“What is it? Be quiet!”
“Pa-pa!”
Silence in the room, the whizzing and wrathful hissing of the snowstorm outside, and the dull, viscid sounds of the bell. The idiot is slowly turning his head, and his thin, lifeless legs, with the curving toes and the tender soles that have never known contact with firm ground stir feebly and impotently strive to flee. And he calls again:
“Pa-pa!”
“All right. Stop. Listen, I will read you something.”
Father Vassily turned back the page and began with a grave and severe voice, as though reading in church:
“And as He passed by He saw a man who was blind from birth. He raised his hand and with blanched cheeks looked up at Vassya.
“Understand: BLIND FROM BIRTH. Had never seen the light of the sun, the face of his near ones and dear ones. He had come into the world and darkness had enveloped him. Poor man! Blind man!”
The voice of the priest resounds with the firmness of faith and with the transport of sated compassion. He is silent, he is staring ahead with a softly smiling gaze as though he cannot part with this poor man who was blind from birth and had never seen the face of a friend and had never thought that the grace of God was so nigh. Grace—and mercy—and mercy.
“Boom!”