Now is the sort of moment, my love, when I need to stay in the warmth, even if only for an hour, Arseny told Ustina. You need not worry about me: as you can see, nothing terrible is happening. I need only catch my breath, my love, and then I can make my way back.
Arseny tried to smile but realized he could not feel either his lips or his cheeks. He wavered and then returned to the house and went up the icy front steps. He knocked at the door. Nobody opened it so he knocked again. The door opened. His acquaintance stood on the doorstep. He stepped back as if freeing the space for Arseny. Arseny was despondent when he realized this person truly needed a running start. The man ran up with a shriek, knocking Arseny from the front steps with both arms.
The moon was shining again when Arseny came to. He took a handful of snow and rubbed his frozen face. The snow he tossed away was bloody. Arseny caught sight of the silhouettes of distant houses in the moonlight. He set off for them, staggering. The houses were rundown and Arseny knew poor people lived in them. When he knocked, people came out with sticks. They said:
Go away and die, O holy fool, we find no way to save ourselves from you here.
Arseny left after finding no compassion among these people. He set off, walking past houses, and noticed a ramshackle shed at the end of the street. Once his eyes had grown used to the dark, he could make out several pairs of eyes in the corner of the shed. The eyes reflected the moonlight penetrating through gaps in the roof. Several large dogs were watching Arseny, who got on all fours and crawled toward them. The dogs growled, muffledly, but brought Arseny no harm. He laid down between them and dozed off. There were no dogs alongside him when he awoke.
That is how vile I have become, Arseny told Ustina. God and man have left me. And even the dogs want nothing to do with me, either, so they left. My body, all dirty and turned blue, is loathsome, even for me. This all indicates that my bodily existence is pointless and nearing its end. Meaning, my love, you will not be pardoned because of my prayers.
Arseny crouched, grasped his head in his hands, and buried it in his knees. He was aware that he could no longer sense either his head or his hands or his knees. All he could feel, weakly, was his heart. Only his heart had not been shackled by the cold, because it was located deep within his body. It is good, Arseny thought, that I have already bid farewell to a part of my body. From the look of things, it will be far easier to bid farewell to what has not yet frozen.
As Arseny had that thought, he sensed warmth gradually filling him from within. After opening his eyes, he saw before him a young man with a splendid appearance. His face shone like a sunbeam and in his hand he held a branch scattered with scarlet and white flowers. The branch did not look like branches from the decaying world and its beauty was unearthly.
The splendid young man asked, holding the branch in his hand:
O Arseny, where dost thou now endure?
I sit in darkness, shackled by iron in the shadowe of death, answered Arseny.
Then the young man struck Arseny on the face with the branch and said:
O Arseny, take invincible life for your whole body and the cleansing and the ceasing of your sufferings from this great bitter cold.
And with those words, the fragrance of the flowers and life—granted to him a second time—entered Arseny’s heart. When he raised his eyes, he discovered the young man had become invisible. And Arseny understood who that young man was. He remembered the life-giving verse: Wher the Lord wills it, the natural order is overcome. Because according to the order of nature, Arseny should have died. But he was scooped up and returned to life as he was flying off toward death.
From then on, time definitively began moving differently for Arseny. More precisely, it simply stopped moving and remained idle. Arseny saw events taking place on earth but also noticed that events had, in some strange way, diverged from time and no longer depended on time. Sometimes events came one after another, just as before; sometimes they took a reverse order. Rarer still, events arrived in no order whatsoever, shamelessly muddling prescribed sequences. And time could not cope with them. It refused to govern those sorts of events.
It has become known here that events do not always flow along in time, Arseny told Ustina. Now and again they flow on their own. Uprooted from time. Of course you, my love, already know this very well but I am encountering it for the first time.
Arseny observes the spring snow melting and the cloudy waters flowing down to the Velikaya River through the gutter the sisters have hollowed from wood. The sisters clear out this gutter every spring because it clogs with leaves—oak and maple—in autumn. The wind sweeps leaves into Arseny’s home, too, but Arseny does not object to this sort of feather bed since he considers it not made by human hands.
Arseny sees how an early June sun peers out after a night rain. Water is still quivering on leaves. Water detaches, as clouds of steam, from the John the Baptist cupola and disappears in an improbably blue sky. Sister Pulcheria leans on her broom and observes the water evaporate. A warm wind touches the wheaten locks of hair that have come out from under her wimple. Sister Pulcheria is pensively scratching a beauty mark and dying from blood poisoning. She is lying in a fresh grave a few sazhens from Arseny’s home. Her grave is drifted with snow.
The abbess approaches Arseny at the height of the autumn leaf season. She says:
The time commeth for me to departe from this vayne worlde for the never old, eternal dwellinge. Bless me, O Ustin.
Leaves glide along her vestments with a rustle. Arseny gives his blessing to the abbess.
Even as he does so, he tells Ustina, I have no right to bless someone. And so, my love, I am doing this not because I have the right but from impudence, since this woman requests it. Beyond that, her journey truly is distant, and she knows it.
The abbess is dying.
On a hot summer day, Sister Agafya leans on her broom, standing by the church of John the Baptist. She looks at the church’s cupola and her hand stretches for a beauty mark on her face. Arseny stops Sister Agafya’s hand halfway. He did so in time.
She will live, Arseny thinks as he walks away.
With a steady gait, he walks into the building, to priest John. He jolts the door open. The rough tongue of bitter cold barges in behind Arseny. Priest John and his family are sitting at the table. The priest’s wife is preparing to put food on the table. She peers out the blurry window: there is nothing outside but snow. Priest John stares straight ahead, as if he is trying to spot his own impending fate. The priest’s wife gestures silently, inviting Arseny to share the meal with them. The gesture separates itself from the priest’s wife and flies out the open door. Arseny does not notice it. The children squeeze onto the bench and focus their gaze on their hands, which rest on their knees. Then their fingers tug at the coarse linen of their shirts. To them, Arseny is similar to the lightning ball their father once saw. Their father taught them that when a lightning ball flies in, it is best not to move and not to give yourself away. Best to exhale and be still. They are still. Arseny grabs a knife off the table and lunges at priest John. Priest John continues staring ahead, as if he does not notice Arseny. In reality, he sees everything but considers it unnecessary to resist fate. Arseny waves the knife right in front of priest John’s face. As before, the priest does not move; perhaps he is thinking about the lightning ball. About how it found him anyway. Arseny tosses the knife to the floor and runs out of the house. Priest John feels no relief. He understands that what has happened is prophesy. It is only heat lightning but he is waiting for the lightning bolt to arrive. And he guesses that this time it will not be so easy for it to miss.