The Tales of Chekhov, vol 7 | Page 8

his hand.
"You are in bed already, your holiness?" he asked. "Here I have come
to rub you with spirit and vinegar. A thorough rubbing does a great deal

of good. Lord Jesus Christ! . . . That's the way . . . that's the way. . . .
I've just been in our monastery. . . . I don't like it. I'm going away from
here to-morrow, your holiness; I don't want to stay longer. Lord Jesus
Christ. . . . That's the way. . . ."
Sisoy could never stay long in the same place, and he felt as though he
had been a whole year in the Pankratievsky Monastery. Above all,
listening to him it was difficult to understand where his home was,
whether he cared for anyone or anything, whether he believed in
God. . . . He did not know himself why he was a monk, and, indeed, he
did not think about it, and the time when he had become a monk had
long passed out of his memory; it seemed as though he had been born a
monk.
"I'm going away to-morrow; God be with them all."
"I should like to talk to you. . . . I can't find the time," said the bishop
softly with an effort. "I don't know anything or anybody here. . . ."
"I'll stay till Sunday if you like; so be it, but I don't want to stay longer.
I am sick of them!"
"I ought not to be a bishop," said the bishop softly. "I ought to have
been a village priest, a deacon . . . or simply a monk. . . . All this
oppresses me . . . oppresses me."
"What? Lord Jesus Christ. . . . That's the way. Come, sleep well, your
holiness! . . . What's the good of talking? It's no use. Good-night!"
The bishop did not sleep all night. And at eight o'clock in the morning
he began to have hemorrhage from the bowels. The lay brother was
alarmed, and ran first to the archimandrite, then for the monastery
doctor, Ivan Andreyitch, who lived in the town. The doctor, a stout old
man with a long grey beard, made a prolonged examination of the
bishop, and kept shaking his head and frowning, then said:
"Do you know, your holiness, you have got typhoid?"
After an hour or so of hemorrhage the bishop looked much thinner,
paler, and wasted; his face looked wrinkled, his eyes looked bigger, and
he seemed older, shorter, and it seemed to him that he was thinner,
weaker, more insignificant than any one, that everything that had been
had retreated far, far away and would never go on again or be repeated.
"How good," he thought, "how good!"
His old mother came. Seeing his wrinkled face and his big eyes, she
was frightened, she fell on her knees by the bed and began kissing his

face, his shoulders, his hands. And to her, too, it seemed that he was
thinner, weaker, and more insignificant than anyone, and now she
forgot that he was a bishop, and kissed him as though he were a child
very near and very dear to her.
"Pavlusha, darling," she said; "my own, my darling son! . . . Why are
you like this? Pavlusha, answer me!"
Katya, pale and severe, stood beside her, unable to understand what
was the matter with her uncle, why there was such a look of suffering
on her grandmother's face, why she was saying such sad and touching
things. By now he could not utter a word, he could understand nothing,
and he imagined he was a simple ordinary man, that he was walking
quickly, cheerfully through the fields, tapping with his stick, while
above him was the open sky bathed in sunshine, and that he was free
now as a bird and could go where he liked!
"Pavlusha, my darling son, answer me," the old woman was saying.
"What is it? My own!"
"Don't disturb his holiness," Sisoy said angrily, walking about the room.
"Let him sleep . . . what's the use . . . it's no good. . . ."
Three doctors arrived, consulted together, and went away again. The
day was long, incredibly long, then the night came on and passed
slowly, slowly, and towards morning on Saturday the lay brother went
in to the old mother who was lying on the sofa in the parlour, and asked
her to go into the bedroom: the bishop had just breathed his last.
Next day was Easter Sunday. There were forty-two churches and six
monasteries in the town; the sonorous, joyful clang of the bells hung
over the town from morning till night unceasingly, setting the spring air
aquiver; the birds were singing, the