Sisters of the Cross

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TH

EI V EX ZO AL MI RE

F O S R E T IS S S S O R C E

SISTERS OF THE CROSS

RU S S I A N L I BR A RY

The Russian Library at Columbia University Press publishes an expansive selection of Russian literature in English translation, concentrating on works previously unavailable in English and those ripe for new translations. Works of premodern, modern, and contemporary literature are featured, including recent writing. The series seeks to demonstrate the breadth, surprising variety, and global importance of the Russian literary tradition and includes not only novels but also short stories, plays, poetry, memoirs, creative nonfiction, and works of mixed or fluid genre.

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EI V EX ZO AL MI RE

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Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu Published with the support of Read Russia, Inc., and the Institute of Literary Translation, Russia Copyright © 2018 Roger John Keys and Brian Murphy All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Remizov, Aleksei, 1877–1957, author. | Keys, Roger, 1947–, translator. | Murphy, Brian, 1923–2017, translator.

Title: Sisters of the cross / Alexei Remizov ; translated by Roger Keys and Brian Murphy.

Other titles: Krestovye sestry. English Description: New York : Columbia University Press, 2018. | Series: Russian library Identifiers: LCCN 2017021730 (print) | LCCN 2017024109 (ebook) | ISBN 9780231546157 (electronic) | ISBN 9780231185424 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231185431 (pbk.)

Classification: LCC PG3470.R4 (ebook) | LCC PG3470.R4 K713 2018 (print) | DDC 891.73/44—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017021730

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America Cover design: Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich Book design: Lisa Hamm

CONTENTS

Introduction

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Sisters of the Cross 1

INTRODUCTION

“There is a problem with you—you are untranslatable.”

(D. S. Mirsky)1

A

lexei Remizov (1877–1957) was one of the leading figures in the Symbolist movement in Russian literature at the beginning of the twentieth century, and Sisters of the Cross (1910)2 is arguably his greatest fictional achievement, worthy to rank with such high points of Russian modernism as Andrei Belyi’s Petersburg (1913–1914) and Fiodor Sologub’s The Petty Demon (1907). At the same time, Remizov is probably the least well-known of the three great novelists of the movement, and unlike Belyi and Sologub, has been little translated into English. Three of his six novels did appear in English translation during the 1920s, it is true,3 but for some reason his masterpiece Sisters of the Cross never appeared in the language, either then or in more recent times. This may be because of the complexity of Remizov’s style, which is a singular amalgam of colloquial, literary, and folkloric Russian. Remizov himself was philosophical about the fact. “Sisters of the Cross has been translated

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into German, French, Italian, and Japanese,” he once wrote, “but you won’t find it in English; there was no Russian around to give the word, and the English themselves are too rich—they lack curiosity about other people’s literatures.”4 The plot of Remizov’s novel is universal in its resonance. The thirty-year-old Piotr Alekseevich Marakulin lives a contented, if humdrum, life working as a financial clerk in a Petersburg trading company. He is jolted out of his daily routine when, quite unexpectedly, he is accused of embezzlement and loses his job. The iron enters his soul as he gradually becomes aware of the indifference of the majority of people to the misfortunes of others. His change of status will bring him into contact with a number of women whose life experiences bear upon his own, and whose sufferings will lead him to question the justice of God’s universe. Three of the women share the name Vera (“Verushka” or “Verochka” in its affectionate forms), which means “belief ” or “faith” in Russian, and this group of characters, which includes Marakulin’s deceased mother, are by implication the “sisters of the cross” referred to in the title.

In some ways Sisters of the Cross derives from what Donald Fanger has dubbed the “romantic realist” tradition in European literature,5 familiar to us from the work of such writers as Balzac, Dickens, Gogol, and Dostoevsky. In romantic realist works, writes Fanger, “facts become symbols, revealing through the events of the temporal world a transcendent sphere of causes and effects.”6 Remizov’s hero lives in the Burkov flats in Petersburg, a tenement building not unlike the pension Vauquer in Balzac’s novel Le Père Goriot, and like old Goriot he is forced to move apartments and rent a room higher up in the building, an act symbolizing the decline in his financial and social circumstances. Burkov House—the building

and the four-chimneyed electricity station overlooking it survive to this day—operates as a symbol of “all Petersburg” in a social sense, therefore, but, as it turns out, may also be the point of contact with metaphysical forces inimical to humankind. (There are plot links here with Andrei Belyi’s novel Petersburg, written a little later and almost certainly influenced by Remizov’s novel.)

A different intertextual link connects Marakulin with the depiction of the lowly clerk Akaky Akakievich in Gogol’s Petersburg tale, “The Greatcoat” (1842), and here, too, the similarities point beyond those of mere social typicality. Like Gogol’s hero—and like Remizov in real life, incidentally—Marakulin is a master copyist who, as the narrator tells us, for days and nights “traces out one character after another, . . . until he achieves such perfection that you could display his work in an exhibition.” Most of Akaky Akakievich’s colleagues attribute no significance at all to such a skill, preferring, indeed, to mock him as he immerses himself in the single aspect of his existence that approximates perfection. Marakulin’s devotion to calligraphy is presented as an attribute of freedom, possessing value in and of itself and associated perhaps with the “feeling of inexplicable joy” that the hero experiences at unexpected moments in his life, including that of falling in love.

Above all, however, Remizov’s novel is replete with social, psychological, and plot motifs reminiscent of Dostoevsky’s work, especially of Crime and Punishment (1866). The hero Marakulin resembles Raskolnikov in many ways, although he lacks the latter’s will to dominate others. The suffering of the women around him leads Marakulin to become increasingly fixated on the wife of the deceased General Kholmogorov, who inhabits one of the richer apartments of Burkov House. Nicknamed the “louse,” she comes to symbolize in his eyes Introduction

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the heartless nonchalance of a life focused entirely on its purely material, nonspiritual attributes. He wonders, however, in words that recall the figure of the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov (1880), whether a life deprived of suffering, moral responsibility, and fear of mortality might not be the preferred choice of most members of the human race. Parallels with Raskolnikov’s victim—the grasping moneylender Aliona Ivanovna—are inescapable. She was also referred to by Raskolnikov as the “louse,” and although Marakulin does indeed consider various ways in which the louse might be disposed of, it is noticeable that, unlike Dostoevsky’s hero, he cannot bring himself to deny another creature the gift of life.

As already alluded to, a recurring semantic and stylistic presence in Sisters of the Cross are motifs taken from folklore, old Russian heroic poetry (byliny), and Orthodox Russian apocryphal texts. These convey both the notion of Christ’s suffering (participated in by “sisters [and brothers] of the cross”) and the possibility of forgiveness, the latter particularly embodied in the life of another of the main female characters, the peasant woman and “holy fool” Akumovna. One of the novel’s major stylistic tours de force, indeed, is the account given by Akumovna of her visit to hell, a nightmarish vision that is shot through with motifs from an apocryphal tale concerning the Virgin Mary.7 Marakulin is particularly affected by Akumovna’s profound belief that whatever happens in life, “no one should be blamed.” Nevertheless, he rails inwardly against what he perceives to be his own submissiveness and that of others. Far from believing that self-abasement will bring people closer to God, he becomes more and more convinced that there is no God or that, if he exists, he is indifferent or evil. The “sisters’ ” very different experiences of suffering provide the backdrop against which Marakulin’s Karamazovian rejection of a world seemingly

abandoned by God is played out. On the other hand, Sisters of the Cross is undoubtedly a post-Dostoevskian novel that belongs firmly in the Russian modernist tradition.

Sisters of the Cross is a rich and intricate novel, therefore, that successfully unites ethnographic depiction of the realia of Petersburg in 1910 with folklore traditions inherited from the Russian past—all coexisting with colloquial skaz narration à la Gogol and metaphysical speculation à la Dostoevsky.8 Remizov’s dense “ornamental” style is used to embody a plot that moves both metonymically—the life, sufferings, and dreams of Marakulin interspersed with descriptions of the trials and tribulations of seven “sisters of the cross”—and metaphorically—the complex web of cyclically repeated leitmotifs that imply the existence of another dimension beyond the world of our common interpretation.

Remizov and his wife left Russia in 1921, never to return. After a period spent in Berlin, they settled in Paris, and Remizov eventually became a leading Russian émigré writer alongside Ivan Bunin, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Aleksandr Kuprin, and others. Like most émigré writers, with the notable exception of Vladimir Nabokov, he never found a large audience for his work, either in France or elsewhere, and he was reviled by the Soviet critical establishment until his death in 1957. Remizov’s work always attracted the attention of cognoscenti in the west, however, and his collected works in ten volumes finally appeared in Russia some fifteen years ago.9 He was also a talented graphic artist and illustrator of his own works; a book on this subject was published in the United States not long ago.10 Sisters of the Cross was regarded by Remizov’s fellow Symbolist writers and critics as among his best and most significant achievements, and the novel was one of the few works that Remizov—an Introduction

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arch-rewriter of his own œuvre—did not tamper with in subsequent years. This makes it all the more extraordinary, perhaps, that the novel has never before appeared in English translation. It was, in fact, not the case, as Remizov later wrote, that his work lacked Russian advocates in England. On the contrary, Dmitry Mirsky, the most gifted of Russian critics living in the west and the author of the greatest history of Russian literature in the English language, made valiant efforts on the writer’s behalf throughout the 1920s.

Remizov had “created an entirely fresh style of Russian prose,” he wrote, one based “not on the logic of written language, but on the system of intonations of living speech.”11 Remizov’s intention, Mirsky argued, was to “de-Latinize and de-Frenchify the Russian literary language and to restore to it its natural Russian raciness.”12 By comparison with certain Western European languages, Russian’s highly inflected nature does indeed give it extraordinary syntactic flexibility, and this, together with Remizov’s predilection for obscure archaisms and unusual coinages, was bound to cause difficulty for translators. “He uses so many hard words,” lamented one potential English translator in 1916,13 a sentiment echoed by Mirsky in his letter to Remizov of March 11, 1924: “There is a problem with you— you are untranslatable. But we will see what can be done.”14 Roger Keys, Oxford, April 30, 2017 ɷɸɷ

In the text that follows, the translators have used the Library of Congress system for transliterating the majority of Russian names.

NOTES 1. “ ‘ . . . S Vami beda—ne perevesti’: Pis’ma D. P. Sviatopolka-Mirskogo k A. M. Remizovu, 1922–1929,” published by Robert Hughes in Diaspora. Novye materialy 5 (Paris and St. Petersburg: Athenaeum-Feniks, 2003), 335–401.

2. “Krestovye sёstry,” in Al’manakh “Shipovnik,” book 13 (Petersburg: Shipovnik, 1910). Reprinted in Sochineniia, vol. 5 (Petersburg: Shipovnik, 1911). Also in Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 4 (Moscow: Russkaia kniga, 2001), 95–208.

3. The Clock, trans. John Cournos (London: Chatto & Windus, 1924, and New York: Alfred Knopf, 1924); The Fifth Pestilence and History of the Tinkling Cymbal and Sounding Brass, trans. Alec Brown (London: Wishart and Co., 1927).

4. Alexei Remizov, Vstrechi. Petersburgskii buerak (Paris: Lev, 1981), 36. Also in Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 10 (Moscow: Russkaia kniga, 2003), 197.

5. Donald Fanger, Dostoevsky and Romantic Realism (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1965).

6. Ibid., 129.

7. “Khozhdenie Bogoroditsy po mukam” ( Journey of the Mother of God Through Hell), dating to the twelfth century. The original Greek text is said to be from the fourth or fifth century.

8. The best general treatment of the novel in English is to be found in Greta N. Slobin’s Remizov’s Fictions, 1900–1921 (DeKalb: Illinois University Press, 1991), 96–107.

9. Remizov, Sobranie sochinenii, vols. 1–10 (Moscow: Russkaia kniga, 2000–2003), ed.

A. M. Gracheva, T. G. Ivanova, A. V. Lavrov, N. N. Skatov, O. P. Raevskaia-Kh’iuz, and N. M. Solntseva. Two additional volumes (11 and 12; St Petersburg: Rostok) appeared in 2015 and 2016, respectively, ed. A. M. Gracheva, A. D’Ameliia, A. V. Lavrov, E. R. Obatnina, O. P. Raevskaia-Kh’iuz, N. N. Skatov, and T. S. Tsar’kova.

10. Julia P. Friedman, Beyond Symbolism and Surrealism: Alexei Remizov’s Synthetic Art (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2010).

11. D. S. Mirsky, Modern Russian Literature (London: Oxford University Press, 1925), 113 12. D. S. Mirsky, Contemporary Russian Literature: 1881–1925 (London: George Routledge, 1926, and New York: Alfred Knopf, 1926); incorporated in A History of Russian Literature (London: Routledge, 1949; abridged edition, ed. F. J. Whitfield 1964), 479.

13. The translator referred to is the Cambridge classicist Jane Ellen Harrison, to whom Mirsky dedicated his A History of Russian Literature from the Earliest Times to the Death of Dostoyevsky (1881) (London: Routledge, 1927). She went on to edit and translate a collection of Remizov’s animal tales, entitled The Book of the Bear (London: Nonesuch, 1926). The quotation is taken from page 193 of Marilyn Schwinn Smith’s informative article “Aleksei Remizov’s English-Language Translators: New Material,” A People Passing Rude: British Responses to Russian Culture, ed. Anthony Cross (Cambridge: Open Book, 2012), 189–200.

Introduction

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Introduction 14.“ ‘ . . . S Vami beda—ne perevesti’: Pis’ma D. P. Sviatopolka-Mirskogo k A. M. Remizovu, 1922–1929,” published by Robert Hughes in Diaspora. Novye materialy 5 (Paris and St. Petersburg: Athenaeum-Feniks, 2003), 335–401. For information concerning Remizov’s relationship with Mirsky, see G. S. Smith, D. S. Mirsky: A RussianEnglish Life, 1890–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

SISTERS OF THE CROSS

01

I

t was not because their duties brought them close together that Marakulin and Glotov were friends. Neither of them could manage without the other: Piotr Alekseevich gave out the payment slips, Aleksandr Ivanovich was the cashier. The order in which they worked was as follows: Marakulin would write only in ink and Glotov would count out only in gold. And they were both so different and unlike each other—the one being narrow chested and with a thin line of moustache, the other broad shouldered and with whiskers like a cat, one looking out from the depths of his being, while the other was always ready to break into a smile. All the same they were friends who ate at the same table.

They both had a distinguishing mark—part of their nature and so deep there could be no hiding it. It would shine out from under the eyelids of a person even when asleep, and anyway it didn’t matter in the slightest whether it was buried in the pupil of the eye or ran from the pupil around the eyeball. It was like an insect’s proboscis or a feeler that both had in common, and it’s not as though this feeler clung to life, but somehow sucked into itself everything that was living around it, down to the merest blade of grass that

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breathed, to the tiniest stone that grew, and sucking them in with a kind of voracious joy—with a joy, indeed, that you might find infectious. That’s what it was.

Who needed to, could see it; who couldn’t see, could feel it; and who couldn’t feel, could guess it.

They were young—both were thirty or thirtysomething; they were successful—they somehow managed to make a go of everything; they were physically strong—they were never ill, never complained about their teeth, and they had no obligations either in wedlock or out of wedlock; each was alone in the steppe, as it were, and the steppe stretched out far and wide in all its might around them, free, unbridled and unconfined—one’s very own.

It must be three years now since Glotov threw his espoused wife out onto the roadway from the second floor and the poor woman’s skull cracked in half, but it can’t be three years, no, it must be four— however, it doesn’t really matter. What we are talking about has nothing to do with Glotov, but with Marakulin. It’s Piotr Alekseevich Marakulin we are concerned with.

Those who worked with Marakulin were always infected by his blithe cheerfulness. He confessed once that, though he was really thirty years old, somehow he unconsciously felt himself to be about twelve, let’s say, and he gave examples: when he happened to meet someone or to get in conversation with someone, then it seemed that all those senior to him were very old, while he being junior was very small, something like twelve years old. And Marakulin also confessed that he wasn’t in the slightest like a person, at least not like those real people whom we are always seeing on the stage, at meetings or clubs, as they come in or out, talk or fall silent, grow angry or are content—well, he simply wasn’t like them in the slightest and

that with him, from his nose to his little finger, everything must be wrong, or so he thought. And another thing Marakulin used to confess was that he never thought about anything, never felt that he was thinking, and if he walked about the streets—well, he walked simply by moving his feet, and when he was introduced to someone—then he wouldn’t notice anything special, or any distinguishing features, either in the face or in the movements of his new acquaintance, and just dimly felt that some people attracted him, that others repelled him, one was closer, another was more distant, while with others it didn’t matter at all, but most often his strongest feeling was of being close to that person and of being certain of his or her kindly beneficence. And Marakulin also admitted that once he started reading books and coming across people, he wasn’t at all frightened by the most contradictory opinions and that he was ready to agree with them, since he thought that everyone was right after his own fashion, and as far as arguing was concerned, he really didn’t argue—whereas if he couldn’t contain himself and started to argue, then that was for quite indisputable reasons—and by the way, he was perfectly aware of this every time it happened, only he didn’t show it openly—there were so many indisputable reasons in life, after all! Marakulin also confessed that he had never wept once from the time he was born, except one time when his old nurse was passing away. On that very last day he climbed up into the storeroom and choked with weeping, the first and last tears of his life. And he had one extraordinary wayward feature that other people usually mocked: some sort of mad nonsense would get into his head and he would cling to it with such persistence, as though it was the essence of his own life and of everyone else’s life as well, and yet the whole business was really the result of some ridiculous nonsense that he had invented himself.

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He had to hand in an account of his work to the director, and this had to be done before the holiday. A report like that was normally typed out—the most run-of-the-mill kind of statement—but here he was now, wanting to write it out himself and in his own hand. This, even though it would be faster to type it and easier and simpler, and even though there were special forms for typing it on. He was not abashed by anything like that, God forbid! So for days and nights he stubbornly traces out one character after another, writing evenly as if threading beads, and he writes it out many times until he achieves such perfection that you could display his work in an exhibition, as good as that—Marakulin was famous for his handwriting. Tomorrow, however, they’ll be tucking that report away among the other papers. No one will pay particular attention to it; no one specially needs it, so much time and work will have been spent on it and to no good purpose. A wayward man, stubborn even in his waywardness!

And besides all that, it was even stranger to hear Marakulin tell of some feeling of inexplicable joy that he felt, and he would experience it completely unexpectedly; he would sometimes run to work in the morning and suddenly for no particular reason his heart seemed to flutter up and fill his chest to overflowing with an extraordinary rejoicing. And this happiness was so great, so all-embracing, and there was so much of it that he could have taken it burning hot from his chest, he thought, and distributed it to each and every one—and there would have been enough of it for all; he could have taken it like a bird in his cupped hands and, breathing on it with his mouth to prevent it getting cold so that it would not fly away, he would have carried it along the Nevsky Prospekt, this bird of paradise: let people see it and breathe in its warmth and feel its light—the peaceful light and warmth which the heart breathes and radiates from joy.

Of course, you are not going to sit in judgment on your own actions; confessions don’t solve anything; whether something happened or did not happen—who can say what’s true?—but love of life and a feeling for life, joy in his heart, that was something he certainly brought with him!

When you listened to Marakulin and saw how he approached people, and smiled and looked at them, you might have thought at times that a man like him would dare to enter the cage of a wild beast at any hour and, without blinking or taking thought, would risk stretching out his hand to stroke the bristling fur of the animal—and the beast would not bite him.

And how grieved Marakulin was when suddenly he saw quite unexpectedly that people might hate him just as they hated anybody else, that he also had people who were not well-disposed toward him, that for some people—God knows why: he would be a regular beam in their eye. But when all’s said and done, you could do anything with Marakulin. And if he had contrived so far to live to the age of thirty quite successfully, then this itself was an unlikely thing, nothing short of miraculous. Most probably people liked Piotr Alekseevich, not with any special fervor, but just because, after all, there was no reason not to like him—he was cheerful and laughed, but not with simple laughter; his laugh had a sort of drunken feeling about it that was specially “Marakulian,” and why should you hate him for that? But all the same, everything finished without much love, and things turned out badly for Piotr Alekseevich.

This is how it was. By Easter, Marakulin was expecting to be promoted and to receive a reward—in big commercial offices they generally dish out bonus payments at holiday times—but instead of promotion and a bonus they suddenly gave him the sack.

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It happened like this: Piotr Alekseevich had been working five years in that office, for five years he had been in charge of issuing payment slips, and everything had been in good order and exactly as it should be (they jokingly called Marakulin “the German” because he kept everything so neat and precise)—but the managers ventured to check the books just before the holiday, and when they began to calculate and check the figures, there came a real hitch: it seemed as though something did not quite match up, there was something missing, maybe trifling amounts, but the fact of finding them at all meant that there was a big problem, these trifles and the confusion might mess up the entire business. So they took the books away from him, and he was fired.

At first Marakulin simply would not believe it, refused to believe it, thought they were playing a joke on him or something, people sounding off on their trumpets just for a joke, for greater merriment, that’s what it was, just before the holidays, he himself was laughing. So off he went to find out what was happening, in a joking mood himself.

“Allow me,” he says, “grand thief, bandit and highwayman, to talk about the robbery . . .”

“What’s that you’re saying?”

“Ha ha,” he was the first to laugh.

And in the letter of explanation to a very important and influential person, the director, he signed himself not simply Piotr Marakulin, but as the thief and embezzler Piotr Marakulin.

“The thief and embezzler, Piotr Marakulin.”

“What’s that you’re saying?”

“Ha ha,” he was the first to laugh.

But evidently his joke did not work, nothing funny came of it— or if it did, then they did not notice it and, as for laughter, no one was

laughing—rather the opposite. And the funniest thing turned out to be the reply of one young accountant—this accountant was a quiet little chap who wouldn’t harm a fly, so he didn’t have any official title.

Averianov said: “Until the misunderstanding involving you has been sorted out, I would like to reserve my final reply.”

At this point Piotr Alekseevich engaged quite seriously with what was being said: “What is this confusion you are talking about? There simply cannot be any mistake.”

“What’s that you’re saying?”

“I’m talking about this supposed mistake . . . I do my work without a single mistake. I’m as methodical as any German. Where is the mistake?”

And at this point he realized that they were serious.

Would you believe it? A wild beast is evidently no simple proposition and doesn’t give in very easily. When its fur is bristling with rage, it’s no simple thing to stroke it—keep your hands off it, the beast will bite off your finger! Isn’t that how it is? Or has the beast got nothing to do with it, and isn’t the whole curse not that man is cruel to man, but that he is like a wooden beam and quite indifferent to the fate of another human being? No matter how much you pray to him, he will not hear you; no matter how much you call out, he will make no reply. You can batter your own forehead on the ground before him, and he will not move a muscle; he will carry on standing there as placed, until he crashes down, or you do.

Isn’t that how it is?

So it was that thoughts of this kind flashed into Marakulin’s mind, and for the first time the thought came to him quite clearly and expressed itself sharply: a man is as indifferent as a beam to the fate of another.

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He knocked here and tried there—everything was shut off and closed: no one was willing to admit him. And if they did let him in, then they were unwilling to talk and they wouldn’t let him utter a word. Then they began to slam the doors in his face, saying “I haven’t got time to talk to you” and “Leave me in peace, please” and “I simply have no time to deal with you” and “I’m up to my eyes in other work!” and “What were you doing before?” and “You have only yourself to blame!” and again “I haven’t got time!” and “Leave me in peace!” And now even the servants would not talk to him even with the door on the chain; they weren’t allowed to, and everyone was completely fed up with him.

Marakulin had no haven where he could take refuge. He remained alone in the steppe, as it were, and the steppe lay all around, scorched and black, boundless and inimical. Look around on all four sides, go on, do! He had been involved in everything and was now part of nothing.

And, after all, this whole affair had blown up out of nothing, simply blind chance. Rumors were going around to the effect that Aleksandr Ivanovich had arranged the whole business himself, that Glotov had involved his friend Marakulin and he himself escaped scot-free. But on the other hand everyone knew that Marakulin, too, whether out of kindness of heart or some other quality, his extreme trustfulness, perhaps, or his excess of imagination—he liked to get on well with other people, after all—well, he was not averse, on a temporary basis, of course, to giving a payment slip to some person who had no basis at all for being thus favored, but he would receive it because of some particular request or a friend’s financial embarrassment, even on occasion giving one to that same Aleksandr Ivanovich. After all, you could do what you liked with Marakulin.

But he himself, jolted out of his routine by blind chance, with nothing to do, alone, thinking to himself night and day that times had changed—the old times had gone—now he, too, began to think like normal people; he first came to a firm decision and put himself on trial: he didn’t confess his guilt and didn’t accuse himself of theft. But trying to prove his right to exist, trying to grasp things in this fevered state of his, in his thoughts, in his own private “Marakulian” way, just as he had when in a happy mood and laughing, he grabbed hold of this wooden beam that he had thought of, that one man was like a beam in the eye of another, and he began to twist it about in his mind. He wanted to know without fail and at all costs who needed all this and for what purpose—for the pleasure of which beam beams in general are set up—and he wanted to know so that he could say firmly to himself whether he was to carry on existing as a beam in the way that it had got into someone’s head to set him up or, without waiting for the moment when somebody else might again take it into his head to pull him down, to come crashing down himself, just of his own free will and without asking anyone’s permission.

Judge for yourselves: a ready answer to all this is not easily provided, and who will come up with one? Not the palmist from Kuznechny Lane who stole Marakulin’s trousers and then, reading the lines on his palm, proved that it was someone else’s fault, that of the neighbor who rented a corner of his room, also on Kuznechny Lane!

Yes, evidently you can’t get away without wearing your heart out, without breaking your heart; evidently it is always like this when someone sets about proving his right to exist. And after all, it’s not at all a question of one man being a savage beast to another, or of one Sisters of the Cross

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man being a beam to another. It’s simpler than that: when a misfortune comes along, just put up with it and put up with it because it makes no difference whether you start kicking against it or trying to bite back—that’s all a waste of time. It won’t let you go until its time has run through. Isn’t that the way of it?

So something like that flashed through Marakulin’s mind at that time and said quite clearly: “Put up with it.”

He spent the summer with no occupation. Everything he had managed to accumulate during his five years of payment slips in Petersburg, all that went to moneylenders either at the capital or at the city pawnshops on Vladimirsky Prospekt. And soon nothing was left. He had handed over the pawn tickets to a watchmaker on Gorokhovaia Street and whatever remained was all so worn out and torn that even a Tatar rag-and-bone man wouldn’t have taken them. His clothes became ragged and tattered. His sole cambric collar he had washed until it was threadbare. The only things that survived were the cross that hung around his neck and the pilgrim’s belt from the Bogoliubsky monastery embroidered with a prayer, which he had not put on for a long time in any case. He just kept it hanging on the wall for old time’s sake. He felt a sort of shame such as he had never experienced before. He no longer dared to ask for anything. Perhaps it was just as well there was no one to beg from; his friends simply ran away from him as though he had cholera, and they all went into hiding. Somehow he felt afraid of everyone, both the people he knew and those who were strangers. He felt ashamed and terrified walking along the streets, as though everyone knew something about him so disgraceful that he could not bring himself to admit it to himself, let alone mention it in public.

Passersby would bump into him. Even the dogs would growl and try to catch his leg. He was just done for.

All right, you may be done for and have no rights, but be patient; put up with it and forget about it. . . . When misfortune crashes down on you, you must forget that there are other people in the world.

People won’t help, and even if they do wish to help, it’s of no consequence. Misfortune will upset their affairs, cowing them, scattering and nullifying their every effort, so forget about other people. Isn’t that the way of it?

So something like that flashed through Marakulin’s mind at this point and said quite clearly: “Forget.”

But soon he found people to help him, and not anyone resembling Averianov or his assistant Chekurov, “scourge of the low,” as that most honorable Chekurov styled himself. No! The ones who helped him now were all the sorts of people Marakulin never once remembered. These were humble suspicious clerks who had been driven out from all sorts of institutions, and wandered about from place to place. These were the kinds of people who are always driven out, who are coming or have come to grief, defamed, long-suffering people who would not be admitted to any decent house, and to shake hands with whom would be considered indecent and out of the question. These were people who possessed a clearly defined name, their own along with words such as “thief,” “rascal,” “scoundrel,” or “cheat.” And now all these thieves, rascals, scoundrels, and cheats, well-known, half-known, or completely unknown to Marakulin, clustered around him to express their sympathy. In the early days they even found work for him to do, nothing particularly grand, just jobs of some sort, enough for him somehow to keep himself alive.

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Marakulin had his own apartment on the Fontanka1 by the Obukhov Bridge. It was a small flat, but all the same it belonged to him. Now he had to give up this home and go into rented rooms.

He found a room on that same stairway, three floors higher up. As a whole, Marakulin’s life took shape quite well, but it was untidy and confused. He had once lived in a down at heel way, but all that was before he found a place he could call his own, in his young days when such things don’t count. But life seemed difficult to him now; it wasn’t easy to cram yourself into cramped surroundings, and it was all the more difficult now that there was no hope of putting things right, and working on shady jobs did not bring a great deal in, barely enough to keep himself alive.

But what was there to keep himself alive for? Why should he be patient, why should he forget, forget and put up with it all? He wanted to know without fail and at all costs who needed all this and for what purpose, for the pleasure of what thief, rascal, scoundrel, or cheat, and he wanted to know so that he could say firmly to himself whether it was worth dragging out all these proceedings—putting up with it in order somehow to keep himself alive.

Judge for yourselves: a ready answer to all this is not easily provided, and who will come up with one? Not the palmist from Kuznechny Lane who stole Marakulin’s trousers and then, reading the lines on his palm, proved that it was someone else’s fault, that of the neighbor who rented a corner of his room, also on Kuznechny Lane!

Yes, evidently you can’t get away without wearing your heart out, without breaking your heart; evidently it is always like this when 1. A river in Petersburg.

someone sets about proving his right to exist. And after all, it’s not at all a question of putting up with it, nor is it a question of forgetting.

It’s simpler than that: don’t think. Isn’t that the way of it?

So something like that flashed through Marakulin’s mind at that time and said quite clearly: “Don’t think.”

Was it now he had to stop thinking? Yes, it was just at this very moment when, jolted out of his routine by blind chance, now, alone and with nothing to do, he had started to think—the old times had gone when there was no thinking, and he could not get those times back.

And so the circle closed within him. He knew that thinking was futile, that there was no point in thinking, you wouldn’t be able to prove anything, and yet he couldn’t not think, he couldn’t stop trying to prove things—thinking till it hurt, his thoughts kept turning relentlessly, as though he were delirious.

Marakulin had no difficulty moving out of his apartment; no one dragged him off to the police station, and they did not list his belongings. There was nothing to list, and the only thing he had left was his soul, which can’t be taken away. Only Mikhail Pavlovich would not shake hands, the senior janitor Mikhail Pavlovich who, if he respected anyone of middling circumstances, always shook hands with him.

Marakulin had a memorable last day in his old home. In the morning the most wretched event occurred in the courtyard: a cat died, a smooth-haired white cat with gray whiskers. Perhaps she didn’t fall from anywhere and had no thought of falling from any roof four floors up, but she had just swallowed something by chance, a nail or a piece of glass, or maybe some kind person had fed her the glass or the nail on purpose for a joke—there are such people. She was in torment, with terrible pains; one moment she was lying on her back Sisters of the Cross

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and rolling about on the stones, then she would turn over onto her belly, stretch out her front paws, raise her little face, as though trying to look into the windows, and she kept on meowing.

Little children crowded around the cat. Giving up their wild fun and games, they squatted down on their haunches and fell silent.

They could not take their eyes off the cat, and she went on meowing.

The dark-skinned Persian masseur from the public baths also settled down next to her, rolling the whites of his eyes, while the cat went on meowing.

Some smoky-colored tomcat jumped out of the carriage shed, and padded swiftly across the boards over the gravel in the yard, heading straight for the cat. But he came to a sudden halt about three paces away, his fur standing on end. Then he fluffed up his tail and moved off to one side. One little girl suddenly ran off to get some milk. She came back with a piece of broken pottery and placed it right under the cat’s nose. But the cat wouldn’t even look at it and kept on meowing.

“The cat has gone out of its mind,” said one of the grown-ups, who, like Marakulin, must also have been watching the cat from one of the windows.

“It’s our cat, Murka,” said the little girl who had run off to get milk.

Her face was burning red and her voice expressed impatience and offense of some sort.

It looked as though everyone was just waiting for the end to come. Marakulin could not leave the window; he could not tear himself away. He, too, was waiting for the cat to die. And he would have stood like that till evening, without moving, if he hadn’t felt that someone was standing behind him, shifting from one foot to the other. For some time now he had given up locking the doors of his

apartment, and now someone must have come in! Yes, and so it was.

There was some old man standing in front of him, a tall, disheveledlooking old man shifting from one foot to the other. Beneath his overcoat his trousers hung loosely around his legs, as though he did not have proper limbs, but just bones. His hands were pulling at his hat and at something else . . . some sort of envelope, yes, some sort of envelope. Of course, Marakulin had never seen an old man like him before—but what did he want?

“What can I do for you?”

“I’ve come to see you, Piotr Alekseevich. I’ve come from Aleksandr Ivanovich.”

“From Aleksandr Ivanovich!”

“From the very same. You forgot to shut the door, sir. I was standing right outside, only I was afraid to ring. Please forgive me,” said the old man, moving his lips and fiddling with his hat.

Previously, various people had come from Glotov quite frequently— the office needed extra clerks to work in the evenings—but how could Glotov have thought to send a person to him now? After all, he knew that he had been sacked, and here he was with nothing but a five-kopeck piece in his pocket.

“I cannot do anything to help you. I expect it’s money you’re needing . . .”

The old man made a restless movement and pulled out of its envelope a crumpled quarter sheet of paper that was covered in a large uneven scribble.

“I have written out my request for your kind attention. I was ashamed to say it, so I’ve set my plea down in writing.” The old man pushed his note toward him, keeping a fixed smile on his face as though his lips were mewing like Murka the cat’s.

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Thrusting his last five-kopeck piece on the old man, Marakulin sat down at the table and waited for one thing to happen, for the old man to leave and for the scene to come to an end.

The old man was showing no signs of leaving, however. In one hand he gripped the five-kopeck piece and his hat, and in the other hand the envelope and the crumpled quarter sheet of paper that was covered in a large uneven scribble. His hands were shaking and his hat slipped out and fell onto the floor.

“What news of Aleksandr Ivanovich? How is he getting along?”

Marakulin asked, feeling that everything inside him was shaking and that he might not stand the strain, that he was going to shout and drive the old man away.

The old man stretched out his neck like a bird and opened his mouth wide like a beak.

“He’s in top form these days,” he said, his head starting to shake as if with joy. “He’s dressed very well like a senior janitor, with a tightfitting coat and patent leather boots, just like a senior janitor. ‘You must go, Gvozdev, straight to Piotr Alekseevich on the Fontanka,’ that’s what he said. Like a senior janitor! I was at their summerhouse in Tsarskoe Selo. He kept on joking that he was in love with some madame. He kept on joking all the time: ‘You can feed a hungry man, you can make someone rich who’s poor, but once you fall in love— and if the object of your love does not respond—then for the life of me, there is nothing to be done.’ I don’t understand anything, sir.

He keeps on joking all the time. He gave me the overcoat from off his own shoulders. It used to belong to the accountant Averianov, it was his and it was a bit loose on him. ‘Do you behave, Gvozdev?’ ‘Excuse me, Aleksandr Ivanovich,’ I say. ‘I’m a great one for the women.’

He keeps joking all the time.”

The old man spoke incessantly in a muddleheaded way and, as for sitting down, he didn’t, nor did he unclench his fist or pick up his hat.

He was a restless old man, really restless. In Petersburg he had worked as a groom with the Shakhovskois. It was a good job, but one of the horses kicked out and caught him in the chest. He went off to a monastery and from then on he went from one monastery to another. He had such a restless nature: as soon as he felt at home, he would run off straight away. A month ago he ran away from the Cheremenetsky monastery.

“I was helped by one man I knew, who took me into his room. He pays the rent for a room on Zelenina Street, quite a small room, in fact.

Koriakin is married, with a wife and a young child, a little girl. All four of us lived together. On St. Olga’s day their elder daughter came to visit them in Peter.2 We were short of space, and it was embarrassing—she was grown up, after all. I moved out to the Obvodny Canal, where I rented a corner. One and a half rubles and pickles thrown in. It was a good corner, in the corridor. You see, Piotr Alekseevich, I would even do a little bit of buying and selling, enough to keep alive, at any rate.”

The old man spoke incessantly in a muddleheaded way, one word spluttering into another. He was a restless sort. But Marakulin’s eyes were beginning to glaze over; his eyelids felt heavy. He could no longer see anything now apart from Averianov’s wide trousers, hanging loosely over the old man’s legs or, rather, bones.

“I’m a great one for the women . . . one and a half rubles with pickles thrown in . . . Enough to keep alive, at any rate . . .”

Marakulin sprang up from his chair.

“But what is there to keep alive for? Tell me that!” he shouted.

2. The affectionate name for Petersburg.

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But he was by himself in the room, and there was no one else with him.

The cat was meowing, Murka was meowing. He was by himself in the room. He had gone to sleep as they were talking. The old man had guessed and had stolen out unnoticed—just as he had come in—clutching Marakulin’s last five kopecks. His hat was no longer lying on the floor. The cat was meowing, Murka was meowing.

And suddenly Marakulin thought quite clearly, as he had never thought so clearly before, that Murka had always been meowing, and not just yesterday, but the entire five years he had spent on the Fontanka in the Burkov flats, but that he had simply not noticed.

And not only here, in the Burkov flats on the Fontanka near Nevsky; Murka was meowing in Moscow, too, in the Taganka, by the Church of the Resurrection in the Taganka, where he was born and where he grew up, wherever there is a living soul. And as clear as his thought was the firmness of his conviction that there was nowhere he could hide from that meowing, from Murka, any longer. And as firm as his conviction was the depth of his feeling that it was not outside that Murka was meowing, but right here . . .

“Give me some air!” Murka was meowing as though she were pronouncing the words “Give me some air!” rolling about on the stones and gazing up at the windows.

The children were squatting in an ever tighter circle around her.

Forgetting their wild fun and games, they fell silent, looking on for something to happen. The piece of broken pottery with the milk was still standing there untouched, and the dark-skinned Persian masseur from the public baths stayed where he was, rolling his eyes.

It was late in the evening by the time Marakulin made his way up to his new room on the fourth floor, where there had previously

been a laundry. There was no one in the flat, apart from the cook Akumovna. The owner, Adoniia Ivoilovna, had not yet returned.

In the summer Adoniia Ivoilovna went off on a pilgrimage, leaving Akumovna to look after the flat. The two other rooms were unoccupied.

The first night in his new room Marakulin had a dream as though he were sitting at a table facing the stage in some sort of garden out in the country. The garden reminded him of the Aquarium restaurant, and all around were people he did not know, angry agitated faces, and all walking about, grumbling and whispering among themselves. He reasoned that he was the one they were whispering about, that their grumbling was about him, and that they were planning some evil against him, something really nasty! Fear began to seize him, more and more of them were approaching, and the circle was becoming ever tighter. They had stopped whispering, but their eyes were pointing him out. They were in agreement and were pointing toward him. There was no doubt about it. He could not stay there any longer; they would kill him. He stood up and made his way imperceptibly toward the door, but they followed him.

That’s how it was—they were going to kill him. They were going to kill him, choke him to death. Where could he go? Where could he hide? Oh God! If there were only one person who would help him, just one! But they were on his heels, closer and closer. Any moment now and they would catch him. He dived into a cave, fell facedown onto the stones. And suddenly a bird came down on his back like a stone, not an eagle—this was a vulture of the kind that carries off hens—and its talons were gripping him firmly, tearing at his back, squeezing the whole of him, just as it would break the body of a hen.

“Thief, thief, thief!”—striking him with its beak. He felt oppressed; Sisters of the Cross

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the heaviness was shattering his heart, tearing it to pieces. His arms sank down, and he no longer had any doubt that he would never be able to rise and stand on his feet again. He felt bitter and oppressed and a deathly sadness.

In the morning, when Marakulin told Akumovna about the people in the night and the vulture, she said: “A bad dream like that is what you see just before you get ill. You are bound to fall ill.”

So it was. Sickness, disease struck him down. He was aching all over; laying back his head, he felt really ill. The next morning he could barely swallow a glass of tea and could not eat at all. It was the hottest time of the summer, but he was shivering all over, as if it were the coldest frost of the winter.

Holy Akumovna, as they called her around the Burkov flats, was a kindly soul. She put Marakulin to bed, gave him hot raspberry juice to drink, applied mustard plasters, looked after him night and day, and brought him through. The sickness and disease left him in peace.

Even so, he was laid out for two whole weeks.

The first thing he felt when he ventured out after his illness, when he crossed the threshold of the building and found himself outside on the street, was that somehow he had begun to see and to hear everything. Even more than this, he could feel that his heart was opening up and that his soul was alive.

One person has to betray in order—through treachery—to open up his soul and become his real self in the world. Another person has to kill in order—through killing—to open up his soul and at least die as himself. He needed somehow to write out a payment slip and give it to the wrong person in order to open up his soul and become his real self in the world, and not just any old Marakulin, but Marakulin Piotr Alekseevich—and see, and hear, and feel.

That was the message in Marakulin’s head on the first day after his illness. That was how he found a way back into the world, that was how he proved his right to exist: just to see, just to hear, just to feel.

He was not afraid of other people; they were not terrifying for him. And he ceased to care at all whether he was a thief or not a thief.

Nor was he afraid of any misfortune. And if he had to suffer misfortunes a thousand times worse, he thought, he was ready for anything, would agree to anything, would accept everything and would endure everything. He would live through any shame and through any humiliation, seeing everything, hearing everything, feeling everything. For what purpose he himself did not know—only that he was going to live.

Whether it was to get his own back on Ill-Fortune,3 that one-eyed evil being who is only ever happy when people grieve and weep, Marakulin exhausted his own Ill-Fortune by allowing it to wander hungry through the world, while the one-eyed one with his swollen pupil scowls down from the starry heights above the clouds, as the world turns head over heels in grief, in misery, in need, in dejection, in desolation, in anger and hatred and meows like Murka, and perhaps Marakulin will endure it for a while. No, he feasts his eyes on it.

As I find you, so shall I judge you. Or whether it was to spite WoeMisfortune,4 that thin, pinched, emaciated creature, girded with bast, covered in lime bark, with disheveled hair like that of old man Gvozdev, to spite her mockery, to get his own back on her crocodile tears when, pushing him into a pit, she would lament: “Behold the man!” Or did he glimpse some higher justice in Murka’s meowing,

3. An image derived from Russian folklore.

4. An image derived from Russian folklore.

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in Murka’s preordained mewing, punishment for some original sin on Murka’s part, something maybe trifling that she had not paid for or expiated, for it is said: “He who observes the entire law, yet errs in one detail, is guilty of everything”—and, finding his own right in age-old arbitrariness, he submitted in fear and trembling? Or were his own love of life and instinctive feeling for it, his joy of spirit as the foundation and pivot of his existence—were these his justification, did these dictate his ability to find himself, to adjust and adapt himself, without any words or proofs, were these the qualities of his soul? Or would he simply go on living, not in anger and not in spite, and not from reason, or thanks to any spiritual quality of his, but just like that—not for any reason, just as before Easter he had written out by hand his report for the director again and again, spending days and nights stubbornly tracing out one character after another, threading the letters together like beads? Is that how it was?

So, something like that flashed through Marakulin’s mind at this point and said quite clearly: it’s not for any purpose, it’s not for any purpose, but he will live—just to see, just to hear, just to feel.

02

B

urkov House does not abut the wall of any other building. Opposite is the Obukhov Hospital. Between the buildings are two large enclosed areas, one belonging to Burkov House itself and one to the Belgian Society. The Belgian Society factory is on the right-hand side—four brick chimneys with lightning conductors, blackening the sky the whole day long, which is why there is black soot between the inner and outer window frames. When Akumovna cleans the rooms before a holiday she always grumbles about that soot; only for some reason she does not blame the factory’s brick chimneys, but rather the huge opal glass electric lamp that lights the factory yard.

The moon shines in through the window, but Marakulin’s room never sees the sun. Only in summer does his room exude heat, like a scorching-hot frying pan. The sun’s rays settle together with the dust and that wearisome sound of iron hitting against stone as Petersburg renews and rebuilds itself during the summer. Nor are there many stars.

All that can be seen is the evening star, and even that is visible only in the springtime when there is still light at the dead of night. On the other hand, the little light in the Obukhov Hospital is always there like a star.

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When blackened people appear in the Belgian Society yard and, like prisoners condemned to hard labor, drag black wheelbarrows filled with coal one after another from the Fontanka River, and day after day the yard grows into a black mountain, this means that summer has come to an end and winter is approaching. It is autumn.

When, however, the huge mountain begins to diminish, melting and slipping away like snow, and the blackened people appear once again with their dark wheelbarrows and drag away the last black lumps in their clanging barrows, and on the thin gray dust of the yard white tents rise up, and the shorn heads and sallow features of people wearing gray hospital dressing gowns appear wandering around, and the white figures of nurses in their Red Cross uniforms, this means that winter is over and summer is approaching. It is spring.

Burkov House is the whole of Petersburg.

The main frontage of the house faces into the lane toward the barracks—those are the richer apartments. That’s where Burkov himself lives, the former governor. You can see his importance from his uniform, which sheds a radiance like electricity, and his hallway is filled with people showing off their gold buttons and epaulettes.

On the floor above lives the barrister Amsterdamsky, who takes two flats for himself. Above him are the Oshurkovs, husband and wife, who occupy ten rooms, all of which are filled with various little gewgaws scattered here and there, and there is also an aquarium with fish. Their servants are changing all the time. The Oshurkovs’ neighbor is a German, Doctor of Medicine Wittenshtaube, who cures all diseases with X-rays. Above the Oshurkovs and Wittenshtaube lives the wife of General Kholmogorov, or “the louse,” as people around the flats call her. There is no one living above the general’s wife, and below Burkov’s flat there is just an office and a bakery on the corner.

As for Burkov himself, no one saw him, and there were just rumors about his being the cause of his own self-destruction; apparently when he was governor somewhere in Purkhovets and was putting down an insurrection, he got so carried away that among a mass of other papers he wrote a report to the ministry that he was completely unsuitable, and was summoned to Petersburg and pensioned off—a happy ending, but not at all what he had expected.

On the other hand, anyone could see the wife of General Kholmogorov, and everybody knew very well that she had income enough in interest alone to live on for the rest of her life—and she was going to live on for a good fifty years. Strong and spry, she would outlive everyone. As the palmist had said, there was no visible end to her lifeline. Besides that, they knew that the general’s wife went to the public baths every Tuesday, sweating away in the steam room, and had made herself so fit that she would never grow old, but remain just the same. And people also knew—God knows how—that she had seemingly nothing to repent of: she had not killed anyone or stolen anything, and she would not kill or steal, because she just ate and drank, digested and made herself fit. Finally, everyone knew that, when going out of the house, she invariably carried a little folding chair with her that she took in case anyone was to attack her—so that every day you could meet her taking her constitutional along the Fontanka, and on Saturdays and Sundays, on the day before religious holidays and on the festive day itself, in church on Zagorodny Prospekt and leaving church.

Every time the midday cannon booms out, Burkov’s maid Susanna appears outside. She looks more like a young lady or a typist from some government department than a maid, as she leads the governor’s fine red setter across the yard. The dog is called Inspector Sisters of the Cross

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General, and she can scarcely control it on its uncomfortable steel chain. On Wednesdays the carpets are brought out into the yard, and before public festivals the soft furnishings as well, for the cleaners to shake and beat them with such force and such a din that sometimes it seems as though guns are being fired on the Neva to warn of an attempt on the life of the tsar, or a flood. All these carpets and furnishings come out from the rich apartments at the front end of the building, from Burkov, Amsterdamsky, the Oshurkovs, from Wittenshtaube and General Kholmogorov’s wife.

The back end of the building consists of small flats with middling tenants and the majority even more modest. Here we can find the shoemaker and the tailor, the baker, bath attendants, barbers and a laundrywoman, two milliners, three dressmakers, a sick nurse from the Obukhov Hospital, tram conductors, engine drivers, men who make hats, umbrellas or brushes, shop assistants, plumbers, typesetters, and various mechanics, technicians, qualified electricians with their families, their dusters, their medicines, their jars and cockroaches, and all sorts of young ladies from Gorokhovaia Street and Zagorodny Prospekt, dressmakers and girls from the teashop, and smart young men from the baths who would wash Petersburg ladies on demand. This is where the corners for rent are, too.

The man who owns the corners is the merchant Gorbachov, “old tight lips,� as his nickname is around the flats. He owns three stalls on the Field of Mars as well. Getting on in years, stumpy, thickset and with a touch of gray in his hair, he is a pious man, and on Saturdays he spreads incense around every one of his thirty corners. On public holidays Gorbachov has crowds of young girls swarming about, wearing little black scarves, as well as alms-collector nuns dressed in boots. At Easter all these daughters of harmony sing fervently and

joyfully “Christ is Risen from the Dead” for him. Everyone knows Gorbachov: he is not greatly loved, and he himself cannot stand the sight of children. They say that General Kholmogorov’s wife cannot put up with them, either, but she has never had any of her own. Gorbachov on the other hand had a little girl. He kept her in an empty storeroom full of rats, beating her and even breaking her fingers, until he drove her to her death. The children tease Gorbachov and follow him around in wild hordes, calling him every sort of name, mocking his incense, and his nose with wild horsehair growing out of it and, because of this, wild coarse language flows around the yard—such strong language as you will rarely hear even in prison, though prison is where it was perfected.

“The times are ripe, the cup of sin is full, punishment is at hand.

I’ll hang all you little rascals up on a rope,” grumbles the tightlipped, insulted, exasperated old man, sniffing with his Gorbachov nose and pulling at his wild horsehair, as he spreads incense around all his thirty corners on Saturdays, savagely and bitterly intermingling the divine and the obscene.

Gorbachov’s corners are well known. This is where you’ll find the old woman with her stall by the baths who sells sunflower seeds, carobs, fruit drops wrapped in fancy pink paper, salted herrings, pickled pears, and besides her you’ll find unemployed cooks and various people like the restless old man Gvozdev, and a housepainter, and a joiner, and a mead seller, and peddlers to boot.

The peddlers’ lockers—their storage booths—stand over the basement wood stores, from the channel for slops on one side to the rubbish pit on the other. In the early morning when the janitors are tidying up the yard and sweeping it, the peddlers at their booths have brisk work flying through their hands: apples, oranges, dried Sisters of the Cross

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peaches, prunes, dates and other sweetmeats and delicacies—all this is laid out carefully and enticingly rearranged, spruced up and refurbished, and then wheeled over to the Fontanka and looking so tempting and tasty that you’d think no one could resist buying at least a date or some Lenten sweets smelling of toadstools to have with their tea.

And just as Gorbachov’s odd corners are never empty, so the peddlers’ lockers are always laid out with delicacies and sweetmeats.

Not far from the corners is the janitors’ lodge, and there are seven janitors. Externally they all look so healthy, and yet they’re all ill with something, and it would be amazing if one of them were healthy for a change. And the janitors’ work is by no means easy: stay on duty, carry the firewood around and take it to where it should go, and do everything in double-quick time. There is only one perk—that is the firewood itself. Only at the posh front end of the block do they have the landlord’s wood. The ones at the back buy their own, and all seven janitors without exception sell firewood.

Above the janitors’ office lives the senior janitor, Mikhail Pavlovich. His noble appearance befits him more for work at the Aleksandr Nevsky monastery, and he wouldn’t be one of the least there, either, never taking less than a ruble tip from his present clients at holiday times. Above Mikhail Pavlovich live the passport officer Iorkin and the clerk Stanislav.

As far as drinkers go, everyone knows that Iorkin has not a single person to rival him in the whole of Burkov House. And on public holidays he may make his way up to some flat on the fourth floor, quite often ringing at the door and muttering that he has come to collect his twenty-kopeck gratuity for the feast day. However, at this point he may fall down on the threshold as if stone dead. Once,

whether it was at Christmas or Easter, he rolled down the stairs from step to step—bump, bump, bump—until he became so covered in bruises and welts from the stones that people couldn’t recognize him. After the New Year, at Epiphany, Mikhail Pavlovich’s wife, Antonina Ignatievna, being a God-fearing woman, would take him to a holy brother in the harbor district, trying to bring him back to the true path. And, indeed, he did repent, giving the brother a written note, pledging himself to abstain from drink until the next New Year. Iorkin trades in health-tax stamps and for him these stamps, especially the ruble ones, are the same kind of treasure as firewood is for the janitors in Burkov House.

Iorkin’s flatmate, the clerk Stanislav, and his friend, the fitter Kazimir, have long been known for prowling at night up and down all the staircases, and there has never been an occasion when any of the cooks or the serving maids have been able to resist them. Any guardsman from the Semionovsky regiment is simply rubbish compared to them.

Weddings, funerals, events, incidents, public scenes, fistfights, punch-ups, calling the police, ending up in a cell—someone shouting, a cat meowing, someone else being strangled—that’s the way things are every day.

Burkov House is like the Viazma doss-house in Petersburg— anything can happen there.

Marakulin’s landlady, Adoniia Ivoilovna Zhuravliova, has her flat, number 79, at the back end of the block.

Number 78 has the midwife Lebedeva living in it. During the preChristmas fast someone stole her winter fur coat, and they never found the thief. It’s as though her coat had been consumed in the stove. People blamed the doorkeeper Nikanor for not keeping an eye Sisters of the Cross

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open—but how could he spot everything? He was on his feet all day, then at night he had to get up to answer people ringing the bell, and so it went on the whole year round. Of course, this was a clever thief, an inside job, nothing you could do about it!

Flat 77, also on the same floor, once had two students living there, Sheveliov and Khabarov. They looked well-off, dressed in good clothes, and paid the rent a month in advance. They lived in isolation, had no one knock at the door, and invited no one to see them.

There was not a sound coming from their flat, and they did not keep any servants. Usually they went out in the morning and only came back home late in the evening. They were busy making money to help any friends who were less well-off than they were, as they explained when they went around collecting money from all over the Burkov flats, both the posh part and the more modest apartments. There was only one drawback: they often used to sing at night, not loudly, but all the same you could hear them singing a requiem for some reason or other: “Rest Among the Saints,” “Mourning at the Graveside,” and “Eternal Memory.” Naturally, this nocturnal singing of burial hymns gave their neighbors a certain feeling of trepidation, even if it did not alarm them outright. And then what happened? A month or so later it turned out that they were not students at all and their names were not Sheveliov and Khabarov, but Shibanov and Kochenkov, the most regular thieves, and their flat looked as if it was never lived in— it was empty, not even a chair with one leg missing, nothing apart from a tallow candle end stuck into an empty beer bottle and some sort of brass tap—that was it. But they had swindled quite a lot of people, so they were arrested.

After the students, apartment number 77 was occupied by two performing artistes, the Damaskin brothers. Sergei Aleksandrovich

was from the ballet—according to what people said around the flats he had taken exams in twelve languages and had studied every subject under the sun. Vasily Aleksandrovich was a clown from the circus, or a “cloon,” as they pronounced it around Burkov House.

He could breathe fire, was afraid of nothing, and used to fly on a balloon. The brothers were called “artistes” by the senior janitor, Mikhail Pavlovich, who treated them with an unusual respect that he couldn’t really account for, as if he were talking to a holy brother from the harbor district.

Vasily Aleksandrovich, the clown, had a body shaped like a teacup. Sergei Aleksandrovich was slim and neat, like a young lady of sixteen. When he walked, it was as though his feet hardly touched the ground, and he was as stubborn as a three-year-old child. His shoes seemed to have no heels, and every minute he seemed to be testing his legs with exercises. He would swing his feet around from side to side, like a cockerel flapping its wings. Vasily Aleksandrovich performed only in his own circus, and every evening he would put on some kind of turn—that was what was expected. Sergei Aleksandrovich danced in the theater, and also gave lessons, either at his own flat or in his pupils’ houses.

The artistes earned good money, but they threw it around like wood shavings. Sergei Aleksandrovich used to play at cards and always lost. They were never out of debt and often they were desperately short of money.

Neither of them was older than Marakulin. Sergei Aleksandrovich had been married, but his wife had left him. Although he assured her that love comes only once—she being the only love of his life—if he went after his girl pupils, that was just connected with his work, and if he was chattering with some beauty Sisters of the Cross

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or other, then he was just talking to her as he would to anybody, without being seriously committed; nevertheless his wife had left him. Sergei Aleksandrovich lived quite a pure life. Vasily Aleksandrovich, on the other hand, needed to have a new young lady every day, he couldn’t live without that, and he wasn’t at all fastidious; he wasn’t at all afraid, even if he knew about some hidden drawback. He used to go to church, although not very often, whereas Sergei Aleksandrovich stayed at home, even at Easter.

Once when Sergei Aleksandrovich had a toothache and decided he was dying, not even then did he think of calling the priest. On the contrary, he warned his “slave”—as the artistes called their cook, Kuzmovna—and in a very threatening way. “If you bring in a priest,” he said in the frenzy of his toothache, “I’ll kick the scoundrel downstairs!”

And he certainly would have thrown the priest down the stairs; Sergei Aleksandrovich was a great freethinker.

Marakulin would only give a formal bow to the midwife Lebedeva. He did not care for her; she was rather sickly and always had an eye on what she might make out of you, so that she had two different tones of voice: one tone for those who had well-filled pockets and quite another voice for anyone who had nothing. The midwife soon stopped acknowledging Marakulin’s greeting, and he somehow ceased to notice her presence. Marakulin did not know the students and met them only a few times on the stairs, when he was going up and they were running down; at night he was the first person to hear their student funeral chant. At first glance he felt well-disposed toward the young men, so clever and happy with life. He became friends with the artistes, and he used to visit them to have a glass of tea in the evening.

The artistes both came from a religious background and had been educated in a seminary. Both were like shaved chickens, and both pushed grief away. They never got depressed, and they wouldn’t ask favors of anyone else. Vasily Aleksandrovich was a clown who did not talk too much, but he was not one to hinder conversation; he was good-natured and used to laugh, even when there was nothing at all funny to laugh at, most likely following his own clownish line of thought. Sergei Aleksandrovich liked to talk. Apart from that he liked reading, and he read not only comic journals with pictures such as the Petersburg Satyricon, not only the famous Andrei the Sorely-Tried, and not only writers like Elza Gavronskaia. He also read Dread Secrets of the Underworld, The Terrible Adventures of Blackhand, the Bandit Leader, The Love Affairs of Beritsky, The Abduction of Liudmila, Alexander, Robber of the Woodlands . . . these were the sorts of things the clown liked.

He would also read the latest book to have made a real sensation and you could see it everywhere—at Suvorin’s bookshop, and at Wolf ’s, and at Mitiurnikov’s, on Nevsky Prospekt, in Gostiny Dvor, and on Liteiny Prospekt, and it could even be displayed in the only shop on Gorokhovaia. And over tea Sergei Aleksandrovich would generally reply to all Marakulin’s gloomy arguments with his own conclusions about the destiny and fate of all the countries, of all the peoples and of mankind in general. Then, however, he would come to a brief summary conclusion: “We must shake ourselves free of all this!” and saying this he would swing his feet around from side to side, like a cockerel flapping its wings.

Sergei Aleksandrovich was a great artist.

Marakulin’s landlady, Adoniia Ivoilovna Zhuravliova, was not young. She was quite stout and very kind. She had been a widow for Sisters of the Cross

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fifteen years. It was fifteen years since her husband had died a hungry death from cancer. He was buried in the Smolensk Cemetery.1 She was not from Petersburg herself, although her husband was a Petersburger. She was from the White Sea coast. Her husband’s business had been on Sadovaia Street, a draper’s shop selling plain calico and threads. She was letting the shop out for rent. She had no children either, just one nephew. This nephew would come to visit her at holiday times, Christmas and Easter. He would also give her his good wishes and congratulate her on her saint’s day and on her birthday.

She was well-off, had plenty of money, but no one to spend it on. She was heartbroken that she had no children, and she used to grieve at the childless life that God had ordained for her.

Adoniia Ivoilovna lived in the farthest room: when you went into the building her room was to the right of the hall. She would stay in all day, not going out onto the street. She found it difficult to go downstairs as her leg gave way under her. She found herself out of breath when going up, and she was afraid of the trams outside. Her only entertainment was in the kitchen—it was good to walk into Akumovna’s place to talk about various dishes.

Adoniia Ivoilovna liked her food.

The rooms were all in a row next to each other, Marakulin’s being closest to the kitchen, and in the morning Piotr Alekseevich could hear dinner being ordered. Adoniia Ivoilovna particularly liked fish dishes, and with what deeply felt relish she instructed Akumovna about sturgeon, in particular sturgeon soup: “What you should do, my dear Ulianushka, is this,” she says to Akumovna as though she were choking back her tears. “First of all 1. A cemetery in Petersburg.

you must boil some perch as long as you can and then put the sturgeon in—and you’ll get the most delicious soup.”

And she was quite right; the fish soup was very tasty. Not only the kitchen, but all four rooms were filled with the deeply experienced, sumptuous aroma of rich sturgeon on the boil, and Marakulin could hardly sit still and wait for that blissful moment when it would be time for him to walk to the eating house on Zabalkansky Prospekt.

Adoniia Ivoilovna knew how to eat well.

She would sit the whole winter without stirring. She was so fixed in the one place that people simply called her and her room “the smithy’s.” But as soon as the spring came she was not to be seen in Petersburg—she would spend the whole summer traveling from one holy place to another.

Adoniia Ivoilovna loved the blessed and the holy fools, the elders, the brothers in Christ, and the prophets. She went to visit one raving elder near Kishiniov and listened to his terrifying tales about the Day of Judgment, the torment of sinners and such terrible things that some of the pilgrims went on their way in confusion and succumbed to a frenzy, while others died on the spot from fear of the torments of hell—so terrifying were the tales. She also made a visit to the Urals to see the elder Makary. The old monk lives in a hen run. He walks after a bird and talks to it, and all the livestock submit to him.

If he stands to pray at sunset, then the animals will stand turning their horned or bearded heads toward where the monk’s prayers are directed. They will stand there without moving, without emitting a sound or jingling their little bells. She spent time also in Verkhotur’ie with Fedotushka Kabakov, whose prayer could call down a voice from heaven, and she also visited that elder who can touch you and Sisters of the Cross

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with his touch impart to you the purity of angels and bring you to a state of paradise. She had also visited the Chinese prophet, the monk who gives you his tongue to suck. He pushes it out, you suck it and you become saintly; you will enter a state of bliss. And in her time she had visited many other holy men, both in the Bogodukhovsky monastery where the elder drives out unclean spirits, mortifying the flesh through coition, and with Bosoi, the elder of the Ivanovsk monastery, and the elder Damian, and with Foka Skopinsky, who burned himself on a funeral pyre.

Adoniia Ivoilovna loved the blessed and the holy fools, the elders, the brothers in Christ, and the prophets. She would have listened forever to their incomprehensible conversations, their parables, and their words. And she would have prayed in their cells, where the icon lamps light of their own accord like a Jerusalem candle. But she was really grieved that they didn’t speak to her; to her alone they would say nothing. Was it because she was getting on in years or because she couldn’t hear, or was it simply not given to her to hear? Only sister Parasha said to her: “The ships will sail, so many of them, far, far away.”

And often in the winter, sitting alone in her airless room, Adoniia Ivoilovna repeats to herself: “Ships, ships, so many of them!” but she can make no sense of the words, and her tears flow like pearls.

Adoniia Ivoilovna’s resemblance to a seal is remarkable—she is the very image of a Murmansk seal.

Adoniia Ivoilovna loves the blessed and the holy fools, the elders, the brothers in Christ, and the prophets. She has another passion that is just as invincible: the sea—she adores the sea. She has been around all the seas of Russia and has traveled on the Murman

coast along the Arctic Ocean where the whales live—and, finally, she has seen the Mediterranean.

Often in the winter, sitting alone in her airless room on the Fontanka, she remembers both the White Sea, where she spent her early years, and the Black Sea, and the warm emerald sea of the Mediterranean and, as she remembers the sea, she repeats Parasha’s prophetic words: “Ships, ships, so many of them!” but she can make no sense of the words, and her tears flow like pearls.

During the nights Adoniia Ivoilovna is at the mercy of dreams.

She has dreams of many colors. She may dream of the land where she was born and of the rivers she knew so well, the Onega River, the Dvina River, the Pinega River, the Mezen and Pechora rivers. She remembers the heavy brocade of the old Russian costumes, white pearls, and the pink pearl of Lapland, whales and seals, Laplanders, Samoyed people, fairy stories and epic tales, the long winter nights and the midnight sun, the Solovetsky monastery, and round dances.

She dreams of hornless Kholmogorov cows, a whole herd of them, and the cows have human eyes: it’s as though they were making up to her, rubbing their backs against her, and then one cow comes out from the herd, giving her a hoof as though it were a hand and says: “Adoniia Ivoilovna, teach me how to speak!” And then another one comes out, and so it goes on, cow after cow, each one offering a hoof as though it were a hand and making the same plea: “Adoniia Ivoilovna, teach me how to speak!” She dreams of scorpion chameleons, all as it were dressed in frock coats. They have scattered along the walls, waving their tails about, now emerald green, now purple, like an icy sunset, and they are just looking at her. Already the whole wall is covered with scorpion chameleons, they are everywhere, covering the icons and behind the icons, and one tail, made up of a thousand Sisters of the Cross

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tails, is waving to her, enticing her, now emerald green, now purple like an icy sunset. Then she’ll have a ridiculous dream as though she is eating a cheesecake and, no matter how much she eats, she is still hungry and the cheesecake never gets any smaller.

Every day Akumovna explains her dreams and over tea in the evenings she tells fortunes from playing cards. Akumovna can read the future from willow branches and carriage candles, and in the wintertime from the pattern of frost on windowpanes, but most reliably from cards.

It is an evening in the autumn. Outside, the fine rain of Petersburg is falling. The muffled sound of water pouring from the gutters over the stones merges with the howling of a dog. In the Belgian Society factory the electric lamp seems to swing like a moon through the mist and smoke. There is one light shining in a window of the Obukhov Hospital.

In the end room, Adoniia Ivoilovna’s airless room, the samovar is singing—it’s impatient, it’s full of hot water, the steam is hissing out of it; the singer has begun to play its game, and you can hear the samovar’s song throughout all the rooms.

Akumovna is not in the kitchen; she is telling fortunes from playing cards in Adoniia Ivoilovna’s room. The samovar comes off the boil, its song is less insistent, and Akumovna’s voice becomes quieter and quieter: “For the house. For the heart. For what will be. For how things will end. How things will abate. How things will astonish. Tell the whole truth with an open heart. What will be will be.”

But the card came out corrupt, indifferent, obscure.

Adoniia Ivoilovna is crying. Yes, and how could she not weep?

They had buried her husband in the Smolensk Cemetery, while she had wanted to place his body in the Aleksandr Nevsky Monastery.

His relatives had insisted and would not listen to her. He had been so kind to everyone and helped them greatly, but they did not like him. She was the only one who loved him, and they would not listen to her. And in the cemetery the ground was giving way under him and collapsing.

Again Akumovna’s voice can be heard, but even more muted: “For the house. For the heart. For what will be. For how things will end. How things will abate. How things will astonish. Tell the whole truth with an open heart. What will be will be.”

But the cards remain just the same. Adoniia Ivoilovna is weeping.

And she is shedding the same tears. She was the only one who loved him, and they would not listen to her. The ground was giving way under him and collapsing.

“Nobody should be blamed,” Akumovna says suddenly.

It is an evening in the autumn. Outside, the fine rain of Petersburg is falling. The muffled sound of water pouring from the gutters over the stones merges with the howling of a dog. In the Belgian Society factory the electric lamp seems to swing like a moon through the mist and smoke. There is one light shining in a window of the Obukhov Hospital.

In the end room, in Adoniia Ivoilovna’s airless room, there are three icon lamps, which never go out. Adoniia Ivoilovna is a long time at her prayers. In the kitchen, too, heavy with the smell of sturgeon soup and dried mushrooms, Akumovna has three lamps that never go out. Akumovna is long at her prayers.

“Ships, ships,” a voice can be heard at night through tearful snoring.

The voice is answered by the muffled sound of another from the far end of the building: “Nobody should be blamed.”

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And a third voice can be heard, coming through the wall of the artistes’ flat: “We must shake ourselves free of all this!”

But Marakulin shrinks into himself without any joy, all hushed into silence and on his guard. He continues to repeat over and over again one and the same idea, and that to no good purpose: unsubmissive, he can no longer avoid thinking, he can no longer avoid hearing his own thoughts, far removed from any sense of tranquility.

Holy Akumovna’s passport shows her to be a spinster aged thirtytwo, but from her own assurances—which would have been obvious in any case—she is not thirty-two, but fifty years of age for sure. She is from Pskov, “the maid of Pskov,” as she is dubbed by the artistes, whom she often calls in on to divine their fortunes from the cards.

She would be quite prepared to spend a whole day doing that for Sergei Aleksandrovich, yes, and there was his “slave” Kuzmovna, too, who was a kind of godmother to her, for all that she reminded Akumovna of some fish, or a frozen chicken from the Hay Market.

Akumovna was small, with black hair and a very dark complexion, a beetle, but she smiles and looks at you from time to time as might a holy fool, not directly, but from some other place with her head cocked a little to one side. She is meek and she never becomes angry with anybody. She moves quickly, although it doesn’t look so much that she is running, as that her feet are moving up and down on the spot and she only appears to be running.

She is nimble, too, and will get everything done on the spot, only beware: if you are sending her out to get something urgently, then it’s hopeless—you won’t live to see the day. She’s up on the fourth floor, her legs are old; she may manage to run down to the street, but if she starts to go upstairs, then she starts missing her footing.

Her feet are quite willing to move, Akumovna would like to get

there as soon as possible, but she hasn’t got the strength now, and she just teeters on the spot.

Akumovna lives by day and by night, just like Adoniia Ivoilovna.

She has multifarious dreams: she sees fires—the house is on fire; she sees robbers—the robbers are running and chasing after her; she sees a naked man—naked on the shore, washing himself with soap, no less; she sees a spotted reptile—the reptile is biting her and in her dream she is eating berries—red bilberries, big bunches, as big as the tail of a sheep. But more often than this, very often in fact, she dreams that she is flying, flying always to one and the same place, toward Ostashkov, to the monastery of St. Nil Stolobensky.

“You take a long jump and then you are flying,” Akumovna would say. “I fly up and, moving my arms as I would in water, everything becomes easy and I keep flying forward like a bird.”

For a long time Akumovna has been promising herself to go to the monastery, to the remains of St. Nil Stolobensky, but she has not fulfilled her promise and has never been there even once. That is why often, so very often, she flies to Ostashkov at night.

Around the flats people love Akumovna: holy Akumovna. She always has children crowding into her kitchen. She knows how to play with them, and she loves doing that and chattering with children. She visits everywhere. If she has money, she will give it out and people take it and never pay it back. In every corner people are glad to see her. There is only one thing she is afraid of: that is when they start fighting outside in the yard.

Sergei Aleksandrovich Damaskin has overcome all the laws of nature—he is a circus artiste. Akumovna is just such a person, too— she knows what life is like in the next world. That is what they say about her around the Burkov flats.

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Akumovna has been in the next world; in the next world she has been in hell.

There, in the next world she was shown everything—only she does not know who and how many were guiding her.

“I entered . . .” thus Akumovna would begin her tale of how she witnessed the torments, “I entered some sort of building, some gigantic chamber; in places the floor was rotten, the supporting beams had collapsed; instead of earth there was filth, and on the floor were lying disgusting rotten fish of various kinds, meat and skulls; everything was horrible, bad things were lying there, and dead people—nothing but bone, and human limbs, and dead animals were lying around, everything rotten and horrible.”

And they led her around the chamber and showed her everything! And the chamber stretched out in front of her—she could see no end to it. It was wide, and yet she felt she was hemmed in. In front of her there were people, many, many people, and behind her and all around her, everywhere there were people, walking or standing still.

And there were some creatures in the corners, not human—that she could understand—and there were many of them also.

“I felt torment, and I was repeating a prayer, but they would not answer me; they had the tail and legs of a cow, the claws of a dog.

‘Let me go!’ I begged them. One of them says straight out: ‘Not yet, let her look at it all,’ and after him another one says: ‘She must wait a while, let her see everything.’ So they led me on.”

And they led her through the chamber and showed her everything. Everything was horrible, bad things were lying there, rotten things, nothing but carrion; everything had rotted away, everything was disgusting, the dead people and the dead animals, bones, skulls, and filth.

“ ‘If God will only allow me to accept His holy truths,’ I think to myself, ‘I will get out of this sinful place.’ So I keep on praying: ‘Lord, Lord, allow me to take communion. I am racked with torment.’ Then I see that we have already left the chamber.”

They led her uphill, and on top of the hill there are three faces, three persons are standing there, all in bright coats and their faces shining with radiance. They are taking communion. Only instead of the communion vessel there is a slop-basin, and there is no ladle— they take communion just like that. Then there is a host of people, all coming up and all taking communion. Next they bring her up. She wants to make the sign of the cross, but it is difficult for her to cross herself; they are hindering her.

“He himself took the wafer and gave it to me dry, not soaked in wine. But I could not swallow their gift. I felt ill and choked on it.

‘Lord, Lord, I beseech Thee, holy saints and angels. Lord, Thou hast tormented me enough.’ Those creatures are laughing. One of them says: ‘You’ll have to wait a while, you are going to do some more walking!’ And another one says after him: ‘Yes, we need to take her around again.’ They are laughing, they have the tails and legs of a cow, the claws of a dog. So they led me on again.”

And they led her down from the hill to a lake. But past them a whole crowd is rushing, overtaking them, just like people hurrying along Nevsky Prospekt. They are running and running, dragging their long tails behind them. They all rush down from the hill and into the lake. And there in the lake they turn into doves, a flock of doves, like an enormous cloud.

“The doves came down onto the water and began to drink, and I said: ‘Shall we be going there, too?’ ‘Yes,’ comes the answer, ‘we shall.’ And one of them says: ‘Yes, now you will soon meet your end.’

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And we come closer and closer to the lake. I start to cough, I cannot swallow their gift. ‘Lord, I beseech Thee. Thou hast tormented me enough.’ Suddenly children are running around me and I take refuge with the children; will they not save me? ‘My guardian angel, protect me; anybody, preserve me, have mercy on me!’ The whole lake is covered with doves. The water is muddied and dirty. And I waded into it knee-deep . . . ‘Now it will soon be the end of you.’ I could hear the voice, but I had no idea where the one who had been leading me had gone.”

Thus did Akumovna visit the next world. This was her path through its torments.

She was still quite well in herself. Her heart was healthy, only Akumovna suffered from stomach pains. And, indeed, a great deal of suffering had come her way; this was the whip she had been lashed with.

Akumovna’s father had been rich and well-known. Her mother had died before she was even ten. She had seven brothers, all older than she. She was a healthy girl, even though she was badly hurt when she was still a baby; she was asleep in her cradle, and the bigger children were rocking it, when the cradle came loose and she crashed to the ground in it. She bawled night and day, and even the solace of her mother’s breast would not help. But then it all passed, and she completely recovered. She was a bright girl. Just before her mother died, she had given her fifty rubles, wrapped up in a bit of cloth. And no one knew about that money except her father. And when her father was in need, she would take what he wanted out of the cloth and give it to him. He would pay it all back to her later, and she would wrap it up again without a word to anyone. Her brother’s wife knew nothing about it. Her father was living with his daughter-in-law, who

did not like Akumovna. When they were eating, it used to happen that she would find fault with the girl, take her by the hand and lead her away from the table. She used to beat the poor girl terribly. The father was living with his daughter-in-law. Once one of Akumovna’s cousins came to see her father, who had promised some time ago to give him money; now he had come to collect it. But for some reason Akumovna’s father got angry and would not give it to him. All the same, Vasíly needed the money desperately and felt hurt: why had he promised it to him? Vasily just started to weep. The girl heard him. She was tenderhearted and unhappy herself, so she caught Vasily and wanted to give him some of what she had wrapped up in the cloth, only on the strict condition that he absolutely must pay it back. Well, naturally her cousin rejoiced and swore he would do so: “If I don’t give it back, may my house burn down and may I never have children.” And she gave him, kopeck for kopeck, the sum that her father had promised him, twenty rubles. But when the time came for him to give the money back, he did not return it. He kept on saying that he hadn’t any money; just let her wait a little. Yes, she would have waited, but the money wasn’t the problem.

Just supposing her father were to ask her, what was she going to say?

And, as luck would have it, just at that time her father fell ill. He had drunk some beer, his legs had gone blue, he was really feeling very bad. They gathered the village around, and her cousin Vasily came.

They all sat around and waited. The father asked the girl to bring the cloth with the money. She was frightened and did not know what to say. She tried to blame the keys, saying that she had lost them.

Then the daughter-in-law said: “You’re saying you’ve lost the keys.

All right.” So she took an axe, went to the barn, broke open the box and brought in the cloth. They started to count the money—there Sisters of the Cross

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were twenty rubles missing. The father asked the little girl: “Where is the money?” She was silent. And he asked her again, “Where’s the money?” Again she said nothing. Then he fell mortally ill, and he began to give his last blessing to his children. He blessed his sons, her elder brothers, until it came to her turn. She started to cry and asked quietly that Vasily should confess about the money. But Vasily, the scoundrel, said “no” and “no” again: “I know nothing about it; I didn’t take the money,” as though he had never borrowed it. And she had stopped crying now—when things are really bad, people don’t cry. She was looking at her father, just gazing at him. The father says to the girl: “I give you my blessing.” He stopped and thought for a moment. “May you wander around the whole wide world like a rolling stone!” he said, gnashing his teeth, and died.

“Around the whole wide world like a rolling stone!”—those were the words of parental blessing that Akumovna received from her father, and it was clear that Akumovna thought that those words condemned her to wander around the whole wide world.

She spent less than six weeks at home, and those in the vegetable garden. While her father was still alive things may have been bad, but now when her father had gone, the daughter-in-law became worse than any wild beast; she would chase the girl around, nagging her to death. Six days after the festival of St. Flora and St. Laura, Madame Buianova took Akumovna into service at her mansion at Turii Rog, six versts from Sosna Gora.

Life was good on that estate. Madame Buianova became fond of her. She was just a little older than Akumovna, who was thirteen, while the mistress was sixteen. The master, Buianov himself, was not young; he was old enough to be grandfather to either of them. He often went into the city on business, and when he was at home he

was always busy—there was a great deal of land and forest to look after, as well as lakes. He really knew how to manage his estate, and he loved the land. At Turii Rog hemp grew so densely that you couldn’t walk through it, and there were hens feeding in the fields. But the mistress was always on her own, with just Akumovna for company, like a little sister. She used to take her around everywhere with her, into the fields and into the woodland—into the thickets for mushrooms, and into the pinewoods for berries. In the pinewoods, in hot places where the sun beat down, there were red berries growing; it was good to take the fruit, as they tweaked off walnuts and gathered acorns to make coffee. Otherwise the mistress would lie down under a pine tree and send Akumovna to bring flowers. Akumovna would bring back many different flowers—the blue ones she used to weave into a wreath, while the mistress lay under the pine tree, weeping.

Akumovna would decorate her with different flowers, all blue, and kiss her all over. She herself had sharp, joyful eyes, with black hair braided with a red ribbon.

Akumovna spent a whole year there, never parting from her mistress. They showed her everything, teaching her how to iron clothes and how to wash them. Before the Feast of the Intercession of the Virgin the master went off to the city and fell ill. What happened to the master they said was this: he was being tormented; the woodlands and the waters have their own masters. In Turii Rog there had been dense, impassable woodland that a beetle couldn’t fly through.

Buianov cleared the forest, and where there had been no way through to the lakes, he had made roads around them and cleared them here and there. But they, the spirits, did not like that. They would gather together and appear before him from time to time and reproach him for doing them to death. That was why he was being tormented, so Sisters of the Cross

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people said. They sent a message from the city to the mistress in Turii Rog. She got ready and departed.

“My mistress gave me strict instructions,” Akumovna used to tell people, “to look after Krasotka the cow, to check her every night.

There were many cows, but only one Krasotka, the favorite. Krasotka had a calf, and that was how all the trouble started. There was a wedding in the village. I asked for time off to go to the wedding, promising to be back by midnight, but I got carried away watching what was going on and did not get back till two in the morning. However, Krasotka had given birth to her calf at midnight and killed the calf by kicking it. ‘Only one of us can live here,’ the herdsman said, ‘either you or me.’ They would drive out either him or me.

Then I went to the young master, my mistress’s brother, who was in charge of the estate, but I was afraid to go in to see him. I scraped at the door and then turned back. ‘Well, what is it, Beetle?’—the young master had heard me. ‘It’s my fault, master. We have had a misfortune!’ ‘Come here,’ he said and let me in. I went down on my knees before him and told him everything as I was weeping. ‘Get out and pack up your things.’ And he drove me out. I went to my own room—my tiny room behind the dining room—but which things to take I didn’t know. None of it was mine, and I wept. I kept on weeping all night. The next morning the young master comes in. ‘Have you gathered all your things together?’ he asks. I say to him once more: ‘Forgive me, master, it was my fault!’ ‘Be quiet, and don’t you dare to cry, or else I’ll have you hanged!’ And off he went.

I’m thinking: well, he won’t hang me, he’s just trying to frighten me.

But for some reason I have a feeling of fear, I am afraid of something.

It was Saturday, and they were heating up the baths. I had scrubbed down the sweating-shelf, laid out the beer and was on the point of

leaving, but the master was already approaching. I ran to the door.

‘Stand still! Have you gathered all your things together?’ I gave him my wonted reply: ‘Forgive me, master, it was my fault. Don’t drive me away!’ He thought for a moment and said: ‘If you agree to live with me, then stay. Otherwise, off you go!’ And he pushed me out of the bathhouse. And I don’t want to go away, to be driven away from my mistress, and where would I go in any case—back to my brother’s, to the place where the daughter-in-law lives? I walk up and down, weeping. The herdsman made it clear: ‘Only one of us can live here, either you or me!’

“If only my mistress would come back, but she is away day after day. It was Saturday, and they were heating up the baths. I had scrubbed down the sweating-shelf and laid out the beer; I was hurrying to get away before the master came in. I was frightened and afraid of something. And now here he is, coming in: ‘Well, do you agree?’ ‘Yes, all right.’ You see, I was just a young girl. I didn’t understand. ‘Go and get undressed, so I can have a look at you.’ I went in and started to take my clothes off. The next day the master went into town—on that first day he had not touched me—and brought me a silk headscarf from town and a ribbon for my hair. I told the old nurse about this (she was an old woman who was still living in the house). ‘That’s all right,’ said the old nurse, ‘only ask him to pay five hundred into your savings account, as security,’ although I didn’t know what savings account she was talking about. You see, I was just a young girl. I didn’t understand anything. The old nurse called me that evening. ‘Serve the master the samovar and stay with him.’

The master’s room was right next door to the dining room. I put on the silk headscarf, braided the ribbon into my hair, served him the samovar, and sat down at the table. I was shaking all over. . . .”

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Indeed, Akumovna felt disgrace, sullied and shamed; she wanted to hang herself. Her mistress had returned, and here she was, walking around in such a state! The mistress calmed her down, promising to bring up the child. She forgave her for what had happened to Krasotka and did not drive Akumovna away. Then Akumovna gave birth to a boy, and soon afterward the mistress herself had a child, also a boy. The children were brought up side by side, one nurse looking after both of them, and they were taught together. When they were both nine years old, they were taken away to Petersburg and the mistress’s brother adopted Akumovna’s son. They used to come back only for the summer holidays, and for Christmas and Easter.

Both of them finished their schooling in the same year and became officers, only spending a little time in the country and then back to Petersburg. When Akumovna’s son was young, he was gentle and kind, but when he grew up she began to be afraid of him. Sometimes he would give her such a look that, far from her wanting to utter a word, she just wanted to hide away from him.

All the same, time does not wait, time will have its way; the old master died because they suffocated him. The woodlands and the waters have their own masters, that’s what they say. Real misfortune befell the old master and the mistress’s brother. On the local saint’s day seven people had their throats cut on the main road; a search was started for who had done it. The road led straight to the manor at Turii Rog, and they put the master in jail for covering up the tracks of the murderers. He spent a year in jail. When he was released, he was ready to go abroad, but he died. Akumovna had not seen him when he was dying. She had only seen him when he came out of prison, and she could not recognize him; he had gone black as earth.

His lungs had collapsed, that’s what they said.

Once more Akumovna remained with her mistress, as in the old days. They went out together for walks in the fields and the woods, as before. Akumovna would gather different flowers and weave the blue ones into a wreath, while her mistress was lying under a pine tree, only now she was not weeping, she was asleep—the mistress had taken a drop too much, she had long since got used to drinking. She would have a drink, eat a bit of minted ginger cake, and drop off to sleep.

Come the spring, the mistress’s brother died. Then in the autumn they brought Akumovna’s son from Petersburg to Turii Rog; he had asked to be brought there before he died; he was suffering from consumption. He was buried in the Turii Rog cemetery. They gave his uniform and his cap to Akumovna. Then, before a year had gone by, the mistress also died. On the day of her death she dreamed that the old master had come and with him a white dog. And they buried her mistress.

Turii Rog had become empty; Akumovna was the only one left.

The young master did not want to keep her in his service and dismissed her after the funeral. So she was left completely alone. As for crying, she didn’t—when things are really bad, people don’t cry.

For the very last time she went around the open field, the wood, and the thicket; for the last time she sat for a little in the pine forest at the sunny spot where the red berries were growing, and beneath the pine tree where her mistress used to lie down. She made her bows to the wood, to the open field, to the pine forest, to the tree, and then off she went. She walked along the main road from Turii Rog past Sosna Gora, past her brother and the daughter-in-law, past Vasily’s cottage. Past the cemetery with the crosses that marked the graves of her mother and father, keeping straight along the road from Turii Rog, around the whole wide world like a rolling stone.

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And it took her more years than one to walk from Turii Rog to Petersburg, and until she reached the city, on her way she would walk beside the plow, and work the scythe, and live in the ravines like a gypsy.

Akumovna has been living in Petersburg for nine years. Her son’s cap and uniform were stolen from her a long time ago on the road from Turiy Rog to Petersburg, and all she has left is the memory of him; she sprinkled his warm boots with naphthalene, and they are in a cardboard box up under the ceiling, along with his galoshes.

Akumovna opens up the box at holiday times, saying: “I shall have a look at those things, just like looking at him himself.”

For nine years now Akumovna has been living at the cheap end of Burkov House on the Fontanka, winter and summer, the whole year round; she has never been farther than the Hay Market and the fish stalls, but Akumovna longs for the fresh air: “If only I could breathe a bit in the open air,” she says from time to time with a smile and looking at you as might a holy fool, from some other place, humble, holy, unhappy, with no family left to her anywhere in the world.

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he two rooms remained empty all autumn, but by the start of the winter they had been taken and Marakulin had two new neighbors: Vera Nikolaevna Klikachova, who was studying at the preparatory school on Nadezhdinskaia Street, and Vera Ivanovna Vekhoriova, or Verochka, a pupil of the theater school.

Vera Nikolaevna was a thin young lady, so very slim that you felt afraid on her behalf, particularly when she sat up all night reading a book. What is it that keeps a person alive? She had not a drop of color in her face, and her eyes seemed lost, like those of wandering Holy Russia herself.

She had been living with her mother in the old provincial town of Kostrinsk; the house she owned had burned to the ground and all its contents had been destroyed. In fact, they could have saved something from the fire, but her mother, old Mrs. Klikachova, had stood with their icon right against the flames and would not let them carry anything out, so that everything had been consumed. If you let the fire swallow everything and offer no resistance, then it will return your goods a hundred times over, that’s what the old woman had

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been thinking a week before when the table and the icons had made terrifying cracking sounds. The old lady had not realized about the omen in time, and therefore everything had been consumed. After the fire they were living in the old bathhouse. Vera Nikolaevna had been through the old town school in Kostrinsk, and would have lived the rest of her life in the bathhouse, if a certain young woman, who had been exiled from Petersburg, had not started to teach her and put her through four years of grammar school education. Vera Nikolaevna went to the provincial capital of the province, passed her examinations and then spent three years in the medical school attached to the hospital. After that she went to Petersburg and was finishing the Nadezhdinsky course.

Vera Nikolaevna did not find it easy to study, and sometimes it was so difficult that she was reduced to tears. But she would not give up; she was such a hard worker. After the Nadezhdinsky course she wanted to work for her leaving certificate, to go to medical school.

Vera Nikolaevna was earning her living by working as a masseuse and never had time to sit down for a moment. Full of cares, she walked to work and to her classes, laden with textbooks on medicine. It was difficult to get a word out of her; she rarely entered into conversation and said little about her life. She mentioned only her mother and Mariia Aleksandrovna, the exile from Petersburg who had taught her and accustomed her to studying—those were the only people she ever talked about.

Vera Nikolaevna’s mother, Lizaveta Ivanovna, had lived since her childhood in Kostrinsk, that desolate, little, old white city on the River Ustiuzhin with its fifteen white churches, in Kostrinsk, the first among weeping cities for the peal of its mourning bells.

Old people can remember what Lizaveta Ivanovna was like when

she was young—a great one for drawing people in, a leader in the round dances, a teller of tales and a lover of old things. They remember how she was married in the cathedral and how the archpriest, who knew both bride and groom, kept on getting their names mixed up, and the old washerwoman Inchikha shook her head sadly, knowing in her own prophetic way that the couple would not live together for long, that some third person was standing between them beneath the marriage crown. The old woman knew, but she kept silent about it.

Inchikha was beside Lizaveta Ivanovna both when her husband was dying and when the house was burning down. It was from her that Lizaveta Ivanovna learned to carry nothing out of the house, but to surrender everything to the fire. And this was not all that she taught her; she vouchsafed all her intricate, prophetic knowledge of how things are, for Inchikha had a great store of wisdom and it seemed she knew everything that man was fated to encounter. That was the judgment of people in Kostrinsk. So she went quietly to her grave, leaving one person in place of her in this world; Lizaveta Ivanovna would pronounce a special prayer to God for Inchikha, because the old woman had passed on to her all her knowledge and had done more for Lizaveta than can be done by a mother and father. She had done so much for her that it seemed there was nothing left for anybody else to do. That was the judgment of people in Kostrinsk.

It was now about ten years since Inchikha had died and the house had burned down. And living in the old bathhouse, Lizaveta Ivanovna had long been dreaming of building a new house for herself, as new and solid as the one that had been consumed in the flames.

Every summer she brought in beams from the forest and piled them up in her vegetable garden. She also went for a blessing to Father Ivan Sisters of the Cross

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Kronshtadtsky in Kronshtadt, bringing him as a gift an old icon of the Stroganov school. And she received from him a payment of one hundred rubles to make a start on the building. How many times did exiled architects draw up plans for her of the house to be built, and she examined them carefully with her sharp eyes—looking for this, that, and the other: had they not left out the larder, the storeroom, the outside porch; was it all laid out in their plan as it had been in the old house that had burned down? But her new solid house she simply never built. The beams rotted in the vegetable garden, the plans were carefully preserved in their box, and the hundred rubles, the holy father’s gift, never got as far as Moscow. Never in her whole life had she possessed so much money. Lizaveta’s husband had been a petty clerk in Kostrinsk, earning a pittance, and the priest’s rainbowcolored note had been consumed before her eyes: it was spent on all sorts of trifles—little boxes were brought as gifts from Kronshtadt, boxes necessary and unnecessary, boxes broken and boxes intact, and every little thing and every little box had its purpose, while the largest box was to be used as she might think fit, and that idea swallowed almost fifty rubles. How could they possibly have managed to get a house built?

Lizaveta Ivanovna had become bent and toothless; all she had were the heavy tresses of white hair enmeshing the whole of her head, but her light blue eyes had grown even lighter and seemed to shine brightly. She had lived many years in this world, although for her this world consisted of nothing but that desolate, little, old white city with its fifteen white churches, and it was as though all her days were resonant with the reproachful sound of its funeral bells.

Kostrinsk is an old town on the River Ustiuzhin, for the peal of its mourning bells the first among weeping cities. Lizaveta Ivanovna

had buried many people, and she would visit all of their graves. On Easter Sunday she would bring them eggs dyed red and give them an Easter kiss, for it is more important to kiss the dead than the living, so thought the old woman. And she lived on her own in the bathhouse, as though she were in a proper dwelling. She loved watching the sun going down behind the bell tower and gilding the cross, and when people would start taking sleigh rides at the beginning of the winter, and when they would jump from plank to plank in the spring.

She was just waiting for someone to come along to whom she could pass on everything that the old washerwoman Inchikha had once passed on to her. Surely the person to whom she would pass this on would be as happy as she was herself, for the old woman thought that there was no one so happy as she. And her joy came from the fact that through her intricate, prophetic knowledge—imagined or real, it does not matter—she had come to understand how one should live, and that she was living not for herself, nor for others, and that, whenever she did something, she was thinking not of herself, nor of the good folk of Kostrinsk, but she was preparing for the next life and the next world. And in her dealings she was thinking about the next life and the next world. For that reason she felt good, and others felt the benefit from being in her company.

Lizaveta Ivanovna was to Kostrinsk what one of the holy brothers from the harbor district was for the Petersburg poor.

Mariia Aleksandrovna had come to Kostrinsk as an exile from Petersburg. In her banishment time hung heavy on her hands. To find some way to make the days pass more quickly she took it upon herself to teach Vera Nikolaevna, whom she had come to like. And she would often visit the Klikachovs. She also became interested in Lizaveta Ivanovna, and she used to ask the old woman what she Sisters of the Cross

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thought, how one should live, what to live by in this world, how to forget what we can never put out of our mind, and what to do in order to avoid being afraid or wanting things that we cannot have— those were the sort of things she questioned the old woman about.

And judging by her questions the old woman realized, and this accorded with what her heart was telling her, that this exile was the very person to whom she should pass on all her intricate, prophetic knowledge of the world and thereby make her happy.

Mariia Aleksandrovna had been living under compulsion for about a year in that desolate, little, old white city with its fifteen white churches. She came for Easter to break the Lenten fast with the Klikachovs. At Easter, as people say, everything is particularly visible and clear to those who know. And Lizaveta Ivanovna saw a sign of death somewhere above the brow of her favored one, the one she had chosen. When she recognized that mystery, she did not want to believe her own thought. But somehow in the holy days that followed there was no sign of Mariia Aleksandrovna in Kostrinsk—she had disappeared and all traces of her had gone cold.

Lizaveta Ivanovna had experienced much in her life. She had buried her husband and seen a great deal of other people’s woe—where is it not to be found? Only never did she sigh as heavily as when the morning came, the day went by till evening and the night, and nowhere in Kostrinsk was there to be seen her favored one, the one whom she had chosen and who was now doomed to die. Lizaveta Ivanovna had been happy: she had learned how to live through her own intricate, prophetic knowledge of the world—imagined or real, it does not matter. She had come to understand how one should live, but she had not carried out the task set her by God by passing on her wisdom and, if Mariia Aleksandrovna did not come back, she,

Lizaveta, would die in misery. And the old woman waits, shaking her head enmeshed in its heavy tresses of white hair, praying quietly, humbly, resignedly. Above her the old bells reproachfully ring out their mourning peal. Kostrinsk is the old city on the River Ustiuzhin with its fifteen white churches, and the first among weeping cities for the peal of its mourning bells.

“So what has become of Mariia Aleksandrovna?” Marakulin asked once.

But Vera Nikolaevna said nothing in reply—only her eyes were lost; like those of wandering Holy Russia they were like two fires in the dark, and the whole night she had not wept, but howled, as though people had placed a noose around her throat and the noose was being drawn tight.

Marakulin also failed to get to sleep that night, as he kept on listening for something. He had realized what it was all about, and for some reason he felt terrified.

“Whereas if you take Gorbachov,” he thought, “he’ll have nuns and girls in little black scarves singing ‘Christ Is Risen from the Dead’ for him from now until eternity.”

This thought kept coming back into his head, pounding along in a heavy way, articulating itself in words, but when it was played out, he was seized by a sort of apprehension: he forgot, both about Gorbachov, and about Mariia Aleksandrovna, and about Lizaveta Ivanovna; he was just striving to realize what he had to push out of his mind in order to calm himself down.

And suddenly for some reason he remembered General Kholmogorov’s wife, how she walked around, so well-fed and healthy, contented and triumphant—a louse who had nothing to repent of, taking her constitutional, strolling along the Fontanka with her little Sisters of the Cross

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folding chair, or coming back from church along Zagorodny Prospekt with a dead spider’s web seemingly trailing after her—the kind that hangs in dark, airless, rat-filled storerooms, or that lies between the floor and the bottom of heavy old chests, so difficult to move—that was the kind of web she was trailing behind her, that might get into your mouth and choke you; better to drown yourself in the Fontanka!

He had been noticing this for a long time, but only now did he understand it. And the whole night through to morning he kept on turning over in his mind the most cunning way of getting rid of the general’s wife, so that there would be no trace left at all of her; and besides, if he didn’t eliminate her, he couldn’t go on living, there was no air to breathe—with her dead spider’s web she didn’t let him breathe freely—and as long as she was there he would have no sleep, and no patience, and no rest.

And if Marakulin in a moment of desperation were to kill the general’s wife and were called to account for that the next morning, then recovering his wits he could say one thing in his justification: that she had been killed not by him, but by the cruel Burkov night.

And the whole night through to morning Vera Nikolaevna had not wept, but howled, as though people had placed a noose around her throat and the noose was being drawn tight.

Cruel nights stretched ahead for Marakulin. What had happened to his readiness to endure everything, and only see, only hear, only feel? The one persistent thought of the general’s wife never left his mind; that wretched woman stuck in his throat. A wayward man, stubborn even in his waywardness.

In the morning paper he read about a doctor who had poisoned someone. He hid the newspaper under his pillow and read it through again in the evening just before going to bed.

“You, doctor, are a benefactor of humanity,” he whispered in the dark. “You have already sent one louse into the next world. . . .

Perhaps you’ll manage to get rid of someone else!”

When he remembered the fury and indignation expressed by the papers, he said to himself with delight: “Now we can see how Mrs. Kholmogorov’s sisters have all banded together to defend the louse poisoned by the doctor, that genuine benefactor of humanity!”

He would get up in the middle of the night, light a candle, read the paper through again, hide it under his pillow, lie down once more, and carry on whispering in the dark, his brain active until the morning. And he would transfer his despair at the Burkov flats from himself onto the whole human race, whose benefactor might be that doctor, the poisoner, as he cleared the air by sending one louse after another into the next world, thus making it easier to breathe— otherwise there would be no air for him to breathe and he would have no sleep, and no patience, and no peace. A wayward man, stubborn even in his waywardness.

For a week or more Marakulin lived in a sort of frenzy and reached, as he thought, a certain limit, and when he came to that limit, he found a way of crawling back into the world; he had found once again the right to live in the world, for after all ever since autumn that right had wavered or rather, for what’s the point in hiding the truth, had not wavered, but disappeared, together with sleep, and patience, and peace.

Gorbachov, in Marakulin’s opinion, after all his waverings and stratagems, had discovered and come to understand how he should live: he wanted to save his soul and, in order to do so, swung incense into all his corners, and all the rest—whether he were to hang all Sisters of the Cross

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the children on a rope, or set about feeding them sweets enclosed in pink wrappers—was of no importance for saving his soul. Mariia Aleksandrovna, after all the questions she had asked, had also discovered and come to understand how she should live: it wasn’t even that she placed a high value on danger, the kind of life where death was always close at hand; she had been ready to destroy her soul, she had been willing to surrender her soul for the sake of others, she had been preparing herself as a victim for the sake of some law or other and justice, the advent of which would determine the happiness of mankind, and she must have killed or have been preparing to kill or helped to kill any individual whom she judged to be harmful to the law and to justice. Lizaveta Ivanovna through her intricate prophetic knowledge, imagined or real, it did not matter, had discovered and come to understand how she should live; not thinking of herself, nor of others, but thinking about the next world and about life in that world, and preparing herself for the next world and for the next life, she behaved in a way that befitted her hopes. But, after all, whether one waved incense around or tried to fight off children, or whether one was preparing for a murder or preparing for the life hereafter, all this was work, effort, action and, moreover, its completion entailed many highly important decisions and, above all, one must know and, whether out of conscience or out of fear of the way things had been done in the past, that did not matter, one must be able to answer what it was that should save one’s soul or what it was that should destroy it, or what it was that should prepare it for the next life, and that was also something that should be set as a firm duty in the name of the indisputable.

But the general’s wife did not stir a muscle, she did absolutely nothing at all—you couldn’t really count going to the bathhouse as

activity—and yet she achieved everything and in the most remarkable way. She made herself fit in the most conspicuous manner and could see no end to her life; the palmist had made no mistake about that, so perhaps she already was immortal; and, when all was said and done, she was concerned neither with saving her soul, nor with ruining it; ruining it and saving it were all one to her, and she prospered by ignoring all means of salvation, owing nothing to anyone or anything. And if Gorbachov had the right to exist—since he knew how to live—and if Mariia Aleksandrovna and Lizaveta Ivanovna possessed that right also—since they, too, knew how to live—then the general’s wife, like some vessel of God’s choosing, not only had that right, but possessed it as an absolute entitlement.

Pushing the matter to what seemed to be its limit, Marakulin reasoned: “If I have to take thought now and really work it out, I need to decide firmly for myself once and for all how humanity would behave if, for example, the great powers, that union of countries headed by England, were—through parliaments and assemblies and by special manifestos—to propose to their subjects, to the whole of humanity that they live the louse-like, carefree, sin-free, and immortal life of the general’s wife. Such a possibility would appear to be a genuine revelation, which some learned German scientist like Wittenshtaube would arrive at by means of his X-rays, or by deceiving us, or someone like our former Governor Burkov, the agent of his own destruction—are there not in Russia plenty of such agents who zealously turn their exceptional powers against themselves? Burkov himself might come up with some stunt, some cunning trick that would work for a while and of course allow some radiant holy elder like Kabakov to stuff a gramophone into his cellar and to proclaim as a voice from heaven that he is the leader and judge to the world who Sisters of the Cross

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will redeem us from Murka’s original sin and in peace and kindness create the New Zion, not made by human hand, and do so swiftly, simply, and cheaply—how would humanity react to that, how would it respond?”

With his own innate, Marakulian stubbornness, he continued to expand his thoughts to an end point: “But I consider that, without any superfluous words or ceremonies, forgetting both what they owe and what they do not owe and any means of salvation, quietly, without doffing their caps or any other headgear befitting their rank, these subjects would let down their trousers and, protecting themselves with the sign of the cross, would answer the courageous, free, proud, holy summons by diving into the enormous head covered in horsehair, for example the one constructed by us at that same Belgian factory, and would jump into that New Zion created in peace and kindness by Kabakov and not made by human hand, in order then to begin their new louse-like, carefree, sin-free, immortal and— above all—peaceful lives: eat, digest, and make yourself fit. There will always be time enough to equip yourself with a little folding chair. Yes, it can be done in conditions that are compulsory, but that are accepted voluntarily and, therefore, are generally widespread, when each of us will have a little cowbell clanging around our neck, so that we don’t become lost as we are eating our food, and even without our little folding chair it will not be dangerous for us to take our constitutional strolling along the Fontanka, and going to the church on Zagorodny Prospekt. We must also think that all things reasonable and good would act that way—for who is going to be his own enemy? We would be acting lawfully, correctly, wisely, and humanely for, after all, who really wants to be wandering, panting and sleepless, losing both patience and peace?”

When he was a child, Marakulin wanted to serve in the cavalry guards, and he used to pray that the Lord would do this for him, would help him to become a horse guardsman. But when he wanted to become a highwayman, he used to pray with the same words, only substituting “robber” for “horse guardsman.” And he used just those same words in his prayers when he wanted to become a teacher of calligraphy. These were the main prayers he made for himself when he was still in the Taganka in Moscow, rather than asking to get top marks at school. Later on, when he was just uttering a habitual prayer, he didn’t ask anything special from God. As he woke up in the morning and before going to sleep at night, he would just repeat: “Lord, have mercy on me.” And then later he even forgot to ask “Lord, have mercy on me.” But now, when it seemed to him that his reasoning had led him to the limit and he had discovered that he had an absolute, unlimited right, he suddenly wanted this supreme right to be enacted in this world, so that he prostrated himself to the floor at night to the point of feeling real pain.

“Lord,” he begged, “just allow me one minute of the real life of a louse, admit me to your glory. Lord, let me rest just for one brief hour, and then Thy will be done!”

And if in a moment of despair Marakulin had broken his skull by banging his forehead on the floor, and if the next morning they called him to account, then he could say just one thing in his justification: that it was not he who had killed himself, but the cruel Burkov night.

It must be admitted that in general by Christmas things had managed to get really bad for him. There was no work to be had. It was difficult for a publicly punished person to find work, especially when he was asked: “What kind of work do you do?” and he would not conceal the real cause of his unemployment. And Marakulin somehow Sisters of the Cross

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could not hide it, but told it naively, like some twelve-year-old boy talking about the scrapes he had got into—telling of the business with the payment slips and of how he had lost his job over them.

Things were in a bad way. He was being rescued by the Damaskin artistes, Sergei Aleksandrovich and Vasily Aleksandrovich, and also

by Vera Nikolaevna. Otherwise, the only alternative would be to write a petition, like that restless old man Gvozdev, who had turned up to see him on his last day in the old apartment, on the day Murka met her end.

Very well—you may write—you have an absolute, unlimited right to do so, that is your absolute, unlimited prerogative in the hours of the night—but it is obvious that it is not so easily acted upon, even without all the compound interest which it would take all your life to pay; perhaps it would be better not to go troubling God about it—you won’t achieve anything!

For the festive season the artistes put up a Christmas tree in their flat and invited Adoniia Ivoilovna’s tenants, among others, to visit them. A great many people came, all of them artistes, we must assume.

Sergei Aleksandrovich bustled about most of all, setting out ashtrays for the guests, so they shouldn’t throw cigarette ends on the floor; but Vasily Aleksandrovich became so entertaining and extraordinarily bright-eyed that he had people rolling around with laughter till their stomachs hurt and they became exhausted. Playing cards, both Sergei and Vasily Aleksandrovich lost almost everything, bar the clothes they were standing in. When Vera Nikolaevna found herself in company she, too, let herself go, singing her old songs from Kostrinsk, as she had learned them from her mother, Lizaveta Ivanovna.

And it was from the time of the artistes’ Christmas party that Vera Nikolaevna began to sing softly, sitting alone in her room and taking

her mind off her textbooks. She would sing melodies in an oldfashioned way, and from her age-old melodies one caught the sense of a Russia long since past.1 She would begin with a melody about the seven wild oxen and their mother, telling how seven oxen with their golden horns were going along by the blue sea, how they swam across the blue sea to come out on the famous island of Buian, and there they met the great ox who was their mother. So her young told her how they had chanced to go past Kiev, past God’s Church of the Resurrection, and they described the miracle they had seen there: how a maiden came out of the church carrying a golden book on her head, how she waded up to her waist in the River Neva; she laid the book on a burning white rock and started reading the book and weeping. Then the mother ox explained the marvelous miracle to her young: that maiden was the Virgin Mother of God and she was reading the golden book, the Gospel, and as she was reading she wept, hearing the misfortune befalling Kiev and the whole of Holy Russia.

Behind the oxen there rose up in all his heroic stature the mighty Il’ia Muromets; the hero breathed in his heroic spirit at the tomb of Sviatogor, the third white foam issuing from the tomb that hurled Il’ia aloft and tossed him about with what immediately became his own strength. And then, here she is, the Mother Superior Churilia, the red vixen with forty maidens in black following on behind her like rooks; and already the frightening elder Igrimishche-Kologrenishche, rattling and banging away, has come out of the Bogoliubov

1. The songs that figure in the next few paragraphs echo plots and motifs taken from old Russian heroic poetry (byliny).

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monastery, wanting to save his soul and send it to paradise; he is dragging a sack along and in the sack a white cabbage, a bitter radish, and a red beetroot, the black-haired girl.

And once again the oxen with their golden horns are swimming through the deep blue sea to meet their mother, telling her a wondrous tale. And their mother explains to them that the maiden was the Virgin Mother of God and that the book she was reading was the Gospel, and that as she was reading she wept, hearing the misfortune befalling Kiev and the whole of Holy Russia.

Vera Nikolaevna would also sing the brigand’s song about the bewhiskered heroes, and she sang about the joyous wandering minstrels: “Play softly, you minstrels, play softly and happily!

My poor little head is aching and my heart feels grief . . .”

In the kitchen Akumovna is praying before three icon lamps that never go out, praying for her mistress, for her mistress’s brother, for her own son. In the farthest room in front of three lamps that never go out Adoniia Ivoilovna remembers Parasha’s ships, but, making no sense of the words, she weeps.

It seemed as though something had happened to Vera Nikolaevna; she felt lazy and burst into song.

Entering Vera Nikolaevna’s room unexpectedly, Verochka Vekhoriova once said to her: “I swear to God, you have fallen in love with Sergei Aleksandrovich!” casting cunning looks at her, with provocation and even with spite.

And Vera Nikolaevna, usually so pale, flared up and then fell silent, uttering not a word. For after all, she would never say a single word to

him; she would die without saying anything—there are such people in the world. That is why her age-old melodies with their sense of Russia long since past are filled with heartrending melancholy.

Vera Ivanovna Vekhoriova, who for some reason they called Verochka almost from the very first day, would rarely spend an evening at home. Akumovna would also call her a “shameless hussy,” but she said it kindly, not as a slight. She would be at school during the day, would run home for an hour, and then off to some theater.

If she wasn’t going out anywhere, she would sit with the Damaskins.

Sergei Aleksandrovich was teaching her dancing. She was supple, slender, and light as a feather and, when they danced together, it was as though they both had wings, like birds. They had a merry time together.

Marakulin dropped in once when they were dancing and began to visit his neighbors even more often, and because Verochka was there, he always felt in good heart with them. However, after Christmas Vera Nikolaevna no longer called in on the Damaskins. She always made some excuse and sat by herself, immersed in her textbooks, or it would turn out to be one of her days on duty in the hospital.

Marakulin took to Verochka. She danced well and could read aloud with true emotion in her voice. She had come from the south, but had been brought up in Moscow, and her speech bore the marks, neither of tedious southern twittering, nor of northern coldness born of freedom restrained. Her voice had strength, however, and a certain Muscovite quality provoking desire. After they had danced, Sergei Aleksandrovich, who loved poetry, always asked Verochka to recite something. Several times she repeated for him Onegin’s letter: “I see it all. You will be hurt by the explanation of my sad mystery. . . .”

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What struck Marakulin, and what at first might have completely alienated him from Verochka, was her extraordinary selfconfidence, amounting to arrogance and self-praise almost equal to a traveling actor’s self-promotion. There were times when one blushed for her, but she took any objection as an insult. She would get so carried away that all words were reduced to the same meaning— not the call of those who see the true state of things, but a challenge, a wild shout about some special right that she claimed to overcome all earthly resistance, as the old phrase goes, by climbing a stairway to heaven, or by using a ring buried in the earth, to turn the whole world upside down. But the main thing was that she got so carried away, clamoring with a mad scream about her rights, that she didn’t ever realize how ridiculous she sounded. And he felt sorry for Verochka.

She used to say that she was a great actress: not only had she no need to learn, but everyone else must learn from her, and if she had entered some sort of stupid school, then that was only in order to forge her way ahead. You couldn’t avoid doing so. And she would forge her way ahead, revealing her real worth, and then they would all see.

“And then they’ll see!” screamed Verochka with unfeigned emotion. “Many people will be sorry, but by then it will be too late! . . .”

Going through the names of celebrities and, as it were, comparing them to herself, she would smile, now with pity, now with contempt.

“You’ll see who I really am then,” she said, her eyes flashing with fervor and simultaneously burning with fierce hatred: “I’ll show the whole world who I am, and let them see. . . .”

“But who does she mean by ‘they’?” Marakulin asked himself more than once, thinking about Verochka more and more often.

Verochka was quite willing to talk a bit about herself, but she was

somehow always saying different things, and you couldn’t fathom where the real truth was and what was just her imagination.

When her father died she was still small. Her father had been an officer. His regiment was stationed at Voznesensk in Kherson.

Her mother moved from there to Moscow and took up employment as housekeeper to an old general, one of her husband’s relatives. Verochka entered a finishing school and was still studying when her mother died. The general was sometimes visited by a rich factory owner called Vakuiev, who was doing some profitable business with him; Vakuiev was not young, but he was in good health and a fine-looking man and was famous for that in Moscow. Anisim Nikitich started to pay court to Verochka, and she liked him.

So somehow it came about that, with the general’s permission, Verochka moved in with Vakuiev, who owned an old nobleman’s house on the Arbat. His wife had died, and his children had set up for themselves. His brother had gone bankrupt, leaving him three elderly nieces who were running the house. Verochka lived for a year with Vakuiev, and we can only surmise that over the course of that year he wearied of her, and we may also surmise that she did not lead the most joyful of lives on the Arbat. According to what she said, Anisim liked change and variety. Everything went well for him and he never got into trouble. It was Anisim who sent her to Petersburg to study, remitting her thirty rubles a month, on which money she lived.

“Is it Anisim and his three nieces, the ones whom she has so taken against, are they the ones who will then see?” Marakulin asked himself more then once, thinking about Verochka more and more often.

Once during St. Fiodor’s Week, at the beginning of spring, Verochka came home so full of joy and animation that everyone was amazed Sisters of the Cross

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at her. Adoniia Ivoilovna, usually so tearful and unyielding, forgot her tears and, her face still wet with them, started bustling about as though Verochka were her own daughter who had come back home to her, so joyful and lively. Akumovna also bustled about with great animation, as though this was no ordinary day, gazing occasionally with particular tenderness on her “shameless hussy.�

Then in spring there came a sunny day, with its warmth beckoning everyone out onto the spacious Belgian Society yard, where the snow was melting, the black hill of coal was shrinking, and smoke was mounting steadily up to the sky from the four brick chimneys that circumscribed the windows of Burkov House, while the little children poured out onto the broad space in front of the building and even babies were coming out with their nannies.

Vakuiev, Anisim Nikitich himself, had come to Petersburg and met Verochka on Nevsky Prospekt; that is what had happened and that was the real cause of her happiness and the extraordinary euphoria that animated her.

Verochka did not come home that night, and in the morning, as soon as she got back, she started to go over her room, to give it a thorough spring-clean. And she, who in general was so slapdash, so disorganized, so unlike Vera Nikolaevna, now displayed such inventiveness; she blew away each tiny speck of dust, pushed a wedge of paper under an unstable table leg to stop its wobbling, and placed her hairpins in little boxes. And how much bustle and preparation there was, with her even producing a flower as though it were Trinity Sunday. She was expecting a special guest to visit her, none other than Vakuiev, Anisim Nikitich himself, and it was such a sunny spring day, beckoning everyone out with its warmth.

The day went slowly by, and the evening set in, bringing its anxiety. When suddenly the bell rang in the hall, the whole apartment froze in silence, all four rooms and the kitchen. Marakulin was going to put out the light, but the lamp went out of its own volition as though there was rumbling thunder such as we hear in Moscow.

It was just some technical student who had hit on the wrong door as he was looking for a friend of his. And Akumovna had to argue with him for a long time, because somehow he could not accept that there was no Liubimov living here, and never had been.

“That just cannot be right,” the student insisted indignantly. “You don’t have any right to say that.”

Somehow or other they managed to get rid of him and the blinddrunk student disappeared at last, but they did not expect any other visitors.

Verochka was walking tirelessly up and down the room, not with her usual soft pace, but her steps were firm like the claws of a bird of prey and her eyes shameless and piercing like two sharp knives. For some reason it felt rather frightening.

Feeling the beauty of this lovely spring day, Adoniia Ivoilovna was sitting by the samovar with Akumovna, trying to foreglimpse her summer season of prayer: it was time for her to be on her travels—spring had come.

“Twig intertwines with twig,” she could hear Akumovna’s voice filled with emotion, “and one shoot with another.”

Meanwhile Vera Nikolaevna had finished her work and was quietly singing her favorite age-old melodies, and from her songs one caught the sense of a Russia long since past and a numb, heartrending melancholy:

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“Play softly, you minstrels, play softly and happily!

My poor little head is aching and my heart feels grief . . .”

Then suddenly she fell silent, uttering not a word. She would never say a single word to him; she would die without saying anything.

“Twig intertwines with twig, and one shoot with another . . .” they could hear Akumovna’s emotional tones: “Spring has come.”

And it was even more difficult to bear, because Adoniia Ivoilovna began to weep even more loudly than usual, most likely remembering her husband and how in the cemetery the ground was giving way under his body and collapsing.

Verochka was walking tirelessly up and down the room, not with her usual soft pace, but her steps were firm like the claws of a bird of prey and her eyes shameless and piercing like two sharp knives. For some reason it felt rather frightening.

But the singing samovar had fallen silent, all the tears had been shed, the footsteps had stopped, and everyone had fallen asleep in the house and around the yards outside; no motor horns sounded from the Fontanka, and in the Obukhov Hospital the little light began to flicker like a star in the night. And a star rose above the brick chimneys of the Belgian factory, peering in at the window, the great evening star of springtime. It was after midnight when Marakulin thought he heard a strange sound like that of someone knocking. He grew alert, began to strain his ears and realized that the sound was coming from Verochka’s flat; something was knocking in her room.

Then he realized Verochka was alone in her room; she had not gone to sleep, nor would she; without tears or any lamentation she was beating her head against the wall. Her eyes were wide open, but no tears came; when things are really bad, people don’t cry.

And for some reason or other all Marakulin’s feelings—that savagery and despair of his, which looked as if they had calmed down for a time—all that now burst out again, engulfing the irresistible image of the general’s wife who had become so hateful to him. All in a fever, grinding his teeth with some foul vehemence, he imagined how that unfortunate woman, in rude good health, carefree, sin-free, and immortal, a vessel of God’s choosing, the louse, was sleeping the sweetest of sleeps. Marakulin suddenly wanted to speak about this to someone, to anyone, but he must do so immediately, before his heart burst. And panting, he sprang across to the little open window and shouted out with all his might: “Good Christian people of the Orthodox faith, the louse is sleeping peacefully. Help us!”

And with this he began to feel the gradual approach of that extraordinary joy that he had felt before, and that his heart was about to flutter up and fill his chest to overflowing. . . .

“Who are you shouting for?” came that rasping voice, and from the dark corners there appeared Gorbachov’s hirsute nose with its tuft of horsehair.

But the knocking was still going on. It was Verochka, alone in her room; she had not gone to sleep, nor would she. Without tears or any lamentation she was beating her head against the wall. Her eyes were wide open, but no tears came; when things are really bad, people don’t cry.

Moments of cruel suffering and travail concluded Marakulin’s first year in Burkov House.

The first to move was Adoniia Ivoilovna. She left for Kashin and the Most Reverend Anna Kashinskaia, and from Kashin to Murman to the Most Reverend Trifon in the Pechengsky Monastery. After Adoniia Ivoilovna, Vera Nikolaevna, having finished all her exams, Sisters of the Cross

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went away until autumn to stay with her mother in Kostrinsk, her desolate, white old town on the River Ustyuzhin with its fifteen white churches—as unhappy as unhappy can be. Verochka was the last to depart. She had not taken her exams and had abandoned her theater school, since she had found another more certain and tested way to make her career—which, precisely, she did not say.

She said: “Next year you will see. I shall show the whole of Russia who I am!”

Marakulin went to see her off at the Nikolaevsky Station: Verochka was traveling via Moscow to somewhere in the Crimea.

After the bell sounded for the train to move, he felt with particular keenness how sad he was that Verochka would no longer be there, and he stood motionless by her carriage. But she was leaning right out of the window in her own special way, casting impatient glances at the people on the platform and attracting their gaze in her turn, so slender, graceful, and light was she.

And suddenly Marakulin smiled for the first time since he had been in Burkov House, not knowing how or why; he simply smiled, and she must have noticed this. It was so unusual and unexpected!

“You should be weeping for me!” she said, drawing out her words in a theatrical fashion, narrowing her eyes—was it with pity or disgust? She struck his arm with her umbrella and said all too solemnly, even putting on a slight frown: “I am a great actress!”

At that moment he found it easy to believe with all his heart that Verochka was a great actress who really would show herself next year to the whole of Russia, and her name would resound throughout Europe and the whole world.

When Marakulin returned from the station to his home on the Fontanka and found himself alone with Akumovna, he felt how his life had gone stale and that he could no longer live like that.

One person has to betray in order—through treachery—to open up his soul and become his real self in the world. Another person has to kill in order—through killing—to open up his soul and at least die as himself. He needed somehow to write out a payment slip and give it to the wrong person in order to open up his soul and become his real self in the world, and not just any old Marakulin, but Marakulin Piotr Alekseevich—and see, and hear, and feel.

But he is no longer willing to do so, because he cannot; he no longer consents to live like that, with no aim, simply seeing, hearing, and feeling: the life of a louse, carefree, sin-free, and immortal—life as an absolute entitlement, that drop of water which a simple soul seeks in the next world—he no longer wants any of this. He wants to live, and he will live to feel again at least one more time that extraordinary joy that he had felt since childhood and no longer knows, save on the occasion when it approached him on that night in spring, when Anisim did not come to Verochka, on that spring night when twig intertwined with twig, shoot with shoot, leaf with leaf; and there came into his mind, like leaves cleaving together, those words that Akumovna uttered as she was touched by the tender spring sunshine.

And he felt so keenly, more bitterly even than the previous evening, the fact that Verochka was no longer there, as though there was embodied in her all that extraordinary joy of his—the source of his life.

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04

“

V

era! Verochka! Verushka!”

Marakulin had been sitting all day from morning till evening, writing out in semiuncial an old Russian humorous tale, a rare and profitable commission that had come to him like some refreshing manna from heaven. He gave a sudden start and did not complete the ingenious scroll in the elaborate twists of one capital letter.

And from the stairway he could hear ever more insistently the sound of a familiar name: “Vera! Verushka! Verochka!”

“Akumovna, who are you calling there?” said Marakulin, losing patience and looking in at the kitchen.

“I’m calling Vera,” said Akumovna, without turning round. “Oi! The shameless hussy!”—and she stamped on down the outside stairs.

It was late—about eleven o’clock—and the windy sunset had already spread its dust-laden fires beyond the Obukhov Hospital.

With the brief night came mists, seeping in from the marshy outskirts farther up the river. And in the yard, piled high with rubbish, crushed stone and bricks, children were still hollering, and a

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balalaika was strumming its heart out. There was an abundance of these poor un-Russian blessings in the Burkov yard,1 and, placing cushions on the windowsills and tormented by the sultry heat of stony Petersburg, people stuck their rumpled heads out of the windows in the hope, most likely, of gaining a breath of cool air.

The India ink on Marakulin’s pen was drying and the letters ceased to form themselves properly. He thought that Akumovna would return no more and be lost—with her mysterious, unresponding Vera—somewhere in the rubble strewn in front of Burkov House.

When he heard stamping sounds again in the kitchen, it was not Akumovna’s voice that accompanied them, but rather the tones of an older child or young girl chattering on, now breaking into joyous laughter, now into aching lament. With a certain feeling of relief he drew the curtain back over the window and went on with his work as before.

Marakulin’s copying work was dear to his heart, and he wanted to finish it without fail, since he had been working at it for nearly two months. It was Sergei Aleksandrovich who had procured this rare work for him before he left for the summer tour. Marakulin was due to be paid a whole fifty rubles for it, and his affairs were definitely looking more hopeful.

“Who have you got living in your kitchen now?” Marakulin asked the next day, when Akumovna was setting out Adoniia Ivoilovna’s red, singing samovar.

“Verushka,” replied Akumovna, “—the miraculous one,” she added with a smile and looking at you from time to time from some other place, as might a holy fool.

1. The balalaika is commonly thought to be of Central Asian or Caucasian origin.

Then the slop-basin was brought in, not by Akumovna—she remained standing in the doorway—but by the “miraculous” Verushka.

She was a young girl, an adolescent of about fifteen years of age, no different from the many other girls in and around Burkov House who were in service as nannies, and her figure was fully formed. But when Marakulin looked at her more carefully, he discovered in her eyes something unusually close to him that he knew so well, but that he could not put a name to, nor remember where he had seen something like that before: some sort of tiny flame—no, something else besides, which there could be no hiding. It would shine out from under the eyelids of a person even when asleep.

“Shall I call you Vera?”

“Verushka or Verochka,” the girl replied, quietly somehow, and gloomily, stumbling over the words; then as though embarrassed for some reason, she took a step back.

“And even Verochka, how about that?” said Marakulin, looking at her with a kind of delight and suddenly rising to his feet.

But she went out into the corridor to hide behind Akumovna, and when she returned to the kitchen she was tapping about with something or, God knows why it happens with people, could it have been his heart beating?

“Sir, I really want to ask you one thing: don’t touch her!”

“How could you even think of such a thing? Don’t be ridiculous!” he said, but he sat down like someone who had been caught out.

“I’m afraid of Vasily Aleksandrovich,” Akumovna went on.

“When he comes back from his dacha, it’s terrible. Every time he wants something, and nothing is ever enough for him. There are these others, too, idlers who hang around outside the doors at night.”

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Sheltering the girl from the street, Akumovna jealously guarded her from the idlers around Burkov House—from Stanislav the clerk and Kazimir the fitter. Quite often in the evening, when it was still light, she locked up the kitchen and brought the girl into her bed, with the three icon lamps that never went out for security. And she called Vera “the miraculous one,” because a miracle had been wrought upon her.

“She is miraculous,” said Akumovna, “because until she was five she was mute and could not speak. They showed her to the doctor Nikolai Frantsevich, but with no result. People advised her mother to take her to the icon of the Sorrowing Virgin, and to the icon of St. Matriona she went barefoot many times. Afterward, on the Friday before St. Elijah’s Day, they went to the gunpowder works—there’s a religious procession on that day carrying twelve icons and up to a thousand small ones. They stayed until the service was finished and were about to set off for home, when the girl asked for something to drink: ‘Mother, give me a drink!’ From that time on she has been able to speak.”

Vera’s father was in the bookselling trade: books, hooks, buttons, various bits of this and that. Vera’s mother was a sickly woman, but she would go out to do hourly paid work, washing floors, cleaning rooms. They lived in a corner on Kuznechny Lane beside the palmist’s house where those frightening venetian windows are. Vera was beginning to grow up, so they gave her over to be trained as a goldthread sewer. She spent a year doing that, but she was no good at it—her eyes started to ache, so she went to work as a nursemaid.

But then one day her father was running away from a policeman and carrying his stall across Vladimirsky Prospekt at the Five Ways crossroads, and he fell under a tram that crushed him. And it was just about this time that Vera lost her job. They really found it hard

to make ends meet. Vera’s mother had the idea of trying to send her to her uncle who was working as a janitor on Murinsky Prospekt in Lesnoe district—he might be able to find her a place. So the little girl set out, arriving at Lesnoe in the evening. As she was walking along the road looking for the building, she stopped outside a hotel to listen to the band. As she was standing there listening, openmouthed and with her eyes sparkling, an unknown gentleman came out of the hotel with a lady on his arm, and he gave Vera such an affectionate look. Then he stopped walking and began to question her in a kindly tone. She told him about everything right up until when she had stopped to listen to the band. Well, what good luck that was, he said; they just happened to be needing a nanny, and the wages would be very good. Vera was delighted and agreed to work for them. They hired a cab and took her to where they lived, which was close by.

Everything had turned out so well! It was already late and dark by the time they reached their destination, and they sat Vera down to have supper with them. After they had fed her, the gentleman led her into another room—the room across the corridor that was to be her bedroom. During the night he came in again. She wanted to cry out, but he put his hands over her mouth. That’s how it all began.

Vera came to, and it was morning. She came out of her room, and there was a corridor. She wandered along the corridor, looking for the gentleman and his lady, and landed up in a buffet. Apparently she had spent the night in a hotel! She asked the waiter in charge of the buffet where the gentleman and his lady were. The waiter laughed— there was no gentleman or lady, but if she wanted, then let her come and work for him as a nanny for his children. That was a pretty fix: if she didn’t agree, it would be terrible going back to her mother. And if she did agree, well, supposing the waiter stifled her mouth with Sisters of the Cross

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his hands as the gentleman had done yesterday? Both choices were frightening, but there was no third way out. So in the end she went as a nurse to the waiter’s family. It turned out that he had many children.

She struggled along and coped somehow for about a week. After the week was over, as she had now become used to things, the waiter moved her into another room where she could sleep away from the children—there were so many of them—it would seemingly be more comfortable for her there and more peaceful. And again the same tune was played: first the boss himself—the waiter—and after him the district policeman. As soon as night had fallen, someone would come without fail—up to five men each night would be brought to lie with her. And they wouldn’t let her leave that room, and she did not see the children any more; they had a new nurse now. She wept, but what of it—they only laughed at her. And Vera managed to get away from the waiter only through a miracle. By a lucky chance a fire broke out in the hotel, otherwise she would have been there forever. In the confusion she managed to escape from her room and took to her heels. She ran to Kuznechny Lane, to the corners where the palmist lived, but her mother was not there—she had died of cholera. That was another pretty fix: there might be nothing to do but go back to her room with the waiter. But the janitor’s wife took pity on her. Like Antonina Ignatievna, Mikhail Pavlovich’s wife—she used to visit the brother in the harbor district—she was softhearted and knew Antonina Ignatievna and sent her off to see her at Burkov House in case they could find a place for the poor girl.

Instead of Antonina Ignatievna, Vera ended up with Akumovna.

“She’s a miraculous girl!” said Akumovna, “but there’s only one thing I’m afraid of. It’s the way those idle folk hang around outside the doors. It’s terrifying.”

The endless summer wore on, exhausting in its monotony. The weather was intensely hot, and all over Petersburg, on every street, the standpipes appeared—as usual they were resurfacing the roads—and there was no way you could get through either on foot, or in a vehicle, and there was just that stifling heat.

In the evenings sitting by the samovar Akumovna would tell Marakulin’s fortune, just as in the winter she had sat by the samovar doing the same for Adoniia Ivoilovna. She was bounteous and made endless forecasts not only on the king of clubs, or the king of the cross, as Akumovna called him, but also on the other kings and queens—clubs, hearts, diamonds, spades, whichever cards came out for him, in order to know their fate and the more reliably to learn who they were and what their thoughts were.

The cards did not lie. It was always one and the same thing, a kind of meaningless muddle: a little monotony, a little money, a little change, a few tears and some annoyance, a young lady, your own house and belongings, an important, noble-looking gentleman with a document, a government building, the young lady’s boredom, a little unpleasantness, your own worries, talking to yourself. And Marakulin was constantly left with talking to himself.

Akumovna would lay out the cards for the last time and begin to whisper the final words: “For the house. For the heart. For what will be. For how things will end. How things will abate. How things will astonish. Tell the whole truth with an open heart. What will be will be.”

And for the last time it came out one and the same way—one card: a kind of meaningless muddle and talking to yourself.

The cards did not tell lies. Only sometimes they probably became bored and got angry. They began to laugh at us and would forecast Sisters of the Cross

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some big change, or else they would show the high road, a great deal of money and the fulfillment of desires.

Sitting over the cards, Akumovna would often remember her mistress and the old master, her mistress’s brother and her own son— who had what dreams, what they led to, and what they meant.

“Now our priest at Turii Rog was a good sort, and a great one for repentance, our Father Arseny,” Akumovna remembered. “Just before he died, he stood up and asked: ‘Are the horses ready?’

‘What horses do you mean, Father?’ ‘Well, you see,’ says he, ‘I’ve just married a young couple, and they’ve invited me to go abroad to their wedding feast!’ With that he died. Then, six days before the old master died, my mistress dreamed that she had lost the shoe off one foot. And just before she died, I dreamed that I was seated in front of a stove that I had stoked up. The wood burst into flames and started to break up. I cut up some bacon fat, put it in a pot and placed it in the stove. The pot broke into two halves, the logs started spattering, and there was smoke everywhere. . . . My father never gave me a proper blessing. ‘May you wander around the whole wide world like a rolling stone!’ And that’s how everything has turned out!”

“And what about your brother and his wife?” asked Marakulin.

“Well, it went on as before. They were having a difficult time with no woodland, no fuel, no meadow grass. Then their youngest daughter, Fedosia, my niece, went every day to Turii Rog to do weeding on a piecework basis. The young master, young Buianov, took a fancy to her. He liked to play around, so he took her on as a house servant for a month. When that month finished, he kept her on for a further month after that, and so it continued for the whole winter. My brother knew what was going on, but said nothing to his wife. They

had no woodland, no fuel, no meadow grass, while from the master they would get firewood and money, so it was to their advantage.

So Fedosia carried on living there right through the winter. However, in the week after Easter the master went off to the city and got married there. And Fedosia went back home to her father, and now they all found out. Her brothers started to reproach her: how could she have turned out to be like that with this sin of hers. They pecked at her like ravens and finished her off. She couldn’t stand it any more, and nine days before the Feast of the Virgin she died. She was just over twenty and still very young. Then my cousin Vasily got frostbite and lost both feet at Shrovetide.”

When Akumovna remembered Turii Rog and Sosna Gora, she would come up with things that you would never think would enter her head at Burkov House.

“The barley will already have ripened by now, thank God!” she would say, crossing herself. “God forbid we should get rain.”

Vera had become used to Marakulin and was no longer shy with him. He had become used to her, too, and liked her coming into the room, first Akumovna entering with the samovar, and then Vera with the slop-basin.

“In the next world devils give communion to other devils and to sinners from a slop-basin” Marakulin once thought, remembering what Akumovna had seen in her visit to hell. And he smiled for the first time since the other Verochka’s departure.

And Vera smiled back at him, as though she had read his thoughts, and for a long time he remembered her smile, that of an older child, or else a young girl.

And what a void there seemed to be, when Vera found herself a job and moved from Akumovna’s kitchen up to the fourth floor in Sisters of the Cross

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the “wing,” as the back end of the block was called, looking out onto the Belgian Society factory.

Akumovna began to disappear quite often, going to visit her miraculous girl, the light of her life, her darling Vera. She was probably teaching her how to clean a room, how to soak birchwood, and other such things. So Marakulin was left completely alone, and everything seemed empty.

Some gentleman from the wing got into the habit of leaning out of his window in the evening, facing Marakulin and whistling at him. From the way the man never took his eye off him, Marakulin became certain that the whistling would never stop, all of which made him furious, so willy-nilly he had to draw the curtain and sit in the stifling heat.

He felt empty, and anger was choking him.

In the mornings he read the newspaper, seeking out with impatient glee, and taking malign pleasure in every murder, fire, disaster, flood, avalanche, or earthquake. In his malicious delight he believed that anyone could be frightened and terrified, could have their innermost being and their soul turned inside out—and then the evening’s self-satisfied impudent whistling would stop ringing in his ears.

But there must have been something amiss with Vera’s new position; something must have happened. It had been impossible to protect her from the idlers, most likely—and no one could possibly keep a proper eye on her anyway, she was so shameless.

Akumovna broke off her fortune-telling, and in tears began to speak about Vera: “I shall go to the tsar himself; as before God, I shall place my hands together and tell him everything.”

“They won’t let you in, Akumovna.”

“I’ll go in naked; as before God, I shall place my hands together and tell him everything.”

“They won’t let you in naked, either.”

But she insisted on what she was saying; she believed that the tsar would intervene and the girl would come to no harm. She carried on insisting for a long time, and then suddenly she fell silent: she was resigning herself. And Marakulin could hear her whispering the final words with which she would leave this mortal life—retribution and reward for all that had happened: “No one should be blamed.”

“Then who is guilty, Akumovna?”

“I’m an ignorant person, I know nothing,” she replied, smiling and looking at you from time to time from some other place, as might a holy fool.

The summer was dragging on endlessly, exhausting in its monotony. Marakulin could not wait for the holidays to come. They were holidays, after all!

The first to return was Vasily Aleksandrovich, the clown. He had been putting on a summer performance in Petersburg, while living at a dacha outside the city in Shuvalovo. He would visit the flat only occasionally, and then only look in for a moment. His “slave” Kuzmovna was also in Shuvalovo with him. After Vasily Aleksandrovich, Sergei Aleksandrovich returned, having finished his summer travels.

From the warmer climes or, as Akumovna put it, from the country where they ride on bulls, he brought back with him a hundred jars of honey—he was a great one for looking after provisions. Shortly after Sergei Aleksandrovich, Vera Nikolaevna also returned with fresh

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fruit jam from her mother in Kostrinsk, her desolate, little, white old city with its fifteen white churches. After Vera Nikolaevna Adoniia Ivoilovna herself reappeared.

They had all come back; only Verochka was missing, and there was absolutely no news of her. And as early as September Verochka’s room was rented out, according to the green notice hanging on the door of the doorkeeper Nikanor.

Marakulin’s new neighbor turned out to be Anna Stepanovna Shiianova, married name Leshchova, a teacher from Purkhovets.

Purkhovets is an ancient town on the River Smugra, and for the singing of its nightingales the first nightingale city. At the girls’ high school in Purkhovets where Anna Stepanovna was teaching there were two famous teachers: the history master Rakov and the literature master Leshchov, both of them friends and both, according to their own definition, “progressive.” Anna Stepanovna’s destiny was closely linked to the fate of Leshchov, while Leshchov and Rakov, like two halves of a single body, were one in spirit and thought. Only Rakov was a little bit older and Leshchov a little bit younger. Both Rakov and Leshchov were living with the same landlady a modest, sober and secluded life.

Their landlady, Pavlina Polikarpovna, although she was no sixteen years of age, was still spirited and strong. From time immemorial she had served as cook to the civil servant Gerasimov, and Gerasimov just before he died had settled things for her, as Pavlina Polikarpovna put it, and had given her a lottery ticket for her exemplary service.

She bought herself a little house, took in lodgers, and that was what she lived on.

Having found out about Gerasimov’s lottery ticket, Rakov, as a historian, did not neglect to note its number in his notebook and followed the announcement of winning numbers in the newspapers.

To Pavlina Polikarpovna he was respectful, serious, and gentle. And the years went by in peaceful seclusion and expectation.

Pavlina Polikarpovna, although she was no sixteen years of age, still had a little thought running round her head and would sometimes suddenly burst into tears just like that, for no apparent reason.

In the spring especially, when the sun began to gain warmth, and the hens all started laying, and the gardens turned green, and the nights became warm, muggy, and langourous, and the nightingales began to sing, and Rakov himself would start to play on his guitar, plucking it like a gusli,2 and begin to sing like a nightingale: “Over the blue ocean waves Only the stars shine in the sky, A ship sails on its lonely way, Plowing on at full sail.”

In the spring, you would think, no heart could resist, and Pavlina Polikarpovna’s heart would swoon in adoration.

Purkhovets is an ancient town on the River Smugra, and for the singing of its nightingales the first nightingale city.

In the morning, as Rakov was looking through the Purkhovets Provincial News, he suddenly burst out laughing with the kind of cackle that a man may give way to in great joy when his throat seems too small to express it. And how could he not have done so; Gerasimov’s ticket and none other had won the entire prize of two hundred thousand rubles! Nevertheless, managing to stop in time,

2. An ancient Russian stringed instrument, usually held horizontally and plucked as well as strummed.

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Rakov pushed the paper into his pocket, coughed especially loudly and, concealing Pavlina’s good fortune, he went off to give his lessons in the high school as if nothing had happened.

Come the evening, having scarcely managed to get through his classes, Rakov fell ill with excitement, and Pavlina Polikarpovna had to spend the whole night looking after him. The next morning he was no better, and so it went on all week. Pavlina Polikarpovna tended to Rakov for a whole week and, on the day before Lent, they got married.

The first thing he did after the ceremony, when the bride and groom were alone, was ask the question, immodest but entirely natural in a newlywed: “Where is the ticket?” “What ticket?” “What do you mean: ‘What ticket?’ Gerasimov’s ticket!” But Gerasimov’s ticket had been sold off long ago. She was no longer in possession of any such ticket.

In the week before Lent, almost on the very same day as Rakov’s wedding, Leshchov also got married, to Anna Stepanovna Shiianova.

Now the Shiianovs had been the richest people in Purkhovets, but Anna Stepanovna’s father had gambled away all his resources at cards; having once been extremely wealthy, they then lived on in poverty.

First Anna’s father died, and then her mother. She was already more than twenty years old, but it was strange: while nothing in her face was repulsive, nothing that you could call ugly or outlandish—the opposite, in fact—she did not seem particularly attractive to men, and in general no one paid court to her. In Purkhovets she was not thought of as the marriageable type, nor did she herself imagine she would get married. She must secretly have reconciled herself to the fact that she was alone and would remain alone forever. Or rather, she did not become reconciled to it (nobody can), but she just convinced herself that that was how things were. Then one fine day she inherited money from some distant aunt of hers, whom she had never

heard of—and quite a decent inheritance: fifty thousand-odd rubles.

Of course, the high school knew about it—she was the first to tell everyone, and naturally Leshchov also knew. At this point Leshchov weighed in: he began following Anna Stepanovna everywhere. Suddenly turning himself into some kind of victim, he began to weep and moan and invented the notion that he was being persecuted and at the mercy of enemies. He fell ill from every imaginable malady, all of them incurable, and at any moment he might commit suicide. At the same time, he pretended to be desperately in love and began singing like a nightingale, and an amazing nightingale at that. . . .

Purkhovets is an ancient town on the River Smugra, and for the singing of its nightingales the first nightingale city.

So Leshchov married Anna Stepanovna, took all her aunt’s money off her—the entire fifty thousand—and then showed her the door: “Do you really think I need you? It’s your money that I need!”

One felt sorry for Vera Nikolaevna, frightened for Verochka, and hurt for Anna Stepanovna. Somehow she smiled in such a way that one felt sick at heart at the sight of it.

Vera Nikolaevna wanted to learn. For what purpose? Well, that was what her own Mariia Aleksandrovna told her to do, whom she believed, as she believed in the Iversky Virgin. And she would study as long as she had the strength to do so, and some time in the future she would give up her soul to God, while bent over some physics book by Kraievich.

Verochka wanted to become a great actress, to become famous all over Russia, the whole of Europe, the whole world, and she wanted this so much because she wanted to revenge herself on Anisim: just for one minute that Anisim Nikitich Vakuiev—for whom everything went well and who never got caught—might feel sorry for himself Sisters of the Cross

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and repent of the fact that he had traded her in for other women who were fond of him or had sold themselves to him. So now she was trying to make her career through some other tried and tested means and would fight on to do so as long as she had the strength.

But what did Anna Stepanovna want? She had been left alone and without anything, but that was not the point: she had lived alone and without any money before, but now something else was at stake, something that concerned her heart; she had believed fervently in the innermost depths of her being that she was loved, and that she herself had fallen in love. So what did she want now? What did she want?! What can a person want whose soul has been besmirched, whose soul has been violated?

When Marakulin looked closely at Anna Stepanovna, he became more and more convinced that she really had no part to play in this world. The fact that she should smile so wonderfully made one feel sick at heart for that smile.

It was a difficult autumn at the start, and everyone felt the strain.

After the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, on September 14, Vasily Aleksandrovich the clown, flying through the circus on a trapeze, fell and hurt himself or, as they said around the flats, he had injured his spine and his pelvis. He felt so bad immediately after the fall that he even asked the priest to give him extreme unction. But the doctor said that he would be laid up for six months and would face a difficult operation.

“They will cut him up from the heel and then open up the flesh,” announced Akumovna in sympathy for his plight, “then cut out the bone with a chisel and throw it away. Then they’ll do the same thing to the other. If only he would drink an infusion of horse manure, then everything would be all right. . . .”

After his success in the summer Marakulin once again had nothing to live on. The most people did in various places and institutions was to take a note of his address, and as everybody knows, when they write down your address, then there’s no point in expecting anything from them. At that time in Petersburg a census was being taken of all the dogs. So for about a week he walked up and down places like Burkov House and the Belgian factory yard, counting the number of dogs. When he was doing that, he got to know a certain student, one Likhovidov, who was also an accountant.

This student, Likhovidov, who himself was at the end of his strength, could somehow manage to get bits and pieces of work to do like the dog census, and Marakulin profited by his example. It looked as though things might be about to get better. But then Likhovidov got into a spot of bother. He used to work in an office somewhere, and one day he left quite late after the evening’s business was done.

The office manager went out just after him, dressed to the nines in his winter coat with its rich fur collar. “What do you think, Mr Likhovidov?” he says. “What would it be better to drink now, tea or coffee?”

And Likhovidov, who had eaten nothing all day and who was as hungry as a horse, not to mention his teeth chattering from the blast of cold Petersburg air, looked at the manager as though he was working out whether it would be better to drink tea or coffee, and landed him a blow to the face, after which he simply disappeared. Once Likhovidov had gone, things came to a halt for Marakulin as well.

An animal will run straight into the arms of the hunter. After a long search Anna Stepanovna found herself some teaching in a kind of private high school which turned out to be exemplary, and the headmistress, Ledniova, was one of the progressive ones. She possessed the great skill of never spending a single kopeck of her own Sisters of the Cross

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money. She managed to do that easily and wisely, somehow concealing her dealings in that most real of Petersburg fogs. Of course, people said that she paid the teachers out of some mysterious fund for the provision of uniforms that did not belong to her at all, and that the teachers in her school changed every year without fail. As far as “progressive ideas” were concerned, Rakov and Leshchov were simply nothing compared with Ledniova, just as, in the matter of young female cooks, any guardsmen from the Semionovsky regiment were as nothing compared with Stanislav the clerk and Kazimir the fitter.

Anna Stepanovna got no pay for two months. They kept on putting her off with various excuses, and only gave her money for the third month and then, of course, not as a normal salary, but as some kind of grant to come out of that fund allocated for uniforms. When she got her first salary, she took Marakulin and Vera Nikolaevna to see an opera at the Mariinsky Theater. The tickets cost her quite a lot.

On the other hand, they were good seats, where they could see and hear everything.

It was on that evening in the theater that Marakulin met Verochka again. How many times during the summer and autumn had he thought about her and sent inquiries to the address bureau, always receiving the same reply: “Gone away.” And now he had met her. For the first moments he was frightened, but then his fear turned into anxiety: Verochka was not alone, but with the cashier Aleksandr Ivanovich Glotov, Marakulin’s friend.

Verochka had not changed in the slightest, but then do people ever really change? As for Glotov—he hadn’t changed, either, but whether on purpose for some reason clear to him alone, he pretended that he did not recognize his old friend.

“What an unexpected surprise! And you know, Petrusha, we had written you off long ago!”

Meanwhile Verochka, when she discovered that Vera Nikolaevna was also in the theater, set off at once to find her and did not come back.

Glotov took Marakulin into the buffet.

“Where did you meet her?” Glotov asked his friend.

“We spent a winter living at the same landlady’s,” Marakulin replied.

“So you are well acquainted with her?”

“It depends.”

All of a sudden their faces were distorted with hatred. They understood each other all too well. There could no longer be any conversation between them. But it was awkward for them to walk away from each other—and awkward for them to say nothing.

Glotov suggested a drink. Marakulin said “no,” and they went out of the bar alongside each other, shoulder to shoulder, each of them looking for Verochka. Marakulin remained silent. But Glotov, in a studied way and with a certain pleasure, kept on repeating one and the same phrase: “What an unexpected surprise! And you know, Petrusha, we had written you off long ago!”

In the interval Marakulin did not meet Verochka. She had promised to look in again on Vera Nikolaevna, but didn’t come. And so he saw her no more.

After leaving the theater Marakulin set off for a coffeehouse on Nevsky Prospekt along with Vera Nikolaevna and Anna Stepanovna.

The meeting with Verochka and Glotov, seeing them both together, along with the performance and the coffeehouse—all this agitated Marakulin, and the emotion that had begun to boil up in him invisibly when he had been standing in the bar with Glotov turned into Sisters of the Cross

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black despair. His suffering made him feel that if someone were now to get up from his table, someone like Glotov or Glotov’s brother or some matchmaker of Glotov, anyone who knew Verochka and with whom she was well acquainted, if he were to get up, come up to him and land him a blow in the face, just as the student Likhovidov had done to his manager, then he, Marakulin, would kiss his foot gratefully and offer him his neck at the same time: let him beat him with his fists as much as he wanted, or let him hit Marakulin in the teeth, so that his jaws cracked. Then, feeling all the burning pain that he had freely taken upon himself, in his cruel suffering, he remembered the irresistible image of that unfortunate woman, the general’s wife, who had become so hateful to him, and he suddenly lost the desire to be beaten; he no longer needed to receive a slap in the face, or a punch, or a kick either from the well-trimmed moustache engaged in self-important conversation with the scrawny-looking absence of moustache, or from the devil-may-care, upward-curling, gingercolored whiskers who knew Verochka and with whom Verochka was well acquainted. No, he was thinking in his despair how good it would be to scald the general’s wife just a bit with boiling water, or just pour a little bit of boiling water over her, and with what savagery she would rush to bite him and every single one of them.

“Why is Verochka’s surname no longer Vekhoriova, but a different one, Rogova?”

“Because she is the general’s wife,” Marakulin replied.

“What general’s wife?” replied Vera Nikolaevna uncomprehendingly, looking now at him and now at Anna Stepanovna, who was smiling with a smile that made one feel sick at heart.

And Marakulin suddenly wanted to get up himself and gouge out the eyes of one of the women—those lost eyes of wandering Holy

Russia, so meek in her wandering beggary, Holy Russia, engirdled by poverty in its pilgrim’s belt from the Bogoliubsky monastery, Holy Russia, so humble, long-suffering, and patient, who will not make her own coffin, but can only build a funeral pyre and burn herself upon it. The other woman he wanted to stifle to make her stop smiling, and then there would be no more of that smile, proclaiming with barefaced effrontery that here is a besmirched soul that has been violated; she had no reason to live, she had nothing to do, she had no place in this world.

But perhaps he himself had no place in this world any more?

“And what do you think, Vera Nikolaevna?”

“Verochka gave us her address and told us that we were not to ask for Vekhoriova, but for Rogova.”

Marakulin closed his eyes; he suddenly felt an immense tiredness and a kind of complete indifference to what was happening. If a fire, he thought, were to start in the coffeehouse, he would not move from the spot, and if the ceiling were to begin to fall in, he would not even glance at it.

Noticing that he was out of sorts, Vera Nikolaevna and Anna Stepanovna did not want to alarm him and, trying to leave him in peace, they talked quietly between themselves.

Vera Nikolaevna was talking about one of the nurses: “They brought a child into the hospital who had been scalded with boiling water. They would have to operate on him and replace some of his skin, but where could you get fresh skin? Surely not from the child? He couldn’t have stood it, since he was very weak. Then the nurse offered some of her skin, and they cut some of hers away, as much as they needed.”

“So, what happened then?”

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“Everything went well, thank God! They are both alive.”

Anna Stepanovna gave a smile as she crossed herself: “Thank God!”

Marakulin stood up, and they went out on to the Fontanka.

Verochka was living in furnished rooms on the Moika3—quite a small apartment with just her and her landlady. The rooms were full of all sorts of little sofas and tables, and crammed with all sorts of trifles, very probably just like the things the Oshurkovs had amassed in their ten rooms. And everything was the same canary yellow: yellow cushions, yellow screens—everything was yellow.

Marakulin had finally managed to track down Verochka. As soon as he entered the hall, he realized that she was living there, not of her own choice, but that someone had installed her in this yellow furnished apartment.

He found her in and rejoiced at his success: she was on her own.

He got talking to her in an easy and natural way. As usual, she began by being extremely defiant, but she was somehow always saying different things, and you couldn’t fathom where the real truth was and what was just her imagination. She had changed her name because she was now on stage, working in the theater, in a café chantant in Petersburg.

“I do my dancing there. You must come and watch me sometime.”

Well, the theater and the dancing were all well and good, but the fact was that Anisim had long ago stopped sending her money. Instead of by Vakuiev, she was being kept by a certain prominent old man who had installed her in this apartment, and it was for him she had changed her name: Variaginsky was an important person who was often at court.

3. A river in Petersburg.

“He’s like a little old man who sees a mouse with his left eye. He blinks and the mouse is gone. When he opens his eye again, there is the mouse, again as live as can be, a tiny, little, gray mouse.”

For a long time now Anisim had not been sending her any money, and she was really short of funds. What she really needed was for old Variaginsky to deposit capital in her name, and then . . .

“I shall show the whole world who I am, and then they’ll see!”

Yes, she would show her true worth, her name would resound throughout Russia, throughout the whole of Europe—around the whole world. She had chosen the burning road for herself, but after all you wouldn’t get anywhere by choosing a commonplace route.

You couldn’t forge your way ahead on your own. If you didn’t have money, they wouldn’t let you in anywhere and they’d rub you out, even if you were the devil himself. You needed to be able to tell lies and to have money, to tell lies and to have money—that’s what you needed. And she had tried to live in the ordinary way. She knew what that involved only too well. She wasn’t going to set up as a laundress—or was she really supposed to take up such work? She was not willing to live in Kuznechny Lane with the palmist, nor would she live in Gorbachov’s corners. But when the old man deposited some capital in her name, when she had some money, then . . .

“With money you can buy everything,” Verochka shouted in her wild voice, not the call of those who see the true state of things, but a challenge, a wild shout about some special right to overcome all earthly resistance, as the old phrase goes: by climbing a stairway to heaven, or by using a ring buried in the earth, to turn the whole world upside down—this was both defiance and a shriek of despair at the burning road that lay before her: “I am a prostitute and I shall be a prostitute. But next year I shall show myself, and you will see Sisters of the Cross

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me. Vera Nikolaevna would not refuse to take money, and that other lady of yours with the pitiful smile would take it also. The only thing is that nobody gives it to them, whereas every man gives me money.

I know how to lie, and I shall take what is mine!”

And she rushed around to show off her fine clothes, opening up every chest of drawers and her wardrobe. Dresses and underclothes in no particular order flew toward Marakulin, and already a multicolored heap of silk and lace had piled up between the yellow sofas rising like the black mound of coal outside the Belgian factory.

“And this is all mine,” she shouted. “Look, these are all presents, and all of it is mine!”

Marakulin had stood up, wanting to stop her, but it was already impossible to get near her, so he sat down again on the yellow sofa. Meanwhile Verochka, in a kind of frenzy, was crumpling, tearing, and hurling things about. And when the chests of drawers were empty and the boxes turned upside down, she started on the knickknacks, spinning them around, rolling them over and breaking them. Then she started piling everything together in one great heap.

“And all this is mine—my presents!” she shouted, straining her voice to the utmost—and then without any voice at all.

For a moment Marakulin felt an irresistible urge to take a match, strike it, and set fire to the heap of possessions in order to annihilate everything, the whole heap, the entire mountain of clothes and those yellow sofas, yellow screens, yellow lampshades, yellow cushions—all presents.

Verochka had snatched a little bronze tortoise off the shelves and held it out toward him, wanting no doubt to make him a present of the tortoise.

“When they say ‘pres’ . . . when they say ‘pres’ . . . when they say ‘pres’ . . .” he said, looking straight into Verochka’s eyes as if beating her with the words and not taking the present. Then, without finishing what he was saying, he ran out of breath and suddenly his shoulders began to heave.

Yes, she knew quite well herself: there was nothing in the apartment that belonged to her. And one should not give other people’s things away. Presents are not normally given away, either, but all the same you can give one as a gift. But none of what was here belonged to her; they were not presents, all of them were somebody else’s things, and one should not give other people’s things away. The owners here were old Variaginsky, the one who saw the mouse, chief cashier Glotov, and anyone who had money and could give away money, and the more he could give, the more important he would be. Everything of hers had been defiled and contaminated by the hands of others, she could not now kiss Vera Nikolaevna, she had nothing to kiss her with: everything had been put to use, everything had been soiled, spat upon.

“And what about you, Petrusha, wouldn’t you like some, eh?” she suddenly asked with a certain venom in her voice. “Yes, what about you—would you like some, eh?”

Marakulin got to his feet.

“So this is what you’ll get,” said Verochka, sticking out her tongue, “You’ll get nothing! You are just a beggar, and I don’t accept beggars, do you hear me? I don’t accept them!” Her shameless eyes glinted like two knife blades, and her loosened hair seemed to burn her with fire.

Marakulin followed wherever his legs would take him, taking no heed of the streets. There was a slight December thaw with a warm wind wafting in, and the streetlamps seemed like enormous stars and moons descended from heaven and hanging in the mist. . . .

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Coming out from Podiachovskaia onto Sadovaia Street, he began to cross to the other side, and then stopped abruptly. Where the bell hangs at the gates of the Spasskaia district there now stood a fireman in a huge brass helmet, a real fireman, only on a superhuman scale and wearing a brass helmet that reached up higher than the gates.

In his terror Marakulin started to run. He could feel his innards rising and crushing his throat. When he got home and was alone in his room in the Burkov flats, he realized that he was weeping, as he had wept only once before in his life, on the day when his old nurse was passing away.

And during the night he dreamed that he was lying in the yard in front of the Burkov House, but the courtyard seemed larger than it was in reality. Although the yard was hemmed in by the sides of buildings, the peddlers’ storage booths seemed farther away somehow; the carriage shed, the channel for slops and the rubbish pit seemed much farther away, and the piles of various bricks under the windows, and of gravel and of refuse seemed even higher. Nor was he lying by himself in the courtyard; alongside him lay stretched out all of the inhabitants from both the richer end and the back end of the building, from the wing and from Gorbachov’s corners. Even though there were many individuals he did not know by sight, still he guessed—and in fact there could be no doubt—that this gentleman and lady were the Oshurkovs, who occupied ten rooms filled with all sorts of objects; their entire apartment was filled with things, even an aquarium with fish. And that man over there in the top hat, such a lively person, was the barrister Amsterdamsky, a cheerful man, he knew how to manage his affairs, the doormen in the senate probably wait for him, as they do at Easter. And Burkov himself was lying there, the former governor, the destroyer of himself. However,

since no one had seen him, but seen only his uniform, then it was, properly speaking, not he who was lying there, but his uniform. And alongside the uniform were the chief janitor Mikhail Pavlovich with his wife, the God-fearing Antonina Ignatievna, and the merchant Gorbachov with some little girl, his daughter, whose fingers he had broken in a storeroom full of rats. Also Vera, along with Akumovna, and Stanislav, the clerk, and Kazimir the fitter and Adoniia Ivoilovna, and the Damaskin artistes, Sergei Aleksandrovich and Vasily Aleksandrovich, Vera Nikolaevna, Anna Stepanovna and the midwife Lebedeva covered with the winter fur coat that had been stolen from her at Christmastime, and the doorman Nikanor, and the students who used to sing burial hymns at night—they continued to lie beside each other in their bright new student uniforms and with the brass tap that was their only possession—and all seven caretakers and the passport officer Iorkin, the janitors with their firewood, Iorkin with his face and hands all covered in ruble health stamps, and the children were lying there in a heap, and the Persian masseur from the baths, and the little girl who had brought the milk to Murka, she lay there with the piece of broken pottery, and the cobblers and bakers, and bath attendants, hairdressers, tailors, milliners, a sick nurse from the Obukhov Hospital, tram conductors, engine drivers, men who made hats, umbrellas, or brushes, shop assistants, plumbers, typesetters, and various mechanics, technicians, qualified electricians with their families, their dusters, their medicines, their jars and cockroaches, and all sorts of young ladies from Gorokhovaia Street and Zagorodny Prospekt, and girls—dressmakers and girls from the teashop, and smart young men from the baths who would wash Petersburg ladies on demand, and also the old woman with her stall by the baths who sells sunflower seeds and all sorts of rubbish, Sisters of the Cross

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and unemployed cooks, and a housepainter, and a joiner and a mead seller, all kinds of peddlers, loaded down with dates and Lenten sweets smelling of toadstools to have with their tea—in a word, the entire Burkov House, the whole of Petersburg. But when Marakulin had recognized these people from the Burkov flats, he began to look more closely, and then he saw not the burkovites, but his mother, father, and sisters, the old man Gvozdev, Aleksandr Ivanovich Glotov, the accountant Averianov, Chekurov, Lizaveta Ivanovna, and Mariia Aleksandrovna, Rakov with his winning ticket for two hundred thousand rubles, and Leshchov and Pavlina Polikarpovna, and all the saints and holy fools, elders and brothers in Christ, and various Belgians and Germans—the Germans pressed around Dr. Wittenshtaube, who can cure any disease with his X-rays—and finally all of wandering Holy Russia.

There they were, lying in the front yard of Burkov House as on a field of death, although these were not bones but living people, no dry bones but living people, all with active, beating hearts. In addition there were animals lying beside the people, the governor’s dog, Inspector General, on its uncomfortable steel chain, raising his clever muzzle this way and that. Murka, too, was lying close by, only she was covered by some smoky-colored tomcat. Then alongside Marakulin lay the wife of General Kholmogorov, the louse. And the streetlamps seemed like enormous stars and moons descended from heaven and hanging low in the mist over the Burkov yard.

“The times are ripe, the cup of sin is full, punishment is at hand,” said Gorbachov in broken phrases as if half asleep, sniffing with his nose covered in horsehair.

Then there was a jangling noise like that of a cutlass, and from one of the peddlers’ storage booths emerged a fireman, huge beyond

human scale, wearing a great brass helmet, and he started forward, his boots knocking on the ground. Moving swiftly and easily he passed through all the housepainters, locksmiths, and peddlers, came closer to Marakulin and stopped when he reached him.

It was the most ordinary of firemen—with a red face.

It was at this point that Marakulin suddenly felt how difficult everything had become for him; he could move neither hand nor foot, and now he knew that he had not long to live; all he had left was the freedom to speak. And he also felt how difficult everything had become for all those on the field of death; they could move neither hand nor foot, and all they had left was the freedom to speak; feeling that his last moments had come, he could hear motor vehicles sounding their horns along the Fontanka.

Above him, motionless, stood the fireman. It was the most ordinary of firemen—with a red face.

And Marakulin would have liked to say something daring like some elder Kabakov, calling down a voice from heaven. He wanted to ask a question of the fireman on behalf of everyone, on behalf of the whole world, but he lacked the courage to ask in the Kabakov way on behalf of everyone, on behalf of the whole world, on behalf of all those on the field of death, so he just asked about himself: “Shall I be all right?”

“Wait,” said the fireman.

“Will it be all right?” Marakulin asked again, barely catching his breath and at the same time hearing how the motor vehicles were sounding their horns along the Fontanka.

And the fireman replied to him, but so despairingly that he could barely finish his words: “It . . . will . . . be . . . all . . . right.”

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J

ust before Christmas Marakulin’s cross got broken. Anna Stepanovna took it away to get it mended, and she went from the high school to the shops at Gostiny Dvor. There her purse was stolen and Marakulin’s cross went with it—a little baptismal cross made of gold.

During the Christmas holidays Akumovna was telling fortunes, and it looked to Marakulin as though the cards had turned out really spiteful and were mocking them with all their merciless honesty.

They foretold a happy journey—a noble person of some note, lots of money, if you haven’t got a letter today, then you’ll get one tomorrow, he drinks a little bit—and somewhere the side cards show grass and Christmas trees.

But the cards were not lying. Whether Akumovna had foreseen the truth or even without the cards it had been decreed by somebody, soon after St. Tatiana’s Day, and quite unexpectedly, Marakulin had to leave Petersburg for Moscow.

Marakulin came from Moscow. He was born and grew up in Moscow and did his schooling there. Before he went to Petersburg he had spent only five years outside the big cities. His business had

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taken him to such towns as Kostrinsk and Purkhovets. He had studied in the commercial section of a private technical school in Moscow. He had just started there when his mother died, and his father died before he finished school. His last years at school were difficult; he had to work things out for himself. He had two sisters, both older than he was and both married. When he was living in Moscow, he used to visit them often at first, but then less and less, until he hardly saw anything of them at all. While he was young, they had lavished love on him and spoiled him, and he remembered this, but they had forgotten. When he was living in the provinces, he used to write to his sisters often at first, then not so often, later just the usual greeting cards, and then he ceased writing entirely. They were the first to break off all correspondence. When he was living in Petersburg he had come to think that he had no family in Moscow, and only in the Kalitnikovskoe Cemetery were there two graves marked by crosses, one cross for his father and one cross for his mother.

His father had been senior accountant with the Plotnikov firm, which had a factory in the Taganka district and wholesale warehouses in the Ilyinka area. His father had been a hardworking man who had made his way up through his own stubborn efforts. His mother was quite different. She was strange.

Evgeniia Aleksandrovna, as his mother was called, was righteous, simplehearted, and sincere. Everyone knew of her righteousness, including Marakulin’s father; and those who often visited the house also realized her ways, so that when she was present they uttered not a word of gossip about the people they knew. Watching their words carefully, they would never say anything that could not be said directly to the person concerned. The possibility that there might be two opinions about anyone or anything, what could be said

at home within the tight family circle, and what could be said outside it, if need be, in the presence of other people, such an everyday notion was beyond her, and she had no worldly nous. And for that reason there could always arise, if not a public scene, then at least an embarrassing moment, and Marakulin’s father had had to warn his wife more than once about that. This worldly nous that knows of two opinions is simply an intuitive form of self-defense, often rather ignoble, and cannot be regarded as wisdom. True wisdom that knows not two, but twenty-two, opinions is both knowledge and mercy. That highest of wisdoms she could not, of course, possess, but the wisdom that is prompted by unmediated perception, along with wisdom grasped by the heart, these she possessed. There was not a trace of half-heartedness or coarseness in her entire being.

While she found it impossible to remain indifferent, she could not speak out with brutal frankness. She was moved and tormented by everything, had an extraordinary fund of compassion and sympathy, and was ready to help whomsoever it might be. And people loved her for those qualities. Everyone had known her when she was just a girl called Zhenia, and everyone had loved her for just those qualities. Just after she had left school, she fell in love with the student who was her brother’s tutor, and she looked with reverence at him as if he were God. And the student was all right; he was a serious student who just smiled and smiled and thanked people. Her father, Marakulin’s grandfather, was a doctor at Plotnikov’s factory, and he would often take Zhenia to the factory with him. Now Plotnikov had a young technician, Tsyganov, who spent time with the workers, arranging all sorts of readings for them and visits to the theater, and later people who knew even said that he raised a strike among them.

The factory workers loved Tsyganov and did what he said. Zhenia Sisters of the Cross

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had also spent time at the factory, and the sight of what life was like there made her feel sick at heart. When she got to know Tsyganov she volunteered to help him. She spent a lot of time with that technician, doing as much as her strength allowed. And when things went well and something got sorted out, with what joy did she recount her success to her brother’s tutor, to her very own student whom she revered as if he were God. And the student was all right; he was a serious student who just smiled and smiled and thanked people.

Once Zhenia was sitting with Tsyganov, selecting books to read to the workers, these “books” being really propaganda leaflets. She was trying very hard: she really wanted them to be read as quickly as possible by those about whom she believed the truth was written in them, and that the pamphlets should show a way out of their pitiful lives for people for whom she felt sick at heart. She was hurrying, and it was the first time she had done it. Tsyganov was sitting alongside her at the same desk, sorting out the leaflets and not leaving her side; he was also hurrying, and he too wanted to get it all done as soon as possible, since it was dangerous work. And then, when everything was done, the leaflets selected and put in order, she was so satisfied and happy to think about how she would relate everything to the student, to her God. He now must surely have finished giving the lessons to her brother, and perhaps he would already be sitting by the samovar in the dining room with her father and playing chess. Now, as she was rushing to get home as soon as possible, Tsyganov suddenly threw himself at her and brought her to the floor. . . .

That evening, when she came home and, just as she had thought, found the student already sitting with her father by the samovar in the dining room, playing chess, she said nothing to either of them

about what had happened between her and Tsyganov and did not utter a word about the horror she felt.

Horror and shame were stronger than all her desire to tell the truth, and she concealed the most important thing that had happened. She kept silent, but, unable to dissemble, her demeanor told everything. And even so, no one noticed anything; only her father saw a certain sadness in her face that had not been there before. And much later a few other people besides her father began to notice it, but they didn’t say anything and could not say anything since, though they had seen her often before, they had perhaps examined her carefully now for the first time and could not decide whether she had always been sad like this, and they just hadn’t noticed, or there had really been a change in her.

Of course, she had always had that sadness about her from the day of her birth; it had been hiding inside her, and it was just they who had failed to notice. For all her seventeen years, the sadness lay hidden in her being, and it was only on the evening when she and Tsyganov had been sorting out leaflets and, having finished them, she was able to think joyfully of telling her student friend, her God, that the sadness had emerged from her sense of horror.

And was it only sadness that was expressed on her face when she was rolling on the floor in animal pain, when, if she had not held back the pain, she would have cried out in horror and disgust? Was it only sadness her face was expressing at that time when, though tormented, she kept silent, only her demeanor showing evidence of her pain?

If people studied each other carefully and took note of one another, if they all were granted eyes with which to see, then only a heart of stone would be able to bear all the horror and mystery of life.

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Or perhaps none of us would need a heart of stone if only individuals took note of one another.

But how had all this happened, what had caused it to be so, and how did Zhenia explain it all to herself?

On the first evening, that very evening, Tsyganov had gone blind; there was no predetermined cause of any kind—he had simply gone blind. And if he had had seven eyes, who knows whether perhaps all seven would not have been blinded by those two eyes of hers, so joyful, so ready to transmit some of her joy to the student, to her God. And her joy was immense, for this was the first time she had been entrusted with something dangerous, and she believed she had found salvation for those pitiful lives that made her feel sick at heart.

In the end, she had accomplished all her duty.

That was how Zhenia explained everything, laying the blame on no one but herself.

Whether that was so or not, whether he had gone blind or not, whether he could have refrained from jumping on top of her or not, Tsyganov is not the only one who, engaged in an enterprise that needs to be conducted secretively and clandestinely, seemingly goes blind from the suspiciousness that it engenders. Yes, of course he lost his sight, and it doesn’t matter why; after all, if he had noticed anything at all, then what went on to happen would not have taken place at all. And what happened was that every time that Zhenia came to see him to help sort out pamphlets or on some other business of that nature, every time without fail that first evening, so full of danger and joy, was repeated. And she used to plead with him, prayed for him to spare her, not to touch her, but he would not listen, because he heard nothing and noticed nothing. And so things went on for a whole year.

Then when Tsyganov disappeared from Plotnikov’s factory somewhere or other, some people said that he had been exiled to Siberia, others that he had found a job in a factory beyond the Triokhgorny Gate and had a big salary, and yet others that he had seemingly announced the New Jerusalem to the world—in short: after Tsyganov had disappeared and Zhenia was about to breathe a sigh of relief, then to a hair the same thing occurred once again, only this time she found her brother, a military cadet, had turned up to replace Tsyganov. And she asked her brother, begged him to spare her, not to touch her, but he did not want to listen, because he heard nothing and noticed nothing.

The reason he heard nothing and noticed nothing was because he went blind at that very minute, for the reason that there was something in her that makes men blind: after all, the evenings with her brother had nothing in common with the danger and joy of the evenings with Tsyganov.

That was how Zhenia explained everything, laying the blame on no one but herself.

Whether that was so or not, whether her brother went blind or not, he, the brother, without engaging in Tsyganov’s enterprise, nor being driven by its clandestine and dangerous nature into blind suspicion, but on the contrary with an open road before him, without any need to look around or take special precautions, he, like many people from all walks of life, was not endowed with any particular sharp-sightedness. Yes, of course, this was the case, and it doesn’t matter that he was not sharp-sighted. After all, if he had noticed anything at all, then what went on to happen would not have taken place. And what happened was that every time he found her alone, he repeated all the same things that he had Sisters of the Cross

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enacted on the first evening with his sister. And so things went on for about a year.

But, when her brother left Moscow and she remained on her own and could breathe again, then, just as Tsyganov had been replaced by her brother, so he in turn was replaced by an assistant of her father’s, a young doctor, and after the doctor another man, and then someone else: they approached her quite boldly and did what they liked.

And they could do what they liked, not because it was there for the taking; they had their way with her because they were brought to it in their blindness.

That was how Zhenia explained everything, laying the blame on no one but herself.

Whether that was so or not, whether they went blind or not, whether they were led to her or they themselves hunted her out, however things stood—she did not blame a single one of them, but only accused herself, something inside herself that made other people blind and deaf.

She remained silent, silent for the whole three years, giving no hint, nor uttering a single word. But she had a feeling of horror and shame and torment. People loved her. She had many women friends, and she knew how they loved her and thought about her, but, being righteous, with all her righteousness she could not say to them that they were wrong and she was not as they thought she was. After all, if they knew the whole truth, perhaps they would recoil from her.

And now, by concealing the truth about herself, she was stealing their love.

Men approached her and did whatever they liked; whatever they were brought to, that they did, and she could offer no resistance, yielding to them with animal pain and revulsion. And for the fact

that she yielded to them and could not help but yield to them in spite of all her animal pain and revulsion; for that thing inside herself which made others blind and deaf and which made people throw themselves on her—for all this: mere human punishment was not enough for her. To commit suicide would be very simple, but what would it matter if she did put an end to her life?! And if they were to inflict pain and torture her, harrow and torment her to death, what would it matter if they tortured her to death? Mere human punishment, punishment devised by men, was not enough for her. She herself must both punish and execute herself. But how was she to set about this? During these three years of horror, shame, and torment, during the horror, shame, and torment that she experienced in her sleepless nights, she had torn at her hair again and again and beaten her head against the iron bedstead, her mockery of a maiden’s couch, but what good had that done? No good whatsoever. So who then would show her the punishment and how to punish herself? And she prayed with all the sharpness of her horror, shame, and torment, begging God to show her a fitting end.

If people studied each other carefully and took note of one another, if they all were granted eyes with which to see, then only a heart of stone would be able to bear all the horror and mystery of life.

Or perhaps none of us would need a heart of stone if only individuals took note of one another.

Zhenia left Moscow and stayed for some time not far away along the Kursk highroad with the family of a doctor who was a friend of her father’s. By now her father had noticed that it was not just a question of sadness. Alarmed and attributing everything to overwork, it was he who had persuaded Zhenia to leave Moscow and take some time off in the country. But this is what happened in the country: on Sisters of the Cross

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the Tuesday of Easter week she went home, as they thought, to be with her father for the festival, but in reality she had gone to pray for three days and three nights in the forest with all the burning horror, shame, and torment of someone whose heart is damning her and who asks for one thing only—to be put to death: to be shown the form it will take and the punishment that will follow. And on Good Friday, when they were bringing out the holy shroud, she appeared in the church completely naked, holding only a razor in her hand.

And when they brought in the shroud, she followed on behind it— and the ranks of the congregation parted before her, as they melted before the shroud. And she stood naked before the shroud with the razor in her hand: “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Someone answered: “Amen.” Then she brought the razor up and started to slash her body, placing crosses on her forehead, on her shoulders, on her arms and on her breasts—and blood poured from her onto the shroud.

For about a year and no less, Zhenia lay in the hospital, where they brought her after she had fainted in the church. There were no visible signs of the crosses she had made, except for a barely noticeable little scar on her brow, and her hair covered that, so it could not be seen. Then, when they found that she had recovered, they released her from hospital and sent her back to her father.

So, was she at peace now? No, she was not at peace. However, she was no longer asking for execution. Somewhere in the depths of her being she had fallen silent. God knows, perhaps they were treating her with some special medicine, or it could be that as she recovered and became healthy, she could no longer listen so intently and hear the message being uttered in the depths of her soul. But she did come to hear it soon and quite unexpectedly. There came to visit her

father the accountant from the Plotnikov factory, Aleksei Ivanovich Marakulin. It must be that he took a great fancy to Zhenia and somehow he managed to declare his love for her. And then it was that she heard the message being uttered in the depths of her soul.

Surely not a single human being knows for what she had asked to be punished; not a single person knows about the three years of her torment and the fourth year of her thoughts of execution. She said nothing to her confessor—she spoke only in her thoughts, when the priest was giving her absolution after confession. She could not bring herself to declare it all to the priest; it would not be enough for him to know that what she had done was her sin, and he might always ask about those people who were with her.

Perhaps, when he saw her horror, shame, and torment and wanted to give her some consolation in this life, he might want to find out how it had all happened and then, when he knew all the circumstances, he might condemn those people and absolve her. But she herself did not accuse them of anything, laying all the blame on herself, on that something inside her that made other people blind and deaf, and then the priest might denounce them. And now the moment had come when she would say everything to the man who loved her. And she must come out with it—that was the message being uttered in the depths of her soul. Without fail she must tell all to that man.

And she told him all that had happened without holding anything back. He listened humbly and he wept, because he loved her.

Although in his heart of hearts he did not believe that what had happened to her would not be repeated once again, that those three years of hers would not return once more, he wanted to believe it because he loved her.

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Zhenia devoted all the rest of her life to her children. In the first year of her new life she suddenly looked much older somehow. This was nothing to do with old age, but from the horror, shame, and torment that appeared for all to see and lay upon her face, as did her sadness. Until the very end of her life her posture was marked by a seeming plea for men to spare her, not to touch her, with her hands joined together and her eyes uplifted as though she was about to take flight in alarm. And as she lay in her coffin there could be clearly seen, beneath the wreath that covered her forehead—the cross.

At that time Marakulin was ten years old, but he always remembered that cross, her cross peeping out on her waxen brow from beneath the white wreath of flowers. So now, on his way to Moscow, he remembered this cross, and the memory of his mother’s cross became indissolubly fused with the memory of his own baptismal cross made of gold, the one that someone had stolen just before Christmas.

And a kind of melancholy swept over him.

Marakulin was going to Moscow at the insistent demand of Plotnikov.

Pavel Plotnikov had studied at the same school as Marakulin, and was two classes below him. When Marakulin first saw Pavel, he greatly took to him. He was a healthy boy, like milk fresh from the cow somehow, so that you wanted to go up to him and stroke him, to tousle his hair, or wash him like a little pet—take his cheeks between your fingers and tap his nose with your middle finger gently, gently, making him break into a smile. In his first year he had a sore throat and the white bandage round his neck made him look even more lovable.

Marakulin tried to speak to him, touching him and speaking gently,

but Plotnikov fought shy of him. It was only in the following year that chance brought them together. Marakulin was a chorister, and when Plotnikov was chosen to join the choir, they both sang as altos. At rehearsals Plotnikov found himself beside Marakulin and gradually became less shy of him. He became attached to this boy, who would help him in every way; if they were set a difficult problem, he would solve it for him, or if a difficult translation, he would do it. So for a whole year they had a touching and tender friendship. Then suddenly, some time after the summer holidays, Plotnikov grew up, and there was nothing left in him of that puppyish, kittenish quality that had attracted Marakulin to go up and stroke him like a little pet. So now he no longer fussed over him so much, no longer spoke so tenderly to him. But Plotnikov often turned to him for advice, as to someone older and wiser, who knew life in a way that seemed beyond his reach.

Plotnikov did not finish the course at the technical school. He stuck in the fifth class, and his parents withdrew him. He was the only son—and that after a succession of daughters. He was greatly needed in the firm, and the Plotnikov Company was known not only around the Taganka, but all over Russia. By the time Pavel’s schooling came to its untimely end in the fifth year, he had grown so much and so filled out that, looking at him, it was hard to recall the new boy Pasha with his white bandage, Pasha, who looked like milk fresh from the cow, Pasha, whom you wanted to take between your fingers and whose nose you wanted to tap. It looked as if all links between them would come to an end, but that did not happen. Plotnikov kept on coming to Marakulin, each time to borrow a book that he asked to have time to read, and for some reason or other he always seemed to be shy. Marakulin gave him the book, and Pasha would disappear for a long time. Then, quite unexpectedly, he might come back at Sisters of the Cross

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some extraordinarily early hour in the morning, often in an excited state—as though he had begun the evening in some Taganka beer saloon, spent half the night drinking in some out-of-the-way place like the Saratov and the other half of the night until morning in the Iar, then washed himself in the five-kopeck Poluiaroslavsky public baths and had now appeared straight from there, only without his switch of birch twigs—and it turned out later that this was exactly what he had done. He would shyly return the book, always making the same timid declaration that he had not mastered it and needed something more simple. Marakulin gave him an easier book, and Plotnikov would disappear again for a long time.

The upper classes of the school were a motley crew, united we must suppose by the same things that linked Marakulin and Glotov.

There were all sorts of desperate characters there, and their hangerson who tried to keep up with them, and all those who had to spread their wings, individuals who later would become either those who would turn into smart operators, or the most run-of-the-mill clerks, and some who might take to drink and finish among the down-andout on the Khitrovsky market. Those sorts of people were habituĂŠs of the Taganka beer saloon and the Moscow boulevards, and on summer Sundays they were to be found in Kuskovo, since that was where the Taganka and Rogozhskaia crowd decamped to in the warmer months. Marakulin went around with those people, who were sometimes joined by Plotnikov.

On one occasion, as drunk as a lord and with so few clothes on that he might have been taken in by the police, Plotnikov got into a battle with some horses on Taganka Square. When drunk, he was so full of fight and difficult to humor that he might attempt any wild stunt, without rhyme or reason, without fearing anything or anybody, just

to pass the time. Everyone knew that. And he made just one exception: for Marakulin. In the most extreme circumstances, when Plotnikov was quite intractable and untamed, he alone could calm him down and reason with him.

Pavel Plotnikov was exactly like his father, Vasily Pavlovich, in his intractability and in his talent for finding all sorts of tricks to enliven the passing scene, but in the Taganka Vasily Pavlovich held the lead in this respect; his example was infectious, and he had many followers. However, the father never became violent, although he had missed attending not just the fifth class, but any classes at all, and he never got into fights on Taganka Square, either with horses or with people. Quite the opposite: Vasily Pavlovich was quiet and humble and never let a drop of alcohol pass his lips. In his final years, when he was old and could no longer hope to come up with anything fresh and knew that his life was drawing to a close, he conjured up the madcap idea of passing the time by getting the local police officers drunk—not seeking to set the police force on its feet, as they say, but rather to get them legless. He set about this idea with great skill, achieving his aim by hook or by crook, doing nothing himself, but getting things done indirectly through instructing others. The bait that lured them in was a carriage, nothing special, just a carriage without any crest on it—around the Taganka people were not supposed to have coats of arms denoting their rank. In the mornings Vasily Pavlovich usually sat by his window on the lookout for a policeman, who about that time would be passing his house on his way to the police station. This man would be enticed into the house, seemingly on business. But, of course, there was no business, since people tried to avoid having dealings with the police. But you could always find some trifle or other for the occasion. Meanwhile Sisters of the Cross

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Vasily Pavlovich would invite the policeman to inspect his carriage and invite him to do so in such a way that it would be hard for him to refuse. So the policeman, being flattered, would follow him into the carriage shed, where everything that was needed was ready, and there was no way the man would get out except legless. The next day the same thing would happen, so that eventually, little by little, the policeman forgot all about walking his beat. First thing every morning he would appear at the shed to look at the carriage. And, of course, they soon threw the man out of the force and appointed another to replace him. Then the same business with the carriage would start all over again. Infected by the example of Vasily Pavlovich, the fish merchant Barabokhin at the very same hour began to get the priests drunk. To attract them Barabokhin used his fishpond, quite an ordinary pond, in no way intended to contain some rare, nonexistent, foreign fish with an unpronounceable name— but simply a pond for sterlet. Both the carriage and the fishpond enjoyed extraordinary success for a good long time before their charms faded. Such was Vasily Pavlovich, who left behind a worthy successor in the shape of Pavel, his heir. Along with the carriage, Pavel inherited from his father all sorts of devices for passing the time of day, and he did not hide his talent beneath a bushel, but perfected it. If something came into his head, he would not rest until he had acted on it, and very many ideas came to him, including what other people were a bit scared of. But he never allowed himself to do anything that might have affected Marakulin. Marakulin was the exception to all his pranks. Everyone knew that.

There were three occasions when Plotnikov took a firm hand in Marakulin’s fate, the first time protecting him, the second time setting him up in a job, and the third time rescuing him.

Plotnikov protected him by driving Strakunov away from Marakulin, and beating Strakunov in public and to good effect. In the Taganka there was this man, Sashka Strakunov, a scoundrel if ever there was one. God knows what he had to live on, or what he wouldn’t descend to! Somehow he had wormed his way into the group at Kuskovo, and for some reason Marakulin took to him. (God only knows how a man like that can find favor with anyone!) In fact, Marakulin himself would have found it difficult to say why he took to Strakunov—a poseur, as full of monkey tricks as a gypsy, and that was all there was to him. Strakunov stripped Marakulin of his money like a milch cow, and whatever Marakulin had made by giving lessons, it all went to him. That went on for a month. When Plotnikov came to hear about it, he put a stop to it straight away—and protected him.

Then, after he had finished school, and almost immediately after the exams—not even taking a full week off—Marakulin had already begun work in the office on Kuznetsky Bridge, and all that was set up

by Plotnikov.

During the summer they spent their evenings on the boulevards.

Once, when Marakulin was listening to the summer band playing in the gardens at Chistye Prudy, he got to know Polia, a young girl from the district. Polia, who would only appear on the boulevard at twilight, was actually from near the Rogozhskoe Cemetery and lived on Station Lane. In Chistye Prudy she was known as Polia, but when Dunaev introduced Marakulin to her, he called her Dunia, and so did Poliansky. Dunaev and Poliansky were in the same class as Marakulin at school, both belonged to the Taganka-Kuskovo group of friends, and soon Polia became Dunia for Marakulin also. Marakulin got to know her not because he specially sought her out—quite the contrary: it happened more as a childish prank. At Easter Marakulin Sisters of the Cross

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happened to be visiting Poliansky, and in the most casual conversation about their friends (this being just before their final school exams) he started to argue with Poliansky about Dunaev. “Well, you’re just simply infatuated with Dunaev,” remarked Poliansky and smiled in that particular way of his. “He’s just like a young lady, and so you are keen to defend him.” Marakulin blushed all over, and he felt embarrassed both at the way Poliansky had smiled and at the fact that he himself was conscious of how he had blushed all over. And could he really have defended Dunaev only because he resembled a young lady? And it all started from that. Dunaev, “like a young lady,” was quite at home on all the boulevards and, whether as a sign of friendly gratitude, or simply for no particular reason (in matters like this there may always be a hidden motive), he offered to introduce Marakulin to Polia. But Marakulin could not forget Poliansky, and the main thing he remembered was how Poliansky had smiled on that occasion. So now he had clutched at this chance of being introduced to Polia; that would stop Poliansky smiling like that again.

Well, these are the sort of childish pranks that boys can get up to.

So they got to know each other on one of the Thursday evenings at Chistye Prudy. Dunia immediately took to Marakulin. She said that bluntly in front of Dunaev and Poliansky after the very first days of their acquaintance. Then one night in Station Lane, when she was seeing Marakulin off from her flat, she nimbly slipped down the stairs to open the door for him, and when he had reached the bottom step and stood in front of the door, she gave him a firm embrace.

After hugging him, her hands became like those of a child again, and she pushed a handkerchief into his pocket with his initials embroidered in cross-stitch. The handkerchief was silken and scented with a perfume quite different from the one that she generally used when

she came onto the boulevard in the evening twilight. But from that night on, the more Dunia clung to him, the more distant he felt from her. And by the end of the summer he found it unbearable, the way she would look out for him and follow him about; there was no place left where he could get away from her. She was spending less and less time on the boulevards, dressing herself up and dousing herself with a different scent that did not belong to that life at all. And this was a heroic act on her part because, when a woman makes her living from the boulevards, it is impossible to spend money on dresses when she stops going there. She was not especially well-dressed now, and had quite ordinary clothes, but she still looked extraordinary and, if she had wanted, she could have made a success of her life. Everyone who knew her said so, both the smart public, and her own women friends.

Dunaev and Poliansky said so, also. And Marakulin knew about it, too; after all, on that first night her hands had suddenly become like those of a child—but what was he to do? Her handkerchief—he had never taken it out of his pocket since that night, and he would have forgotten about it, if he had not felt it, the handkerchief that she had embroidered with his initials in cross-stitch. It was made of silk, but it weighed particularly heavily, as though it were made not of silk, but of cast iron. There was only one thing to do: either burn it or throw it into the Moscow River. It was the end of August, the last of the festivities in Kuskovo, and already the Taganka and Rogozhskoe company were turning back toward their Taganka and their Rogozhskoe. This was the last Sunday evening, cold and with the sky full of stars. The theater had finished and the station was filled with people. There was Dunia, walking up and down the platform. So Marakulin went up to her and started speaking with all the rage that had boiled up in him and that he had long held back. He Sisters of the Cross

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broke off suddenly without giving her any opportunity to reply and walked away immediately. And it seemed to him now that he had done everything that was necessary; she would no longer approach him, there was nothing more he needed to do, and nothing more that he needed! Then Poliansky came up to Dunia, and they walked up and down the platform. Then when they drew level with Marakulin, Poliansky said something to him, but so quietly that he could not make out the words, and Marakulin noticed only his smile, exactly the same smile that he had shown that time at Easter. So now, when Marakulin saw them again, so distant at the end of the platform, he felt a kind of burning reproach and, as they drew closer, the feeling of reproach became stronger and made him ashamed. Then, when they drew level with him once more—and he was still standing in full view, face-to-face with her—he could no longer bear her burning reproach and his own shame, so that he bowed down low before her, right down to the very ground at her feet. And now there happened something soundless, but seemingly so fearful that everybody rushed to one side and there was turmoil. At this moment the train was approaching, everything was shaking, and the wind was whistling. Marakulin rose up from the ground to see some policeman, a superintendent perhaps, dragging Dunia off by her arm; he quivered all over and, hearing nothing but the wind whistling sharply above him, he dealt the policeman a blow. But in fact the policeman was not dragging her anywhere, and if the policeman had not acted as he did, then the train would have crushed her. But all of this emerged later, when it was already too late. The next evening Plotnikov came to see Marakulin in his cell at the Tagansky police station where they had transferred him from Kuskovo. Quite out of the blue, and shyly for some reason, just as it was when he used to borrow a book,

Plotnikov timidly told him that they would let him out the next morning—and in fact they did release Marakulin the next morning and without any more ado. So that was how Plotnikov rescued him.

And that was the last he had seen of him.

Marakulin could not sleep all night, as he recalled everything to do with his early life in Moscow, and it was only when they were quite close to Podsolnechnaia station that he dropped off to sleep for a moment and had a dream.

He dreamed that Pavel Plotnikov came up to him and said to him timidly: “The best and most rational thing would be if I cut off your head.” And Marakulin imagined that he was replying: “How can I get on without a head? It must be terrible to have no head.”

“There’s nothing to be done,” argues Plotnikov and begins to assure him that it will not hurt; at the very most it will be outlandish and strange. Although he has his own timid way of persuading Marakulin, he will not admit of any arguments against it.

“All right, cut away,” says Marakulin in agreement.

So Plotnikov takes the razor and starts to cut into his neck and indeed it isn’t the slightest bit painful, and his head has fallen right back, as now it is held on only by a thread.

“Just one more small, but firm movement, and your head will be right off,” says Plotnikov as he strops his razor.

And the head falls onto the floor.

But even without his head it seems that Marakulin can still see everything; he has seen how his head fell off, rolled across the floor and disappeared somewhere, and at the same time how thick, cherry-colored blood gushed out from his throat, spouting upward in a wide stream right to the ceiling. The whole floor is covered with blood, and so is he; there is not an untouched spot anywhere. Later, Sisters of the Cross

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it’s as though the cherry-colored fountain of blood has started to weaken and grows ever less; it’s no longer gushing out, and soon there won’t be any at all. He then sees how outlandish and strange it was that there was no head, only the red pipe of his throat.

“How am I going to manage without a head?” he said, spitting, and woke up.

What happened in the dream happened in life; what had happened was outlandish and strange.

At Plotnikov’s house they were already expecting him. Fomich, the old factory worker, took him straight into his boss’s study, which was divided into two halves, forming two sections: on one side there were copies of paintings by Nesterov, and on the other side there were two cages with monkeys. Between the picture of Holy Russia and one of the monkeys sat Plotnikov. Powerless with drink and for some reason smeared all over in honey, he was sitting there with the oppressive sadness of a hermit. There were empty bottles lying on the table, empty bottles under Holy Russia, and more of them around the monkeys.

He had no head, his mouth was in his back and his eyes were on his shoulders. At Christmastime he had thrown himself at the honey, eating it in the comb. And he ate a great deal, so that he had bees inside him, a whole hive of them. He was a hive. And he was terrified—people could not resist sweet things—he was terrified that they would eat him up, be the death of all his bees, and consume his hive and him as well! Then in summer, as soon as the first fly appears, he will start using the fly as a motive force. All Russia will be divided into sections with a fly governor general for each part; deputies with the powers of a governor general will be in charge of collecting the flies. These will be packed automatically into armored

vehicles and will be delivered from every corner of Russia direct to Moscow and the Taganka. The Russian fly will overcome steam and electricity, Russia will crush England and America into powder. He has no head, his mouth is in his back, and his eyes are on his shoulders. He is a hive of bees. He does not understand the Russian language, and he does not speak Russian. “I have no need of your elephant,� said Plotnikov, with his drunken eyes haughtily surveying Marakulin from head to toe. As he expressed himself thus, he broke into swearing of such truly Russian tricks and turns that the sonority and strength of his native language seemed to make his eyes stare out of his forehead.

Marakulin was standing between Holy Russia and the monkey, and he could understand absolutely nothing of what was going on, neither about the astonishing Russian engine propelled by flies, nor about the hive, nor about the elephant. It was all outlandish and strange. But it seemed that his silence was already beginning to annoy Plotnikov, who had abandoned the oppressive sadness of being a hermit and was snorting. He does not understand the Russian language, and he does not speak Russian. After crushing Europe with the aid of the Russian fleet, he will move over Lapland to the North Pole, and will take not only the Pole, where there are fish with fried legs, but what lies even beyond the Pole, unexplored by anyone, the dwelling place of Gog and Magog, that will be called Landiia, which is to say: the Country. There, coming from that Landiia beyond the Pole, using the freely given allRussian force of flies as an engine, shall be RUSSIA, and he, Pavel Plotnikov, as autocrat, shall move the earthly globe by his own whim and will, now to the left, now to the right, now stopping it, now setting it in motion.

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“You scoundrel,” Plotnikov shouted suddenly, “your elephants have been crushed like mint, and I’m not going to buy mint elephants!” He snatched a bottle off the table and stood up, disheveled, red-faced and covered in honey, with his mouth gaping like the jaws of an animal. Twirling the bottle around, he began to take aim.

Marakulin was standing between Holy Russia and the monkey, and he could understand absolutely nothing either about the Arctic fleet, or about Gog and Magog, or about Landiia, or about the earth turning at someone’s whim and will—and it was outlandish and strange.

But suddenly the bottle slipped timidly down onto the floor, and there was a fearsome animal shriek, more heartrending than any cry for help, and all the walls seemed to crack, Holy Russia began to shake, the monkeys shrank with fear, and there was something groaning in the corners and booming through the house.

Plotnikov, savagely drunk for a month already, headless, his mouth in his back and his eyes on his shoulders, Plotnikov the beehive who did not understand the Russian language, or speak a word of Russian, Plotnikov recognized Marakulin.

“Petrusha, you old scoundrel . . .” Stumbling over his words and rolling his head like an elephant’s trunk, he stood stamping his feet on the spot in front of Marakulin, spreading out his hairy hands like tentacles, rolling and pitching like a battleship in the Arctic fleet.

“Petrusha, you old scoundrel!”

Then, pitching over to the sofa, he came crashing down with his entire, huge, armored body, like Gog and Magog—Plotnikov, the untamed—and began to buzz like a beehive between Holy Russia and the monkey.

Two strapping young men, who were on duty by the doors, caught Marakulin under the arms and almost carried him out like a treasure from the study into the drawing room. And to meet him there arose, leaning on her stick, a wizened old lady, Plotnikov’s mother, Evdokiia Andreevna herself.

“Father, you have healed him!” was all that the old lady could say and, making a great sign of the cross in the old-fashioned way, she dropped her stick and bowed down to the ground.

Dark figures of elderly women were about to rush in from all sides to help her, but she did not wish to get up. And only Marakulin could calm her down.

Buzzing like a beehive, Plotnikov slept for two whole days without waking once. Through the entire house there was silence, as though apart from him and his buzzing hive there was not a single living soul in the house. During these two days they would not let Marakulin go out. They stuffed him with food, but kept the door locked all the time.

There was talk of poor Pasha, of his misfortune, how he had smeared himself all over with honey, refusing to accept anyone, not recognizing anyone by sight, and going so far as to take his own mother for an elephant with tusks, for some kind of crushed mint animal, and ordering Fomich to shoot her, and how later in his unhappy delirium he had started to call on Marakulin with a piteous voice like a cat whose kittens have been taken away from her.

Evdokiia Andreevna told her story: “I remembered then how, when we were trying to get Pasha used to working in the firm, he would bring home a book and say that he had been at Petrusha’s with Piotr Alekseevich, who brought him luck. He came to believe in you,

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father, from his earliest years he came to believe in you. I thought to myself: ‘You are the only person who can cure this terrible malady of his and his misfortune.’ We asked Father Semion, the priest from the Church of the Resurrection, to sprinkle holy water over him, but Pasha would not let him. He called him a crushed peppermint beast.

We wanted to take him up to Khapilovka to Brother Ivanushka, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Thanks be to our doctor, Nikolai Fiodorovich, who thought of sending for you. You have cured him, father!” Then the old lady made a great sign of the cross in the old-fashioned way and bowed down to the ground. “For casting out the unclean demon like a wild beast!” the dark old women whispered from the corners.

Meanwhile Evdokiia Andreevna carried on crossing herself and bowing low.

On the third day Plotnikov woke up and, as if nothing had happened, he traveled into town and returned safely only in the evening.

That evening he dragged Marakulin off to Lavrov’s bar.

They were sitting in the corner room on the left as they used to do before and, as before, there was an orchestrion playing.1 Plotnikov was remembering the past: their school and all their teachers, and Chistye Prudy and Kuskovo. He could even remember Lavrov’s special cold summer soup that Marakulin used to like. But the sound of the orchestrion made them feel melancholy; they had no desire to bring back the past. The old times were there as though spread out on the palm of your hand, but somehow they could not imagine why the past had been like that, and could it only be there for it to be remembered by them? When Marakulin looked into the hidden corners of his life, he realized that in reality nothing had changed: in those days 1. A mechanical keyboard instrument designed to imitate an orchestra.

he used to feel exactly the same—even about the summer soup at Lavrov’s—only he remembered it all vaguely, quietly, with occasional flashes of clearer recollection. But when all’s said and done, do people ever change? They were sitting in the corner of the room on the left, as they used to before and, as before, there was an orchestrion playing.

“But I am on your Arkady Pavlovich, the policeman’s side,” said Plotnikov. “You shouldn’t have insulted him then. It was over there that he and I sat,” he went on, pointing in the direction of the private rooms on one side and slapping his pocket with a grunt. “Five hundred rubles it cost to agree to an amicable settlement, and all because of your Fenia!”

“Dunia,” Marakulin corrected him.

“Dunia, Fenia, it doesn’t matter. Let’s go, my friend, to see Arkady Pavlovich, he’ll be really glad. Do you know they gave him a cross for his work during the Moscow uprising, a real cross, and they moved him to the Tverskaia police station. He’ll be really glad! But do you know, Petrusha”—here Plotnikov leaned across and began to speak in a low voice—“I have faith in you like I do in God, and when things aren’t working out in my affairs, I only have to think of you and pronounce your name aloud and—just like that—everything becomes as it was before. What I think is that, when my end is coming and it’s time for me to die, I’ll simply call for you, and you’ll come and stop me from dying. I’ll be meowing like some mangy cat, and you’ll make me a man again. So you see, Petrusha, that’s what I think of you.”

They were sitting in the corner of the room on the left as they used to do before and, as before, there was an orchestrion playing.

But the odd thing was that, when he remembered the old days, even the summer soup at Lavrov’s that Marakulin loved, and even when he was admitting to his faith, Plotnikov was never once Sisters of the Cross

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curious and never once even thought to ask how Marakulin was managing, and what was even odder was that, though never taking his eyes off him, he seemed to see him as someone completely different, not Marakulin, but whom—God only knows. But perhaps he saw him precisely as one whose affairs you didn’t ask about. After all, you didn’t ask the Iverskaia Virgin how she was faring! It seemed outlandish and strange.

Marakulin spent one more day at the Plotnikovs’ house. Plotnikov took him out to the warehouse at Ilyinka, then to the Tverskaia police station to see Arkady Pavlovich, but to Plotnikov’s great regret he turned out not to be there, and in the evening he saw Marakulin off at the railway station. Saying goodbye, he repeated once again that he had faith in him as he did in God, and that if he were just to see him, he would rise from his deathbed, meow like a mangy cat, and turn into a man again.

At night, when the train had passed the station at Klin, Marakulin suddenly asked himself: had the whole Moscow visit been just a dream?

Everything had been outlandish and strange: both the way Plotnikov had faith in him as he did in God, and how for some reason he had dragged himself over to see the warehouse at Ilyinka, and even to the officer at the Tverskaia police station, Arkady Pavlovich, whereas he had not gone to the Kalitnikovskoe cemetery and, after all, he should have gone to the Kalitnikovskoe without fail and stood at the graves for a while, well, if only to look at them, to look at them and take his leave.

And a kind of melancholy swept over him.

06

F

rom first thing in the morning Vera Nikolaevna would run around giving massages to her patients, while in the evening she would sit over her textbooks; she was preparing to take her leaving certificate. She had not given up her cherished dream: no matter what it cost she wanted to get into the medical institute. Studying alongside Vera Nikolaevna was Anna Stepanovna, for whom things were not going well at Ledniova’s Model High School.

Thanks to the existence of some mysterious fund for the provision of uniforms, Ledniova, who was headmistress of the High School, was for the time being paying Vera’s salary out of her own pocket, and this generous subsidy was handed over to her with Ledniova’s favorite deliberations about good works in general, about the decline in morality, and about her own sacrifices: in her very own High School she was giving lessons without any pay.

According to Anna Stepanovna, God alone knew what was going on in the High School. Model chaos reigned in the model school. It was not that the school let the children do what they liked—pupils on a long leash, as it were—no, it was not a question of their being

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mischievous; the teachers valued the pupils as the resource that was bringing in the funds, and the children prized highly such an attitude toward them. Of course, no punishments were prescribed, and the school had to push pupils’ marks up so high that the parents would never think for an instant about taking their daughters away from Ledniova and enrolling them in some other teaching establishment.

Apart from that, Ledniova herself, the headmistress, really did give lessons, and she not only did so, but she liked to be present at lessons taught by her other staff, testing her unpaid teachers by asking them questions. And everything was far removed from the prescribed curriculum and completely different from what was in the textbooks approved and sanctioned by the ministry; thus, in the great French Revolution it was not Robespierre and Marat who had been active, as taught by accepted tradition—far from it: what did Robespierre and Marat matter?—no, it was Hugh Capet who had been active and perished for his misdeeds along with King Louis.

Model chaos was completed by model overcrowding and model cold in the Model High School. The cold was as cold as it can get; the stoves were never stoked—and that not only in the classrooms, as should have been done for the proper control of pupils’ health, but even in the teachers’ common room. It is true that the children seemed to feel no particular hardship; they jumped and ran and danced—there was regular uproar in the High School—but somehow it was not very fitting for the teachers to raise such a din. There is no way you can make a squabble without making a noise, and it was not appropriate for them to be noisy. Headmistress Ledniova had just one reply to all their complaints: “That’s as may be,” the headmistress would say, “but you should have seen what it was like in the Karasev High School, or you should

spend some time in Spasskaia High School. There you would find out what real cold is like.”

Ledniova’s answer took Anna Stepanovna away from Petersburg and back to her native Purkhovets, and she was reminded of the Purkhovets inspector of people’s schools, the famous Obraztsov.

And by some sort of family connection that famous Obraztsov was no less than half-brother to Ledniova, born of the same mother.

Rakov the historian spoke of Obraztsov with great respect.

According to Rakov, if Obraztsov had lived in ancient times his name would unfailingly figure among the sayings recorded in the temple at Delphi, and a carving of his head would have graced the top of the Parthenon in Athens. And Rakov the historian was never mistaken.

When some teacher or other complained to Obraztsov that the school was damp and cold and only six degrees Centigrade, this is what he replied in words worthy of Ledniova herself: “For heaven’s sake, six degrees,” he exclaimed, “that’s real luxury! Now in Pokidoshenskaia Province when I was carrying out inspections there, I once came into a school where the children were all wearing sheepskins, and the teacher was in a fur coat and galoshes. I sat there for a short while and got chilled to the bone myself. I was going to make a note about my visit, but the ink had frozen. The teacher blew and blew into the inkwell, trying to thaw it out, but nothing would work.

So I had to leave without making a note. That’s what real cold is like—but you’re in clover here.” And when some teacher or other complained about overcrowding and that the school was filled to the limit, then also Obraztsov was not at a loss: “For heaven’s sake,” he exclaimed, “you’ve not seen real overcrowding! When I was carrying out inspections in Pokidoshenskaia Province, I once went into a church school, an almshouse. There in a single room were the beds Sisters of the Cross

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of the almswomen, and a goose sitting on its eggs and squawking in its basket, and a calf was mooing, and there in the same room the children were working at five desks. There was nowhere to swing a cat, and the air was so foul that I could hardly breathe. That’s what real overcrowding is like—but in this school you are really in clover!” And to the teacher who told him about the masses of frogs in the school that even crawled under your blanket, Obraztsov gave a rebuke worthy of the Delphic oracle, and Purkhovets or Pokidosh or wherever it was were entered willy-nilly into Rakov’s ancient history.

“And there are not really ‘masses’ of them,” Obraztsov exclaimed.

“You only have to have a dozen, and you are already calling them ‘masses’! You’ve not seen what ‘masses’ can be! In Pokidoshenskaia Province, when I was carrying out inspections there, I once saw a school in which the ceiling was literally seething with cockroaches.

If you slammed the door, then they would pour down like rain. Now that was what you could call ‘masses’! I came back home from the school and took my clothes off, and there were cockroaches all over me, like on the ceiling. My wife even took fright and pushed me out into the frost, where I finished changing my clothes. But here you’re in clover!” Yes, Rakov the historian was right as usual.

But if we had to inscribe the name of the famous Purkhovets inspector among the other entries in some temple at Delphi, we would have to award an even higher place to the headmistress Ledniova, who possessed the great art of never spending a kopeck from her own funds and who could so cunningly beguile not only her starving teachers but, as people said, even the ministry itself.

The winter was passing. The black mountain in the yard of the Belgian factory was melting along with the snow. Spring was setting in, bringing Easter with it.

They felt no joy in welcoming Easter, just as they had felt no joy in celebrating Christmas.

The clown Vasily Aleksandrovich had been discharged from the hospital. His heel had mended, but all the same it was not so good as it had been; it was as though he had no heels. He could walk to the newspaper seller at the corner of Gorokhovaia Street and back again—that was all he could manage. Instead of taking her leaving certificate, Vera Nikolaevna was advised by a doctor not to delay for a minute but to go somewhere or other in Abbas-Tuman.1 It looked as though there was something wrong with her lungs—there was some sort of squeaking and hissing sound in her lungs as she breathed.

Because of the conditions in Ledniova’s model school, Anna Stepanovna’s health simply collapsed, and all she could do was smile with that terrifying, painful smile of hers.

At Easter everything in the Burkov flats was as it had been every year at the time of the great church festivals for as long as Burkov House had been standing there on the Fontanka: events, incidents, public scenes, fistfights, punch-ups, calling for the police, ending up in a cell, and all this pushed to the limit and with more noise than usual.

The midwife Lebedeva had another robbery, although this time it wasn’t a winter fur coat that got stolen, but the thirty-two rubles that she had saved up to buy another coat. She had kept the money wrapped in a stocking in a locked chest of drawers. The stocking was still there, but the money was nowhere to be found—it was as though it had been consumed in the stove. Once more people blamed the doorkeeper Nikanor for not keeping an eye open, but how could he spot everything? He was on his feet all day, then at 1. A spa town in Russian Transcaucasia, now part of Georgia.

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night he had to get up to answer people ringing, and so it went on the whole year round. Of course, this was a clever thief—an inside job, nothing you could do about it! The baker Iarygin from the Burkov bakery, after kissing everyone three times on Easter Sunday, lay down to sleep in the evening on a plank above the kneading trough and then apparently turned over awkwardly and fell into the dough. All night he was sucked farther down into the dough. In the morning, when they tried to get hold of him, there were only his legs sticking up out of the trough. A good baker he had been, Iarygin! Stanislav the clerk and Kazimir the fitter, on the lookout for a bit of fun and games, gave Iorkin the passport officer too much to drink. Now Iorkin had been strictly observing the New Year pledge he had given the brother not to drink vodka. Swigging down a tumblerful of strong pepper vodka after long abstinence, he went crazy and plunged into a fight—and all this happening in broad daylight at the time when in the corners young girls wearing little black scarves as well as alms-collector nuns in boots were singing “Christ Is Risen from the Dead” for Gorbachov. Kazimir managed to jump away, but Stanislav came to grief. Iorkin scooped him up and threw him to the ground, forcing him down and pressing on him with his knee. He grabbed him by the head and bit off his nose. The governor’s ginger dog, Inspector General, who just happened to be in the yard, gobbled up Stanislav’s nose there and then. Burkov himself, the former governor who had destroyed his own position, was coming back on Easter Sunday from visiting some important people and accidentally left his Easter egg behind in the cab. It was only on the next day that he realized this. He announced to the police that they must find the Easter cabby and this doubtless remarkable egg, and all the papers reported this the day after. And on that same day the youngsters in

Burkov House were playing at conducting a court-martial. They condemned Vaniushka, the doorman Nikanor’s son, to death by hanging, and they carried out the sentence. They dragged the boy into the coach shed and strung him up with reins around his neck.

No sooner had they gone away than the feeble boy went blue in the face and nearly choked to death. Finally, and quite without warning, the Oshurkovs, man and wife, committed suicide. Around the yard no one could understand why they had to kill themselves; they had a flat with ten rooms, after all, and all ten rooms filled with all kinds of things, including an aquarium with fish. “They were a good master and mistress,” all the servants said, including both the cooks and the housemaids, none of whom would have been kept on for any length of time, however, because of these various things that the Oshurkovs kept around them in the house.

One evening soon after Easter, on St. Thomas’s Day, Sergei Aleksandrovich called in at Marakulin’s for a glass of tea, having come to an agreement with the theater about a tour abroad. Vera Nikolaevna and Anna Stepanovna also came to tea, as did the clown Vasily Aleksandrovich with his stick. They talked about Damaskin’s theatrical trip abroad, which Sergei Aleksandrovich himself saw as nothing but the salvation of Russia. According to him, Russia was almost choking to death on all these Rakovs, Leshchovs, Obraztsovs, Ledniovas, Burkovs, Gorbachovs, and Kabakovs and for the first time would use its art to reveal itself to the city of great people—to the heart of Europe—to Paris, and would be victorious.

“Really, why not?” said Sergei Aleksandrovich, getting into his stride as though he were in some sort of theater, “We shall all go together. We all need to go abroad—if only for a month or a week, it doesn’t matter how long—just to have a look and free ourselves Sisters of the Cross

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from all this stuff in the Burkov flats. You, too, need to go, Vasily.

We’ll drag you along with us! And you, Vera Nikolaevna, can forget about Abbas-Tuman!”

“But what money will we be traveling on?” asked Anna Stepanovna, smiling.

“What do you mean: on what money?”

“How on earth can we get to go abroad?” observed Vera Nikolaevna.

“I will get the money,” said Marakulin, suddenly remembering about Plotnikov. “I shall get a thousand rubles!” He said this with such faith and such assurance that they all believed him and did not talk any more about money.

The question was decided: they would all go abroad together to the city of great people—to the heart of Europe—to Paris. Their heads were all spinning. They constructed all sorts of notions, developing details with such faith and fervor, as though this journey abroad really was linked with the salvation of Russia—their own salvation, too, and they would only have to cross the frontier for that process to start.

There, somewhere in Paris, Anna Stepanovna would find her proper place on earth, her heart would be uplifted, and she would smile in a quite different way, and there, somewhere in Paris, Vera Nikolaevna would recover and receive her leaving certificate, and there, somewhere in Paris, Vasily Aleksandrovich would climb onto the trapeze once again and perform wonders, and there, somewhere in Paris, as Sergei Aleksandrovich danced to win the heart of Europe, Marakulin would find his lost happiness.

“We must find Verochka,” Marakulin suddenly thought. “We must take her with us so that somewhere in Paris she shall achieve her heart’s desire, either to become a great actress and have her

revenge on Anisim, or let it be that the peace of God would descend upon her, that her desire for vengeance should be assuaged, and that she should simply forgive him.”

As soon as he had said this, they all agreed that they must take Verochka with them as well.

“But I’ve met Verochka,” said Vera Nikolaevna. “You were in Moscow at the time. I was walking home along Gorokhovaia Street one evening, and she came running toward me. It was incredibly cold.

A blizzard had started, and she was just wearing a light summer jacket, and over her hair a thin white scarf. ‘Verochka,’ I called to her. She stopped and looked, and looked at me in such a strange way.

She was trembling all over. ‘Verochka,’ I say, ‘let’s go and have some tea. Come along to our flat.’ But she just straightened her scarf, trembling all over, and shook her head like this. We were on Semionovsky Bridge, and it was incredibly cold. A blizzard had started.”

The letter to Plotnikov was written that same evening and sent to Moscow the next morning by registered post. Marakulin had faith that the money would come. He believed in Plotnikov’s thousand rubles, just as Plotnikov believed in Marakulin.

In the meantime Adoniia Ivoilovna had set off on her pilgrimage.

She set out for Jerusalem, where the incense is never extinguished and perpetual candles burn. There she will wash herself in the River Jordan and rub herself down with weeping grass, and her sorrows, afflictions, and tears will fall away from her, like the bark from a pine tree; she will grasp the meaning of Parasha’s ships, and no longer will the earth give way and collapse on her husband’s grave in the Smolensk cemetery.

As she was free in the evenings, Akumovna was telling fortunes.

It came out that they could all expect great change and a journey.

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For Marakulin, besides that, there would be grass and pine trees as there had been just before his journey to Moscow, only the pines were right up close and not along the sides—it was Vera Nikolaevna who had them showing in the cards along the sides.

“A happy journey,” whispered Akumovna.

“We are going to Paris, Akumovna, to the heart of Europe!”

Sergei Aleksandrovich gave a wink: “Should we not take Akumovna with us? Would Akumovna agree to go abroad with us, to Paris?”

“Well, I will go. I haven’t breathed fresh air for nine years, and I shall breathe in a bit of fresh air.” Akumovna did not need any persuasion; she would willingly have gone with Sergei Aleksandrovich, not just to Paris—she would have followed him on foot to the end of the world.

“That’s fine then. We shall leave God’s servant Kuzmovna to guard the apartment and—farewell to Russia. We must shake off all worldly cares.” Then, no longer able to contain himself, and feeling a flood of his own feelings and hopes for Russia’s success in conquering the very heart of Europe, Sergei Aleksandrovich began to swing his feet around from side to side, like a cock flapping its wings.

“We must pick up Verushka at the same time. She will come to grief otherwise, the shameless girl,” said Akumovna, her thoughts going back to her Vera, who had perished long ago in the Burkov flats.

“We’ll take your Verushka as well, and we shall all be abroad together.”

With great affection Akumovna was laying out the cards to tell Sergei Aleksandrovich’s future.

Akumovna suddenly remembered: “Now our priest at Turii Rog was a good sort, and a great one for repentance, our Father Arseny.

Just before he died, he stood up and asked: ‘Are the horses ready?’

‘What horses do you mean, Father?’ ‘Well, you see,’ says he, ‘I’ve just married a young couple, and they’ve invited me to go abroad to their wedding feast.’ With that he died.”

“A priest will always die a priest,” said Sergei Aleksandrovich, as he followed the cards.

Marakulin felt a shudder within him as though something had broken, but his hopes came to life again and put things right. All his hopes were based on Plotnikov, and he could think about nothing else. His hopes were his strength.

May arrived, and white tents went up in front of the Belgian Society factory. They brought bricks and sand into the yard and began to repair the house. In the evenings a balailaika would strum its heart out—there was an abundance of these poor un-Russian blessings in the Burkov yard and, settling themselves on the windowsills and wearied by the winter, people stuck their rumpled heads out of the windows in the hope, most likely, of catching some warmth from the May sunshine.

But there was no reply from Plotnikov. And a terrible anxiety crept into Marakulin’s heart, only he was afraid to admit this to himself and said nothing to anyone else. The reply would come—it had to come! They should be—and they would be—abroad, in the city of great people, in the heart of Europe—in Paris.

There, somewhere in Paris, Anna Stepanovna would find her proper place on earth, her heart would be uplifted, and she would smile in a quite different way, and there, somewhere in Paris, Vera Nikolaevna would recover and receive her leaving certificate, and there, somewhere in Paris, Vasily Aleksandrovich would climb onto the trapeze once again and perform wonders, and there, somewhere Sisters of the Cross

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in Paris, as Sergei Aleksandrovich danced to win the heart of Europe, Marakulin would find his lost happiness, and he would seek out Verochka, and there, somewhere in Paris, Verochka would become a great actress, and the peace of God would descend upon her, and there, when Akumovna, like a rolling stone, had made her way to Paris, her father’s curse would be lifted from her, and she would breathe in the fresh air that she had not breathed for nine years, and she would no longer have to fight her way through to the tsar, nor would she have to drink an infusion of horse manure—and there, somewhere in Paris, her Vera would also not die, the one who had perished so long ago in the Burkov flats.

Faith had vanquished every doubt, dispersed every anxiety through its strength and certitude. Marakulin believed in Plotnikov’s thousand rubles, just as Plotnikov believed in Marakulin.

There was only a week left now before the date fixed for Sergei Aleksandrovich to go abroad. It was decided that he would go on ahead with the theater company and write from somewhere in Paris, and by that time they would have received the money, and nearly everyone from Burkov House would move straight from the Fontanka to Paris.

When finally it arrived, that week—full of expectation and anxiety and swinging between faith and doubt—decided everything in its own way.

Anna Stepanovna’s exams came to an end, and the mysterious uniform fund—or the travel expenses, or the removal costs (they were called different things by different people)—must have finally arrived. But such money, as it turned out, could only be given once to any individual teacher, and, of course, Ledniova deprived her of her job; seemingly, Anna Stepanovna found things difficult at

the High School and she had various shortcomings, like wearing a jacket with an open neck—quite improper—and the way she had of smiling, which embarrassed the teacher of religion, the priest Aristovulov—also quite improper. The rumor would go around that in Miss Ledniova’s model school a woman teacher was seducing the priest—and that was quite out of order! Put briefly, if one person wants to defame another for any reason of his own, then he will try his hardest to do so—that’s the way people are. Of course, the open-necked jacket and Father Aristovulov, the object of Anna Stepanovna’s seduction, all that was lost in favorite deliberations about good deeds in general, the decline in morals, immorality, the cause of the younger generation that must be upheld, and one’s own sacrifices; the headmistress Ledniova herself gave lessons for free in her own school, and as well as that she was providing sustenance for twenty teachers! And everyone was well acquainted with her, the headmistress Ledniova, the whole of Petersburg knew her, and General Kholmogorov’s wife herself was her friend.

So it all came to an end simply for Anna Stepanovna, very simply, and she went on her way, smiling. You felt sick at heart at the sight of her smile. She had gone on her way from Leshchov to Ledniova, and would go from Ledniova to Petrova, and then to some sister of Ledniova’s, until she stopped smiling.

And finally there came the reply from Plotnikov, so long awaited, so impatiently expected. Through his bank, Plotnikov had transferred to Marakulin the sum of twenty-five rubles. And off went Sergei Aleksandrovich with his theater to Paris, to conquer the heart of Europe through Russian art. Just before he left, he rented a country cottage somewhere in Finland and persuaded Vera Nikolaevna and Anna Stepanovna to settle there along with Vasily Aleksandrovich, Sisters of the Cross

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who still required considerable care and attention. He mustn’t feel lonely without heels and with nothing but his stick. Led by the “slave” Kuzmovna, Vera Nikolaevna, Anna Stepanovna, and Vasily Aleksandrovich the clown departed for Tur-Kilia instead of Paris. Marakulin and Akumovna were left in Burkov House to spend the summer there.

“I shall go to the tsar himself; as before God, I shall place my hands together and tell him everything. I shall go to the tsar himself—naked; as before God, I shall place my hands together and tell him everything.” But Marakulin had no words left to argue with Akumovna. He did not even repeat the final words with which she would leave this life—retribution and reward to all people: no one should be blamed. Somehow everything in him had fallen silent and become deaf to everything.

One person has to betray in order—through treachery—to open up his soul and become his real self in the world. Another person has to kill in order—through killing—to open up his soul and at least die as himself. He needed somehow to write out a payment slip and give it to the wrong person in order to open up his soul and become his real self in the world, and not just any old Marakulin, but Marakulin Piotr Alekseevich—and see, and hear, and feel.

But he could not stand a life with no purpose, just seeing, hearing, and feeling, and he asked for some relief from that. He imagined the general’s wife to himself, the carefree, sin-free, and immortal louse, and he found for himself her absolute entitlement, in the hope of retrieving that extraordinary joy of his, which he had lost.

And now on his path, so straight and even, where even the last shadow and trace of hope were vanishing, the dark evil forces of

oncoming despair had already begun their work, quiet and clinging like little worms, gnawing away and untethering him from life, eating away at the strong pivot and foundation of his existence.

From morning to evening Marakulin would pace the city of Petersburg from one end to the other, from gate to gate, from high road to high road, on and on like a mouse in a mousetrap. He had lying in his pocket the crisp, new banknote from Plotnikov, the twenty-five rubles, just as once he had carried the new silk handkerchief he had received from Dunia cross-stitched with his initials, and he forgot about the crisp, new banknote from Plotnikov, just as he had once forgotten about Dunia’s silk, scented handkerchief.

At the same time, it is extraordinary how tenacious man is of life: he can be thrown about and beaten, yet he will still go strutting on, unconcerned, like a cock that has been killed and is walking about even without its head, as if swaggering and looking for grain, though headless. Marakulin had found an activity, found a way of unburdening himself; he had made a discovery, and this discovery was not a whit less important than that drunken idea of Plotnikov’s to use flies as a source of motive power.

All you have to do is to step out onto the street and then, quite independently of your will, you will fall under the power of that special law of the street, and it will no longer depend on you how you walk and how you hold yourself, but that will be governed by some wave or current of the street into which you have stepped. You may get into one wave and it’s as though everyone is laughing at you, making faces at you, snorting at you—that’s the women—while the men purse their lips into a round shape like a bobbin, as though they are about to whistle; then another wave may roll you along— it looks completely different: the men have brutish faces, frowning Sisters of the Cross

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and surly, you seldom meet a woman, and if you do chance on one, then she’ll be by herself, going along, laughing and seeing nobody, as though she was blind, laughing to herself; next there comes a broad wave of people—all women and, seemingly, you could not find eyes and smiles that were as spiteful; their eyes cut through you, and their smiles look as though they were pouring scalding water over one another, spiteful wives; and now here comes another wave of people, ordinary people who walk in a bunch, energetically, and in their midst not children, but monstrous dwarfs, emaciated, with their flaccid arms dangling like whips and huge heads sloping forward, out of proportion to their size; and there are many other different waves of people, even a wave that will sweep you away, if you get mixed up in it—you will be driven along, everyone will be running, both people and horses, old men, children and old women, both trams and motor cars.

Once he had made this discovery for himself, Marakulin clutched at it with dogged persistence, as he used to do with reports for the director. In any case, he was already like a dead man; they had buried him, after all. He remembered the words of Glotov, the cashier Aleksandr Ivanovich, the words that he had once uttered in the theater: “And you know, Petrusha, we had written you off long ago.” Yes, they had buried him long since, and he, as a dead man, as a corpse, as someone not of this world, could follow easily, simply, and impartially the movements of those who were alive and still of this world.

So now he was going to test himself, test out his discovery.

But what was the point of checking and what sense was there in his discovery? Who would need it, and for what purpose? For the pleasure of whom, whether dead or alive, whether of this world or of the next? This was a question that he did not ask; it was not his

concern—everything in him had fallen silent and gone dead. There was simply no purpose in it, just as a cock continues to swagger after its throat has been cut.

However, he was wrong, and there was no time to do any checking.

Walking along Nevsky Prospekt that night, Marakulin met Verochka. It happened like this: at the watchtower by the Duma the police were rounding up suspects and, as usual, there were hundreds of women tastelessly overdressed, rushing along, clutching at passersby and pleading for them to escort them just a little way.

One woman in particular caught Marakulin’s eye. Just as absurdly as the others, she was jumping backward and forward from pavement into roadway and back from roadway onto pavement, only she was all dressed in dark clothes. She had managed to avoid the policeman and was making her way toward Anichkov Bridge. In this lonely, dark woman completely dressed in dark clothes—dress, hat, gloves and all—Marakulin had recognized Verochka. And suddenly remembering the crisp, new Plotnikov banknote and crushing it in his hand—he was no longer a beggar—he ran to catch up with her.

But at Anichkov Bridge Verochka mingled with a crowd of people coming toward her and disappeared.

“Verochka!” he called, sweeping his eyes from the Nevsky to the Fontanka and back again. “Verochka!” And something dark and cold enveloped his heart like a snake.

The next morning the first thing he thought of and firmly decided to do was that in the evening he must, come what may, go to Nevsky Prospekt and look out for Verochka. During the day he stayed at home. It was the seventh Thursday after Easter, the last Thursday before Trinity Sunday, and Akumovna was particularly keen to do some fortune-telling. According to her, the cards on that Thursday Sisters of the Cross

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would tell the whole truth unfailingly, as would any dream dreamt on that day.

Two strolling musicians came into the Burkov flats, one with an accordion, the other with a tambourine. The accordion was played by a tall, swarthy man—a locksmith, perhaps, or a plumber. The little girl striking the tambourine was dressed in a sailor’s shirt and cap; she must have been about twelve years old, it was difficult to say exactly, and she had only one leg. She supported herself on a stick and held the tambourine on her bent knee.

The little girl sang along to the accordion.

She was singing some sort of factory song, a mixture of verses like “I will sink to the bottom of the sea . . . I will fly up above the clouds . . .” and lines from gypsy songs about various sleigh rides, burning eyes, and tender tears. Then suddenly her voice burst into one of the oldest of Russian songs. She formed the words purely, and you could hear everything clearly, every word. But words were not the most important thing. The girl sang in a resonant alto deep from the chest, striking the rhythm on her tambourine. The song was infused with the endless expanses of the steppes and the vastness of the sea, and the tambourine struck against her knee like a sinking heart.

The musicians found themselves surrounded by the children, who had abandoned their wild games and doings and formed a circle around the players. They had fallen silent and were unable to tear their eyes away from the one-legged girl, just as once they had looked at the cat Murka, when she was rolling about on the stones in agony. And the girl went on singing. The dark-skinned Persian masseur from the public baths was always where the children were, and he settled down at the same time, rolling the whites of his eyes.

And the girl went on singing.

The girl was singing in a resonant alto deep from the chest, striking the rhythm on her tambourine. The song was infused with the endless expanses of the steppes and the vastness of the sea, and the tambourine struck against her knee like a sinking heart.

The children were moving in ever closer to the one-legged girl, as though they did not want to let her go. The crowd of children closed her off completely, so that she was no longer visible, and it seemed as though the earth was singing, the steppe was singing, the sea was singing—the broad, free expanse, the heart of the earth. Everyone was afraid that at any moment the song might come to an end, the girl would stop singing and go away. No one wanted her to leave.

But the song did finish. Just the accordion was now playing on its own. Leaning on her stick, the girl was hobbling over the gravel, and seemed to be circling around through the yard, holding out her tambourine and smiling. With her pure, open face she was gazing up toward the windows, just as the cat Murka had once looked up at them when she was rolling about on the stones in agony.

Akumovna started weeping bitterly, like a child somehow, no doubt remembering all her trouble, how she had gone around the whole wide world like a rolling stone.

Marakulin rushed out onto the street and finally caught up with the musicians beyond the gates.

“What’s your name, little girl?”—and he touched her hand.

“Maria,” replied the girl, looking at him unsmilingly with her pure, open face.

The accordion player had also stopped and raised his peaked cap a little. Swarthy and pockmarked, he was probably her father.

Marakulin’s fingers sought out Plotnikov’s crisp, new banknote, crumpled as it was, and thrust it at the girl, all twenty-five rubles of Sisters of the Cross

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it, and without a backward glance he went back into the courtyard.

Behind him he could hear the wild sweeping song. Infused with the endless expanses of the steppe it was, and the vastness of the sea. The tambourine struck against her knee, like a sinking heart.

He was going by his own even, straight path to Nevsky Prospekt.

Night was already falling. There, on the Nevsky, he would wait until he saw Verochka. He would stand all night in wait for her. And he wouldn’t make any mistakes. It was a white night, after all, and white would not deceive him!

The white night would not deceive him; some woman dressed in dark clothes shoved past him and, holding up the hem of her dress, walked on fast toward Anichkov Bridge. Everything she was wearing was dark in color—dress, hat, and gloves. He recognized Verochka and rushed after her. But by Anichkov Bridge Verochka merged with a crowd of women who looked like her—she wasn’t the only one wearing dark clothes.

“Verochka!” he called to her, “Verochka!”—looking into the eyes of each dark figure, and not only of two or three: there were many of them, and they all dodged him and gathered together in another place, from where they seemed to be quietly and imperceptibly creeping up on him. Quiet, dark figures, and something dark and cold enveloped his heart like a snake.

And that night, that night of the last Thursday before Trinity, Marakulin dreamed that he was sitting at a table with a samovar in some large room crammed with furniture, and everything was scattered and thrown around, like when you gather things together prior to moving, and the people in the room with him were all strangers, tired and dejected-looking somehow. And sitting next to him—he noticed this with a feeling of disgust—was a snub-nosed, naked

woman with prominent teeth, and someone else besides, dressed in dark clothes—and they were bending over the junk, sorting out old bits of cloth. Grabbing hold of a glass in vexation, he took aim at her empty, naked skull.

But she, the snub-nosed, naked woman with prominent teeth got up and ran toward the door: “On Saturday,”—her teeth rattled as she laughed—“Don’t you forget to give a pound to Akumovna”—her teeth rattled as she laughed—“And your mother will be dressed in white”—the woman with the prominent teeth laughed again.

“A pound of what? Of grain, of silver?” he began to argue with bitterness, as if he were defending some last right of his not to be subjected to any time limit and to any special Saturday. “Well, come on then, don’t fool about! You mean a real pound sterling, do you?”

“On Saturday,” laughed the snub-nosed woman, naked and with the prominent teeth and, without turning round, clattered down the stone steps into the yard.

In the yard—and it was the Burkov yard—the tenants were pouring out from all the apartments, and from the wing and Gorbachov’s corners: all seven janitors, including the senior janitor Mikhail Pavlovich and his wife Antonina Ignatievna, and the passport officer Iorkin, and Stanislav the clerk with the bitten-off nose, and Kazimir the fitter, the doorkeeper Nikanor and Vaniushka, his son, sentenced by the children to death through hanging, as well as the children who had condemned Vaniushka, and the Persian masseur from the public baths, and the little girl who had brought milk out to Murka, along with shoemakers, bakers, bath attendants, barbers, dressmakers, milliners, a night nurse from the Obukhov Hospital, tram conductors, engine drivers, men who made hats, umbrellas or brushes, and plumbers, typesetters and various mechanics and electricians with Sisters of the Cross

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their families, all sorts of young ladies from Gorokhovaia Street and Zagorodny Prospekt, dressmakers and girls from the teashop, and smart young men from the baths who would serve Petersburg ladies on demand, and the old woman with her stall by the baths who sold sunflower seeds and all sorts of rubbish, and unemployed cooks, a house painter, a joiner, and a mead seller and all the peddlers, in a word—the entire Burkov flats, the whole of Petersburg.

And they are all looking up toward the window, as the cat Murka had looked up, rolling around on the stones in agony, as the wandering singer had looked up, the little girl Maria with her tambourine, circling around the courtyard on her one leg.

“What did she say?” they ask Marakulin.

But Marakulin is standing as though framed by the window, like some holy elder Kabakov, calling down a voice from heaven in his prayers, as he stands facing the people.

“One of us shall die,” says Marakulin.

And in reply the entire Burkov yard whispers to him in mortal anguish: “Surely it will not be me, Lord? Surely it will not be me?”

And up in the heights, much higher than the four brick Belgian chimneys with their lightning conductors, airplanes are sailing like great green birds, their huge green wings covering the sky.

“Surely it will not be me, Lord? Surely it will not be me?” the entire Burkov yard whispers in mortal anguish.

And now it seems that Marakulin is making his way home to the Fontanka, when something strange happens: he seems to hear the bells ringing out for the evening service at the Church of the Resurrection on the Taganka, and he’s not going in through the front door, but from the kitchen; he half opens the door, and by the kitchen

range some sort of woman is sitting who looks quite like Akumovna, only this is not Akumovna; she is dressed all in white. “Your mother will be dressed in white,” he remembered the words of the snubnosed, naked woman with the prominent teeth, and he hurled himself into the room.

It was the same room crammed with furniture, and everything was scattered and thrown around in confusion, like when you gather things together prior to moving, only there are no strangers now, there is not a soul in the room, just his mother sitting there, his mother with a cross on her forehead.

“She has already come and sat down,” says his mother, talking about the one who is sitting in front of the kitchen range dressed in white, and suddenly she bursts into tears.

And he knelt down, bending his head as beneath the stroke of an axe, in despair and mortal grief.

That was how Marakulin woke up: in despair and mortal grief.

It was Friday. He was struck by the sudden gloomy thought that he had until Saturday, and that only one day remained. He went as cold as ice. He did not want to believe his dream, and yet he did believe it and, since he believed, he was condemning himself to death.

Man is born into the world and is already condemned; all are condemned from the day of their birth. People live under sentence, but completely forget about it, because they do not know the hour when it will come. But when the day is pronounced, when the time is measured out, and the term is laid down, when Saturday is indicated—no: that is more than man’s God-given strength can endure. For when God endowed men with life, He condemned them, but concealed from them what would be the hour of their death.

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Marakulin believed his dream and felt that he could not bear it, that he could not wait for Saturday. In despair and mortal grief he wandered around the streets from morning on; he could do nothing but wait for night to come; then he would see Verochka; he would tell her everything and take his leave of her.

And now on his path so straight and even, where even the last shadow and trace of hope had vanished, the dark, evil forces of despair had already begun their work, quiet and clinging like little worms, gnawing away and untethering him from life, eating away at his last links with the firm foundation of his existence.

It was hard for him to tear himself away from life.

Perhaps, after all, dreams are just dreams. When put to the test they may not come true at all. Why then did he have such belief in his dream? And should one really believe some dream like that?

God knows what doing so might lead to! Indeed, it is never like that.

Before death people always dream of something quite plain and simple, like losing a boot, or something like that, or getting ready to go on a trip abroad. . . .

Marakulin remembered about the trip abroad, about Paris, that paradise of his—and he came back to his senses.

He was standing in front of some sort of fence completely covered with posters, and he could not recognize where and on what street he was standing. He could see the spire of the Engineers’ Castle2 rising above the trees, but when he walked along the fence, heading, as he thought, straight toward the spire, it suddenly disappeared. He dared not go any farther, as though that way lay his Saturday, his allotted span, the hour of his death. He turned back and, catching sight once 2. Also known as the Mikhailovsky Castle, built for Tsar Paul I and the place of his murder in 1801.

again of the spire, walked boldly along the fence in the opposite direction. The spire remained in his field of vision for a long time, but then suddenly vanished, just as it had the first time. He dared not go any farther, as though that way lay his Saturday, his allotted span, the hour of his death. So he walked along the fence, keeping an eye on the spire of the Engineers’ Castle, to and fro along the boundary that he had set for himself, in despair and mortal grief.

It was misfortune that was leading him on, hurling him from street to street, from one lane to another, diverting his gaze and confusing him—it was his destiny that cannot be overridden and from which there is no escape.

Grief at his own mortality and despair at his burden eventually exhausted him; the span of his life and hour of his death were forgotten. His head sank down, but his legs were still strong, and they brought him out on the right path; he was going along Engineers’ Street, and he crossed the road to the Mikhailovsky Palace.3 Then he was stopped by some tattered old woman, wrinkled and with watering eyes. She had clutched at his arm for him to take her across the street. Although she was so small—just a bag of bones, hanging onto him as though she had no legs of her own—she seemed so heavy to him that he could hardly walk out with her to the line of the tramway in the middle of the street. Then, when he started to cross the rails, the old woman seemed to grow even heavier, and God knows how he did not fall under the tram. Ringing its bell insistently, the hurtling tram passed so close to him that he could feel its heat.

Marakulin let go of the old woman and started to run.

3. Built for the Grand Duke Mikhail, the son of Paul I, and now home to the collections of the Russian Museum.

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Feeling hot and cold all over, he ran to the Narva Gate, running away from the bony old woman, running from his fated end.

For some reason he was heading for the Narva Gate, somewhere beneath the Narva Arch, where he thought there would be no bony old woman, where he would forget about his predicted end, about his last hour, about Saturday.

However, for some reason, when he reached Gorokhovaia Street, he did not go along the Garden Ring Road, but turned along Gorokhovaia toward the Fontanka.

On the Fontanka in a street near the Burkov flats they were trying to catch some young lady, a revolutionary presumably. The police had sealed off the lane, and there was no way through. Marakulin came to a halt.

They had been chasing the young lady for a long time, and finally some men in civilian clothes, probably detectives, surrounded her and led her off to a cab. The young revolutionary somehow reminded Marakulin of the wandering girl singer; was it her pure, open face that reminded him of her, except that the revolutionary was tall and rosy cheeked. Her hairpins had slipped out, and her straw hat was askew, with her long light-brown hair in disarray. A police officer climbed into the cab beside her, and she was taken away.

“She’s just like Maria Aleksandrovna,” thought Marakulin, “she’s the same sort of person, preparing herself to be a victim and ready to die for humanity once more,” and he walked along the Fontanka, past the Burkov flats.

At the Izmailovsky Bridge, just a few steps from the beer saloon, he caught up with a lady; no longer young, gray-haired but strong and healthy, she was striding along at a steady pace, as though she was out for a constitutional. When Marakulin was about to overtake

her, she suddenly bent double and foolishly started to run; at that very moment there was a shot from the beer saloon and a shout for help! And the lady was lying on the pavement with her spine shattered and her face pushed into the stones—a strong, healthy old woman and beside her, smoking slightly, lay her folding chair.

“Well, that’s immortality for you!” thought Marakulin, as he realized that this old woman was none other than his unfortunate general’s wife, that very louse of a general’s consort whom he had endowed with absolute entitlement in his own cruel Burkov night.

And now blind chance had robbed her of her absolute entitlement, and her folding chair had not availed her.

People were running up from the Fontanka and the little side streets; they were gazing at the victim’s face with curiosity, with horror, and with that particular malicious delight that shows when living eyes confront the eyes of a dead person. But she—the carefree, sin-free, immortal one—was now lying motionless with her spine shattered, hapless, helpless, and having drawn her last breath.

A policeman had run up, and Marakulin said to him: “That is our lady from the Burkov flats, the wife of General Kholmogorov.”

They carried the general’s wife away—the white gauze on her hat had come loose and was trailing out behind her like a spider’s web. Marakulin was walking at the front of the crowd, behind her and her folding chair. He was going past the flats again and did not call in, but came out onto Gorokhovaia Street, and then went along Gorokhovaia right through to the Admiralty, saying mindlessly again and again: “Well, there’s a woman supposed to be immortal!

Well, that’s immortality for you!”

In the Aleksandrovsky Garden he was about to sit down on a bench, but suddenly jumped up as though he had been stung, and Sisters of the Cross

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he carried on farther on his way. He stopped by the monument to Peter the Great: “Piotr Alekseevich,” he said, turning toward the statue, “Your Imperial Majesty, the people of Russia are drinking infusions of horse manure and subduing the heart of Europe for a ruble and a half ’s worth of vodka with cucumbers. I have nothing further to say!”

With that he took off his hat, bowed, and went on along the English Embankment, then across Nikolaevsky Bridge to Vasilevsky Island.

On a little street between Sixth and Seventh Lines beyond Sredny Prospekt, a crowd of people blocked his way. They were all just standing there so completely silent, that you could have heard a pin drop. Under a tree sat an old woman, shaking her head with its heavy ringlets of white hair. She was just gazing out, and from her submissive eyes quiet, humble streams were running down her cheeks, streams not of tears, but of blood.

“She’ll never live to see the day,” thought Marakulin. “Lizaveta Ivanovna did not see out her time, she did not accomplish the task God had set her. She did not pass on her happiness, poor woman!”—and suddenly he felt a terrible thirst, as though those quiet tears of blood had scorched him.

On Seventh Line, not far from Maly Prospekt, right next to an enormous building there was a little one-story house with a beer saloon. Marakulin managed to find some forgotten ten-kopeck piece in his pocket, and he turned off to enter the bar. He was tormented by an unbearable thirst.

Facing the window, he sat down at a dirty wet table and picked up a newspaper, not to read, but just as a reflex action.

“You can feed a hungry man, you can make someone rich who’s poor,” he heard a familiar voice and familiar words. “But once you

fall in love—and if the object of your love does not respond—then, for the life of me, there is nothing to be done!”

“That restless old man Gvozdev said it on Murka’s day, that’s who it was!” Marakulin remembered, putting down the paper and reaching for his warm beer.

“You’re forever joking, Aleksandr Ivanovich, but I recently ate a mouse at the Afon monastery inn. I had a bet for five rubles with the brothers there. ‘If you eat it, Gvozdev, that’s five rubles for you, but if you don’t eat it, then you have to cough up to us.’ All right, they caught a mouse on the spot—there are plenty of them around the inn—it was a little gray one, a tiny thing. I took the skin off it, roasted it a little around the sides to make it taste better, cut it into slices, salted them, blessed myself, and ate it all up. I demolished the mouse, sir! I collected the five rubles, choking with laughter, and I says to them: ‘You Afon monks have paid me five rubles for eating a mouse, but at Prokopy the Righteous’s Church I ate a rat this size without any salt, just for one ruble!’ You see, Aleksandr Ivanovich, I have to get by somehow!”

Then, in reply to Gvozdev, someone’s emotional voice drawled out: “I am just dying for love of you and your marvelous sweet eyes!”

“I myself, Aleksandr Ivanovich, am a great one for the women!”

By now something heavy had fallen onto the sticky floor, writhing about and weeping bitterly, as only children can, as bitterly as Akumovna wept at Maria’s singing, when she remembered everything that had happened to her.

Marakulin drank up his warm beer, making his thirst only worse, and went out onto the street.

He was going by his own even, straight path to Nevsky Prospekt.

Night had already fallen. There on Nevsky Prospekt he would wait Sisters of the Cross

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until he saw Verochka. He would stand all night in wait for her. When he saw Verochka, he would tell her everything and take his leave of her. And he wouldn’t make any mistakes. It was a white night, after all, and a white night would not deceive him!

The white night would not deceive him. Verochka appeared immediately; he recognized her by her dark clothes. But he froze in horror: every last woman was wearing dark clothes—everything was dark, their dresses, their hats, their gloves. And they did not try to dodge him. They were walking along with stately assurance past a policeman in his white uniform, stepping around another policeman in white uniform, as though taking part in some ancient ceremonial dance, from the Znamenskaia Church to the Admiralty, and from the Admiralty back to the Znamenskaia Church.

“Verochka,” he was calling, “Verochka,” looking into the eyes of each woman, not missing a single one, and something dark and cold enveloped his heart like a snake.

It was despair that enveloped his heart.

And death, with its twisting devious ways, was already approaching his door.

All night he wandered in despair and mortal anguish, looking into the eyes of each woman, not missing a single one. He stopped on Anichkov Bridge and stood there, letting them all pass by before his eyes—and they stepped around him, as they had the policeman in his white uniform, walking with stately assurance, as though taking part in some ancient ceremonial dance, from the Znamenskaia Church to the Admiralty, and from the Admiralty back to the Znamenskaia Church.

Then, when the sun came up and all those dark figures had vanished somewhere, there was not a single person left clothed in black,

absolutely no one remained on Nevsky Prospekt, apart from the policemen in white. Marakulin turned off along Liteiny Prospekt in the direction of the Finland Station.

He had suddenly decided—somehow it seemed to happen automatically—that he would go to the dacha in Tur-Kilia to see Vasily Aleksandrovich, Vera Nikolaevna, and Anna Stepanovna—after all, they had rescued him so many times, they would rescue him again now, they would give him some milk—he was hungry—after all he was only twelve years old!—yes, they would give him some milk.

It was Trinity Saturday, the eve of Trinity Day, and the little trees for that festival were already being taken along Liteiny Prospekt; the street was filled with cartloads of curly green boughs—the boughs of tiny young birch trees, as green as green could be.

There were no trains running as yet from the Finland Station, and he would have to wait; but Marakulin did not feel like sitting in the station, so he started to walk along the sleepers, but when he had gone a little way, he stepped off the railway track at a bridge, sat down in a ditch and fell asleep.

And he slept most soundly, no doubt as Plotnikov did for two whole days after his cruel, ill-fated drinking bout.

When Marakulin woke up, however, it was already evening— Saturday was coming to an end. Once more he was struck by the oppressive thought that Saturday was his last day, and he went as cold as ice. He did not want to believe his dream, and yet he did believe it and, since he believed, he was condemning himself to death.

Man is born into the world and is already condemned; all are condemned from the day of their birth. People live under sentence, but completely forget about it, because they do not know the hour when it will come. But when the day is pronounced, when the time Sisters of the Cross

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is measured out, and the term is laid down, when Saturday is indicated—no: that is more than man’s God-given strength can endure.

For when God endowed men with life, He condemned them, but concealed from them what would be the hour of their death.

Saturday had dawned, and now Saturday was coming to its end; the term had been reached, and the hour was approaching.

And now on his path so straight and even, where even the last shadow and trace of hope had vanished, the dark, evil forces of despair had already begun their work, quiet and clinging like little worms, gnawing away and untethering him from life, eating away at his last links with the firm foundation of his existence.

It was hard for him to tear himself away from life.

Perhaps, after all, dreams are just dreams. When put to the test they may not come true at all. Why then did he have such belief in his dream? And should one really believe some dream like that? God knows what doing so might lead to! And why had he not told Akumovna about his gloomy dream? Well, let Akumovna work it out.

She was holy, after all; she would say whether it was true or not.

Marakulin became agitated and rushed to get on a tram. He had already sat down, but when he remembered that he had no money, having spent his last remaining ten-kopeck piece in the beer saloon, he jumped off and rushed off to the Fontanka, almost overtaking the tram.

He ran to the Fontanka as far as the Burkov flats, but it was difficult for him to get into his flat. He felt he had been ringing for at least half an hour, and no one answered or uttered a sound. He stopped ringing and started to knock on the door. But there was no reply to his knocking. Everything was quiet in the flat, except the sound of

the wind whistling through the cracks. The pipes of the stoves must have been left open, and the wind was whistling in an eerie way.

Marakulin rang once more, knocked again, stood for a moment waiting and then went down into the janitors’ lodge, but there was no sign of Nikanor, who had gone off to the shop. Nikanor’s son, Vaniushka, had no idea what had happened; he had seen Akumovna that morning, but had not gone up to her since. Akumovna was at home, but the boy kept on laughing for some reason.

But then if she was at home, why did she not answer and open the door? After all, he had been ringing for a good half hour and had been knocking for no less time. Could it be that the old woman had died?

Then he went out into the lane, came back in through the gate and approached the back door. It was strange: as he went up the stairs, he could suddenly hear the bells ringing for the evening service at the Church of the Resurrection in the Taganka, and his heart began to beat in apprehension.

The door into the kitchen turned out to be unlocked. Akumovna was sitting by the stove, and her hair was bound up in white; she was wearing a white kerchief. “Your mother will be dressed in white”: he remembered the words of his dream the previous night. Akumovna had two eggs in front of her in a saucer and was eating a third. The word “pound” flashed through Marakulin’s mind. “So that’s what they meant by a ‘pound’!”

Akumovna was not smiling, and her eyes looked strange and protruding somehow. It wasn’t Akumovna who was sitting by the stove.

No! It was some woman who looked like Akumovna. Marakulin was seized with terror.

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“Sir! Master!”—Akumovna suddenly stood up. But she said this not in her own voice, but in a hoarse, drunken voice that only resembled hers.

Feeling that he had lost all his strength, Marakulin clutched at the doorpost and groaned.

“Sir! Master! The Lord be with you, master of mine, Piotr Alekseevich! I’ll bring the samovar right away, this very minute!”—and the real Akumovna began to really bustle about. Abandoning her egg, she seized hold of the Zhuravliovs’ red samovar and began to tap its chimney pipe in place.

Marakulin sat down on Akumovna’s stool, but he couldn’t say anything; his throat was tight, and his lips were trembling.

“Sir! Master!”—Akumovna was fussing around the samovar.

“Something happened to me today, but the Lord took pity and saved me.”

It was absolutely true that something had happened to Akumovna; how it was she had not gone out of her mind was really only through the grace of God, who had taken pity on her. Indeed, it was no wonder that she had heard neither the bell nor Marakulin’s knocking. And it was amazing that she was able to recognize Marakulin and that she had enough strength to utter a word! The eggs might help her, and she was eating them so as to speak in even a hoarse voice and not to moo like a cow; anyone would moo like a cow, if they had gone through what she had gone through!

In the morning Akumovna had gone up to the attic; some washing of hers was hanging there, and she had gone up to take it off the line, so as to get it ironed in time for the Trinity evening service— but someone had played a trick on her and locked her in the attic.

She had begun to shout, and shouted for quite a long time, but there

was no one to hear her; all the flats around her were empty—everyone had gone away to their dachas. No one needed to go up into the loft; not a single cook or maid would come there—there was no one around. She knew it was no good shouting, but she did shout all the same. How could she help shouting? Was she to stay up in the attic? Till when? Until the autumn? When people came back from their dachas? Or when they would take pity on her, whoever had locked her in? They might come and let her out. But could she count on that? After all, they might get caught up in their own affairs and forget about her, who knows what might happen? She just could not remain up in the attic forever. And she no longer had any voice left.

Then she started crawling around in the dark, feeling for a broken window. She remembered that somewhere right up under the roof there was a window. She groped and scrabbled about—and felt a crack: she had found the window. She got hold of it to pull it out, but the planks were quite firmly fixed. No matter how much she struggled they would not give way, and the crack was very small, hardly enough for a mouse to get through. But she applied all her strength, got both hands around the plank and pulled it out. Thank God! There was the light of day. She crossed herself, climbed out onto the roof, and in panic crawled along to the other end, where the main entrance facing the barracks was. She crawled because she was afraid to walk—her foot might slip—and she began to shout. She crawled along to a chimney stack, stood up by the chimney, took her shoes off and threw them down into the street. Some little children picked up the shoes and carried them off. So there she was, standing by the chimney stack, barefoot, holding onto the chimney and shouting. But she knew that simply shouting wouldn’t be enough; they would not hear her. She was shouting that her master had come Sisters of the Cross

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back and was ringing the bell, and that she couldn’t open the door to him. Besides that, all the noise on the Fontanka, the steamers, the car horns would drown out any shouting. As she didn’t have her shoes on, she would not slip, so she stepped away from the chimney and made her way back along the roof, shouting out her message: “My master has come back and he is ringing, but I can’t open the door to let him in!” Some house painters heard her; they were painting the roof of the next house. “What’s the use of shouting, woman? Jump across to us,” they laughed. But how was she going to jump across to them? They wouldn’t give her a ladder; they were using all the ladders. She couldn’t jump like a cat, after all. However, she got over her first fright. At least she had heard a human voice. She got used to the situation and worked out what to do. The best thing would be for her to go to the other end, to cross over to where the back entrance was, and from there go down the drainpipe into the yard. If you climb up a drainpipe, your hands can go numb, but if you climb down a drainpipe and your hands don’t let go of the pipe, then it is quite easy— that way you will slide down. She thought things over, remembered and walked to the other end to where the back entrance was and over to the drainpipe (luckily she had a head for heights). Yes, so she grasped the top of the pipe with both hands, began to lower her feet and grasped the pipe with her legs. . . .

“Stop, woman!” shouts Nikanor. “Don’t climb down! I’ll go and open it up,” and he’s laughing. Well, at that point she went back over the whole roof, in through the window and into the attic.

“For six hours I suffered, master, and nearly died. But God took pity on me and saved me in the end!”

In the meantime the samovar had started boiling. The red Zhuravlyov songster was puffing away, getting ready for the tune it sang in

the evenings. Marakulin had calmed down as he listened to her story and went off into his own room.

Perhaps that whole gloomy dream was not intended for him at all, but really referred to Akumovna. Or was it really impossible to have a dream in someone else’s place? But why shouldn’t you have dreams like that?

All the same, Saturday was not over yet; night was moving on, his last hours were setting in. The time was approaching when he must find answers. He must answer himself and demand answers back.

Akumovna had brought in the samovar. She ate up the eggs to improve her voice and came back to Marakulin with the cards in her hands. But Marakulin refused the cards; he didn’t want any fortunetelling. He wanted to tell her the dream he had had on the Thursday before Trinity, if only she would tell him the truth.

So he started to narrate his gloomy dream, in order and in its entirety.

He could remember every detail with clarity, so he told her about the snub-nosed, naked woman with the prominent teeth who had set Saturday as the end of his life; and also he talked about his mother with the cross on her forehead and how she had started to weep.

“What does this dream mean, Akumovna?”

Akumovna was silent. She was smiling and looking at him from time to time as might a holy fool, from some other place.

Seized again by the sudden gloomy thought that his time would be up on Saturday, he went as cold as ice.

“So,” he thought, “it’s all true—and why doesn’t Akumovna say anything? So is it true that in a few minutes my span will be at an end and my time will be up?”

Man is born into the world and is already condemned; all are condemned from the day of their birth. People live under sentence, Sisters of the Cross

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but completely forget about it, because they do not know the hour when it will come. But when the day is pronounced, when the time is measured out, and the term is laid down, when Saturday is indicated—no: that is more than man’s God-given strength can endure. For when God endowed men with life, He condemned them, but concealed from them what would be the hour of their death.

“Akumovna, so is it true or not?”

“I am just an ignorant person, I don’t know anything,” Akumovna replied, smiling and looking at him from time to time as might a holy fool, from some other place.

And now the clock in the kitchen began to wheeze and slowly count out the hours: one by one. And it struck twelve. Saturday had come to an end, and Sunday had begun.

“Akumovna, did it strike twelve?” Marakulin asked timidly.

“Twelve o’clock, sir, exactly midnight.”

“Has Sunday started?”

“Sunday, yes, sir, it’s Sunday now. Sleep peacefully. The Lord be with you.” And Akumovna left the tuneful Zhuravlyov samovar behind and retired to her kitchen to sleep.

But can he really sleep? Marakulin waited till Akumovna had quietened down, and he shut off the samovar. Then he took a pillow and placed it on the windowsill, as the tenants of Burkov flats do when they are spending the summer in Petersburg. He laid his head on the pillow and then, holding onto the windowsill, he transferred his weight to it and stretched himself out to sleep. But no: he would not go to sleep; all night long he will not sleep; Saturday is over and Sunday has begun!

Outside, the yard was empty; there was not a single person about, and no one to be seen at the windows, just him. Then suddenly he

saw on the rubbish heap and the bricks near the peddlers’ storage booths, from the channel for slops and the rubbish pit to the carriage shed, an abundance of green birch trees; the whole area of the Burkov yard was covered with little birch trees; they were so green and covered in little green leaves. And he felt that his former happiness was slowly rolling toward him and approaching, that earlier extraordinary joy that he had lost. That extraordinary intense happiness was bubbling up like a spring from somewhere beneath his heart, growing with great fervor to fill his heart and his entire being.

Now he could no longer see anything any more, only the birch trees, and along the birch trees, herself like a birch tree, the real Vera, Verushka, Verochka, and her hands were intertwined with the leaves, from one leaf to another she was making her way toward the carriage shed, as though she was floating in the air and as though the earth was closing over her footprints as she passed by. Now Marakulin’s heart overflowed and took flight, drawing the whole of him outside; he stretched right out, extending his arms and no longer holding onto anything except his pillow, he flew down from the windowsill. . . .

And Marakulin heard someone speaking, as it were, through a little trumpet from the bottom of a deep well: “The times are ripe, the cup of sin is full, punishment is at hand.

That’s how it is with us; lie there! That’s one less of you, and you will not rise again. Bonehead!”

On the stones in front of the Burkov flats in a pool of blood lay Marakulin with his skull shattered.

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PRAISE FOR SISTERS OF THE CROSS “In Sisters of the Cross, we get an expertly accurate translation of perhaps the only masterpiece of Russian prose before 1917 that remains unknown to Anglophone readers. Keys and Murphy capture Remizov’s teeming, intensely human post-Dostoevskian Petersburg, where the sordid, the surreal, and the spiritual are inextricable.”

—G ERALD S MI TH, University of Oxford “Sisters of the Cross is a tale set in Burkov’s boardinghouse—a microcosm of Petersburg and the whole of Russia—filled with minor civil servants, wronged women, and holy wanderers, accident-prone circus artistes set to conquer the heart of Europe, the indifferent rich, and a Moscow merchant, haphazard patron of the protagonist. All this buzzes and sings, expands and contracts in mesmerizing spirals—until the shock of the last line, a scream for help in an empty world. Wisely, Keys and Murphy preserve the authorial intonation, and thereby achieve simplicity and poetic resonance without losing immediate human interest among the echoes of another culture.”—AVRIL P YMAN, University of Durham “An English translation of Alexei Remizov’s Sisters of the Cross has long been overdue. Roger Keys and Brian Murphy successfully tackle the challenges of Remizov’s unique and quirky style, which fuses archaic and folkloric traits with a modernist flair reminiscent of surrealism.”—A DRIAN WANNER, Pennsylvania State University

Columbia University Press New York cup.columbia.edu Printed in the U.S.A.

ISBN: 978-0-231-18542-4