Fate in Sour Cream

They say the most convenient prophecies are the ones that let you off carrying water. So it was with our Ostap, who once heard from an old fortune-teller that an important sign was to appear on his palm. Another man would have crossed himself and gone off to chop wood. But Ostap walked into the inn with his arms folded on his chest like a saint on an icon and announced: "Good people, today I am unfit for work. Fate is ripening on me."

I slid a mug of beer over to him, and he won't even lift it. Asks me: Ivan, raise it to my lips, for if I wrap my fingers around the jug, the sign might fade. I raised it, he drank, thanked me with a nod and went home, proudly carrying his clean palms through the autumn wind. And the next morning the miracle of idleness began.

Zoreslava asks him to fetch water, and Ostap refuses on the spot: mustn't, the sign will wash off. Chop wood - fate will crack. Wash a bowl - this hand is not for slops. He walked about the house holding his hands carefully away from everything, as if he were carrying a full bowl of hot borshch in them. He even shooed the cat away with his elbows.

The children, of course, came running to look at the saint. They stand there, laughing. One asks: Uncle Ostap, with holy hands can you at least scratch your nose? And just then a fly landed on Ostap's nose. He stands there, blinking, blowing air out of his mouth, not daring to wave his hands. He endures, because fate, he says, is testing his faith.

Zoreslava watched all this in silence. She's a practical woman: quarreling with a husband over superstitions is like trying to catch a windmill. She simply fired up the stove, got out cherries, flour, thick sour cream. And began making varenyky. Such a smell went through the house that even the stove seemed to sigh with contentment.

She set a bowl before Ostap. The varenyky hot, steam curling, sour cream white as the first snow. Ostap folded his arms on his chest again. Says: I am keeping a fast today, preparing myself for the sign of fate. Zoreslava only shrugged: well, as you like, fate is that sort of thing, it's in no hurry. And moved off down the table to knead more dough.

But then Ostap spun round so sharply on the bench that he knocked the table, and one varenyk, slippery with butter and sour cream, flew out of the bowl and headed for the floor. Ostap's hand shot out like lightning and caught it in midair. He froze. Looked at his finger, smeared with sour cream. Licked it. And then, with a sigh, took another. Because, he says, fate doesn't like to see good things go to waste.

While he ate, Zoreslava asked him gently: Ostap, your hands are holy now, hold this heavy makitra for me, my wrist is aching. He grumbled, but got up and took it. Then she asked him to move the bench over. And then to pull the hot cast-iron pot out of the stove. He argued, but did it obediently. And so, without noticing, Ostap was drawn into the work. His hands were no longer clean.

On his palms lay white flour, red cherry juice, a little grey ash from the stove, and sour cream. He kneaded, carried, held things steady, sweating from the heat and his own importance, having quite forgotten his heavenly calling. When evening lay on the windows, the fortune-teller herself looked into the inn. She came in to enjoy my mead, saw Ostap and says: well then, man, show me what fate has drawn on you. Ostap went pale.

He looked at his dirty, working hands and groaned: wasted! I've soiled the omen with household chores, now nothing will come of it! Zoreslava came over, took his palm and held it up to the candlelight. And there, amid the flour, the cherry juice and the ash, a mark showed clearly. The juice and the flour had come together in an even crescent, and the ash added the shadow. It looked like a true sign, only not from heaven, but from life itself.

The fortune-teller smiled into her kerchief and says: there, you see, Ostap. Fate was looking for hands. Only not the ones that lay folded on a chest all day, but the ones that finally got down to work. A sign doesn't come to empty palms; it settles where there is warmth from work and the smell of cherries. Fate doesn't much care for clean hands that have kept themselves from life all day.

It settles more often on palms where there is flour, heat from the stove, a scratch from the firewood and at least one rescued varenyk, for a true calling begins where a person opens the door of possibility to it, with small but important deeds.