Living Relics

Land of native long-suffering— Land of the Russian people!.. —F. Tyutchev

The next day I woke up very early. The sun had just risen; there was not a single cloud in the sky; everything around sparkled with the strong double brilliance of young morning rays and yesterday’s downpour. While my cart was being harnessed, I went for a stroll through a small garden—once an orchard, now gone wild—that surrounded the little annex on all sides with its fragrant, lush overgrowth. Oh, how fine it was in the open air, under the clear sky, where larks fluttered, from where the silver beads of their ringing voices rained down! On their wings they surely carried drops of dew, and their songs seemed drenched with dew. I even took my cap off my head and breathed joyfully—with my whole chest… On the slope of a shallow ravine, right by the wattle fence, an apiary was visible; a narrow path led to it, winding like a snake between solid walls of weeds and nettles, above which rose—brought from God knows where—the pointed stalks of dark-green hemp.

I set off along this path and reached the apiary. Beside it stood a little wicker shed, a so-called omshanik, where beehives are placed for the winter. I looked through the half-open door: dark, quiet, dry; it smelled of mint and lemon balm. In the corner a platform had been set up, and on it, covered with a blanket, lay some small figure… I was about to leave…

“Master! Master! Pyotr Petrovich!” I heard a voice, feeble, slow, and hoarse, like the rustle of marsh sedge.

I stopped.

“Pyotr Petrovich! Please come here!” the voice repeated. It came from the corner, from the platform I had noticed.

I approached and froze in astonishment. Before me lay a living human being; but what was it?

The head was completely dried out, all one color, bronze—exactly like an icon of ancient painting; the nose narrow as a knife blade; the lips almost invisible—only the white teeth showed, and the eyes, and from under the kerchief thin strands of yellow hair straggled onto the forehead. At the chin, on a fold of the blanket, two tiny hands, also bronze-colored, moved slowly, the fingers stirring like little sticks. I looked more closely: the face was not only not ugly, it was even beautiful—but terrible, extraordinary. And the face seemed all the more terrible to me because I could see across it, across its metallic cheeks, that a smile was straining… straining and could not spread.

“You don’t recognize me, master?” the voice whispered again; it seemed to evaporate from the barely stirring lips. “But how could you recognize me? I am Lukeria… Do you remember how I used to lead the round dances at your mother’s place, in Spasskoye… Do you remember, I was also the lead singer?”

“Lukeria!” I exclaimed. “Is it you? Can it be?”

“Yes, master, it is I. I am Lukeria.”

I did not know what to say and stared, dumbstruck, at this dark, motionless face with its bright, deathly eyes fixed on me. Could it be? This mummy—Lukeria, the first beauty among all our household servants—tall, full-figured, white-skinned, rosy-cheeked—a laugher, a dancer, a singer! Lukeria, clever Lukeria, whom all our young lads courted, for whom I myself secretly sighed—I, a sixteen-year-old boy!

“Forgive me, Lukeria,” I said at last, “what happened to you?”

“Such misfortune befell me! But don’t be squeamish, master, don’t be disgusted by my woe—sit down there on that little keg—closer, or you won’t be able to hear me… see what a loud voice I have!… Well, and how glad I am to see you! How did you come to be in Alekseyevka?”

Lukeria spoke very quietly and weakly, but without pausing.

“The huntsman Yermolai brought me here. But tell me…”

“About my misfortune? Very well, master. It happened to me a long time ago, six or seven years. I had just been betrothed to Vasily Polyakov—do you remember, such a fine-looking fellow, curly-haired—he served as butler for your mother? But you weren’t in the village then; you had gone to Moscow to study. We loved each other very much, Vasily and I; I couldn’t get him out of my head; and it was springtime. Well, one night… dawn wasn’t far off… and I couldn’t sleep: a nightingale in the garden was singing so amazingly sweetly!… I couldn’t resist, got up and went out on the porch to listen to it. He trilled and trilled… And suddenly it seemed to me someone was calling me in Vasya’s voice, softly: ‘Lusha!’ I looked to the side, but being half-asleep, I stumbled and flew straight down from the steps—and slammed against the ground! And it seemed I hadn’t hurt myself badly, because I soon got up and went back to my room. Only something inside me—in my belly—seemed to tear… Let me catch my breath… just a moment… master…”

Lukeria fell silent, and I stared at her in amazement. What amazed me was that she told her story almost cheerfully, without sighs and groans, not complaining at all and not fishing for sympathy.

“From that very moment,” Lukeria continued, “I began to wither, to waste away; a darkness came over me; it became hard for me to walk, and then I couldn’t control my legs at all; I could neither stand nor sit—I just wanted to lie down all the time, and I didn’t want to eat or drink: everything got worse and worse. Your mother, out of her kindness, showed me to doctors and sent me to the hospital. But I got no relief. And not one doctor could even tell me what kind of illness I had. What didn’t they do to me: they burned my back with red-hot iron, they sat me in chopped ice—all for nothing. I became completely stiffened in the end… So the masters decided there was no point in treating me anymore, and it was impossible to keep cripples in the manor house… so they sent me here—because I have relatives here. So here I live, as you see.”

Lukeria fell silent again and again tried to smile.

“But this is terrible, your situation!” I exclaimed. And, not knowing what to add, I asked: “And what about Vasily Polyakov?”

It was a very stupid question.

Lukeria turned her eyes slightly to the side.

“What about Polyakov? He grieved for a while—and then married another, a girl from Glinnoye. Do you know Glinnoye? It’s not far from us. Her name was Agrafena. He loved me very much—but he’s a young man—he couldn’t stay a bachelor. And what kind of companion could I be to him? But he found himself a good wife, a kind one—and they have children. He lives here, at the neighbor’s, as a steward; your mother let him go with a passport, and, thank God, he’s doing very well.”

“And so you just lie and lie?” I asked again.

“Yes, master, this is the seventh year I’ve been lying. In summer I lie here, in this little wicker shed, and when it gets cold they move me to the bathhouse anteroom. There I lie.”

“Who looks after you? Who takes care of you?”

“There are good people here too. They don’t leave me. And there’s not much care needed. I eat practically nothing, and water—there it is in the mug—always kept ready, clean spring water. I can reach the mug myself: one hand still works. And there’s a little girl here, an orphan; now and then she looks in—bless her. She was just here… Did you meet her? Pretty little thing, fair-haired. She brings me flowers; I’m very fond of them—flowers, I mean. We don’t have garden flowers—there used to be, but they’ve died out. But field flowers are nice too; they smell even better than garden ones. Take the lily of the valley… what could be more lovely!”

“And you don’t get bored, you don’t feel frightened, my poor Lukeria?”

“What can one do? I don’t want to lie—at first it was very hard; but then I got used to it, became patient—it’s nothing; others have it even worse.”

“How is that?”

“Some don’t even have shelter! And some are blind or deaf! But I, thank God, can see perfectly and hear everything. A mole burrows under the ground—I hear even that. And I can sense every smell, even the faintest! When the buckwheat blooms in the field or the linden in the garden—I don’t need to be told; I’m the first to know. As long as a breeze blows from that direction. No, why anger God?—many have it worse than I do. Take this: a healthy person can sin very easily, but sin has left me alone. The other day Father Aleksei, the priest, came to give me communion, and he says: ‘There’s nothing to confess you of—can you sin in your condition?’ But I answered him: ‘What about sin in thought, father?’ ‘Well,’ he says with a laugh, ‘that’s not a great sin.’ But I must not be very sinful even with that kind of sin, the sin of thought,” Lukeria continued, “because I’ve trained myself not to think, and especially not to remember. Time passes more quickly.”

I confess I was amazed.

“You’re always alone, Lukeria; how can you keep thoughts from coming into your head? Or do you sleep all the time?”

“Oh no, master! I can’t always sleep. Though I have no great pains, it aches there, deep inside, and in my bones too; it doesn’t let me sleep properly. No… I just lie there, I lie and lie—and I don’t think; I feel that I’m alive, I breathe—and that’s all there is to me. I look, I listen. The bees buzz and hum at the apiary; a dove lands on the roof and coos; a mother hen comes in with her chicks to peck at crumbs; or a sparrow flies in, or a butterfly—and it’s very pleasant to me. The year before last, swallows even built a nest right there in the corner and raised their young. How interesting that was! One would fly in, press herself to the nest, feed her babies—and off she’d go. You’d look—already another one there to take her place. Sometimes one wouldn’t fly in, just dart past the open door, and the babies would immediately start chirping and opening their beaks… I waited for them the next year too, but they say a local hunter shot them with his gun. What use could he have for them? A whole swallow is no bigger than a beetle… How cruel you hunters are!”

“I don’t shoot swallows,” I hastened to note.

“And another time,” Lukeria began again, “there was such a laugh! A hare ran in, really! Whether dogs were chasing him or what—he just rolled right through the door!… He sat down close by and sat for a long time—kept twitching his nose and his whiskers—a regular officer! And he looked at me. He understood, it seems, that I was no danger to him. Finally he got up, hop-hop toward the door, looked back at the threshold—and was gone! So funny!”

Lukeria glanced at me… as if to say: isn’t that amusing? To please her, I laughed. She bit her parched lips.

“Well, in winter, of course, things are worse for me: because it’s dark; it’s a pity to light a candle, and what for? Although I know how to read and was always fond of reading, what is there to read? There are no books here, and even if there were, how would I hold a book? Father Aleksei brought me a calendar once for entertainment, but seeing it was no use, he took it away again. But even though it’s dark, there’s always something to listen to: a cricket chirps, or a mouse scratches somewhere. That’s when it’s good: not to think!”

“And then I say prayers,” Lukeria continued, after resting a little. “Only I don’t know many, those prayers. And why should I bore the Lord God? What can I ask Him for? He knows better than I what I need. He sent me a cross—that means He loves me. That’s how we’re taught to understand it. I say the Our Father, the Mother of God, the hymn to all those who sorrow—and then I just lie without a single thought. And it’s all right!”

About two minutes passed. I did not break the silence and did not stir on the narrow keg that served as my seat. The cruel, stony immobility of the living, wretched creature lying before me communicated itself to me as well: I too seemed to have grown numb.

“Listen, Lukeria,” I began at last. “Listen, let me make you an offer. Do you want me to arrange to have you taken to a hospital, a good city hospital? Who knows, perhaps they can still cure you? In any case, you won’t be alone…”

Lukeria moved her eyebrows ever so slightly.

“Oh, no, master,” she said in a worried whisper, “don’t send me to the hospital, don’t touch me. I’ll only suffer more there. What’s the point of treating me! Once a doctor came here and wanted to examine me. I begged him: ‘Don’t disturb me, for Christ’s sake.’ What use was it? He started turning me over, bending and straightening my arms and legs; he said: ‘I’m doing this for science; I’m an educated man, a scientist!’ He prodded and poked me, told me the name of my illness—something very learned—and off he went. And for a whole week afterward all my bones ached. You say I’m always alone. No, not always. People come to me. I’m quiet—I don’t bother anyone. Peasant girls drop in for a chat; a wandering pilgrim woman comes by and starts telling about Jerusalem, Kiev, the holy cities. And I’m not afraid to be alone. It’s even better, truly!… Master, don’t touch me, don’t take me to the hospital… Thank you, you’re kind, but please don’t touch me, my dear.”

“Well, as you wish, as you wish, Lukeria. I only meant it for your own good…”

“I know, master, it’s for my good. But, master, dear, who can help another? Who can enter into his soul? A person must help himself! You won’t believe it—but sometimes I lie like this, all alone… and it’s as if there’s no one else in the whole world except me. Only I am alive! And it seems to me that something illuminates me… I’m seized by a thought—it’s even amazing!”

“What do you think about then, Lukeria?”

“That, master, is impossible to tell: you can’t explain it. And afterward it’s forgotten. It comes like a little cloud, pours down, and everything becomes fresh and good, but what it was you can’t understand! Only it seems to me: if there were people around me—none of this would happen, and I would feel nothing but my misfortune.”

Lukeria sighed with difficulty. Her chest did not obey her—just like all her other limbs.

“As I look at you, master,” she began again, “you feel very sorry for me. But don’t pity me too much, really! I’ll tell you something, for instance: even now, sometimes… You remember what a merry girl I was in my day? A bold one!… So you know what? I sing songs even now.”

“Songs?… You?”

“Yes, songs, old songs—round-dance songs, Yuletide songs, all kinds! I knew a lot of them, you see, and I haven’t forgotten them. Only I don’t sing dance songs. In my present state—that wouldn’t be right.”

“How do you sing them… to yourself?”

“To myself and aloud. I can’t do it loud, but still—it can be understood. I told you a little girl comes to see me. An orphan, so she’s quick to learn. I’ve already taught her four songs. Don’t you believe me? Wait, I’ll show you right now…”

Lukeria summoned her strength… The thought that this half-dead creature was preparing to sing aroused an involuntary horror in me. But before I could utter a word, a long-drawn, barely audible but pure and true sound quivered in my ears… It was followed by another, a third. “In the meadows,” Lukeria sang. She sang without changing the expression of her petrified face, even staring with fixed eyes. But how touchingly that poor, forced little voice rang out, wavering like a thread of smoke, how she wanted to pour out her whole soul… I no longer felt horror: an inexpressible pity gripped my heart.

“Oh, I can’t!” she said suddenly. “I haven’t the strength… I’m so glad to see you.”

She closed her eyes.

I placed my hand on her tiny, cold fingers… She looked at me—and her dark lids, fringed with golden lashes like those of ancient statues, closed again. A moment later they glistened in the half-darkness… A tear had moistened them.

I did not stir, as before.

“What’s the matter with me!” Lukeria said suddenly with unexpected force, and, opening her eyes wide, tried to blink away the tears. “Aren’t I ashamed? What’s wrong with me? This hasn’t happened to me for a long time… not since the day Vasya Polyakov came to see me last spring. While he was sitting and talking with me—it was all right; but when he left—I did have a cry, all alone! Where did it come from!… But tears don’t cost our kind anything. Master,” Lukeria added, “you must have a handkerchief… Don’t be squeamish—wipe my eyes.”

I hurried to do as she asked—and left her the handkerchief. At first she refused… what would she need such a gift for? The handkerchief was very plain, but clean and white. Then she gripped it with her weak fingers and did not open them again. Having grown used to the darkness in which we both sat, I could clearly make out her features, could even detect a faint flush showing through the bronze of her face, could discover in that face—or so at least it seemed to me—traces of its former beauty.

“You were asking me, master,” Lukeria began again, “whether I sleep. I do sleep rarely, it’s true, but every time I see dreams—good dreams! I never see myself as sick; in my dreams I’m always healthy and young… One thing is hard: I wake up and want to have a good stretch—but it’s as if I’m all in chains. Once I had a wonderful dream! Shall I tell you? Well, listen. I dream I’m sitting like this on a highway under a willow, holding a peeled stick, with a pilgrim’s sack on my shoulders and my head wrapped in a kerchief—just like a pilgrim! And I have to go somewhere far, far away, on a pilgrimage. And pilgrims keep passing me; they walk quietly, as if reluctantly, all in one direction; their faces are all sad, and they all look very much alike. And I see one woman weaving and darting among them, a whole head taller than the others, wearing a strange dress, not like ours, not Russian. And her face is strange too—a stern, fasting face. And it seems all the others make way for her; and suddenly she turns—and comes straight at me. She stopped and looked at me; and her eyes are like a falcon’s—yellow, large, and bright as can be. I ask her: ‘Who are you?’ And she says to me: ‘I am your death.’ I should have been frightened, but instead I was overjoyed—I crossed myself! And that woman, my death, says to me: ‘I’m sorry for you, Lukeria, but I cannot take you with me. Farewell!’ Lord! How sad I felt then!… ‘Take me,’ I say, ‘dear mother, darling, take me!’ And my death turned to me, began to tell me something… I understand that she is appointing my hour, but unclearly, indistinctly… ‘After the Petrovki fast,’ she seems to say… With that I woke up… Such are the strange dreams I have!”

Lukeria raised her eyes upward… and fell into thought…

“But here’s another thing I saw,” she began again, “or maybe it was a vision—I don’t know anymore. It seemed to me I was lying right here in this little shed, and my dead parents came to me—my father and mother—and they bowed low to me but said nothing. I asked them: ‘Why do you bow to me, father and mother?’ ‘Because,’ they say, ‘you suffer so much in this world that you have not only eased your own soul, but you have taken a great burden off us too. And things have become much easier for us in the other world. You have already finished with your own sins; now you are conquering our sins.’ And having said this, my parents bowed to me again—and I couldn’t see them anymore: only the walls were visible. I doubted very much afterward what had happened to me. I even told the priest about it at confession. Only he doesn’t think it was a vision, because visions come only to the clergy. But then there’s another trouble: sometimes a whole week passes and I don’t fall asleep even once. Last year a lady was passing through; she saw me and gave me a little bottle of medicine for sleeplessness; she told me to take ten drops. It helped me very much and I slept; but that little bottle was drunk up long ago… Do you happen to know what that medicine was and how to get it?”

The passing lady had obviously given Lukeria opium. I promised to get her such a bottle and again could not help marveling aloud at her patience.

“Ah, master!” she objected. “What do you mean? What patience? Now the patience of Simeon Stylites was truly great: he stood on a pillar for thirty years! And another saint had himself buried up to his chest in the ground, and ants ate his face…”

After a short silence, I asked Lukeria how old she was.

“Twenty-eight… or nine… I won’t be thirty. But what’s the point of counting years! I’ll tell you something else…”

Lukeria suddenly gave a kind of muffled cough and groaned…

“You’re talking too much,” I remarked to her, “it might harm you.”

“True,” she whispered, barely audibly, “our talk is over; but what does it matter! Now, when you leave, I’ll have my fill of silence. At least I’ve unburdened my soul.”

I began to take my leave, repeated my promise to send her the medicine, and asked her once more to think carefully and tell me—was there nothing she needed?

“I need nothing; I’m content with everything, thank God,” she uttered with the greatest effort, but with emotion. “May God grant everyone health! And you, master, might persuade your mother—the peasants here are poor—if only she’d lower their rent a little! They haven’t enough land, no commons… They would pray to God for you… But I need nothing—I’m content with everything.”

I gave Lukeria my word to fulfill her request and was already approaching the door when she called me back again.

“Remember, master,” she said, and something strange flickered in her eyes and on her lips, “what a braid I had? Remember—down to my very knees! For a long time I couldn’t decide… Such hair!… But how could I comb it? In my condition!… So I cut it off… Well, forgive me, master! I can’t go on…”

That same day, before setting out to hunt, I had a talk about Lukeria with the farm elder. I learned from him that in the village she was called “Living Relics”; that, moreover, she caused no trouble; not a murmur was heard from her, not a complaint. “She asks for nothing herself, but on the contrary is grateful for everything; a quiet one, a really quiet one, I must say.”

Several weeks later I learned that Lukeria had died. Death had come for her after all… and “after the Petrovki fast.” They said that on the very day of her death she kept hearing the sound of church bells, although from Alekseyevka to the church is reckoned more than five versts and it was a weekday. Lukeria said, however, that the ringing came not from the church but “from above.” Probably she did not dare to say: from heaven.

—Ivan Turgenev

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Translator’s Notes:

• This story is from Turgenev’s Zapiski okhotnika (A Sportsman’s Sketches, 1852), a collection that helped sway public opinion against serfdom. Tolstoy greatly admired the book and considered it a masterpiece of Russian prose.
• The title Zhivye moshchi literally means “Living Relics”—in Russian Orthodox tradition, moshchi refers to the preserved remains of saints. The peasants’ nickname for Lukeria is both affectionate and reverent: she is a living saint.
• The epigraph is from Fyodor Tyutchev’s poem “These Poor Villages” (1855), which celebrates the long-suffering, Christ-like patience of the Russian peasantry—the same quality Turgenev depicts in Lukeria.
• Simeon Stylites (c. 390–459) was a Christian ascetic saint who achieved fame for living 37 years on a pillar near Aleppo, Syria. His extreme asceticism became a touchstone for discussions of Christian endurance.
• “Petrovki” refers to the Apostles’ Fast (also called Peter’s Fast or Petrov Post), which ends on June 29 (July 12 in the Gregorian calendar), the feast of Saints Peter and Paul. Death’s cryptic promise that she would come “after Petrovki” is fulfilled.
• The story embodies themes central to Tolstoy’s religious thought: that authentic Christianity is found among simple peasants, not theologians; that suffering can be transfigured by faith; and that material circumstances matter far less than spiritual state.
• Lukeria’s request is not for herself but for the poor peasants—asking the master to lower their rent—exemplifying the selflessness Tolstoy saw as the essence of Christian life.