‘Take away this cup from me,’* He said. He recognized Caesar.* God can’t recognize human power over men, He is all power! He doesn’t divide His soul: this is divine, this is human… But He recognized trade, recognized marriage. And He was wrong to curse the fig tree* – was it of its own free will that it didn’t bring forth? It’s not of its own free will that the soul lacks the fruit of goodness either – did I myself sow malice in it? There!”

In the room was the constant sound of two voices, embracing and grappling with one another in excited play. Pavel paced, and the floor creaked beneath his feet. When he spoke, all other sounds were drowned in his speech, while when Rybin’s heavy voice was calmly and slowly flowing one could hear the ticking of the pendulum and the quiet crackling of the frost, probing the walls of the house with its sharp claws.

“I’ll tell you in my way, a stoker’s way: God is like fire. Right! He lives in the heart. It’s said: ‘God is the Word,* and the Word is spirit’…”

“Reason!” said Pavel insistently.

“Right! So God is in the heart and in reason, but not in the church! The church is God’s grave.”

The mother fell asleep and did not hear when Rybin left.

But he started coming frequently, and if one of Pavel’s comrades was with him, Rybin would sit down in a corner and be silent, just occasionally saying:

“There. Right!”

One day, though, looking at everyone from the corner with his dark gaze, he said morosely:

“We need to talk about what is; what will be, that we don’t know – there! When the people are freed, they’ll see for themselves what’ll be best. Quite a lot has been knocked into their heads that they didn’t want at all – enough of that! Let them weigh things up for themselves. Perhaps they’ll want to reject everything, the whole of life and all the sciences; perhaps they’ll see that everything is directed against them, like, for example, the Church’s God. Just pass all the books into their hands and they’ll reply for themselves – there!”

If Pavel was alone, however, they would immediately enter into an endless but always calm argument, and the mother would listen to their speeches and follow them, trying to understand what they were saying. At times it seemed to her that the broad-shouldered, black-bearded peasant and her well-proportioned, strong son had both gone blind. They rushed around, first in one direction, then in another, in search of a way out; they clutched at everything with powerful but blind hands, shook things, moved them from place to place and dropped them onto the floor, and their feet trampled on what had fallen. They brushed against everything, had a feel of each thing and then threw it away, without losing faith or hope…

They accustomed her to hearing words that were terrible in their directness and boldness, but those words no longer struck her with the force they had the first time – she had learnt to push them aside. And at times, behind the words rejecting God she sensed a strong belief in that very same God. Then she would smile a quiet, all-forgiving smile. And although she did not like Rybin, he no longer aroused hostility.

Once a week she would take linen and books to the prison for the Ukrainian; on one occasion she was allowed to see him and, on coming home, she talked about it emotionally:

“Even there he’s made himself at home. He’s nice to everyone, and everyone jokes with him. It’s hard for him, difficult, but he doesn’t want to show it…”

“That’s the right way!” remarked Rybin. “Misery hems us all in like our skin, we breathe woe, we’re clothed in woe. It’s nothing to boast about. Not everyone has the wool pulled over their eyes, some shut their eyes of their own accord – there! And if you’re stupid – put up with it!…”

XII

The Vlasovs’ small grey house attracted the attention of the settlement more and more. There was much suspicious caution and latent hostility in that attention, but there were the seeds of trustful curiosity too. Sometimes someone would come and, looking around cautiously, say to Pavel:

“Right, brother, you here read books, you know the laws. So then, can you explain…”

And he would tell Pavel about some injustice on the part of the police or the factory administration. In complicated cases Pavel would give the man a note to take to a barrister he knew in town or, when he could, he would explain the matter himself.

Respect was gradually growing among people for the serious young man who talked about everything simply and boldly, looking at and listening to everything with an attention that dug stubbornly into the tangle of each individual case and always, everywhere, found some common, endless thread linking people together by thousands of strong stitches.

Pavel particularly grew in people’s eyes after the episode of “the marsh copeck”.

Beyond the factory, almost surrounding it in the shape of a rotten ring, there stretched an extensive marsh, overgrown with fir groves and birch. In summer it breathed out dense yellow fumes, and clouds of mosquitoes flew out of it at the settlement, spreading fever. The marsh belonged to the factory, and the new director, wanting to extract some benefit from it, came up with the idea of draining it and at the same time extracting the peat. Indicating to the workers that this measure would make the locality healthier and improve living conditions for all, the director ordered one copeck in the rouble to be deducted from their earnings towards the draining of the marsh.

The workers became agitated. They were particularly upset that the office staff were not included in those paying the new tax.

Pavel was ill on the Saturday when the director’s notice about the collection of the copeck was put up; he was not at work and knew nothing about it.