The Heathen: A Novel

By the Fireside

By the Fireside hOW BEAUTIFUL THAT FIRESIDE in Emilka’s house where we, our company of good friends, used to gather years ago almost every day, throughout the long autumn and winter evenings. Low-set, inlaid with black marble, it had a small bronze fender to prevent the burning wood from slipping out, and two iron stands where the logs were stacked—alder logs, so brittle they scarcely left any char or ash, so clean, bright, flaming red that even though sadness weighed on the heart, trouble on the conscience, our thoughts would shine in their blazing light and point the way to salvation. Now you have to imagine that precious hearth set in a spacious high-ceilinged room, that immaculate fire illuminating four spotless white walls, two gothic windows with shutters closed on the garden side, snow-white folds of muslin curtains, gilded frames of landscape paintings, furniture upholstered in crimson damask, a grand piano lurking in the shadow—and from eight o’clock, a little to one side, a small table laid with a tea-service, glasses, dainty cups and a gleaming samovar hissing or growling when the water boiled inside, depending on how much coal was added. The gloomier the weather outside, the more we relished the fire in the hearth and the tranquillity of the room, the music of the samovar—Ah! for how well we all got on in those days! How sincerely we loved, trustingly respected, entertained such high hopes of one another!... And today? Fate has scattered us across the wide earth. Indifference, forgetting, a bitter grudge or bitter regret haunts one or another of us. If someone were to kindle again the welcoming fire, were we all to gather round it once more—would the injury then be forgotten? Would longing be thrustfromeveryheart?Wouldhandsbedrawntogetherinfriendship, T h e h e a T h e n  brows transfigured by cheerful thoughts? No, my advice is never attempt to relive your past. May he who loved once not encounter again those whom he loved! May she who laid in earth her nearest and dearest, not look today for their resurrection! Those who lost loved ones, may they never recover them, for it is terrible to observe after two, three, ten years how different they have become from what they were, how different we are ourselves. To be disappointed by them or by ourselves, to have our memories dashed or hear in their presence a clock strike the sad hour of infirmity!... May God spare us this—all those who sat then by the fireside and conversed so happily, freely, amicably. And there was quite a crowd of us, and sometimes someone from our wider circle of acquaintances also came to greet us. My memory has preserved each one of them and preserved them just as I knew them in those bygone days; not how they are now, nor how I think they should be. First Emilka, our hostess, widow of a husband who had poisoned the days of her first youth1 : was she angel or saint? I hesitate in my choice of words for there is a great difference between an angel and a saint, though in Emilka there was much likeness to both. An angel, a messenger, is a pure calm spirit who drives straight towards the good in line with God’s bidding. But a saint is a daughter of this earth who, in toil and in pain, through struggle and triumph, earns her place in heaven. And so Emilka’s thoughts were the thoughts of an angel, her heart the heart of a saint—like an angel calm and assured, she never had doubts; no impulse, no need of body or mind stood between herself and the truths of the Christian religion. But the battle unwaged in her mind shifted to her heart and her heart suffered terribly. The crimes of those close to her, the imperfections of those whom she loved, the disasters that befell her brothers and sisters, were like the intense suffering of an open wound. Emilia’s lips uttered no resentment, complaint, condemnation; her soul knew instead the horror of futile effort, the trials of exhaustion. She survived it all, however, always clement as the sun that shines alike on the evil and the good, patient as the craftsman who begins his same work afresh day after day, yet always easily deceived—like a child who has not yet learned to lie; for she was angel and saint...