The Tales of Chekhov, vol 7 | Page 4

brother.
"He is all right, thank God. Though he has nothing much, yet he can
live. Only there is one thing: his son, my grandson Nikolasha, did not
want to go into the Church; he has gone to the university to be a doctor.
He thinks it is better; but who knows! His Holy Will!"
"Nikolasha cuts up dead people," said Katya, spilling water over her
knees.
"Sit still, child," her grandmother observed calmly, and took the glass
out of her hand. "Say a prayer, and go on eating."
"How long it is since we have seen each other!" said the bishop, and he
tenderly stroked his mother's hand and shoulder; "and I missed you
abroad, mother, I missed you dreadfully."
"Thank you."
"I used to sit in the evenings at the open window, lonely and alone;
often there was music playing, and all at once I used to be overcome
with homesickness and felt as though I would give everything only to
be at home and see you."
His mother smiled, beamed, but at once she made a grave face and said:
"Thank you."
His mood suddenly changed. He looked at his mother and could not
understand how she had come by that respectfulness, that timid
expression of face: what was it for? And he did not recognize her. He

felt sad and vexed. And then his head ached just as it had the day
before; his legs felt fearfully tired, and the fish seemed to him stale and
tasteless; he felt thirsty all the time. . . .
After dinner two rich ladies, landowners, arrived and sat for an hour
and a half in silence with rigid countenances; the archimandrite, a silent,
rather deaf man, came to see him about business. Then they began
ringing for vespers; the sun was setting behind the wood and the day
was over. When he returned from church, he hurriedly said his prayers,
got into bed, and wrapped himself up as warm as possible.
It was disagreeable to remember the fish he had eaten at dinner. The
moonlight worried him, and then he heard talking. In an adjoining
room, probably in the parlour, Father Sisoy was talking politics:
"There's war among the Japanese now. They are fighting. The Japanese,
my good soul, are the same as the Montenegrins; they are the same race.
They were under the Turkish yoke together."
And then he heard the voice of Marya Timofyevna:
"So, having said our prayers and drunk tea, we went, you know, to
Father Yegor at Novokatnoye, so. . ."
And she kept on saying, "having had tea" or "having drunk tea," and it
seemed as though the only thing she had done in her life was to drink
tea.
The bishop slowly, languidly, recalled the seminary, the academy. For
three years he had been Greek teacher in the seminary: by that time he
could not read without spectacles. Then he had become a monk; he had
been made a school inspector. Then he had defended his thesis for his
degree. When he was thirty-two he had been made rector of the
seminary, and consecrated archimandrite: and then his life had been so
easy, so pleasant; it seemed so long, so long, no end was in sight. Then
he had begun to be ill, had grown very thin and almost blind, and by
the advice of the doctors had to give up everything and go abroad.
"And what then?" asked Sisoy in the next room.
"Then we drank tea . . ." answered Marya Timofyevna.
"Good gracious, you've got a green beard," said Katya suddenly in
surprise, and she laughed.
The bishop remembered that the grey-headed Father Sisoy's beard
really had a shade of green in it, and he laughed.
"God have mercy upon us, what we have to put up with with this girl!"

said Sisoy, aloud, getting angry. "Spoilt child! Sit quiet!"
The bishop remembered the perfectly new white church in which he
had conducted the services while living abroad, he remembered the
sound of the warm sea. In his flat he had five lofty light rooms; in his
study he had a new writing-table, lots of books. He had read a great
deal and often written. And he remembered how he had pined for his
native land, how a blind beggar woman had played the guitar under his
window every day and sung of love, and how, as he listened, he had
always for some reason thought of the past. But eight years had passed
and he had been called back to Russia, and now he was a suffragan
bishop, and all the past had retreated far away into the mist as though it
were a dream. . . .
Father Sisoy came into the bedroom with a candle.
"I say!" he