And I ran, Brothers, I ran, faster than I’d ever run in all my life.’

Many more of these stories would be told, and I found them so fascinating that I would listen to them all, and only barely manage to close my eyes towards dawn. But then Father Ignatius would prod us with his cane and say: ‘Get up! It’s time we were out on the lake!’ The novices would get up and yawn; poor fellows, they were drowsy. They would pick up the sweep-net, take off their shoes and trousers, and go down to the boats. The monastery boats, black and ungainly as loons, were always kept moored to stakes some fifteen sagenes off shore, because there was a long sandbar running out from the beach, and the black boats sat very low in the water and could not pull in to the shore. Nevstruyev used to carry me in his arms all the way along the sandbar to the boats. Well I remember those wadings across, those carefree, good-natured faces. Even now I seem to see the novices wading into the cold water, straight from their slumbers. Jumping up and down, they would laugh and, trembling with cold, would drag the heavy net along, stooping down to the water to freshen their eyes which were still stuck together from sleep. I remember the fine mist that rose from the water, the golden carp and slippery turbot; I remember the exhausting noontides, when we would all flop down on the grass like dead men, refusing the amber-coloured fish soup which Father Sergius prepared for the ‘bookless’ monks. Even better, I remember the aggrieved, even hate-filled expression on everyone’s face when the fat horses were being harnessed – the horses which would draw to the monastery the carts containing the carp we had caught and Father Ignatius, behind whom the ‘sluggards’ would have to march back within their monastery walls once more.

It was in these very same places, familiar to me from childhood, that I chanced yet once again, quite unexpectedly, to encounter the person of Musk-Ox, after his flight from Kursk.

5

A lot of water had flowed under the bridge since those days to which my memories relate, memories which have, perhaps, very little connection with Musk-Ox’s grim destiny. I was growing up and becoming acquainted with life’s sorrows; Grandmother had died; Ilya Vasilyevich, Fine Lady and Surprise were no more; the merry novices had turned into staid, respectable monks; I was sent to the gymnasium for a time, then transferred to the university of a town some sixty versts distant, where I learned to sing one Latin song, read some snippets of Strauss, Feuerbach, Büchner and Babeuf and, replete with knowledge, returned to my lares and penates once more. It was here that I formed the acquaintance with Vasily Petrovich which I have described. Another four years went by, years I spent in a rather miserable fashion, before finding myself once again beneath my native lime trees. At home during this time no change had taken place either in morals, views or trends of thought. The news was merely of the kind one would have expected: my mother had advanced in age and grown stouter, my fourteen-year-old sister had passed straight from the desk of a young ladies’ boarding school to a premature grave, and several new lime trees had grown, planted by her childish hand. ‘Can it really be,’ I thought, ‘that nothing has altered during this time in which I have experienced so much: acquired a faith in God, rejected Him and then rediscovered Him; loved my native land, been crucified with it and been among its crucifiers?’ This seemed almost offensive to my youthful vanity, and I determined to carry out a verification of everything – myself and all that surrounded me in those days, when ‘all the impressions of existence were still new to me’.1 Above all I wanted to see my beloved hermitages, and one crisp morning I drove my droshky to the P— hermitage, which lies some twenty or so versts distant from our home. The road was still in the same condition, the jackdaws still hid in the thick winter crops, the muzhiks still bowed from the waist, and the peasant women still begged for alms as they lay in front of their thresholds. Everything was as it had been in the old days. Here were the familiar hermitage gates – there was a new gatekeeper now, the former one had become a monk. But the Father Almoner was still alive. The ailing old man had by now attained the ninth decade of his life. There are many such examples of exceptional longevity to be encountered in our monasteries. The Father Almoner no longer performed his duties, however, and lived ‘in retirement’, although he was still invariably referred to as ‘the Father Almoner’. When I was led in to him, he was lying on his bed; not recognizing me, he began to grow agitated, and asked the servant brother: ‘Who’s this?’ Without replying to his question, I went up to the old man and took him by the hand. ‘Good day, good day,’ the Father Almoner muttered; ‘Who are you?’ I bent forward, kissed him on the forehead, and spoke his name. ‘Oh, it’s you, my little friend! Well, I never, good day!’ the old man said, growing agitated on his bed again. ‘Kirill! Prepare the samovar right away!’ he said to the servant brother. ‘I can’t walk any more, my friend. For more than a year now my feet have been all swollen up!’ The Father Almoner had dropsy, which very frequently carries off monks who spend their lives in prolonged standing in church and in other occupations which make them susceptible to this illness.

‘Tell Vasily Petrovich to come here,’ the Almoner said to the servant brother, when the latter placed the samovar and cups on the bedside table. ‘I have a poor fellow living here,’ the old man added, turning to me.

The servant brother left the room, and a quarter of an hour later the sound of footsteps and of a distant bellowing could be heard approaching down the flagstones of the outer passage.