A Tramp's Sketches

by Stephen Graham

III

THE LITTLE DEAD CHILD

In the little town of Gagri on the Caucasian shore of the Black Sea there is a beautiful and wonderful church surviving from the sixth century, a work of pristine Christianity. It is but the size of a cottage, and just the shape of a child's Noah's Ark, but made of great rough-hewn blocks of grey stone. One comes upon the building unexpectedly. After looking at Gagri's ancient ruins, her fortresses, her wall built by Mithridates, one sees suddenly in a shadowy close six sorrowful little cypresses standing absolutely still—like heavily dressed guardsmen—and behind the cypresses and their dark green brooms, the grey wall of the church, solid, eternal. One's eyes rest upon it as upon a perfect resting-place. If Gagri has an organic life, this church must be its beating heart.

I came to Gagri one Saturday afternoon after the first two hundred and fifty miles tramping of my pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and at this little church I witnessed a strange sight. I had hardly admired the grey interior, the bare walls growing into the roof in unbroken curves, the massive stone rood-screen, the sorrowful faces in the holy pictures, when a little procession filed into the church; four girls carrying a flower-bedecked coffin, half a dozen elders, and a pack of children carrying candles—a sight at once terrible and diurnal, a child's funeral.

Russian churches, having no chairs, have the appearance of being almost empty. In the centre of this emptiness at Gagri church two trestles were put up, and the open coffin placed upon them; in the coffin, lying in a bed of fresh flowers and dressed in delicate white garments, was a little dead child. The coffin was perfectly and even marvellously arranged; it would be difficult to imagine anything more beautiful, and at the same time more terrible.

A girl of about four years, she lay in the coffin as in bed, with her head somewhat raised, and the face looking directly at the altar and at the sorrowful pictures; on her head was a cream silk embroidered bonnet, on her forehead, from ear to ear, a paper riza with delicate line drawings of the story of the girl's angel, St. Olga. A high lighted candle stood at her head, two little ones at each side, and two at her feet. The bonnet and the dress were tied with little bits of pink ribbon; the child's hands, small, white, all lovely, lay one upon another, and in one of them was a little white cross. The face and arms were the colour of fine grey wax, the lips thin, dark red and set—the little dead girl looked steadfastly at the Ikons.

I stood and wondered. Round about the coffin were a score of people, mostly little children, who every now and then nicked away flies that were about to settle on the dead body. The grey church and its beauty melted away. There was only a little grey wax figure lying poised before the face of Christ, and little children flicking away flies.

Among the flowers in the coffin I noticed a heavy metal cross—it would be buried with her. Hanging over the trestles at each of the four corners were gorgeous hand-embroidered towels. "This is some rich person's child," I thought as I waited—it was twenty minutes before the father, the mother, and the priest arrived. I was mistaken; this was the child of ordinary peasants.

* * * * *

I wonder the mother was allowed to come to church; she was frantic with grief. When she came into the church she fell down on her knees and hugged the dead body and kissed it and sobbed—sobbed so horribly that except for the children there was no one present who kept dry eyes. The husband stood with his hands dangling at his side, his lips all puckered, his hair awry, and the tears streaming down his red cheeks.

But when the priest came in he took the good woman aside and quieted her, and in his words surely was comfort. "Those who die as children are assured of that glorious life above, for of them Christ said, 'Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.' Least of all should we grieve when a child dies."

I held a candle with the others and joined in the little service, and when the service was over ate of the boiled rice and grapes that were handed round to save us from evil spirits.

The candles were put out, the priest retired, and then the sobbing broke forth once more, the people crowded round the coffin and one by one kissed the little dead one, kissed her again and again. Most of all the little children kissed her, and the father in distraction stood by, calling out in broken treble, "Say good-bye to her, children, say good-bye!"

Last of all, the wild mother said good-bye, and was only taken away by sheer force. Then the lid was put on the coffin, and the four girls—they were each about twelve years old—lifted it on the embroidered towels and carried it out of the church.

The mother fainted and was taken into the open air, where one woman helped to revive her by pouring water on her head out of an old kettle, and another by drinking water and spurting it out again in her face. Meanwhile the father took eight nails—he had them in his pocket—and with all the crowd looking on, he nailed down the lid of the coffin. The girls once more lifted their burden upon the beautiful towels, and they bore it away to the grave. The crowd followed them with hymns—

All we like dust go down into the grave,

the sound of their singing almost drowned by the beating of their uneven steps. The music modulated and died away to the silence of the evening. The little church remained grey and ancient, and the six cypresses stood unmoved, unmoving, like guards before some sacred portal….

And the pilgrim goes on his way.