AVRAM DAVIDSON TRAVELED far and wide, and his experiences provided inspiration for many lifetimes’ worth of writing. He was in Israel during the 1948 war of independence and afterward journeyed through Europe to London. His wanderings included Cyprus, where “The Ikon of Elijah” is set. Cyprus is a small island in the eastern Mediterranean where Greeks, Turks, and other ancient cultures live in a constant state of simmering conflict—and there are always opportunists who are ready to make a profit from conflict.
“The Ikon of Elijah” appeared in 1956 and was one of Avram’s first published stories. The editor at Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine commented: “Watch Mr. Davidson: he has the gift—the precious gift of words and insight.”
—GD
On a wet afternoon in early winter a small and mud-splashed automobile entered Nicosia through the Paphos Gate and made its way through Sultan Solyman Square, Queen Irene Street, Ledra Street, and, finally, through a back alley which had neither name nor paving to speak of. Very few people in Cyprus were feeling cheerful in the cold rain, and the driver of the car—a heavy-jowled man with snowy hair—was certainly not one of them. He cursed the rain and the people thronging the narrow streets of the capital city, Greeks and Turks and Armenians and British, with superb impartiality, but in a low voice. Drawing to a stop about halfway up the alley, he blew two short, hard blasts on his car horn, and struggled out, breathing heavily.
A door opened in the stone wall to the right, and a man wearing the high boots and baggy black pantaloons still favored by Cypriotes of the older generation hurried out. He had few teeth and gray stubble covered his cheeks and chin.
“More floods in the foothills, Kyrios!” he said. “People and cattle drowned, houses washed away—”
“I wish the whole damned island would wash away. Be quiet. Park the car. I won’t need it again today.”
“Yes, Mr. Carpius.” The houseman folded himself into the little vehicle and maneuvered it slowly away, while Mr. Carpius entered the back garden of his house and closed the door behind him. The garden was not well kept, the interests of the master of the house presumably lying elsewhere; tiles clinked loosely under his rapid feet, unpruned shrubs grew to the size of small trees, moss was everywhere. The ground-floor windows were barred, as were the second-floor windows. There was no third floor, but if there were and if it had windows, they would certainly have been barred, too; for Mr. Carpius was a cautious man.
He let himself into the house with two keys, and passed through an enormous and shadowy kitchen, where an old woman dressed all in black was feeding chestnut wood into an ancient stove. She mumbled a greeting over her shoulder and Mr. Carpius, sniffing the aroma of lamb pilaf and stuffed grape leaves, permitted himself a little smile of anticipation, and blessed her fulsomely.
After unlocking and locking the doors of three more rooms, and passing through, Mr. Carpius came at length to a small shop fronting on a fairly busy street. His eyes flickered rapidly around it, looking for a moment with pleasure on the window:
and came to rest on a small, dark Maltese, who at once broke into a smile of obsequious welcome.
“What news, Paul?” Mr. Carpius asked, sitting in a rush-bottomed chair.
“Another terrible flood, sir—”
“Oh, damn that! Besides, I’ve already heard it from the houseman. What news?”
“Yes, sir, I understand, sir. Pray excuse me. Ah. Mr. Harari has bought the bronze camel-bells. All of them. He says he can use many more. Camel-bells are popular now—in Israel, he says. They hang them on the walls.… Why, sir?”
“Who cares why? Let them hang them around their necks, if they please, as long as they buy them. What else?”
“The parchment sanjek-map.”
“Good, good.” Mr. Carpius moved slightly a De Lusignan–period dagger which lay near the edge of a table. “What else?”
“And all six of the silver denarii of Tiberius, sir.”
“Ex-cellent! I am very pleased, Paul,” Mr. Carpius said benignly. Paul writhed in gratification. A sudden afterthought struck his employer. “At the prices marked?” he snapped.
“Oh, yes, sir!” Paul assured him, in haste. “Minus the usual ten per cent deduction for dealers,” he added nervously; but Carpius waved aside the usual ten per cent deduction.
“That’s all right.”
“And you, sir, Mr. Carpius? Did you have good luck?”
Mr. Carpius’s heavy, square face, usually pink, now darkened to a mulberry-red. He scowled, and clenched his teeth.
“No, damn it! I didn’t.” Paul backed away and began to arrange a trayful of strings of amber beads, the sort which pious Moslems use to recite the nine-and-ninety Attributes of the Almighty, beginning with His Compassion, a quality in which Mr. Carpius was lamentably deficient. “Let them alone!” Carpius barked. Paul dropped one, then fell to his knees.
After swallowing what seemed to be something large and dry, and beating his stubby-fingered hand on his knee several times, Carpius finally composed himself.
“I arrived there with the twenty pounds that Yohannides had agreed on,” he said, “although I was naturally prepared to go much higher. The situation appeared made to order: the chapel had been closed for so many years he’d had to break the lock to get in. The place hadn’t been entered since the Diocese leased the estate to the Agricultural Department before the First World War. Imagine it!”
Carpius leaned forward, furious, then went on: “An ikon of Saint Mamas riding his lion, Eleventh Century work, and the silver cover, showing details of his life, from the reign of Isaac Comnenus, the last Greek ruler of Cyprus! Fabulous! Priceless! One dare hardly estimate the value.… I should have forced him to let me take it away the first time I saw it. A petty clerk in the Agricultural Department, how dared he refuse to trust me? And what happened when I got back there, after driving to the end of the island? It was gone!
“I could have throttled him. ‘What do you mean, gone? You’ve sold it, you scoundrel!’ I said. But by and by I saw that he was telling me the truth. The Bishop took it! ‘For safekeeping’! For forty years the Bishops didn’t even know it was there, didn’t think about it, care about it—now, just when I take an interest, so does the Bishop.… What we need Bishops for at all is something I can’t see. It is just this sort of thing which causes anti-clericalism.”
Carpius sat back, breathing heavily, while Paul hardly breathed at all. Gradually the angry color ebbed from the antique dealer’s face.
“Tomorrow,” he said calmly, “I shall see what can be done about arranging to have it stolen. If nothing can be done—and, sometimes, alas, such is the case—I shall be obliged,” he sighed, “to offer to sell it on commission.”
He rose, flicked on the lights, and walked over to the windows. He removed a small painting of a meditative bull in a peeling gilt frame and replaced it with a set of ivory and ebony chessmen, and had just stepped back to consider the effect when two men arrived in front of the shop. Mr. Carpius muttered something short and rapid, then smiled broadly as the two men entered.
“My dear, dear Mr. Calloost Chiringirian!” he sang out. “And Major—Major—?”
“Parslow,” said the Major, a thick-set, ruddy-faced man whose bulging chest was covered with rows of ribbons.
“Hello, Carpius,” said Mr. Calloost Chiringirian negligently. He was a tall man in a gray astrakhan hat, and the same pelt showed at the cuffs and collars of his coat. He turned a clever, sallow, eagle-face to the shop owner. “I’ve brought you a customer. Major Parslow is his Regiment’s treasurer and he is looking for a piece of silver suitable for a farewell present to Colonel Eggerton, who is being retired. Something heavy and hideous—the Colonel’s taste leans towards the Edwardian, if not to say, the Victorian. Nymphs, with huge bosoms and massive buttocks, supporting an inkwell in the form of St. Paul’s Cathedral—that sort of rubbish, Carpius. Your sort of rubbish.”
“Mr. Chiringirian’s sense of humor is famous,” Carpius said bleakly.
“Quite,” said Major Parslow.
Carpius snapped his fingers. “Paul,” he said. Paul jumped, began to climb up a small ladder and take things down from shelves. Behind Carpius’s face various emotions seethed and bubbled. He hated the suave Armenian, who had got the better of him in many a deal, and he hated him none the less for now deriding him through his merchandise. And yet he envied him with all his heart for daring to speak before Major Parslow with a boldness which he, Carpius, would never dare employ.
“Offer him a fifth of what he asks, my dear Major,” the tall man was saying. “And certainly do not pay more than a third.”
“I am happy,” said Carpius, “to be of service to the Major. We British—”
“You?” the Major asked. Paul came up holding, or rather clutching, an object consisting of two silver Scotchmen in kilts, standing on a slab of marble, and supporting a clock with several dials on its enormous face.
“I was born, of all places, in Hong Kong,” Carpius tittered, “and, naturally, my being a British subject by birth is my most precious possession.”
“Next, of course, to your virtue,” Chiringirian said. “Examine it well, Major. It is gruesome enough to please even Colonel Eggerton, and it tells the time, the day and month, the year, and the phases of the moon.… I have just returned today, Carpius, from a visit to Thallassaöpolis, where I paid my respects to the Bishop. A delightful man. He had me to tea.”
Carpius glared, quivering.
“He wanted my advice and counsel. Would you believe it, Carpius—an ikon of St. Mamas of the Eleventh Century, and a silver cover dating from the reign of the Emperor Isaac Comnenus … Lovely, lovely. He had removed it, on my advice, from a neglected chapel in the hills. We—ah—came to terms. It is now in a bank vault. How lucky I heard of it … dear me, Carpius, you are pale.” The Armenian smiled coldly.
Carpius stared at him, livid, but he soon composed himself.
Chiringirian gestured. “This sort of rubbish you have here,” he said, “would have sold well to the old Turks. They had an unfailing taste for the worst in Western Art—if, indeed, one may call it art. The Imperial Turks, the Imperial Russians, Major, they were faulty and even wicked—but when I recall the blood bath and holocaust which followed their overthrow—” He sighed deeply.
Carpius shrugged. He remembered the unrest in Russia and Asia Minor with affection. Business had never been so brisk, before or since. The loot of a thousand churches and monasteries passed through his hands. Perhaps those days might come again. Carpius gazed with sudden disgust around the crowded shop. It was rubbish—Chiringirian was right. He thought of jeweled crosses and golden communion spoons. One never knew what might happen, with half the peoples of Asia ready for one another’s throats.
He let Major Parslow have, with barely a struggle, and at only four hundred per cent profit, a silver snuff-mull in the shape of a ram’s head, with carnelian eyes: when the top was lifted a concealed music box played Rule, Britannia.
“Adio, Carpius,” Chiringirian said, with a crooked smile. “We shall meet at Philippi—though I, personally, prefer the Riviera. After you, dear Major.”
It was then time to close the shop. Paul put up the iron shutters and locked them, and was dismissed to the comfort of home and fireside, represented by his elder sister, a sharp-tongued spinster with a black mustache. Carpius turned his thoughts to old Eleftheria in the kitchen—or, more exactly, to the lamb pilaf and the stuffed grape leaves. Briefly he reflected that his dislike of his tall rival had put him in such emotional confusion that he had committed a great breach of custom: he had neglected to offer coffee—the sweet, thick, black coffee of the Levant, served in tiny cups with beaten-brass lids—without which scarcely any business deal or social call in Cyprus is conducted. But his mind quickly left this embarrassing recollection, and returned to supper and to the bottle of Commandaria which was to accompany it; and at this moment someone knocked on the shop door.
Carpius, about to switch off the lights, hesitated. Then he shrugged. “Who is there?” he called out.
“The monk Theodoros,” was the answer.
“And what is it you wish?”
“I have … that is … Do you buy ikons?”
“One moment.” Carpius began to unbolt the door. The chances were that the monk had some wretched modern daub to offer, in the worst style of cigar-box art; but one never knew, and besides, it was always well to make as many contacts with custodians of church property as possible.
Carpius opened the door. The monk Theodoros entered diffidently. His blue cassock was worn and patched, but the long, dark hair gathered in a bun at the back was glossy with health, and the fresh blood of youth was on his cheeks where as yet an untrimmed beard grew sparsely. Looking into the monk’s eyes, Carpius received a startling impression: they were not the eyes of social man; they were like the eyes of some untamed bird of the hills or seas—clear and bright and focused afar off. In the Greek Church, whose priests may marry, the term of “monk” is applied to all celibate priests, including those in parish positions; but Carpius felt certain that Theodoros was not one of these.
“Which is your monastery?” the dealer asked.
“Saints Barnabas and Basil,” the monk replied in a low voice.
Carpius knit his forehead in thought. “I don’t believe I have ever heard of it,” he said, and almost at once a vague shadow of memory arose, only to fade quickly.
“It is a small monastery. It … here is the ikon.” The young monk began to unwrap it from a piece of oilcloth. Carpius took it. His eyes widened, then narrowed. He lifted it close to his eyes, then to his nose, then examined it again. The style was Early Byzantine, or late Hellenistic, and depicted the Prophet Elijah lifting a hand in benediction while standing in a fiery chariot drawn by fiery horses. The hands and face were that shade of gray which in the Eastern Church indicates sanctity. Across the top, in old Greek minuscules, was written: “Prophetas Elias ascending unto Heaven.” The legend along the bottom read: “Painted by the hermit Prokopios to the glory of the Thrice-Holy and for the salvation of his soul.”
“Why, the paint is hardly dry on it!” Carpius said.
“Yes, it is newly done,” the monk admitted, “but surely the paint is quite dry? Yes.” He tested it. Carpius ignored the gesture. His mind moved warily, searching for the right words. He must not startle this shy creature, he must move warily. If what he thought was true—
“I trust,” he said cautiously, “that proper care is being taken of the original. It is very old. And very holy,” he added hastily.
“Oh, very holy,” the monk agreed. “In all Cyprus there is no holier ikon. It is never left alone for a single moment—one monk is always engaged in prayer before it.”
“Very proper.… What is the price of this copy?”
The price was low enough, but Carpius automatically knocked a few piasters off it. He let the young monk depart, but not without asking his blessing. It was not the dealer’s intention to make too great an impression this first time, but he wanted the impression to be a favorable one. That night, after supper, and while leisurely smoking a yellow Egyptian cigarette, he questioned old Eleftheria.
The Monastery of Saints Barnabas and Basil? Oh, yes, she had heard of it, but she hardly knew what to say about it. It had not been built as a religious retreat; originally it was only a large farmhouse. She supposed that the monks were devout: they were always keeping fast days and fast periods to commemorate events everyone else had forgotten; they ate no meat, no fish, no eggs, no milk, no cheese; and they also mortified themselves with long vigils spent either on their feet or knees. But the fact was, they were heretics! Yes, they had thrown off the discipline of the Holy, Orthodox, and Autocephalic Church of Cyprus, if such a thing could be believed. And why? Because of the calendar. When the Archbishop had followed the Four Patriarchs in directing that the Gregorian Calendar should be adopted so that the religious date should agree with the civil date, these monks had defied him. What, adopt the innovation of a “Latin” Pope? Abandon the ancient Julian Calendar always used by the Church? Never! So, of course, they had been put under the ban, and had retreated to their Monastery. They were very poor, few in number, and, worst of all, they were said to have opposed the enosis movement; they had not desired union with the Motherland because the Greek government had outlawed the Julian Calendar Sect in Greece.
Carpius listened, outwardly—but only outwardly—not very interested. But after Eleftheria had tottered off to bed, he took from the bookshelf a large illustrated volume, Spendlove’s The Iconography of Cyprus, and rapidly turned the pages. Yes, it was mentioned there. Spendlove, the greatest authority on the religious art of the island, had seen it in 1905. He described the ikon faithfully, but the monks—the ikon had then been located in a monastery near Paphos—had not permitted him to photograph it or any of their other ikons: “…being as yet unconvinced [wrote Spendlove] that the camera is not an invention of the devil. They have very little sense of time—all the events of Christian history seem almost contemporary to them. Constantinople has fallen only yesterday, and Alexandria (I attribute this ikon of Elijah to the Alexandrian School) only the day before. Hence the reason why they do not seem to value this particular ikon more than any other, despite its unquestionable age.”
Carpius wondered how it had got from where it was then to where it is now, but the point was not important; probably it had simply been taken by one of the dissident monks—since he was not going to buy it he need not bother about a clear title. Carpius did wonder, though, why its present custodians obviously valued it more than its former owners did. He thought he knew the answer and decided to waste no more time—to leave the next day.
* * *
THE MONASTERIES OF CYPRUS, where so many traditions of earlier times still linger, are as open for travelers to lodge in as churches are open for them to pray in. Rooms are always kept for visitors’ convenience. There is no charge made for this, or for meals, but it is customary for travelers to drop something in the pyx on leaving.
Carpius, not particularly desiring to adopt the ascetic diet of the monks, brought along an ample supply of provisions—canned delicacies, smoked meats, sweets, a bottle of rum. He did not know how long his stay would last, but business had fallen off so much because of the rains (Mr. Harari and Major Parslow had been the only decent customers in days) that his absence could hardly make things worse. He had not told Paul where he was going. Paul was dependable, but only up to a point: he babbled to his sister, and his sister had the longest tongue in Nicosia. Carpius would not be surprised if the sale of the ikon of St. Mamas had not contributed quite a few pounds toward her dowry—trust Chiringirian for that. Nor did Carpius desire to make himself conspicuous by taking his own car. He regretted that the railroad had been discontinued, but regrets were useless.
Jolting from side to side in the small and crowded bus, the antique dealer regretted the absence of the railroad still more. The day was misty, the curves on the mountain roads were exceedingly sharp, and the driver’s habit of taking one hand off the wheel to cross himself while making each turn did nothing at all for Carpius’s peace of mind. The only gratification of the ride was that the other passengers were all too busy talking to one another to notice him. There was little logic in his desire to be inconspicuous, but he felt that in order to avoid the bad luck of the St. Mamas incident he ought to go about this matter differently. There was so much more at stake this time. If the ikon of the Eleventh Century were so valuable, then the price of this earlier one almost transcended the power of estimation.
For a while Carpius managed to forget the bus. He thought of a villa in the South of France, a well-furnished flat in Paris, and a certain hotel in Switzerland, where he had once stayed briefly—not a large hotel, but admirably appointed. In this pleasant dream (in which Cyprus, with its rains and mud, its turbulent population, and its few good resorts crowded during the brief season with rich and vulgar Egyptians, played no part) Carpius remained until the bus stopped suddenly and jerkily at a crossroads store. All the passengers got off, chattering loudly—some to stretch their legs, some to use the sanitary facilities, some to get coffee, some because this was their stop. Carpius got off not quite last, his bundle under his arm. He suddenly realized he had been here before. The vague memory which the monk’s words, “Saints Barnabas and Basil,” had aroused in his mind was based on this single visit.
While en route to the mountains one summer to sell a genuine forged Alma-Tadema to a cotton pasha at one of the hotels, he had stopped here briefly. The day had been especially clear. Some distance down the smaller road a path branched off and led to a large stone house a mile or so away. Idly he had asked what house it was and had been told, “The Monastery of Saints Barnabas and Basil.” (The pasha had bought the Alma-Tadema. It was crowded with decorously semi-nude young men and women, the pasha’s own taste tending rather toward the latter, though by no means excluding the former.)
While the passengers trooped into the combination shop and café, Carpius faded away into the mist. He had bought his ticket to the end of the line, but he did not think his absence would be noted. Sticking closely to the side of the road, he came presently to the path he remembered. He was not used to carrying bundles, or, indeed, to walking more than very short distances. It was fortunate that the route lay downhill. In less time than he would have thought, the world lay wrapped in silence. No sound from the road reached him. The trees and bushes crowded close to the path, discharging part of their moist burden upon him as he brushed by. Head down, he trudged along, and hardly noticed when he entered the monastic grounds. He came face to face with the house and stopped abruptly.
It was old and heavy and made of stone. The windows were few and narrow. Architecture was not Carpius’s forte, but he thought that at least part of the structure dated from the reign of the De Lusignan dynasty, the “Latin” kings of Cyprus, before the days in the island of Genoa and Venice, and poor lost Othello. Later additions to the house had copied the same style. The roofs, which were on several levels, were mostly large slabs of mossy stone (the walls would have to be thick to support their weight), and partly tiles, black with age. Carpius knew that he could not expect plumbing, running water, electric lights, or other features he had found in up-to-date, more prosperous monastic establishments. He viewed the lack of these conveniences with philosophical detachment. He could enjoy them later—in the South of France, in Paris, in the Berne-Oberlandt.
To the monk who received him he explained that he wanted to see the Archimandrite, or Father Superior. Only after presenting Carpius with a tray on which were a glass of water and a small dish of preserves—traditional symbols of hospitality—did the monk depart, his feet echoing on the stone floors until the sound of them died away. After a long time the sound began again. The Father Superior was an old man with a vast gray beard. Carpius stood up and bowed. The old man inclined his head.
“Yesterday, Archimandrite, I bought from your monk, Theodoros, an ikon of the Prophet Elijah.”
“Brother Theodoros? He has not yet returned. There was nothing wrong with the ikon? Brother Constantine painted it.”
“Oh, no,” Carpius hastened to assure him. “It is a very good ikon. But it has troubled me that he asked so little for it.”
The Archimandrite said nothing, so Carpius decided to skip the gambit of offering to add to the price, and continued.
“In fact, I scarcely slept the whole night. I kept thinking of the holy Prophet and how he fled into the wilderness to escape the wickedness of the priests of his day, and of the government.” The old man looked up. There was a gleam of interest in his eyes. “Surely, in a place where the priests do evil and the government supports them, the people are corrupted as well.” The old man nodded slowly. “When I considered the action of the Archbishop in changing the calendar,” Carpius went on, “I was troubled. But I said to myself, ‘Surely what this venerable and holy man does cannot be wrong?’”
The Archimandrite frowned, and Carpius hastily resumed: “But last night it came to me, as if in a vision, that he was wrong. What right had he to tamper with the ancient traditions of the Church, with the Julian Calendar that was good enough for the Fathers of the Church—Origen, Polycarp, Ephraim of Edessa, and the others? And I was obliged to admit—no right at all! The Established Church of Cyprus is now in a state of heresy, of apostacy! Its festivals are all on the wrong days, and hence are no festivals at all. Most reverend Archimandrite, I have come here to seek the true religion from you.”
The old man’s face was illuminated with joy. He stretched out his hands.
“My son,” he said, in a voice tremulous with emotion, “you speak with the tongue of angels. You have not come here in vain.”
* * *
LATE THAT NIGHT, while Carpius was trying to compensate for the frugal supper of the monks with a late snack of deviled ham, biscuits, and brandy, he reviewed the situation. How right, how lucky and right, he had been in his guess as to why the ikon of Elijah was so venerated here. In the prophet of Israel, the short-tempered Tishbite, the dissident clerics of the monastery saw the forerunner of their own order. As Elijah had denounced false worship, so had they. As Elijah had been obliged to flee into the wilderness from the anger of authority, so had they. The only thing Carpius had not calculated was the vision which the Archimandrite had had: With tears running from his eyes, and protestations of his unworthiness, the old man described how, in a dream, Elijah appeared before him, chariot and all, holding out his mantle with the words, “Thou art cold. Cover thyself.”
Actually, the monks were retreating from more than a change in calendar. They were retreating from the airplane and the jazz band and the hand grenade, the tumult and weary unrest of the present troubled age—retreating from it and turning back to the long and deep slumber of Byzantium. Off on their side road they need never even smell the fumes of an automobile. And deep in the cellar where the ikon reposed, in a special tiny chapel all to itself, no bigger than a dungeon cell, each monk in turn venerating upon his knees, they found the peace they sought—sweet and silent and heavy.
Carpius took the copy of the ikon from its wrapping and mentally compared it with the original. As to whether or not Spendlove had been correct in calling it Alexandrian, he could not say; but certainly it was Hellenistic. It had nothing of the rigidity or formalized stiffness which characterized later iconography; it was purely natural. Perhaps the Monk Prokopios, before his turning to the religious life, had painted many a late Roman patrician or tribune or matron; perhaps he had even done bacchanalian scenes for the walls of some pagan tavern or villa.
Putting speculation aside, Carpius rose and removed his shoes. Finding the stone floors cold to his feet, he added a second pair of socks. In one pocket went the copy painted by Brother Theodoros. In the other went a small bottle and a thick gauze pad; this might not be necessary: very likely the monk on vigil would be dozing at this hour, in which case it would be the work of a few moments to make the exchange. But just in case … And if the bottle and gauze were needed, what then? They were always having visions, these monks; let him make the most of this one when he recovered. In the dim light cast by the tiny lamp, no one could tell the difference between the old ikon and the new.
Silently Carpius went through the corridors and down the steps, flashlight in hand. Here and there a monk snored, or breathed heavily in his sleep. Down, farther down, deep into the cellar, along a cold, cold hall—at last he saw ahead of him the pale glow of the tiny chapel lamp. He switched off his flashlight and crept slowly ahead. In the cell a monk crouched on his knees, elbows resting on the floor, head buried in his hands. His breath came and went, smooth and even.
“Asleep,” Carpius thought, inching forward. He reached out his hand for the ikon, and in a moment—so swiftly that his eye retained no image of an intermediate picture—the monk was on his feet, howling wildly and grappling with him.
“Satan!” the monk shrieked. “Father of lies, and of thieves!”
He’s an old man, Carpius thought; how does he have the strength to shout like that? And with his free hand Carpius lifted the heavy flashlight and struck.
Then, looking at the monk lying there, another thought came to him—lines from something he had once read, something an Englishman had written: Who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him?
Perhaps the struggle had taken longer than it seemed; perhaps he stood there longer than he thought; but when he looked up he saw them at the door. Carpius stood there, stupidly, motionless. He heard their voices, saw them lift the body, felt the cold seeping through his stockinged feet. One syllable began to beat in his head like a pulse. Why?… Why?… Why?…
“Why?” asked the Archimandrite. “Why did you kill Brother Damianos?”
“I didn’t mean to … He saw me reach for the ikon … I didn’t mean to. I am very sorry, believe me—” His mind was clearing now, swiftly; it darted this way and that, seeking a point of escape. “I only wanted to look at the ikon, but he thought I came to steal it. He took me by the throat and I was frightened.”
He dropped to his knees and clutched the Father Superior’s hand. “Do not turn me over to the police! It was an accident!”
“An accident,” murmured the old man. The monks muttered and crossed themselves. “Moses appointed cities of refuge for the manslayer to flee to,” the Archimandrite said. “Sanctuaries for those who had killed accidentally. You say you are sorry … I shall choose to believe you.” The Archimandrite disengaged his hands.
“Oh, thank you, thank you,” Carpius said.
The monks moved backward—moved away from him, away from the blood.
“We shall not call the police,” the old man said. “But you must pray—pray for Divine forgiveness. You must repent. Pray without ceasing.”
“I shall.” Carpius rose.
It had been easy, after all. He turned to pick up the ikon, hiding it by standing between it and the monks. The copy lay on the floor beside the original. He slipped the real one in his pocket. A grating noise interrupted him. He turned to see the door swing shut. A key clattered in the lock. He looked through a small opening in the door. It was a thick door, bound with iron. He pressed his face to the opening, not understanding.
“Pray without ceasing,” the Archimandrite repeated. “We shall bring you food and water twice a day, and oil for the lamp. We shall feed you as the ravens fed Elijah. As long as you live we shall feed you, and you must pray for forgiveness.”
They moved away.
Carpius stared at the walls around him. The roof was made of stone—he had noticed that; in order to support such a heavy roof, the walls must be very strong and thick.…