THE icon-painting workshop occupied two rooms in a large house partly built of stone. One room had three windows overlooking the yard and one overlooking the garden; the other room had one window overlooking the garden and another facing the street. These windows were small and square, and their panes, irisated by age, unwillingly admitted the pale, diffused light of the winter days. Both rooms were closely packed with tables, and at every table sat the bent figures of icon-painters. From the ceilings were suspended glass balls full of water, which reflected the light from the lamps and threw it upon the square surfaces of the icons in white cold rays.
It was hot and stifling in the workshop. Here worked about twenty men, icon-painters, from Palekh, Kholia, and Mstir. They all sat down in cotton overalls with unfastened collars. They had drawers made of ticking, and were barefooted, or wore sandals. Over their heads stretched, like a blue veil, the smoke of cheap tobacco, and there was a thick smell of size, varnish, and rotten eggs. The melancholy Vlandimirski song flowed slowly, like resin:
How depraved the people have now become;
The boy ruined the girl, and cared not who knew.
They sang other melancholy songs, but this was the one they sang most often. Its long-drawn-out movement did not hinder one from thinking, did not impede the movement of the fine brush, made of weasel hair, over the surface of the icons, as it painted in the lines of the figure, and laid upon the emaciated faces of the saints the fine lines of suffering. By the windows the chaser, Golovev, plied his small hammer. He was a drunken old man with an enormous blue nose. The lazy stream of song was punctuated by the ceaseless dry tap of the hammer; it was like a worm gnawing at a tree. Some evil genius had divided the work into a long series of actions, bereft of beauty and incapable of arousing any love for the business, or interest in it. The squinting joiner, Panphil, ill-natured and malicious, brought the pieces of cypress and lilac — wood of different sizes, which he had planed and glued; the consumptive lad, Davidov, laid the colors on; his comrade, Sorokin, painted in the inscription; Milyashin outlined the design from the original with a pencil; old Golovev gilded it, and embossed the pattern in gold; the finishers drew the land — scape, and the clothes of the figures; and then they were stood with faces or hands against the wall, waiting for the work of the face-painter.
It was very weird to see a large icon intended for an iconastasis, or the doors of the altar, standing against the wall without face, hands, or feet, — just the sacerdotal vestments, or the armor, and the short garments of archangels. These variously painted tablets suggested death. That which should have put life into them was absent, but it seemed as if it had been there, and had miraculously disappeared, leaving only its heavy vestments behind.
When the features had been painted in by the face-painter, the icon was handed to the workman, who filled in the design of the chaser. A different workman had to do the lettering, and the varnish was put on by the head workman himself Ivan Larionovich, a quiet man. He had a gray face; his beard, too, was gray, the hair fine and silky; his gray eyes were peculiarly deep and sad. He had a pleasant smile, but one could not smile at him. He made one feel awkward, somehow. He looked like the image of Simon Stolpnik, just as lean and emaciated, and his motionless eyes looked far away in the same abstracted man — ner, through people and walls.
Some days after I entered the workshop, the banner-worker, a Cossack of the Don, named Kapendiukhin, a handsome, mighty fellow, arrived in a state of intoxication. With clenched teeth and his gentle, wom — anish eyes blinking, he began to smash up everything with his iron fist, without uttering a word. Of medium height and well built, he cast himself on the workroom like a cat chasing rats in a cellar. The others lost their presence of mind, and hid themselves away in the corners, calling out to one another:
“Knock him down!”
The face-painter, Evgen Sitanov, was successful in stunning the maddened creature by hitting him on the head with a small stool. The Cossack subsided on the floor, and was immediately held down and tied up with towels, which he began to bite and tear with the teeth of a wild beast. This infuriated Evgen. He jumped on the table, and with his hands pressed close to his sides, prepared to jump on the Cossack. Tall and stout as he was, he would have inevitably crushed the breast-bone of Kapendiukhin by his leap, but at that moment Larionovich appeared on the scene in cap and overcoat, shook his finger at Sitanov, and said to the workmen in a quiet and business-like tone:
“Carry him into the vestibule, and leave him there till he is sober.”
They dragged the Cossack out of the workshop, set the chairs and tables straight, and once again set to work, letting fall short remarks on the strength of their comrade, prophesying that he would one day be killed by some one in a quarrel.
“It would be a difficult matter to kill him,” said Sitanov very calmly, as if he were speaking of a business which he understood very well.
I looked at Larionovich, wondering perplexedly why these strong, pugilistic people were so easily ruled by him. He showed every one how he ought to work; even the best workmen listened willingly to his advice; he taught Kapendiukhin more, and with more words, than the others.
“ You, Kapendiukhin, are what is called a painter — that is, you ought to paint from life in the Italian manner. Painting in oils requires warm colors, and you have introduced too much white, and made Our Lady’s eyes as cold as winter. The cheeks are painted red, like apples, and the eyes do not seem to belong to them. And they are not put in right, either; one is looking over the bridge of the nose, and the other has moved to the temple; and the face has not come out pure and holy, but crafty, wintry. You don’t think about your work, Kapendiukhin.”
The Cossack listened and made a wry face. Then smiling impudently with his womanish eyes, he said in his pleasant voice, which was rather hoarse with so much drinking:
“Ekh! I— va — a — n Larionovich, my father, that is not my trade. I was born to be a musician, and they put me among monks.”
“With zeal, any business may be mastered.”
“No; what do you take me for? I ought to have been a coachman with a team of gray horses, eh?”
And protruding his Adam’s apple, he drawled despairingly:
“Eh, i-akh, if I had a leash of grayhounds
And dark brown horses,
Och, when I am in torment on frosty nights
I would fly straight, straight to my love!”
Ivan Larionovich, smiling mildly, set his glasses straight on his gray, sad, melancholy nose, and went away. But a dozen voices took up the song in a friendly spirit, and there flowed forth a mighty stream of song which seemed to raise the whole workshop into the air and shake it with measured blows:
“By custom the horses know Where the little lady lives.”
The apprentice, Pashka Odintzov, threw aside his work of pouring off the yolks of the eggs, and holding the shells in his hand, led the chorus in a masterly manner. Intoxicated by the sounds, they all forgot them — selves, they all breathed together as if they had but one bosom, and were full of the same feelings, looking sideways at the Cossack. When he sang, the workshop acknowledged him as its master; they were all drawn to him, followed the brief movements of his hands; he spread his arms out as if he were about to fly. I believe that if he had suddenly broken off his song and cried, “Let us smash up everything,” even the most serious of the workmen would have smashed the workshop to pieces in a few moments.
He sang rarely, but the power of his tumultuous songs was always irresistible and all-conquering. It was as if these people were not very strongly made, and he could lift them up and set them on fire; as if everything was bent when it came within the warm influence of that mighty organ of his.
As for me, these songs aroused in me a hot feeling of envy of the singer, of his admirable power over people. A painful emotion flowed over my heart, making it feel as if it would burst. I wanted to weep and call out to the singers:
“I love you!”
Consumptive, yellow Davidov, who was covered with tufts of hair, also opened his mouth, strangely resembling a young jackdaw newly burst out of the
These happy, riotous songs were only sung when the Cossack started them. More often they sang the sad, drawn-out one about the depraved people, and another about the forests, and another about the death of Alexander I, “How our Alexander went to review his army.” Sometimes at the suggestion of our best face painter, Jikharev, they tried to sing some church melodies, but it was seldom a success. Jikharev always wanted one particular thing; he had only one idea of harmony, and he kept on stopping the song.
He was a man of forty-five, dry, bald, with black, curly, gipsy-like hair, and large black brows which looked like mustaches. His pointed, thick beard was very ornamental to his fine, swarthy, unRussian face, but under his protuberant nose stuck out ferocious-looking mustaches, superfluous when one took his brows into consideration. His blue eyes did not match, the left being noticeably larger than the right.
“Pashka,” he cried in a tenor voice to my comrade, the apprentice, “come along now, start off: Traise — ‘ Now people, listen!”
Wiping his hands on his apron, Pashka led off:
“Pr — a — a — ise — ”
“The Name of the Lord,” several voices caught it up, but Jikharev cried fussily:
“Lower, Evgen! Let your voice come from the very depths of the soul.”
Sitanov, in a voice so deep that it sounded like the rattle of a drum, gave forth:
“R— rabi Gospoda (slaves of the Lord) — ”
“Not like that! That part should be taken in such a way that the earth should tremble and the doors and windows should open of themselves!”
Jikharev was in a state of incomprehensible excitement. His extraordinary brows went up and down on his forehead, his voice broke, his fingers played on an invisible dulcimer.
“Slaves of the Lord — do you understand?” he said importantly. “You have got to feel that right to the kernel of your being, right through the shell. Slaves, praise the Lord! How is it that you — living people — do not understand that?”
“We never seem to get it as you say it ought to be,” said Sitanov quietly.
“Well, let it alone then!”
Jikharev, offended, went on with his work. He was the best workman we had, for he could paint faces in the Byzantine manner, and artistically, in the new Italian style. When he took orders for iconostasis, Larionovich took counsel with him. He had a fine knowledge of all original image-paintings; all the costly copies of miraculous icons, Theodorovski, Kazanski, and others, passed through his hands. But when he lighted upon the originals, he growled loudly:
“These originals tie us down; there is no getting away from that fact.”
In spite of his superior position in the workshop, he was less conceited than the others, and was kind to the apprentices — Pavl and me. He wanted to teach us the work, since no one else ever bothered about us.
He was difficult to understand; he was not usually cheerful, and sometimes he would work for a whole week in silence, like a dumb man. He looked on every one as at strangers who amazed him, as if it were the first time he had come across such people. And although he was very fond of singing, at such times he did not sing, nor did he even listen to the songs. All the others watched him, winking at one another. He would bend over the icon which stood sideways, his tablet on his knees, the middle resting on the edge of the table, while his fine brush diligently painted the dark, foreign face. He was dark and foreign-looking himself. Suddenly he would say in a clear, offended tone:
“Forerunner — what does that mean? Tech means in ancient language ‘to go.’ A forerunner is one who goes before, — and that is all.”
The workshop was very quiet; every one was glancing askance at Jikharev, laughing, and in the stillness rang out these strange words:
“He ought to be painted with a sheepskin and wings.”
“Whom are you talking to?” I asked.
He was silent, either not hearing my question or not caring to answer it. Then his words again fell into the expectant silence:
“The lives of the saints are what we ought to know! What do we know? We live without wings. Where is the soul? The soul — where is it? The originals are there — yes — but where are the souls?”
This thinking aloud caused even Sitanov to laugh derisively, and almost always some one whispered with malicious joy:
“He will get drunk on Saturday.”
Tall, sinewy Sitanov, a youngster of twenty-two years, with a round face without whiskers or eye-brows, gazed sadly and seriously into the corner.
I remember when the copy of the Theodorovski Madonna, which I believe was Kungur, was finished. Jikharev placed the icon on the table and said loudly, excitedly:
“It is finished, Little Mother! Bright Chalice, Thou! Thou, bottomless cup, in which are shed the bitter tears from the hearts of the world of creatures!”
And throwing an overcoat over his shoulders, he went out to the tavern. The young men laughed and whistled, the elder ones looked after him with envious sighs, and Sitanov went to his work. Looking at it attentively, he explained:
“Of course he will go and get drunk, because he is sorry to have to hand over his work. That ............