第72章

The monk from Obdorsk, having been directed to the apiary by the beekeeper, who was also a very silent and surly monk, went to the corner where Father Ferapont's cell stood."Maybe he will speak as you are a stranger and maybe you'll get nothing out of him," the beekeeper had warned him.The monk, as he related afterwards, approached in the utmost apprehension.It was rather late in the evening.Father Ferapont was sitting at the door of his cell on a low bench.A huge old elm was lightly rustling overhead.There was an evening freshness in the air.The monk from Obdorsk bowed down before the saint and asked his blessing.

"Do you want me to bow down to you, monk?" said Father Ferapont.

"Get up!"

The monk got up.

"Blessing, be blessed! Sit beside me.Where have you come from?"What most struck the poor monk was the fact that in spite of his strict fasting and great age, Father Ferapont still looked a vigorous old man.He was tall, held himself erect, and had a thin, but fresh and healthy face.There was no doubt he still had considerable strength.He was of athletic build.In spite of his great age he was not even quite grey, and still had very thick hair and a full beard, both of which had once been black.His eyes were grey, large and luminous, but strikingly prominent.He spoke with a broad accent.He was dressed in a peasant's long reddish coat of coarse convict cloth (as it used to be called) and had a stout rope round his waist.His throat and chest were bare.Beneath his coat, his shirt of the coarsest linen showed almost black with dirt, not having been changed for months.They said that he wore irons weighing thirty pounds under his coat.His stockingless feet were thrust in old slippers almost dropping to pieces.

"From the little Obdorsk monastery, from St.Sylvester," the monk answered humbly, whilst his keen and inquisitive, but rather frightened little eyes kept watch on the hermit.

"I have been at your Sylvester's.I used to stay there.Is Sylvester well?"The monk hesitated.

"You are a senseless lot! How do you keep the fasts?""Our dietary is according to the ancient conventual rules.

During Lent there are no meals provided for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.For Tuesday and Thursday we have white bread, stewed fruit with honey, wild berries, or salt cabbage and whole meal stirabout.On Saturday white cabbage soup, noodles with peas, kasha, all with hemp oil.On weekdays we have dried fish and kasha with the cabbage soup.

From Monday till Saturday evening, six whole days in Holy Week, nothing is cooked, and we have only bread and water, and that sparingly; if possible not taking food every day, just the same as is ordered for first week in Lent.On Good Friday nothing is eaten.In the same way on the Saturday we have to fast till three o'clock, and then take a little bread and water and drink a single cup of wine.

On Holy Thursday we drink wine and have something cooked without oil or not cooked at all, inasmuch as the Laodicean council lays down for Holy Thursday: "It is unseemly by remitting the fast on the Holy Thursday to dishonour the whole of Lent!" This is how we keep the fast.But what is that compared with you, holy Father," added the monk, growing more confident, "for all the year round, even at Easter, you take nothing but bread and water, and what we should eat in two days lasts you full seven.It's truly marvellous- your great abstinence.""And mushrooms?" asked Father Ferapont, suddenly.

"Mushrooms?" repeated the surprised monk.

"Yes.I can give up their bread, not needing it at all, and go away into the forest and live there on the mushrooms or the berries, but they can't give up their bread here, wherefore they are in bondage to the devil.Nowadays the unclean deny that there is need of such fasting.Haughty and unclean is their judgment.""Och, true," sighed the monk.

"And have you seen devils among them?" asked Ferapont.

"Among them? Among whom?" asked the monk, timidly.

"I went to the Father Superior on Trinity Sunday last year, Ihaven't been since.I saw a devil sitting on one man's chest hiding under his cassock, only his horns poked out; another had one peeping out of his pocket with such sharp eyes, he was afraid of me; another settled in the unclean belly of one, another was hanging round a man's neck, and so he was carrying him about without seeing him.""You- can see spirits?" the monk inquired.

"I tell you I can see, I can see through them.When I was coming out from the Superior's I saw one hiding from me behind the door, and a big one, a yard and a half or more high, with a thick long grey tail, and the tip of his tail was in the crack of the door and I was quick and slammed the door, pinching his tail in it.He squealed and began to struggle, and I made the sign of the cross over him three times.And he died on the spot like a crushed spider.He must have rotted there in the corner and be stinking, but they don't see, they don't smell it.It's a year since I have been there.I reveal it to you, as you are a stranger.""Your words are terrible! But, holy and blessed father," said the monk, growing bolder and bolder, "is it true, as they noise abroad even to distant lands about you, that you are in continual communication with the Holy Ghost?""He does fly down at times."

"How does he fly down? In what form?"

"As a bird."

"The Holy Ghost in the form of a dove?"

"There's the Holy Ghost and there's the Holy Spirit.The Holy Spirit can appear as other birds- sometimes as a swallow, sometimes a goldfinch and sometimes as a blue-tit.""How do you know him from an ordinary tit?""He speaks."

"How does he speak, in what language?"

"Human language."

"And what does he tell you?"

"Why, to-day he told me that a fool would visit me and would ask me unseemly questions.You want to know too much, monk.""Terrible are your words, most holy and blessed Father," the monk shook his head.But there was a doubtful look in his frightened little eyes.

"Do you see this tree?" asked Father Ferapont, after a pause.

"I do, blessed Father."