And his glazed eye moved wearily from that disquieting expanse of blue along the wall of his chamber which had once been white and was now scrawled over with obscene jests and drawings, product of the leisure hours of generations of prisoners. The writing, like all writing, was unintelligible to him. But some of the artistic efforts left little to the imagination. He was saddened, less by homely pictures than by the unfamiliar script. He had always distrusted the written word. Why all these strange letterings—so unnecessary, so dangerous to the life of an orthodox Christian? What one brother has to tell another—why write it down?
He saw the straw pallet destined for his nocturnal repose. It reminded him dimly of a similar resting-place during his monastic life. Then, too, he had slept on a couch near the floor. Flickering visions came to him of those days, so long ago, ere yet the First Revelation was given to the world. A breath of old Russia was wafted into his nostrils. He remembered the lusty, jovial country folk, the songs and dances at hay-making, the fragrance of the land, the sluggish rivers rolling their brown mud about the plains, the mild long-drawn evenings. He felt again that all-pervading charm of sadness, of tender yearning, that hangs in the pale Russian sky and penetrates to the very soul of the endless country.
Gloomy autumn days—wet leaves and lowering horizons. The long winter within doors. Faces appeared to him, faces of old, an endless procession of faces clear-cut as ever … his brother monks, bearded and unkempt … debauched acolytes … pilgrims from the Holy Land … glittering festal robes … vodka orgies, endless chants and litanies, holy lamps burning, somber eikons with staring eyes … the smell of greasy lukewarm cabbage soup, of unwashed bodies and boot leather and incense. Holy Russia—it all moved before his eyes in a kind of melodious twilight. Then the First Revelation. The Man-God.
Man-God. The word filtered through his intelligence. How strange it sounded. The Man-God—what could it mean.
A sudden change. A life of glory and intrigue. Food on platters of gold, sparkling wines and laughter. A diamond cross, an imperial gift, the reward of faithful services. Everybody cringing. Showers of bribes. Women—always women. A divine life! Nothing but women….
Darkness. Something had happened; they had carried him into a place full of endless penances, floggings, starvings. Then they accused him of doing wrong. What was it? The flesh of warm-blooded beasts…. He had preferred the service of God to that of his earthly master. For this they banished him and made him suffer. He was dying now—dying to save mankind. He was giving up his life for sinners. Someone else had once done the same thing. Who was it? He could not remember. People who read and write—they know these things. Some saint, possibly; or at least a man from another province—someone he had never met or spoken to. A good Russian, whoever it was. But the name—the name had slipped out of his mind. He always had a good memory for faces, but a bad one for names.
He was so ill and oppressed too. Worse than before. He felt himself rotting earthwards, like a fungus of his own native forests under autumn rains. His body remained inert but his eye, roaming away from the straw pallet, fixed itself upon the door. When, when would that kindly gentleman with the instrument arrive?
CHAPTER XXXVII
Concerning the life and death of Saint Eulalia, patroness of Nepenthean sailors, we possess ample and accurate information.
She was born in 1712 at a remote village in the Spanish province of Estramadura. Various divine portents accompanied her birth. Her mother dreamed a strange dream about a sea-serpent; her father was cured of a painful gouty affection; the image of Saint James of Compostella in the local church was observed to smile benignly at the very hour of her entry into the world. At the age of two years and eleven months she took the vow of chastity. Much difficulty was experienced in keeping the infant alive; she tormented her body in so merciless a fashion. She refused to partake of food save once in every five weeks; she remained immovable "like a statue" for months on end; she wore under her rough clothing iron spikes which were found, after death, to have entered deeply into her flesh. She was never known to use a drop of water for purposes of ablution or to change her underwear more than once a year, and then only at the order of her confessor who was obliged to be in daily contact with her. The heat of her body was such that it could not be touched by human hands. During her frequent trances she spoke accurately in sixty-nine different languages; there was no hair whatever on her head which was "spotless as an egg." She put baskets of sea urchins into her bed and, as a penance for what she called "her many sins," forced herself to catch the legions of vermin that infested her brown blanket, count them, separate the males from the females, set them free once more, and begin over again. She died at the age of fourteen years and two months. Her corpse forthwith became roseate in colour, exhaled a delicious odour of violets for twenty weeks, and performed countless miracles. On dissection, a portrait of Saint James of Compostella was discovered embedded in her liver.