" 'What are you doing? What are you going to burn?' he said, and went up to the portrait. 'Good heavens, it's one of your best works. It's that moneylender who died recently; but it's a most perfect thing. You simply got him, not between the eyes but right in them. No eyes have ever stared the way you've made them stare.'
"'And now I'll see how they stare in the fire,' said my father, making a move to hurl it into the fireplace.
"'Stop, for God's sake!' said the friend, holding him back. 'Better give it to me, if you find it such an eyesore.'
"My father resisted at first, but finally consented, and the happy fellow, extremely pleased with his acquisition, took the portrait home.
"After he left, my father suddenly felt himself more at ease. Just as if, along with the portrait, a burden had fallen from his soul. He was amazed himself at his wicked feeling, his envy, and the obvious change in his character. Having considered his behavior, he was saddened at heart and said, not without inner grief:
" 'No, it is God punishing me. My painting deserved to suffer disgrace. It was intended to destroy my brother. The demonic feel- ing of envy guided my brush, and demonic feeling was bound to be reflected in it.'
"He immediately went to look for his former pupil, embraced him warmly, asked his forgiveness, and tried his best to smooth over his guilt before him. His work again went on as serenely as before; but pensiveness now showed more often on his face. He prayed more, was more often taciturn, and did not speak so sharply about people; the external roughness of his character somehow softened. Soon one circumstance shook him still more. He had not seen the friend who had begged the portrait from him for a long time. He was just about to go and see him when the man suddenly walked into his room unexpectedly. After a few words and questions on both sides, he said:
"'Well, brother, you weren't wrong to want to burn the portrait. Devil take it, there's something strange in it… I don't believe in witches, but like it or not, there's some unclean power sitting in it…'
" 'Meaning what?' said my father.
" 'Meaning that once I hung it in my room, I felt such anguish as if I wanted to put a knife in somebody. Never in my whole life have I known what insomnia is, and now I had not only insomnia but such dreams… I myself can't tell whether they were dreams or something else-as if some evil spirit was strangling me-and the accursed old man kept appearing in them. In short, I can't tell you what a state I was in. Nothing like it has ever happened to me. I wandered about like a lunatic all those days. I kept feeling some kind of fear, expecting something unpleasant. I felt I couldn't say a cheerful and sincere word to anybody: just as if some sort of spy was sitting next to me. And it was only when I gave the portrait to my nephew, who asked for it himself, that I suddenly felt as if a weight had fallen from my shoulders: I suddenly felt cheerful, as you see me now. Well, brother, you cooked up quite a devil!'
"My father listened to the story all the while with undivided attention, and finally said:
" 'And the portrait is now with your nephew?'
"'My nephew, hah! He couldn't stand it,' the cheerful fellow said. 'The moneylender's very soul must have transmigrated into it: he jumps out of the frame, walks around the room; and what my nephew tells, the mind simply can't grasp. I'd have taken him for a madman if I hadn't experienced some of it myself. He, too, sold it to some art collector, but that one couldn't bear it either and also unloaded it on somebody.'
"This story made a strong impression on my father. He fell to pondering seriously, lapsed into hypochondria, and in the end became fully convinced that his brush had served as a tool of the devil, that part of the moneylender's life had indeed passed somehow into the portrait and was now troubling people, inspiring them with demonic impulses, seducing the artist from his path, generating terrible torments of envy, and so on and so forth. Three misfortunes which befell him after that, three sudden deaths- his wife's, his daughter's, and his young son's-he considered as heaven's punishment of him, and he was absolutely resolved to leave this world. As soon as I turned nine, he enrolled me in the Academy of Art and, after paying off his creditors, withdrew to an isolated monastery, where he was soon tonsured a monk. There he amazed all the brothers by his strictness of life and unremitting observance of all monastery rules. The superior of the monastery, learning of his skill with the brush, requested that he paint the central icon in the church. But the humble brother said flatly that he was unworthy to take up his brush, that it had been defiled, that he would have to purify his soul with labors and great sacrifices before he would be worthy of setting about such a task. They did not wish to force him. He increased the strictness of monastery life for himself as far as possible. Finally even that became insufficient and not strict enough for him. With the blessing of his superior, he withdrew to the wilderness in order to be completely alone. There he built himself a hut out of branches, ate nothing but raw roots, dragged stones on his back from one place to another, stood in one place from dawn till sunset with his arms raised to heaven, ceaselessly reciting prayers. In short, he seemed to seek out all possible degrees of endurance and that inconceivable self-denial of which examples may be found only in the lives of the saints. Thus for a long time, over the course of several years, he exhausted his body, strengthening it at the same time with the vivifying power of prayer. Finally one day he came to the monastery and said firmly to the superior, 'Now I am ready. God willing, I will accomplish my work.' The subject he chose was the Nativity of Jesus. For a whole year he sat over it without leaving his cell, barely sustaining himself with strict fare, praying ceaselessly. At the end of a year, the picture was ready. It was indeed a miracle of the brush. You should know that neither the brothers nor the superior had much knowledge of painting, but everyone was struck by the extraordinary holiness of the figures; the feeling of divine humility and meekness in the face of the most pure Mother leaning over the Child, the profound intelligence in the eyes of the divine Child, as if they already perceived something in the distance, the solemn silence of the kings, struck by the divine wonder and prostrate at his feet, and, finally, the holy, inexpressible silence enveloping the whole picture-all this was expressed with such harmonious force and power of beauty that it produced a magical impression. The brothers all fell on their knees before the new icon, and the superior, moved to tenderness, said, 'No, it is not possible for a man, with the aid of human art only, to produce such a picture. A higher, holy power guided your brush, and the blessing of heaven rests on your work.' "Just then I finished my studies at the Academy, was given a gold medal and along with it the joyous hope of going to Italy-the best of dreams for a twenty-year-old painter. It only remained for me to bid farewell to my father, from whom I had parted twelve years earlier. I confess, even his very image had long since vanished from my memory. I had heard something about the strict holiness of his life and imagined beforehand meeting a hermit with a hard appearance, alien to everything in the world except his cell and his prayer, wasted away, dried up with eternal watching and fasting. What was my astonishment when there stood before me a beautiful, almost divine elder! No traces of exhaustion were to be seen on his face; it shone with the brightness of heavenly joy. A beard white as snow and fine, almost ethereal hair of the same silvery color flowed picturesquely down his breast and the folds of his black cassock, falling to the very rope tied around his poor monastic garb; but the most amazing thing for me was to hear from his lips such words and thoughts about art as, I confess, I shall long bear in my soul, and I wish sincerely that every brother of mine could do likewise.