Savva

One day when I was in trouble, I decided to run away.

A new torture had been devised to keep me quiet, my mother said: every day after breakfast I was to work on a task of embroidery. Such injustice could only be answered by determined disobedience. As soon as I found myself alone, I left the room by the window leading into the garden, with the firm resolve to lay in a good provision of apples and then go and hide myself.

Every year as soon as the apples ripened enough to look tempting, without being ripe enough to be wholesome, we were forbidden to go into the orchard. I never understood why, except that I was told eating unripe fruit was likely to make me ill. Nevertheless, I observed that all the servants were eating apples, and they often gave some to us children. Finally, in order to protect the apple crop, which was especially good that year Grandmama gave orders that the orchard should be guarded night and day by Savva.

Savva was the watchman. He was out and about every, night winter and summer watching the house and grounds, and striking from time to time with a small iron bar on a sort of gong which hung near the granary, Sometimes when I woke up in the night with a bad dream I heard Savva’s gong in the distance, and it was like the sound made by the Archangel Michael as he drove away the dragon. The dragon was the frightful dream that had waked me up. But through it all I was conscious that it was only Savva striking the gong to drive away wolves and robbers. I scarcely ever saw him, but he was one of those beings whom one knows all the better because one so seldom sees them. Savva existed for me in the same category as Ivan-the-Simple, Baba-Yaga, the Fire Bird, and all the other people in the only books really worth reading—people who were, it's true, generally absent in bodily form, but whom a child could summon at will and send away again as soon as their presence was no longer required.

Savva wasn't a bit like the other servants. We never saw him sweeping or waiting at table, and yet he seemed always present; and though we didn't see him, we knew that he was fulfilling some grand and mysterious duty. He was "The Watchman."

He wasn't born in the village. He had neither home nor relations. No one knew who he really was or where he came from. Many years ago, when Grandpapa was still young, a pilgrim came to the house and asked to see him. Grandpapa, who was good and pious, loved pilgrims. The story went that when Grandpapa met Savva in the hall (the pilgrim was Savva), Savva said something to him in a foreign tongue and immediately Grandpapa took him into his study, and they remained talking together for several hours. No one knew what took place between them, but Savva had been on the estate ever since. It seems there was a clause in my grandfather's will stating that Savva was not a serf, and a request that he should always be well treated and should be allowed to stay on the estate as long as he chose. Everyone seemed convinced that Savva was of noble birth; some looked upon him as a saint, others as a sorcerer. He could cure sick children by placing his hands on their heads. He had foretold my grandfather's death before going into the sick-room. When he did go in he said, "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word." And Grandpapa replied, "Pray for me, Savva." At the same moment a cuckoo began to sing in the park, an event that happened only when there was to be a death in the family.

I was an expert on the subject of apples and knew that an apple gathered from the tree was no good, but that the best fruit always lay under the tree. When I had passed into the orchard through a hole in the hedge, I began to hunt in the grass for fallen apples, but to my astonishment I found none. I strolled on to "Grandfather's apple tree," where I thought I would certainly find some, but there I discovered only two small half-rotten ones in the grass. Determined to get some somehow, I climbed onto one of the nearest branches and shook it as hard as I could. A score of apples fell to the ground. Down I came, leaving on the way a strip of petticoat and with serenity in my soul I gathered up my well-earned harvest.

Suddenly, as I raised my head, I saw close to me an old man wearing a blue shirt and a hat pulled down over his ears. He was leaning on a stick and watching me attentively. His face was small, white, and almost beardless; his lips thin and colorless and nearly hidden between his aquiline nose and his prominent chin. His eyes were black, round, and lifeless, and they stared from beneath heavy' eyebrows without seeming to see things. A kindly smile hovered round the colorless lips.

"What a good little girl! She has been collecting apples for me. Come and put them with the others."

He turned away and walked noiselessly on his bare feet through the dry grass, stooping as he went to avoid the branches. I felt no desire to run away, but followed him as if led by some irresistible force. After walking some distance we reached a small open space where a little thatched hut stood. At the entrance to this clearing lay two enormous heaps of apples, and a kettle was hanging over a fire of leaves and dried branches. It was Savva's hut which stood before me.

"Put the apples down there," said Savva, "and go back to the house."

"But I picked them up for myself," I objected.

"Are they yours?"

“No.”

"Then you have stolen them."

Now my feelings were hurt. No one had ever dared tell me I had stolen anything "I have not stolen; I took what I wanted," I replied haughtily, "and I won't go back to the house. I am out for a walk."

"Whoever takes things without permission doesn't only take, he steals. When I tell you to go back to the house, you should obey, for you must always obey your elders. He who obeys does right. A blind horse can be made to follow a road if the driver sees the way. The sheep in the flock wouldn't know where to go if they didn't have a shepherd. Why did you come into the garden alone? Because you were disobedient. Why did you steal the apples? Because you were disobeying authority. Just as a stone cannot give fruit so a thief cannot do right. Lying and disobedience lead to all the other sins, pride as well. You have disobeyed, you have stolen, and you intended to eat apples that hadn't been blessed. That was also a sin. Don't you know that God drove Eve out of Paradise because she ate an apple?"

Again he looked at me with his black, lifeless eyes, and I felt extremely guilty, though scarcely knowing why.

Savva took up an apple, cut it across and showed me the core enclosing the seeds, which looked like little green spots grouped in threes in the center of the core. Then he explained to me that these little seeds and the spaces between showed that the apple was a sacred fruit. The Ten Commandments, the number of the seraphim, and the four evangelists are symbolized in the interior of an apple, but in order to see them one must know how to cut it open in a particular way.

"How could you think of eating such a fruit without God's permission? At the feast of the Saviour¹ all the apples are blessed, after which all Orthodox Christians can eat them. Before that feast it is a sin to eat them. Not a very great sin, it is true; but God punishes all sin."

I felt weighed down with guilt. Yes, I had disobeyed I had told stories, and I had wanted to eat apples before the feast of our Saviour, and Eve had been driven out of Paradise for eating fruit without permission. But no one had ever told me the real reason for not eating the apples. I had only been told that they were unwholesome; and I could see that was not true, for everyone else was eating them. I wanted to tell Savva all this, but I couldn't find the words in which to say it. Instead I answered simply and sincerely, "I won't do it again."

"Good little girl; good" and his old eyes looked at me now almost tenderly.

This look in his eyes melted me. I can only imagine that wild beasts feel like that in the presence of their trainers. This old man, standing near his hut and his miserable little fire—the smoke of which rose straight towards heaven—this old man who seemed to know so many great and good things appeared to me almost supernatural. At his side I felt small and humble.

Savva had sat down; he appeared to be either very sad or very tired. He breathed with difficulty; and his eyes seemed to look out far, far beyond the trees into space.

His face was strangely white, his eyes strangely fixed, but his lips moved silently, as if he were speaking to himself. Silently I watched him, for something very serious seemed to be taking place around us. A feeling of veneration such as I had never felt for anyone else sprang up in my heart for this poor, bent, ragged old man. And this feeling of pity and veneration drew me very close to him, although he appeared to me something great and mysterious.

"You say, Savva, that one ought to obey grown-up people; but they are often unjust and cruel."

"We cannot hope for justice in this world. Don't reckon up other people's shortcomings; reckon up your own. Let wicked people do as they will. Do yourself what is right, and God will reckon up the good and the evil. For all of us—good and bad, rich and poor, masters and servants—will one day stand before Him to be judged, and to he rewarded according to our deeds. We must not expect justice in this world."

I lay down in the grass near Savva and watched attentively a blade of grass along which an ant ran, then stopped and raised its tiny head and antennae. Savva's words were unanswerable. Above all grown-up people, above the rich and the strong, there was God, Who was stronger than them all. But then came the thought, Why does He allow wicked people to do as they like? "But how can God reckon up the wrong that people do?"

"God knows all; He is everywhere and sees everything."

I had been told this every day, but had never attached any exact meaning to the words. Now the whole terror of this assertion entered into my soul. God was not up above in the blue vault of heaven; He was everywhere, even among the trees that stood motionless around us. He was looking at me now and listening to what Savva was saying. It is because He sees and hears everything that He is able to reckon everything up and to punish and reward. There is no escaping from this all-pervading power, which one cannot see but which sees us. Then with a rush I remembered all Grandmama's injustices and unkindnesses towards the servants, the peasants' brutality to the animals, and Peter's cruelty to the children of the peasants, and I felt an immense pity for all those whom God was going to punish.

"When I am grown up, Savva, I won't do any wrong to others; and I won't allow anyone else, not even grown-up people, to be wicked or unjust."

Savva did not reply. Was it that he would not answer, or was he too tired to speak? After a long silence he rose, threw some branches on the fire, and then came towards me and placed an ice-cold hand on my head, repeating, as if to himself, "We must not expect justice in this world. O Lord God, do not abandon this child!"

The voice was so strong and so solemn that I wondered if it were Savva who was speaking, but I dared not raise my head or even move.

Then I felt the cold hand removed from my head and heard Savva's feeble voice saying, "Now, little girl, run into the house and be good!"

"Yes, Savva, I will go in now, but I will come back and see you again."

"When you get leave to come. Never come into the garden without leave."

"Then I shall never be able to come, because they will never allow it."

That was the last time I met Savva, when I saw him that day in the orchard. A few days after my visit to his hut Savva died. I saw him once more in the church when we went to the funeral. He lay in his coffin, which stood in the middle of the church surrounded with white tapers and incense. When, as was the custom, each member of the congregation approached the bier to give the dead man the last kiss, they wanted to lead me away, but I implored them to let me do as the others did. Pelagia Mikhailovna lifted me up, and I kissed one of the cold hands that were crossed on his breast.

Savva was buried on the day of the feast of the Saviour [Transfiguration]. All the peasants, as they left the church, were eating apples.

We had apples for breakfast, but I could not eat any.

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  1 The Transfiguration. In Greece pious Christians bring grapes to be blessed on the Transfiguration. in Russia, where the climate is too cold to grow grapes, they bring apples instead.