CHAPTER III
Tichon saw Father Cornelius surrounded by a number of hermits, peasants and children from the neighbouring villages. “Lose no time, O faithful ones!” exhorted the monk, “bravely thrust yourselves into the fire. Surfer for the Lord’s sake! Leap into the flames. ‘Here, devil! take my body, you have nothing to do with my soul!’ Now our persecutors bring us fire and wood, earth and axe, knife and gallows; but there in heaven angelic songs and praise and joy are awaiting us. When our bodies shall be brought to life by the Holy Spirit, then shall we come forth from the earth, like children from their mother’s womb. Prophets and Patriarchs, none will be freed from trial, all have to pass the river of fire, only we shall be free; we shall have burned here. We shall be purged because we enter the flames of our own free will. We shall burn like candles, a sacrifice to God! We shall bake like sweet bread for the Holy Trinity. We will die for the love of the Son of God. More radiant than the sun is the Red Death——!”
“Rather burn, than fall into the hands of Antichrist!” shouted the frenzied crowd.
The women’s and children’s cries rose even above the men’s.
“Run, run into the flames; let us burn! Flee from the tormentors!”
“Now the monasteries are burning,” continued the monk, “but after awhile villages and towns will kindle in their turn. I would have loved to set Nijni on fire myself; I would rejoice to see it burn from end to end. One day the whole of Russia will burn with us!”
His eyes glowed with a strange light. They reflected that last fire which shall destroy the world.
When he had finished the crowd dispersed over the glade and in the outskirts of the wood.
Tichon for some time kept wandering about the groups, listening to what was said. He believed all were going mad.
One peasant said to another:—
“The kingdom of heaven itself is falling into your lap, and you hesitate. Your children are small, your wife young, you love them, you do not desire to perish, but how do you enjoy life with them? A sack, a pot, and bast shoes is your little all. Even your wife herself yearns for the martyr’s fire; and you, a man, are more foolish than a woman? Suppose you live to marry your children and to console your wife! What then? What else but the grave? Whether you burn or no, die you must one day.”
A monk was persuading another monk: “Expiation for our sins is slow and wearisome—ten years’ public penance, endless fasts and prayers! Enter now the flames; and there is an end to your penance! neither work, nor fasting one hour will bring you to heaven. The fire will purge away all sins. Once burnt you are free from all!”
One old man was calling to another:—
“Come, friend, you have lived long enough. It is time to go into the other world, even if only as the lowliest of martyrs.”
The lads playfully said to the girls:—
“Come into the fire! In the other world we shall have golden dresses and red boots, nuts, honey and apples in plenty.”
“It will be well for the young children to burn,” said the monks; “they will avoid sinning, marrying and having children; their purity will remain uncorrupted!”
Others spoke of the great burnings in ancient days; of how, in the Paleostrovsky Monastery, where two thousand seven hundred people had burnt themselves together with the old monk Ignatius, a miracle had taken place. When the church took fire, after the thick smoke had gone off, Father Ignatius, cross in hand, rose through the cupola, followed by all the other monks and a multitude of people in shining garments and great glory. They went up the road to heaven, and passing the gates, disappeared.
And another recounted how in the Poodoyhski churchyard, where nineteen hundred and twenty persons were burnt, the soldiers on guard saw a luminous pillar descend from heaven, many-hued like a rainbow; three men in cassocks, radiant as the sun, came down from it and went round the place three times; one blessed it with the cross, the other sprinkled it with holy water, the third swung the censer. Then they entered the pillar again and ascended into heaven. After this, on the eves of special festivals, many believers saw at that same place wax candles light themselves and heard ineffable singing.
A peasant of Pomone said he had himself had yet another vision. He had lain unconscious in a fever and suddenly saw a moving wheel of fire, and on that wheel tortured men were wailing: “Here are those who refused to burn themselves, but live after the flesh and served Antichrist. Go thou and preach self-burning to all people.” A drop fell upon his lip from the wheel; he awoke, his lip had inflamed. Then he preached to the people: “It is good to burn alive; this sign on my lip is the stigma made by the dead who refused to burn.”
Then the woman Kilikeya sitting on the grass sang about the wife of Alleluja. When the Jews, sent by Herod, sought to kill the child Jesus, the wife of Alleluja hid him and threw her own child into the furnace instead.
Then spake Christ, the heavenly King:
Glory to thee, merciful wife of Alleluja,
Go, tell My will to all My faithful ones!
Let them throw themselves into the fire for love of Me!
Let them cast in also their innocent children.
Nevertheless here and there voices against self-burning could be heard.
“Dearly beloved brethren,” entreated Father Missail, “it is well to be zealous for the Lord, yet there should be a measure in all things! Self-immolation is not acceptable before God. Christ’s is the only way. Let those who can, flee; those who are taken must suffer. But do not seek out death intentionally. Calm down your terrors, my poor children!”
The frantic Father Triphilius agreed with the meek Father Missail.
“We are not mere brands for burning, to no purpose. Are you going to troop together, like pigs in a sty; and then set yourselves on fire?”
“What ignorance!” Father Hierotheus shrugged his shoulders, in sheer disdain for the doctrine and martyrization.
Moreover, Mother Golendoukha, who had already sought death once in the flames, but had been pulled out in time, purposely terrified everybody with her description: how the bodies are contorted in the flames, head and legs shrink together and the blood boils and foams like food in a pot; and how after the fire the bodies lay about, bloated and baked, smelling like roast meat. Some had remained whole, yet at a touch fell to pieces; dogs roamed about, with muzzles grimed with smoke, eating the corpses. A horrid stench spread around; none could pass by without holding his nose. At the time of the burning two black devils with bats’ wings appeared above the flames, rejoicing, clapping their hands and crying, “These are ours!” And for many years on that spot voices were heard at night lamenting, “We are lost, lost!”
Finally the opponents of self-burning approached Cornelius triumphantly: “Why did you not burn yourself? If it is as righteous as you say, you teachers ought to set the example. But no! You persuade poor novices into the fire. You are all alike, you teachers of self-burning. You praise it for others, not for yourselves. Are you not afraid of God’s wrath? You have burnt enough human beings, spare the remainder.”
Then, stung by the taunt, and at a sign from the old monk, Kirucha, a frantic adherent came forward. He brandished his axe, and called out in a loud voice:—
“He who is against self-burning let him come out with his axe, we two will fight it out! A trial by combat! If I am killed, the burning is not acceptable before God; should I kill, then—all we—on to the flames!”
Nobody accepted the challenge.
Then old Cornelius, coming forward, said, “All those for burning stand forth to the right; against, to the left!”
The crowd divided. One part surrounded the old monk, the other stood aside. Those who desired to be burnt numbered about eighty; those who refused about a hundred.
The old man lifted his pectoral cross and blessed those who had chosen the burning with the sign of it, and lifting his eyes to heaven prayed in a solemn voice: “For Thy sake, O Lord, and Thy faith, for the Love of God’s only begotten Son, we die. We do not spare ourselves. We return our souls to Thee. Joyfully we accept this second baptism by fire that we may not lose our faith; we seek the flames for the hate of Antichrist, dying for the love of Thee.”
“Burn, burn, begin,” the frenzied crowd again shouted. Tichon felt that he also would lose his senses if he stayed any longer among this maddened crowd.
He fled into the forest. He ran till he could no longer hear the shouting. A narrow path brought him to the glade grown with high grass and surrounded with impenetrable pines, where he had once prayed to the “Fertile Mother Earth.”
The evening glow was dying away on the tree tops. Golden cloudlets floated over the sky. The thicket exhaled a fresh resinous perfume. The stillness was intense.
He threw himself on the ground, buried his head in the grass, and again, as on that day near the Round Lake, he kissed the earth and prayed to her as if he knew that she alone could save him from this fiery delirium of the Red Death:—
Wondrous Queen, Mother of God,
Earth, thou fertile Mother of all!...
Suddenly he felt a hand laid on his shoulder; he turned round and saw it was Sophia.
She was bending over him and regarding him silently, intently. He too remained silent, and looked up at her. The young girl’s face under the black shawl stood out against the gold and azure sky like the icon of a saint upon the golden background. Pale, with lips red and fresh, like a newly opened flower, with innocent eyes, deep as the lake, her face was so beautiful that his heart stopped beating as in sudden fright.
“So you are here, brother!” she said at last. “And Cornelius searching for you everywhere cannot think whither you have disappeared. Come up! Let us go. Be quick!”
She was excited, joyous, as if great happiness had befallen her.
“No, Sophia,” he said in a calm firm voice, “I will not return there again. Really, I have had enough of it; I have seen and heard sufficient. I shall leave the monastery for good.”
“And you will not endure martyrdom?”
“No.”
“You will go without me?”
He looked at her entreatingly.
“Sophia, dearest, do not listen to those madmen. There is no need to burn. God never willed it. It is a sin, a temptation of the devil. Let us go away together, loved one.”
She bent lower still over him with a subtle, tender smile, her face almost touched his; he felt her burning breath.
“You shall not go,” she murmured in a passionate whisper. “I won’t let you go.”
She suddenly took his head between her hands and kissed him on the lips.
“Sister, sister, what are you doing? This is not allowed. We might be seen.”
“Let them see us! Everything is permitted now! the fire will purge it all! Only say you will burn. Do you will it?” she asked in a faint whisper, clinging closer and closer to him.
Denuded of thinking-power, strength or will, he whispered:
“I will.”
The last glow was dying away on the tree tops; the golden clouds had become grey as ashes. A balmy freshness breathed in the air. The forest sheltered them with the dense shade, earth covered them with her tall grass.
And it seemed to Tichon as though the forest, grass, earth, air and sky were all burning with the last fire which should destroy the world. But he no longer feared. He believed that the Red Death was fairer than the brightness of the sun.