“Who, Tsaritsa?” asked Alexis.
“Don’t you understand? Don’t you see it? Listen then, grandson, how it was I dreamt that dream. Perhaps you will then understand. It seemed to me, as if I were lying on this very bed, as it were expecting something. Suddenly the door was thrown open, and he appeared. I at once recognised him. Tall, stout, a short foreign coat, in his mouth a pipe; his face clean shaven, with whiskers like a cat. He came up, looked at me and remained silent. I also kept silent, waiting for what would happen next; I felt so sick at heart, so weary—— I tried to cross myself; but could not lift my hand; I tried to recite a prayer, my tongue would not move. I lay there, as if dead. He took my hand, and felt it; I shuddered. I glanced at the holy image, the image too seemed to have taken a new shape: it was no longer the blessed Saviour, but an unclean German, with bloated blue face, like that of a drowned man. And meanwhile I heard him saying to me:—
“‘You are sorely ill, Martha. Would you like me to send you my doctor? Why are you staring at me like this? Do you not recognise me?’ I answered, ‘How could I fail to recognise you? I know you—I have seen many like you.’ ‘Well, if you know me tell me who I am,’ said he. ‘There is no mistaking who you are: a foreigner, a foreigner’s son, a drummer.’ Upon this he grinned and chuckled like a mad tom cat. ‘You are completely gone mad, old woman, that is quite evident. I am neither a foreigner, nor a drummer, but the divinely anointed Tsar of all the Russias, your own dead husband’s, the Tsar Fédor’s, stepbrother.’ Now I was roused, I could hardly restrain myself from spitting in his face, and calling: ‘Thou dog! cur’s pup; pretender, Gregory Otriópieff, anathema, this is who thou art!’ But then, ‘it isn’t worth while,’ thought I, ‘why should I rail at him? He is not even worth spitting on. It is but a dream, an evil apparition, which by God’s will, I am now enduring. I’ll just blow with my lips and it will all disappear and disperse.’ ‘And if you are the Tsar,’ said I, ‘What is your name?’
“‘Peter is my name,’ he answered. When I heard the name ‘Peter,’ it was as though a light had flashed upon me. ‘Ah!’ thought I, ‘is this who you are? well, just wait.’ And seeing my tongue would not move, I, not being a fool, began in my mind to recite the holy adjuration.
“‘Satan! thou fiend, get thee away from me, into empty space, thick forests, deep precipices, into bottomless seas, upon prodigious, uninhabited hills, on which the glory of God’s face never shines. Cursed! disappear from me into Tartarus, bottomless hell, the infernal regions of Gehenna. Amen! Amen! Amen! I blow at thee, I spit on thee.’ When I had finished my imprecation, he had disappeared: the earth seemed to have engulfed him, not a trace of him was left, only a smell of tobacco. I awoke, cried out. In hurried Soundóuleya Vahrameyevna, sprinkled me with holy water, burnt some incense; I got up, walked into the chapel, fell down before the holy Queen, only then having remembered and thought it over, I realized who he had been.”
While she was speaking the Tsarevitch gradually realised that it was his father who had been to see her, not in a dream, but in reality. At the same time the maundering of the woman seemed to catch hold of and infect him.
“Well, and who was it, Tsaritsa?” he repeated with a trembling yet eager curiosity.
“Don’t you see? Have you forgotten what is said in Ephraim’s book, about the second coming, ‘there shall come a proud prince of this world, under the name of Simon Peter, who shall be the Antichrist.’ Do you hear, his name is Peter? It is he Himself, no doubt.”
She fixed on him her eyes dilated with fear, and repeated in a choking whisper: “It is he, himself, Peter! the Antichrist, the Antichrist!”