40 for 1

In Ukraine they knew from of old: if Death herself has found your house, there is no road back. But there was a sin people feared to speak of even in a whisper. You can point her to your own door yourself. That is what a holy man, a priest named Father Vasyl, once did. Three nights he did not answer the knocking. On the fourth he heard a calm woman's voice from behind the door: - Don't be afraid. Tonight I have not come for you, Father.

And then the bolt slid back slowly, all by itself. Into the house came an ancient, hollowed-out being in a wet grey cloak. No water dripped from it - it ran slowly down her very image, and the air drank it before it could touch the floor. Death stood by the stove. The embers burned steady, but around her the frost took the clay. - I can come back in a year, - she said. - Where exactly, you decide yourself... He agreed.

He wanted very much to live, and not to see the heavenly kingdom and its "holiness". The first was an old man beyond the mill. He opened the door himself and seated the guest closer to the stove. By morning the house had grown quieter - a human breath had gone from it. The old man lay so peacefully, as if he had long been waiting for someone. And on the fogged window, on the inside, there remained the prints of strangers' palms. Only two. As if two were already leaving.

Then came a sick widow... A lonely shepherd... Then a man who only yesterday had been joking at the inn. Death never touched anyone. She sat silently over the bed until dawn. And in the morning the house held one breath fewer. At first he told himself: - They didn't have long anyway. In time he stopped saying anything at all.

Years passed. People learned to know him from afar. Windows were shut before he even reached the yard. Candles were snuffed out. Mothers pulled their children off the street. Even the dogs did not bark. They lay down on the ground, pressed their muzzles flat and whined softly, never taking their eyes off the woman in the grey cloak who always walked one step behind.

They went round the villages. Then the hamlets. Then the lonely forest houses. He grew old. His hands trembled. Her hair had not greyed by a single strand. She hardly ever spoke. Only sometimes she stopped by the next yard. And he already knew what that meant. One evening the door was opened by a little boy. Behind him it smelled of fresh broth, rye bread and a warm home. - Come in, grandpa. It's cold outside. And only then did the boy look a little farther.

His smile went out. He saw the grey one behind the man's shoulder. But, being a well-brought-up child, he said nothing. From deep inside the house the mother called: - Son, who's there? The boy was silent. For the first time in forty years the man could not cross a stranger's threshold. He stepped back. Slowly he shook his head. - No. No one else. The inverted form of life in the grey cloak looked at him for a long time.

And for the first time in all those years it faintly smiled with its sexless face. - At last you will understand, Vasyl. He closed his eyes, waiting for her to whisper him away. But Death only walked past. She set off back down the road. To his own house. In that moment he understood what he had not noticed for forty years. She had never asked him to give her the others. She had only been waiting to see whom he would choose himself.

In his house everything stood as it had on that first night. The same bench. The same stove. The same bowl on the table. Death sat down quietly by the embers. Took off her wet cloak. She looked at him with a smile. - All I ever asked for was a night's lodging. You decided yourself that it would not be your home.

All these years it was you who opened the doors, Father. I gave you one year, and you gave me countless many. Thank you - and now, mangled soul, rest in a world filled with the darkness of peace. He did not live to see the dawn.