Part 8 (1/2)
We were really getting more than anxious when the last parcel--a very small one--lay in its white paper at the bottom of that basket.
Even Brother Sebastian began to share our anxiety and sorrow, as he consolingly told us no meat, fish, or fowl was to be procured for love or money on the Island. Slowly and sadly we undid that little parcel, and lo! happily sitting on the white paper were three small pigeons.
”No chicken, but small pigeons,” we exclaimed--”how ridiculous; why, they are so tiny there is nothing on them.”
Yet it turned out the creatures were not pigeons but the typical fowls eaten in Finland during the month of July. Almost as soon as the baby chicken has learnt to walk about alone, and long before he is the possessor of real feathers, his owner marks him for slaughter; he is killed and eaten. Very extravagant, but very delicious. A Hamburger fowl or a French poussin is good and tender, but he is nothing to be compared with the succulent Finlander, whose wis.h.i.+ng-bone is not one inch long.
Having devoured a whole fowl for my dinner, I brought away the small bone as a memento of a ravenous appet.i.te--unappeased by an entire spring chicken.
Brother Sebastian smiled at the incident, and we tried to persuade him to change his mind and join us; he looked longingly at the modest dainties which seemed to bring back recollections of the days when he lived in the world, and enjoyed the pleasures thereof, but he only said--
”Besten Dank, meine Dame, but my conscience will not let me eat such luxuries. I cannot take more than the Church allows in fast times--the tea and bread is amply sufficient, for this is white bread, and that is a delicacy I have not tasted for years; all ours is black and sour. I should like to eat a sardine, but my conscience would kill me afterwards, you see.”
As we did not wish to kill the unsophisticated youth, we pressed him no further.
What a picture we made, we four, in a far-away chamber of the _Valamo_ Monastery with that beautiful boy sitting on the queer coverleted couch.
He told us that three years previously he had ”made a fault.” We did not ask of what nature, and he did not say; he only stated that his father who was a high official in the Russian Army, had, on the advice of the priest, sent him here to repent.
”Was it not very strange at first?”
”Yes, for you see we live in Moscow, and my father knows every one, and there are many grand people always at our house. It seemed difficult to me because most of the inmates here are peasants, and once within the monastery walls we are all equal; we are all men, and G.o.d's servants.
Rank counts as nothing, for no one knows our names except the _Igumen_ himself. When we enter we give up our garments, our money, our ident.i.ty, and clothe ourselves as servants of the Church until we leave again, or take the vows of monks and give up the world for ever.”
”How do you become monks?” we inquired, interested.
”We cannot do so till we are thirty years of age--we are novices at first, and free to go away, but at thirty we can decide to take the vows, give up all we possess, and dedicate our lives to the Church, if we desire to do so. Then our name is struck off the police rolls.”
”You are lost, in fact?”
”Yes, lost to the world, for although while novices we can get away occasionally for a time on important business, once we become monks it is hardly possible to obtain leave of absence. A monk,” he continued proudly, ”wears a tall hat, has a room to himself, is waited upon by a probationer, sits at the upper table, and leads a much easier life as regards all kinds of work.”
He had spoken such splendid German, this fine young fellow with the sympathetic eyes, through which his very soul shone, that we again complimented him.
”I used to speak some French,” he said; ”for we had a French governess, as children, and always spoke that language in the nursery; but since I have been here there has been so little occasion to employ it, I have quite forgotten that tongue. Indeed, in four years--for I have stayed some months beyond my time of punishment--I find even my German, which, as I told you, is my mother's language, getting rusty, and I am not sure that I could write it in _Latenischen-Buchstaben_ now at all.”
”What a pity,” we exclaimed, ”that you do not read French and German so as to keep your knowledge up to date.”
”We are not allowed to read anything that is not in the Cloister Monastery,” he replied, ”which for the most part only contains theological books, with a few scientific works, and those are written in Russian, Hebrew, Slavonic, and Greek, so I have no chance, you see.”
”Do you mean to say you have no opportunity of keeping up the knowledge you already possess?”
”Not that kind of knowledge. I love botany, but there are no books relating to botany here--so I am forgetting that also. We never read, even the monks seldom do.”
”But you have the newspapers,” we remarked, horrified to think of a young intellect rotting and mouldering away in such a manner.
”I have not seen a newspaper for nearly four years, never since I came here. We are not allowed such things.”
”But you said you were sent here for only three years' punishment--how does it happen you have remained for nearly four?”
”Because I chose to stay on; you see I have lost touch with the world.