From that day on, loaf baker Prokhor called on Arseny fairly frequently. He brought a loaf each time, sometimes more than one. Arseny took the loaves gratefully. After Prokhor left, he took them to the convent wall and gave them to people of modest means.
With time, however, it was not only they who awaited the loaves from Arseny. People came from the city and from Zapskovye and many of them were considered well-to-do. These people were not tormented by hunger but they knew the loaves from Arseny’s hands were unusually tasty and wholesome. They had observed that these loaves imparted strength, stopped bleeding, and improved the metabolism.
One day Pskov’s mayor, Gavriil, came to Arseny after hearing about the distribution of loaves. Gavriil received half a loaf and headed back home with it. He, his wife, and their four children of various ages ate the bread he had received. They liked the bread and they felt better, though, essentially, they had felt pretty good before the bread, too.
Now this is a phenomenon worthy of all kinds of support, said Mayor Gavriil.
He set off to see Arseny and, in the presence of the sisters, presented him with a wallet of silver. To Mayor Gavriil’s surprise, Arseny accepted the wallet. As he left, the mayor had someone remain at the convent to see how the holy fool would handle the funds that had been presented to him. In the evening of that same day, the person came to Mayor Gavriil and reported to him that holy fool Ustin had gone straight to merchant Negoda. It was noted separately that the holy fool entered the merchant’s with the wallet in his hands but left without the wallet.
Mayor Gavriil then went to visit Arseny again and asked why he had given the money to a merchant rather than a beggar. Arseny looked silently at the mayor.
What’s not to understand here? asked a surprised holy fool Foma, who stood in the gap in the wall. Merchant Negoda is broke and his family is wasting away from hunger. And he’s ashamed to solicit alms because of his uprightness. He’ll put up with it, the damn tomcat, until he kicks the bucket—he and his family. And so Ustin gave him the money. Paupers can feed themselves: begging, after all, is their profession.
Mayor Gavriil marveled at Arseny’s wisdom and asked:
And you, O brother Ustin, what is necessary for thy life? Ask me and I will geue you a good rewarde.
Arseny was silent and then holy fool Foma said:
If I chose for him, will you geue the rewarde?
Mayor Gavriil answered:
I will geue it.
Then geue him the great burg of Pskov, said holy fool Foma. And sufficient it shall be for his sustenance.
The mayor did not utter another word, for he could not give the entire city away to Arseny. And holy fool Foma began laughing when he saw Mayor Gavriil’s distress:
Take it easy; jeez. If you can’t give him the city, then don’t. He’ll get it without you anyway.
The ensuing winter was dreadful. Neither the Pskovians nor, even more so, Arseny could remember a winter like it. Admittedly, Arseny did not remember how many winters had passed since his arrival in Pskov. Maybe one. Or maybe all the winters had blended into one and no longer had anything to do with time. They just become winter.
First, snow covered the city. The snow fell day and night, and its abundance in the air and on the earth was stunning. It turned God’s world into a single milky clump. Cowsheds, houses, and even small churches were snowed under. They turned into huge snowbanks, sometimes with crosses visible at the top. The snow crushed the roofs of old houses and they collapsed with a dry crack. People found themselves under open skies from which the snow unceasingly floated, filling the damaged houses in the course of a day. Snow fell for three weeks and then a cold snap hit.
The cold snap was relentless. The wind, which could not be escaped, tripled the force of the cold. The wind knocked pedestrians off their feet, stole in through door cracks, and whistled from between logs that had not been firmly set. Birds perished from the wind in mid-air, fish froze to death in small rivers, and wild animals fell in the forests. Even people who had warmed themselves with fire could not tolerate the bitter cold, the body being feeble. Many people and cattle froze at that time, in the city, the surrounding villages, and on the roads. In enduring great adversities, beggars and those who were pilgrims for the sake of Christ lamented from the depths of their hearts and wept bitterly and shivered unceasingly and froze.
By order of the abbess, they moved Arseny into the faraway cell, where he was commanded to wait out the ferocious bitter cold. After three days elapsed, Arseny left the faraway cell and returned to his home in the cemetery. He responded with silence to all attempts to persuade him to stay inside.
You understand, he told Ustina, my flesh warms up in the faraway cell and begins making its own demands. There’s no use starting anything, my love. If you give your flesh a finger, it will grab an entire hand. It really is better, my love, that I spend some time in the fresh air. I guess I will go walking around Zavelichye to keep from freezing. I will watch what is happening in this big wide world of ours, though it looks less wide than white, more than ever before.
So Arseny began walking around Zavelichye. And when he encountered freezing people or drunk people or those inclined to fall asleep in a snow bank, he led them off to their homes. If someone had no home, he brought that person to a home for the impoverished, which had been set up for the cold spell in an old shed near the walls of the convent.
One day, as he was walking along the frozen river, Arseny saw holy fool Foma on the river, and Foma said to him, from the ice:
My kind friend, the border between the city’s various parts has now been erased by natural means. It should be stated that the barrier that divided us is hidden temporarily under ice of an unprecedented thickness. If you wish to gather up these frozen elements on my territory, too, I shall saye nothinge against it.
After hearing holy fool Foma’s statement, Arseny stopped limiting himself to Zavelichye. He went to the city and even to Zapskovye, where holy fool Karp resided. Prints of bare feet radiating from the John the Baptist Convent spoke to this. The new tracks that revealed themselves each morning showed Pskovians where Arseny had been the night before.
One time, Arseny brought a night wanderer back to his home. The man was leaving a tavern and his strength was almost gone. He sat down in the road often, demanding Arseny leave him alone. When that happened, Arseny had to use force and drag the unknown man through the snow. This was no smooth glide: the unknown man, laughing, scraped at the snow with the toe of his boot during the first part of the journey. An hour later he was chilled to the bone and merriment had deserted him. He silently trudged after Arseny, mean and significantly sobered.
They walked in circles through the hamlets outside the city in search of his dwelling. As midnight neared, the moon settled matters by showing itself in the sky. After identifying one of the drifted snowbanks as his house, the unknown man decisively headed for the front steps. He went up the steps and slammed the door behind him just as decisively.
Arseny looked around. All the roaming had disoriented him and now he could not figure out which direction the city was in. The moon clouded over again. Arseny understood that even the house would be lost to him if he took a few steps away. He sensed that he could also no longer get by without warmth.