Here are the best goods in the town!”
The impervious and inscrutable customer would look at me for a long time in silence. Suddenly pushing me aside with an arm like a piece of wood, he would go into the shop next door, and my shopman, rubbing his large ears, grumbled angrily :
“You have let him go! You’re a nice salesman!”
In the next shop could be heard a soft, sweet voice, pouring forth a speech which had the effect of a narcotic.
“We don’t sell sheepskins or boots, my friend, but the blessing of God, which is of more value than silver or gold; which, in fact, is priceless.”
“The devil!” whispered our shopman, full of envy and almost beside himself with rage. “A curse on the eyes of that muzhik!
You must learn!
You must learn!”
I did honestly try to learn, for one ought to do well whatever one has to do.
But I was not a success at enticing the customers in, nor as a salesman. These gruff men, so sparing of their words, those old women who looked like rats, always for some reason timid and abject, aroused my pity, and I wanted to tell them on the quiet the real value of the icons, and not ask for the extra two greven.
They amazed me by their knowledge of books, and of the value of the painting on the icons. One day a gray-haired old man whom I had herded into the shop said to me shortly:
“It is not true, my lad, that your image workshop \s, the best in Russia — the best is Rogoshin’s in Moscow.”
In confusion I stood aside for him to pass, and he went to another shop, not even troubling to go next door.
“Has he gone away?” asked the shopman spitefully.
“You never told me about Rogoshin’s workshop.”
He became abusive.
“They come in here so quietly, and all the time they know all there is to know, curse them! They understand all about the business, the dogs!”
Handsome, overfed, and selfish, he hated the peasants. When he was in a good humor, he would com plain to me:
“I am clever! I like cleanliness and scents, incense, and eau-de-Cologne, and though I set such a value on myself, I am obliged to bow and scrape to some peasant, to get five copecks’ profit out of him for the mistress.
Do you think it is fair?
What is a peasant, after all?
A bundle of foul wool, a winter louse, and yet ”
And he fell into an indignant silence.
I liked the peasants. There was something elusive about each one of them which reminded me of Yaakov.
Sometimes there would climb into the shop a miserable-looking figure in a chapan7 put on over a short, fur-coat. He would take off his shaggy cap, cross himself with two fingers, look into the corner where the lamp glimmered, yet try not to, lest his eyes rest on the unblessed icons. Then glancing around, without speaking for some time, he would manage at length to say:
“Give me a psalter with a commentary.”
Tucking up the sleeves of his chapan he would read the pages, as he turned them over with clumsy movement, biting his lips the while.
“Haven’t you any more ancient than this?”
“An old one would cost a thousand rubles, as you know.”
“I know.”
The peasant moistened his finger as he turned over the leaves, and there was left a dark fingerprint where he had touched them.
The shopman, gazing with an evil expression at the back of his head, said:
“The Holy Scriptures are all of the same age; the word of God does not change.”
“We know all about that; we have heard that!
God did not change it, but Nikon did.”
Closing the book, he went out in silence. 7 The Nikonites are the followers of Nikon, patriarch of Moscow, who objected to the innovation of Peter the Great in suppressing the patriarchate of Moscow, and establishing a State Church upon the lines of the old patriarchal church. They are also termed the Old Believers, who are split up into several extraordinary schisms which existed before and after the suppression of the patriarchate, but who, in the main, continue their orthodoxy.
Sometimes these forest people disputed with the shopman, and it was evident to me that they knew more about the sacred writings than he did.
“Outlandish heathen!” grumbled the shop-man.
I saw also that, although new books were not to the taste of the peasants, they looked upon a new book with awe, handling it carefully, as if it were a bird which might fly out of their hands.
This was very pleasant to me to see, because a book was a miracle to me. In it was inclosed the soul of the writer, and when I opened it, I set this soul free, and it spoke to me in secret.
Often old men and women brought books to sell printed in the old characters of the preNikonovski period, or copies of such books, beautifully made by the monks of Irgiz and Kerjentz. They also brought copies of missals uncorrected by Dmitry Rostovski, icons with ancient inscriptions, crosses, folding icons with brass mountings, and silver, eucharist spoons given by the Muscovite princes to their hosts as keepsakes. All these were offered secretly, from their hoards under the floor.
Both my shopman and his neighbor kept a very sharp lookout for such vendors, each trying to take them away from the other. Having bought antiques for anything up to ten rubles, they would sell them on the market-place to rich Old Ritualists for hundreds of rubles.
“Mind you look out for those were — wolves, those wizards! Look for them with all your eyes; they bring luck with them.”
When a vendor of this kind appeared, the shop-man used to send me to fetch the valuer, Petr Vas — silich, a connoisseur in old books, icons, and all kind of antiques.
He was a tall old man with a long beard, like Blessed Vassili, with intelligent eyes in a pleasant face.
The tendon of one of his legs had been removed, and he walked lame, with a long stick. Summer and winter he wore a light garment, like a cassock, and a velvet cap of a strange shape, which looked like a saucepan.
Usually brisk and upright, when he entered the shop, he let his shoulders droop, and bent his back, sighing gently and crossing himself often, muttering prayers and psalms to himself all the time.
This pious and aged feebleness at once inspired the vendor with confidence in the valuer.
“What is the matter? Has something gone wrong?” the old man would ask.
“Here is a man who has brought an icon to sell. He says it is a Stroganovski.”