The Decembrist. Prayer. Chapter 1

Countless are these Russian blizzards that from autumn till early spring hold sway over our roads. One will swoop down, whirl, and drift the snow so high that you think the end of the world has come—for the heavens seem to shift and merge with the earth, and the Spirit of God, as in the beginning of time, hovers over the abyss, save that now this abyss is one of snow—mute, white, and savage. It was in such a season, on the very eve of St. Nicholas’s Day in winter, that I, Andrei Petrov, stationmaster in the wilds of Smolensk province, chanced to meet a man who stirs the past like embers in a dying stove.

The wind began blowing from morning. At first it only creaked and called out now and then, like a coachman chiding his stalled horses; but by noon it was howling like a wolf and whistling like a highwayman on the high road. Through the window of my little room, which looked out onto the post road, there stared an impenetrable darkness, and the snow fell not in flakes but in great white tatters, ripped to shreds by the gale. The panes rattled in their frames, and the icon-lamp before the old image of the Saviour Not Made by Hands, which hung in the honoured corner, began to flicker and glow with a troubled, wavering light, casting upon the log wall shadows like the wings of enormous birds. The silence in the house was deceptive—it was composed entirely of the roar and whistle beyond the walls, of the drifting snow that coiled like a serpent under the threshold, of the tinkle of ice-crystals beating against the shutters.

I sat, you understand, by the stove, which I had stoked mightily, so that the heat stood like that of a bathhouse, and I brooded my own thoughts. Reading was out of the question: my eyes are old, and my mind was far away. I dwelt increasingly on the past. The past, in such foul weather, rises before one’s eyes more vividly than this accursed tract, than the mileposts, than the tedium of this place. Thirteen years I have stood here, at this station, since I retired. Thirteen winters and thirteen springs. And it seems I have seen everything: imperial couriers, messengers with important dispatches, landowners trembling in their carriages piled with featherbeds, and convicts in grey greatcoats trudging eastward in chains, their eyes as empty as those of saints on icons when you gaze too long—and they do not understand where they are being led.

Thank God, I had a daughter, and even she is gone. She married an honest man, a merchant from Yelnya, and now trades in meat and raises children. I am left alone with my samovar, which hums at night like a living soul, with my post-book, in which the ink has dried, and with my icon.

Outside, meanwhile, the storm had grown fierce in earnest. A whirlwind rose so violent that it seemed the whole white world had gathered into a single point and was spinning around my wretched hovel. I had begun to pray to myself that no one should perish on the road—it would be a sin on my soul if I did not open the door and warm a traveller—but who would venture out in such a maelstrom? Yet not half an hour had passed before, through the howling and groaning of the wind, I caught another sound—distant, intermittent, but alive. A bell. At first barely audible, like a winter mosquito in the corner; then clearer, more insistent; and at last I made out the strained squeal of runners, the snorting of weary horses, and the driver’s shout, swallowed by the blizzard.

I threw on my sheepskin coat, took my lantern, and stepped out onto the porch. The frosty wind flung itself into my face, snatched my breath, and plastered my eyes with stinging grit. But through the white murk I made out the silhouette of a carriage—not a landowner’s, but a simple travelling kibitka, plastered with snow up to the shafts. The horses, two chestnut nags, stood with drooping heads, breathing heavily, steam rising from them in columns. The driver, one of our local men, Mitry, climbed down from the box, cursing under his breath, and began to open the gate.

“Hey there, master!” I called, though I was the master here. “Whom has God brought?”

“A traveller!” Mitry answered. “A gentleman! He ordered me to drive him, but to where—the devil only knows! He says to Petersburg, but at this rate it’ll take a month, if this snow doesn’t let up!”

I helped him open the gate, and the kibitka rolled into the yard. From it, with difficulty straightening his stiffened back, emerged a man. He was wrapped in an overcoat with a beaver collar, over which he wore a cloak, both covered in snow, so that he seemed a spectre risen from a snowdrift. I could not make out his face, only noticed that he was tall, held himself erect despite his weariness, and that there was something familiar in his bearing—something military, as it were.

“Allow me, sir,” I said, holding the heavy door. “You are most welcome into the house. It is not fitting to remain out of doors on such a night. I have warmth, and the samovar will be ready in an instant.”

He said nothing, only nodded, and I felt the cold radiating from him—the frosty freshness and the faint scent of expensive tobacco mingled with horse sweat.

In the room he finally shed his cloak, removed his overcoat, and, remaining in a dark-green frock coat, sank heavily onto the bench by the stove. His hands—slender and white, with long fingers—trembled, whether from cold or inner tension. I threw more wood on the fire, and the flame crackled merrily, illuminating the room with a hot, unsteady light. Then I could see him clearly. He was a man of about thirty-five, no more. His face, pale and regular-featured, bore the stamp of exhaustion, but his eyes—grey, deep-set—gazed calmly and even with a certain intensity, as though he were appraising everyone he met. His light-brown hair, slightly curling, was combed back, revealing a high forehead. He sat slightly hunched, rubbing palm against palm to warm himself.

“Allow me, good sir, to offer you some tea,” I said, fetching from behind the partition the samovar, darkened with age. “You will warm yourself, and then, God willing, the storm will abate. My tea is with oregano—I gathered it myself.”

“Thank you,” he replied in a low but resonant voice. “At such a time, tea is the greatest of blessings.”

I set the samovar on the table, lit another candle in a brass holder to make it cheerier. I fastened the shutters more tightly, so that the wind’s howl would not frighten us so much, yet still it seemed that something vast beyond the walls was shifting great blocks of ice and groaning, demanding to be let in. While I busied myself, the traveller warmed his hands at the stove, then moved to the table, where I poured him strong, almost black tea into a earthenware mug.

“Sugar, if you please,” I said, pushing the sugar-loaf toward him.

“Most grateful,” he said, and after taking a sip, closed his eyes. It was plain that the journey had worn him to the bone. But it would not do for him to doze in solitude, nor for me to sit mute as a stump. I am a talkative man by nature, and a lonely life has made me greedy for the sound of a human voice.

“Is your journey far, sir?” I asked, seating myself opposite on a stool.

“To Petersburg,” he answered curtly. “Or… wherever fate leads.” At these words the corner of his mouth twitched in a bitter smile.

“That is a gentleman’s affair,” I nodded. “And yet in such a blizzard… It must be hard. Surely your business cannot be so pressing?”

“Pressing,” he agreed. “Business from which one cannot turn aside, any more than from this storm.”

We fell silent. The firewood crackled in the stove, and in that stillness, broken only by the whistling outside, I suddenly noticed that when he set his mug on the table, his frock coat fell slightly open at the chest. Beneath it, on a thin moir; ribbon, there flashed, catching the candlelight, a small enamel cross surmounted by an imperial crown. I recognised it at once—the Order of St. Anne, Third Class. Not the sort given for years of service or civil diligence, but the military, officers’ order, for valour. My own heart gave a lurch, as if I had seen an old comrade. Many such crosses I had seen on the breasts of my fellows in that distant time, when we fought our way from Borodino all the way to Paris.

Noticing my gaze, the traveller instinctively drew his coat together, but it was too late. I understood everything. I understood, too, that if a man wears a military order on his breast and travels alone through such wilderness, with such sorrow in his eyes—his fate cannot be simple. And he is not here on my station, amid the snows, by mere chance; his will must be broken, or else directed by another’s hand.

“Do not look so, sir,” I said quietly. “I am no stranger. I, too, know what service means. In the year twelve… at Borodino… I served in the Life Guard Jaeger Regiment. Afterwards we marched abroad. And then—here, to this station. Life, you know, is like a blizzard: it whirls you about, and you cannot tell where you are, where sky ends and earth begins.”

He raised his eyes to me. In them there was no longer that cold aloofness he had shown at first. Something living, human, even a hidden sympathy appeared there.

“You fought?” he repeated, his voice warming. “Then you remember…”

“I remember everything,” I interrupted. “Every day, every step. How we retreated, and how we marched into Paris. And I remember the men. Such men…” I faltered, for my throat suddenly tightened—not from age, but from that force which still lived in me at the mere memory of those years.

“I, too… had a friend,” I said, looking aside at the icon of the Saviour, where the lamp flickered. “A colonel. We began together in the year twelve. Together we went into the fire, together we dreamed…” I sighed. “Only for one of us fate had one thing in store, and for the other, another.”

The traveller set aside his cup and now regarded me with keen attention. I saw he was waiting. And I myself felt an overwhelming need to speak out. It had been long since I had sat before a man who could understand. And his order—that little cross on its ribbon—seemed to unlock a door I myself had kept bolted for many years.

“You, sir,” I began cautiously, “are you not perhaps one of those… who in Petersburg… in the year fourteen… or after?” I did not finish, but he understood.

He slowly turned his gaze to the window, where the storm raged, and answered:

“I am one of those who did not succeed. Or who succeeded, but not as others did. I am… from the provinces. From our own kind.” He paused. “From those who knew, but were not on Senate Square.”

“Ah,” I said, and felt my heart beat more evenly, for we were speaking the same language. “There, my good sir, so you too are one of the initiated. And I, sinful man, here in the wilderness… I too was entangled. Not in conspiracies, no—but I knew. And I thought. And my colonel and I often talked of how best to arrange life, so that there should be neither oppression nor injustice, so that the Russian soldier should not be a dumb beast but a man. Ah, youth!” I waved my hand. “Youth, the fool, the green wine.”

But the traveller did not smile. He looked at me gravely, and in his eyes I read not just curiosity but the very same pain that lived in me. Then I made up my mind. The Lord had sent me a companion on this long winter evening, that I might confess to him as to myself.

“Would you like me to tell you about the colonel?” I asked. “About that very friend of mine? Because in you I see… a kindred spirit, if I may say so.”

“I beg you,” he answered simply. “I shall not sleep till this storm is over. And to hear an old soldier’s tale is a great honour.”

I rose, went to the stove, threw on two more logs to keep the heat blazing, and drew my stool closer to the table. The candle had gutted, and I replaced it with a fresh one. The lamp before the icon burned steadily, softly illuminating the face of the Saviour, who seemed to hearken to our discourse.

“Well then, sir…” I began, lowering my voice as if fearing the wind beyond the wall might overhear. “That colonel—if only you knew what a man he was! All fire, all truth, all light. His name was… but his name I will perhaps tell you later, when we come to the heart of the matter. We met in that very campaign when the French were breaking upon Moscow. I was a sergeant then, and he a lieutenant, but we paid no heed to rank when we lay in the same firing-line, when we shared our last biscuit between us, when we stood shoulder to shoulder on Raevsky’s battery under hellish fire. I remember how he, young and beardless, would rise under grapeshot, his face calm, even luminous, as though he marched not to death but to a feast. And the soldiers loved him. That, you know, is a sure sign: when soldiers follow an officer into fire without compulsion—then that officer is blessed by God.

We did not part even after the war. I retired as a captain, wounded at Leipzig—my arm still aches before bad weather—and settled here at the station. He rose to colonel. But we wrote to one another, and sometimes he would stop by when his travels took him past. And each time,” here I paused and passed my hand over my face, “each time our talk was not of balls, not of honours, not of ranks. We spoke of what we had seen. How in Paris, in the streets, people live differently, and soldiers are not beaten with sticks, and quartermasters do not steal, and truth is not sold for a copper kopeck. And it seemed to me, sir, that we were not alone in this. That all over Russia there were men who had seen the light and wished to bring it back to their native hearths. I, sinful man, even corresponded with some… and I gathered signatures myself… but that was in the province, quietly, not like in the capital.”

The traveller listened without moving. Only his fingers, resting on the table, clenched into a fist, and I saw the knuckles whiten. I knew I had struck the very heart of his memory.

“And my colonel,” I continued, gazing into the stove-fire, where the logs had burned down and now lay as a heap of crimson coals, “my colonel was one of those who could not wait. He was like that wind outside: he wanted all or nothing. He said, ‘Andrei, one cannot live halfway. If you believe serfdom is a sin, then go and fight it. If you believe the Tsar should be limited in his autocracy, then do not keep silent when injustice is done.’ I, a cautious man, would tell him, ‘Wait, the time is not yet come.’ But he would laugh. ‘Time,’ he would say, ‘never comes of itself. Men bring it.’”

And so, sir, we came to the year 1825. Rumours reached me that in the south, in Petersburg, something was brewing. I knew my colonel was among them. And then…” My voice broke. I could not speak. Even now, five years later, even here in warmth and safety, a tremor ran through me when I recalled those days.

“Then everything collapsed,” I said almost in a whisper. “Like that snow from the mountain. Grapeshot, investigation, hard labour… and silence. Such silence that it rings in your ears. I waited for word of him. I waited, I prayed, but…”

I fell silent and rose. My legs had suddenly grown weak, and I needed to busy myself. I went to the stove, opened the damper, and began to stir the coals with the poker, though they were burning hot enough. The traveller did not hurry me. He sat with his head bowed, only the candle-shadow trembling on his face.

“But I do not wish, sir,” I said without turning around, “to tell you this story in haste, cutting it with the howling of the wind and the clatter of the damper. In this story there is everything: a friendship that even Siberia could not break, betrayal, and… a final meeting, from which my hair still turns grey. You are here, it seems, for some time. The storm will not abate till morning, and may well last all day tomorrow. If you have the inclination and the time, I will tell you everything in order. From beginning to end.”

I turned to him. The traveller raised his head, and I saw tears standing in his eyes—not of pity, no, but because in my words he recognised his own fate, his own loss. He was a Decembrist, like us, only he had not been sent to the mines but left here, in this remote province, to live with the weight of an unfulfilled truth, to breathe an air that had become alien to him after all that had happened.

“I am listening, Andrei Petrovich,” he said quietly. “And I am ready to wait as long as need be. On such a night, an old soldier’s tale is the best thing to warm the soul.”

I nodded, walked to the table, sat down opposite, and poured myself some tea, now cold.

“Then listen,” I said. “And I shall begin with how, in seventeen, long before all these secret societies, we were stationed at Tsarskoye Selo, and he first told me that our victory over Napoleon was only half the work, and the other half awaited us at home…”

I fell silent, for at that moment the wind beyond the window seemed to change: it no longer howled but hummed steadily and deeply, like a vast cathedral bell submerged in water. The blizzard had ringed the station in a tight white circle, and there was neither beginning nor end to this snowy realm, where time had stopped, while memory, by contrast, had grown wings.

“But of that,” I said, raising a finger, “I shall tell you tomorrow, when we have refreshed ourselves and I have set my thoughts in order. For now, allow me only this: look upon this holy one”—I pointed to the icon of the Saviour—“He sees that I do not lie. And He too was witness to the oath that the colonel and I gave each other on that night when all was ended. I will tell you everything. Everything, as in confession.”

The traveller crossed himself before the icon, and I crossed myself after him. Then I rose to throw fresh wood into the stove, for the heat was beginning to fade. The blizzard still droned beyond the walls, but in that house, where two of us sat—an old soldier and a chance traveller, united by one secret, one grief, and one past—it was quiet, warm, and solemn, as in the sanctuary before the great procession.