Prayers with Slyvianka

If old Matviy suddenly gives up drinking and starts going to church every evening, his wife Zhadana does not panic. She simply, without a word, moves the rolling pin closer to the doorway and hides the cellar keys. On the first of February Matviy solemnly declared: "Zhadana, I've quit. The body is a temple, and I've been testing it far too often. I'm off to Father Vasyl, to save my soul with evening prayers." Zhadana narrowed her eyes but held her tongue.

Because she knew: if Matviy quits drinking, then either the medovukha in the village has run out, or the world is ending. He came back from his "prayers" a strange man. Face beatific, eyes glossy, and his sheepskin coat smelling not of incense but of pickled plums and a little garlic. He sits down on the bench, tries to pull off his boots, but manages only the left one, because the right leg "got seized by a cramp." Zhadana asks: "Well, Matviy, has grace descended?"

And he crosses himself and answers: "It has, wife. But my sins are heavy, they drag me to the earth, that's why I sway. It's not me that's drunk, it's my conscience walking with a wide stride." Zhadana is a patient woman, but not a blind one. On the third evening she threw on her kerchief and went after him.

The tracks led not to the altar but to the old bell tower, where the wind roams and where, so rumor had it, Father Vasyl hides the "church offerings" from his stern matushka Paraskeva. Zhadana crept up to the door and peered through the crack. Inside all was quiet, only something clinking and Father Vasyl whispering. By the old barrel, under the rope of the great bell, stood Matviy and the no-longer-quite-so-holy father.

Between them - a bowl of pickles, half a heel of bread and a jug of slyvianka disguised as "holy water for sprinkling the yard." Vasyl was pouring and pronouncing: "Matviy, Scripture says that wine gladdens the heart of man. And slyvianka gladdens the joints as well. For your piety, your penance shall be to drink to the health of the patriarch, and then to Matushka Paraskeva never finding out that we turned her jam into mash."

Matviy would sigh, clink his shot glass against a pickle and say: "It's a sin to drink alone, Father. But it's also a sin to leave a shepherd without a parishioner. Amen." The wife stood behind the door, pressing her hand over her mouth so as not to laugh loud enough for the whole street to hear.

She understood everything: Matviy drinks not out of malice, not because life is miserable, but simply because "the old bones ache when the weather turns," and he and Father Vasyl are the only two in the village who understand that the finest psalm is silence and a good bite to eat. She flung the door open. The priest crossed himself in fright and tried to hide the jug in his cassock, but it got stuck. Matviy froze with a pickle in his teeth.

Zhadana slammed the door so hard that old wooden dust rained down from the bell tower, and the bats under the roof forgot how to sleep. Father Vasyl, in his terror, began making the sign of the cross over the jug, and Matviy quickly dropped to his knees and pretended to pray, though what he held in his hand was not a cross but a pickle.

- Ah, you holy saints of the bell tower! - thundered Zhadana, planting her hands on her hips so that the doorway became twice as narrow. - I thought my old man had gone off to save his soul, and here he is with the pastor, greasing the bell from the inside with slyvianka! - Zhadana, my dove, that's not slyvianka... - Matviy babbled, hiding the pickle behind his back. - Those are the tears of Job! Father and I are collecting them, so that...

- Quiet, you righteous man! - she cut him off. - This morning you swore to me your back ached and you could barely walk, and look how nimbly you clink your shot glass against the barrel! And you, Father, - she jabbed a stern finger at the priest, - you're supposed to be keeping the fast! Why is something gurgling under your cassock like a barrel at Epiphany? And what kind of table is this, I ask you?!

Zhadana walked over to the barrel and looked at their victuals with disgust. - A few crooked pickles and stale bread for two grown men?! What are you feeding my old man on - air and sins?! You've laid yourselves a table like beggars! Father Vasyl turned red and tried to hide behind his collar: - Well, Zhadana, we only... a drop at a time, for the joints...

- For the joints there's a hot stove in my house and borscht simmering away! - Zhadana snapped, snatched the jug from the priest's hands, poured out its contents - at which the old man's sinful heart nearly stopped - and hid it in the deep pocket of her sheepskin coat. - On your feet, you pious pilgrims! Take your pickle and march home!

Or else here, in this draft, it won't be your souls you save but a chill you catch in your chests, and then I'll be the one nursing the pair of you back with herbal brew! Matviy rose, swayed, and looked at her with hope: - You see, Father, what a miracle! The wife is calling us to a meal. The Lord must be hearing our prayers after all! - Go on then, holy fathers, - Zhadana opened the door and tossed over her shoulder - And mind you limp when there are people about, Matviy!

Let the neighbors see how I make you do penance for your sins! And you, Father, hitch up your cassock, or the flock will laugh at you! People often think that cunning is a man's business. But the truth is that men only invent the tricks, and women let them believe it. Because true wisdom is not catching a man in a lie, but making the lie itself lead him home to hot borscht.

The strongest faith is tested not in church but in the bell tower, when a wife confiscates the holy drinks for the health of sinful joints. Sometimes the shortest road to heaven runs through a quarrel and a feigned limp. Such is family piety. Pour, before the stove goes cold. And here's to the health of those women who see everything, but forgive what matters most.