The Son of Man

In one not-very-rich Great Russian village, there lived an old sixty-year-old priest named Father Ivan Bogoyavlensky. No one could tell about how his life began, about the years of his childhood and youth: he himself, by the passage of time, had forgotten everything, and his wife and children, relatives and acquaintances simply knew nothing. And it seemed as if his life had no beginning—just as, probably, there would be no end either. His life resembled a corridor—a long corridor with many dull doors: something opens ahead, something slams shut behind, and it buries everything in silence…