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Updated: June 2, 2025
Such things that people would not believe them if they saw them in the newspaper. . . . And when will there be an end to it all!" "Hush, Father!" Kunin almost shouted, frightened at his tone. "Why take such a gloomy view of life?"
There were many windows, but the general effect of colour was grey, and so it was twilight in the church. "Anyone pure in soul can pray here very well," thought Kunin. "Just as in St. Peter's in Rome one is impressed by grandeur, here one is touched by the lowliness and simplicity." But his devout mood vanished like smoke as soon as Father Yakov went up to the altar and began mass.
Kunin did not dare to think that the priest had come on foot every day to see him; it was five or six miles to Sinkino, and the mud on the road was impassable. Further on he saw the coachman Andrey and the boy Paramon, jumping over the puddles and splashing Father Yakov with mud, run up to him for his blessing.
"All this is positively incredible," said Kunin, sitting down and looking almost with horror at Father Yakov's pale face. "Incredible it is! It's a thing that has never been! Pavel Mihailovitch, that a doctor's wife should be rinsing the linen in the river! Such a thing does not happen in any country! As her pastor and spiritual father, I ought not to allow it, but what can I do? What?
"They will heat the samovar directly," he said, without looking at his visitor. "My goodness, they have not heated the samovar yet!" Kunin thought with horror. "A nice time we shall have to wait." "I have brought you," he said, "the rough draft of the letter I have written to the bishop. I'll read it after tea; perhaps you may find something to add. . . ." "Very well." A silence followed.
The short priest was wearing a crumpled and extremely long robe of some shabby yellow material; the hem of the robe trailed on the ground. The church was not full. Looking at the parishioners, Kunin was struck at the first glance by one strange circumstance: he saw nothing but old people and children. . . . Where were the men of working age? Where was the youth and manhood?
Here Kunin suddenly recalled the private information he had sent to the bishop, and he writhed as from a sudden draught of cold air. This remembrance filled him with overwhelming shame before his inner self and before the unseen truth. So had begun and had ended a sincere effort to be of public service on the part of a well-intentioned but unreflecting and over-comfortable person.
Father Yakov coughed into his fist, sank awkwardly on to the edge of the chair, and laid his open hands on his knees. With his short figure, his narrow chest, his red and perspiring face, he made from the first moment a most unpleasant impression on Kunin.
Father Yakov led Kunin into a light little room with a clay floor and walls covered with cheap paper; in spite of some painful efforts towards luxury in the way of photographs in frames and a clock with a pair of scissors hanging on the weight the furnishing of the room impressed him by its scantiness.
Oh, how useful those wasted rouble, three-rouble, ten-rouble notes would have been now! "Father Avraamy lives on three roubles a month!" thought Kunin. "For a rouble the priest's wife could get herself a chemise, and the doctor's wife could hire a washerwoman. But I'll help them, anyway! I must help them."
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