Aglaia

In that community, in that forest village where Aglaia was born and had grown up, she was called Anna. She was bereaved of her father and mother at an early age. The smallpox visited the village one winter, and many of those who had gone to their rest were carted off then to the churchyard in the settlement beyond Sviyat-Oziero.12 Two coffins in one day stood in the hut of the Skuratovs as well. The little girl had experienced neither fear nor pity; she had only come to remember forever that odour which emanated from them, which is like nothing else on earth and is unknown and oppressive to the living, and that winter freshness, that cold of the Lenten thaw before Easter, which had been let into the hut by the peasants who were carrying the coffins out to the wide sledge standing under the windows.

In that forest-covered region the villages are few and small; their crude, log-enclosed yards are scattered without any order, just as the clayey hummocks permit and as near as possible to the little rivers, to the lakes. The folk thereabouts are not so very poor and watch after their goods, their ancient way of living⁠—notwithstanding the fact that they have been going out to hire since time out of mind, leaving the women to plough the stepmotherly earth, where it is free of the forest; to mow the grasses in the forest; and in winter to whirr at the weaving loom. Toward that way of living did Anna’s heart incline in her childhood; endeared to her were both the black hut and the burning rush light in its cresset.

Katherine, her sister, had long been married. She it was who managed the house⁠—at first together with her husband, who had been taken into the household; and later, when he began going away for a whole year at a time, all by herself. Under her eyes the girl grew, steadily and rapidly; never did she cry, never did she complain of aught; only she had constant fits of pensiveness. If Katherine called to her, asking what the matter with her was, she would answer simply, saying that her neck was creaking, and that she was listening to it. “There,” she would say, turning her neck, and her fair little face, “do you hear it?” “And what are you thinking of?” “Oh, just so. I don’t know.” During her childhood she never had anything to do with girls of her own age, and never did she go anywheres⁠—only once had she gone with her sister to that old settlement beyond Sviyat-Oziero, where in the churchyard, under pine trees, crosses of pine wood stick up out of the ground, and where stands a little church of logs, roofed with blackened tiles of wood that look like scales. That was the first time that she had been dressed up in bast slippers and a sarafan of bright coloured linen, and that a necklace and a yellow kerchief had been bought for her.

Katherine grieved about her husband and wept; wept, too, about her childlessness. But, having shed all her tears, she gave a vow to have no more knowledge of her husband. When her husband would come, she would meet him joyously, speaking with him cheerily, painstakingly looked over his shirts, mending all that stood in need of mending; she bustled about the oven, and was pleased when he liked anything; but they slept apart, like strangers. And when he would go away, she would again become wearied and quiet. More and more frequently did she leave the house, staying at a nearby nunnery, visiting the holy old man Rodion, who was striving for his soul in a hut within a forest that was beyond that nunnery. She was perseveringly learning to read, bringing saintly books from the nunnery, and would read them aloud; not in her usual voice, but pitching it in high singsong. She would be sitting at a table, her eyes castdown, holding the book with both hands, while the girl stood near by, listening and picking a splinter from the table, looking all about the hut, which was always in the best of order. Drinking in the sounds of her own voice, Katherine read on of saints, of martyrs, who had contemned the dark things of our earth for things heavenly, desirous of crucifying their flesh with its lusts and its passions. Anna listened attentively to the reading, as to a chant in an unknown tongue. But as soon as Katherine would shut the book, she would never ask her to read some more: the book was always beyond her understanding.

In adolescence she grew not by days, but by hours. When she was about thirteen, she became exquisitely slender, tall, and strong. She was gentle, fair of face, blue-eyed, but the work she liked was of the commonest, of the roughest. When summer came on, when Katherine’s husband returned, when the entire village went to the mowing, Anna, too, went with her people and worked like a grownup. Only, there is not a great deal of summer work in that region. And once more the sisters would be soon left alone, once more they would return to their placid existence; and, once more, having done for the day with the live stock, with the oven, Anna would be sitting at her sewing, or the loom, the while Katherine read aloud: of seas, of deserts, of the city of Rome, of Byzantium, of the miracles and deeds of the first Christians. In the black hut in the forest sounded then words that enchanted the ear: “In the land of Cappadocia, in the reign of the devout Byzantian emperor, Leo the Great⁠ ⁠… In the days of the patriarchship of the most holy Joachhim of Alexandria, in Ethiopia, which is most distant from us.⁠ ⁠…” Thus did Anna come to know of the virgins and youths, torn to pieces by wild beasts at pagan circuses; of the heavenly beauty of Barbara, beheaded by her cruel, ferocious, unnatural parent; of the relics of saints, guarded by angels on the Mount of Sinai; of the warrior Eustacius, converted to the true God by the call of the Crucified Himself, who burst out like a refulgent sun between the horns of a deer that he, Eustacius, had been pursuing in the chase; of the labours of Sabbas the Sainted, that dwelt in the Vale of Fires; and of many, many others, who had spent their bitter days nigh desert springs, in crypts, and in mountain cenobies.⁠ ⁠… During her adolescence she had beheld herself in a dream, clad in a long linen shift and with a crown of iron on her head. And Katherine had told her: “That stands for dying, sister⁠—for an early death.”

And when she was going on fifteen, she became altogether maidenly, and folks marvelled at her loveliness; the aureately-white colour of her face was just the least bit tinged with a delicate blush; her eyebrows were bushy, of a light flaxen colour, her eyes blue; she was light, wellmade⁠—unless it were that she was disproportionately tall, slender, and long of arm; quietly and beautifully did she raise her lashes. The winter that year was a rigorous one. The forests, the lakes, were snowed under; the openings in the ice were thickly frozen over; the frosty wind burned; and of dawns, two mirror-like, rainbow-tinged suns were flashing at the same time. Before the Christmas holidays Katherine ate bread-and-kvass pudding, and dried oatmeal; but Anna would nourish herself only with bread: “I want to fast till I get another prophetic dream,” she had told her sister. And toward the New Year again did she have a dream: she saw an early, frosty morning; the blinding, icy sun seemed to have just rolled out from beyond the snowdrifts, and a cutting wind was making her catch her breath; she was flying upon skiis against the wind, toward the sun, over the white plains, in pursuit of some wondrous ermine⁠—but she suddenly tumbled off into some abyss, and was blinded, stifled in the cloud of snow dust swirling up at the edge of the precipice from under the skiis.

She could understand nothing of this dream; but Anna, during all New Year’s day, did not once look into her sister’s face. The priests were going through the village; when they came to see the Skuratovs in their turn, she hid behind the curtains of the sleeping place above the big oven. During that winter, not having yet become settled in her intentions, she was frequently dreamy, and Katherine would say to her: “I have long been calling you, to go to Father Rodion⁠—he would ease you of all your worries!”

She read to her that winter of Alexis, the Man of God; and of John, who dwelt in a hut of branches⁠—both had died in poverty at the gates of their wellborn parents; she read of Simeon Stylites, who had rotted alive while standing upon a pillar of stone. Anna asked her: “But why doesn’t Father Rodion stand on a pillar?” And she answered, that the tasks of holy people are varied, that our Russian martyrs had sought salvation, for the most part, in the caverns of Kiev⁠—and, later on, within impassable forests; or else had attained the Kingdom of Heaven as naked, useless innocents. During that winter did Anna find out about the Russian saints as well⁠—her spiritual forefathers: about Matthew the Clear-Seeing, upon whom was bestowed the gift of seeing only the dark and base things of this world, of penetrating into the innermost hidden recesses of filth in the hearts of men, of beholding clairvoyantly the visages of underground devils and of hearing their impious counsellings. She heard of Mark the Grave Digger, who had dedicated himself to the burial of the dead, and who through his incessant proximity to Death had gained such sway over it that it trembled at the sound of his voice; she heard of Isaac the Anchorite, who had clad his body in the undressed hide of a goat which had grown to his skin forever, and who gave himself up to mad dances with evil spirits, that enticed him of nights into skipping and reeling to their noisy calls, reeds, tympani and dulcimers.⁠ ⁠… “From him, from Isaac, started all these innocents,” Katherine had told her. “And how many there were of them afterward, none can reckon up! Father Rodion said thus: ‘There have been none of them in any other land save ours; only to us did the Lord send them as a visitation for our great sins, and through His great grace.’ ” And she added what she had heard in the nunnery⁠—the grievous tale of how Russia had retreated out of Kiev into impassable forests and morasses, into its little towns of bast, under the cruel rule of the princes of Muscovy; what Russia had endured from seditions, from internicine wars, from ferocious Tartar hordes and from other chastisements of God: from plague and famine, from fire and heavenly portents. There was then, said she, such a vast multitude of the folks of God, suffering and acting the innocent for the sake of Christ, that the holy songs were not to be heard for their squealing and clamouring in the churches. And a considerable number among them, said she, were canonized among the heavenly throng. There was Simon, from the forests of the Volga regions, who wandered over desert waste lands, hiding himself from the sight of man, clad only in a torn shift, and afterward, dwelling in a city, he was castigated every day by its citizens for his uselessness, and expired from the wounds inflicted during such castigations. There was Procopius, who took upon himself ceaseless tortures in the town of Viatka, for that he would, in the nighttime, clamber up into belfries and ring the bells in quick alarm, as though there were a fiery conflagration. There is a Procopius that was born in the region of Ziryan, amongst savages, amongst hunters after beasts; all his life did he go about with three coal-rakes in his hands; he did adore the desert places, the mournful wooded banks of the Sukhona, where, perched upon a little boulder, he did with tears pray for those that sailed upon it. There was Jacob the Beatified, who sailed in an oaken log, hollowed out into a coffin, upon an ice block, down the river Msta to the benighted dwellers of that poor region; there is John the Hairy, from near Rostov-the-Greater, whose hair was so unruly that it threw into a panic all whosoever might behold it; there was John of Vologda, called Big Cap, small of stature, wrinkled of face, all hung over with crosses⁠—until his very death he never took off his head covering, that was like to a pot of cast-iron; there was Basil, that went about naked, who wore for apparel, in winter cold and summer heat, only iron chains and a little handkerchief that he bore in his hand.⁠ ⁠… “Now, sister,” Katherine had said, “they are standing before the face of the Lord, rejoicing among the throng of His Saints; as for their imperishable relics, they repose within shrines of cypress and of silver, in the holiest of cathedrals, by the side of kings and prelates!”

“But why doesn’t Father Rodion be an innocent?” again asked Anna. And Katherine answered that he had followed in the steps of those who imitated not Isaac, but Sergius of Radonezh; he had followed in the steps of the men who had founded monasteries in forests. Father Rodion, said she, had at first sought salvation in an ancient and famed desert place, located in the same regions where, in the midst of a dreary forest, in the hollow trunk of an oak, three centuries old, a great saint had once dwelt. There had Father Rodion served a strict novitiate and taken the habit; had merited through the tears of his repentance, and through his mercilessness toward the flesh, a sight of the countenance of the Queen of Heaven Herself; he had fulfilled his vow of seven years’ seclusion and seven years’ silence, but he was not satisfied with that⁠—he left the monastery, and had come⁠—it was now many, many years ago⁠—into these forests. He had put on shoes of bast, a white robe of sackcloth, a black stole with an eight-pointed cross upon it, with a depiction of the skull and bones of Adam; he subsists only upon water and uncooked swamp-grass; he has barred the little window of his cabin with a holy icon; he sleeps in a coffin, under an ever-lit holy lamp, and at the hour of every midnight he is incessantly beset by howling beasts, by throngs of ravening dead men, and by devils.⁠ ⁠…

On her fifteenth birthday, at that very age when a maid ought to become a bride, Anna forsook the world forever.

Spring that year came early and was a warm one. The berries ripened in the woods beyond number; the grasses were waist-high, and at the beginning of the Fast of St. Peter13 the entire village went out to mow them. Anna worked with a will; became sunburned among the grasses and the flowers; the blush flamed darker upon her face; the kerchief, pushed lower over the forehead, hid her warm glance. But once, in the meadow, a great glistening snake with an emerald head wound itself around her bare foot. Seizing the snake with her slim and long hand, tearing away its icy and slippery plait, Anna cast it far from her without even lifting her face. But she was very much scared⁠—she had become whiter than linen. And Katherine said to her: “This, sister, is the third sign for thee: dread the Arch-Tempter, a dangerous time is coming for thee!” And it may have been the fright, or it might have been these words⁠—but for a week after that the deathly pallor did not depart from Anna’s face. And just before St. Peter’s Day, suddenly and unexpectedly, she begged to go to the nunnery to hear the all-night mass⁠—and did go, and did spend the night there, and in the morning was found worthy of staying in the crowd of humble folk near the threshold of the recluse. And a great grace did he show to her: out of all the crowd did he remark her and did beckon her to him. And she came out of his cabin with her head bent low, covering half her face with her kerchief, having pushed it down over the fire of her flaming cheeks, and in the confusion of her emotions did not see the ground beneath her. And a chosen vessel, a sacrifice to God, had he called her; had lit two little wax tapers, and, taking one himself and giving the other to her, had stood a long while in prayer before an image. And afterwards he had ordered her to kiss that image⁠—and had given her his blessing to enter the nunnery for a novitiate within a short while. “My joy⁠—thou simple sacrifice!” he had said to her. “Be thou a bride not of this earth but of heaven! I know, full well, thy sister hath prepared thee. I shall concern myself with this also, sinner that I am.”

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

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

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

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

“Oh, her stay was not a long one,” said he. “It is a pity you say, with such beauty and youth? Of course, to such fools as we, it would be a piteous thing. But it’s plain to be seen Father Rodion knew well what he was about. For he was that way with everybody⁠—kindly, and meek, and gladsome, yet set on having his way, unto mercilessness; but he was especially so with Aglaia. I, my little ones, have been at the spot where she is resting.⁠ ⁠… A long little grave, beautiful, all grown over with grass, all green.⁠ ⁠… And I won’t hide anything⁠—I won’t hide that it was there, at her grave, that I thought of tying up my eyes; it was Aglaia’s example that gave me the idea; for she, I must tell you, during all her stay in the nunnery, did not for a single hour raise her eyes; even as she had pushed the veil down over them, so did it remain, and she was so sparing of her speech, so evasive, that even Father Rodion himself wondered at her. And yet, come to think of it, it was no easy matter for her to bear her task⁠—to bid eternal farewell to the world, to the face of mankind! And her work in the nunnery was the very hardest that she could find, while her nights she spent standing in prayer. But then, how Father Rodion had come to love her! He marked her out from all the rest, let her come every day into his little cabin; held long converse with her about the future fame of the nunnery; even revealed his visions to her⁠—with a strict order of silence. Well, and so she burned out, like a candle, in the briefest time.⁠ ⁠… Again do you sigh, being sorry? I do agree with you, it is a sad thing! But I will tell you something far greater; for her great humility, for her disregard of this world, for her silence and for her toiling beyond her strength, he wrought a thing unheard of: toward the end of the third year of her striving, he invested her with the habit, and afterward, after prayer and holy meditation, he did summon her to him on a certain fearsome hour and commanded her to her end. Yes, that is just the way he spoke to her: ‘My joy, thy time has come! Remain thou in my memory just as glorious as thou now art, standing before me in this hour; depart to God!’ And what think ye? Within four and twenty hours she did forsake this life. She lay down, burning as with a fire⁠—and passed out. True, he did console her⁠—he confided to her before her end that by reason of her not having been able, during the first days of her novitiate, to keep just a few things of his secret discourses, only her lips would be rotted. He offered up silver coins for her funeral, and coppers to be given out at her burial; a bundle of candles for a forty days’ mass for her; a yellow candle worth a whole rouble for her coffin; and the coffin itself⁠—rounded out, of oak, hollowed out of one piece. And he blessed her as she was laid out, slender and just a trifle too tall, within that coffin, with her hair all let out, in two shroud-shifts. She was in an under-cassock of white, with a black selvage all around, and in a black mantle with white crosses on top of it; upon her little head they put a green little cap of velvet, broidered with gold; on top of the cap a small skull cap; and after that they tied a blue shawl with tassels upon her head, and then they put a leathern rosary into her dear hands.⁠ ⁠… Oh, I can’t tell how fine they arrayed her. And yet, little ones, there is a spiteful rumour which is of the devil, that she did not want to die⁠—oh, how she didn’t want to!

“Departing in such youth and in such beauty, she took her farewell of everybody, so they say, with tears, saying to all, in a loud voice, ‘Forgive me!’ And at the very last she closed her eyes and said distinctly: ‘And against thee, Mother-Earth, have I sinned in body and soul⁠—wilt thou forgive me?’ And those words are fearful words: touching their foreheads to the earth, men uttered them in the prayer for repentance throughout ancient Russia, before Whitsuntide, before the heathen day of the water nixies.”