Anastasia wakes up early in the morning from the cool air. The fire has burned down. Laurus is half-sitting, his back leaning against a pine tree. He is holding the baby in his arms. The baby is breathing evenly. He is warm in Laurus’s embrace. After taking the baby from Laurus’s arms, Anastasia gives him her breast. The child wakes and hungrily smacks his lips.
Laurus’s eyes are closed. The sun’s first rays lie on his eyelids. The rays slide through morning’s vapors. Pine needles shine. The shadows are long. The air is thick, for it has not yet lost the scent of the awakening forest. The moss is moist. It is filled with creatures for whom home is a leaf and life is a day. Anastasia sinks to her knees before Laurus and looks at him for a long time. She touches his hand with her lips. The hand is cool but not yet cold. Anastasia sits alongside Laurus. Presses against him. Anastasia knows Laurus is dead. She knew this even in her sleep.
I slept through your death, Anastasia says to Laurus, but my child saw you off.
Ionah, archbishop of Rostov, Yaroslavl, and Belozersk, is walking along the shore of Lake Nero. He always takes a walk there before the morning service. This is the deepest lake on earth but the water is only clean at the surface. What is deeper is silty: it does not release anyone who ends up there. Ionah knows this. He admires the lake’s depth, even as he is aware of its danger. In keeping with his given name, he is not afraid of depths, but he does not recommend that his spiritual children leave firm ground. Ionah is surprised when he sees a person gliding along the surface of the lake.
Who are you who walks on water? asks Archbishop Ionah.
I am God’s servant Innokenty. I report to you of the death of God’s servant Laurus.
Just you be careful in the depths, says Ionah, shaking his head.
Based on Innokenty’s smile, Ionah understands his advice is redundant. With that same smile, Innokenty visits Pitirim, bishop of Perm and Vologda, in a divine dream. He announces Laurus’s death to Pitirim.
Ask that they not bury him yet, Bishop Pitirim tells Innokenty.
No need to worry, O bishop, answers Innokenty, because he will not be buried.
Anastasia takes the child and goes to Rukina Quarter. The residents gather around her. Anastasia tells them of Laurus’s death. She declares that the real father of her child is miller Tikhon, who forbade her to tell of this, under threat of death.
If this information corresponds to the facts, the residents tell Tikhon, you had better confess because this would cast a shadow on a righteous man and Final Judgment will not be easy for you.
For some time, Tikhon does not confess. He keeps his silence, choosing between earthly and heavenly judgment. After weighing everything, the miller says:
I confess in the syghte of all that, after offering flour in a time of hunger, I deflowered the aforesaid Anastasia, and also that, fearing disclosure, I threatened her with death, though if I think things through, I wonder who would have believed her. I see this girl’s youth and freshness as the reason for my fall along with, however, the withered condition of my own spouse, who was under the care of the deceased Laurus.
Abbot Alipy arrives in Rukina Quarter. He is gloomy. Alipy has ordered Laurus’s body not be touched before the arrival of the bishops. After delivering the liturgy, he does not allow any residents older than seven years to Communion. The residents are anxious. Alipy leaves.
The news of Laurus’s departure spreads with lightning speed. People sense this most of all in Rukina Quarter, where soon there is no room in any of the houses. There is no room in any of the nearby villages, either. Those who arrive build shelters in the surrounding areas. Some, in light of it being summertime, spend the night under the open sky. Everyone knows miracles can occur at the interment of a righteous man.
There assemble the maimed, blind, lame, leprous, deaf, mute, and those with impediments of their speech. They carry those sick of the palsie from various places, some distant. They lead the possessed, who are tied in ropes or shackled in chains. There arrive impotent husbands, infertile wives, the husbandless, widows, and orphans. There come the black and white clergy, brethren of the Kirillov Monastery, princes of princedoms large and small, boyars, mayors, and colonels. There gather those who were once treated by Laurus, those who had heard a lot about him but never seen him, those who want to see where and how Laurus lived, and also those who love a large convergence of the people. It seems to those witnessing the proceedings that the entire Russian land has gathered.
Laurus’s body continues to lie under the pine tree by the entrance to the cave. It contains no traces of decomposition but those guarding it are on the alert. They approach the body every hour and inhale the smell that comes from it. Their nostrils quiver with diligence but they detect only the aroma of grass and pinecones. The guards proclaim this in the glade, with cries of astonishment, but at the bottom of their souls they themselves firmly know this is exactly how everything should be.
On August 18, in the year 7028 since the Creation of the world and the year 1520 since Christ’s Birth, when the number of people who have come reaches 183,000, they raise Laurus’s body from the earth and carefully carry it through the forest. This transfer is accompanied by funereal birdsong. The deceased’s body is light. One-hundred eighty-three thousand people are waiting at the forest’s edge.
As Laurus’s body comes out of a thicket and into sight, everyone drops to their knees: first those who have seen him and then, row by row, those behind them. The bishops and monastic clergy accept his body. They carry it on their heads and the crowd before them parts, like the sea. Their path leads to the church built where Christofer’s house stood. The funeral service takes place there. Tens of thousands wordlessly wait outside.
The service inside the church is not audible to the crowd. At first even the words Abbot Alipy utters just outside the church are not audible, either: he is proclaiming Laurus’s last will. But Alipy did utter these words. They spread through the crowd like rings from a stone cast in water. A minute later, this human sea goes silent, for something unprecedented lies ahead.
In full silence, they carry Laurus’s body through the crowd. They place it in the grass on the edge of the green meadow. The grass gently envelops Laurus, expressing its willingness to accept him in his entirety, since they are not alien to one another. It was on this meadow that Christofer showed the deceased where the earthly firmament and the heavenly firmament meet.
Laurus’s feet are tied with a rope, with the rope’s two ends extending outward. Screams are heard in the crowd. Someone rushes to tear away the rope but he is brought down immediately and pulled off into the crowd. If viewed from above, those standing appear to be an unprecedented accumulation of dots and only Laurus has length.
Ionah, Archbishop of Rostov, Yaroslavl, and Belozersk, approaches one end of the rope. Pitirim, bishop of Perm and Vologda, approaches the other end of the rope. They kneel and soundlessly pray. They take the ends of the rope in their hands, kiss them, and stand up straight. Cross themselves in unison. The hems of their robes and the ends of their beards flap in unity. The proportions of their shapes are uniformly deformed by the wind, for both are flaring out to the right. The two of them work as one. Their gazes are addressed above.
Archbishop Ionah nods ever so slightly and they take their first step. The endless crowd behind them repeats that step. The crowd’s endless sigh overpowers the sound of the wind. The arms on Laurus’s chest shudder and burst apart as if in an embrace. They drag behind the body. Fingering the grass just as rosary beads are fingered. The eyelids quiver, making everyone think Laurus is ready to wake up.