The monastery of Petschenga : $b Sketches of Russian Lapland (from historical and legendary sources)Friis, J. A. (Jens Andreas)
History
The monastery of Petschenga : $b Sketches of Russian Lapland (from historical and legendary sources)
Friis, J. A. (Jens Andreas)
Legends -- Lapland; Petschenga (Monastery)
‘Yes,’ she replied; ‘he ought to be either at Solowetski or here, but
he was not at Solowetski, so I expected to find him here.’
‘What was he like?’
‘He was a tall, handsome, and strong-looking man, with fine light hair,
and a scar on his forehead.’
‘Perhaps it is Ambrose, who is lying ill across on the island.’
‘No,’ said the young woman, ‘his name is Theodore Ivanovitsch.’
Meanwhile, Unnas came over from the island to see the pilgrims, and to
talk to them. But there was only one with whom he could at all freely
converse, and that was the young woman who, besides Russian, could also
speak Karelen. He informed her that in a gamme on the island, across in
the river, a poor monk was lying with his face and hands burnt, and he
asked her if she, or one of the others, had any remedy which might do
him good.
‘We have very few remedies,’ she said; ‘but I was taught in a convent
how to nurse sick people, and I will go across with you and attend to
him.’
On their way Unnas told her how the sick man had on one occasion saved
his life, and that he was to have been made a monk and to have taken
the vows on the very night that the monastery was attacked and
destroyed by the invaders.
On a plank bed, in the somewhat dark earth-hut, Ambrose lay with a
bandage over his eyes. Unnas told him that a band of pilgrims had
arrived who knew nothing about the destruction of the monastery, and
that in their company was a young woman—a nun—who understood doctoring,
and who had been so good as to come with him, and that she was now
there in order to examine his injuries.
‘Thanks,’ said Ambrose.
The young woman came to the bedside, and carefully loosened the bandage
over his eyes. The sick man could not open them, as a hardened scab
from the burns had formed over nearly the whole of his face. She
beckoned to Unnas, and told him to bring her some water, so that she
might wash and cleanse the sores on the face of the sick man with her
pocket-handkerchief. At the sound of the strange woman’s voice the sick
man suddenly raised himself up to a sitting posture. There was
something in that voice, and in the sound of the Karelen word which she
uttered, that seemed to strike a chord in the depth of his heart. But
with a sigh he laid himself down again on the bed.
‘I am dreaming,’ he sighed.
The young woman had taken the basin with the water from the Finn, and
she dipped her pocket-handkerchief in it and knelt down beside the sick
man. She carefully undid a little more of the bandage, and began to
wash his face, but suddenly she turned as pale as a corpse, let go the
pocket-handkerchief, and folded her hands. Had she not seen the scar on
that forehead often before!
‘God in heaven!’ she exclaimed, ‘but can it be possible?’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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