Page:The way of Martha and the way of Mary (1915).djvu/89

Rh through whom I was able to hear a multifarious collection of the common people discuss religion and Russia and ghosts and the eternal questions.

From the "Yama" have sprung several interesting sects, for example, the Bezsmertuzkz, or deathless ones. Their doctrines, promulgated by a wretched consumptive who had both feet in the grave, was that it was possible to escape death. He held that health was faith in life, and that disease was faith in death. Death came simply from lack of faith. There were people living eternally but we did not know where to find them. The Bezsmertniki make pilgrimages to the East to seek those who have been living for ages. Alas! the founder died before the eyes of his followers. "He lacked faith," said they, and the new religion continued. One of the most ardent of them is a frequent visitor of the "Yama," Alexey Yegorovitch, a stocking-hawker.

So much trouble came from the discussions in the "Yama" that the public-house was closed by the Government. But as in the case of Sasha, so in the case of the "Yama" and the God-seekers. You can kill or mutilate the body, but you cannot kill the soul, the thing in itself. The "Yama," crushed in one tavern, broke out in another.

I visited the "Yama" one Sunday. It was resuscitated in the "Bay" public-house in Malo-Golovinskaya by the Candlemas Gate. We sat down in the tavern at 12 o'clock, and over two glasses of tea talked for six hours and a half