(A Sketch From a Traveler’s Notebook)

THE VILLAGE OF GOD

(A SKETCH FROM A TRAVELER’S NOTEBOOK)

I

Early one summer morning I put my knapsack on my shoulders and set out from Arzamas.

Southeast of the city stretched the slopes of a green mountain. A little white church welcomingly and mildly peered out through the trees which grew in large numbers among the graves and beside the cemetery on the pitted sides of the mountain were some strange white spots....

As I drew near I saw that these were small and almost toy houses of old brick with peaked roofs covered with mosses and lichens. Three were shorter than a man,—one, in the form of a chapel, was taller. The roofs supported eight-pointed crosses, and on the walls were the dark boards of ikons. The faces had been worn away by the winds and beaten by the rains.

I was told in Arzamas that these were all that was left of a unique village. In earlier times the entire mountainside had been covered with similar structures, as if a city of dwarfs had been laid out opposite to the real city with its gigantic churches and its monastery. The people called this place the “Village of God.”

Every year, on the Thursday of the Seventh Week after Easter the local clergy come to this mountain and wave their censers in the air amid these peculiar houses; the incense perfumes the place and the choir sings:

“Remember, Lord, Thy slaughtered servants and those who died an unknown death, whose names, O Lord, Thou knowest....”

For whom they pray, for whom they sing the requiem, whose sinful souls are remembered in this prayer,—neither the people of Arzamas who stand around and pray nor the clergy of Arzamas can tell definitely.... For them the service in the disappearing “village” is merely a pious and revered custom, a relic of the hoary past....

And this past was sad and bloodstained....

Arzamas was once on the frontier. The city guarded the border. The breeze which raised the dust on the distant steppes here roused great anxiety and alarm. Some looked toward the steppes with terror, others with uneasy hopes.... And every spark borne hither on the winds from the Don or the Volga, found here a goodly supply of inflammable material in oppression, violence, injustice, slavery, and grievous national suffering.

This was the soil where was planted the Village of God.

II

It began, according to tradition, in the days of Stepan Timofeyevich Razin.... The workmen of Stenka robbed even in Arzamas. They fled from here to the north of Nizhny Novgorod, nested for a while in the village of Bolshoye Murashkino, and then passed on to Lyskovo and Makary. At their heels came the generals of the tsar and the bloody vengeance of the followers of Razin was followed by the not less bloody vengeance of the tsar.

During Peter’s reign in 1708, Kondrashka Bulavin sent from the free Don his “pleasant letters.” “Young atamans, lovers of travel, free people of every class, thieves and robbers! He who wishes to go with the military campaigning ataman Kondraty Afanasyevich Bulavin, he who wishes to raid with him, to travel gloriously, drink and eat as he will, ride over the open fields on fine horses, let him come to the black mountains of Samara.” ... So wrote the rebellious ataman to the Cossacks of the Don, to the Ukraine, and the Zaporozhian Syech. Along the Volga, through cities north and south, to worthy commanders, flew the message and also to the villages and towns. In long and business-like letters, carefully composed with a view to their political effect, he set forth all the oppressions of nobles and magnates, all the wrongs and injustice under which the land had long been suffering. The appeals of Kondrashka inflamed the whole land, more blood was shed, and savage was the vengeance of the people.... Again from Moscow advanced the regiments of troops in accordance with the terrible order of Tsar Peter:

“ ... Go through the cities and villages which have joined the robbers, burn them to the last straw, slay the people and torture the leaders on wheel and stake.... For this plague cannot be removed, except by sternness....”

In those days there was no lack of sternness and after the pacification even the cruel tsar wrote to Dolgoruky, not to execute the brother of the slain Bulavin, for many had joined the revolt from misapprehension or “from compulsion.”

The rebels were carried to Arzamas. Scaffolds, stakes, and wheels were erected along the roads and the city during one of these periods of vengeance was, in the words of an eye-witness quoted by Solovyev, “like hell”; for more than a week the groans of the victims of the terrible tortures filled the air and birds of prey hung over the places of execution.

After this pacification arose on the mountainside houses of the “Village of God,” and the people began to sing the requiems on the hillside....

Ere long the bone of the followers of Razin and of Bulavin were joined by the bones of the banished Stryeltsi (Guards).... Defiantly and in disobedience to the tsar’s order, they left Vekikiya Luki, whither they had been sent, and they stoutly resisted the tsar’s General, Shein, with a large force, but they were defeated in a desperate hand-to-hand encounter, as they were trying to cut their way through to Moscow to the Stryeltsi villages where their wives and children were living. The victorious general filled the prisons and dungeons of Arzamas with the men who had disobeyed the tsar’s orders. The ring-leaders were punished. The tsar returning from abroad was dissatisfied with the weakness and the mildness shown by Shein to the rebels. A judge was sent from Moscow to make a new investigation.... There were not enough executioners in the city to administer the new tortures and punishments and more had to be summoned from Moscow for the occasion....

New houses were added to the “Village of God.” ...

Drenched with blood, the naÏve and rebellious dream of the people for a free life died away until new outbreaks commenced, a dream closely connected with the old cross and the beard, with Cossack bands, and with confused memories of the freedom of the steppes. The old injustice weighed more and more heavily upon them and hardened and increased their century-old suffering. The memory of the people involuntarily returned to those who promised freedom and who sealed this promise with their own and others’ blood.... Time and time again, like stones washed down to the shore by the raging torrent, new groups of “houses of God” appeared on the slopes of the mountain of Arzamas.

At first, perhaps, each grave preserved the memory of a definite man, his name, and his saint on an ikon. Some one would bring these ikons and sprinkle the tombs of shame with passionate tears of love and sympathy. These mourners died.... The wind, the rains, and the sun faded the faces on the ikons, and along with these there perished the living personal memory of the people buried here. There remained hanging above the mountain only a vague tradition and a vague popular feeling, ... a feeling of sad inability to comprehend, which dared not pronounce its own judgment and presented this to heaven.... And down the centuries, from year to year, even to our own times, sounds the solemn prayer for all those who had been put to death, be they innocent or guilty, and for all those who died an unknown death....

... Whose names, O Lord, Thou knowest....

III

I heard the following tale in Arzamas.

It was after the suppression of the rebellion of Razin. The tsar’s generals had erected near Arzamas a whole forest of columns with cross-beams and towards evening the city saw in horror, as they looked from one hill to another, hanging upon them the bodies of atamans and of the men of Arzamas who had joined the revolt. The bloody sun set behind the mountain, fearful darkness covered the heavens, and crows swarmed in clouds around their booty. The people kept asking one another: “Who is hanging there on the mountain? Criminals and murderers or the defenders of popular freedom, the avengers of century-old injustices?”

That same night a young merchant of Arzamas was driving his tired horse along the road from Saratov and he was urging it on with all his might. He abandoned far from the city his cart and the wares which he was bringing from the Volga, and was hurrying ahead without resting at all; he had learned from fugitives whom he had met that there was something wrong in the city and that the men of Razin were rioting in it. And he had left in the city his father and mother and his young wife with her first-born babe.

At midnight the young man galloped on his foaming horse out of the forest on to a hill in sight of his natal city. There was no gleam of fire to be seen above the city, no alarm bells to be heard. The city seemed dead; but in two or three of the churches were there timid lights,—perchance by the dead bodies of “honorable citizens,” who were waiting Christian burial....

Suddenly ... his horse started.... It was at that very place where now stand the “houses of God.” ... The merchant saw a dread and leafless forest standing on the mountain side, and, like ripe fruit, the bodies of good young men hanging on the trees, with crows flapping their wings and picking out the eyes of the dead.

The young merchant’s heart had been surging with uncertainty and sorrow during his hurried journey by day and night, uninterrupted save by the need of changing his tired horses, and his soul was weighted down as by a rock with his hatred for the rebels of Razin. He stopped his horse under one scaffold, rose in his stirrups and with all his strength he lashed one of the dead bodies and cursed it.... The body swayed.... The chain creaked and a cloud of crows rose in the air, flapping and cawing.

A dreadful result followed: the tortured dead descended from every scaffold, from every wheel, and from every hook and rushed at the merchant.... The maddened horse tore through the fields, leaped the ravines, and reached the city utterly exhausted. And throughout the whole flight, like autumn leaves driven by a gale, dashed after him the shades of the executed, with their dead eyes aflame, and their fettered hands grasped after him with curses and moans, and their dead voices wailed, lamented, cursed....

Then the merchant realized that it was not for him to judge those who were now standing before a far different tribunal, pleading there their own and others’ sins, their own and others’ wrongs, their own and others’ blood. In that dreadful hour he took a solemn oath to bury all those who had been executed and yearly to have a requiem for them.

Since then, it is said that the houses of God have stood in Arzamas. Since then the clergy sing the requiem over the nameless graves and the ikons which have been brought hither do not perish unnoticed....

IV

It was a clear, calm morning when I went out to the remains of the Village of God. A tired woman who was driving a lost cow crossed herself, when she saw the cross of the chapel. A gang of workmen, “panniers” of Arzamas, were going to their work. A very old peasant, gray as an owl and with faded but still living eyes, was sitting on the threshold of the chapel and binding the flaps of his rough boots. The sun had just risen above the distant forests.

“Greetings, grandsir,” I said to the old man.

“Good morning, son.... Where’re you going?”

“To Sarov.”

“You’re on the wrong road. There’s the proper way.... To the bridge and then the village there.”

“I know, grandsir. I left the road on purpose, so as to see the houses of God.”

“Look, son, look.... And pray here too.... It’s a holy place, you know....”

“Don’t you know who’s buried here?”

“Yes, son, yes! People of every class.... Violence!... A Saltykov, a landowner from the Vyyezdnaya Sloboda, who oppressed the people,—God forbid.”

The old man sadly shook his gray beard.

“You know, old people say,—a merchant was going from Makary to Arzamas,—and offered thanksgiving for arriving safely. Glory to God—he was at home! At dawn he went out of the city peacefully and met the lord and his retainers on the bridge. There was no justice.... They hurled him from the bridge into the Tesha and in a day or two his body floated to the city.... It was picked up and buried here, on the mountain. And here it lies till the Day of Judgment....”

I was already familiar with the name of this Saltykov: the old records in the archives of Nizhny Novgorod preserve the dark memories of the acts of this noble family, and one is well known from the revolt of Pugachev: his retainers collected the taxes by robbery. When the glad tidings spread among the people that Petr Fedorovich had made himself known and was marching to recover his throne, the serfs of Saltykov thought that there would be an end to their master’s outrages and their necessarily sinful lives. The mir assembled, seized and bound their lord, put him in a cart and took him to the “tsar’s camp” for trial. “But,” said one landowner who described the incident, “the Lord heard the prayers of the innocent victim and the rascals instead of going to the camp of the pretender, carried him to the troops of Mikhelson.”

It goes without saying that the kindly nobleman was quickly released and the wicked peasants received just punishment. Their bones perhaps joined those of the followers of Bulavin, the Stryeltsi and the victims of this same Saltykov. They all lie there together awaiting “the judgment of God” over all earthly actions....

“Yes, there’s the Sloboda,” said the old man, rising to his feet and pointing to the village with its columns of smoke and with the morning fog across the river Tesha. “And there, higher up, were the gardens of Saltykov....”

“Do you think these houses of God were built since, grandsir?” I asked.

“N-no, friend! Since! N-no.... Much earlier.... Perhaps since Pugachev.”

“Who was Pugachev?”

“Who knows, we are dark people. We heard from our fathers and grandfathers nothing but Pugachev and Pugachev.... You know the old story. My father died forty years ago and he was ninety years old when he died.... And he was still a boy when Pugachev appeared. Count now, how long ago it was.”

“A hundred and twenty years, grandsir.”

“Yes, a hundred and twenty,—and more!... Pugachev was a stern man. Oh, so stern. You know, he didn’t love the landowners. He’d go into a village. ‘Give me your lords!’ If the peasants hid them,—God forbid! Cruel.... My father, God bless him, once told me there were two villages side by side. The people of one guessed right. They took the ikon and went to meet him, ringing the bells. He pardoned them, rewarded them, gave them a charter of his favor.... Ours didn’t; the fools didn’t meet him and he burned the whole village.”

The old man suddenly looked at me, saw my watchchain and the notebook in which I began to jot down the main points of his story,—and he suddenly took off his cap and said:

“Forgive me, for Christ’s sake!”

“What’s the matter, grandsir?”

“That wasn’t so, perhaps.... We’re dark people; how should we know?... Perhaps he never said it.... But it is true that he was stern.... He loved order....”

The old man seemed to be afraid that the gentleman would condemn him for familiar stories about the high qualities of Pugachev, who “loved order” and issued “charters of his favor”....

I succeeded in calming his anxiety, and we continued to talk. The old man proved communicative. His memory kept much curious lore and his simple answers revealed that same vague atmosphere which filled the place: a feeling of pardoning and timid lack of comprehension, of vague questioning and of prayer for those who lie here, under the earth, and perchance had been executed as punishment for crime or perchance had laid down their lives for a cause punishable here on earth but counted holy and righteous there.

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.

We parted and each went his own way.