Resurrection
oblivion, but the habit of fear overcame sleepiness, and she sat up and
looked round, drawing her feet under her. The women had all got up; only
the elder children were still asleep. The spirit-trader was carefully
drawing a cloak from under the children, so as not to wake them. The
watchman’s wife was hanging up the rags to dry that served the baby
as swaddling clothes, while the baby was screaming desperately in
Theodosia’s arms, who was trying to quiet it. The consumptive woman was
coughing with her hands pressed to her chest, while the blood rushed to
her face, and she sighed loudly, almost screaming, in the intervals of
coughing. The fat, red-haired woman was lying on her back, with
knees drawn up, and loudly relating a dream. The old woman accused of
incendiarism was standing in front of the image, crossing herself and
bowing, and repeating the same words over and over again. The deacon’s
daughter sat on the bedstead, looking before her, with a dull, sleepy
face. Khoroshavka was twisting her black, oily, coarse hair round her
fingers. The sound of slipshod feet was heard in the passage, and the
door opened to let in two convicts, dressed in jackets and grey trousers
that did not reach to their ankles. With serious, cross faces they
lifted the stinking tub and carried it out of the cell. The women went
out to the taps in the corridor to wash. There the red-haired woman
again began a quarrel with a woman from another cell.
“Is it the solitary cell you want?” shouted an old jailer, slapping the
red-haired woman on her bare, fat back, so that it sounded through the
corridor. “You be quiet.”
“Lawks! the old one’s playful,” said the woman, taking his action for a
caress.
“Now, then, be quick; get ready for the mass.” Maslova had hardly time
to do her hair and dress when the inspector came with his assistants.
“Come out for inspection,” cried a jailer.
Some more prisoners came out of other cells and stood in two rows along
the corridor; each woman had to place her hand on the shoulder of the
woman in front of her. They were all counted.
After the inspection the woman warder led the prisoners to church.
Maslova and Theodosia were in the middle of a column of over a hundred
women, who had come out of different cells. All were dressed in white
skirts, white jackets, and wore white kerchiefs on their heads, except
a few who had their own coloured clothes on. These were wives who, with
their children, were following their convict husbands to Siberia. The
whole flight of stairs was filled by the procession. The patter of
softly-shod feet mingled with the voices and now and then a laugh. When
turning, on the landing, Maslova saw her enemy, Botchkova, in front, and
pointed out her angry face to Theodosia. At the bottom of the stairs the
women stopped talking. Bowing and crossing themselves, they entered the
empty church, which glistened with gilding. Crowding and pushing one
another, they took their places on the right.
After the women came the men condemned to banishment, those serving
their term in the prison, and those exiled by their Communes; and,
coughing loudly, they took their stand, crowding the left side and the
middle of the church.
On one side of the gallery above stood the men sentenced to penal
servitude in Siberia, who had been let into the church before the
others. Each of them had half his head shaved, and their presence was
indicated by the clanking of the chains on their feet. On the other side
of the gallery stood those in preliminary confinement, without chains,
their heads not shaved.
The prison church had been rebuilt and ornamented by a rich merchant,
who spent several tens of thousands of roubles on it, and it glittered
with gay colours and gold. For a time there was silence in the church,
and only coughing, blowing of noses, the crying of babies, and now and
then the rattling of chains, was heard. But at last the convicts that
stood in the middle moved, pressed against each other, leaving a passage
in the centre of the church, down which the prison inspector passed to
take his place in front of every one in the nave.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE PRISON CHURCH--BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND.
The service began.
It consisted of the following. The priest, having dressed in a strange
and very inconvenient garb, made of gold cloth, cut and arranged little
bits of bread on a saucer, and then put them into a cup with wine,
repeating at the same time different names and prayers. Meanwhile
the deacon first read Slavonic prayers, difficult to understand in
themselves, and rendered still more incomprehensible by being read very
fast, and then sang them turn and turn about with the convicts. The
contents of the prayers were chiefly the desire for the welfare of
the Emperor and his family. These petitions were repeated many times,
separately and together with other prayers, the people kneeling. Besides
this, several verses from the Acts of the Apostles were read by the
deacon in a peculiarly strained voice, which made it impossible to
understand what he read, and then the priest read very distinctly a
part of the Gospel according to St. Mark, in which it said that Christ,
having risen from the dead before flying up to heaven to sit down at His
Father’s right hand, first showed Himself to Mary Magdalene, out of whom
He had driven seven devils, and then to eleven of His disciples, and
ordered them to preach the Gospel to the whole creation, and the priest
added that if any one did not believe this he would perish, but he that
believed it and was baptised should be saved, and should besides drive
out devils and cure people by laying his hands on them, should talk in
strange tongues, should take up serpents, and if he drank poison should
not die, but remain well.
The essence of the service consisted in the supposition that the bits
cut up by the priest and put by him into the wine, when manipulated and
prayed over in a certain way, turned into the flesh and blood of God.
These manipulations consisted in the priest’s regularly lifting and
holding up his arms, though hampered by the gold cloth sack he had on,
then, sinking on to his knees and kissing the table and all that was on
it, but chiefly in his taking a cloth by two of its corners and waving
it regularly and softly over the silver saucer and golden cup. It was
supposed that, at this point, the bread and the wine turned into flesh
and blood; therefore, this part of the service was performed with the
greatest solemnity.
“Now, to the blessed, most pure, and most holy Mother of God,” the
priest cried from the golden partition which divided part of the church
from the rest, and the choir began solemnly to sing that it was very
right to glorify the Virgin Mary, who had borne Christ without losing
her virginity, and was therefore worthy of greater honour than some kind
of cherubim, and greater glory than some kind of seraphim. After this
the transformation was considered accomplished, and the priest having
taken the napkin off the saucer, cut the middle bit of bread in four,
and put it into the wine, and then into his mouth. He was supposed to
have eaten a bit of God’s flesh and swallowed a little of His blood.
Then the priest drew a curtain, opened the middle door in the partition,
and, taking the gold cup in his hands, came out of the door, inviting
those who wished to do so also to come and eat some of God’s flesh and
blood that was contained in the cup. A few children appeared to wish to
do so.
After having asked the children their names, the priest carefully took
out of the cup, with a spoon, and shoved a bit of bread soaked in wine
deep into the mouth of each child in turn, and the deacon, while wiping
the children’s mouths, sang, in a merry voice, that the children were
eating the flesh and drinking the blood of God. After this the priest
carried the cup back behind the partition, and there drank all the
remaining blood and ate up all the bits of flesh, and after having
carefully sucked his moustaches and wiped his mouth, he stepped briskly
from behind the partition, the soles of his calfskin boots creaking.
The principal part of this Christian service was now finished, but
the priest, wishing to comfort the unfortunate prisoners, added to the
ordinary service another. This consisted of his going up to the gilt
hammered-out image (with black face and hands) supposed to represent
the very God he had been eating, illuminated by a dozen wax candles, and
proceeding, in a strange, discordant voice, to hum or sing the following
words:
“Jesu sweetest, glorified of the Apostles, Jesu lauded by the martyrs,
almighty Monarch, save me, Jesu my Saviour. Jesu, most beautiful, have
mercy on him who cries to Thee, Saviour Jesu. Born of prayer Jesu, all
thy saints, all thy prophets, save and find them worthy of the joys of
heaven. Jesu, lover of men.”
Then he stopped, drew breath, crossed himself, bowed to the ground, and
every one did the same--the inspector, the warders, the prisoners; and
from above the clinking of the chains sounded more unintermittently.
Then he continued: “Of angels the Creator and Lord of powers, Jesu most
wonderful, the angels’ amazement, Jesu most powerful, of our forefathers
the Redeemer. Jesu sweetest, of patriarchs the praise. Jesu most
glorious, of kings the strength. Jesu most good, of prophets the
fulfilment. Jesu most amazing, of martyrs the strength. Jesu most
humble, of monks the joy. Jesu most merciful, of priests the sweetness.
Jesu most charitable, of the fasting the continence. Jesu most sweet,
of the just the joy. Jesu most pure, of the celibates the chastity. Jesu
before all ages of sinners the salvation. Jesu, son of God, have mercy
on me.”
Every time he repeated the word “Jesu” his voice became more and
more wheezy. At last he came to a stop, and holding up his silk-lined
cassock, and kneeling down on one knee, he stooped down to the ground
and the choir began to sing, repeating the words, “Jesu, Son of God,
have mercy on me,” and the convicts fell down and rose again, shaking
back the hair that was left on their heads, and rattling with the chains
that were bruising their thin ankles.
This continued for a long time. First came the glorification, which
ended with the words, “Have mercy on me.” Then more glorifications,
ending with “Alleluia!” And the convicts made the sign of the cross,
and bowed, first at each sentence, then after every two and then after
three, and all were very glad when the glorification ended, and the
priest shut the book with a sigh of relief and retired behind the
partition. One last act remained. The priest took a large, gilt cross,
with enamel medallions at the ends, from a table, and came out into the
centre of the church with it. First the inspector came up and kissed
the cross, then the jailers, then the convicts, pushing and abusing
each other in whispers. The priest, talking to the inspector, pushed the
cross and his hand now against the mouths and now against the noses of
the convicts, who were trying to kiss both the cross and the hand of the
priest. And thus ended the Christian service, intended for the comfort
and the teaching of these strayed brothers.
CHAPTER XL.
THE HUSKS OF RELIGION.
And none of those present, from the inspector down to Maslova, seemed
conscious of the fact that this Jesus, whose name the priest repeated
such a great number of times, and whom he praised with all these curious
expressions, had forbidden the very things that were being done there;
that He had prohibited not only this meaningless much-speaking and the
blasphemous incantation over the bread and wine, but had also, in the
clearest words, forbidden men to call other men their master, and to