came raining down. Well, here I got angry, and I knocked all the rest of the candles off with my hand. ‘Why,’ I think, ‘if there’s such insolence going on, I’d better just throw it all down myself.’ ”

“And what did you get for that?”

“They wanted to try me for it, but our recluse, the blind elder Sysoy, who lives with us in an underground hermitage, interceded for me.

“ ‘What would you try him for,’ he says, ‘when it’s Satan’s servants who have confounded him?’

“The father superior heeded him and gave his blessing that I be put in an empty cellar without trial.”

“How long did you spend in the cellar?”

“The father superior didn’t give his blessing for a precise length of time, he simply said ‘Let him sit there,’ and I sat there all summer right up to the first frost.”

“It must be supposed that the boredom and torment in the cellar were no less than on the steppe?”

“Ah, no, how can you compare them? Here the church bells could be heard, and comrades visited me. They came, stood over the pit, and we talked, and the father bursar ordered a millstone lowered to me on a rope, so that I could grind salt for the kitchen. There’s no comparison with the steppe or anywhere else.”

“And when did they take you out? Probably with the frost, because it got cold?”

“No, sir, it wasn’t on account of the cold at all, but for a different reason: because I started to prophesy.”

“To prophesy!?”

“Yes, sir, in the cellar I finally fell to pondering what an utterly worthless spirit I had, and how much I’d endured because of it, and without any improvement, and I sent a novice to a certain teaching elder, to inquire if I could ask God to give me a different, more appropriate spirit. And the elder ordered him to tell me: ‘Let him pray as he should, and then expect what cannot be expected.’

“I did just that: three whole nights I spent on this instrument, my knees, in my pit, praying fervently to heaven, and I began to expect something else to be accomplished in my soul. And we had another monk, Geronty, he was very well read and had various books and newspapers, and once he gave me the life of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk⁴² to read, and whenever he happened to pass by my pit, he’d throw me a newspaper he had under his cassock.

“ ‘Read,’ he says, ‘and look for what’s useful: that will be a diversion for you in your ditch.’