“Here is a little advice for you. Try to avoid eating things that are only called ‘meat.’ Especially when they’re cooked by Elga.” He looked in the pot on the stove. He could see carrots, small onions, and red potatoes simmering along with the meat, but he did not feel tempted. “Where is she now?”
“She is working at the hospital. She told me she will finish there today and then she will take me into the city.”
“When do you plan to go?”
“As soon as she comes home.”
“Ah. I see.” The priest got up and went back outside. It was a cool day and he had wanted to get his tulip bulbs in before the frost came. He went to the barn and climbed into the loft where the bulbs were stored. He saw that Elga had filled up much of the space with her cluttered stash of jars, herbs, and old texts. She had not asked his permission, but he was accustomed to her using his property as she wished, coming and going at will. (More than once Andrei had awoken in the night to the rough stony sounds of digging in the yard. He knew it was most likely a night badger or raccoon, but there was always the possibility that Elga or Zoya was burying a corpse in the vegetable bed. Knowing there was nothing he could do about it, he would roll back to sleep, consoling himself with the thought that the cadaver’s blood and tissue would be good for the soil.)
Andrei took the bulbs, found his shovel, and returned to the garden bed. Digging into the soft rich earth, he thought about Noelle, back in the kitchen, remembering how he had been at her age, so wrapped up in himself, waiting like a tulip bulb, through the cold and the darkness, for a blossoming season.
This was over a half century before, when the tsars still ruled Russia. Born to a struggling merchant and his pious wife who both passed away from fever, he and his brother had been sent off by relatives to seminary as young men, the last of the family money entrusted to their care. Neither Andrei nor his brother, Max, were impressive students, though Andrei certainly believed he had been more diligent than Max. He labored at the catechetical courses and zealously obeyed the rules and rituals of the order, while the more mischievous and prankish Max was regularly caught and beaten. Once they were ordained, they both lived in the monastery, where Max continued to try the elders’ patience. When they were sent off on missions to other eparchies, the elders made them travel as a pair, hoping Andrei would be a moderating influence on his errant brother.
On their last mission together, their destination was a small, remote village in the northern Ural Mountains. They never arrived there. On the eighth day of their journey, Max absentmindedly let their small carriage drift off the edge of the road into a deep, dry rut, splintering the wheel and breaking the axle. In the blistering heat, the two brothers loaded their luggage onto the back of their bony gray mare and trudged five miles to the nearest town, Ivdel. Arriving at dusk, they found the blacksmith’s shop closed and so they dragged their weary bodies to the inn for the night. The town was crowded and the innkeeper tried to gouge them at first, but ultimately, out of shame and reverence, he offered the two young priests a narrow room above the saloon with a small horsehair mattress to share.
Ivdel was a prosperous gold town, booming in those days, and the brothers had arrived on the night of a saint’s festival. The bars and hotels were choked with loud miners, all scrubbed pink clean and roughly cologned with the scent of sweating vodka and pipe smoke, all of them hungry for rough stimulation after their deadening days of labor. Raucous music, shouting voices, and the rhythm of loud, dancing boots rattled and shook the thin paneled walls of the brothers’ small room, keeping the young priests awake. A grinning, invigorated Max finally insisted they go down to investigate, and a nervous, tired Andrei hesitantly followed.
The bar was packed with the broad-shouldered miners and their rouged, laughing whores. Unused to scenes such as these, Andrei blushed at each flirty wink and batted eye, and the barman roared when he timidly asked for a pot of hot tea. Max meanwhile had wandered over to the far corner of the room, lured in and transfixed by the rattle of the ball on the roulette wheel. Later, Andrei realized it had been the perfect trap, neither of the two had ever faced any true temptations and yet here they were sunk deep in the bottom of the devil’s great belly. Before the next clock chimed, Max had coaxed their last coins from Andrei and was busy, betting fast and winning slow; it did not seem like he would last long. Nobody appeared surprised to see a young man in a clerical cassock throwing money down on the table, and they only roared the louder as his winning streak began and then picked up its pace. “You’re truly blessed, my father!” shouted the roughnecks, slapping him on the back as the nine other players dropped to five and then the five to one. When the last ball rattled and dropped into the red slot, Max’s pants and jacket pockets were stuffed full with rubles and kopecks, and, in a sight that made his brother blush, he had his arm firmly wrapped around the waist of a full-breasted grinning brunette. Grabbing a tall bottle of beer, Max announced he was off to find them better accommodations, and amid cheers from the host of drunken miners, the young priest swept the girl out the side door. Looking back over his shoulder as he left, Max held the bottle up, toasting an embarrassed and crestfallen Andrei with a wide, beaming smile. That was the last time the priest ever saw his brother, Max, in the flesh.
The next day, waking alone on his stiff horsehair mattress, Andrei had waited until midafternoon before finally going out in search of his brother. He was not worried at first, sure that he would find Max in some nearby brothel, sleeping off his sins. Wandering through the town, Andrei prepared a sternly worded sermon for the foolish Max. But by nightfall he had begun to worry. The desk clerk claimed not to have seen Max since he had first checked in, and the local constable only shook his head—it was the sort of town where people came and went all the time, the policeman said. Perhaps his brother had eloped? Who could blame him, after all. Why remain a priest when you can run off, rich and happy, with a pretty young girl?
Andrei remained a few more days in the town, walking up and down Ivdel’s streets, knocking on every door, until the innkeeper finally lost patience with this penniless priest and forced him to leave. Loading up the gray mare, a bereaved Andrei led the horse out of town, beginning the long journey back to the monastery with a heart heavy with shame. He trudged down the dusty roads, making a rough camp in the soft beds of the arbor stands and washing himself in the cold spring water of mountain creeks. As he was setting up camp in the dusk of the fifth day, he heard the distant sound of low flute music drifting softly through the trees. Lonely for company, he poked his way through the saplings and brush until he reached the source of the music, a campsite with five women gathered around a small cooking fire. It was a curious sight. He wondered if they were the wives of prospectors or tradesmen, or perhaps part of a traveling circus. One was playing the dancing tune on the flute as two others danced by the fire. The remaining two were seated on the ground, clapping and singing along. Then, with a shock, he recognized one of them, the dark-haired woman with whom he had last seen Max. Impulsively, Andrei broke through the trees and stumbled out in front of them, now wild-eyed; with a shaking voice he cried, “Where is my brother? What did you do to him?”
The women froze, stunned, and stared at him for a long moment. The woods were absolutely silent except for the bubbling rapids of a nearby stream. Then one of the women broke out with a snort and they all started laughing. Taking him by the hand, they drew him gently into their campsite. “Come sit. Come, rest by the fire.” Still trembling and confused by their reception, he stumbled forward and sat down on a log. Tears filled his eyes and he began weeping at his misfortune as they poured him a mug of bitter coffee, stroked his hair, wiped the tears off his cheeks, and handed him roasted pine nuts and dried apricots to eat. “You will find your brother, don’t fear, you will find him,” they reassured him, their voices warm and soothing.
He held the hand of the woman who had been with his brother. “Tell me what happened. Please. Tell me.”
She looked him in the eyes. “I will tell you, of course. I know where he is; your Max is safe, he is happy, but drink first, rest. It is a story, nothing more than a story.”
The oldest one, a stout silver-haired creature with a face like a toad, leaned forward, into the steely light of the fire. Her question came with a wary tone: “How did you find our campsite, my friend? Were you following us from town?”
No, he insisted, suddenly a hair nervous, sensing the air of prickly suspicion that had slipped into the circle. He told of his lonesome journey and how he had heard their music through the trees. They looked at one another, as if weighing the truth of his tale. Then the old one nodded, seemingly content with his answer, and they all seemed to relax again. A bottle of wine came out and was passed between them; he timidly sipped at first but then the warmth of the alcohol flooded him with comfort and so he drank more fully. Soon the dark woods were swimming around him and the stars above him seemed wildly strewn, like clouds of yellow pollen blown across the night. As he giggled and then laughed with the women at their bawdy jokes, he could feel himself floating away from the burdens of his ordeal as, one by one, the binding and long-strained ropes of conscience and duty were severed. He felt relieved from all the responsibilities that had long held him down. Finally, the old one, grinning
