Diamonds To Sit On/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
THE MIRROR OF SIN
AFTER listening to the dying woman's confession, Father Theodore left Hippolyte's house in great agitation and walked down the road, smiling absent-mindedly to himself. He was nearly run over by a motor-car and only just escaped out of the petrol fumes, but forgetting the dignity of his calling and age, he set off home at a gallop.
His wife was laying the table for supper. On days when there were no vespers Father Theodore liked to have supper early, but this time he took off his hat and coat and, much to the surprise of his wife, ran straight into the bedroom, locked the door, and began to pray in a loud, monotonous voice. 'There's something in the wind,' his wife thought to herself rather anxiously. 'I wonder what's the matter?'
Father Theodore was never at peace. He had never known what peace was, not even in the days when he had been a student at the theological college. After that he had studied law for three years at the university, but taking fright at the idea of being called up for military service in 1915, he again returned to the Church. First he was made a deacon, then ordained a priest, and finally appointed to this provincial town. Wherever he had been, and in whatever calling, he had always been greedy for gain, and had had dreams of making money.
One of his dreams was to own a candle factory. Tormented by visions of great vats of wax, he pictured to himself the time when he would be able to buy a little factory of his own.
His ideas came by fits and starts, and as soon as they came he began to scheme and make plans. Once tried soap. He made tons and tons of soap; but although he used pounds of fat, the soap would not lather, and, besides, it cost three times as much as the soap at the co-operative stores. It lay about the house for months until at last it had to be thrown on to the rubbish heap.
Another time he read in some farmers' journal that rabbit flesh was as tender as chicken, that rabbits multiply rapidly, and that breeding them was very profitable. So he bought half a dozen rabbits, and two months later there were so many lop-ears in the backyard that their pet terrier took fright and ran away. The folk in the town were surprisingly conservative and seemed to have mutually sworn never to buy a rabbit. Father Theodore talked the matter over with his wife, and they both decided to test for themselves whether rabbit was really as good as chicken. They had roast rabbit, baked rabbit, stewed rabbit, minced rabbit; stews and soups made of rabbit; rabbit was served up hot for dinner and cold for supper and put under crusts for pies. But it did not seem to make any difference. Father Theodore worked it out that even if they ate nothing but rabbit all the week round they could not possibly eat more than forty rabbits a month, while their rabbits were breeding at the rate of ninety a month, and each month the numbers would grow.
So they decided to cook meals for other people. Father Theodore spent a whole evening writing out notices about 'The villa where you can get tasty, wholesome dinners cooked exclusively with fresh butter.' The advertisement began with the words, 'Cheap and Tasty'. The priest's wife then filled an enamel basin with flour paste, and late one night Father Theodore went out and stuck the notices up on all the telegraph poles and on the walls near the Government offices.
This venture was a huge success. On the very first day seven people came in for dinner. They thought the dinner was excellent. The next day fourteen people came. There was hardly enough time to skin the beasts. Throughout the week everything went with a swing, and Father Theodore was already dreaming of opening a tannery when an absolutely unexpected thing happened. The co-operative stores had been closed for stocktaking for three weeks and they now re-opened. Out into the backyard, which was shared with Father Theodore, the co-operative workers rolled a barrel of rotten cabbage; it was tossed on to the rubbish heap. Attracted by such an unusual smell all the rabbits ran to the heap. Next morning the rabbits were ill; they had been struck down with a curious disease which lasted for only three hours, but it laid the whole lot low. The breeders, the litters, the large and the small rabbits, every single one of them died.
Father Theodore was broken-hearted and could not do anything for two whole months. He was only just beginning to take heart again. And now he had come back from Hippolyte's house, and to his wife's surprise sat locked up in his bedroom. All this pointed to the fact that something else had come into his mind.
She tapped gently at the bedroom door. There was no answer, but the chanting went on louder and louder. A minute later the door opened and Father Theodore's face appeared in the opening. His face was flushed with excitement.
'My dear,' he said rapidly, 'bring me some scissors. Quick!'
'What about your supper?'
'Oh, that can wait!' he retorted.
He snatched the scissors out of her hand, locked himself up in the room again, and went up to the oval looking-glass on the wall. There was a popular picture hanging on the wall next to the looking-glass, called 'The Mirror of Sin'. It was painted by hand, and after his mishap with the rabbits it had been peculiarly consoling to Father Theodore, for it illustrated the vanity of earthly things. At the top of the picture there were four small pictures, and underneath these were the words, ‘Shem prays, Ham sews, and Japheth hath power. Death rules all.’ Death stood holding a scythe and an hour-glass. The picture reminded Theodore that such silly things as rabbits did not count in the long run. At this moment he preferred to look at the small picture ‘Japheth hath power’. Japheth, sitting on a throne, was a fat, prosperous man with a long beard.
The priest smiled as he looked at himself in the mirror and began to trim his beard. Snippets of hair fell on to the floor, the scissors squeaked, and five minutes later he was convinced he was no good at a beard. It was uneven at one side and looked awful. He was annoyed and called his wife. Handing her the scissors, he said testily: 'Here, you might at least help. I’m blessed if I can cut my beard properly.’
She looked at him in horror.
‘What do you think you're doing?’
‘Doing? Nothing; just cutting my beard, that’s all. Please help me. It's a bit crooked.’
‘Surely darling you're not thinking of going over to the New Church?'
Father Theodore was quite pleased at this turn in the conversation.
‘Well, and why shouldn’t I go over to the New ope Aren’t their priests as much men as ours are?'
'Of course, of course,’ she said, and then added sarcastically, ‘of course they are men. They go to concerts and keep fine ladies.’
'Then I shall go to concerts too.’
'Do! I shan’t stop you.’
'All right! I'll go!’ 'Eh, you'll soon get sick of it all. Just look at yourself in the mirror.'
He looked and saw a rather daring face, two bright black eyes, a small, wild beard, and a stupid, drooping moustache.
They trimmed his moustache and made it a decent size. What followed simply amazed his wife. He announced that this very evening he had to go away on business, and insisted that she should run to her brother, the baker, and borrow his brown suit for a week and his coat with the astrakhan collar.
'I shan't dream of going,' she said, beginning to cry.
For half an hour the priest marched up and down the room, frightening his wife with his face, that looked so different, and with the absolute rubbish that he talked. All she could understand was that he had cut off his beard for no reason at all, that he wanted to travel goodness knows where in a ridiculous coat, and that he wanted to leave her, his wife.
'I'm not throwing you over,' he said. 'I tell you I'll be back in a week's time for certain. After all, a man can have business, can't he?'
'No, he can't,' she retorted, and began to weep.
Father Theodore, who was usually a very mild man when dealing with others, brought his fist down on to the table with a loud bang that so terrified his wife that she threw a shawl over her head and ran out to borrow the clothes.
Left alone, the priest thought for a moment, and then said to himself, as he pulled out a small tin trunk from under his bed: 'Of course it is rather hard on a woman.' He opened the trunk and tossed out a number of magazines that were lying on the top: The Russian Pilgrim for the year 1903; a fairly bulky volume, The History of the Schism; and a pamphlet called Russians in Italy, which had a picture of Vesuvius in eruption on the cover. He thrust his hand down to the bottom of the trunk and pulled out an old bonnet belonging to his wife. A smell of naphthaline made him screw up his nose and eyes. He pulled out of a bundle a heavy little roll made of linen in which he found some twenty gold pieces of ten roubles each. This was all that was left of Father Theodore's ventures in business. He lifted the hem of his cassock, thrust the money into his striped trousers pocket, and then went up to the chest of drawers. Here he took out an old chocolate box in which he found fifty roubles in notes, and, leaving twenty roubles behind, he put the rest into his pocket.
'That'll be enough for the housekeeping,' he decided.