Part 15 (1/2)
* Little father.
He smiled, and, dropping his brush, made the sign of the cross over us.
I was perfectly willing to kiss his pretty, plump hand,--I had become very skillful at that sort of thing,--but I confess that I shrank from the obligatory salute to the skull, and from that special chrism.
Nevertheless, I wished the Russians to think that I had gone through with the whole ceremony, if they should chance to look back. I felt sure that I could trust the priest to be liberal, but I was not so certain that our lay companions, who were petty traders and peasants, might not be sufficiently fanatical to construe our refusal into disrespect for their church, and resent it in some way.
Though we returned to the monastery more than once after that, we were never attracted to the catacombs again, not even to witness the ma.s.s at seven o'clock in the morning in that subterranean church. The beautiful services in the cathedral, the stately monks, the picturesque pilgrims, with their gentle manners, ingenuous questions, and simple tales of their journeys and beliefs, furnished us with abundant interest in the cheerful sunlight aboveground.
Next to the Catacombs Monastery, the other most famous and interesting sight of Kieff is the Cathedral of St. Sophia. Built on the highest point of the ancient city, with nine apses turned to the east, crowned by one large dome and fourteen smaller domes,--all gilded, some terminating in crosses, some in sunbursts,--surrounded by turf and trees within a white wall, with entrance under a lofty belfry, it produces an imposing but reposeful effect. The ancient walls, dating from the year 1020, are of red brick intermixed with stone, stuccoed and washed with white. It has undergone changes, external and internal, since that day, and its domes and spires are of the usual degenerate South Russian type, without a doubt of comparatively recent construction. So many of its windows have been blocked up by additions, and so cut up is its s.p.a.ce by large frescoed pillars, into sixteen sections, that one steps from brilliant suns.h.i.+ne into deep twilight when he enters the cathedral. It is a sort of church which possesses in a high degree that indefinable charm of sacred atmosphere that tempts one to linger on and on indefinitely within its precincts. Not that it is so magnificent; many churches in the two capitals and elsewhere in Russia are far richer. It is simply one of those indescribable buildings which console one for disappointments in historical places, as a rule, by making one believe, through sensations unconsciously influenced, not through any effort of the reason, that ancient deeds and memories do, in truth, linger about their birthplace.
Ancient frescoes, discovered about forty years ago, some remaining in their original state, others touched up with more or less skill and knowledge, mingle harmoniously with those of more recent date. Very singular are the best preserved, representing hunting parties and banquets of the Grand Princes, and scenes from the earthly life of Christ. But they are on the staircase leading to the old-fas.h.i.+oned gallery, and do not disturb the devotional character of the decoration in the church itself.
From the wall of the apse behind the chief of the ten altars gazes down the striking image of the Virgin, executed in ancient mosaic, with her hands raised in prayer, whom the people reverently call ”The Indestructible Wall.” This, with other mosaics and the frescoes on the staircase, dates from the eleventh century.
I stood among the pillars, a little removed from the princ.i.p.al aisle, one afternoon near sunset, listening to the melodious intoning of the priest, and the soft chanting of the small week-day choir at vespers, and wondering, for the thousandth time, why Protestants who wish to intone do not take lessons from those incomparable masters in the art, the Russian deacons, and wherein lies the secret of the Russian ecclesiastical music. That simple music, so perfectly fitted for church use, will bring the most callous into a devotional mood long before the end of the service. Rendered as it invariably is by male voices, with superb ba.s.ses in place of the non-existent organ, it spoils one's taste forever for the elaborate, operatic church music of the West performed by choirs which are usually engaged in vocal steeplechases with the organ for the enhancement of the evil effects. My meditations were interrupted by the approach of a young man, who asked me to be his G.o.dmother! He explained that he was a Jew from Minsk, who had never studied ”his own religion,” and was now come to Kieff for the express purpose of getting himself baptized by the name of Vladimir, the tenth century prince and patron saint of the town. As he had no acquaintances in the place, he was in a strait for G.o.d-parents, who were indispensable.
”I cannot be your G.o.dmother,” I answered. ”I am neither _pravoslavnaya_ nor Russian. Cannot the priest find sponsors for you?”
”That is not the priest's place. His business is merely to baptize. But perhaps he might be persuaded to manage that also, if I had better clothes.”
He wore a light print s.h.i.+rt, tolerably clean, belted outside his dark trousers, and his shoes and cap were respectable enough.
I recalled instances which I had heard from the best authority--a priest--of priests finding sponsors for Jews, and receiving medals or orders in reward for their conversion. I recalled an instance related to me by a Russian friend who had acted, at the priest's request, as G.o.dmother to a Jewess so fat that she stuck fast in the receptacle used for the baptism by immersion; and I questioned the man a little. He said that he had a sister living in New York, and gave me her name and address in a manner which convinced me that he knew what he was saying.
He had no complaint to make of his treatment by either Russians or Jews; and when I asked him why he did not join his sister in America, he replied,
”Why should I? I am well enough off here.”
Perhaps I ought to state that he was a plumber by trade. On the other hand, justice demands the explanation that Russian plumbing in general is not of a very complicated character, and in Minsk it must be of a very simple kind, I think.
He intended to return to Minsk as soon as he was baptized. How he expected to attend the Russian Church in Minsk when he had found it inexpedient to be baptized there was one of the points which he omitted to explain.
I was at last obliged to bid him a decisive ”good-day,” and leave the church. He followed, and pa.s.sed me in the garden, his cap c.o.c.ked jauntily over his tight bronze curls, and his hips swaying from side to side in harmony. Under the long arch of the belfry-tower gate hung a picture, adapted to use as an _ikona_, which set forth how a mother had accidentally dropped her baby overboard from a boat on the Dnyepr, and coming, disconsolate, to pray before the image of St. Nicholas, the patron of travelers, she had found her child lying there safe and sound; whence this holy picture is known by the name of St. Nicholas the Wet.
Before this _ikona_ my Jew pulled off his cap, and crossed himself rapidly and repeatedly, watching me out of the corner of his eye, meanwhile, to see how his piety impressed me. It produced no particular effect upon me, except to make me engage a smart-looking cabby to take me to my hotel, close by, by a roundabout route. Whether this Jew returned to Minsk as Vladimir or as Isaac I do not know; but I made a point of mentioning the incident to several Russian friends, including a priest, and learned, to my surprise, that, though I was not a member of a Russian Church, I could legally have stood G.o.dmother to a man, though I could not have done so to a woman; and that a G.o.dmother could have been dispensed with. Men who are not members of the Russian Church can, in like manner, stand as G.o.dfathers to women, but not to men. Moreover, every one seemed to doubt the probability of a Jew quitting his own religion in earnest, and they thought that his object had been to obtain from me a suit of clothes, practical gifts to the G.o.dchild being the custom in such cases. I had been too dull to take the hint!
A few months later, a St. Petersburg newspaper related a notorious instance of a Jew who had been sufficiently clever to get himself baptized a number of times, securing on each occasion wealthy and generous sponsors. Why the man from Minsk should have selected me, in my plain serge traveling gown, I cannot tell, unless it was because he saw that I did not wear the garb of the Russian merchant cla.s.s, or look like them, and observation or report had taught him that the aristocratic cla.s.ses above the merchants are most susceptible to the pleasure of patronizing converts; though to do them justice, Russians make no attempt at converting people to their church. I have been a.s.sured by a Russian Jew that his co-religionists never do, really, change their faith. Indeed, it is difficult to understand how they can even be supposed to do so, in the face of their strong traditions, in which they are so thoroughly drilled. Therefore, if Russians stand sponsors to Jews, while expressing skepticism as to conversion in general, they cannot complain if unscrupulous persons take advantage of their inconsistency. I should probably have refused to act as G.o.dmother, even had I known that I was legally ent.i.tled to do so.
Our searches in the lower town, Podol, for rugs like those in the monastery resulted in nothing but amus.e.m.e.nt. Those rugs had been made in the old days of serfdom, on private estates, and are not to be bought.
By dint of loitering about in the churches, monasteries, catacombs, markets, listening to that Little Russian dialect which is so sweet on the lips of the natives, though it looks so uncouth when one sees their ballads in print, and by gazing out over the ever beautiful river and steppe, I came at last to pardon Kieff for its progress. I got my historical and mythological bearings. I felt the spirit of the Epic Songs stealing over me. I settled in my own mind the site of Fair-Sun Prince Vladimir's palace of white stone, the scene of great feasts, where he and his mighty heroes quaffed the green wine by the bucketful, and made their great brags, which resulted so tragically or so ludicrously. I was sure I recognized the church where Diuk Stepanovitch ”did not so much pray as gaze about,” and indulged in mental comments upon clothes and manners at the Easter ma.s.s, after a fas.h.i.+on which is not yet obsolete. I imagined that I descried in the blue dusk of the distant steppe Ilya of Murom approaching on his good steed Cloudfall, armed with a damp oak uprooted from Damp Mother Earth, and dragging at his saddle-bow fierce, hissing Nightingale the Robber, with one eye still fixed on Kieff, one on Tchernigoff, after his special and puzzling habit, and whom Little Russian tradition declares was chopped up into poppy seeds, whence spring the sweet-voiced nightingales of the present day.
The ”atmosphere” of the cradle of the Epic Songs and of the cradle of Pravoslavnaya Russia laid its spell upon me on those heights, and even the sight of the cobweb suspension bridge in all its modernness did not disturb me, since with it is connected one of the most charming modern traditions, a cla.s.sic in the language, which only a perfect artist could have planned and executed.
The thermometer stood at 120 degrees Fahrenheit when we took our last look at Kieff, the Holy City.
X.
A JOURNEY ON THE VOLGA.
I.