If M, (her husband) found our, she'd poison herself. She wouldn't be able to stand the shame. Yes, yes, poison; rat poison. Through the torrent of her words, her babbling and sobbing, Chelyustnikov was hardly able to inject a word of comfort: she shouldn’t worry, it was all pure coincidence, he'd explain everything, but not now, he was in a hurry, the car was waiting downstairs. And she shouldn't think of rat poison. At 7:30 he got into the black limousine parked in front of the house; a few minutes before 7:45 he arrived at the Provincial Committee. Comrade Pyasnikov's eyes were red and puffy. They downed a glass of vodka, talked things over, and made telephone calls from 8:00 to 9:30, using two different offices so as not to disturb each other. At 9:3 °Comrade Pyasnikov, whose eyes were like a rabbit’s, pushed a button on his large walnut desk, and the cleaning woman brought in tea. For a long time they sipped the hot tea, smiling at each other like those who have accomplished a difficult and important task. At 10:00 they left for the railroad station to check on the security. Comrade Pyasnikov demanded that the poster with the slogan religion is the opiate of the people be removed and promptly replaced by another with a somewhat more metaphysical sound: long live the sun, DOWN with the night. Exactly at 11:00, as the train carrying the highly important guest pulled into the station, Chelyustnikov detached himself from the welcoming committee and joined the security agents, who were standing to one side, dressed in civilian clothes. They were carrying suitcases and pretending to be casual, curious passengers welcoming the friendly visitor from France with spontaneous applause. Quickly sizing up Herriot (who seemed to be somehow insignificant, perhaps because of his beret), Chelyustnikov left through the side door, got into the car, and drove off.
He arrived at Saint Sophia at exactly 12:00.
THE PAST
The Cathedral of Saint Sophia was built as a murky tribute to the glorious days of Vladimir, Yaroslav, and Izyaslav. It is only a distant replica of the Korsun Monastery, named after the "holy city” of Kerson, or Korsun, The chronicles of the learned Nestor note that Prince Vladimir brought icons, church statuary, as well as “four bronze horses" from Korsun, the city of his baptism.[5] But since the first cornerstone of Saint Sophia was laid by the eternally blessed Vladimir, much water and blood and many corpses have flowed down the glorious Dnieper. The ancient Slavic gods continued to struggle for a long time against the celebrated caprice of the prince of Kiev who adopted the monotheistic faith of Christianity, and the pagan Russian people fought with pagan brutality against "the sons of Dazh-Bog," and for a long time cast their deadly arrows and spears on the winds, "the children of Stribog.” The brutality of the believers in the true faith, however, was not less barbaric than pagan brutality, and the fanaticism of the believers in the tyranny of one god was still more fierce and efficient.
Holy Kiev, the mother of Russian cities, had some four hundred churches at the beginning of the eleventh century, and according to the chronicles of Dietmar of Merseburg, it became “the loveliest pearl of Byzantium and a rival of Constantinople.” Choosing the Byzantine Empire and faith, through Orthodoxy, Russia attached herself to an ancient and refined civilization, but because of its schism and the renunciation of Roman authority she was left to the mercy of the Mongol conquerers and could not rely on the protection of Europe. This schism, in turn, brought about the isolation of Russian Orthodoxy from the West; their churches were built on the sweat and bones of the peasants, ignorant of the high sweep of Gothic spires, while in the domain of sensibility Russia was never swept up by chivalry and would "beat her women as if the cult of the lady never existed.”
All this is more or less written on the walls and in the frescoes of Kiev’s Saint Sophia. The rest is only historical data of lesser significance: the church was founded by Yaroslav the Wise in 1037, in eternal memory of the day he triumphed over the pagan Petchenegs. He ordered the magnificent Golden Door built near the portal of the church, so that the mother of Russian cities, Kiev, would not envy Constantinople. Its glory was short-lived. The Mongol hordes poured out of the steppes (1240), and leveled the holy city. But Saint Sophia was already in ruins: in 1240 her vaults collapsed. At the same time, the vaults of a church named Desatna also collapsed, killing hundreds of people who had taken refuge there to avoid brutal massacre by the Mongols. In his Description of the Ukraine, published in Rouen in 1651, the Master of Beauplan, a Norman nobleman in the service of the Polish king, wrote words that resemble an epitaph: "Of all the Kiev churches, only two remain as a memory to posterity. The rest ate sad ruins: reliquiae reliquiarum."
The most famous mosaic of Saint Sophia, “The Virgin Mother Blessing," was glorified by the people of Kiev under the name Nerushimaya stena, the indestructible wail-a distant allusion to the twelfth stanza of the Akatist Hymn.
Legend, however, justifies this name in another way: when the church collapsed, all its walls crumbled except those of the apse, which stood undamaged, a gift of the Virgin Mother in the mosaic.
A CIRCUS IN THE HOUSE OF GOD
As irrelevant as it may seem at first (we shall see, though, that this irrelevancy is only an illusion), we cannot fail to mention at this point those strange frescoes that decorate the walls of the circular staircases leading to the upper floor, where the princes and their guests, the boyars, could participate in the service without leaving the palace. These frescoes were found under painting done in 1843; due to haste and curiosity-the mother of invention as well as error-the restoration had been carried out with the utmost carelessness: to the old patina, to the shimmer of gold and vestments, the nouveau riche dazzle of boyar wealth and luxury was added. Other than that, the scenes were left untouched: under the azure firmament of Byzantium, the hippodrome and circus; at the focal point, the honorary loge of the Emperor and Empress, surrounded by their retinue; behind the barrier, grooms waiting to release their rearing horses into the arena; hard faced warriors armed with spears, accompanied by a pack of hounds pursuing wild beasts; acrobats and actors performing their skills on the stage under the open sky; a muscular athlete holding a long pole on which an acrobat is climbing, as agile as a monkey; a gladiator armed with an ax, lunging at the tamet, who is wearing a bear's head.
The book of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, who speaks of the ceremonies at the Byzantine court in a chapter entitled "The Gothic Games,” gives us the meaning of the above depiction: "The entertainments, called Ludus Gothicus, are held every eighth day after Christmas at the will of His Gracious Majesty, and during that time the guests of His Gracious Majesty disguise themselves as Goths, wearing the masks and heads of various cruel beasts."
5
"Four bronze horse" (cbetire tone medioni), some experts claim, should be rendered "four bronze icons” (cbetire it one mediant). In this lexical ambivalence, we can see primarily an example of the conflict and merging of the two idolatries: the pagan and the Christian, My source, Jean Descane, discovered that all the pages relating to the Cathedral of Sim Sophia were taken almost verbatim from a French study of Russian art. He published an article on the subject in the Journal de Police, which is read i n Bordeaux and Toulouse; like a distant echo this added another circle to the metaphysical message of the story "Dogs and Books."