The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

Now kindly remember that, while Mikhailitsa and I were talking on the porch, old Maroy was praying in the room, and the gentlemen officials and their sbirri found him there. He told us later that, as soon as they came in, they bolted the door and threw themselves straight at the icons. Some were putting out the lamps, others were tearing the icons from the walls and piling them on the floor, shouting to him: “Are you the priest?” He says: “No, I’m not.” They say: “Who is your priest, then?” He replies: “We have no priest.” And they say: “What do you mean, no priest! How dare you say you have no priest!” Here Maroy began explaining to them that we don’t have priests, but since he spoke badly, mumblingly, they didn’t try to make out what he meant. “Bind him,” they said, “he’s under arrest!” Maroy let them bind him: it was nothing to him that a common soldier tied his hands with a piece of string, but he stood there and, accepting it all for the sake of the faith, watched for what would follow. And the officials meanwhile lit candles and started placing seals on the icons: some placed the seals, others wrote them down on a list, still others bored holes in the icons and strung them on iron rods like kitchen pots. Maroy looked at all this blasphemous outrage and didn’t even flinch, because, he reasoned, it was probably God’s will to allow such savagery. But just then Uncle Maroy heard one gendarme cry out, and another after him: the door flew open, and our sea dogs, wet as they were, straight from the water, pushed their way into the room. Fortunately, Luka Kirilovich found himself at the head of them. He shouted at once:

“Wait, Christian folk, don’t brazen it out!” And he himself turned to the officials and, pointing to the icons strung on rods, said: “Why, gentlemen superiors, have you damaged the holy images like this? If you have the right to take them from us, we do not resist authority—take them; but why do you damage the rare artwork of our forefathers?”

But that husband of Pimen’s lady acquaintance, who was there at the head of them all, shouted at Uncle Luka:

“Silence, scoundrel! How dare you argue!”

And Luka, though he was a proud man, humbled himself and said softly:

“Permit me, Your Honor, we know the procedure. We have some hundred and fifty icons in this room. Allow us to pay you three roubles per icon, and take them, only don’t damage our ancestral art.”

The gentleman flashed his eyes and shouted loudly:

“Away with you!” But in a whisper he whispered: “Give me a hundred roubles apiece, or else I’ll torch them all.”

Luka could not give or even consider giving such big money, and said:

“In that case, God help you: ruin it all however you like, we don’t have that kind of money.”

But the gentleman started yelling wrathfully:

“Ah, you bearded goat, how dare you talk about money in front of us?”—and here he suddenly started rushing about, and all the divine images he saw, he strung together, and they screwed nuts onto the ends of the rods and sealed them, too, so that it was impossible to take them off and exchange them. And it was all gathered up and ready, they were about to leave for good: the soldiers took the rods strung with icons on their shoulders and carried them to the boat; but Mikhailitsa, who had sneaked into the room with the other folk, had meanwhile quietly stolen the angel’s icon from the lectern and was carrying it to the closet under her shawl, but as her hands were trembling, she dropped it. Saints alive, how the gentleman flew into a temper! He called us thieves and knaves, and said:

“Aha! You knaves wanted to steal it so that it wouldn’t end up on the bolt; well, then it won’t end up there, but here’s what I’m going to do to it!” And heating the stick of sealing wax, he jabbed the boiling resin, still flaming, right into the angel’s face!

My dear sirs, don’t hold it against me if I can’t even try to describe what happened when the gentleman poured the stream of boiling resin onto the face of the angel and, cruel man that he was, raised the icon up, so as to boast of how he’d managed to spite us. All I remember is that the bright, divine face was red and sealed, and the varnish, which had melted slightly under the fiery resin, ran down in two streams, as if it were blood mixed with tears …