Maxim Torchakov meets a sick Cossack on the road from church Easter Morning. He and his wife have between them a cake blessed and consecrated at that eveinings vigil. Maxim is completly wrapped in the Easter spirit, the Spirit of the risen Lord. He would give a bit of that consecrated cake to a sick soldier trying to make it home. But is wife would not. She would not break the holy cake “uselessly”.
I think it is telling that Tochakov’s life enters a spiral after wronging that man. Surely the risen Christ was there before him asking for a piece of the Kulich, and Torchakov had to choose was he to obey the voice of Christ speaking through his heart and the lips of the poor cossack? or was he to obey the unkind religion of his wife? What a story!
