Vasilisa herself did not see dirt; everything had to be pointed out to her. But once she saw what needed to be cleaned, she would scrub not just until it shined, but until she dropped . . . She did not know even the simplest things, such as that brooms need to be dampened and the floor sprinkled before sweeping. And how would she know, having lived her whole life on a dirt floor. When they told her, she sprinkled the floor so much that she needed a rag, not a broom, to soak up all the dirty water. At this trade, too, Vasilisa turned out to have “no smarts.”
Lizelotta Mikhailovna Klotske could not keep Vasilisa on at the workshop, but she did not want to put her out on the street, so she decided to consult her old girlfriend from school days, Evgenia Fedorovna Nechaeva. She brought Vasilisa to Evgenia Fedorovna’s place in Trekhprudny Lane. A certain helpless meekness in Vasilisa compelled these old friends to care for her.
Although she was rather tall and had long legs and a fine torso, Vasilisa’s arms were short, and she constantly kept her large, coarse hands folded against her chest. Her face was long and ellipsoidal, her gaze mournful and severe, her nose thin and longish like her face, her skin a swarthy rose color, smooth, like enamel . . . In a word, not a pretty village face, but a Byzantine countenance.
“Not your typical look,” Lizelotta said to Evgenia while the girl was being fed in the kitchen, “and not at all Russian. Interesting. Pity the poor thing has lost an eye . . . Think, Zhenechka, what use can she be put to? She’s a very diligent girl, but entirely unfit for our business. She’s also not suitable as domestic help, I think . . .”
OVER GENTEEL CUPS OF COFFEE THE TWO OLD FRIENDS decided that they would ask a third schoolmate for help—Anechka Tatarinova, who soon after graduation from school had lost her fiancé, entered a monastery, and for a number of years already had been abbess at a small monastery in the N administrative district . . .
Vasilisa remained at Evgenia Fedorovna’s, and a week later transportation was found: a family of acquaintances was traveling to visit the abbess. They asked them to take Vasilisa along. Vasilisa carried a letter to Mother Anatolia, formerly Anechka, written by her old school friends. The letter contained a request to the abbess that she “take part” in deciding the fate of the poor orphan. “Take part” was already in its third iteration, but, amazingly, each of the petitioners was successful in her own way . . .
The family traveled by train and bought Vasilisa an expensive ticket in a car with compartments and sat her down on the velvet seat, which she stroked half the trip, feasting her fingers on the unusually soft feel. Then tea was served, but when they offered her some, she grabbed the glass so awkwardly that it fell out of the glass holder. The hot tea scalded her leg, but the pain of the burn was nothing by comparison with her horror at having broken the glass . . . Her kind traveling companions tried to calm her down, but she was almost paralyzed by grief, as if she had destroyed not a glass but a living creature.
Toward evening they arrived in N, a beautifully snow-covered ancient city where they spent the night in a hotel on the same square as the train station, and poor Vasilisa once again reeled from magnificence she had never known. She was given a place to sleep with another girl, who, while obviously not of the same class as their benefactors, was also no country bumpkin. The beds where they slept had such white linen that Vasilisa feared soiling the pillow . . . All this opulence gave Vasilisa no joy and only frightened her.
Early the next morning they set off in two wooden sleighs. Both the sleighs and the horses were handsome, entirely unlike her brother’s in the village. Riding in the sleighs was more what she was accustomed to and more fun than on the train. The monastery was fifteen miles away, the weather was the best kind of winter weather—just below freezing with a springtime sun that blinded your eyes and tickled your nose . . . It was the eve of Candlemas.
The horses sped gaily down the smooth road as if they too were gladdened by the sun. Vasilisa’s scalded knee hurt a lot, but her embarrassment had been so great that the pain seemed to exist apart from her.
The monastery appeared behind a turn: it stood on a rise, like rice funeral porridge in a bowl, all white with glistening snow, with white walls and golden cupolas and an open bell tower that stood out artfully against the blue, rock-hard sky . . . The sudden beauty of this sight melted Vasilisa’s numbness, and she began to weep. Tears streamed from both her eyes. Her left eye could not see, but it could cry.
The sleighs stopped at the closed gates. The sister on guard came running out, waved her arms, and smiled: they were expected.
“The house has been prepared for you . . . Reverend Mother has been waiting for you since yesterday evening.”
OTHER GUESTS WERE ACCOMMODATED IN THE SMALL monastery hotel, but the abbess received those in her inner circle, this family and several others, relatives, in her small house next to the church.
The family’s little girl, about seven years of age, demanded kissel as soon as she got out of the sleigh. The gatekeeper stroked the fur on her bonnet:
“Go to the refectory, my child. Reverend Mother said to leave some bread and kissel for you . . . Just then a small, lean woman in a tall, stiff black velvet headdress and wool habit came out. Vasilisa understood that this was the abbess . . .
The family that had brought Vasilisa with them lined up in single file along the narrow shoveled path and proceeded to the porch. Vasilisa was last in line. Greeting her distant relations, the abbess sensed an almost physical terror and awe coming from the stooped, poorly dressed little girl whose short arms with coarse red hands were folded across her chest.
They’ve brought their new domestic with them, the abbess decided, and beckoned the little girl to come closer. The little girl’s clear, seeing eye closed from fear and the other one shone white as the abbess removed her fluffy black mittens and extended them to Vasilisa. Vasilisa was unable to take them and dropped them on the snow. The seven-year-old little girl who stood alongside her laughed into her fur collar . . .
And so it came to be that even before she had read the letter of recommendation, the abbess gave her heart’s consent to accept Vasilisa.
Vasilisa began her monastery life at age fourteen: the first two years she was a worker, then she became a novice. Her novitiate was always connected to chores: in the kitchen, the cow barn, and the fields. They tried giving her other work, but she did not have a good enough voice for the choir, or any special womanly talent for gold embroidery. As before, she considered herself an insignificant, unimportant being, not worth the food she consumed. It was precisely this that so touched the abbess, and in the third year of Vasilisa’s life in the monastery the abbess adopted as her own this novice dispossessed of any redeeming qualities in the eyes of the other residents of the monastery.
The abbess began to teach Vasilisa to read, at first Russian, then Church Slavonic. Learning came to Vasilisa with great difficulty. Mother Anatolia, aware all her life of her own lack of patience, practiced humility by teaching this sweet but exceptionally learning-disabled girl. Every day, immediately after morning services, Vasilisa spent an hour in the abbess’s room. She placed her light-blue notebook on the edge of the table and looked at Mother Anatolia with a devoted and fearful gaze. Inclined toward intellectual pursuits—which she herself considered sinful games—and fluent since youth in multiple languages, the abbess marveled at the intricate variation in human abilities. There was no doubt that Vasilisa demonstrated the height of resistance to learning, not to say stupidity. Before Vasilisa the abbess could never have imagined that a person could repeat one and the same error so many times before learning how to write or pronounce a word correctly.