They talk loudly, stamp their feet when they walk, make noise, cough, but Nikolai always spoke quietly, gently, and if he noticed that anyone was asleep or praying, he would pass by like a gnat or a mosquito. His face was tender, pitiful …”

Ieronym sighed deeply and took hold of the cable. We were nearing the bank. Out of the darkness and silence of the river we gradually floated into an enchanted kingdom, filled with suffocating smoke, sputtering lamps, and tumult. People could be seen clearly moving about the pitch barrels. The flashing of the fire lent their red faces and figures a strange, almost fantastic expression. Occasionally, among the heads and faces, horses’ muzzles appeared, motionless, as if cast in red copper.

“They’re about to start the Easter canon …” said Ieronym, “and Nikolai isn’t here, there’s no one to grasp it … For him there was no writing sweeter than this canon. He used to grasp every word of it! You’ll be there, sir, try to grasp what they sing: it will take your breath away!”

“And you won’t be in church?”

“I can’t be, sir … I have to take people across.”

“But won’t they relieve you?”

“I don’t know … I should have been relieved between eight and nine, but as you see, I haven’t been! … And, to tell the truth, I’d like to be in church …”

“Are you a monk?”

“Yes, sir … that is, I’m a novice.”

The ferry ran into the bank and stopped. I gave Ieronym a five-kopeck piece for the ride and jumped onto dry land. At once a cart with a boy and a sleeping woman drove creaking onto the ferry. Ieronym, faintly colored by the lights, leaned on the cable, curved his body, and pushed the ferry off…

I took a few steps through the mud, but further on I had to follow a soft, freshly trampled path. This path led to the dark, cave-like gates of the monastery, through clouds of smoke, through a disorderly crowd of people, unharnessed horses, carts, britzkas. It was all creaking, snorting, laughing, and over it all flashed crimson light and wavy shadows of smoke … A veritable chaos! And in this turmoil they still found room to load the little cannon and sell gingerbreads!

There was no less bustle on the other side of the wall, in the churchyard, but there was more ceremoniousness and order to be observed. Here there was a smell of juniper and incense. There was loud talk, but no laughter or snorting. People with kulichi7 and bundles huddled together among the tombstones and crosses. Obviously many of them had come a long way to have their kulichi blessed and were now tired. Over the cast-iron slabs that lay in a strip from the gates to the church door, busy young novices ran, loudly stamping their boots. In the bell tower there was also scurrying and shouting.

“What a restless night!” I thought. “How good!”

One would have liked to see this restlessness and sleeplessness in all of nature, beginning with the night’s darkness and ending with the slabs, the graveyard crosses, and the trees, under which people bustled about. But nowhere did the excitement and restlessness tell so strongly as in the church. At the entrance an irrepressible struggle went on between ebb and flow. Some went in, others came out and soon went back again, to stand for a little while and then move again. People shuttle from place to place, loiter, and seem to be looking for something. The wave starts at the entrance and passes through the whole church, even disturbing the front rows where the solid and weighty people stand. To concentrate on prayer is out of the question. There are no prayers, but there is a sort of massive, childishly instinctive joy that is only seeking an excuse to burst and pour itself out in some sort of movement, be it only an unabashed swaying and jostling.

The same extraordinary mobility strikes one’s eye in the paschal service itself. The royal doors8 in all the chapels are wide open, dense clouds of incense smoke float in the air around the big candle stand; everywhere one looks there are lights, brilliance, the sputtering of candles … There are no readings in this service; the busy and joyful singing goes on till the very end; after every ode of the canon the clergy change vestments and come out to cense the church, and this is repeated every ten minutes.

I had just managed to take my place when a wave surged from the front and threw me back. Before me passed a tall, sturdy deacon with a long red candle; behind him the gray-haired archimandrite in a golden mitre hurried with a censer. When they disappeared from view, the crowd pushed me back to my former place.