Birds of Heaven, and Other Stories

by Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko

They were now watching with malevolent curiosity the scene which was being enacted at the door of the dishonorable habitation.

“What’s the matter? They won’t let him in, I see, ...” one said jokingly. “It’s crowded ... with Mordvin women....”

The wanderer turned and threw a keen glance at the speaker. Suddenly his face took on a humble expression and he walked back to the gate,—and three times he crossed himself reverently and ostentatiously.

The peasants looked at one another in surprise; the stranger had made the sign of the cross not with three fingers, but in the old way with only two.

“The Lord, Who seest all things, will reward the monks according to their mercy,” he said with a sigh. “We, brothers, will shake off the dust from our feet, and listen here, in the temple not made with hands (he pointed gracefully and calmly to the evening sky), to an instructive sermon on repentance....”

The peasants crowded together; their faces expressed their delighted and also credulous surprise. The change was too unexpected.... The idea of holding their own meeting on the alien festival and of listening at the very gate of the monastery to a wandering preacher, who made the sign of the cross in the old way, clearly pleased the adherents of the old faith. The preacher took his stand at the base of the bell-tower. The wind ruffled his dusty, light hair.

It was hard to tell the man’s precise age, but he was clearly not old. His face was heavily tanned and his hair and eyes seemed faded from the action of sun and storm.

At each movement of his head, however slight, the cords of his neck stood out prominently and trembled. The man gave you, involuntarily, the impression of something unfortunate, wonderfully self-controlled and, perchance, evil.

He began to read aloud. He read well, simply, and convincingly, and, stopping now and then, he commented in his own way on what he had read. Once he glanced at me, but he quickly shifted his eyes. I thought he did not care for my presence. After that he turned more often to one of his auditors.

This was a broad-shouldered, undersized peasant, whose shape might have been fashioned by two or three blows of an axe. In spite of the squareness of his figure, he seemed very communicative. He paid the utmost attention to every word of the preacher and added some remarks of his own, which expressed his almost childish joy.