THE PARABLE OF THE SINNER

Having heard the dying Claudia Ivanovna's confession, Father Theodore

Vostrikov, priest of the Church of St. Frol and St. Laurence, left

Vorobyaninov's house in a complete daze and the whole way home kept looking

round him distractedly and smiling to himself in confusion. His bewilderment

became so great in the end that he was almost knocked down by the

district-executive-committee motor-car, Gos. No. 1. Struggling out of the

cloud of purple smoke issuing from the infernal machine, Father Vostrikov

reached the stage of complete distraction, and, despite his venerable rank

and middle age, finished the journey at a frivolous half-gallop.

His wife, Catherine, was laying the table for supper. On the days when

there was no evening service to conduct, Father Theodore liked to have his

supper early. This time, however, to his wife's surprise, the holy father,

having taken off his hat and warm padded cassock, skipped past into the

bedroom, locked himself in and began chanting the prayer "It Is Meet" in a

tuneless voice.

His wife sat down on a chair and whispered in alarm:

"He's up to something again."

Father Theodore's tempestuous soul knew no rest, nor had ever known it.

Neither at the time when he was Theo, a pupil of the Russian Orthodox Church

school, nor when he was Theodore Ivanych, a bewhiskered student at the

college. Having left the college and studied law at the university for three

years in 1915 Vostrikov became afraid of the possibility of mobilization and

returned to the Church. He was first anointed a deacon, then ordained a

priest and appointed to the regional centre of N. But the whole time, at

every stage of his clerical and secular career, Father Theodore never lost

interest in worldly possessions.

He cherished the dream of possessing his own candle factory. Tormented

by the vision of thick ropes of wax winding on to the factory drums, Father

Theodore devised various schemes that would bring in enough basic capital to

buy a little factory in Samara which he had had his eye on for some time.

Ideas occurred to Father Theodore unexpectedly, and when they did he

used to get down to work on the spot. He once started making a marble-like

washing-soap; he made pounds and pounds of it, but despite an enormous fat

content, the soap would not lather, and it cost twice as much as the Hammer

and Plough brand, to boot. For a long time after it remained in the liquid

state gradually decomposing on the porch of the house, and whenever his

wife, Catherine, passed it, she would wipe away a tear. The soap was

eventually thrown into the cesspool.

Reading in a farming magazine that rabbit meat was as tender as

chicken, that rabbits were highly prolific, and that a keen farmer could

make a mint of money breeding them, Father Theodore immediately acquired

half a dozen stud rabbits, and two months later, Nerka the dog, terrified by

the incredible number of long-eared creatures filling the yard and house,

fled to an unknown destination. However, the wretchedly provincial citizens

of the town of N. proved extraordinarily conservative and, with unusual

unanimity, refused to buy Vostrikov's rabbits. Then Father Theodore had a

talk with his wife and decided to enhance his diet with the rabbit meat that

was supposed to be tastier than chicken. The rabbits were roasted whole,

turned into rissoles and cutlets, made into soup, served cold for supper and

baked in pies. But to no avail. Father Theodore worked it out that even if

they switched exclusively to a diet of rabbit, the family could not consume

more than forty of the creatures a month, while the monthly increment was

ninety, with the number increasing in a geometrical progression.

The Vostrikovs then decided to sell home-cooked meals. Father Theodore

spent a whole evening writing out an advertisement in indelible pencil on

neatly cut sheets of graph paper, announcing the sale of tasty home-cooked

meals prepared in pure butter. The advertisement began "Cheap and Good!" His

wife filled an enamel dish with flour-and-water paste, and late one evening

the holy father went around sticking the advertisements on all the telegraph

poles, and also in the vicinity of state-owned institutions.

The new idea was a great success. Seven people appeared the first day,

among them Bendin, the military-commissariat clerk, by whose endeavour the

town's oldest monument-a triumphal arch, dating from the time of the Empress

Elizabeth-had been pulled down shortly before on the ground that it

interfered with the traffic. The dinners were very popular. The next day

there were fourteen customers. There was hardly enough time to skin the

rabbits. For a whole week things went swimmingly and Father Theodore even

considered starting up a small fur-trading business, without a car, when

something quite unforeseen took place.

The Hammer and Plough co-operative, which had been shut for three weeks

for stock-taking, reopened, and some of the counter hands, panting with the

effort, rolled a barrel of rotten cabbage into the yard shared by Father

Theodore, and dumped the contents into the cesspool. Attracted by the

piquant smell, the rabbits hastened to the cesspool, and the next morning an

epidemic broke out among the gentle rodents. It only raged for three hours,

but during that time it finished off two hundred and forty adult rabbits and

an uncountable number of offspring.

The shocked priest had been depressed for two whole months, and it was

only now, returning from Vorobyaninov's house and to his wife's surprise,

locking himself in the bedroom, that he regained his spirits. There was

every indication that Father Theodore had been captivated by some new idea.

Catherine knocked on the bedroom door with her knuckle. There was no

reply, but the chanting grew louder. A moment later the door opened slightly

and through the crack appeared Father Theodore's face, brightened by a

maidenly flush.

"Let me have a pair of scissors quickly, Mother," snapped Father

Theodore.

"But what about your supper? "

"Yes, later on."

Father Theodore grabbed the scissors, locked the door again, and went

over to a mirror hanging on the wall in a black scratched frame.

Beside the mirror was an ancient folk-painting, entitled "The Parable

of the Sinner", made from a copperplate and neatly hand-painted. The parable

had been a great consolation to Vostrikov after the misfortune with the

rabbits. The picture clearly showed the transient nature of earthly things.

The top row was composed of four drawings with meaningful and consolatory

captions in Church Slavonic: Shem saith a prayer, Ham soweth wheat, Japheth

enjoyeth power, Death overtaketh all. The figure of Death carried a scythe

and a winged hour-glass and looked as if made of artificial limbs and

orthopaedic appliances; he was standing on deserted hilly ground with his

legs wide apart, and his general appearance made it clear that the fiasco

with the rabbits was a mere trifle.

At this moment Father Theodore preferred "Japheth enjoyeth power". The

drawing showed a fat, opulent man with a beard sitting on a throne in a

small room.

Father Theodore smiled and, looking closely at himself in the mirror,

began snipping at his fine beard. The scissors clicked, the hairs fell to

the floor, and five minutes later Father Theodore knew he was absolutely no

good at beard-clipping. His beard was all askew; it looked unbecoming and

even suspicious.

Fiddling about for a while longer, Father Theodore became highly

irritated, called his wife, and, handing her the scissors, said peevishly:

"You can help me, Mother. I can't do anything with these rotten hairs."

His wife threw up her hands in astonishment.

"What have you done to yourself?" she finally managed to say.

"I haven't done anything. I'm trimming my beard. It seems to have gone

askew just here. . . ."

"Heavens!" said his wife, attacking his curls. "Surely you're not

joining the Renovators, Theo dear?"

Father Theodore was delighted that the conversation had taken this

turn.

"And why shouldn't I join the Renovators, Mother? They're human-beings,

aren't they?"

"Of course they're human-beings," conceded his wife venomously, "but

they go to the cinema and pay alimony."

"Well, then, I'll go to the cinema as well."

"Go on then!"

•Twill!"

"You'll get tired of it. Just look at yourself in the mirror."

And indeed, a lively black-eyed countenance with a short, odd-looking

beard and an absurdly long moustache peered out of the mirror at Father

Theodore. They trimmed down the moustache to the right proportions.

What happened next amazed Mother still more. Father Theodore declared

that he had to go off on a business trip that very evening, and asked his

wife to go round to her brother, the baker, and borrow his fur-collared coat

and duck-billed cap for a week.

"I won't go," said his wife and began weeping.

Father Theodore walked up and down the room for half an hour,

frightening his wife by the change in his expression and telling her all

sorts of rubbish. Mother could understand only one thing-for no apparent

reason Father Theodore had cut his hair, intended to go off somewhere in a

ridiculous cap, and was leaving her for good.

"I'm not leaving you," he kept saying. "I'm not. I'll be back in a

week. A man can have a job to do, after all. Can he or can't he?"

"No, he can't," said his wife.

Father Theodore even had to strike the table with his fist, although he

was normally a mild person in his treatment of his near ones. He did so

cautiously, since he had never done it before, and, greatly alarmed, his

wife threw a kerchief around her head and ran to fetch the civilian clothing

from her brother.

Left alone, Father Theodore thought for a moment, muttered, "It's no

joke for women, either," and pulled out a small tin trunk from under the

bed. This type of trunk is mostly found among Red Army soldiers. It is

usually lined with striped paper, on top of which is a picture of Budyonny,

or the lid of a Bathing Beach cigarette box depicting three lovelies on the

pebbly shore at Batumi. The Vostrikovs' trunk was also lined with

photographs, but, to Father Theodore's annoyance, they were not of Budyonny

or Batumi beauties. His wife had covered the inside of the trunk with

photographs cut out of the magazine Chronicle of the 1914 War. They included

"The Capture of Peremyshl", "The Distribution of Comforts to Other Ranks in

the Trenches", and all sorts of other things.

Removing the books that were lying at the top (a set of the Russian

Pilgrim for 1913; a fat tome, History of the Schism, and a brochure entitled

A Russian in Italy, the cover of which showed a smoking Vesuvius), Father

Theodore reached down into the very bottom of the trunk and drew out an old

shabby hat belonging to his wife. Wincing at the smell of moth-balls which

suddenly assailed him from the trunk, he tore apart the lace and trimmings

and took from the hat a heavy sausage-shaped object wrapped in linen. The

sausage-shaped object contained twenty ten-rouble gold coins, all that was

left of Father Theodore's business ventures.

With a habitual movement of the hand, he lifted his cassock and stuffed

the sausage into the pocket of his striped trousers. He then went over to

the chest of drawers and took twenty roubles in three- and five-rouble notes

from a sweet-box. There were twenty roubles left in the box. "That will do

for the housekeeping," he decided.

CHAPTER FOUR

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 765