III The Little Dead Child
In the little town of Gagri on the Caucasian shore of the Black Sea there is a beautiful and wonderful church surviving from the sixth century, a work of pristine Christianity. It is but the size of a cottage, and just the shape of a child’s Noah’s Ark, but made of great rough-hewn blocks of grey stone. One comes upon the building unexpectedly. After looking at Gagri’s ancient ruins, her fortresses, her wall built by Mithridates, one sees suddenly in a shadowy close six sorrowful little cypresses standing absolutely still—like heavily dressed guardsmen—and behind the cypresses and their dark green brooms, the grey wall of the church, solid, eternal. One’s eyes rest upon it as upon a perfect resting-place. If Gagri has an organic life, this church must be its beating heart.
I came to Gagri one Saturday afternoon after the first two hundred and fifty miles tramping of my pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and at this little church I witnessed a strange sight. I had hardly admired the grey interior, the bare walls growing into the roof in unbroken curves, the massive stone rood-screen, the sorrowful faces in the holy pictures, when a little procession filed into the church; four girls carrying a flower-bedecked coffin, half a dozen elders, and a pack of children carrying candles—a sight at once terrible and diurnal, a child’s funeral.
Russian churches, having no chairs, have the appearance of being almost empty. In the centre of this emptiness at Gagri church two trestles were put up, and the open coffin placed upon them; in the coffin, lying in a bed of fresh flowers and dressed in delicate white garments, was a little dead child. The coffin was perfectly and even marvellously arranged; it would be difficult to imagine anything more beautiful, and at the same time more terrible.
A girl of about four years, she lay in the coffin as in bed, with her head somewhat raised, and the face looking directly at the altar and at the sorrowful pictures; on her head was a cream silk embroidered bonnet, on her forehead, from ear to ear, a paper riza with delicate line drawings of the story of the girl’s angel, St. Olga. A high lighted candle stood at her head, two little ones at each side, and two at her feet. The bonnet and the dress were tied with little bits of pink ribbon; the child’s hands, small, white, all lovely, lay one upon another, and in one of them was a little white cross. The face and arms were the colour of fine grey wax, the lips thin, dark red and set—the little dead girl looked steadfastly at the Ikons.
I stood and wondered. Round about the coffin were a score of people, mostly little children, who every now and then nicked away flies that were about to settle on the dead body. The grey church and its beauty melted away. There was only a little grey wax figure lying poised before the face of Christ, and little children flicking away flies.
Among the flowers in the coffin I noticed a heavy metal cross—it would be buried with her. Hanging over the trestles at each of the four corners were gorgeous hand-embroidered towels. “This is some rich person’s child,” I thought as I waited—it was twenty minutes before the father, the mother, and the priest arrived. I was mistaken; this was the child of ordinary peasants.
I wonder the mother was allowed to come to church; she was frantic with grief. When she came into the church she fell down on her knees and hugged the dead body and kissed it and sobbed—sobbed so horribly that except for the children there was no one present who kept dry eyes. The husband stood with his hands dangling at his side, his lips all puckered, his hair awry, and the tears streaming down his red cheeks.
But when the priest came in he took the good woman aside and quieted her, and in his words surely was comfort. “Those who die as children are assured of that glorious life above, for of them Christ said, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.’ Least of all should we grieve when a child dies.”
I held a candle with the others and joined in the little service, and when the service was over ate of the boiled rice and grapes that were handed round to save us from evil spirits.
The candles were put out, the priest retired, and then the sobbing broke forth once more, the people crowded round the coffin and one by one kissed the little dead one, kissed her again and again. Most of all the little children kissed her, and the father in distraction stood by, calling out in broken treble, “Say good-bye to her, children, say good-bye!”
Last of all, the wild mother said good-bye, and was only taken away by sheer force. Then the lid was put on the coffin, and the four girls—they were each about twelve years old—lifted it on the embroidered towels and carried it out of the church.
The mother fainted and was taken into the open air, where one woman helped to revive her by pouring water on her head out of an old kettle, and another by drinking water and spurting it out again in her face. Meanwhile the father took eight nails—he had them in his pocket—and with all the crowd looking on, he nailed down the lid of the coffin. The girls once more lifted their burden upon the beautiful towels, and they bore it away to the grave. The crowd followed them with hymns—
All we like dust go down into the grave, the sound of their singing almost drowned by the beating of their uneven steps. The music modulated and died away to the silence of the evening. The little church remained grey and ancient, and the six cypresses stood unmoved, unmoving, like guards before some sacred portal….
And the pilgrim goes on his way.
IV
How the Old Pilgrim Reached Bethlehem
At New Athos monastery in one of the common hostels there were some hundred peasant men and women, mostly pilgrims. It was after supper; some of the company were melting away to the dormitories, others remained talking.
There was one topic of conversation common to all. An old greybeard palmer had broken down that afternoon and died. He had been almost his whole life on the road to Jerusalem, and we all felt sad to think that he had been cut off when he was truly nearing the Holy Land.
“He wished to go since he was a little boy,” said old Jeremy, an aged pilgrim in a faded crimson shirt. Every one paid respect to Jeremy and listened to him. He was a placid greybeard who had spent all his life upon the road, full of wisdom, gentle as a little child, and very frail.
“He wished to go when he was a little boy—that means he began to go when he was a little boy, for whenever you begin to wish you begin the pilgrimage. After that, no matter where you are, you are sure to be on the way. Up in the north the rivers flow under the earth, and no one sees them. But suddenly the river appears above the land, and the people cry out, ‘See, the river is flowing to the sea.’ But it began to go to the sea long ago. So it was with Mikhail. All his life he was a pilgrim. He lived in a distant land. He was born of poor parents, not here, but far away in the Petchora province—oh, far, far away.”
Grandfather Jeremy waved his hand to signify how far.
“Four thousand versts at least, and he hasn’t come straight by a long way. Most of the way he walked, and sometimes he got a lift, sometimes a big lift that took him on a long way.”
“Ah, ah!” said a youngster sympathetically, “and all in vain, all in vain—naprasno, naprasno—”
Jeremy paid no attention.
“Big lifts,” his voice quavered. “And now he is there. Yes, now he is there.”
“Where, grandfather?”
“There, where he wished to be, in the Holy City. He had got very tired, and God had mercy on him. God gave him his last lift. He is there now, long before us.”
“I don’t see how you make that out,” said a young man, a visitor, not a pilgrim. “God, I reckon, cheated him.”
“God never cheats,” said Jeremy calmly.
“God…” said the visitor, and was about to raise a discussion and try to convert these pilgrims from their superstition. But Jeremy interrupted him. For the old man, though a peasant, had a singular dignity.
“Hush! Pronounce not His name lightly. I will tell you a story.”
“Silence now!” cried several. “Hear grandfather’s story!”
The old man then told the story of an aged pilgrim who had died on his way to Jerusalem. I thought he was repeating the story of the life of Mikhail, so like were his present words to those that had gone before. But the issue was different. In this case the pilgrim died and was buried in a little village near Odessa.
He was a penniless beggar. In grandfather’s picturesque language, “he had no money; instead of which he bore the reproach of Christ. He found other men’s charity….
“All his life he wandered towards Bethlehem. He used to say he pilgrimaged not towards Calvary, but towards Bethlehem. The thought that the Roman officials had treated Christ as a thief was too much for him to bear.
“He who possessed all things they treated as one who had stolen a little thing….”
The old man paused at this digression, and stared around him with an expression of terror and stupefaction.
There was a silence.
“Go on, Jeremy,” said some one impatiently.
Jeremy proceeded.
“He always journeyed towards Bethlehem, and whenever he saw a little child, a little baby, he would say to the mother that it foretold him what it would be like for him at the Holy Land. And of the cradles he would always say they were just the shape of the manger where the baby Christ was laid.
“He was very dear to mothers, you may be sure, and he never lacked their blessing.
“He travelled very slowly, for in Moscow a motor-car ran over his foot, and he always needed a strong staff. He was ill-treated sometimes in the towns, where the dogs bit him and the street children aimed stones. But he never took offence. He smiled, and thought how little his sufferings had been compared with those of the saints.
“So he grew old.
“‘You are old, grandfather; you will never reach Jerusalem,’ the peasant women told him. But he always smiled and said, ‘As God wills. Perhaps if I die I shall see it sooner.’
“And he died, poor, wretched, uncared for, in the streets of a little village near Odessa, and children came and beat off the hungry dogs from his body with sticks.
“‘What is this?’ said one policeman to another.
“‘A Bogo-moletz (God-prayer) dead, that’s all,’ was the reply.
“‘No money?’
“‘None. If he had any his pockets have been picked.’
“By his passport he belonged to Petchora province, far away. No one knew him. No one claimed him.
“‘It means he must be buried at the public expense,’ said the head man of the village, and spat upon the ground.
“In the whole village only the coffin maker rejoiced, and he had small cause, since a pauper’s coffin costs but a shilling.
“‘He must be buried on the common,’ said the head man. ‘There’s no room in the churchyard.’
“‘But a pilgrim,’ said an objector. ‘You must bury him in consecrated ground; you can’t shut him out of the Heavenly Kingdom.’
“‘No matter. Ask the priest. If the dead man can pay for a plot of ground for a grave, well and good; or if the villagers will subscribe….’
“The head man looked at the little crowd assembled. They were a poor and needy crowd. No one answered him. Then, without doing any more, the head man walked away, and the dead body remained in the street.
“It seemed no one would pay for the grave, but in the afternoon a woman who lived on the outskirts came and claimed the pilgrim as a distant relative. He could scarcely have been a relative, except inasmuch as we are all descended from Adam.
“The head man and the village priest rejoiced, and the woman took the dead body home and washed it, and clothed it in white linen, and she ordered a three-rouble coffin covered with purple cloth.
“But she was a very poor woman, and when she had paid for the grave she had no money to pay for singers and for prayers.
“‘God will have mercy,’ she said. ‘And belike he was a good man, a pilgrim.’
“And that woman was a virgin,” added Jeremy abruptly and, as I thought, irrelevantly. But the chambers of that old man’s mind were strangely furnished.
“She was a virgin. What remains to be said? She hired a man to dig a grave, and another to wheel the barrow with the coffin. She had no friends who would follow the coffin with her, but in the main street she found a cripple whom she had once befriended, and two little boys who liked to sing the funeral chant.
“Thus the old pilgrim was taken to the grave, and in his honour a simple woman, two street children, and a cripple followed his corse.”
There was a long pause.
“You think he died,” old Jeremy went on. “Oh, no; he did not die, he only went on more quickly. When he fell down dead in the street his soul suddenly began a new life, a life like a dream. Whilst the dogs were barking and snapping at his old legs he suddenly saw in front of him in the darkness a great bright star beckoning him, and in his new life he got up from the road and rushed towards that star—rushed, for he felt young again, younger than any boy, and all the lameness and tiredness were passed away.
“Suddenly, in front of him, and coming to meet him, he saw a horse, draped all in silk, and attendants. A man came up to him and saluted him, offered him a crown, and bade him rise up upon the horse. He sat upon the horse, and, looking at himself, saw that he was dressed in cloth of gold. Behind him was a great train of attendants, carrying gifts. And they all journeyed forward, towards the star.
“Eh, brothers,” said Jeremy, looking round, “what a change in the estate of our poor friend! He has now become one of the first, because on earth he was one of the last. He is a king.”
The listeners were all silent, and the narrator enjoyed a triumph.
Jeremy’s cracked old voice went on, and now again somewhat irrelevantly. “And the woman, who was a virgin, conceived and bore a child, and she was so poor that the child was laid in a manger. And three kings arrived, bearing precious gifts, and they did homage unto the child. It was at Bethlehem. One of these kings was the poor pilgrim who died on his way to the Holy Land.”
“What woman was this?” said the visitor contemptuously. “Your wits are wandering, old man. Do you mean it was the same woman who buried him?”
“The same,” said Jeremy huskily, “only in a different world. There are other worlds, you know. But it is very true. He came as one of the kings. And the woman now has a beautiful child. She knows…. So we shan’t be very sad about Mikhail. I think he also to-day is following that star, and will be at Bethlehem to-night.”
“Only it doesn’t happen to be Christmas Eve,” said the sceptical visitor.
“Eh, hey,” said another pilgrim, breaking in, “there’s a man—he doesn’t know that it is Christmas every day in the year at Bethlehem.”