Oh, no, that’s fine, Amvrosy nodded. The main thing is that your explanations are straightforward.
There are events that resemble one another, continued the elder, but opposites are born from that similarity. The Old Testament opens with Adam but the New Testament opens with Christ. The sweetness of the apple that Adam eats turns into the bitterness of the vinegar that Christ drinks. The tree of knowledge leads humanity to death but a cross of wood grants immortality to humanity. Remember, O Amvrosy, that repetitions are granted for our salvation and in order to surmount time.
Do you mean to say I will meet Ustina again?
I want to say that no things are irreparable.
Once he had become accustomed to monastic life, Amvrosy asked to work in the kitchen. Service in the kitchen was considered one of the most difficult responsibilities at the monastery. Many had gone through service in the kitchen but far from everyone did so eagerly. And even those who went into the kitchen of their own volition looked upon their labor there as some sort of ordeal. Amvrosy did not consider the kitchen an ordeal. He was fond of this sort of work.
Amvrosy liked carrying water and splitting wood. He was not used to the work, so at first he got blisters. The blisters burst, leaving dark, damp spots on the ax handle. The blisters disappeared after he began wearing gloves when preparing the firewood. Later he split wood without gloves, too, but no longer got blisters. The skin on his palms had coarsened. And Amvrosy no longer tired so much. He had learned to hit the middle of the log with the ax, splitting it apart with a short, fine sound so it opened up like two petals of a large wooden flower. When he did not hit the middle, the sound was different. Thin and false. The sound of poor work.
In the middle of the night, as the brethren slept, Amvrosy would light a candle from an icon lamp in the church and carry it around the monastery yard, sheltering it with his palm. He walked slowly, inhaling the nocturnal freshness and the candle’s honeyed scent. From a distance—sheltered by Amvrosy’s palm and not illuminating him—the candle seemed like an independent essence. It moved through the air, carrying its fire into the kitchen.
It was from that fire that the fire in the enormous stove was lit. A short while later, the stove would glow red. It was so hot that it was difficult to stand next to. But Amvrosy prepared food for the brethren with that stove. He set down and took away pots, poured some water, and threw on firewood. The fire singed Amvrosy’s beard, brows, and eyelashes.
Endure this fyre, O Amvrosy, he would tell himself, for this flame will delyver you from the eternal fyre.
Amvrosy simmered cabbage soup in large clay pots. He put cabbage in it—either fresh or soured, sometimes with beets or wild sorrel. He would add onion and garlic, and mix in hemp oil. He cooked porridges from peas, oats, and buckwheat. On non-fasting days, boiled eggs were served with the cabbage soup, two per brother. On those days he would also fry, in a skillet, fish the brothers had caught in the lake. Or make fish soup. During the fast at Assumption, he fed them cucumbers served with honey. On usual days during Great Lent, he served cabbage with oil, diced radish, and bilberry ground with honey, and on Saturdays and Sundays there was black caviar with onion or red caviar with pepper. When he was serving the brethren, he usually ate after them, by himself in the kitchen, rather than at table. Amvrosy ate bread, washing it down with water, not touching the dishes he had prepared for them. Sitting by the fire.
Sometimes he would see his face in the fire. The face of a light-haired boy in Christofer’s home. A wolf curled up at the boy’s feet. The boy looks into the stove and sees his own face. Gray hair, gathered on the back of his neck, frames it. The face is covered with wrinkles. Despite the dissimilarity, the boy understands this is a reflection of himself. Only many years later. And under other circumstances. It is the reflection of someone who is sitting by the fire and sees the face of a light-haired boy and does not want the person who has entered to disturb him.
Brother Melety shifts from foot to foot at the threshold and, placing a finger to his lips, whispers to someone over his shoulder that Amvrosy, Doctor of All Rus’, is now busy. He is observing the flame.
Let her in, Melety, says Amvrosy, not turning. What do you want, O woman?
I want to lyve, O Doctor. Helpe me.
And you do not want to die?
There are those who want to die, explains Melety.
I have a son, O Amvrosy. Take pity on him.
Is he like that one? Amvrosy points at the mouth of the stove where the image of a boy is discernible in the contours of the flame.
There is no reason for you to kneel, my lady (Melety is agitated and gnawing his nails), he does not like that.
Amvrosy tears his gaze from the flame. He approaches the kneeling princess and sinks to his knees alongside her. Melety walks out, backwards. Amvrosy takes the princess by the chin and looks into her eyes. He wipes away her tears with the back of his hand.
You, O woman, have a tumor in your head. This is why your vision is worsening. And your hearing is dulling.
Amvrosy embraces her head and presses it to his chest. The princess hears the beating of his heart. The labored elderly breathing. Through his shirt, she feels the coolness of the cross he wears around his neck. The rigidity of his ribs. She herself is surprised she notices it all. Behind the closed doors, Melety is cutting splinters from logs so they may be used as lamps. There is no expression on his face.
Believe in the Lord and His Most Blessed Mother and ask their helpe. Amvrosy’s dry lips touch her forehead. And your tumor will shrink. Go in peace and grieve no more.
Why do you weep, O Amvrosy?
I weep from joy.
Amvrosy wordlessly turns to the wolf. The wolf licks away his tears.
And so, in the kitchen, Amvrosy was granted the gift of tears and when he was alone, tears perpetually washed his face. The tears flowed along the wrinkles on his cheeks but there were not enough wrinkles for the tears. So tears then carved new paths for themselves and new wrinkles appeared on Amvrosy’s face.
At first they were tears of sorrow. Amvrosy mourned Ustina and the baby and after them he mourned everyone he had loved in his life. He mourned those who had loved him, too, since he believed his life had not given them any joy. Amvrosy also mourned those who had not loved him and had vexed him at times, as well as those who had loved but vexed him, for that was how they expressed their love. He mourned himself and his life and did not know precisely what might be at issue. With his hope to live out Ustina’s life so it would be counted as her own, Arseny no longer understood where his life dwelled since he, after all, had not died. Finally, he wept bitterly for those he had not managed to save from death: there were certainly many of them.
And then his tears of sorrow changed into tears of gratitude. He was grateful to the Almighty that Ustina was not left without hope and that he, Amvrosy, could make pleas for her while he was alive and labor for her spiritual benefit. Amvrosy’s tears of gratitude came because he was still alive, which meant he was capable of good deeds. Amvrosy was also grateful to the Lord for a great many recovered people, for the opportunity afforded to them to be alive at a time when they should have been dead and no longer capable of good deeds.