Free Stories by ANTON CHEKHOV Page A

akathists?” I asked Ieronym.
    “Where could he publish them?” he sighed. “And it would be strange to publish them. What for? In our monastery nobody’s interested in them. They don’t like it. They knew Nikolai wrote them, but they paid no attention. Nowadays, sir, nobody respects new writings!”
    “Are they prejudiced against them?”
    “Exactly so. If Nikolai had been an elder, the brothers might have been curious, but he wasn’t even forty years old. There were some who laughed and even considered his writings a sin.”
    “Then why did he write?”
    “More for his own delight. Of all the brothers, I was the only one who read his akathists. I used to come to him on the quiet, so that the others wouldn’t see, and he was glad I was interested. He embraced me, stroked my head, called me tender words as if I were a little child. He would close the door, sit me down next to him, and start reading …”
    Ieronym left the cable and came over to me.
    “We were like friends, he and I,” he whispered, looking at me with shining eyes. “Wherever he went, I went, too. He missed me when I wasn’t there. And he loved me more than the others, and allbecause I wept from his akathists. It moves me to remember it! Now I’m like an orphan or a widow. You know, in our monastery the people are all good, kind, pious, but … there’s no softness and delicacy in any of them, they’re all like low-class people. They talk loudly, stamp their feet when they walk, make noise, cough, but Nikolai always spoke quietly, gently, and if he noticed that anyone was asleep or praying, he would pass by like a gnat or a mosquito. His face was tender, pitiful …”
    Ieronym sighed deeply and took hold of the cable. We were nearing the bank. Out of the darkness and silence of the river we gradually floated into an enchanted kingdom, filled with suffocating smoke, sputtering lamps, and tumult. People could be seen clearly moving about the pitch barrels. The flashing of the firelent their red faces and figures a strange, almost fantastic expression. Occasionally, among the heads and faces, horses’ muzzles appeared, motionless, as if cast in red copper.
    “They’re about to start the Easter canon …” said Ieronym, “and Nikolai isn’t here, there’s no one to grasp it … For him there was no writing sweeter than this canon. He used to grasp every word of it! You’ll be there, sir, try to grasp what they sing: it will take your breath away!”
    “And you won’t be in church?”
    “I can’t be, sir … I have to take people across.”
    “But won’t they relieve you?”
    “I don’t know … I should have been relieved between eight and nine, but as you see, I haven’t been! … And, to tell the truth, I’d like to be in church …”
    “Are you a monk?”
    “Yes, sir … that is, I’m a novice.”
    The ferry ran into the bank and stopped. I gave Ieronym a five-kopeck piece for the ride and jumped onto dry land. At once a cart with a boy and a sleeping woman drove creaking onto the ferry. Ieronym, faintly colored by the lights, leaned on the cable, curved his body, and pushed the ferry off…
    I took a few steps through the mud, but further on I had to follow a soft, freshly trampled path. This path led to the dark, cave-like gates of the monastery, through clouds of smoke, through a disorderly crowd of people, unharnessed horses, carts, britzkas. It was all creaking, snorting, laughing, and over it all flashed crimsonlight and wavy shadows of smoke … A veritable chaos! And in this turmoil they still found room to load the little cannon and sell gingerbreads!
    There was no less bustle on the other side of the wall, in the churchyard, but there was more ceremoniousness and order to be observed. Here there was a smell of juniper and incense. There was loud talk, but no laughter or snorting. People with kulichi 7 and bundles huddled together among the tombstones and crosses. Obviously many of them had come a long way to