I am intentionally placing this long tirade about laughter here, even sacrificing the flow of the story, for I consider it one of the most serious conclusions of my life. And I especially recommend it to those would-be brides who are ready to marry their chosen man, but keep scrutinizing him with hesitation and mistrust, and can’t make the final decision. And let them not laugh at the pathetic adolescent for poking with his moral admonitions into the matter of marriage, of which he doesn’t understand the first thing. But I understand only that laughter is the surest test of a soul. Look at a child: only children know how to laugh perfectly—that’s what makes them seductive. A crying child is repulsive to me, but a laughing and merry child is a ray from paradise, a revelation from the future, when man will finally become as pure and simplehearted as a child. And so something childlike and incredibly attractive also flashed in the fleeting laughter of this old man. I went up to him at once.
III
“SIT, SIT A WHILE, must be your legs don’t stand firm yet,” he invited me affably, pointing to the place next to him and continuing to look into my face with the same radiant gaze. I sat down next to him and said:
“I know you, you’re Makar Ivanovich.”
“So I am, dear heart. And it’s a fine thing that you got up. You’re a young man, it’s a fine thing for you. An old man looks towards the grave, but a young man must live.”
“But are you ill?”
“I am, my friend, the legs mostly; they brought me as far as the doorstep, but once I sat down here, they got swollen. It came over me last Thursday, when the degrees set in” (N.B.—that is, when the frost set in). “I’ve been rubbing them with ointment so far, you see; two years ago Lichten, the doctor, Edmund Karlych, prescribed it to me in Moscow, and the ointment helped, oh, it helped; well, but now it’s stopped helping. And my chest is blocked up, too. And since yesterday it’s the back as well, like dogs nipping at me . . . I don’t sleep nights.”
“How is it I haven’t heard you here at all?” I interrupted. He looked at me as if he was trying to figure something out.
“Just don’t wake your mother,” he added, as if recalling something. “She fussed around me all night here, and so inaudibly, like a fly; but now I know she’s lying down. Ah, it’s bad for a sick old man,” he sighed. “Not much for the soul to hang on to, it seems, but still it holds on, but still it’s glad of the world; and, it seems, if you were to begin your whole life over again, the soul mightn’t fear even that; though maybe such a thought is sinful.”
“Why sinful?”
“It’s a dream, this thought, and an old man ought to depart in a handsome way. Again, if you meet death with murmuring or displeasure, it’s a great sin. Well, but if you love life out of spiritual mirth, then I suppose God will forgive, even if you’re an old man. It’s hard for a man to know about every sin, what’s sinful and what’s not; there’s a mystery here that passes human reason. An old man should be pleased at all times, and he should die in the full flower of his mind, blessedly and handsomely, full of days, sighing at his last hour and rejoicing, departing like the ear to its sheaf, and fulfilling his mystery.”
“You keep saying ‘mystery’; what is this ‘fulfilling his mystery’?” I asked, and looked back at the door. I was glad that we were alone and that there was undisturbed silence around us. The sun was shining brightly through the window before sunset. He spoke somewhat grandiloquently and imprecisely, but very sincerely and with some strong excitement, as if he was indeed so glad of my coming. But I noticed that he was undoubtedly in a feverish condition and even a strong one. I was also sick, also in a fever, from the moment I went in to him.
“What is a mystery? Everything is a mystery, my friend, there is God’s mystery in everything. Every tree, every blade of grass contains this same mystery. Whether it’s a small bird singing or the whole host of stars shining in the sky at night—it’s all one mystery, the same one. And the greatest mystery of all is what awaits the human soul in the other world. That’s how things are, my friend!”
“I don’t know in what sense . . . Of course, I’m not saying it to tease you, and, believe me, I do believe in God, but all these mysteries have long been revealed by the human mind, and what hasn’t been revealed will be revealed, quite certainly and maybe in the nearest time. Botany has perfect knowledge of how trees grow, physiologists and anatomists even know why birds sing, or will know it soon, and as for the stars, they’ve not only all been counted, but all their movements have been calculated to the minute, so that it’s possible to predict the appearance of some comet a thousand years ahead . . . and now even the composition of the remotest stars has become known. Take a microscope—it’s like a magnifying glass that magnifies objects a million times—and examine a drop of water through it, and you’ll see a whole new world there, a whole life of living beings, and yet this was also a mystery, but now it has been revealed.”
“I’ve heard of that, dear heart, more than once I’ve heard it from people. There’s nothing to say, it’s a great and glorious thing; everything has been given over to man by the will of God; it’s not for nothing that God blew into him the breath of life: ‘Live and know.’”
“Well, that’s a commonplace. Anyhow, you’re not an enemy of science, not a clericalist? That is, I don’t know if you’ll understand . . .”
“No, dear heart, from my youth I’ve respected learning, and though I have no knowledge myself, I don’t murmur about that; if I don’t have it, someone else does. And maybe it’s better that way, because to each his own. Because, my dear friend, not everyone profits from learning. They’re all intemperate, they all want to astonish the whole universe, and I might want it more than anyone, if I were clever. But not being clever at all now, how can I exalt myself, when I don’t know anything? You’re young and sharp, and that’s the lot that has fallen to you, you must study. Learn everything, so that when you meet a godless or mischievous man, you can give him answers, so that he won’t hurl insensate words at you and confuse your immature thoughts. And that glass I saw not so long ago.”
He paused for breath and sighed. I had decidedly given him great pleasure by coming. He had a morbid desire for communication. Besides that, I will decidedly not be mistaken if I maintain that he looked at me, at moments, even with some extraordinary love: he placed his hand on my arm caressingly, stroked my shoulder . . . well, but at moments, I must confess, he seemed to forget all about me, as though he were sitting alone, and while he went on speaking ardently, it was as if somewhere into the air.
“In St. Gennady’s hermitage, my friend,” he went on, “there’s a man of great intelligence. He’s of a noble family and a lieutenant-colonel by rank, and he possesses great wealth. While he lived in the world, he did not want to commit himself to marriage; he withdrew from the world ten years ago now, loving peace and silent havens and resting his senses from worldly vanities. He observes the whole monastic rule, but he doesn’t want to be tonsured. And of books, my friend, he has so many, I’ve never seen anyone have so many—he told me himself it was eight thousand roubles’ worth. Pyotr Valeryanych he’s called. He taught me much at various times, and I loved listening to him exceedingly. I said to him once, ‘How is it, sir, that with such great intelligence as yours, and living for ten years now in monastic obedience and the complete cutting off of your will—how is it that you don’t accept honorable tonsuring so as to be more perfect?’ And to that he replied, ‘How can you go talking about my intelligence, old man? Maybe it’s my intelligence that holds me captive, and not I who control it. And how can you discuss my obedience? Maybe I lost my measure long ago. And about the cutting off of my will? I could give away my money this very moment, and give up my rank, and put all my medals on the table this very moment, but for ten years I’ve struggled to give up my tobacco pipe, and I can’t. What kind of monk am I after that, and what is this cutting off of my will that you praise?’ And I was astonished then at this humility. Well, so last summer, during the Peter and Paul fast, 2I came to that hermitage again—the Lord brought me—and I saw that very thing—a microscope—standing in his cell—he had ordered it from abroad for a lot of money. ‘Wait, old man,’ he says, ‘I’ll show you an astonishing thing, because you’ve never seen it before. You see a drop of water pure as a tear, well, then look at what there is in it, and you’ll see that the mechanics will soon search out all the mysteries of God and won’t leave a single one for you and me’—that’s what he said. I remember it. And I had already looked through a microscope thirty-five years ago, at Alexander Vladimirovich Malgasov’s, our master, Andrei Petrovich’s uncle on his mother’s side, whose estate went to Andrei Petrovich after his death. He was an important squire, a big general, and kept a big pack of hounds, and I lived for many years as his huntsman. It was then that he also set up this microscope, he brought it with him and told all the servants to come and look, one by one, both the male and the female sex, and they were shown a flea, and a louse, and the point of a needle, and a hair, and a drop of water. And it was funny: they were afraid to go look, and they were afraid of the master, too—he was hot-tempered. Some didn’t even know how to look, they squinted one eye but didn’t see anything, others got scared and shouted, and the headman Savin Makarov covered his eyes with both hands and shouted, ‘Do what you want with me—I won’t look!’ There was a lot of empty laughter. However, I didn’t tell Pyotr Valeryanych that I had seen this same wonder before, thirty-five years ago, because I saw the man took great pleasure in showing it, so I began, on the contrary, to marvel and be terrified. He waited a while and then asked, ‘Well, old man, what do you say now?’ And I straightened myself up and said, ‘The Lord said: Let there be light, and there was light.’ But to that he suddenly replied, ‘And wasn’t there darkness?’ And he said it so strangely, not even smiling. I was astonished at him then, but he even seemed a little angry and fell silent.”