And that’s when, as fate would have it, Serafim Danilovich got conscripted into hay mowing and was sent into the Lake Country, onto the islands there, leaving his Mother by herself. Except it’s only now we call her Mother, because her husband is a righteous man in their faith, almost a saint, and back then she was just a girl, never mind she was married. And it seemed her husband didn’t indulge her much, either. Or what have you – you know they live pretty strictly there.
So our Lyubasha was alone, no one to talk to, but she stayed away from the village youth, didn’t go to their parties, turned off the light in the evenings to go to church, and afterward – straight to bed. And with first roosters – she was up, milking her cow, driving her out to pasture, doing chores, busy as a bee.
One day she was walking down our street, at nighttime after her service, and the hooligans came after her, teasing, pulling her braids, cat-calling, you know – she blushed like a poppy-bloom and made to run, but that’s when the younger thug blocked her way. He pulled out his knife and grabbed her, in front of everyone. The poor thing couldn’t even scream, or move – he held the blade to her chin. He pushed her to the little banya in the back, and there would’ve been trouble but the old one suddenly rose from his stool, motioned like so with his hand and snapped his fingers – the young one instantly forgot the girl, and dashed to his boss.
“Kneel!”
He fell to the ground like a cut sheaf. The old one reached behind him slowly, making a point, grabbed the stool and – wham! – smashed it against the young one’s skull, splinters everywhere, the boy face down in the mud. When the boy came ‘round and rubbed the blood out of his eyes, the old one pointed to the shards of the stool and said, “Have a new one here tomorrow.” He was about to go in to Matryona, but stopped and looked a Lyubasha kindly – as she stood there, and the boys around her, neither alive nor dead, too scared to move.
“What’s your name, pretty-eyes?”
She lit up as if with a spark.
“Lyubov.”
“Fine, fine,” the old man nodded. “Go on, sweetie, what are you afraid of? It’ll be a lesson for this here goat.” He shot one glance over her little figure and went home. And she dashed home, too – she couldn’t have hoped for such a rescue.
After that day, people noticed that Lyubasha changed her path to walk past Matryona’s house: she started fetching water at Kopanka, and she’d always gone the other way ‘round, to Kosmodemyanskaya, before. What can you say? The old one must have won her over. Hooked her in, touched some string in the girl’s heart. And of course, soon after there were rumors that he went to her at night. People gossiped, but no one dared to check – they also said the old man carried a gun on him.
All in all, they dallied like that for just over a week: Lyubasha bloomed like my lilac bush, even her gait changed – she used to skip around like a girl, and now she floated swan-like, and her eyes, the eyes – you wouldn’t recognize her, she had these happy little impish sparks dancing in them… But all things end.
Serafim Danilovich returned, to his misfortune, at night – all the neighbors were asleep already. He went in – and there they were: caught red-handed. But what could he do against an ex-con? What all happened, I don’t know, but the thug got him pinned down and shoved her into the pantry and told her to shush. And what then, what got into his head – but who would know those thugs, they’re heartless after the camps, the girl only believed him out of her youth and foolishness – anyway, they had this old, banded trunk in the corner that held all her dowry: beads and necklaces, and money, too, for sure. He emptied it all into his sack, then dragged Serafim Danilovich, stripped of his pantaloons, to the trunk and clamped his manly stuff under the lid, the brute. Shut the trunk, locked it with the key, threw the key out the window, and placed Serafim’s favorite German trophy razor on the lid. Just put it there and vanished – no one saw him or his pup after that. Robbed them, you know, locked him down, and ran.
They say the pain took Serafim Danilovich’s power of speech – all he could do was moo a little; saying anything clearly or calling for help hurt like a white-hot iron brand, and Lyubasha was locked in the pantry, waiting, scared, not knowing what was going on and praying to every saint she could remember. He couldn’t stand it for very long – he was shut tight and things started to swell. So the man grabbed his razor and – slash! – freed himself for the rest of his life. That’s when he screamed. And she bawled, in the pantry, too, sensing woe. People ran in from everywhere; the old ones charmed his blood to stop and patched him up. When they freed Lyubasha from the pantry, you know, the first thing she cried out, before she knew what happened, was, “Don’t beat my Nikolai (so that’s what the thug’s name was), it’s all my fault, mine alone!” Of course, once she saw it and grasped what had happened, she went out like a light and for about a year afterwards no one heard her utter a word. Later, she started talking again, little by little.
Her father then visited Serafim Danilovich, asking him to throw her out, but Serafim didn’t. He did not send her packing, but kept her on as a servant; he hardly talks to her in public, mostly gestures, and what happens at home, we don’t know. And he punished her with a 50-year excommunication, which will last to 2001, which is soon, and which is also when they have prophesied the End of the World.
He probably won’t make it – he’s been ill a lot lately, but he doesn’t let anyone into the house, she alone looks after him.
And that’s their life.
After that, he never touched the razor again – the community gives them everything, and reveres him as a saint almost. People come to see him from other cities: he must forgive them their sins and such and, people say, he also casts out cancers with his hands. Lyubasha, poor thing, has ever since dressed all in black, like a nun. Always on her knees, at the window, praying for forgiveness. Why wouldn’t he let her go, with God? What use does he have for her?
This is all true, and so we can testify, having seen it with our own eyes out of grandma Nastya’s window: beneath a November drizzle, in the cold, the woman kneeled – a tiny black silhouette, covered with a raincoat, at her post, bowing every so often, forehead to the ground.
What we don’t know is what sense there can be in it, because if God is Love, then how do you explain this?
The Fourth Dimension
Critic Igumnov has been to America. To Washington, DC itself. And to New York City, too.
The New York subway scared him.
“It’s a prison, a real prison,” he told his listeners back in Moscow. “And blacks. You know, I’m not a racist, unlike the majority of our émigrés, but one does see some really scary black people. Poor, lazy. They have no desire to work – just stand on every corner and beg for quarters, but even a dollar won’t buy you anything decent.”