Chapter 2 College Students

College Students At first the weather was fine with no wind.Thrushes sang, and something alive in the nearby swamp was making a mournful sound, as if blowing into an empty bottle.A woodcock flew by, and the shot at it made a joyful boom in the spring air.However, when it got dark in the woods, it was a terrible sight. There was a biting cold wind blowing from the east, and all the sounds stopped. A layer of needles of ice spread on the floating surface of the puddle, and the woods became uncomfortable, desolate, and gloomy.This has the meaning of winter. Ivan Verikopolsky, a student of the seminary and son of a church lectern, was walking home from woodcock shooting, along a path in a flooded meadow.His fingers were numb from the cold, and his face was hot from the wind.It seemed to him that this sudden cold disturbed the order and harmony of all things, and that even nature itself seemed to be frightened, so that the dusk of evening came sooner than usual.It was deserted all around, and for some reason, it looked particularly gloomy.There was only light in the widow's vegetable garden by the river, and in the distance and the village about four versts away were immersed in the cold evening gloom.The student remembered that when he came out of the house earlier, his mother was sitting barefoot on the floor in the front hall wiping the samovar, and his father was lying on the stove, coughing.It was Good Friday, and there was no cooking at home, so he was very hungry.Now the student shrinks back from the cold and thinks to himself: Whether it was in the time of Rurik, in the time of Ivan the Terrible, or in the time of Peter, such winds blew all over the place. In those ages, too, there was such severe poverty and hunger, such shabby roofs with holes, such ignorance and misery, such desolation, darkness, and melancholy. Yes, and there will be in the future, so life will not get better in another thousand years.Thinking of this, he didn't even want to go home.

The garden was called the Widow's Garden because it was owned by two widows, a mother and a daughter.A bonfire was burning brightly and crackling loudly, illuminating the plowed fields in the distance around it.The widow Vasilisa, a tall, fat old woman in a man's short leather jacket, stood by, looking at the fire and thinking; She was sitting on the floor, washing a pot and some spoons.Evidently they had just had dinner.A man's voice came from the side. It was the workers here drinking their horses by the river. "Hey, winter is back," said the college student, walking up to the campfire. "Hello!"

Vasilisa shuddered, but she recognized him at once and smiled politely. "I didn't recognize you just now, God bless you," she said. "You're going to get rich." They strike up a conversation.Vasilisa was a woman of experience, formerly working as a wet nurse in a gentleman's house, and later as a nurse.She speaks elegantly, with a gentle and solemn smile on her face all the time.Her daughter Lukelia is a village woman who has been tortured by her husband. At this time, she just squints her eyes and looks at the college student without saying a word. She has a strange expression on her face, like a deaf-mute person .

"It happened that the apostle Peter was warming himself by the campfire on such a cold night," said the college student, holding his hand to the fire. "So it was very cold then. Ah, what a dreadful night it was, ma'am! A very miserable and long night!" He looked around in the darkness, shook his head vigorously, and asked, "Maybe you have heard people read the twelve verses?" "Yes," Vasilisa replied. "Then you will remember that at the Last Supper, Peter said to Jesus: "I am willing to go to prison with you and die with you. ’ But the Lord answered him and said, “Peter, I tell you, the rooster hasn’t crowed today, and you have to say three times that you don’t recognize me.” Weak, heavy eyelids, he couldn't suppress his drowsiness. He fell asleep. Later, you heard people read that Judas kissed Jesus that night and betrayed him to his tormentors. They tied him up take him to the high priest, and beat him. Peter is very tired, and suffers from distress and terror, and, you know, he has not slept enough, but he has a premonition that something bad is about to happen in the world, so he Followed....He loved Jesus passionately and wholeheartedly, and at this moment he saw Jesus being beaten from a distance..." Lukelia put down the spoon and looked intently at the college student.

"When they came to the High Priest," he went on, "Jesus' trial began, and the people, because of the cold, lit a fire in the yard to warm themselves. Peter stood by the fire with them, and warmed himself, As I am now. A woman saw him and said, "This man was with Jesus, too," that is, he must be brought to trial.All those who stood by the fire must have looked at him suspiciously and severely, for he was flustered and said, "I don't know him." A little later another man recognized him as a disciple of Jesus, and said: "You belong to their party too. ' But he denied it again.Someone said to him for the third time: "I saw you in the garden with him today, wasn't it you?" He denied it for the third time.

While talking, the rooster crowed, and Peter looked at Jesus from a distance, remembering what Jesus had said to him at dinner yesterday. ... He thought about it, came to his senses, and walked out of the yard, weeping sadly.The Gospel reads: "He went out and wept bitterly.' I can picture the scene: a quiet, dark garden, with a muffled sobbing sound in the silence. . . . " The college student sighed, meditate.Although Vasilisa was still smiling, she suddenly choked up a sob, and large tears streamed down her face one after another. She covered her face with her sleeves, trying to block the firelight, as if she was ashamed of her tears; And Lukelia stared blankly at the college student, blushing, with a dull and tense expression, like a person enduring severe pain.

The workmen were returning from the river, and one of them, on horseback, had approached, and the light of the campfire shivered on him.The student said good night to the two widows and went on.Darkness fell again, and his hands were gradually freezing.With a biting wind blowing, winter has really returned, making it less likely that the day after tomorrow is Easter. Then the student thought of Vasilisa: since she was crying, everything that Peter went through that terrible night had something to do with her. ...he looked back.The solitary fire flickered quietly in the dark, and no one could be seen beside the fire.The college student thought again: Since Vasilisa was crying and her daughter was also sad, it is obvious that what happened 1,900 years ago just now is related to the present, to these two women, and probably to this desolate The village has something to do with him and everyone else.Now that the old woman was crying, it was not because he was good at telling stories, but because she thought Peter was kind, and because she cared with all her heart for what was going on in Peter's soul.

There was a sudden joy in his soul, and he even stopped for a moment to catch his breath. "The past and the present," he thought to himself, "are connected by a continuous chain of events." One head will vibrate. He crossed the river in a ferryboat, then climbed up the hillside, looked at his own village, looked at the west, and saw a narrow, cold purple glow shining, at this moment he thought to himself: Truth and beauty used to be in the garden and the big The Priest's Court, which has directed life, and continues to direct life to this day, seems forever to be the chief thing in human life and in the world at large.And then the feeling of youth, of health, of strength (he was only twenty-two), of that indescribably sweet yearning for happiness, of a bliss profound and mysterious, gradually seized his heart, and life seemed to him to appear Wonderful, magical, full of high meaning too.

"Notes" ①Christian holiday, observe this festival on the Friday before Easter. ②According to the chronicles, Rurik was the Grand Duke of Novgorod in the ninth century AD, and his son Igor was the founder of the Rurik dynasty, the first dynasty in Russia. ③ That is, Russian Tsar Ivan IV (1530-1584). ④The Russian Tsar Peter I (1672-1725). ⑤Russian custom: when acquaintances meet, they fail to recognize each other for a while, and after they recognize each other, they use this language to ridicule. ⑥Refers to the night when Jesus was arrested as recorded in the Bible, see the Gospel of Luke for details.