Father Sergius

L >> Leo Tolstoy >> Father Sergius


A road ran beside the river and he went along it and walked till noon.
Then he went into a field of rye and lay down there. Towards evening
he approached a village, but without entering it went towards the cliff
that overhung the river. There he again lay down to rest.

It was early morning, half an hour before sunrise. All was damp and
gloomy and a cold early wind was blowing from the west. 'Yes, I must end
it all. There is no God. But how am I to end it? Throw myself into the
river? I can swim and should not drown. Hang myself? Yes, just throw
this sash over a branch.' This seemed so feasible and so easy that
he felt horrified. As usual at moments of despair he felt the need of
prayer. But there was no one to pray to. There was no God. He lay down
resting on his arm, and suddenly such a longing for sleep overcame him
that he could no longer support his head on his hand, but stretched out
his arm, laid his head upon it, and fell asleep. But that sleep lasted
only for a moment. He woke up immediately and began not to dream but to
remember.

He saw himself as a child in his mother's home in the country. A
carriage drives up, and out of it steps Uncle Nicholas Sergeevich,
with his long, spade-shaped, black beard, and with him Pashenka, a thin
little girl with large mild eyes and a timid pathetic face. And into
their company of boys Pashenka is brought and they have to play with
her, but it is dull. She is silly, and it ends by their making fun of
her and forcing her to show how she can swim. She lies down on the floor
and shows them, and they all laugh and make a fool of her. She sees this
and blushes red in patches and becomes more pitiable than before,
so pitiable that he feels ashamed and can never forget that crooked,
kindly, submissive smile. And Sergius remembered having seen her since
then. Long after, just before he became a monk, she had married a
landowner who squandered all her fortune and was in the habit of beating
her. She had had two children, a son and a daughter, but the son had
died while still young. And Sergius remembered having seen her very
wretched. Then again he had seen her in the monastery when she was a
widow. She had been still the same, not exactly stupid, but insipid,
insignificant, and pitiable. She had come with her daughter and her
daughter's fiance. They were already poor at that time and later on he
had heard that she was living in a small provincial town and was very
poor.

'Why am I thinking about her?' he asked himself, but he could not cease
doing so. 'Where is she? How is she getting on? Is she still as unhappy
as she was then when she had to show us how to swim on the floor? But
why should I think about her? What am I doing? I must put an end to
myself.'

And again he felt afraid, and again, to escape from that thought, he
went on thinking about Pashenka.

So he lay for a long time, thinking now of his unavoidable end and now
of Pashenka. She presented herself to him as a means of salvation. At
last he fell asleep, and in his sleep he saw an angel who came to him
and said: 'Go to Pashenka and learn from her what you have to do, what
your sin is, and wherein lies your salvation.'

He awoke, and having decided that this was a vision sent by God, he felt
glad, and resolved to do what had been told him in the vision. He knew
the town where she lived. It was some three hundred versts (two hundred
miles) away, and he set out to walk there.



VI

Pashenka had already long ceased to be Pashenka and had become old,
withered, wrinkled Praskovya Mikhaylovna, mother-in-law of that failure,
the drunken official Mavrikyev. She was living in the country town
where he had had his last appointment, and there she was supporting the
family: her daughter, her ailing neurasthenic son-in-law, and her five
grandchildren. She did this by giving music lessons to tradesmen's
daughters, giving four and sometimes five lessons a day of an hour each,
and earning in this way some sixty rubles (6 pounds) a month. So they
lived for the present, in expectation of another appointment. She had
sent letters to all her relations and acquaintances asking them to
obtain a post for her son-in-law, and among the rest she had written to
Sergius, but that letter had not reached him.

It was a Saturday, and Praskovya Mikhaylovna was herself mixing dough
for currant bread such as the serf-cook on her father's estate used
to make so well. She wished to give her grandchildren a treat on the
Sunday.

Masha, her daughter, was nursing her youngest child, the eldest boy and
girl were at school, and her son-in-law was asleep, not having slept
during the night. Praskovya Mikhaylovna had remained awake too for a
great part of the night, trying to soften her daughter's anger against
her husband.

She saw that it was impossible for her son-in-law, a weak creature, to
be other than he was, and realized that his wife's reproaches could do
no good--so she used all her efforts to soften those reproaches and to
avoid recrimination and anger. Unkindly relations between people caused
her actual physical suffering. It was so clear to her that bitter
feelings do not make anything better, but only make everything worse.
She did not in fact think about this: she simply suffered at the sight
of anger as she would from a bad smell, a harsh noise, or from blows on
her body.

She had--with a feeling of self-satisfaction--just taught Lukerya how
to mix the dough, when her six-year-old grandson Misha, wearing an
apron and with darned stockings on his crooked little legs, ran into the
kitchen with a frightened face.

'Grandma, a dreadful old man wants to see you.'

Lukerya looked out at the door.

'There is a pilgrim of some kind, a man . . .'

Praskovya Mikhaylovna rubbed her thin elbows against one another, wiped
her hands on her apron and went upstairs to get a five-kopek piece
[about a penny] out of her purse for him, but remembering that she had
nothing less than a ten-kopek piece she decided to give him some bread
instead. She returned to the cupboard, but suddenly blushed at the
thought of having grudged the ten-kopek piece, and telling Lukerya to
cut a slice of bread, went upstairs again to fetch it. 'It serves you
right,' she said to herself. 'You must now give twice over.'

She gave both the bread and the money to the pilgrim, and when doing
so--far from being proud of her generosity--she excused herself for
giving so little. The man had such an imposing appearance.

Though he had tramped two hundred versts as a beggar, though he was
tattered and had grown thin and weatherbeaten, though he had cropped his
long hair and was wearing a peasant's cap and boots, and though he bowed
very humbly, Sergius still had the impressive appearance that made him
so attractive. But Praskovya Mikhaylovna did not recognize him. She
could hardly do so, not having seen him for almost twenty years.

'Don't think ill of me, Father. Perhaps you want something to eat?'

He took the bread and the money, and Praskovya Mikhaylovna was surprised
that he did not go, but stood looking at her.

'Pashenka, I have come to you! Take me in . . .'

His beautiful black eyes, shining with the tears that started in them,
were fixed on her with imploring insistence. And under his greyish
moustache his lips quivered piteously.

Praskovya Mikhaylovna pressed her hands to her withered breast, opened
her mouth, and stood petrified, staring at the pilgrim with dilated
eyes.

'It can't be! Stepa! Sergey! Father Sergius!'

'Yes, it is I,' said Sergius in a low voice. 'Only not Sergius, or
Father Sergius, but a great sinner, Stepan Kasatsky--a great and lost
sinner. Take me in and help me!'

'It's impossible! How have you so humbled yourself? But come in.'

She reached out her hand, but he did not take it and only followed her
in.

But where was she to take him? The lodging was a small one. Formerly
she had had a tiny room, almost a closet, for herself, but later she had
given it up to her daughter, and Masha was now sitting there rocking the
baby.

'Sit here for the present,' she said to Sergius, pointing to a bench in
the kitchen.

He sat down at once, and with an evidently accustomed movement slipped
the straps of his wallet first off one shoulder and then off the other.

'My God, my God! How you have humbled yourself, Father! Such great fame,
and now like this . . .'

Sergius did not reply, but only smiled meekly, placing his wallet under
the bench on which he sat.

'Masha, do you know who this is?'--And in a whisper Praskovya
Mikhaylovna told her daughter who he was, and together they then carried
the bed and the cradle out of the tiny room and cleared it for Sergius.

Praskovya Mikhaylovna led him into it.

'Here you can rest. Don't take offence . . . but I must go out.'

'Where to?'

'I have to go to a lesson. I am ashamed to tell you, but I teach music!'

'Music? But that is good. Only just one thing, Praskovya Mikhaylovna,
I have come to you with a definite object. When can I have a talk with
you?'

'I shall be very glad. Will this evening do?'

'Yes. But one thing more. Don't speak about me, or say who I am. I have
revealed myself only to you. No one knows where I have gone to. It must
be so.'

'Oh, but I have told my daughter.'

'Well, ask her not to mention it.'

And Sergius took off his boots, lay down, and at once fell asleep after
a sleepless night and a walk of nearly thirty miles.

When Praskovya Mikhaylovna returned, Sergius was sitting in the little
room waiting for her. He did not come out for dinner, but had some soup
and gruel which Lukerya brought him.

'How is it that you have come back earlier than you said?' asked
Sergius. 'Can I speak to you now?'

'How is it that I have the happiness to receive such a guest? I have
missed one of my lessons. That can wait . . . I had always been planning
to go to see you. I wrote to you, and now this good fortune has come.'

'Pashenka, please listen to what I am going to tell you as to a
confession made to God at my last hour. Pashenka, I am not a holy man,
I am not even as good as a simple ordinary man; I am a loathsome,
vile, and proud sinner who has gone astray, and who, if not worse than
everyone else, is at least worse than most very bad people.'

Pashenka looked at him at first with staring eyes. But she believed what
he said, and when she had quite grasped it she touched his hand, smiling
pityingly, and said:

'Perhaps you exaggerate, Stiva?'

'No, Pashenka. I am an adulterer, a murderer, a blasphemer, and a
deceiver.'

'My God! How is that?' exclaimed Praskovya Mikhaylovna.

'But I must go on living. And I, who thought I knew everything, who
taught others how to live--I know nothing and ask you to teach me.'

'What are you saying, Stiva? You are laughing at me. Why do you always
make fun of me?'

'Well, if you think I am jesting you must have it as you please. But
tell me all the same how you live, and how you have lived your life.'

'I? I have lived a very nasty, horrible life, and now God is punishing
me as I deserve. I live so wretchedly, so wretchedly . . .'

'How was it with your marriage? How did you live with your husband?'

'It was all bad. I married because I fell in love in the nastiest way.
Papa did not approve. But I would not listen to anything and just
got married. Then instead of helping my husband I tormented him by my
jealousy, which I could not restrain.'

'I heard that he drank . . .'

'Yes, but I did not give him any peace. I always reproached him, though
you know it is a disease! He could not refrain from it. I now remember
how I tried to prevent his having it, and the frightful scenes we had!'

And she looked at Kasatsky with beautiful eyes, suffering from the
remembrance.

Kasatsky remembered how he had been told that Pashenka's husband used
to beat her, and now, looking at her thin withered neck with prominent
veins behind her ears, and her scanty coil of hair, half grey half
auburn, he seemed to see just how it had occurred.

'Then I was left with two children and no means at all.'

'But you had an estate!'

'Oh, we sold that while Vasya was still alive, and the money was all
spent. We had to live, and like all our young ladies I did not know how
to earn anything. I was particularly useless and helpless. So we spent
all we had. I taught the children and improved my own education a
little. And then Mitya fell ill when he was already in the fourth
form, and God took him. Masha fell in love with Vanya, my son-in-law.
And--well, he is well-meaning but unfortunate. He is ill.'

'Mamma!'--her daughter's voice interrupted her--'Take Mitya! I can't be
in two places at once.'

Praskovya Mikhaylovna shuddered, but rose and went out of the room,
stepping quickly in her patched shoes. She soon came back with a boy of
two in her arms, who threw himself backwards and grabbed at her shawl
with his little hands.

'Where was I? Oh yes, he had a good appointment here, and his chief
was a kind man too. But Vanya could not go on, and had to give up his
position.'

'What is the matter with him?'

'Neurasthenia--it is a dreadful complaint. We consulted a doctor, who
told us he ought to go away, but we had no means. . . . I always hope it
will pass of itself. He has no particular pain, but . . .'

'Lukerya!' cried an angry and feeble voice. 'She is always sent away
when I want her. Mamma . . .'

'I'm coming!' Praskovya Mikhaylovna again interrupted herself. 'He has
not had his dinner yet. He can't eat with us.'

She went out and arranged something, and came back wiping her thin dark
hands.

'So that is how I live. I always complain and am always dissatisfied,
but thank God the grandchildren are all nice and healthy, and we can
still live. But why talk about me?'

'But what do you live on?'

'Well, I earn a little. How I used to dislike music, but how useful it
is to me now!' Her small hand lay on the chest of drawers beside which
she was sitting, and she drummed an exercise with her thin fingers.

'How much do you get for a lesson?'

'Sometimes a ruble, sometimes fifty kopeks, or sometimes thirty. They
are all so kind to me.'

'And do your pupils get on well?' asked Kasatsky with a slight smile.

Praskovya Mikhaylovna did not at first believe that he was asking
seriously, and looked inquiringly into his eyes.

'Some of them do. One of them is a splendid girl--the butcher's
daughter--such a good kind girl! If I were a clever woman I ought, of
course, with the connexions Papa had, to be able to get an appointment
for my son-in-law. But as it is I have not been able to do anything, and
have brought them all to this--as you see.'

'Yes, yes,' said Kasatsky, lowering his head. 'And how is it,
Pashenka--do you take part in Church life?'

'Oh, don't speak of it. I am so bad that way, and have neglected it so!
I keep the fasts with the children and sometimes go to church, and then
again sometimes I don't go for months. I only send the children.'

'But why don't you go yourself?'

'To tell the truth' (she blushed) 'I am ashamed, for my daughter's
sake and the children's, to go there in tattered clothes, and I haven't
anything else. Besides, I am just lazy.'

'And do you pray at home?'

'I do. But what sort of prayer is it? Only mechanical. I know it should
not be like that, but I lack real religious feeling. The only thing is
that I know how bad I am . . .'

'Yes, yes, that's right!' said Kasatsky, as if approvingly.

'I'm coming! I'm coming!' she replied to a call from her son-in-law, and
tidying her scanty plait she left the room.

But this time it was long before she returned. When she came back,
Kasatsky was sitting in the same position, his elbows resting on his
knees and his head bowed. But his wallet was strapped on his back.

When she came in, carrying a small tin lamp without a shade, he raised
his fine weary eyes and sighed very deeply.

'I did not tell them who you are,' she began timidly. 'I only said that
you are a pilgrim, a nobleman, and that I used to know you. Come into
the dining-room for tea.'

'No . . .'

'Well then, I'll bring some to you here.'

'No, I don't want anything. God bless you, Pashenka! I am going now. If
you pity me, don't tell anyone that you have seen me. For the love of
God don't tell anyone. Thank you. I would bow to your feet but I know
it would make you feel awkward. Thank you, and forgive me for Christ's
sake!'

'Give me your blessing.'

'God bless you! Forgive me for Christ's sake!'

He rose, but she would not let him go until she had given him bread and
butter and rusks. He took it all and went away.

It was dark, and before he had passed the second house he was lost to
sight. She only knew he was there because the dog at the priest's house
was barking.

'So that is what my dream meant! Pashenka is what I ought to have been
but failed to be. I lived for men on the pretext of living for God,
while she lived for God imagining that she lives for men. Yes, one good
deed--a cup of water given without thought of reward--is worth more
than any benefit I imagined I was bestowing on people. But after all was
there not some share of sincere desire to serve God?' he asked himself,
and the answer was: 'Yes, there was, but it was all soiled and overgrown
by desire for human praise. Yes, there is no God for the man who lives,
as I did, for human praise. I will now seek Him!'

And he walked from village to village as he had done on his way to
Pashenka, meeting and parting from other pilgrims, men and women, and
asking for bread and a night's rest in Christ's name. Occasionally some
angry housewife scolded him, or a drunken peasant reviled him, but for
the most part he was given food and drink and even something to take
with him. His noble bearing disposed some people in his favour, while
others on the contrary seemed pleased at the sight of a gentleman who
had come to beggary.

But his gentleness prevailed with everyone.

Often, finding a copy of the Gospels in a hut he would read it aloud,
and when they heard him the people were always touched and surprised, as
at something new yet familiar.

When he succeeded in helping people, either by advice, or by his
knowledge of reading and writing, or by settling some quarrel, he did
not wait to see their gratitude but went away directly afterwards. And
little by little God began to reveal Himself within him.

Once he was walking along with two old women and a soldier. They were
stopped by a party consisting of a lady and gentleman in a gig and
another lady and gentleman on horseback. The husband was on horseback
with his daughter, while in the gig his wife was driving with a
Frenchman, evidently a traveller.

The party stopped to let the Frenchman see the pilgrims who, in accord
with a popular Russian superstition, tramped about from place to place
instead of working.

They spoke French, thinking that the others would not understand them.

'Demandez-leur,' said the Frenchman, 's'ils sont bien sur de ce que leur
pelerinage est agreable a Dieu.'

The question was asked, and one old woman replied:

'As God takes it. Our feet have reached the holy places, but our hearts
may not have done so.'

They asked the soldier. He said that he was alone in the world and had
nowhere else to go.

They asked Kasatsky who he was.

'A servant of God.'

'Qu'est-ce qu'il dit? Il ne repond pas.'

'Il dit qu'il est un serviteur de Dieu. Cela doit etre un fils de
preetre. Il a de la race. Avez-vous de la petite monnaie?'

The Frenchman found some small change and gave twenty kopeks to each of
the pilgrims.

'Mais dites-leur que ce n'est pas pour les cierges que je leur donne,
mais pour qu'ils se regalent de the. Chay, chay pour vous, mon vieux!'
he said with a smile. And he patted Kasatsky on the shoulder with his
gloved hand.

'May Christ bless you,' replied Kasatsky without replacing his cap and
bowing his bald head.

He rejoiced particularly at this meeting, because he had disregarded the
opinion of men and had done the simplest, easiest thing--humbly accepted
twenty kopeks and given them to his comrade, a blind beggar. The less
importance he attached to the opinion of men the more did he feel the
presence of God within him.

For eight months Kasatsky tramped on in this manner, and in the ninth
month he was arrested for not having a passport. This happened at a
night-refuge in a provincial town where he had passed the night with
some pilgrims. He was taken to the police-station, and when asked who he
was and where was his passport, he replied that he had no passport and
that he was a servant of God. He was classed as a tramp, sentenced, and
sent to live in Siberia.

In Siberia he has settled down as the hired man of a well-to-do peasant,
in which capacity he works in the kitchen-garden, teaches children, and
attends to the sick.