[6] Russians eat dried sunflower seeds as Americans eat peanuts.
[CHAPTER XXII]
Peredonov began to attend church frequently. He always stood in a conspicuous place. At one time he crossed himself more often than was necessary, at another he stood like a person in a trance and looked stupidly before him. It seemed to him that spies were hiding behind the columns, and were peeping out from there, trying to make him laugh. But he did not yield. Laughter, the quiet, faint laughter, the giggling and the whispering of the Routilov girls, sounded in Peredonov's ears, and grew at times to an extraordinary pitch—as if the cunning girls were laughing straight into his ears, to make him laugh and to disgrace him. But Peredonov did not yield.
At times a smoke-like, bluish nedotikomka appeared among the clouds of incense smoke; its eyes gleamed like little fires; with a slight rustle it lifted itself into the air, though not for long, but for the most part it rolled itself at the feet of members of the congregation, it jeered at Peredonov and tormented him obtrusively. Of course, it wanted to frighten him so that he would leave the church before Mass was over. But he understood its cunning design—and he did not yield.
The church service—so dear to many people not in its words and ceremonies but in its innermost appeal—was incomprehensible to Peredonov. That is why it frightened him. The swinging of the censers frightened him as if it had been a mysterious incantation.
"What's he swinging it so hard for?" he thought.
The vestments of those serving the Mass seemed to him coarse, vari-coloured rags—and when he looked at the array of priests he felt malignant, and he wanted to tear the vestments and break the sacred vessels. The church ceremonies and mysteries seemed to him an evil witchcraft, intended to subject the common people.
"He's crumbled the wafer into the communion cup," he thought angrily of the priest. "It's cheap wine. They deceive the people to get more money for their church celebrations."
The mystery of the eternal transformation of inert matter into a force breaking the fetters of death was for ever hidden from him. A walking corpse! The absurd mingling of unbelief in a living God and His Messiah, with his absurd belief in sorcery!