The railway station near the steppe village of Greshnoye is completely new. Magnificent trains passing rich people to the Caucasus pass through it. Generals, foreigners and lean ladies with lornets do not know that in the poor church of Sinful the remains of the holy fool are buried.
The church is located at the prince's estate. In it near the windows of the altar are two huge brick coffins, covered with slabs. On one plate the name of the prince and the nobleman is cast, on the other - his slave, the peasant Ivan Emelyan Ryabinin. Under the name of the peasant there is an inscription: “John the Sorrower, holy fool for our sake”, and even lower - the words of the prophet Michea, with whom the holy fool died: “I will cry and cry, I will walk like a robber, I will howl like jackals and yell like ostriches!” .
Passengers on the express train know about the prince only from books, and sinners remember that the nobleman was "small and wonderful." A hundred years ago, he came to Sinful to live his life and marked the arrival with strange deeds - on the first of January he forced the local priest to serve a requiem for the past year, and he himself helped him. On the same day, the prince ordered to give fifty to the holy fool Ivan, who wept and barked and jumped out of the spruce into the alley along which the prince walked.
Passers-by on a pilgrimage do not know about the local man. They say that Vanya grew up in an "honest and righteous family."From childhood, he loved the Scriptures, and read it all day. Father asked Vanya to marry, but he was eager for Athos and asked God to give him a sign. And a vision came to him: to obey his father, to marry.
They played a wedding, but the newlyweds did not touch each other, they burst out crying from the bedroom, and Vanya again sat down for Scripture. Then everyone went to mass, only one Vanya stayed at home. Father sent a worker for him, ordered him to go to church and take money and new bast shoes with him.
When driving around the village, Vanya saw the temple of God on the mountain, said: “Lord Jesus ...”, and only said - looking, he was sitting in the steppe, in the cold, swollen, undressed, and he was crying, throwing himself at everyone like a chain dog , shouts: "I will walk like a robber, I will yell like Strausses!". They learned about it in the village, arrived, piled up, tied it up, drove home, and my father walked towards him and saw a trace from new bast shoes, and the distance between the tracks was huge.
The old women, who live their lives in a princely estate, say that Ivan wandered all his life and was "indecent." He sat for a long time in his father's hut on an iron chain, nibbling his hands, a chain, and anyone who came close to him. With foam on his lips and disheveled hair, in a long shirt, with mice in his bosom, he rushed at the gentlemen and superiors with shouts: “Give me pleasure!” With this cry, he also jumped on the prince .. The old nobleman promised to give Vanya pleasure and since then he smashed him almost every week, and the holy fool "scared the prince" and threw mice at him.
John Rydalts was remembered in Sinful only because of his confrontation with the prince, and the prince struck everyone with his dying order.When he, sick and withered, was informed of the death of Ivan, he ordered that this “madman” be buried near the church, and after the funeral, put him next to the serf.
Every year, she leaves at Greshnovo station and goes to the church, an ugly, thin lady in mourning, led by the “beautiful thin-legged cornet” under her arm. They are serving in the church. In front of the grave of Ivan Ryabinin, the lady kneels and cries for a long time, with a "blue, transparent, ringed" hand, clutching a thin batiste scarf to her eyes.
