Youth | Page 9

out to the
monastery when the morning comes, and see the priest again, and make
a second confession?" Thereafter I grew calmer.

VII
THE EXPEDITION TO THE MONASTERY
Several times that night I woke in terror at the thought that I might be
oversleeping myself, and by six o'clock was out of bed, although the
dawn was hardly peeping in at the window. I put on my clothes and
boots (all of which were lying tumbled and unbrushed beside the bed,
since Nicola, of course had not been in yet to tidy them up), and,
without a prayer said or my face washed, emerged, for the first time in
my life, into the street ALONE.
Over the way, behind the green roof of a large building, the dim, cold
dawn was beginning to blush red. The keen frost of the spring morning
which had stiffened the pools and mud and made them crackle under
my feet now nipped my face and hands also. Not a cab was to be seen,
though I had counted upon one to make the journey out and home the
quicker. Only a file of waggons was rumbling along the Arbat Prospect,
and a couple of bricklayers talking noisily together as they strode along
the pavement. However, after walking a verst or so I began to meet
men and women taking baskets to market or going with empty barrels
to fetch the day's water supply; until at length, at the cross streets near
the Arbat Gate, where a pieman had set up his stall and a baker was just
opening his shop, I espied an old cabman shaking himself after
indulging in a nap on the box of his be- scratched old blue-painted,
hobble-de-hoy wreck of a drozhki. He seemed barely awake as he
asked twenty copecks as the fare to the monastery and back, but came
to himself a moment afterwards, just as I was about to get in, and,
touching up his horse with the spare end of the reins, started to drive
off and leave me. "My horse wants feeding," he growled, "I can't take
you, barin.[Sir]"
With some difficulty and a promise of FORTY copecks I persuaded
him to stop. He eyed me narrowly as he pulled up, but nevertheless said:
"Very well. Get in, barin." I must confess that I had some qualms lest
he should drive me to a quiet corner somewhere, and then rob me, but I
caught hold of the collar of his ragged driving-coat, close to where his
wrinkled neck showed sadly lean above his hunched-up back, and

climbed on to the blue- painted, curved, rickety scat. As we set off
along Vozdvizhenka Street, I noticed that the back of the drozhki was
covered with a strip of the same greenish material as that of which his
coat was made. For some reason or another this reassured me, and I no
longer felt nervous of being taken to a quiet spot and robbed.
The sun had risen to a good height, and was gilding the cupolas of the
churches, when we arrived at the monastery. In the shade the frost had
not yet given, but in the open roadway muddy rivulets of water were
coursing along, and it was through fast- thawing mire that the horse
went clip-clopping his way. Alighting, and entering the monastery
grounds, I inquired of the first monk whom I met where I could find the
priest whom I was seeking.
"His cell is over there," replied the monk as he stopped a moment and
pointed towards a little building up to which a flight of steps led.
"I respectfully thank you," I said, and then fell to wondering what all
the monks (who at that moment began to come filing out of the church)
must be thinking of me as they glanced in my direction. I was neither a
grown-up nor a child, while my face was unwashed, my hair unbrushed,
my clothes tumbled, and my boots unblacked and muddy. To what
class of persons were the brethren assigning me--for they stared at me
hard enough? Nevertheless I proceeded in the direction which the
young priest had pointed out to me.
An old man with bushy grey eyebrows and a black cassock met me on
the narrow path to the cells, and asked me what I wanted. For a brief
moment I felt inclined to say "Nothing," and then run back to the
drozhki and drive away home; but, for all its beetling brows, the face of
the old man inspired confidence, and I merely said that I wished to see
the priest (whom I named).
"Very well, young sir; I will take you to him," said the old man as he
turned round. Clearly he had guessed my errand at a stroke. "The