Lost Diaries

by Maurice Baring

The world is a peep-show, and I have satisfied my expectation. I am weary of the sights of the fair, and the mirth of the crowd to me is meaningless. The bells, and the tambourines, and the toy trumpets, the grating of the strings, and the banging of the drum jar upon me. Like a child, who has spent a whole day in frolic and whose little strength is utterly exhausted, I desire to go home and to rest.

Rest, where is there any rest for thee, Ivan, Ivan the Restless? Everywhere have I sought for peace and found it nowhere, save in a cell, and on my knees, before the Image.

September 10.—Why was I born to be a King?

Why was I cast, a frail and fearful infant, to that herd of ravenous wolves, those riotous nobles, that band of greedy, brutal, and ruthless villains who bled my beloved country and tore my inheritance into shreds? I think I know why I was sent thither. Out of the weakness came forth strength; a little boy was sent forth to slay the giant. I was sent to deliver the Russian people, to break the necks of the nobles, and to cast the tyrants from their stronghold. I was sent to take the part of the people, and they will never forget this or me; in years to come, ages after I am dead, mothers will sing their children to sleep with songs about the great Tsar of Moscow, Ivan the well-beloved, Ivan the people's friend, Ivan the father of the fatherless, the brother of the needy, the deliverer of the oppressed.

But the proud and the mighty, the rich and the wicked, shall hate me and vilify me, and blacken my name. I know you, ye vipers, and all your ways. I would that not one of you could escape me; but, like the hydra, you have a hundred heads, that grow again as fast as they are cut off. When I am gone, O vile and poisonous nobility, you will raise your insolent head once more, and trample again upon my beloved people.

Would that I could utterly uproot you from the holy soil of Russia, and cast you to perish like weeds into a bottomless pit.

October 1.—I dreamed last night a fearful dream. I dreamed that I had done an abominable thing, and that I bore stains on my hands that the snows of the mountains and the waves of the sea could not wash out. I dreamed that all mankind shunned me, and that I wandered alone across the great plain till I came to the end of the world and the gates of Heaven. I knocked at the gates, but they were shut; and round me there was a multitude, and there arose from it a sound of angry voices, crying, "He has slain our fathers, and our brothers, and our mothers, by him our houses were burnt and our homes were laid waste, let him not enter"; and I knocked at the gate, and then there came a man with a mark on his brow, and he said, "This man has killed his son, let him not in." And I knew that man was Cain. And the howling of the voices grew louder, and the cries of hate surging round me deafened me. I knocked, and prayed, and cried, and wept, but the gate remained shut. And all at once I was left alone in the great plain deserted even by my enemies, and I shivered in the darkness and in the silence. Then, along the road, came a pilgrim, a poor man, begging for alms, and when he saw me, he knelt before me, and I said, "Wherefore dost thou kneel to me, who am deserted by God and man?" And he answered, "Is not sorrow a holy thing? Thou art the most sorrowful man in the whole world, for thou hast killed what was dearer to thee than life, and bitter is thy sorrow, and heavy is thy punishment." And the pilgrim kissed my hand, and the hot tears that he shed fell upon it.

And at that moment, far away I heard a noise as of gates turning on a great hinge, and I knew that the doors of Heaven were open.

Then I awoke, and I crept up the stairway way to my little son's bedroom. He lay sleeping peacefully. And I knelt down and thanked Heaven that the dream was but a dream; but when the sun rose in the morning, like a wave from out of infinity, apprehension rolled to my soul and settled on it. I am afraid, and I know not of what I am afraid.

February 13, 1570.—Thanks to God Novgorod is no more. I have utterly destroyed its city and its people for its contumacy. So fare all the enemies of Russia and of Moscow.