Free The Naked Year by Boris Pilnyak Page A

A-ach!…”
    Gleb is thinking about the archangel Varakhiil, whose coat is all white lilies–and he painfully remembers his mother… In the mother’s dark room on the walls hang head and shoulder portraits, already faded and in round gold frames; the ceilings in the mother’s room are sooty, with bas-relief Cupids, and on the walls there is damask wallpaper. In the mother’s room, in front of the Princess-mother, Gleb lowers himself onto his knees, extends his hands imploringly and whispers painfully:
    â€œMummy, Mummy!…”
    Someone rings the front door bell, a telegram is brought from Moscow to Lidia Yevgrafovna:
    â€œHealth. Love, Brilling.”
    Lidia sends Marfusha to reply, and from the lumber room the trunks are brought down to the mezzanine.

TWO CONVERSATIONS. THE OLD MEN
    The scorching sky pours down a scorching heat mist. Sweltering in the sun on the threshold of his cell, a black monk croons ancient Russian songs. In the dark cell the window is high in balsamine, the walls are dark, a jug of water and bread are on the table amidst papers–and the cell is in a far corner, near the tower, covered in moss. The priest, covered in moss, is sitting by the table on a high stool, and on a low stool Gleb sits opposite him. The black monk croons songs–
    â€œIt was on a Sabbath day
    and the weather it was foul!…”
    The sun scorches, the dusty sparrows chirp. Gleb is speaking quietly. The priest’s face is shiny like suede, with short gray hairs, his little eyes look out of his beard slyly and keenly, out from his beard protrudes a single yellowed fang, and his bald pate is like the lid of a coffin. The sly little priest listens.
    â€œOur greatest artists,” says Gleb quietly, “who are superior to Da Vinci, Correggio, Perugino–are Andrei Rublyov, Prokopy Chirin and those nameless ones who are scattered about the Novgorods, Pskovs, Suzdals, Kolomnas, about our monasteries and churches. And what art they had, what talent! How they solved the most complicated artistic problems… Art must be heroic. The artist, the craftsman, is a hero. And he must select for his works the majestic and the beautiful. What is more majestic than Christ and the Virgin?–especially the Virgin. Our ancient craftsmen interpreted the image of the Virgin as the sweetest of truths, the spiritual essence of motherhood–universal motherhood. Not without reason, even today, do our Russian peasant women–mothers all–pray, confess their sins–to the Virgin: she forgives, accepts sins, for the sake of motherhood…”
    â€œAbout revolution, my son, about revolution,” says the priest. “About popular rebellion! What do you say?–You see that loaf there?–there are others as well being brought little by little! And what do you think,
in twenty years, when all the priests have died out, what will it be like?… in twenty years!…” –and the priest grins slyly.
    â€œIt’s difficult for me to say, Father… I’ve spent a good deal of time abroad and always felt like an orphan there. The people in their bowler hats, jackets, dinner jackets, frock coats, the trams, buses, the subways, skyscrapers, the dazzle, the brilliance, hotels with all modern conveniences, restaurants, bars, baths, the finest linen, and female night staff who come quite openly to satisfy unnatural male demands–and what social inequality, what bourgeois customs and rules! and every worker dreams about stocks and shares, and so does the peasant. And everything is dead, a mass of machines, technology and comfort. The path of European culture led to war, ‘fourteen was able to create this war. The machine culture forgot about the culture of the spirit, the spiritual. And recent European art: in painting–either the poster or the hysteria of protest, in literature–either the stock market and detectives, or adventures among