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Updated: June 2, 2025
A reverend Father without a grain of dignity or breeding, hiding biscuits in his pocket like a schoolboy. . . . Fie! Good Lord, where were the bishop's eyes when he ordained a man like that? What can he think of the people if he gives them a teacher like that? One wants people here who . . ." And Kunin thought what Russian priests ought to be like.
Looking at it, one might have supposed that Kunin was talking of matters so abstruse that Father Yakov did not understand and only listened from good manners, and was at the same time afraid of being detected in his failure to understand. "The fellow is not one of the brightest, that's evident . . ." thought Kunin. "He's rather shy and much too stupid."
Let us try and think of some plan together." Kunin began planning aloud. He explained his views and watched Father Yakov's face, seeking signs of agreement or approval in it. But the face was apathetic and immobile, and expressed nothing but constrained shyness and uneasiness.
"Besides I fancy I am not altogether a welcome visitor. My host has not deigned to say one word to me; he simply sits and blinks." Kunin took up his hat, waited for Father Yakov to return, and said good-bye to him. "I have simply wasted the morning," he thought wrathfully on the way home. "The blockhead! The dummy!
Just as on his first visit, he was hot and perspiring, and sat down on the edge of his chair as he had done then. Kunin determined not to talk about the school not to cast pearls. "I have brought you a list of books for the school, Pavel Mihailovitch, . . ." Father Yakov began. "Thank you." But everything showed that Father Yakov had come for something else besides the list.
He lifted his grey-blue eyes to Kunin, thought a moment, and as though recalling his question, he shook his head in the negative. An expression of pleasure and of the most ordinary prosaic appetite overspread his face from ear to ear. He drank and smacked his lips over every gulp.
Father Yakov started like a man asleep who has been struck a blow, and, still smiling, began in his confusion wrapping round him the skirts of his cassock. In spite of his repulsion for the man, Kunin felt suddenly sorry for him, and he wanted to soften his cruelty. "Please come another time, Father," he said, "and before we part I want to ask you a favour.
He has everything found there, except that I have to provide pens and paper." "Oh, I believe you; I believe you! But what's the object of all this?" said Kunin, with a wave of the hand, feeling terribly oppressed by this outburst of confidence on the part of his visitor, and not knowing how to get away from the tearful gleam in his eyes.
Kunin glanced at Father Yakov; he was sitting bent up, thinking intently about something and apparently not listening to his visitor. "Yasha, come here!" a woman's voice called from behind the partition. Father Yakov started and went out. Again a whispering began. Kunin felt a pang of longing for tea. "No; it's no use my waiting for tea here," he thought, looking at his watch.
"Well, that's not at all clerical!" thought Kunin, shrugging his shoulders contemptuously. "What is it, priestly greed or childishness?" After giving his visitor another glass of tea and seeing him to the entry, Kunin lay down on the sofa and abandoned himself to the unpleasant feeling induced in him by the visit of Father Yakov. "What a strange wild creature!" he thought.
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