ONE day, when I was visiting a village on the steppes, I came upon a strange comedy very typical of Russian life. I went in to a bootmaker to get one of my boots sewn up, and I overheard the following conversation.

“Marya Petrovna has seen the Anti-Christ,” says the cobbler’s wife.

“No,” says Jeremy, her husband, “it is God who has looked on her. God has been very pleased with Masha.”

“Yes,” rejoins his wife, “she seems very holy, but I don’t like it. Last Sunday at church she knelt so long that everyone thought she had fallen asleep. When the priest opened the door of the church she went in and knelt down on the stones before the blessed Ikon. All through the service she kneeled, and all through the Communion, and though she had bought her loaf and the priest called her she did not go up to the altar, but simply went on kneeling. Then, when the bells rang and we all went out, she still remained kneeling. And she didn’t cross herself. The priest himself had to come and lift her out of the church so that he could lock up. I think she’s under a curse. She has done some dreadful sin—has talked with wood spirits, perhaps.”

“The Squire’s son came on the Devil’s hoof marks in the forest last week, and saw a man with eight dead foxes shortly afterwards.”

The cobbler’s wife held up her hands with horror.

Katusha, a young woman from a neighbouring izba, has come in.

“You speak of Marya Petrovna,” says she. “We saw her last night, Tanya, Lida and I and a lot of us looking through the window. She was kneeling on her knees and praying to the samovar and calling it God. The priest went in and tried to talk with her, and he tried to raise her, but it was difficult, so he picked up the samovar instead and hid it away. Then poor Masha stood up, and we saw her look at the big black pot that has the cabbage soup in it, and she crossed herself as if it were an Ikon. Two days, they say, she hasn’t eaten, and Peter, her husband, has had to get his meals himself. She won’t do anything in the house, and directly she sees something new she goes down on her knees to it. The priest has been reasoning with her, and she says she sees God everywhere. God is everywhere, that is true, but Masha says He’s in the pots and pans and in the stove, and she won’t sit on a chair because she says it’s all God. You should have seen her last night, she looked a holy saint, and her eyes were full of light.”

“Lord save us!” exclaimed the cobbler’s wife.

“Permit me to go on. Her eyes were full of light, and she lifted up her hands to the roof, and sang strange music, so that we all felt terrified, and the priest wept. When we saw the priest weeping we didn’t know what to think, and presently he and Peter came and told us to go home, and that Marya Petrovna had had a vision—God had been so good to her.”

The cobbler looked very solemnly at her for some minutes, and then turned his gaze upon his wife. “I think,” said he, “that it may be that this is the second coming of Christ.”

“Idiot!” exclaimed his wife. “How could Masha be Christ?”

“I don’t mean Masha,” he replied, “but perhaps she sees Him coming. He may be getting nearer and nearer every moment, and Masha may see the glory brighter and brighter. Masha always was our most religious.”

At this point the grocer’s wife, in a red petticoat and a jacket and a shawl, rushed in, and exclaimed:

“Just think, friends, Marya Petrovna is dead! I am absolutely the first person to give the news, I had it from the priest just as he left the house. He watched with her all night—but pardon me, I must be going.”

With that she rushed out to be the first to give the news to the rest of the village.

The cobbler and his wife exclaimed together, “Bozhe moÏ! Oh, Lord!” And Katusha slipped out after the grocer’s wife, intending evidently to have her share in the glory of gossip. The cobbler threw aside his last, and went out as he was, in his apron and without his hat, and his wife went with him. They swelled the little crowd that was already collected outside Masha’s dwelling.

It was indeed as the grocer’s wife had indicated. Marya Petrovna had died. Of what she had died everyone could say something. Some peasants ascribed it to the Devil and some to God. The majority held that God had taken her to heaven. The priest’s explanation was that the woman’s life had been very acceptable to God, and that He had blessed her with a vision of His glory. The vision had been a promise; it had perhaps shown her her glorious place in heaven. The vision of God had entered her eyes, so that she could not put it aside and look at the ordinary things of life. She could not see a samovar—she saw God. She couldn’t make tea with the samovar; that would have been sacrilege. She could not eat soup, she couldn’t sit down, she couldn’t lie down, she couldn’t touch anything. To do these things was sacrilege. So she died. She died from utter exhaustion and from starvation. No doubt God had taken this means to bring her from the world.

Such was the story that the priest communicated to his superiors and to St Petersburg, hoping that it might perhaps be thought fit to honour the mortal memory of this new Mary whom the Lord had honoured. No canonisation, however, followed, though to the inhabitants of the village of Celo the woman remains a saint and a wonder, and the moujiks cross themselves as they pass the cottage where she used to live.