V
We all apologized to my uncle and brought him to a room where he could change his traveling clothes. Ivan Leontych changed his felt boots for leather ones, put on a frock coat, and sat down by the samovar, and mother began asking him what sort of church business he had come on, that he should go to the trouble even during the feast days, and where his companion by our gate had disappeared to.
Ivan Leontych replied:
“It’s big business. You must understand that I’m now the church warden, and our deacon tore something on the very first day of the feast.”
Mama says:
“We hadn’t heard.”
“As if you ever hear anything interesting! Your town’s such a backwater.”
“But how was it that your deacon tore something?”
“Ah, my dear, he suffered it on account of his zeal. He began serving nicely on the occasion of our deliverance from the Gauls,7 and kept singing louder, and louder, and still louder, and suddenly, as he exclaimed ‘for the salvation’—a vein burst on him. They went to take him from the ambo, and he already had a boot full of blood.”
“He died?”
“No. The merchants didn’t let that happen: they called in a doctor. Would our merchants just abandon him? The doctor says he may yet recover, but he won’t have any voice. So I came here with our foremost parishioner to make sure our deacon gets sent to the nuns in some convent or other, and here we must choose ourselves the best one from all you’ve got.”
“And who is this foremost parisher of yours and where did he go off to?”
“Our foremost parishioner is named Pavel Mironych Mukomol. He’s married to a rich Moscow woman. The wedding celebration went on for a whole week. He’s very devoted to the church and knows all the church services better than any archdeacon. So everybody begged him: go, and look, and choose; the one you like will be to our liking, too. Everybody, old and young, honors him. And he, with his enormous capital, owner of three houses, and a candle factory, and a flour mill, obeyed at once and dropped it all for the church necessity and came flying. He’ll take a room in the Repinskaya Inn now. Are they tricksters there, or honest?”
Mama replied:
“I don’t know.”
“There you have it, you live here and don’t know anything.”
“We’re afraid of inns.”
“Well, never mind. Pavel Mironych is also not easily offended: there’s no stronger fistfighter in Elets or in Livny. Whenever there’s a fight, two or three men fall by his hand. Last year, during Lent, he went on purpose to Tula, and though he’s a miller, he up and left two of the foremost samovarniks there with ruptures.”8
Mama and my aunt crossed themselves.
“Lord!” they said. “Why have you brought such a man to us at Christmastime?”
But my uncle laughs:
“What are you women afraid of?” he says. “Our parishioner’s a good man, and for this church business I can’t do without him. He and I came on the spur of the moment to snatch what suits us and leave.”
Mama and my aunt gasp again.
“What are you doing, brother, making such frightful jokes!”
My uncle laughs even more merrily.
“Eh,” he says, “you lady-crows, you Orel merchant-wives! Your town’s maybe a town, maybe a burnt-down place—it doesn’t resemble anything, and you yourselves sit in it like smoked sardines stuffed in a box! No, your town’s a far cry from our Elets, never mind that it’s a provincial capital. Our Elets is a little district town, but in a Moscow gown, and you can’t even appreciate what you’ve got that’s good here. And that’s just what we’ll take away from you.”
“What is it?”
“We need a good deacon for our parish, and they say you’ve got two deacons with voices: one at the Theophany in the marketplace, the other in the clerks’ quarter, at St. Nicetas. We’ll give them a listen in all styles, and we’ll choose whichever one Pavel Mironych decides is more suited to our Elets taste, and we’ll lure him away and make a deal with him; and the one who doesn’t suit us we’ll call number two: he’ll get money for a new cassock for his trouble. Pavel Mironych has already gone now to gather them for a tryout, and I must go at once to the Boris and Gleb cathedral; they say you’ve got an innkeeper there whose inn is always empty. So we’ll take three connecting rooms in this empty inn and hold the audition. You, Mishutka my lad, will have to come now and take me there.”
I ask:
“Are you speaking to me, uncle?”
He replies:
“Obviously. Who else but you, Mishutka? Well, if you’re offended, then allow me to call you Mikhailo Mikhailovich. Do us a family service—kindly lead your uncle through this strange land.”
I cleared my throat and answered politely:
“Uncle, dear, it’s not on account of that: I’m not offended at anything, and I’m ready and glad to do it, but I’m not my own man and do as mama tells me.”
Mama didn’t like it at alclass="underline"
“Why, dear brother, should you take Misha with you to such company?! You can have someone else lead you.”
“I find it more proper to go with my nephew.”
“But what does he know?!”
“He most likely knows everything. Mishutka, do you know everything?”
I got embarrassed.
“No,” I say, “I can’t know everything.”
“Why’s that?”
“Mama won’t allow it.”
“Just look at that! And what do you think: can an uncle always guide his nephew in everything, or not? Of course he can. Get dressed at once and let’s be gone before trouble comes on.”
I started to go, then stood there like a post: I listened to him, but saw that mama didn’t want to let me go for anything.
“Our Misha,” she said, “is still young, he’s not used to going out anywhere at night. Why do you insist on having him? It will be dark before you notice, and the thieves’ time will come.”
But here my uncle even yelled at them:
“Enough playing the fool, really! What are you stewing him in your women’s skirts for! The boy’s grown so big he can kill an ox, and you still coddle him like a baby. It’s all nothing but your female foolishness, and he’ll be the worse off for it because of you. He has to have his life forces developed and his character firmed up, and I need him because, God forbid, in the darkness or in some back street your Orel thieves may actually fall upon me or I may run into a police patrol—you see, I have all our money for the business with me … There’s enough to dump our torn deacon on the nuns and lure your mighty one to us … Can it be that you, my own sisters, are so unfamilial that you want me, your brother, to be bashed on the head or picked up by the police, and end up there with nothing?”
My mother says:
“God save us from that—families aren’t only respected in Elets! But take our clerk with you, or even two sturdy fullers. Our fullers are from Kromy, they’re terribly strong, they eat some eight pounds a day of bread alone, besides other things.”
My uncle didn’t want to.
“What good are your hired people to me?” he says. “You sisters even ought to be ashamed to say it, and I’d be ashamed and afraid to go with them. Kromy men! And you call them good people! They’d go with me and be the first to kill me, but Misha’s my nephew—with him at least it will be brave and proper.”
He stood his ground and wouldn’t give way:
“You can’t possibly refuse me this,” he says. “Otherwise I renounce you as my family.”
My mother and aunt became frightened at that and exchanged glances, meaning “What on earth should we do?”
Ivan Leontych persisted:
“And understand that it’s not just a family matter! Remember, I’m not taking him for my own amusement or pleasure, but on a Church necessity. Can you refuse me that? Consider well. To refuse that is the same as refusing God. The boy’s a servant of God; God’s will is upon him: you want him to stay with you, but God just won’t let him stay.”