The monastery of Petschenga

by J. A. Friis

‘ “And I should like to know what that may be?”

‘ “I am going to be a monk, and shall enter a monastery. I renounce the estates and the property, and everything else in this world.”

‘ “And all for the sake of a beggar-girl.”

‘ “Yes, for the sake of a poor, harmless, forlorn girl—for the sake of the one woman whom I have loved, and whom I have lost, and of whom my own father has deprived me.”

‘ “As you will,” said my father, but he hardly believed that I was in earnest. I made one more desperate journey to seek [[69]]for some trace of Annita. At a place in Karelen I was informed that one Sunday a young couple, who were travelling, had been at church there, and as they were driving off again, the young woman, when they were crossing a bridge, either threw herself, or fell into the river and was drowned. But who they were nobody knew. I called on the priest of the parish, and asked him, but he could not remember that he had heard the names of Annita or Anthony, and he had never married persons so named.

‘I returned home, but I could not bring myself to live there. Wherever I went I was reminded of Annita. I went out in the park, where she used to play as a child, and where, as a grown-up woman, she had assured me of her love. I threw myself down on the ground with my face to the earth, and lay there a long time. I did not give way to tears, but I had a sense of vacuity about me and around me. A blow had fallen upon me from a cruel hand, and my life was cut in twain. So I bid farewell to my parents, and to my home, and I went to Solowetski to be a monk. But there was too much bustle and secular excitement in that huge monastery, and I did not find sufficient solitude there. I longed for solitude, and for a scenery as bare, bleak, and desolate as my own inner feelings. So I journeyed on foot to this dreary spot. Here, I will remain, and to-morrow I will take the vows. Annita must be dead, or, what is still worse, living as dead to me, for not a trace of her has been found, and it is now three years since anything has been heard of her. I also will die, therefore, from henceforth to the pleasures and sorrows of the world. I am weary of life, weary unto death, and I renounce everything.’

‘Perhaps all this has been for your good, and for the saving of your soul,’ said old Gurij.

‘No, no!’ Ambrose exclaimed passionately, and springing up from the place where he was reclining. ‘I could have been so happy in Annita’s love. You don’t know, nobody knows, what that child was to me. I have watched at night by her sick-bed, and have felt that were she to die, I should lose that which nothing could replace. I have carried her in my arms, and she was more precious to me than my own flesh and blood. I lived wholly and solely in her love. She was my all—my future was centred in her. She was my hope, my sanctuary, and my home.’ [[70]]

‘But, perhaps, in the course of time you might fall in love with some other woman, and be happy in her company?’

‘Never! never! I was no mere lad, who, in the unruly passion of the passing moment, gave vent to vows, the meaning of which he had never reflected on. I was a full-grown man who, with my whole understanding, had pledged myself to that woman.’