The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

So I decided to myself that this elder with the bast shoe was created to destroy hell! And I wandered all night in the forest, not knowing why I didn’t go further, and I kept thinking:

“How does he pray, in what manner, and with what books?”

And I remembered that I hadn’t seen a single icon in his cell, only a cross of sticks tied together with bast, and hadn’t seen any fat books …

“Lord,” I dared to reason, “if there are only two such men in the Church, we’re lost, for this one is all animated by love.”

And I kept thinking and thinking about him, and suddenly, before morning, I began to yearn to see him, if only for a moment, before leaving there.

And I had only just thought it, when suddenly I again heard the same crunching, and Father Pamva came out again with his axe and a bundle of wood and said:

“Why are you tarrying so long? Aren’t you in a hurry to build Babylon?”

These words seemed very bitter to me, and I said:

“Why do you reproach me with such words, old man? I’m not building any Babylon, and I shun the Babylonian abomination.”

And he replies:

“What is Babylon? A pillar of pride. Don’t be proud of the truth, lest the angel withdraw.”

I say:

“Father, do you know why I am going about?”

And I told him all our grief. And he listened, listened, and replied:

“The angel is gentle, the angel is meek, he clothes himself in whatever the Lord tells him to; he does whatever is appointed to him. That is the angel! He lives in the human soul, sealed by vain wisdom, but love will shatter the seal …”

And with that I saw him withdraw from me, and I couldn’t take my eyes from him and, unable to master myself, I fell prostrate on the ground behind him, and when I raised my face, I saw he was no longer there—either he went off into the trees, or … Lord knows what became of him.

Here I started ruminating on the sense of his words: “The angel lives in the soul, but sealed, and love will free him”—and suddenly I thought: “What if he himself is the angel, and God orders him to appear to me in another guise: I’ll die, like Levonty!” Having imagined that, I crossed the little river on some sort of stump, I don’t remember how myself, and broke into a run: forty miles I went without stopping, all in a fright, thinking whether I had seen an angel, and suddenly I stopped at one village and found the icon painter Sevastian. We talked everything over right then and decided to set out the next day, but we talked coldly and traveled still more coldly. And why? For one thing, because the icon painter Sevastian was a pensive man, and still more because I was no longer the same myself: the hermit Pamva hovered in my soul, and my lips whispered the words of the prophet Isaiah, that “the spirit of God is in this man’s nostrils.”²⁶

XII

My return trip with the icon painter Sevastian went quickly and, arriving at the construction site at night, we found everything there in good order. After seeing our own people, we appeared at once before the Englishman Yakov Yakovlevich. Curious as he was, the man was interested in seeing the icon painter at once, and he kept looking at his hands and shrugging, because Sevastian’s hands were huge as rakes, and dark, inasmuch as he himself had the look of a swarthy Gypsy. Yakov Yakovlevich finally says:

“I’m surprised, brother, that you can paint with such huge hands.”

And Sevastian replies:

“How so? What’s unsuitable about my hands?”

“You can’t trace anything small with them,” he says.

“Why?” the man asks.

“Because the finger joints aren’t flexible enough to allow it.”

But Sevastian says:

“That’s nonsense! How can my fingers allow or not allow me something? I’m their master, and they’re my servants and obey me.”

The Englishman smiles.

“So,” he says, “you’ll copy the sealed angel for us?”

“Why not?” the man says. “I’m not one of those masters who fears work, it’s work that fears me. I’ll copy it so you can’t tell it from the real one.”

“Very well,” says Yakov Yakovlevich, “we’ll immediately set about getting hold of the real one, and in the meantime, to convince me, you show me your artistry: paint an icon for my wife of the ancient Russian sort, and one that she’ll like.”

“Of what type?”

“That I don’t know,” he says. “Paint what you know how, it makes no difference to her, so long as she likes it.”

Sevastian pondered a moment and then asked:

“And about what does your spouse pray to God the most?”

“I don’t know, my friend,” he says, “I don’t know what, but I think most likely about the children, that the children grow up to be honest people.”

Sevastian pondered again and replied:

“Very well, sir, I can satisfy that taste as well.”

“How will you satisfy it?”

“I’ll paint it so that it will be contemplative and favorable to the increase of your wife’s prayerful spirit.”

The Englishman ordered that he be given all comfort in his own upstairs rooms, but Sevastian would not work there, but settled by the window in the attic above Luka Kirilovich’s room and went into action.