He must have felt like taking a walk.’

Father Prokhor and Father Vavila were both insistent that I should avail myself of one of the beds. With some difficulty I managed to talk them out of this idea, took one of the soft rush mats – the handiwork of Father Sergius – and lay down on the bench under the window. Father Prokhor gave me a pillow, snuffed the candle, went outside again and remained out there for some considerable time. He was evidently awaiting the arrival of ‘the Wayward’, but ran out of patience and on his return said simply:

‘There’s quite definitely a storm brewing.’

‘It may not come to anything,’ I said, in an attempt to allay my anxiety about the vanished Musk-Ox.

‘Oh, it will: the weather was very oppressive today.’

‘The weather’s been that way for a long time.’

‘My back’s been aching something awful,’ Father Vavila said.

‘A housefly’s been bothering me ever since this morning,’ Father Prokhor added, ponderously turning over in his massive bed. At about that moment I think we all fell asleep. Outside it was awesomely dark, but it still had not rained.

6

‘Get up!’ Father Vavila said to me, giving me a shake as I lay on my mat. ‘Get up! It’s not good to sleep at such an hour. Unequal is the hour of God’s will.’

Not understanding what the trouble was, I quickly sprang up into a sitting position on the bench. A slim wax taper was burning in front of the icon cabinet, and Father Prokhor was kneeling in nothing but his underwear, saying his prayers. A terrible clap of thunder, which detonated above the lake and went booming and reverberating over the forest, explained the reason for the alarm. Father Prokhor’s housefly had evidently had good reason to bother him.

‘Where’s Vasily Petrovich?’ I asked the old man.

Without ceasing to whisper his prayers, Father Prokhor turned his face towards me and indicated by a movement that Musk-Ox had still not returned. I looked at my watch: it was exactly one o’clock in the morning. Father Vavila, who was also dressed in nothing more than his underwear and a quilted calico bib, was looking out of the window; I joined him at the window, and began to look, too. By the constant flashing of the lightning, which brilliantly illuminated the whole of the expanse that was visible from the window, it could be seen that the ground was fairly dry. That meant that there had not been much rain since we had fallen asleep. But it was a fearful storm. Peal followed upon peal, each louder than the last, each more awe-inspiring than the last, and the thunder never died away even for a second. It was as though the heavens were yawning open and might fall to earth in an incandescent flood at any moment.

‘Where can he be?’ I said, finding my thoughts returning to Musk-Ox.

‘You’d do better to think of something else,’ Father Vavila said, remaining by the window.

‘Do you think something’s happened to him?’

‘Why should anything happen to him? There aren’t any wild beasts around these parts. Possibly a criminal or two – but there hasn’t been a case like that for a very long time. No, I expect he’s simply out walking. That’s how his waywardness takes him.’

‘Such a beautiful view,’ the old man went on, admiring the lake, which the lightning was illuminating all the way to the opposite shore.

At that instant there was such a violent clap of thunder that the whole cabin shook; Father Prokhor fell to the ground, and Father Vavila and I were thrown back against the wall. Out in the outhouse something fell down and rolled against the door that led into the cabin proper.

‘We’re on fire!’ Father Vavila cried; and, being the first to recover himself from the general state of numbed shock, he rushed to the door.

The door could not be opened.

‘Let me try,’ I said, perfectly convinced that the cabin was now ablaze, and with all my might I hurled myself, shoulder-first, against the door.

This time, to our extreme astonishment, the door opened freely and, unable to restrain myself, I rushed outside. The outhouse was in total darkness. I went back into the cabin, took one of the candles from the icon cabinet and returned with it to the outhouse. All the noise had been made by my little mare. Frightened out of her wits by the last fearful clap of thunder, she had tugged at the reins by which she had been tethered to a wooden support, had knocked over an empty cabbage press, on which had stood the sieve containing oats and, bolting to one side, had struck the door with the full weight of her body. The poor creature was moving her ears, rolling her eyes anxiously, and quivering in every limb. The three of us set about tidying up the mess, poured out another sieveful of oats, and went back inside the cabin again. Before Father Prokhor brought the candle in, Father Vavila and I observed a faint glow which was coming through the window and being reflected off the wall. When we looked out of the window, we saw that directly across from us, on the opposite shore of the lake, an old, dead pine tree which had long stood on the bare, sandy hill, was burning like a colossal taper.

‘Aha!’ Father Vavila said in a long-drawn-out voice.

‘The lightning has ignited it,’ Father Prokhor whispered.

‘And how wonderfully it’s burning!’ the artistic Father Vavila added.

‘That is the fate to which it has been assigned by God,’ replied the devout Father Prokhor.

‘Come along, Fathers, let’s back to bed: the storm’s over.’

The storm had indeed completely died away, and only occasionally distant rolls of thunder could be heard; over the sky slowly crept the same endless black thunderclouds, seeming even blacker against the burning pine tree.

‘Look! Look!’ Father Vavila exclaimed, suddenly: he was still looking out of the window.