Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2

Next day during the scripture lesson Father Mikhail told his pupils all about the episode of the forged coupon and informed them that it was a grammar-school pupil who had been responsible for it.

‘It was a vile, shameful act,’ he said, ‘but concealing it is even worse. If it was one of you who did this – which I cannot believe – then it would be better for him to own up to it than to hide his guilt.’

As he said this he was staring straight at Mitya Smokovnikov. Mitya went red and started to sweat, then he burst into tears and ran from the classroom.

When Mitya’s mother heard about these events she persuaded her son to tell her the whole truth and then hurried off to the photographic supply shop. She paid back the twelve roubles fifty to the proprietor’s wife and induced her to keep quiet about the schoolboy’s name. She then instructed her son to deny everything, and on no account to make any confession to his father.

And indeed, when Fyodor Mikhailovich heard what had happened at the grammar school, and when his son on being questioned denied it all, he went to see the headmaster and explained the whole matter to him, saying that the scripture teacher’s conduct had been deeply reprehensible and that he did not intend to let things rest there. The headmaster called in the scripture teacher and a heated exchange took place between him and Fyodor Mikhailovich.

‘A stupid woman attempted to pin something on my son and then retracted her accusation, and you could find nothing better to do than to slander the honour of a thoroughly upright boy.’

‘I did not slander him, and I will not permit you to speak to me in such a tone. You are forgetting my vocation.’

‘I don’t give a fig for your vocation.’

‘Your deluded opinions, sir,’ said the scripture teacher, his chin quivering so that his scanty little beard trembled in sympathy, ‘your deluded opinions are well known to the whole town.’

‘Gentlemen, Father,’ said the headmaster, attempting to pacify the two disputants. But to pacify them was impossible.

‘My holy vocation makes it my duty to concern myself with the moral and religious upbringing of the young.’

‘Enough of this pretence. Do you think I don’t know that you haven’t a grain of genuine religious faith in you?’

‘I consider it beneath me to continue talking to such a gentleman as you,’ declared Father Mikhail, who had been particularly offended by Smokovnikov’s last remark, since he knew that it was accurate. He had gone through the whole course at the theological academy and consequently had long since ceased to believe in what he professed and what he preached; in fact he believed only that everyone ought to make themselves believe those things which he had made himself believe.

Smokovnikov was not so much infuriated by the scripture teacher’s behaviour, as by discovering this striking example of the clerical influence which was beginning to manifest itself throughout our society, and he told everyone about the incident.

Father Vvedensky on the other hand, seeing in it a demonstration of the nihilism and atheism which had taken hold not only of the younger generation but of the older one as well, became more and more convinced of the necessity of combating them. The more he condemned the unbelief of Smokovnikov and his kind, the more convinced he became of the firm and unshakable character of his own faith, and the less need he felt to test his faith or to reconcile it with his actual way of living. His faith, acknowledged by the world around him, was for him his principal weapon in his fight against those who denied it.

These thoughts, called forth by his clash with Smokovnikov, together with the disagreeable events at the grammar school which followed in its wake – namely, a reprimand and a caution from the school authorities – impelled him to take a decision which had been tantalizing him for a long time, since the death of his wife, in fact: to take monastic vows and thus opt for a career already followed by several of his fellow-students at the academy, one of whom was already a member of the hierarchy, another the superior of a monastery, and expected soon to be made a bishop.

Towards the end of the academic year Vvedensky left the grammar school, took his monastic vows and the new name of Misail, and was very soon given the rectorship of a seminary in a town on the Volga.

XIII

Meanwhile Vasily the yardman had set out on the highroad to the south.