You, and the Ukrainian, and Nikolai, you were all revealed to be…”

Not finding the word he wanted, he fell silent, looked out of the window and drummed his fingers on the table.

“Your decision was revealed. As if to say: ‘You get on with your business, Your Honour, and we’ll get on with ours.’ The Ukrainian’s a good lad too. Sometimes I listen to the way he talks at the factory, and I think: ‘You won’t crush this one, it’s only death that’ll overcome him.’ A man of sinew! Do you trust me, Pavel?”

“I do!” said Pavel, nodding his head.

“Right. Look – I’m forty, I’m twice your age and I’ve seen twenty times as much. I marched as a soldier for three years and more, I’ve been married twice, one wife died, I left the other. I’ve been in the Caucasus, I know the Dukhobors.* They’re not going to overcome life, brother, no!”

The mother listened avidly to his powerful speech; it was nice to see an older man coming to see her son and talking to him as though he was making his confession. But it seemed to her that Pavel was being too dry with his guest and, to soften his attitude, she asked Rybin:

“Perhaps you’d like something to eat, Mikhailo Ivanovich?”

“Thank you, Mother! I’ve had dinner. So, Pavel, you think life’s going the wrong way, then?”

Pavel stood up and began walking around the room with his hands behind his back.

“It’s going the right way!” he said. “Now it’s brought you to me with an open soul. Little by little it’s uniting those of us who spend all our lives working; the time will come when it’ll unite everyone! The way it’s organized is unfair and hard on us, but it is itself opening our eyes to its bitter meaning and showing man how to quicken its pace.”

“That’s right!” Rybin interrupted him. “Man must be renewed! If someone gets mangy, take him to the bathhouse, wash him down, put clean clothes on, and he’ll recover! Right! But how can a man be cleansed from within? There!”

Pavel started speaking sharply and heatedly about the authorities, about the factory, about how workers abroad stood up for their rights. At times Rybin would tap a finger on the table, as though inserting a full stop. More than once he exclaimed:

“Right!”

And on one occasion he said quietly with a laugh:

“Oh dear, you’re too young! You know too little of people!”

And then Pavel stopped opposite him and remarked seriously:

“Let’s not talk of old age and youth! Rather let’s look at whose ideas are better.”

“So, in your view, they’ve deceived us with God too? Right. I think our religion is false as well.”

Here the mother intervened. Whenever her son spoke about God and everything she connected with her faith in Him, everything that was dear and sacred to her, she always sought to meet his eyes; she tried to ask her son silently not to scratch her heart with sharp, harsh words of unbelief. But behind his unbelief she could sense faith, and this reassured her.

“How am I to understand his ideas?” she thought.

It seemed to her that Rybin, an older man, found it unpleasant and hurtful to listen to Pavel’s speeches too. But when Rybin calmly asked Pavel his question, she could not contain herself and said briefly, but insistently:

“Regarding the Lord, you should be more careful! For you it’s as you like!” Catching her breath, she continued with even greater force: “But for me, an old woman, there’ll be nothing to lean on in my anguish, if you take the Lord God away from me!”

Her eyes filled with tears. She was doing the washing-up, and her fingers were trembling.

“You didn’t understand us, Mamasha!” said Pavel, quietly and gently.

“Forgive me, Mother!” Rybin added slowly in his rich voice and looked at Pavel with a grin. “I was forgetting you’re too old to have your warts cut off…”

“I was speaking,” continued Pavel, “not of the good and merciful God you believe in, but of the one the priests threaten us with like a stick, the God in whose name they want to force everyone to submit to the wicked will of the few…”

“That’s right, yes!” exclaimed Rybin, tapping his fingers on the table. “They’ve taken our God away too, they direct everything that’s in their hands against us! Remember, mother, God created man in His own image and likeness, so He is like man, if man is like Him! But we’re not like God: we’re like wild beasts. In church they show us a scarecrow… God needs to be changed, Mother, cleansed! They’ve clothed Him in lies and slander, they’ve distorted His face to kill our spirits!…”

He spoke quietly, but each word of his speech fell upon the mother’s head as a heavy, stunning blow. And his face, large and mournful in the black frame of his beard, scared her. The dark lustre of his eyes was unbearable and awoke a nagging fear in her heart.

“No, I’d better go away!” she said with a negative shake of her head. “I haven’t got the strength to listen to this!”

And she went off quickly into the kitchen, accompanied by Rybin’s words:

“There, Pavel! The root of things isn’t in the head, but in the heart! There’s this place in the human soul on which nothing else will grow…”

“It’s only reason that will free man!” said Pavel firmly.

“Reason doesn’t give you strength!” retorted Rybin loudly and insistently. “It’s the heart gives you strength, not the head – there!”

The mother undressed and got into bed without praying. She felt cold and unpleasant. And Rybin, who had at first seemed to her so solid and wise, aroused a feeling of hostility in her now.

“A heretic! A troublemaker!” she thought, listening to his voice. “And he just had to come here, didn’t he!”

And he was saying confidently and calmly:

“A pedestal shouldn’t stand empty. Where God lives is a sore spot. If he falls out of your soul, there’ll be a wound left in it – there! A new faith needs to be thought up, Pavel… a god needs to be created who’s a friend to man!”

“There was Christ!” exclaimed Pavel.

“Christ wasn’t firm in spirit.