The group of workmen stopped along with me to hear the almost forgotten traditions connected with this spot.
V
We went together into the little chapel. Its walls were covered with regiments of ikons, and at the eastern end was a crucifix also surrounded by ikons. Gloomy faces, dark boards, bereft of heads.... Oh, so many were lacking heads.... As if the vague feeling of the simple offerers had sought thus to express their feeling that the punishments were undeserved....
I was especially surprised by one ikon, of a crucifix painted on the cubical base. It was not old or had perhaps been renewed and it might well have been a piece of individual workmanship inspired by the sadness of this place. On a semi-circular hill with no attempt at perspective could be seen a severed hand with compressed fingers. Beside it were huge nails. Hammer and saw were hanging in the air. Fragments of chains.... A column with a bundle of rods and whips fastened to it were painted against a background of whirling clouds. But a faint light pierced the clouds and penetrated the mists like a faint gleam of hope. And as if to emphasize this idea more clearly, the artist had depicted a cock greeting the sunrise.... On the top of the column the bird was standing with vibrating wings and open beak, welcoming the morning....
Silently we left the chapel. Although the interior was not dark,—yet it seemed to me that in passing out through this low door we were passing from deep gloom into the light of a clear sky.
Directly ahead of me little heads of grain waved their brilliant wings as if they were alive. The churches and monasteries of Arzamas, like lace, gleamed on the neighboring mountain. The Vyyezdnaya Sloboda with its little church looked down beautifully into the Tesha.
“Oh, God,” sighed one of the peasants deeply and slowly.
What did this sigh express? I do not know. Was it a consciousness of the difficult conditions of life for the workingmen at this present time? Or was it a feeling that, no matter how hard conditions were now, yet it was better to live in the present than in the gloomy night of the past?... I thought it was the second idea.