Short Fiction, Vladimir Korolenko [finding audrey TXT] 📗

said jokingly. “It’s crowded⁠ ⁠… with Mordvin women.⁠ ⁠…”

The wanderer turned and threw a keen glance at the speaker. Suddenly his face took on a humble expression and he walked back to the gate⁠—and three times he crossed himself reverently and ostentatiously.

The peasants looked at one another in surprise; the stranger had made the sign of the cross not with three fingers, but in the old way with only two.

“The Lord, Who seest all things, will reward the monks according to their mercy,” he said with a sigh. “We, brothers, will shake off the dust from our feet, and listen here, in the temple not made with hands (he pointed gracefully and calmly to the evening sky), to an instructive sermon on repentance.⁠ ⁠…”

The peasants crowded together; their faces expressed their delighted and also credulous surprise. The change was too unexpected.⁠ ⁠… The idea of holding their own meeting on the alien festival and of listening at the very gate of the monastery to a wandering preacher, who made the sign of the cross in the old way, clearly pleased the adherents of the old faith. The preacher took his stand at the base of the bell-tower. The wind ruffled his dusty, light hair.

It was hard to tell the man’s precise age, but he was clearly not old. His face was heavily tanned and his hair and eyes seemed faded from the action of sun and storm.

At each movement of his head, however slight, the cords of his neck stood out prominently and trembled. The man gave you, involuntarily, the impression of something unfortunate, wonderfully self-controlled and, perchance, evil.

He began to read aloud. He read well, simply, and convincingly, and, stopping now and then, he commented in his own way on what he had read. Once he glanced at me, but he quickly shifted his eyes. I thought he did not care for my presence. After that he turned more often to one of his auditors.

This was a broad-shouldered, undersized peasant, whose shape might have been fashioned by two or three blows of an axe. In spite of the squareness of his figure, he seemed very communicative. He paid the utmost attention to every word of the preacher and added some remarks of his own, which expressed his almost childish joy.

“Oh, brothers⁠ ⁠… my friends,” he said, looking around.⁠ ⁠… “It’s so true, what he told us about repentance.⁠ ⁠… The end might come.⁠ ⁠… You know⁠ ⁠… and we’re such sinners⁠ ⁠… just one little sin more and another. Yes, yes.⁠ ⁠…”

“And that means another and another,⁠ ⁠…” broke in a second.

“Yes.⁠ ⁠… You see.⁠ ⁠… Oh!⁠ ⁠…”

With delighted eyes, he looked around the gathering.⁠ ⁠…

His noisy interruption and his joy apparently did not please the preacher. The latter suddenly stopped, turned his head quickly, and the cords of his neck tightened like ropes.⁠ ⁠… He wanted to say something, but he checked himself and turned a page.

The congregation had rejoiced too early. At the very time when they were most highly exalted⁠—pride and excessive hope pressed hard on the ladder. It trembled; the listeners seemed frightened; the ladder crashed down.⁠ ⁠…

“He’s through!” were the sad words of the deep-voiced peasant.

“Yes, brother!” chimed in the first. And a strange thing: he turned his sparkling eyes on all and the same joy sounded in his voice.⁠ ⁠… “Now we have no excuse.⁠ ⁠… We mustn’t do that first little sin.”

The stranger closed his book and for a few seconds he watched the speaker obstinately. But the peasant met his gaze with the same joy and trusting good nature.

“Do you think so?” asked the preacher.

“Yes,” answered the man. “Judge yourself, my friend.⁠ ⁠… How long will He suffer us?”

“Do you think so?” the preacher asked again with some emphasis, and his voice caused signs of uneasiness to appear on the other’s face.

“You know there are limits to the long suffering of God. You know about the Orthodox Catholic Church.”

He turned a few pages and began to read about the spiritual power of the Orthodox Church. The faces of his hearers darkened. The preacher stopped and said:

“The Orthodox Catholic Church.⁠ ⁠… Is she not the means of salvation? He who seeks refuge in her need not despair. So⁠ ⁠… if.⁠ ⁠…”

A tense silence prevailed for a few seconds. The stranger was facing the crowd of peasants and he felt that he held their feelings in his hands. Not long since, they had been following him joyfully and it was not hard to foresee the results of the sermon: the men of the old faith had been ready to invite to their homes the man who had been driven from the monastery. Now they were dumbfounded and did not know what to think.

“But if,” continued the stranger, accenting each word, “anyone rejects the one Mother Church⁠ ⁠… expects to be saved in cellars with the rats⁠ ⁠… if he trusts in shaved heads.⁠ ⁠…”

The peasant with the deep voice suddenly turned and walked away.

His good-natured companion glanced around with an air of disillusionment and a lack of comprehension and said half-questioningly:

“Are you shocked?⁠ ⁠… Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!⁠ ⁠…”

He followed the others. The sectarians grimly went to the gates. The wanderer remained alone. His figure was outlined sharply against the base of the tower and there was a strange expression in his faded blue eyes. Evidently he had intended to gain by his sermon that lodging which the monks had denied him. Why had he suddenly changed his tone?⁠ ⁠…

There were now only three of us in the yard: the wanderer, I and the young fellow under the curtain of the booth. The stranger glanced at me but at once turned away and walked up to the dealer. The young man’s face beamed with joy.⁠ ⁠…

“That was clever,” he said. “You shocked them well. They all had their heads shaved. The devils were threshing peas. Ha, ha, ha!”

He broke out into a hearty, youthful laugh and started to put his wares within the shop.

When he had finished, he closed the swinging doors and locked them. The shop was well made and adapted for moving⁠—it was on wheels and had a low shelf. The fellow