Short Fiction, Ivan Bunin [reading women .TXT] 📗

her flaming cheeks, and in the confusion of her emotions did not see the ground beneath her. And a chosen vessel, a sacrifice to God, had he called her; had lit two little wax tapers, and, taking one himself and giving the other to her, had stood a long while in prayer before an image. And afterwards he had ordered her to kiss that image⁠—and had given her his blessing to enter the nunnery for a novitiate within a short while. “My joy⁠—thou simple sacrifice!” he had said to her. “Be thou a bride not of this earth but of heaven! I know, full well, thy sister hath prepared thee. I shall concern myself with this also, sinner that I am.”

In the nunnery, in the monastic atmosphere, abandoning the world and her own will for the sake of her spiritual godfather, Anna, who has been named Aglaia upon taking the veil, passed three and thirty months. And when the thirty-third month was almost run, she did depart this life.

How she had lived there, how she had sought her salvation, is known to none, for the remoteness of time. But still some things have remained in the memory of the people. Once upon a time, some peasant pilgrim women, from various and distant places, were bound for that wooded region where Anna had been born. Near a small river which they had to cross, they met the usual wanderer over holy places, in appearance ill-favoured, tattered⁠—even, to put it plainly, queer, for the reason that his eyes, underneath a derby that had once been high in the world, were bandaged with a kerchief. The women began questioning him about the ways, the roads to the nunnery; about Father Rodion himself, and about Anna. He, in answering them, spoke a bit about himself at first: “I, now, little sisters, don’t know such a terrible lot, myself; however, I can chat a bit with you, for I am returning from those very parts. You,” he said, “must feel uncanny in my company, and I don’t wonder at it: I’m not a sweet sight to many; whoever I meet, whether he be afoot or on horseback, seeing a little old pilgrim going through a forest, hobbling along all by his lonesome with a white kerchief over his eyes, and, to boot, chanting psalms to God⁠—of course, he’s taken aback. But then, for my sins, far too greedy and quick are my eyes; my sight is so rare and penetrating, that I can see even at night, like a cat; and being in general sharp-sighted beyond measure, because I don’t travel with other folk but keep to myself⁠—well, for that reason have I resolved to curb a little my corporeal sight.⁠ ⁠…” Then he began telling them how great a distance, by his reckoning, the pilgrim women had left to go; toward what regions they should direct their way; where they might have lodgings and rest; and what sort of a place the nunnery was.

“First,” said he, “will come the settlement near Sviyat-Oziero; then that very village where Anna was born; and then you’ll see another lake, belonging to the convent, which lake, though shallow, is of a decent size, and you’ll have to sail over this lake in a boat. And, as soon as you get out of the boat, right there is the convent itself, so near you might almost reach it with your hand. Of course, there’s no end of woods on the other shore as well, and through the trees you can see, as always, the walls of the convents, the domes of chapels, the cells, the hostels.⁠ ⁠…”

Then, for a long while, he related to them the life of Rodion, the childhood and adolescence of Anna, and, in the end, he told them of her stay in the nunnery:

“Oh, her stay was not a long one,” said he. “It is a pity you say, with such beauty and youth? Of course, to such fools as we, it would be a piteous thing. But it’s plain to be seen Father Rodion knew well what he was about. For he was that way with everybody⁠—kindly, and meek, and gladsome, yet set on having his way, unto mercilessness; but he was especially so with Aglaia. I, my little ones, have been at the spot where she is resting.⁠ ⁠… A long little grave, beautiful, all grown over with grass, all green.⁠ ⁠… And I won’t hide anything⁠—I won’t hide that it was there, at her grave, that I thought of tying up my eyes; it was Aglaia’s example that gave me the idea; for she, I must tell you, during all her stay in the nunnery, did not for a single hour raise her eyes; even as she had pushed the veil down over them, so did it remain, and she was so sparing of her speech, so evasive, that even Father Rodion himself wondered at her. And yet, come to think of it, it was no easy matter for her to bear her task⁠—to bid eternal farewell to the world, to the face of mankind! And her work in the nunnery was the very hardest that she could find, while her nights she spent standing in prayer. But then, how Father Rodion had come to love her! He marked her out from all the rest, let her come every day into his little cabin; held long converse with her about the future fame of the nunnery; even revealed his visions to her⁠—with a strict order of silence. Well, and so she burned out, like a candle, in the briefest time.⁠ ⁠… Again do you sigh, being sorry? I do agree with you, it is a sad thing! But I will tell you something far greater; for her great humility, for her disregard of this world, for her silence and for her toiling beyond her strength, he wrought a thing unheard of: toward the end of the third year of her striving, he invested her with the habit,