The Cathedral Clergy: A Chronicle

Chapter 3

Chapter 3 Termosesov’s poem thoroughly succeeded in driving all thoughts of Savely from the minds of Old Town’s intelligentsia. Termosesov’s final dirty trick and the humiliating position the haughty postmaster’s wife and her daughters found themselves in thanks to him swept the old archpriest from the local stage altogether; everyone was delighted and everyone nearly died laughing. They spoke of Termosesov as a “sharp rogue”; they occasionally mentioned the archpriest as “that tiresome maniac.” Days went by; a month passed and another began. The town occupied itself with news that has no bearing on our subject: first the police chief received a complaint from a certain young lady against Captain Poverdovnya, the head of a local militia made up of disabled veterans, then Achilles, sitting on the steps of the stagecoach station, heard a rumor from passing travelers that Prince Bornovolokov, the government official, had suffered “sudden death from writer’s cramp,” while Tuberozov still remained in exile and his friends became unanimously reconciled to the idea that “nothing can be done.” The archpriest’s enemies proved slightly better than his friends; a few of them at least did not forget him. His cause, for example, was taken up by the postmaster’s sly wife, who could not forget Termosesov’s grave insult and was even less inclined to forgive society for maliciously rejoicing at her misfortune, so she thought of a way to show that society that she alone was slier than all of them, smarter and more farsighted than all of them, and even more honorable. To this end an opportunity came down to her from on high and she took full advantage of it, once again not without slyness and not without malice. She intended to dazzle society with her insufferable brilliance and to raise her authority in their eyes to unprecedented heights. About six versts [three and a half miles] from town, a lady from St. Petersburg named Missus Mordokonaki2 was spending the summer at her luxurious country estate. During his years as a revenue collector for the government, the elderly husband of this young and very beautiful 2 Mordokonáki—possibly a veiled reference to Dmítry Yegórovich Benardáki (d. 1870), an owner of gold mines who also collected revenue for the government. The name Mordokonáki combines mórda, meaning an ugly mug, with a Greek ending to achieve a comical mixture of high and low styles. CHAPTER 3 265 personage had become the godfather of one of the postmaster’s daughters . Her mother considered that sufficient grounds for inviting the young wife of old Mordokonaki to the name-day party of her husband’s goddaughter and to make a sudden public appeal to her, as a wellknown philanthropist and protector of churches, on behalf of the persecuted Tuberozov. The calculations of the postmaster’s wife were not entirely off the mark: the young and fabulously wealthy St. Petersburg patroness was influential in the capital and enjoyed great respect among the provincial authorities. In any case, she could do more than anyone else to help the castigated archpriest, if only she cared to. But would she care to? That was precisely why society as a whole would make the appeal. The lady was bored with solitude and did not decline to do the postmaster’s wife the honor of attending her ball. The spiteful hostess was jubilant: now she had no doubt that she would dumbfound the local aristocracy with her unexpected initiative to aid old Tuberozov—an initiative that all the others, coming to their senses, would be forced to join only as a chorus, as people of minor importance. The postmaster’s wife kept that sweet thought to herself, but the day when it would become a reality arrived at last. ...