The ability to lay hands, to ease pain with the laying-on of his hands, was part of what determined Arseny’s first nickname: Rukinets, rooted in ruka, for hand. That nickname was actually typical for his part of the world. It was what people from other places called residents of Rukina Quarter. People visiting from far away had also named Christofer “Rukinets.”
This nickname had no meaning for residents of the quarter because they were also Rukinets. Things worked out differently for Arseny. Even within the quarter itself, people began identifying him as Rukinets. This was generally perceived as a sort of issuing of honorary citizenship, like calling his beloved Alexander by the name “Alexander the Macedonian.” When the renown of Arseny’s remarkable hands reached lands where nobody had heard of Rukina Quarter (and that was the majority of places), the nickname lost its meaning again. And then they began calling Arseny “Doctor.”
The adolescent Arseny’s pudgy, childish hands took on noble contours. His fingers stretched longer, the knuckles became more prominent, and previously invisible tendons tensed under his skin. The movements of his hands grew smooth, his gestures expressive. These were the hands of a musician who had inherited the most astonishing of instruments as a gift: the human body.
Arseny’s hands lost their materiality when they touched a patient’s body; it was as if they flowed. There was something in them that was cool, like fresh water from a spring. Those who came to Arseny in his early years found it difficult to say if his touch was curative, but they were already convinced that it was pleasant. Accustomed to the pain that usually accompanied treatment, these people may have experienced, deep down in their souls, doubt about the benefit of pleasant medical actions. This, however, did not stop them. In the first place, Arseny treated them with the very same methods Christofer had treated them with, and Arseny did not have any more blatant failures than Christofer. In the second place (and this was probably the most important thing), the villagers simply had no real choice. Under the circumstances, pleasant treatment could be preferred over unpleasant in good conscience.
As far as Arseny was concerned, it was just as important for him to be around people. Beyond paltry money, people brought him bread, honey, milk, cheese, peas, dried meat, and much more, allowing him not to have to think about food. But the value of these visits was not so much that they provided Arseny sustenance. The point was, first of all, the interaction, which made Arseny feel better.
Patients did not leave after receiving the help they needed. They told Arseny about weddings, funerals, construction, fires, payments to landowners, and harvest prospects. About those who had arrived in the quarter and about the quarter residents’ journeys. About Moscow and Novgorod. About princes in Belozersk. About Chinese silk. They found themselves realizing they did not want to cut short their conversations with Arseny.
With Christofer’s death, it suddenly turned out that, essentially, Arseny had had no other interaction. Christofer had been his only relative, conversation partner, and friend. Christofer had dominated his whole life over many years. Christofer’s death had turned Arseny’s life into something empty. Life seemed to remain, but it no longer had anything inside. After becoming hollow, his life lost so much of its weight that Arseny would not have been surprised if a gust of wind had carried it off into high, high places beyond the clouds and, perhaps, simultaneously brought him closer to Christofer. Sometimes Arseny thought that was exactly what he wanted.
The visitors were the only link connecting Arseny to life. Arseny was, undoubtedly, glad of their arrival. But it was not the visits themselves or the opportunity to speak that gladdened him. Arseny knew the patients still saw Christofer in him, making each visit like a continuation his grandfather’s life. In closing the resulting emptiness, Arseny himself began to feel a little as if he were Christofer, and that identity was tacitly confirmed by the visitors.
Arseny was terse with his callers, despite valuing their interaction. Perhaps things worked out this way because Arseny was expending all his words in discussions with Christofer. These discussions occupied the greater part of the day and took place in various ways.
Arseny went to the cemetery right after getting out of bed in the morning. It is obvious that the word went bears a bit of exaggeration here: he had only to go beyond the fence outside the house to be in the cemetery. The house and the cemetery shared a fence, and there had been a gate in it from time immemorial. Christofer was buried alongside the gate. He did not wish to be taken far from his home in death so had selected his resting place while still alive; he showed no remorse now. Not only did he know about everything that took place in the house, he was almost in it. “Almost” because, remembering the relativity of death, Christofer was also aware that there were separate residences intended for the living and the dead.
A village carpenter slapped together a bench by the mound formed from frozen clumps of earth. Arseny sat on the bench and talked each morning with Christofer, who was lying under the hill. He told him about his visitors and about their illnesses. About the words they had said to him, the herbs he had infused, the roots he had ground, the movement of clouds, and the direction of the wind—about everything, in short, that it was now difficult for Christofer to get a sense of on his own.
Evening was the most difficult time for Arseny. He simply could not get used to Christofer’s absence by the stove. The flickering of the fire on his thick-browed and wrinkly face had somehow seemed as primordial and ancient as fire itself. That flickering was a property of fire, an integral characteristic of the stove, something that, essentially, had no right to disappear.
What had happened with Christofer was not the absence of someone who had departed for the unknown. It was the absence of someone who was, nevertheless, lying nearby. When the weather was frosty, Arseny threw a sheepskin on the mound. He certainly knew that Christofer was not sensitive to the cold in his current condition, but life in the heated house became unbearable when he thought of his grandfather lying there without heat. The only thing that saved Arseny in the evenings was reading Christofer’s manuscripts.
Solomon sayde: better to dwell in emptie earth than to dwell with a chydynge and an angrye woman; Philo said the just man is not he who will not offend but he who could offend but does not wish to; Socrates saw his friend, who was rushing to artists to order his image be carved upon rock, and he said to him, you are rushing for a stone to become like yourself, why not take care that you do not become like a stone; Philip II of Macedon assigned a certain person to serve amongst other judges when he learned the judge was coloring his hair and beard, and he barred him from judging, saying: yf you are not true to your hayrie lockes, how can you be a true judge unto people; Solomon sayde: There be thre thinges too wonderfull for me, and as for the fourth, it passeth my knowledge: The waye of an aegle in the ayre, the waye of a serpent over the stone, the waye of a shippe in the see, and the waye of a man wyth a yonge woman. Solomon did not understand this. Christofer did not understand this. Life would prove that Arseny did not understand this, either.