The Cathedral Clergy: A Chronicle

Chapter 11

Chapter 11 The October night was cold and gloomy; clouds scudded across the sky, and the wind rattled the bare branches of the brittle willows growing along the road. Achilles walked and walked without stopping, and by the time the gray autumn dawn began to appear on the horizon, he was already halfway to the city and could afford to give himself a rest. He turned off the road and headed for a big stack of straw, lay down behind it out of the wind, covered his head with the skirt of his coat, and fell asleep. The day was just like the night. The cold sun would peep out and start to shine, then retreat behind storm clouds again; the wind would blow in fierce gusts, then hiss along the ground like a snake. The deacon ’s head covering had long since blown off and was flapping in the wind, while the sun, darting out from behind the clouds, shone directly upon his herculean face. The deacon slept on. The day had become quite warm by now, and the last belated inhabitants of the lifeless field emerged from the trampled stubble where Achilles lay with his head buried in straw: a hard black beetle crawled onto Achilles’ boot, while a shivering, half-numb bumblebee climbed up his beard, barely dragging itself along. Finding warmth and refuge in the deacon’s thick beard, the poor insect began to move about more actively and woke him up: Achilles gave a loud snort, stretched, jumped up, slung his bundle over his shoulder, and, after drinking half a kopeck’s worth of kvass at an inn, set off for the city. He covered the remaining thirty-five versts [about twenty-three miles] before dusk and when he spotted the crosses of the city’s churches, he sat down on the bank of the roadside ditch and thought about eating for the first time since he had left home: he took out the flat onion rolls that had spent the previous week in his pocket, made a sandwich out of them by putting their undersides together, and began to wolf them down with more than his usual appetite. He did not finish them, however, and, after stuffing them back into the same pocket, headed into town. He spent the night with some seminary students he knew, then went to Tuganov’s residence early the next morning, asked to be announced, and sat down in the foyer on a long chest that served as a bench. An hour went by and then another, but Achilles was not summoned. More than once he asked the servant who kept running past him: CHAPTER 11 331 “Hey, butler! Listen, when are they going to call me?” But the butler did not even deem it necessary to answer the country deacon in the dusty nankeen cassock. Not having rested properly from the previous day’s march, Achilles began to doze off, but since it was not the right time or place for snoozing , he decided to distract himself with food, for which the uneaten remainder of yesterday’s onion rolls provided the perfect opportunity. But no sooner had he taken the leftovers out of his pocket and begun to blow off the lint clinging to them when suddenly he froze, then leapt up as if he had been stung, and raced off through the unfamiliar, luxurious rooms of the mansion without waiting to be announced. By accident he ended up in the marshal of the nobility’s study and, running into him face to face, he cried: “O holy Fathers! Whoever believes in God, help me! Look what horrible thing has happened!” “What is it? What’s the matter?” the astonished Tuganov inquired. “Parmen Semyonych! Wretch that I am, what have I done!” Achilles wailed, beside himself with horror. “What did you do? Murder somebody?” “No. I ran all the way here to get some advice from you, because I want to put up a monument to the archpriest for two hundred rubles.” “Well, what’s wrong with that? Or did somebody take your money?” “No, nobody took it. Worse.” “Did you lose it?” “No, I ate it!” And in despair Achilles showed Tuganov the bottom of a half-eaten roll with one undamaged corner of a hundred-ruble note plastered to it as if it had been baked on. Tuganov grasped the corner with his manicured fingernails, peeled it away from the crust, and saw that beneath it...