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But once again, the chief role goes, not to the believers, but to these same roaring youths. In twos and threes they burst into the yard, hurrying, yet not knowing where to look, which side to make for, where the procession will come from. They light their crimson Easter candles, and with the candles—with those candles they light their cigarettes, that's what they do with them!
They crowd and wait as though for the beginning of the fox trot. All that's missing is a bar, so that these curly-headed lanky youths (our race is as tall as ever) may blow white beer foam onto the tombs.
By now the head of the procession has moved down from the porch and turned into the yard to the sound of the carillon. Two businesslike men, who walk in front, ask the young comrades to make way a little. Three paces behind them an elderly processional personage, something like a verger, carries a pole topped by a heavy cut-glass lantern with a candle inside. He glances apprehensively up at the lantern, anxious to keep it steady, and as apprehensively from side to side. This—this is the picture I would paint if I knew how! What does the verger fear? That the builders of the new society will fall upon the Christians, that they will beat them up? The onlookers share his fear.
Trousered girls with candles, and boys in caps and unbuttoned raincoats, cigarettes between their teeth (there must be many faces in the picture, primitive, cheeky faces, with their ruble's worth of self-assurance and five kopecks' worth of understanding—though some are trusting, simple-mouthed) crowd around and watch a performance that no one can buy tickets to see. Following the lantern come two banner bearers. They, too, as though afraid, huddle together.
And behind them, in five rows of twos, come ten women with thick, burning candles in their hands. They too must all be in the picture. The women are elderly, with strong, dedicated faces, ready to die should the tigers be loosed. Only two are young—as young as the girls who crowd with the boys—but how innocent their faces and how full of light! Ten women sing and walk in serried ranks. They are as triumphant as though all around them were people crossing themselves, praying, repenting, bowing to the ground. These women do not smell the cigarette smoke, their ears are closed to the obscenities, their feet move across the yard not sensing that it has turned into a dance floor.
So begins the Easter procession. Something reaches out to the young jungle beasts on either side and they grow a little quieter.
Following the women come priests and deacons in pale chasubles—about eight of them. But how huddled together they are, crowding together, getting in each other's way, so that there is scarcely room to swing a censer. Yet here, if he had not been dissuaded, the Patriarch of all the Russias could have celebrated the liturgy and walked in the procession!
Close together, hastily, they pass, and after them—after them there's no one! That's the end of the procession! There are no worshipers, no pilgrims following the priests because, should they leave the church, they could not get in again.