Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Ox and Mother Love

Since as early as the fifteenth century, it has been widely accepted in Stargorod that woman is a vessel of evil. It is interesting to note that the following story has come to us from two different, one could even say, independent, sources: one from our times and the other from times long past. The first time I heard the tale was in the steam room of Banya No. 2, on the Right Bank, from an ancient old-Believer. Later, the same anecdote was related to me by a researcher who, in the late Stagnation Era, had the miraculous opportunity to visit Mount Athos’ Rossikon Monastery, where he found it, much to his embarrassment, among the fifteenth-century chronicles that had been transcribed, by the way, in Stargorod’s own Sage-Nicholas Monastery.

Later comparisons revealed no significant discrepancies between the two narrators’ stories; the “banya” version, admittedly, was spiced with more exuberant epithets and metaphors, not all of them fit to print, and there’s surely a certain significance in this, but we, having resolved to relate the chronicler’s version, will reproduce it here humbly, without deep philosophical digressions into the burlesque culture of the skomorokh, the longevity of this ancient novella, its relevance to the present-day and other similarly complex problems that shall remain untroubled by our probing minds.

Thus, once upon a time, there lived in the glorious city of Konstantinopolis a very pious priest. His chastity, modesty and humility made him famous far beyond his community. His wife was just as chaste and innocent, just as obedient and joyful. And so it came to pass that, just before Easter, at the very end of Lent, our priest was overtaken by the demon of lust, and so tightly did the devil clutch him, that, to put it somewhat metaphorically, the poor man grew a giant and unshakable horn. The sorry soul bowed and prayed, and donned an encolpion reliquary containing holy remains, but the demon would not let up, “turmenting muche.” That’s when the priest went after his wife, asking and begging her to give him that “which is his, but is prohibited.”

The priest’s wife, chaste “like duve,” loving her husband deeply, answered him simply and straightforwardly, blushing “like poppie bloome”:

“My dear spouse, you are, before our Lord Jesus Christ, my master and ruler of my life; I am your humble servant now and forever, but do not ask of me what is impossible – your torments will end soon. Bear your burden, my heart, for your suffering is nothing before our Savior’s suffering on the cross. As soon as our Glorious King returns and the mystery of Resurrection is celebrated and complete, we shall be with each other, and I shall be yours, and you shall be mine. But this hour you must think of heavenly things and forget that which is worldly, for Satan is among us, desiring to undermine that which is holy, setting the pure of soul upon the road to perdition.”

The priest left his wife and cried fiery tears, overjoyed as he was with his spouse’s purity, yet despairing at his own weakness. He went to the manger and chewed on the thrashed straw, but the demon would not let him go. He turned the grinding wheels in the mill-house and milled loads of flour, but the horn of his lust still protruded. When he could tolerate it no longer, he went to the stable and made use of a jenny, and a nanny-goat, and then the jenny again, to the count of three, and only then did the cursed tempter leave him be.

Afterwards, the priest went back to the house, put on clean robes, and left for the church where he officiated the service, as was his duty. And the miracle came – Our Savior, who had been put to death by Pontius Pilate and died on the cross for our sins, rose and lived again, and the people’s joy knew no end. And later, when it was time for everyone to depart after Mass, the father fell prostrate on the ambon and confessed his cruel sins to his congregation, and begged forgiveness for the jenny, and for the nanny-goat, and for the jenny again, to the count of three. And he was given the people’s forgiveness, and his Christian brethren came and kissed him and praised Christ thrice.

And at that moment there came a fearsome sight: horrific copper-beaked birds of prey came from everywhere, flocking onto the church’s roof. Their beaks and claws were sharper than a barber’s blade, and in place of feathers they were bedecked of hard-cast arrows. The creatures flew in the skies, barking hideously, instilling fear in people’s hearts, and not letting anyone go home.

Seeing this frightful sight, the priest’s wife approached him, and helped him up from the ambon, kissed him thrice and led him to the door. Out they went into the yard, and the birds flew lower and lower, in circles smaller and smaller, until they dove all as one at the wife and tore her to little pieces. All that remained was her copper cross.

But this is an ancient myth, from bygone days. Our mission, however, is to chronicle recent history, and we believe the present-day version of the story gives us a no-less edifying plot than this doubtful tale, this Decameron-esque fare, this anti-clerical contrivance of some Firentsuolus who loses his mind after contracting the French disease. Stargorod is no place for vague eroticism – everything here is touchable and visible. Take, for instance, the story of Ox and Mother Love.

Exactly what brand of Christians the people in this story are – of that we cannot be sure: maybe they are Anabaptists, or Baptists, or maybe some sort of Adventists, but certainly not Khlysts. The folks who have lived for as long as anyone can remember on the Right Bank, behind the Rodina Hotel, have never done harm to anyone. In fact, no one has ever seen anything but aid and goodwill from them, and if they get together in one big house to read the Bible and sing their songs – who could complain about that? Come to think of it, they must be some sort of Old Believers, because Baptists don’t sing like that – longingly, sweetly and melodically, so that the song pulls at your heartstrings, even though you don’t understand a word of it – it’s like the priest’s chant at High Mass during Easter, when it’s time to praise the Savior in Greek. But they don’t have priests; that’s a fact. Their old men all wear prayer beads wrapped around their wrists and those long cassocks, down to the ground, with upright collars. They bow so much when they pray that everyone has a little personal pillow – we think it’s so they don’t bludgeon their foreheads into mush, or maybe to keep their knees from callusing over.

What we don’t know, we don’t know, and there’s plenty of that, because most of our information comes from our neighbors who, although good Christians all, can’t always tell the difference between an akathist and an analogion, so we can’t blame them for their less than perfect grasp of confessional differences.

When it’s evening, the Right Bank community gathers in their prayer house. Lyubov Mikhailovna always arrives first, although she is almost always there anyway – cleaning, polishing, scrubbing. And when Serafim Danilovich comes (he’s their holy man and Lyubov’s husband), she bows to him, leaves the church and sits on a little bench outside, by the window. The congregation gathers. They often stop and visit with her, calling her kindly “Mother Love,” because that’s what her name means, and when done chatting, they bow to each other and part: folks go on to church and she stays on her bench. The bench sits on a wooden platform, and that’s where she listens to the service, winter or summer. When it gets too hot, they open the windows, and she can hear everything, and even when it’s all closed up, she still stays there, singing and bowing. All of the folks learn the Mass as kids, before their multiplication tables.

Tall cottonwoods and the fence around the prayer house hide her from strangers’ eyes; in the winter, when it grows dark early, you can barely spot her from the top floor of the five-story apartment building next door: there she is, bowing, praying, always at her post.

Mother Love is small, but not hunched-over like many of the Right Bank women, and, in fact, not all that old. She must be about sixty, and one can still see the good Lord didn’t deny her the gift of beauty when she was younger, and her eyes – enormous, deeper than the Lake – glow with a strange, utterly un-ascetic, exuberantly plucky fire. In a word, she is a spell of an old woman – once you’ve seen her, you don’t forget her. However, we must give her husband his due, as well. Serafim Danilovich – he is tall and almost sickly thin, with a wispy little beard and a halting falsetto voice, but his eyes… His eyes compensate for the feebleness of his body – they are filled with glowing molten steel, with strength, and faith, and a truly prophetic certainty. Catch his eye in a crowd, and you won’t feel blessed exactly, but you won’t forget the man, either, because you’ll glimpse the sort of strength that can turn rock into sand, the type of restless intellect that is always at work. But for his eyes and his fingers, which are always compelled by some internal impulse to work his well-worn antique amber prayer beads, like a weaver’s shuttle through the shed, the man’s whole figure would seem subdued and ethereal. He’s got his spells, or so, at least, say the old retired ladies one to another – those women who are always shelling sunflower seed on benches before apartment buildings, keeping track of everyone else’s business, 365 days a year, except, of course, during leap years.

Serafim Danilovich must be over 80, and he’s always lived on the Right Bank, near Kopanka, close to their sect’s cemetery, with its roofed wooden crosses and chapel of red coquina stone from beyond the Lake. He’s always lived here, as did his parents, and his grandparents before that. He only left once – to go to war. Among our truly Orthodox folk, only Anastasia Petrovna Terentieva remembers him as a boy – they went to school together, before the war, that same war, of course.

“He was always so sickly,” grandma Nastya remembers, “girls had no use for him, although he hadn’t mangled himself yet, back then. But even then, it seems, he was an Ox.”

Who knows what truth there is in her words, or where we might find it? What we know for sure is that when he came back from the war, they married him to Mother Love. She must’ve been very young, a girl, hardly fifteen then.

“She was one little daredevil. Eyes like dinner plates, not like now, but wily, crafty. Yet she went to the altar without a peep – her father ordered it so, and they have it strict, you know, not like we sinners,” Grandma Nastya told us. “So, by and by, they lived together for about five years, didn’t bear any children, but lived quietly, at peace, went to church, and during the day Serafim Danilovich worked as a barber in Banya No. 1 over the bridge. He was good too, the men respected him; sometimes they’d line up in the street to wait their turn – he shaved without cuts or pain, and didn’t skimp on warm compresses. In a word, he was an expert.”

And it would have gone on like that, but you know what times those were. After the war, in the nighttime, a man’s life wasn’t worth a kopek. And we had our share of those amnestied, or escaped ex-cons and bandits, hell knows where they came from. So, one time these two toughs stayed at Matryona Timofeyevna’s place, this divorced lady we had. People rumored the two were on the run, but if anyone knew it for sure, they didn’t tell. The men kept to themselves, Matryona brought them vodka and liver and innards from the sausage plant – that was where she worked. If she pleased one of them at night, we don’t know which one it was, the old one or the young one. One was about 40 – he’s the one we called “old” – and the other still wet behind the ears, but rotten already: foxy, beady, angry little eyes, mustache like a thread, stylish pants, and his whole body taut like a string – a viper about to bite. In the evenings, the old one would take a stool outside, sit on it and roll himself a cigarette; he’d sit there and smoke and watch the street, and his sidekick, like a pup, would be right there, just in case. Sometimes, the young one played cards with the boys, or pulled out his knife, just making threats, but the old one was always quiet, never messed with anyone’s business, just watched silently and went inside by nightfall.

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?