Father and son proceeded along the street in silence.
Neither could find the words to say what needed to be said. Paul desperately wanted to thank his father, to apologize for shaming him in the community. Yet at the same time he wanted to explain why he had done it, why he believed as he did. He wanted his father to understand the passion that burned in his heart. In his inner turmoil and confusion he wanted both to defend and debase himself before his father.
Yevno’s soul was no less torn apart. The tender heart of the father sought only to wrap loving arms around his son, protecting him from the cruelties of an imperfect and unjust world. Another part of him, however, argued that what Paul needed at this moment more than anything was firmness—parental strength that included a sound beating when they returned home. He had been sympathetic and understanding and patient long enough, and look what had been the result: his son had been thrown in jail, and he had had to relinquish every ruble the family had to rescue the ungrateful boy! Now was the time for drastic measures!
Yet what if his son did not respond with the humility of heart such discipline was intended to bring? What if it made him turn away completely, and landed him in deeper trouble later?
Thus Yevno battled within himself, back and forth between the two opposing arguments of his mind. He must show his love to Paul, that much was certain. But how should he love him—through gentleness, or with punishment?
The pervading silence made the walk back to Katyk seem longer than it was. Still a versta or so from the village, Yevno at length ventured to speak.
“Plotnik the Jew says spring will come early this year.”
“Just as he said last year,” added Paul without much enthusiasm.
“Sometimes he is right.”
“Sometimes you are right too,” said Paul, “about the weather.” The last words were not spoken with any particular emphasis, but Yevno wondered if they had been added as a hasty afterthought.
“The Jews have a sense about these things, though.”
“So it is said.”
“An early spring would be welcome.”
“It has been a cold winter.”
“As always.”
“Much snow.”
“Frozen ground.”
A pause came. Both wondered how long they could sustain such a conversation.
“Is the weather all that is on your mind, Papa?” ventured Paul at last.
“No, my son, but I was thinking that an early spring would be good for your mother, and let us plant some things sooner.”
“How much did you have to pay that fat, ugly magistrate to release me—or did you have to deal with that snake Vlasenko?”
“Pavushka! Do not speak of your superiors in that way!” Almost the same moment, however, a slow half-smile appeared on his face. That he felt the same way about the two men was hardly a fact that he could hide from his son, nor would he have been comfortable trying to maintain the hypocrisy. “Enough,” he said. “We will speak of it no more. You are home—that is what matters.”
“Papa, don’t you see? What matters is that they are lining their own pockets by way of the broken backs of the peasants. A magistrate is supposed to be a symbol of justice, yet that fat old bear is just as evil in his own way as the police chief! Don’t you see the mockery of it, Papa? Do you think a nobleman would have to pay his last kopeck to free his son for doing nothing more than speaking his mind? In a government based on equality, such things would not happen.”
“How do you know I paid my last kopeck? Perhaps it is not so grim as you imagine.”
“Oh, Papa, I know the system of ours! I know how the tsar and his government works. Do not imagine me so naive. And I know because I can see it in your eyes.”
Paul wanted to cry. He was not angry at his father, although his voice rang with passion. The tumult of emotions inside him threatened to boil over in a torrent of tears. Only his anger at injustice kept him steady. “You should not have done it, Papa,” he said. “I am not worth it.”
“Would you break your poor matushka’s heart?” said Yevno. Not to mention my own, he thought to himself. “When a man, or even a boy, is sent to prison, he is as good as dead. The chances that his family will ever see him again are small. You do not understand what it is like, my Pavushka. If I had not had enough—”
He checked himself, hesitated briefly, then went on, “If I had not been able to get you out, perhaps if the magistrate had not known me, if this had all happened in Pskov . . .”
The voice of the father broke. He shuddered involuntarily. “I do not want to imagine what might have become of you, my son,” he added softly, fighting off the tears.
They walked on a while in silence.
“What will you do, Papa? That money was to get us through the rest of the winter . . . whenever springs happens to come.”
“God will provide,” answered Yevno. “He will not let us starve.”
“Like He has always provided for us?” said Paul in a sarcastic tone. “Like He provided for Gevala last winter, who froze when her fire burned out? Like He provided for Kazan’s cousin in Moscow who was imprisoned for taking a loaf of bread from a shopkeeper’s cart for his starving daughter? Like He made a way for Anna to remain at home with her family?”
“I thought your bitterness was only toward the government—not toward God also.”
“I try hard not to be bitter, Papa,” said Paul, and the change in his voice revealed that the words were deeply sincere. “But when I look around and see such suffering and injustice and cruelty, I cannot help wondering if He is a loving and caring God, why would He allow such things to be? If there truly were a God such as this, I do not think these injustices would happen.”
Yevno quickly made the sign of the cross and uttered a hasty prayer of forgiveness for his son’s near blasphemy.
He knew he needed to say something. But he was an ignorant man. How could he reply to his son’s heartfelt plea? How could an illiterate old Russian peasant make sense out of the conundrum that had perplexed theologians and philosophers since the beginning of time?
Paul should be talking of these things to the priest, thought Yevno. He had no inkling that the simple words he might offer, springing from a life of obedience to the ways of God, could have a more profound influence on Paul than any platitudes from the mouth of a priest—however holy his life, however true his replies.
“Trouble is part of life, Pavushka,” said Yevno quietly. “Would you have all pain removed from the earth? I do not think even God would care for that.”
“Just more evenly distributed,” answered Paul.
“The rain falls where it will.”
“If God makes the rain, then He should see a little better to where it lands.”
“Paul, Paul, is God a man that we should order Him about according to our puny understandings? God makes the rain, but He allows it to fall. He does not send forth each drop from His fingers to shield from the storms those who are already wet, and to cause downpours only where the earth is parched. He makes the rain, and then lets the rain fall to water the earth. Does He not do the same with the troubles of life?”
“But rain is good, Papa, and troubles are not.”
“How do you know that, my son?”
“Is it not obvious?”
“In time of flood, the rain appears as an enemy. Yet without the rains, the earth could not survive half a year. Might it not be so with the pains of life as well? Do they not season us and make us strong and hardy? Where would we be, Pavushka, if there were nothing to fight against, nothing to conquer? We would be flabby, miserable creatures—hardly worthy to be called men. Ah, Paul, I would not trade places with the magistrate for all the money in the tsar’s treasury. Neither would I escape a single one of the troubles the Lord would send upon me.”
“And the troubles men send upon you, Papa?”
“They are harder to endure. You are right, my son. I do not like what I had to do this morning. Yet somehow I believe that the strong hand of a God who is above all things good is completely in control even when bad men would bring hurt upon me. How this can be, I do not know. But I believe it is so. And if it is so, then nothing can happen to me outside the reach of His care.”
Paul heard his father’s words, though how much he grasped their meaning was doubtful. When he did not reply, Yevno added, “So you see, no matter how much trouble may come, I yet know God’s life and care are raining down upon me—whether it be spring showers or winter floods.”
Paul said no more about God, and they walked on toward Katyk.
He could admit no more than he had already hinted at to his father. Further thoughts in this direction he would explore within the quietness of his own soul. Paul sensed already that he was losing his faith—if he had ever had a faith of his own. Kazan would probably say that he was now at last shaking free from the superstitions of his upbringing, which had never been a faith at all.
Kazan was an atheist, admittedly and without the slightest reservation. He could never believe in a God, he said, who not only would allow such corruption and misery to exist in a world of His supposed creation, but whose so-called blessing would rest, as the church so steadfastly maintained, upon the tsar of such an evil and despicable governmental system. Kazan’s arguments were convincing. If there was a God, He was by definition just as much an enemy of the revolutionary cause as the tsar himself. His supreme authority was no less unjust than the tsar’s, and His commands to worship His almighty name alone no less pompous than Ivan the Great’s styling himself “Sovereign of all the Russias” in the fifteenth century.
Paul was caught between Kazan’s fervent convictions and his father’s gentle belief. Yet did not his father call himself an unlearned man, unschooled in ideas? He wanted to retain his belief in God, if for no other reason than because he was not ready to deny his own father. But he could not ignore the questions that nagged at him, questions that Yevno was ill-equipped to answer, questions that the faithful old man probably had no idea could even exist. Where could he go for answers but to others who had wrestled with the same questions and had come to rational grips with the issues at stake? To whom could he go but to those like Kazan?
He loved his father, but in these struggles his father could not help him. Thus Paul kept further comment to himself.
It was better that way.