‘Who comes to see you? Who looks after you?’
‘There are kind people here as well. They don’t leave me by myself. But I don’t need much looking after. So far as feeding goes, I don’t eat anything, and I have water – there it is in that mug: it always stands by me full of pure spring water. I can stretch out to the mug myself, because I’ve still got the use of one arm. Then there’s a little girl here, an orphan; now and then she drops by, and I’m grateful to her. She’s just this minute gone… Did you meet her? She’s so pretty, so fair-skinned. She brings me flowers – I’m a great one for them, flowers, I mean. We haven’t any garden flowers. There used to be some here, but they’ve all disappeared. But field flowers are pretty too, and they have more scent than the garden flowers. Lilies-of-the-valley now – there’s nothing lovelier!’
‘Aren’t you bored, my poor Lukeria, don’t you feel frightened?’
‘What’s a person to do? I don’t want to pretend – at first, yes, I felt very low, but afterwards I grew used to it, I learnt to be patient – now it’s nothing. Others are much worse off.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Some haven’t even got a home! And others are blind or dumb! I can see perfectly, praise be to God, and I can hear everything, every little thing. If there’s a mole digging underground, I can hear it. And I can smell every scent, it doesn’t matter how faint it is! If the buckwheat is just beginning to flower in the field or a lime tree is just blossoming in the garden, I don’t have to be told: I’m the first to smell the scent, if the wind’s coming from that direction. No, why should I make God angry with my complaints? Many are worse off than I am. Look at it this way: a healthy person can sin very easily, but my sin has gone out of me. Not long ago Father Aleksey, the priest, was beginning to give me communion and he said: “There can’t be any need to hear your confession, for how can you sin in your condition?” But I answered him: “What about a sin of the mind, father?” “Well,” he said and laughed, “that kind of sin’s not very serious.”
‘And, it’s true, I’m not really sinful even with sins of the mind,’ Lukeria went on, ‘because I’ve learned myself not to think and, what’s more, not even to remember. Time passes quicker that way.’
This surprised me, I must admit.
‘You are so much by yourself, Lukeria, so how can you prevent thoughts from entering your head? Or do you sleep all the time?’
‘Oh, no, master! Sleep’s not always easy for me. I may not have big pains, but something’s always gnawing at me, right there inside me, and in my bones as well. It doesn’t let me sleep as I should. No… I just he like this and go on lying here, not thinking. I sense that I’m alive, I breathe – and that’s all there is of me. I look and I smell scents. Bees in the apiary hum and buzz, then a dove comes and sits on the roof and starts cooing, and a little brood-hen brings her chick in to peck crumbs; then a sparrow’ll fly in or a butterfly – I enjoy it all very much. The year before last swallows made a nest over there in the corner and brought up their young. Oh, how interesting that was! One of them would fly in, alight on the little nest, feed the young ones – and then off again. I’d take another look and there’d be another swallow there in place of the first. Sometimes it wouldn’t fly in but just go past the open door, and then the baby birds’d start chirping and opening their little beaks… The next year I waited for them, but they say a hunter in these parts shot them with his gun. Now what good could he have got from doing that? After all, a swallow’s no more harm than a beetle. What wicked men you are, you hunters!’
‘I don’t shoot swallows,’ I hastened to point out.
‘And one time,’ Lukeria started to say again, ‘there was a real laugh! A hare ran in here! Yes, really! Whether dogs were chasing him or not, I don’t know, only he came running straight in through the door! He sat down quite close and spent a long time sniffing the air and twitching his whiskers – a regular little officer he was! And he took a look at me and realized that I couldn’t do him any harm. Eventually he upped and jumped to the door and looked all round him on the doorstep – he was a one, he was! Such a comic!’
Lukeria glanced up at me, as if to say: wasn’t that amusing? To please her, I gave a laugh. She bit her dried-up lips.
‘In the winter, of course, things are worse for me. I’m left in the dark, you see – it’s a pity to light a candle and anyhow what’d be the good of it? I know how to read and was always real keen on reading, but what’s there to read here? There are no books here, and even if there were, how would I be able to hold it, the book, I mean? Father Aleksey brought me a church calendar so as to distract me, but he saw it wasn’t any use and picked it up and took it away again. But even though it’s dark, I’ve always got something to listen to – maybe a cricket’ll start chirruping or a mouse’ll begin scratching somewhere. That’s when it’s good not to be thinking at all!’
After a short rest, Lukeria continued: ‘Or else I say prayers. Only I don’t know many of them, of those prayers. And why should I start boring the Lord God with my prayers? What can I ask him for? He knows better than I do what’s good for me. He sent me a cross to carry, which means he loves me. That’s how we’re ordained to understand our suffering. I say Our Father, and the prayer to the Blessed Virgin, and I sing hymns for all who sorrow – and then I lie still without a single thought in my mind. Life’s no bother to me!’
Two minutes went by. I did not break the silence and I did not stir on the narrow barrel which served as a place for me to sit. The cruel, stony immobility of the unfortunate living being who lay before me affected me also, and I became literally rigid.
‘Listen, Lukeria,’ I began finally. ‘Listen to what I want to propose to you. Would you like it if I arranged for you to be taken to a hospital, a good town hospital? Who knows, but maybe they can still cure you? At least you won’t be by yourself…’
Lukeria raised her brows ever so slightly.
‘Oh, no, master,’ she said in an agitated whisper, ‘don’t send me to a hospital, let me alone. I’ll only have to endure more agony there. There’s no good in trying to cure me! Once a doctor came here and wanted to have a look at me. I said to him, begging him: “Don’t disturb me for Christ’s sake!” What good was it! He started turning me this way and that, straightening and bending my legs and arms and telling me: “I’m doing this for learning, that’s why. I’m one who serves, a scientist! And don’t you try to stop me, because they’ve pinned a medal on me for my contributions to science and it’s for you, you dolts, that I’m working so hard.” He pulled me about and pulled me about, named what was wrong with me – and a fine name it was! – and with that he left. But for a whole week afterwards my poor bones were aching. You say I’m alone, all the time by myself. No, not all the time. People come to see me. I’m quiet and I’m not a nuisance to anyone. The peasant girls come sometimes for a chat. Or a holy woman will call in on her wanderings and start telling me about Jerusalem and Kiev and the holy cities. I’m not frightened of being by myself. Truly it’s better, truly it is! Let me alone, master, don’t move me to hospital. Thank you, you’re a good man, only leave me alone, my dear.’
‘Just as you wish, as you wish, Lukeria. I was only suggesting it for your own good…’
‘I know, master, it was for my own good. But, master, my dear one, who is there that can help another person? Who can enter into another’s soul? People must help themselves! You won’t believe it, but sometimes I lie by myself like I am now – and it’s just as if there was no one on the whole earth except me. And I’m the only living person! And a wondrous feeling comes over me, as if I’d been visited by some thought that seizes hold of me – something wonderful it is.’
‘What do you think about at such times, Lukeria?’
‘It’s quite impossible to say, master – you can’t make it out. And afterwards I forget. It comes out like a cloud and pours its rain through me, making everything so fresh and good, but what the thought was really you can neve
r understand! Only it seems to me that if there were people round me – none of that would have happened and I’d never feel anything except my own misfortune.’
Lukeria sighed with difficulty. Like the other parts of her body, her breast would not obey her wishes.
‘As I look at you now, master,’ she began again, ‘you feel very sorry for me. But don’t you pity me too much, don’t you do that! See, I’ll tell you something: sometimes even now I… You remember, don’t you, what a gay one I was in my time? One of the girls!… D’you know something? I sing songs even now.’
‘Songs? You really sing?’
‘Yes, I sing songs, the old songs, roundelays, feast songs, holy songs, all kinds! I used to know many of them, after all, and I haven’t forgotten them. Only I don’t sing the dancing songs. In my present state that wouldn’t be right.’
‘How do you sing them – to yourself?’
‘To myself and out loud. I can’t sing them loudly, but they can still be understood. I was telling you that a little girl comes to visit me. An orphan, that’s what she is, but she understands. So I’ve been teaching her and she’s picked up four songs already. Don’t you believe me? Wait a moment, I’ll show you…’
Lukeria drew upon all her reserves of energy. The idea that this half-dead being was preparing to sing aroused in me a spontaneous feeling of horror. But before I could utter a word, a long-drawn, scarcely audible, though clear sound, pitched on the right note, began to quiver in my ears, followed by another, then a third. Lukeria was singing ‘I walked in the meadows of green grieving for my life’. She sang without altering the expression on her petrified face, even gazing fixedly with her eyes. But so touchingly did this poor, forced, wavering little voice of hers resound, rising like a wisp of smoke, that I ceased to feel horror: an indescribable piteousness compressed my heart.
‘Oh, I can’t any more!’ she uttered suddenly. ‘I’ve no strength left… I’ve rejoiced so very much already at seeing you.’
She closed her eyes.
I placed my hands on her tiny cold fingers. She looked up at me and her dark eyelids, furred with golden lashes like the lids of ancient statuary, closed again. An instant later they began to glisten in the semi-darkness. Tears moistened them.
As before, I did not stir.
‘Silly of me!’ Lukeria uttered suddenly with unexpected strength and, opening her eyes wide, attempted to blink away the tears. ‘Shouldn’t I be ashamed? What’s wrong with me? This hasn’t happened to me for a long time – not since the day Vasya Polyakov visited me last spring. While he was sitting with me and talking it was all right. But when he’d gone – how I cried then all by myself! Where could so many tears come from! For sure a woman’s tears cost nothing. Master,’ Lukeria added, ‘if you have a handkerchief, don’t be finicky, wipe my eyes.’
I hastened to do what she asked, and left the handkerchief with her. She tried to refuse at first, as if she were asking why she should be given such a present. The handkerchief was very simple, but clean and white. Afterwards she seized it in her feeble fingers and did not open them again. Having grown accustomed to the darkness which surrounded us both, I could clearly distinguish her features and could even discern the delicate flush which rose through the bronze of her face and could make out in her face – or so at least it seemed to me – traces of her past beauty.
‘Just now you were asking me, master,’ Lukeria started saying again, ‘whether I sleep. I certainly don’t sleep often, but every time I have dreams – wonderful dreams! I never dream that I’m ill. In my dreams I’m always so young and healthy… I’ve only one complaint: when I wake up, I want to have a good stretch and yet here I am, just as if I were bound in fetters. Once I had such a marvellous dream! Would you like me to tell it to you? Well, listen. I dreamt of myself standing in a field, and all around me there was rye, so tall and ripe, like gold… And there was a little rust-red dog with me, wickedly vicious it was, all the time trying to bite me. And I had a sickle in my hand, and it wasn’t a simple sickle, but it was the moon when the moon has the shape of a sickle. And with the moon itself I had to reap the rye until it was all cut. Only I grew very tired from the heat, and the moon blinded me, and a languor settled on me; and all around me cornflowers were growing – such big ones! And they all turned their little heads towards me. And I thought I would pick these cornflowers, because Vasya had promised to come, so I’d make myself a garland first of all and then still have time to do the reaping. I began to pluck the cornflowers, but they started to melt away through my fingers, to melt and melt, no matter what I did! And I couldn’t weave myself a garland. And then I heard someone coming towards me, coming close up to me and calling: “Loosha! Loosha!” Oh dear, I thought, I’m too late! It doesn’t matter, though, I thought, because I can put the moon on my head instead of the cornflowers. So I put the moon on my head, and it was just like putting on one of those tall bonnets – at once I glowed with light from head to foot and lit up all the field around me. I looked, and there, through the very tips of the heads of rye, someone was smoothly approaching ever so quickly – only it wasn’t Vasya, it was Christ Himself! And why I knew it was Christ I can’t say – He’s never depicted as I saw Him – but it was Him! He was beardless, tall, young, clad all in white, except for a belt of gold, and He put out a hand to me and said: “Fear not, for thou art My chosen bride, come with Me. In My heavenly kingdom thou shalt lead the singing and play the songs of paradise.” And how firmly I pressed my lips to His hand. Then my little dog seized me by the legs, but at once we ascended up into the heavens, He leading me, and His wings stretched out to fill the heavens, as long as the wings of a gull – and I followed after Him! And the little dog had to leave go of me. It was only then that I understood that the little dog was my affliction and that there was no place for my affliction in the Kingdom of Heaven.’
Lukeria fell silent for a minute.
‘But I also had another dream,’ she began again, ‘or perhaps it was a vision I had – I don’t know which. It seemed that I was lying in this very wattle hut and my dead parents – my mother and my father – came to me and bowed low to me, but without saying anything. And I asked them: “Why do you, my mother and father, bow down to me?” And they answered and said: “Because thou hast suffered so greatly in this world, thou hast lightened not only thine own soul but hast also lifted a great weight from ours. And for us in our world the way has been made easier. Thou hast already done with thine own sins and art now conquering ours.” And, having said this, my parents again bowed low to me – and then I couldn’t see them any longer: all I could see were the walls. Afterwards I was very full of doubt whether such a thing had happened to me. I told the priest of it, only he said it couldn’t have been a vision, because visions are vouchsafed only to those of ecclesiastical rank.
‘Then there was yet another dream I had,’ Lukeria continued. ‘I saw myself sitting beside a big road under a willow, holding a whittled stick, with a bag over my shoulders and my head wrapped in a kerchief, just like a holy wanderer! And I had to go somewhere far, far away on a pilgrimage, offering prayers to God. And the holy wanderers, the pilgrims, were continually going past me; they were walking quietly past me, as if unwillingly, all the time going in the same direction; and their faces were all sad and very much alike. And I saw that weaving and hurrying among them was one woman, a whole head taller than all the others, and she wore a special kind of dress, not our kind, not like a Russian dress. And her face was also of a special kind, stern and severe, like the face of one used to fasting. And it seemed that all the others made way for her; and then she suddenly turned and came straight towards me. She stopped and looked at me. Her eyes were like the eyes of a falcon, yellow and big and bright as could be. And I asked her: “Who are you?” And she said to me: “I am your death.” I should’ve been frightened, but instead I was happy as a child, I swear to God I was! And this woman, my death, said to me: “I am sorry for you, Lukeria, but I cannot take you with me.
Farewell!” O Lord, what sorrow there was for me then! “Take me,” I cried, “beloved mother, dear one, take me!” And my death turned to face me and began to speak… And I understood that she was appointing the hour when I should die, but I couldn’t quite grasp it, it wasn’t clear, except that it would be some time after Saint Peter’s Day… Then I woke up. Such surprising dreams I’ve been having!’
Lukeria raised her eyes to the ceiling and grew reflective.
‘Only I have this one trouble, that a whole week may pass and I never once go to sleep. Last year there was a lady who came by, saw me and gave me a little bottle with some medicine to make me sleep. She told me to take ten drops each time. That was a great help to me, and I slept. Only now that little bottle’s long ago finished. Do you know what that medicine was and how to get it?’
The lady who came by obviously gave Lukeria opium. I promised to procure such a little bottle for her and again could not restrain myself from remarking aloud at her patience.
‘Oh, master!’ she protested. ‘What d’you mean by that? What sort of patience? Now Simon Stilites’ patience was really great: he spent thirty years on a pillar! And there was another of God’s servants who ordered himself to be buried in the ground up to his chest, and the ants ate his face… And here’s something else that an avid reader of the Bible told me: there was a certain country, and that country was conquered by the Hagarenes, and they tortured and killed all who lived therein; and no matter what those who lived there did, they could in no way free themselves. And there appeared among those who dwelt in that country a holy virgin; she took a mighty sword and arrayed herself in heavy armour and went out against the Hagarenes and did drive them all across the sea. But when she had driven them away, she said to them: “Now it is time that you should burn me, for such was my promise, that I should suffer a fiery death for my people.” And the Hagarenes seized her and burned her, but from that time forward her people were freed for ever! Now that’s a really great feat of suffering! Mine’s not like that!’