The Tales of Chekhov, vol 7 | Page 9

sun was shining brightly. The big
market square was noisy, swings were going, barrel organs were
playing, accordions were squeaking, drunken voices were shouting.
After midday people began driving up and down the principal street.
In short, all was merriment, everything was satisfactory, just as it had
been the year before, and as it will be in all likelihood next year.
A month later a new suffragan bishop was appointed, and no one
thought anything more of Bishop Pyotr, and afterwards he was
completely forgotten. And only the dead man's old mother, who is
living to-day with her son-in-law the deacon in a remote little district
town, when she goes out at night to bring her cow in and meets other

women at the pasture, begins talking of her children and her
grandchildren, and says that she had a son a bishop, and this she says
timidly, afraid that she may not be believed. . . .
And, indeed, there are some who do not believe her.
THE LETTER
The clerical superintendent of the district, his Reverence Father Fyodor
Orlov, a handsome, well-nourished man of fifty, grave and important as
he always was, with an habitual expression of dignity that never left his
face, was walking to and fro in his little drawing-room, extremely
exhausted, and thinking intensely about the same thing: "When would
his visitor go?" The thought worried him and did not leave him for a
minute. The visitor, Father Anastasy, the priest of one of the villages
near the town, had come to him three hours before on some very
unpleasant and dreary business of his own, had stayed on and on, was
now sitting in the corner at a little round table with his elbow on a thick
account book, and apparently had no thought of going, though it was
getting on for nine o'clock in the evening.
Not everyone knows when to be silent and when to go. It not
infrequently happens that even diplomatic persons of good worldly
breeding fail to observe that their presence is arousing a feeling akin to
hatred in their exhausted or busy host, and that this feeling is being
concealed with an effort and disguised with a lie. But Father Anastasy
perceived it clearly, and realized that his presence was burdensome and
inappropriate, that his Reverence, who had taken an early morning
service in the night and a long mass at midday, was exhausted and
longing for repose; every minute he was meaning to get up and go, but
he did not get up, he sat on as though he were waiting for something.
He was an old man of sixty-five, prematurely aged, with a bent and
bony figure, with a sunken face and the dark skin of old age, with red
eyelids and a long narrow back like a fish's; he was dressed in a smart
cassock of a light lilac colour, but too big for him (presented to him by
the widow of a young priest lately deceased), a full cloth coat with a
broad leather belt, and clumsy high boots the size and hue of which
showed clearly that Father Anastasy dispensed with goloshes. In spite
of his position and his venerable age, there was something pitiful,
crushed and humiliated in his lustreless red eyes, in the strands of grey
hair with a shade of green in it on the nape of his neck, and in the big

shoulder-blades on his lean back. . . . He sat without speaking or
moving, and coughed with circumspection, as though afraid that the
sound of his coughing might make his presence more noticeable.
The old man had come to see his Reverence on business. Two months
before he had been prohibited from officiating till further notice, and
his case was being inquired into. His shortcomings were numerous. He
was intemperate in his habits, fell out with the other clergy and the
commune, kept the church records and accounts carelessly --these were
the formal charges against him; but besides all that, there had been
rumours for a long time past that he celebrated unlawful marriages for
money and sold certificates of having fasted and taken the sacrament to
officials and officers who came to him from the town. These rumours
were maintained the more persistently that he was poor and had nine
children to keep, who were as incompetent and unsuccessful as himself.
The sons were spoilt and uneducated, and stayed at home doing nothing,
while the daughters were ugly and did not get married.
Not having the moral force to be open, his Reverence walked up and
down the room and said nothing or spoke in hints.
"So you are not going home to-night?" he asked, stopping near the dark
window and poking with his little finger into the cage