There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby

The Father

THERE ONCE LIVED A FATHER WHO COULDN’T FIND HIS CHILDREN. He went everywhere, asked everyone-had his little children come running in here? But whenever people responded with the simplest of questions-“What do they look like?” “What are their names?” “Are they boys or girls?”-he didn’t know how to answer. He simply knew that his children were somewhere, and he kept looking. One time, late in the evening, he helped an old lady carry her bags to her apartment. The old lady didn’t invite him in. She didn’t even say thank you. Instead she suddenly told him to take the local train to the Fortieth Kilometer stop.

“What for?” he asked.

“What do you mean, what for?” And the old lady carefully closed the door behind her, bolting it and fastening the chain. Yet on his very first day off-and it was the middle of a cold, northern winter-he went off to the Fortieth Kilometer. For some reason the train kept stopping, for long stretches of time, and it was beginning to grow dark when they finally reached the station.

The hapless traveler found himself on the edge of a forest; for some reason he started tramping through snowdrifts until he reached its very heart. Soon he was on a well-beaten path, which in the twilight brought him to a little hut. He knocked on the door, but no one answered. He stepped into the hall, knocked again, and again there was nothing. Then he quietly entered the warm hut, took off his boots, coat, and hat, and began to look around. It was warm and clean inside, and a kerosene lamp was burning. Whoever lived there had just gone out, leaving their tea mug and kettle and bread, butter, and sugar on the table. The stove was warm. Our traveler was cold and hungry, and so, apologizing to anyone who might hear, he poured himself a cup of hot water. Then, after some thought, he ate a piece of bread and placed some money on the table. Meanwhile, outside it had grown completely dark, and the traveling father began to wonder what he should do. He didn’t know the schedule of the trains, and he was in danger of finding himself in a snowbank, especially as the snow had been coming down hard and covering all the paths. The father collapsed on the bench and fell asleep. He was roused by a knock at the door. Raising himself from the bench he said, “Yes-come in.”

A little child wrapped in some kind of frayed rag entered the hut.

He stopped at the table and froze, uncertain what to do.

“Now what’s this?” said the future father, who wasn’t yet fully awake. “Where are you coming from? How did you get here? Do you live here?”

The child shrugged and said “No.”

“Who brought you here?”

The child shook his head, wrapped in his torn-up shawl.

“Are you by yourself?”

“Yes,” said the boy.

“And your mom? Your dad?”

The boy sniffled and shrugged his shoulders.

“How old are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“All right. What’s your name?”

The boy shrugged once again. His nose suddenly thawed and began to drip. He wiped it on his sleeve.

“Hold on there!” said the future dad. “That’s why we have handkerchiefs.” He wiped the boy’s nose with a handkerchief and then started carefully taking off the boy’s things. He unwound the shawl and took off the old fur hat and then the little overcoat, which was warm but very shabby.

“I’m a boy,” the child said suddenly.

“Well, that’s something already,” said the man. He washed the boy’s hands under the faucet-they were very small, with tiny fingernails. In fact the boy looked a lot like an old man, and at other moments, with his face scrunched up, his eyes and nose puffy, like he was wearing a space helmet. The man gave the boy some sweet tea and began feeding him bread.

It turned out the boy didn’t know how to drink-the man had to give him the tea with a spoon. The man even began sweating, it was such hard work.

“All right, let’s put you to bed,” said the man, by now completely exhausted. “It’s warmer on the stove, but you’d fall off. Sleep tight, sleep tight, till the morning comes all bright. We’ll put you on the trunk and surround you with some chairs. Now as for sheets…”

The man searched the hut for a warm blanket but couldn’t find one, and instead put down his warm coat for the child to lie on. He took off his sweater to cover the child with it. And then he looked at the trunk: What if there were something in there, some kind of blanket? The man opened the trunk and removed a blue silk quilted blanket, a pillow with lace, a little mattress, and a pile of little sheets. Under those he found a bundle of thin little shirts, also with lace, and then some warm flannel shirts and a knot of little knit pants, tied together with a light blue ribbon.

“How do you like that? There’s a whole dowry here!” cried the man.

“Of course this belongs to another little boy-but all children get equally cold and equally hungry, so they should share with one another!” the future father concluded aloud. “It wouldn’t be right for one child to have nothing, to walk around in rags, while another child has too much. Right?”

But the child had already fallen asleep on the bench.

With his clumsy hands the man prepared a luxurious blue bed, very carefully changed the child out of his old clothes and into clean ones, and put him down to sleep. For himself he threw his jacket on the floor next to the trunk and its chairs and covered himself with a sweater. The future father was so tired he fell asleep right away, and slept as he’d never slept before.

A knock on the door roused him.

A woman, all encrusted with snow but barefoot, entered the hut.

Leaping up and shielding the trunk, the man said: “I’m sorry, we made ourselves a little at home here. But I’ll pay you.”

“Excuse me,” said the woman, not hearing him, “I got lost in the forest. I thought I’d come in here for a minute and warm up. It’s a real blizzard out there; I thought I’d freeze to death. May I?”

The man realized that this woman didn’t live here, either.

“I’ll make you some tea,” he said. “Please, sit down.”

He had to feed firewood to the stove and look for the water bucket in the hall. Along the way he discovered a clay pot with potatoes that were still warm and another one with millet kasha and milk. “All right, we’ll eat this,” said the man. “But the kasha we’ll save for the child.”

“What child?” said the woman.

“Why, that one,” said the man, and pointed to the trunk, where the baby slept sweetly, his little arms up over his head.

The woman knelt before the trunk and suddenly began to weep.

“Oh God, it’s him, my little one!” she said.

And she kissed the edge of the blue blanket.

“Yours?” said the man, surprised. “What’s his name?”

“I don’t know-I haven’t named him yet,” said the woman. “I’m so tired after this night, a whole night of suffering. There was no one to help me. Not a soul in the world.”

“What is he, then,” said the man suspiciously, “a boy or a girl?”

“It doesn’t matter-whatever he is, we’ll love him.”

And once again she kissed the edge of the blanket.

The man looked closely at the woman and saw that her face really did show traces of suffering-her lips were cracked, her eyes were hollow, her hair hung like string. Her legs turned out to be very thin. But some time passed, and the woman warmed up, apparently, and became prettier. Her eyes began to shine, and her sunken cheeks became rosy. She looked thoughtfully at the ugly, bald little boy. Her arms, holding tightly to the edge of the trunk, trembled.

The boy, too, changed. He shrank, and now looked like a little old man with a puffy nose and little eyes like slits.

This all struck the man as very strange-the way the woman and boy changed before his very eyes, literally in an instant. The man even grew frightened.

“Well, if he’s yours, I won’t bother you anymore,” the failed father said, turning away. “I’ll go. My train is leaving soon.”

He dressed hurriedly and went away.

It was already growing light out, and the path, strangely, was clear and well-beaten, as if there had been no blizzard the night before. Our traveler went away from the house quickly and after several hours of walking found himself at a house exactly like the one he’d left. No longer surprised, he went in without even knocking.

The hall was the same, the room was exactly the same, and just as before there was a teapot on the table and some bread. The traveler was tired and cold, and so without pausing he gulped down the tea, scarfed down a piece of bread, and lay down on the bench and waited. But no one came. Then the man leapt up and threw himself at the trunk. Once again there were kids’ clothes inside, though this time they were warm little clothes-a little coat and hat, tiny little felt boots, warm little flannel pants, even a resplendent snowsuit, and at the bottom of the trunk a little fur sleeping bag with a hood. The man immediately thought that the boy must have nothing to wear outside-sure, he had some shirts, and all sorts of junk, but that was it! Apologizing to the empty room, he took only the most necessary items-the fur sleeping bag, snowsuit, boots, and hat. Then he also grabbed the sled, which stood in the corner, because he noticed there was another one in the other corner.

Once again begging forgiveness, he took from the pile of felt boots behind the trunk one adult pair that looked like they would fit a woman-she had been barefoot! With this load he ran as fast as he could through the cold back to the first hut. Already there was no one there. The teapot was still hot, and there was bread on the table. The trunk was empty.

“She must have dressed him in silk and lace,” said the failed father. “But that’s so silly-I have everything he needs!”

He ran out the door onto the other path and, dragging the sled behind him, soon caught up with the woman, who could barely stand and even swayed a little. Her bare feet were red from the snow. She carried the child wrapped in all his silky things.

“Hold on!” cried the father. “Wait! This won’t do at all! First you need to dress a fellow up. I have everything he needs.”

He took the child from her, and she, obediently, closing her eyes, gave him her burden, and together they walked back to their hut. Only then did the father remember the strange old lady whose bags he had carried home, and he asked the woman: “Tell me, did the old woman give you the address, too?”

“No,” said the woman, who was nearly asleep on her feet, “she only told me the name of the train station, Fortieth Kilometer.”

But just then the child started crying, and both of them rushed to change his clothes, and he was suddenly so small that no boots could fit him, and instead they had to put him in diapers, wrap him up in a blanket, and that’s when the fur sleeping bag with its hood came in handy. The rest of it they tied up in a bundle. The woman put on her new boots, and the three of them continued back together. The newfound father carried the baby, and the woman dragged the things, and along the way they forgot all about how they met, and the name of the station. They remembered only that there had been a trying night, a long road, and painful loneliness-but now they’d given birth to a child and found what they’d been looking for.

The Cabbage-patch Mother

THERE ONCE LIVED A WOMAN WHO HAD A TINY LITTLE DAUGHTER named Droplet. The girl was just a tiny droplet of a baby, and she never grew. Her mother took her to doctors, but as soon as she showed her to them, they refused to treat her! No, they said-and that was that. They didn’t even ask any questions about her.

So then the mother decided to play a trick: she wouldn’t show her little Droplet to the next doctor. She went to his office, sat down, and asked: “What should you do if your child isn’t growing properly?”

To which the doctor replied, as a doctor should: “What’s wrong with the child? What’s the child’s medical history? What is the child’s diet?” And so on.

“This child wasn’t born,” the poor mother explained. “I found her in a head of cabbage, young cabbage. I took off the top leaf, and there she was, a little cabbage-patch girl, a little dewdrop, this big”-she showed him with her fingers-“a little droplet. I took her with me, and I’ve been raising her ever since, but she hasn’t grown at all, and it’s been two years.”

“Show me the child,” said the doctor.

The girl’s mother took out a matchbox she kept in her breast pocket, and out of this matchbox she took half of a hollowed bean, and in that cradle, wiping the sleep from her eyes with her tiny little fists, sat a tiny little girl.

The mother took a magnifying glass from her purse, and with this magnifying glass the doctor began examining the child.

“A splendid girl,” the doctor said under his breath. “In good health, well nourished-you’ve done an excellent job, mother. Now get on your feet, little girl. That’s right. Good.”

The little droplet climbed out of her little bean and walked around on the doctor’s desk, back and forth.

“Well,” the doctor said. “I’ll tell you this: She’s a splendid girl, but this isn’t the right place for her to live. Now where exactly she should be living, I can’t tell, but definitely not here with us. We’re not the right crowd for her. This isn’t the right place.”

The mother said: “It’s true. She tells me she has dreams about her life on a distant star. She says everyone there had little wings, and they flew through the fields-she did, too-and she ate pollen and dew from wild flowers, and they had an elder, who was preparing them, because some of them would have to leave, and they all waited in terror for the day their wings would melt-because then their leader would take them to the top of a high mountain, where there was an opening to a cave, and steps leading down to it, and the ones whose wings had melted would descend into the cave, and everyone else watched them as they went down, farther and farther down until they were as small as little droplets.”

Sitting on the desk, the girl nodded.

“And then my little princess also had to leave, and she cried and walked down the steps, and that’s where her dream ends, and she wakes up on my kitchen table, in a cabbage leaf.”

“Interesting,” said the doctor. “And, tell me, what about you? What’s happened in your life? What’s your medical history?”

“Me?” said the woman. “What’s it matter? I love my girl more than I love my life. It’s so terrible to think she’s going to return to the place she came from… As for my history, well, my husband left me when I was pregnant, and I didn’t have the baby… I went to a doctor who referred me to a hospital, and there they killed my baby inside me. Now I pray for him. Maybe he’s in that place, in the land of dreams?”

“Interesting,” said the doctor. “I see now. I’m going to write you a note, and you’ll take it to a certain person. He’s a hermit, and he lives in the forest. He’s a very strange man, and sometimes it’s impossible to find him, but he might help you. Who knows.”

The woman put her little girl back into the cradle made out of a little bean, put the bean back into the matchbox, put the matchbox back into her pocket, and took her magnifying glass and left-directly for the forest, to look for the hermit there.

She found him sitting on a pile of garbage near the road. Without uttering a word she showed him the doctor’s note and then pointed at her breast pocket.

“You need to put her back where you found her,” the hermit said, “and not look at her anymore.”

“Back where? The produce store?”

“Stupid woman! Where’d they find her?”

“In a cabbage patch. But I don’t know where that is.”

“Stupid woman!” the hermit yelled. “You knew how to sin; you must know how to save yourself.”

“Where’s the cabbage patch?” the mother asked again.

“Enough,” said the hermit. “And don’t look at her.”

The woman cried, bowed down, crossed herself, kissed the hermit’s smelly, frayed sweatshirt, and walked away. When she turned around a minute later, there was no longer any hermit, or any trash pile-just a wisp of fog.

The woman grew scared and ran. Evening was approaching, and she kept on running through empty fields. Suddenly she saw a patch filled with rows of little cabbage buds poking through the earth.

It was growing dark out, and the woman stood there in the drizzle, holding her breast pocket, thinking she couldn’t leave her daughter here in the cold and the fog. The girl would get scared and start crying!

So with her bare hands the woman dug up a big clump of soil and a cabbage bud with it, wrapped this into her slip, and dragged the heavy bundle with her to the city and all the way home.

As soon as she crossed the doorstep, falling down with exhaustion, she took out her largest pot and placed the clump of soil and the cabbage into the pot and then put all this on her windowsill. And to avoid ever looking at it, she closed the curtain.

But then she thought: she’d have to water the little cabbage. And in order to water the cabbage, she’d have to look at it.

So she took her pot out onto the balcony, into real field conditions. If there was rain, there’d be rain, and if there was wind, there’d be wind, and birds, and so on. If the baby lived and grew inside her, like all other babies, then she’d be protected from the cold and the wind, but her little Droplet was different-she couldn’t hide inside her mother’s body; she’d have only one cabbage leaf to protect her.

Carefully moving aside the young, firm leaves of the cabbage bud, the mother put her little daughter inside it. Her Droplet didn’t even wake up-in general she loved sleeping and was an unusually quiet, happy, and easygoing child. The cabbage leaves were hard, naked, and cold, and they immediately closed around little Droplet.

The mother quietly stepped back from the balcony, closed the door, and began living all by her lonesome again, just as before. She went to work, returned from work, prepared herself some food, and never looked out her window to see what was happening with her cabbage plant.

The summer went by, and the woman wept and prayed. So as to hear even just a little of what was happening out on the balcony, she slept on the floor right next to the door. When there wasn’t any rain, she worried that the cabbage would wilt; when there was rain, she worried that it would drown; but the mother forbade herself to think for even one second about what her little Droplet was doing there, what she was eating and how she was crying, there by herself in her green grave, without a single motherly caress, without any warmth at all…

Sometimes, especially at night, when the rain came down in buckets and the lightning flashed, the woman tore herself up trying not to go out on the balcony and cut down the cabbage plant and take out her little Droplet and feed her a drop of warm milk and put her into her cozy bed. Instead, she ran downstairs and stood in the rain, making quite a spectacle of herself, to show her Droplet that there was nothing scary about rain and lightning. And the whole time she told herself it must have been for a reason that she’d met the filthy hermit-monk and that he’d told her to put her little Droplet back where she found her.

In this way a summer passed, and the autumn came. All the produce stores were selling young firm cabbage plants, but the woman couldn’t bring herself to go out on the balcony yet. She was afraid she wouldn’t find anything there. Or she’d find a wilted cabbage plant and inside a little clump of red silk, the dress of poor Droplet, whom she’d killed with her own hands, just as she’d once killed her unborn child.

And then one morning the first snow fell, unusually early for autumn. The poor woman looked out her window, terrified, and rushed to open the door to her balcony.

As the door began to open, reluctant, with a heavy creaking sound, the woman heard a frightened meowing from the balcony, persistent and shrill.

“A cat!” the poor woman cried, thinking a cat had come over from a neighboring apartment. “There’s a cat on the balcony!” And everyone knows how much cats love to eat anything that is small and runs around.

At last the balcony door opened, and the woman ran out into the snow just like that, in her slippers.

Inside her pot was an enormous, glorious cabbage, covered with numerous curly leaves like rose petals, and on top of the plant, lying on its many curls, was a thin, ugly baby, all red, with flaking skin. The baby, closing tight its tiny eye slits, made mewling noises, choking with sobs, shaking its clenched little fists, wobbling its bright-red toes the size of currant berries. And as if that weren’t enough, the baby had, stuck to its bald head, a little scrap of red silk.

“But where’s Droplet?” the woman thought to herself, bringing the whole cabbage plant and the baby into the room. “Where’s my little girl?”

She put the crying baby on the windowsill and began digging into the cabbage. She lifted every leaf very carefully, but her Droplet wasn’t there. “Who left this baby here?” she thought. “Is this a joke? What am I going to do with this thing? Look at the size of her. They took my little Droplet, and left me with this…”

The baby was clearly cold, its skin bluish, its cries more and more piercing.

But then the woman thought that after all it wasn’t this girl-giant’s fault that she’d been dumped here, and she picked her up carefully, without pressing her to her breast, took her to the bath, washed her with warm water, cleaned her off, dried her, and then wrapped her in a clean, dry towel.

She brought this new girl to her own bed and covered her up with a warm blanket. As for herself, she got her old matchbox and took out the little half-bean where her Droplet used to sleep and began kissing it, and crying over it, remembering little Droplet.

By now it was clear that her Droplet was gone. She’d been replaced by this enormous, ugly, clumsy thing with its big head and skinny arms-a real baby, and not at all hers.

The woman cried and cried, and then suddenly she stopped. She thought for a second that this other child had stopped breathing. Could it be that this girl had died, too? Oh God, could she have caught cold on the windowsill while she was digging through the cabbage plant?

But the baby was sound asleep, her eyes closed tight-a baby that no one needed, and really in fact an ugly, pitiful, helpless little baby. The woman thought there wasn’t even anyone to feed it, and took her in her arms.

And suddenly she felt as if something had struck her powerfully on the breasts, from within.

And, like every mother on earth, she unbuttoned her blouse and placed the baby to her breast.

After feeding her little girl, the mother put her to bed and then poured some water into a jug and watered the cabbage plant before placing it on the windowsill.

With time the cabbage plant grew-it developed long sprouts and pale little flowers, and the little girl, when she in her turn got up on her weak skinny legs and began to walk, immediately headed over to the window, swaying, and laughed, pointing at the long, wild shoots of the cabbage-patch mom.

Marilena’s Secret

THERE ONCE LIVED A WOMAN WHO WAS SO FAT, SHE COULDN’T fit in a taxi, and when going into the subway she took up the whole width of the escalator.

When sitting down, she needed three chairs, and when sleeping, two beds, and she had a job in a circus, where she lifted heavy things.

She was very unhappy-though a lot of fat people live quite happily! They are known for their kindness and sweet temper, and most of us, in general, like fat people.

But the enormous Marilena carried a secret inside her: only when she returned at night to the hotel (the circus is always traveling, after all), where, as usual, three chairs had been set up for her, and two beds-only at night could she really become herself, which is to say, two average-sized, very pretty girls, who would begin, right away, to dance.

The enormous Marilena’s secret was that, once upon a time, she’d danced on the stage as two twin ballerinas, one of whom had golden blond hair, whereas the other, for variety’s sake, had curls black as tar-this made it easier for the sisters’ admirers to send their bouquets to the right sister.

And, naturally, a certain magician fell in love with the blonde, whereas he immediately promised to turn the second twin, the brunette, into an electric teakettle, a very loud electric teakettle, which would always travel with the married pair to remind them that this second sister, before she was a teakettle, took just one look at the magician and immediately tried to convince her sister to break off the acquaintance.

But just as he was pointing his magic wand at the brunette, her sister, the blonde, got so red in the face, and so sweaty, and irritated, and started hissing and bubbling, exactly like a teakettle in fact-that the magician realized this wasn’t going to work.

“Brides like this,” said the magician, who knew a thing or two about them, having been married seventeen times, “wives like this are even worse than teakettles, because whereas you can turn off a teakettle, you can’t do anything about a boiling woman.”

He decided to punish the troublesome twosome.

Now, all this took place in the hallway backstage, where he’d cornered the twins after the show so he could meet the blonde and propose his marriage plans right away.

It’s hard to tell about his other skills-but this he certainly knew how to do.

Incidentally, if anything didn’t go right for him immediately, he’d lose interest and grow bored and just abandon the whole thing halfway through.

He usually transformed his old girlfriends and wives at random into whatever came to mind: a weeping willow, or a water faucet, or a fountain in the center of town.

He liked to make them weep for the rest of their lives.

“You’ll do your share of sobbing, trust me,” he told the girls now, blocking them in the crowded hallway on the way to the dressing room.

“Oh, really?” answered the sisters. “And do you know that when we were born, the Fairy Butterbread said that if anyone ever makes us cry, he’ll turn into a cow! And he’ll be milked five times a day! And he’ll spend his whole life up to his knees in manure!”

“Oh, really?” The wizard laughed. “In that case I have a present for you! You’ll never be able to cry again! That’s one! And two-you’ll never see each other again! Now that we’re at it!”

But the sisters replied:

“The Fairy Butterbread thought of that, too. She said that if anyone separates us, he’ll be turned into a dysentery germ, and will spend the rest of his life in hospitals, in terrible conditions!”

“That’s even better!” said the failed bridegroom-wizard. “I’ll keep you two together forever and ever! You’ll always be together-the Fairy Butterbread will be very pleased. Unless of course”-and here he laughed quietly to himself-“someone tries to divide you in two, in which case I agree that the guilty party should indeed be turned into a dysentery germ! I think that’s fair-really your Fairy is a mensch. But who will even think of cutting you in half?”

Then the twins answered:

“That won’t work! By the Fairy Butterbread’s enchantment, no matter what, under any circumstances and in any weather, we need to dance together every night for two hours!”

The wizard thought about this and said:

“That’s not a problem. You can have your two hours. When no one sees you, you will dance two hours every night-and you’ll live to regret it, believe me.”

Here the twins turned pale and threw their arms around each other and began saying their good-byes-but already they were unable to cry.

Meanwhile the wizard, chuckling to himself, waved his magic wand, and right away a girl-mountain rose up before him, pale and frightened, with a chest like a big pillow, a back like a blow-up mattress, and a stomach like a bag of potatoes.

This girl waddled heavily to the mirror, took one look, let out a groan-and fainted.

“And that’s that,” the wizard said sadly, and disappeared.

Why sadly? Because life always appeared to him in its worst aspects, even though he could do anything. Really, he had no life to speak of.

No one loved him, even his parents, whom he’d once, after a minor argument, turned into a pair of slippers.

Naturally his slippers were constantly getting lost.

The wizard took vengeance on everyone who failed to love him. He literally laughed at all the poor, powerless human beings, and they paid him back in fear and hatred.

He had everything: palaces, planes, and ocean liners, but no one loved him.

Maybe if some kindly soul had come along and taken care of him, he’d have brightened up, like a copper pan that has a dutiful owner.

But the trouble was that he himself couldn’t love anyone, and even in the passing smile of a stranger he saw some evil scheme and a hidden wish to get something from him for nothing.

Here however we’ll leave him-he walks through the wide world, not fearing anyone (which is too bad), while our fat girl was immediately kicked out of the theater by the guards, who said she had no right to be there. She wasn’t even able to take the twins’ purses, with their money in them-who was she to be grabbing other people’s things?

Marilena-formerly Maria and Lena -nearly died of hunger in those first few days. She lived at the train station, then in the municipal gardens. She couldn’t dance anymore to earn her living, and who’s going to give their spare change to someone like her-who ever heard of a fat beggar?

A beggar like that needs to go away somewhere quiet and lose some weight; otherwise she’ll starve.

And she’ll lose that weight quickly, believe me.

But our Marilena couldn’t lose weight, even if she’d stopped eating entirely: the wizard had made sure of that.

Incidentally, many overweight people seem to be cursed in just this way: no matter how much they diet, the weight comes right back, as if by black magic.

In any case, no one invited our Marilena to perform her dancing duets anymore.

First of all, because you can’t dance a duet by yourself!

Second, because she was too fat.

Finally, no one recognized her, and everyone knows that you can get on in show business only if you have connections.

However, late at night in the park or among the back-yards of the train station, the big fatty would turn into two very slim ballerinas and very sadly, stumbling from hunger, dance a Charleston, a tap number, some rock and roll, and the pas de deux from the ballet Sleeping Beauty.

But at those times no one saw her, just as the wizard had promised.

Finally she figured out a way to make things better: she went to the circus and proposed a booth in which she’d eat a fried bull in ten minutes.

The directors of the circus thought this a grand idea, and they set up a trial run, in which the hungry Marilena ate an entire bull in four and a half minutes!

The bull was, truth be told, rather petite and definitely underfed, as the directors of the circus didn’t want to spend too much money.

But after eating the bull, Marilena felt such a burst of strength that, in her excitement, she picked up the director and the head administrator, each with one of her pinkies, and carried them around the arena.

Here she was immediately signed up at the circus as the world’s strongest woman-hailing, it was announced, from the islands of Fuji-Wuji, where she was a world champion.

No one mentioned the bull-eating anymore, as that could have incurred serious expenses.

Instead, every evening Marilena put on a show wherein she picked up a horse and buggy, a steamboat, and, as an encore, the entire first row of the audience, who sat on connected chairs.

That’s the only way she could make money at the circus. In art you must always shock your audience; otherwise you’ll quickly starve to death.

Breathing heavily, she’d go after every show to a restaurant, where she’d eat a whole fried lamb, drink a jug of milk, and then, without paying, take a taxi to her hotel.

Her supper was an advertisement for the restaurant-gamblers would gather there to bet on how quickly Marilena would eat her lamb.

She also went shopping in the same spirit of fun. Tailors would sew dresses for fat Marilena and then invite the television crews and photographers: Here’s Marilena BEFORE, and here’s Marilena AFTER. Look how she’s been transformed by the dress!

And the magazines printed photos of the big happy fat girl with her pretty face-it’s true that, because it was now double the size, her nose was bigger, but, on the other hand, her eyes were simply enormous, and her teeth were so big and so white that all the toothpaste and toothbrush companies threw themselves at her feet, begging her to advertise their pastes and brushes.

In other words, she became much richer than she’d ever been.

And now she became seriously annoyed by her nighttime dances, which she’d brought upon herself by making up the Fairy Butterbread when confronted by the gullible wizard.

Because by now she’d begun to forget that inside of her were two souls, and these souls kept quiet and cried without tears in the dark prison of her powerful body. In their place there grew inside Marilena’s body a whole new soul, fat and gluttonous, obnoxious and fun-loving, greedy and tactless, charming when this was advantageous to her, and grim when it wasn’t.

It’s no secret, of course, that souls sometimes die within a person and are replaced by others-especially with age.

Marilena’s new soul knew perfectly well which journalists from which papers needed to be treated to dinner before an interview, and when the best time was to visit the dance club for oppressed overweight people, and when she should deliver the companies’ presents to the orphans (the companies paid her for this, too).

She no longer cared about her nightly dances or about the two souls that were allowed for some reason to appear for two hours every evening, miserable and lonely. They disrupted her entire schedule; they didn’t know the way things worked, that she’d had a hard day, that there was a flight to catch at six in the morning. They didn’t know how to count profit and loss, but instead would suddenly start to remember their hometown and their poor mother and father, who’d died, and this just got in the way of the whole evening’s fun for Marilena.

They became especially troublesome when Marilena acquired a fiancé, a young man named Vladimir, with very plump lips, who quickly took all her accounts upon himself, and all her calculations and negotiations.

And he became very annoyed that every evening Marilena would disappear for two hours and come back looking like a horse run ragged, and refuse to talk with anyone and turn off the phone.

He’d taken over Marilena’s whole life, and he couldn’t understand where these two unpaid hours were going, and he’d throw loud tantrums about it.

Marilena loved him and gave him an enormous salary, and even hired his sister Nelly. But for some reason she was too shy to tell him about those two hours.

One day, Nelly, the sister, announced that Vladimir had set up a vast ad campaign about dieting for Marilena. It was for two companies that specialized in diets and cosmetic operations.

And they’d be paying her an enormous sum of money!

They couldn’t let this opportunity pass them by, Nelly insisted. Vladimir was off on a business trip, to both South and North America, and would return just in time to see his new, young, thin bride.

“I’ll be able to dance,” said Marilena-forgetting that if she became too thin the two souls inside her would die of hunger.

Nelly answered by saying that she was also going into the same clinic for some plastic surgery-she, too, would be getting younger and changing a few things about her face, she said. “So you won’t suffer alone,” joked Nelly, who was usually very grim.

So Marilena was taken to the clinic, where experienced surgeons photographed her from all sides, then hid these photographs for later (when they’d cause a sensation), and then led Marilena down the corridors of the clinic, farther and farther down, and finally locked her in a room-a very nice room, except it had no windows in it.

Marilena couldn’t understand what was happening. She wanted to call someone, but there was no telephone. She knocked on the door, but no one came.

She started knocking harder, then simply banging on the door-and don’t forget, Marilena worked as a strongwoman at the circus-but still it was in vain.

Having bloodied her hands with all her knocking, Marilena collapsed on the floor. But suddenly she heard some distant strains of music, as she always did before the dancing began, and then she saw her thin little sister, and she herself became Maria again, and together they danced.

Apparently it was time for their evening dance, and, cursing everything in the world, the two twins danced with their bloody hands.

They told each other what they’d long suspected-that this was the beginning of the end, that Vladimir had decided to get rid of Marilena and take all the money for himself, and that the clinic was a trap.

But their performance was barely over when fat Marilena devoured the dinner that had somehow appeared outside the door.

After her dinner, Marilena felt terribly sleepy and had just enough time to realize she’d been poisoned before she collapsed right where she was, next to the wardrobe.

When the prisoner awoke, she decided to fight for her life and not eat anything-she’d just drink water from the tap. But you know how fat people are-they can’t go an hour without eating something-and sure enough Marilena soon had to eat what was left for her outside the door-a pot of thick meat-and-cabbage soup with the bone still in it.

After eating this she literally crashed onto the bed and lay there unconscious until she was stirred awake by the soft strains of music that announced her evening dances.

Now Maria and Lena danced together with difficulty. It was a slow, clumsy waltz, a farewell waltz, because by now it was clear: someone had decided to poison big Marilena.

For much of the time the sisters talked about their imminent death, prayed and wept without tears, bid farewell to each other, remembered their childhood, their father, who left them so early, and their mother, who died soon after.

And where their parents’ souls had gone, so the sisters were now destined to go.

The next day, big Marilena didn’t even have the strength to get out of bed and drink some water from the tap.

She lay there under her own enormous weight, and talked quietly to herself in her two voices-one of which was whiny and petulant, while the other was soft and kind.

“If you’d agreed to marry that wizard, none of this would have happened to us,” said one voice.

“Right, and now you’d be a teakettle,” said the other.

“No, we’d have convinced him not to do that! And anyway, I’d rather be living as a teakettle than dying like this.”

“Don’t worry,” said the first soft and kind voice, “soon the angels will bring us to Mother and Father.”

“We don’t need anything!” wailed Marilena. “No money, no Vladimir -just let us go live somewhere on the islands of Fuji-Wuji!”

“If only,” Marilena answered herself curtly.

And then a miracle occurred: with a soft rustle one of the walls slid aside, and Marilena felt the night’s dampness against her skin, though she couldn’t believe it.

The room slowly filled with an evening fog and the smell of jasmine and hyacinths.

The head of Marilena’s bed now pushed against a wild rose bush, and its simple pink flowers hung over her pillow.

With great difficulty Marilena picked herself up, crawled into the garden, and collapsed into some stinging weeds, and a whole rain of dew fell upon her.

With her dry tongue, the thirsty Marilena licked the moisture from the grass and from her wet hands. Then she jumped up-the quiet music was already playing-and began to perform some kind of dance among the bushes, either a cricket dance, or a mosquito dance, with hops and jumps.

“Don’t you see?” Maria cried out happily. “We’re in heaven!”

“Oh no, already?” Lena sobbed without tears. “What about my life? Is it over?”

Just then the two ballerinas were grabbed by two sets of strong paws, and as it happens they belonged to people without any wings or white robes-just regular security guards with guns and sweaty shirts.

And the moment Lena squeaked out something like “I don’t think this is heaven,” they grabbed the ballerinas and dragged them along roughly, even though they didn’t resist in the least bit.

The guards apparently dragged their prisoners through the wild rose bushes, because pretty soon their hands and shoulders were scratched and even bleeding, so that by the time the girls were dragged into the porter’s room, they looked like a pair of wild bums.

Right away the guards wrote up a protocol about the violation of a secure zone, and then they began interrogating the sisters as harshly as they could, especially on the subject of whether the prisoners could immediately pay a fine of three million rubles. If so, they’d be released.

“Where would we get that kind of money?” the blonde Maria asked them. “We don’t even know anyone here; we’re just passing through. We’re dancers from the ballet.”

“Are you out of your minds?” the brunette Lena yelled at them. “Just grabbing people for no reason! We’ll file a complaint!”

“All right-if you have no money, you’re going to get a prison sentence of life without parole!” the guard said cruelly. “You don’t maybe have two million? We’re not greedy.”

But here something strange happened. Another guard ran into the room and barked: “Who’s this? This isn’t her! You let her escape! What are you two doing here? Nelly’s yelling like a madwoman! There’s supposed to be one fat one-and you’ve got two ragged clothes hangers! You’ll answer for this yourselves, then. She’s coming now.”

And sure enough, a woman all bundled up in bandages ran into the porter’s room, accompanied by a suite of doctors in their robes. With all her bandages, you could recognize her only by her low, mean voice.

“What’s this? Where is she? What? You want to go to back to prison? Why were you hired, huh? As soon as she escaped from her room, you kill her in self-defense! Who’s this you’re showing me?”

“They were just, just standing right where the wall opens,” the guard defended himself. “These two rag dolls. There was no one else there.”

“What, what-you crook! You dead man! Why, I’ll send you to Fuji-Wuji for this! Did you forget what your sentence was? Vladimir did everything for you! He saved you from death row, and now this? What are you waiting for? Get out there and comb that garden! And put these two in separate rooms and interrogate them. Maybe they know something.”

With that, Nelly and her suite of doctors left the room.

The only one left was the head guard, the one who had asked for the three million.

With a sweet smile he said: “Oh, you’ll tell me everything! I have such methods-such nice methods! Oh, you’ll talk, you’ll confess that you killed the fat girl yourselves and ate her. And raw, at that. There’s no other way. And you’ll be executed! Whereas we’ll be paid three million for our hard work. Marilena was supposed to be killed accidentally, anyway. Do you hear? And anyway that big fatso was all filled up with narcotics. And she was supposed to kill one of us here, by the way. That one, she looked in, she doesn’t know, naturally. Telling everyone what to do. Too bad it didn’t work out. But this is even easier. Oh, I have such terrible methods of torture! You’ll be amazed, I guarantee you. You’d be better off confessing now, so as not to suffer too much before your execution. Because you ate her, didn’t you?”

But here the two hours of dancing apparently came to an end, because Maria began to be drawn inexorably toward Lena, and Lena toward Maria, and the guard found himself in between them.

“Hey!” he yelled. “What are you doing? What’s gotten into you two? I’ll shoot! Stay where you are!”

Maria and Lena were already melding into each other around him.

Here the desperate guard reached behind his belt for a knife and began blindly chopping the air with it.

And right after the first blow, when he divided Maria’s arm from Lena ’s arm, the sisters felt that they no longer needed to join together.

The bloodied, scratched-up ballerinas found themselves standing there, just staring at each other. The guard was gone.

“You know what happened?” cried the incredulous Lena. “It’s just as the wizard predicted. Whoever tries to divide us will turn into a little dysentery germ!”

“Eww,” said Maria, “let’s get out of here! We’ve had enough trouble without picking up dysentery.”

Shocked and staring at the floor-where, according to their calculations, right now a fat, hairy dysentery microbe should have been crawling-the sisters ran out of the room.

Sometimes one evil defeats another, and two minuses make a plus!

No one stopped them.

They ran out into the garden and stumbled around for a long time in the wet bushes until they found a gate and a guard on the lookout.

“Hurry, there’s a fat woman with a knife in there! She threatened to stab us!”

“A fat one?” The guard became excited and hurled himself toward the telephone.

Lena and Maria jumped out the gate. They were free. They ran away from that cursed place as fast as they could, ran and ran, until they reached the train station, familiar from long ago.

Where else is a homeless person to go?

They washed up, first in a puddle behind some bushes (apparently it had rained in the city that night, while they were escaping) and then in the bathroom.

The few scratches on their foreheads and hands were nothing-all sorts of things can happen to wandering poor people.

At the train station, Lena and Maria looked through some newspapers that were lying around and learned that tomorrow would see the long-awaited triumphant return of big Marilena, the star of the circus, who now weighed fifty kilograms instead of one hundred.

Next to this announcement was a photo of the new Marilena (quite obviously the secretary Nelly, but with big teeth and widened eyelids, which made her look a little cross-eyed, like a bulldog-but what can you do) and an ad for a remarkable clinic where in three days a person can get a new body and also adopt a new healthy diet through the use of miraculous herbs.

It also said that Marilena was leaving the circus to pursue a new life, since she can no longer lift heavy things or eat whole lambs, and is no longer in fact the world’s strongest woman nor the champion of the islands of Fuji-Wuji.

But now she’s bought herself a dieting clinic and an institute for herbal remedies and appointed her husband, Vladimir, as director-they’d been married long ago, according to the paper, but kept it secret, because a great artist can’t belong to just one person; she belongs to everyone.

Moreover, the new Marilena has opened a museum of the old, fat Marilena, where the fat strongwoman’s old things will be displayed, including her underwear and photos of her with her husband, Vladimir.

The newspaper also printed photos of the gradual transformation of the old fat Marilena into the new Marilena, although this was obviously a fake and a cheat, as both Maria and Lena well knew. But what can’t you do with photos these days!

Here, too, there was an interview with Vladimir in the family car, a Rolls-Royce, King-Sized (the king size was made special for the old Marilena, but they couldn’t just throw away a perfectly good car, could they?), in front of a new palace and in front of the very clinic the sisters had escaped from that night.

“He set everything up so well,” Maria said.

“It’s good we never told him about the dances!” Lena said. “That’s thanks to you-you were afraid of what he’d do if he found out he had two fiancées.”

They were quiet for a moment, standing in the dark train station.

“So what do we do now?” asked Lena.

“We dance,” said Maria.

“Of course! Remember the old rule? In any predicament, one must dance!”

They assumed the first position and, quietly invoking the magic phrase, “one-two-three, one-two-three-four,” began to perform their steps.

Immediately around them formed a small circle of bums, station workers, and sleepy late-departing passengers with their suitcases and children. Everyone clapped in delight and threw some very small coins to show their appreciation (rich people don’t sit in train stations at night).

The ballerinas gathered the money quickly, knowing that wherever there’s a crowd there will soon be policemen with their nightsticks, and departed from their temporary stage. They bought tickets for the next train and left this terrible town where they’d had so many adventures because of their talent and beauty.

A year later, the LenMary sisters were famous in the next town over for their wonderful dance performances in the most expensive theater, and now they were accompanied everywhere by their own bodyguard, a frail old man in a general’s uniform (generals are more feared, for some reason), and they had a house on the sea and contracts to visit all the countries of the world, including the obscure islands of Fuji-Wuji.

Among their audience, incidentally, you can quite often meet the wizard, who sends them flowers, emerald crowns, and fans made from peacock feathers-he has strange tastes. He’s also afraid of the sisters and their unseen protector, the Fairy Butterbread, since she was able to defeat his own powerful spell.

Now he enjoys loving from afar, in secret and out of harm’s way.

Especially as the unknown and fearsome Butterbread might still punish him for his little tricks of long ago.

Strangely enough, the sisters also often receive love letters from a man named Vladimir.

He writes to say that he’s loved Maria and Lena ever since he first saw them, and he doesn’t even know how to choose one over the other, and so is willing to marry each of them in turn.

In the meantime, he writes, he has found himself in some financial difficulties, having been robbed by his cruel wife Marilena, who somehow put all of their shared property in her own name and then ran off to who knows where. Meanwhile the clinic that he, Vladimir, headed has been infected by dysentery, and the government forced him to burn the whole thing down! So for the time being Vladimir asks for a temporary loan of just thirty million, with a payback period of forty-nine years.

These letters are always accompanied by photos of Vladimir in his swimsuit, in a tuxedo at a fancy ball, in a turtleneck reading a book, and in a leather coat and hat next to the smoking ruins of his clinic, with a rueful smile on his pale face.

The sisters, it’s true, never read these letters. They are read in his free time-and with great interest-by the old general, who then files them into a folder, affixes a number, and places it on a shelf, hoping that someday he will be able to retire and in his retirement write a novel, with photographs, about the surprising power of the love of one young man, V. The Sorrows of Young V., it will be called.

The Old Monk ’s Testament

THERE ONCE LIVED AN OLD MONK WHO CLIMBED UP TO HIS mountain monastery with a small box of donations.

Things were not going well at the monastery, which was far away from all the roads. The monks had to fetch their water from a stream deep in the canyon, and their meals consisted of scraps of bread and dried pancakes, which they collected as donations in the godless villages nearby. The monks gathered wild fruits and nuts in the forest, as well as berries and roots, and they also looked for honey and mushrooms-they ate those, too.

It was useless, in those parts, for the monks to try to keep a vegetable garden: during harvesttime someone would come along at night with a shovel and make off with everything. Those were the ways of the area, unfortunately.

Because of this, the peasants in the nearby towns were extremely unkind to strangers and beggars. They guarded their little plots with rifles in hand, the entire family taking shifts. They buried extra vegetables underground in the basement.

The impoverished monastery, on the other hand, stood unguarded in the forest. It was a popular target for local kids who needed money for vodka. Eventually the monks learned to do with the absolute bare minimum-tin cans for boiling water in, some straw to sleep on, old sacks for blankets. As for the honey and berries, which could after all be stolen, they hid them in the forest, in the hollows of trees, like squirrels.

They used kindling for heat, since even their ax and saw had been stolen from them.

Then again, that was the monks’ vow, wasn’t it-to work only with what God had given them, to work only for Him, and to make do with the same food as rabbits and squirrels.

They ate neither fish nor fowl, and each day of this existence they blessed.

But they did sometimes need a little bit of money to buy candles, and oil for their homemade tin burners, and to fix the roof, for example, or to help really and truly poor people buy some medicine.

Their icons had all been stolen, so the monks painted the walls of the monastery themselves-in fact they did this so beautifully that people tried to get in and cut these paintings out of the walls. But that didn’t work. You needed real museum training to extract a painting from a wall, and since when did thieves work hard and master a craft?

During winter, the monastery was freezing. There wasn’t enough kindling to heat the space, and the monks refused to break branches off living trees. But cold and hunger are hardly problems for a monk-in fact they’re blessings, and, what’s more, during the winter months the monastery got a break from being robbed. Who’s going to drag himself through the hills and snow to break into a frozen monastery-even though every morning the monks rang, not a bell, because the bell had been stolen and sold for its metal, but an iron crossbeam.

It was an ancient crossbeam-the old bell had hung from it-and the hardworking local thieves, try as they might, weren’t able to bring it down.

The monks rang their crossbeam with a secret metal crowbar they had. It was the only defense they kept on hand to fend off wild animals, say, or to break through the ice for water when their stream froze, or to beat a path through the forest.

And it’s not like the local thieves really cared that much about this piece of secret scrap metal-who’d want to drag it through the forest, for one thing, and for another it wouldn’t fetch more than a few kopeks at the market anyway.

And so every morning the people in the surrounding villages could hear the melancholy sound of the metal crowbar against the old crossbeam. Of course no one was so stupid as to heed the call and come there for prayer.

Who calls a doctor to heal a healthy person? Who fixes what isn’t broken? Why run off to pray to God when everything is fine?

Baptisms and burials-those were sacred, sure. But no one was about to knock their foreheads against the cold floor and wave their arms about-with the exception of a dozen deaf old ladies and a few God-fearing women who apparently had nothing better to do. Once in a while the monastery would also receive visitors who were in mourning-but mourning is something that passes; one day you look and the person is fine again.

But the monks themselves prayed. They prayed for the entire population of the surrounding villages, prayed that they be forgiven for their sins.

The monks lived peacefully and happily, in silence, and the head monk, old Trifon, was sad only that his days were coming to an end and that there was no one to replace him. None of the other monks really wanted to be in charge-they all considered themselves unworthy, and in fact condemned the very thought of having authority over others.

Old Trifon talked to God constantly, without interruption; there was no one to distract him from this task, except during holidays.

The local population adored holidays. They’d all get together, bring wine and snacks, and come to the forest for a big party. The monks always spent a long time afterward cleaning up.

Weddings and funerals and baptisms were also traditionally held at the monastery.

But no one liked dragging themselves all the way out there, so for a long time now everyone had been talking about opening a branch of the monastery in the central village, so they could hold their wakes and marriages and baptisms at a more convenient location. They could just build a chapel, really, and that would be that.

Unfortunately, such an undertaking would require money, and spending money, especially collectively, was something the local people didn’t especially like. Whenever money was collected for such projects, it would be stolen before it could be spent. So sometimes they called old Trifon into town, and he would bury someone, and baptize someone else, and then go around the village to raise a little money for the monastery.

People gave money to the old monk grudgingly, suspecting him of trying to grow rich off the work of others, as they themselves would try.

It couldn’t be said that the people of the valley were doing badly. There hadn’t been any wars recently, or fires, or floods, droughts, famines. The livestock multiplied, their little plots gave plentiful harvests, and their wine barrels were never empty. You might even say that prosperity had reached the valley.

On the other hand, it couldn’t be said that all was well with the ways of the people. For example, they didn’t like the sick, and considered them parasites. This was especially the case if the sick person was not one of their own-if it was a neighbor, say, or a distant cousin.

If the sick person was part of the family, he’d be tolerated. But medicine cost money, and the doctor also wanted to be paid… so for the most part they treated the sick with the ancient folk methods, drawing some blood, then off to the steam room for a good steaming. Either that or they’d just take them into the forest and leave them there. It was thought that whoever died in the forest would go straight to heaven.

The monks would visit these dying people in the forest and bring them back to the monastery if they could. But what could the monks do for them there? They’d give them some hot water with dried berries and a teaspoon of honey.

The people down below, in the villages, didn’t approve of this. It was difficult for a healthy peasant to imagine that someday he too would have to lie down on the moss in the woods and wait for death.

The old monk wandered tirelessly down the roads, in the heat and cold, visiting the villages, the towns, himself small and dried out, whispering his prayer-and people would throw a bit of change into his little box.

Incidentally, beggars weren’t tolerated in those parts. Instead of being given spare change, they’d be confronted with nasty questions and some useful life lessons.

But the old monk answered all the questions put to him-was he really a monk? what sort of glue did he use to keep his long beard attached? wasn’t he just a gypsy in disguise? and won’t he just take the money, earned with someone else’s sweat and tears, to the nearest bar for a drink?-indirectly, with a prayer, or a saying, or a joke.

The local wits even followed him just to hear him answer, laughing with particular pleasure when they heard his prayer, as if this were a particularly clever way of dodging a question, and thinking maybe they should use it themselves.

The monk would sleep right there in the street, wherever he’d been collecting alms, like a homeless dog. He would stay in town a few days, and toward evening there would always be some bleeding-heart woman (there are some people you just can’t do anything about) who would sneak out and hand him a little scrap of bread, or some vegetables, or even a bowl of hot porridge.

Some of them, seeing him sleeping there at night, would cover him up with a sack or some other warm thing, especially if it was raining.

Some would stay with him a while, talk about life, say a prayer.

One time his trip down to the town ended unhappily. Trifon barely received any donations in his box, and then during the night he was robbed. Two men pushed him to the ground, searched him roughly, and, when he said “God be with you,” merely gave him a knock to the head. Then they left, taking his cash box.

Trifon was very sorry about the box. It had been crafted many years before by the previous head of the monastery, the saintly old Antony, just before his death.

Lying in the ditch with his head bleeding, the monk heard the two robbers turn the corner, get into an argument about who should open the box, then finally open it. The change inside spilled out, and they used a lighter to see how much there was. When they saw how little money their robbery had earned them, they came back to the monk to get at his real riches, since clearly he’d hidden them somewhere. They ripped off his robe, searched him again, and again found nothing. So then they started beating him in earnest, this time with their boots.

They didn’t beat him to death, but when Trifon regained consciousness the next morning, he found that his robe was ripped to tatters and his donations box was crushed. The old monk got up, gathered the coins that even the robbers hadn’t deigned to pick up, tied them in a bundle with what was left of his robe, used another strip for loincloth, and, looking that way, bloody and filthy, began walking down to the stream to clean out his wounds.

He was recognized there by the women doing their wash. They were horrified to see his wounds and took him to a kind old woman who treated him, quickly sewed him a new robe out of old sack, and told him to leave town-there was no protection for him here.

The two robbers were known all over town. They had been going around at night for a long time, robbing and killing, and no one stopped them, because one of them had a father who was a judge.

The judge had thrown his son out of the house for stealing from the family, at which point the son decided to embarrass his father by landing himself in jail, in which case the judge might well have lost his job.

But the judge didn’t want to lose such a comfortable post, so he gave an order that his son’s antics be ignored. It was decided that the police would not respond to the provocations-that’s all they were-of this clown.

Where there’s no judge, death will stalk the earth. And death had taken up residence in the town. Those who were beaten to death, whether in the street or in the famous forest, were left to die without any investigations or arrests. Everyone was afraid to search for the truth, so no one reported the robberies and beatings. In fact anyone who reported these things would himself be arrested immediately and taken off somewhere outside town.

The monk learned a great deal, lying there on the mound of straw in the kindly old woman’s house. He even learned that next door there lived an inconsolable young widow whose husband had been killed one night while taking their sick baby to a doctor in the next village. The mother had been lying in bed, herself ill with fever, when apparently the husband met the frightful pair-Red and Blondie, they were called-on the road.

The sick little boy cried and screamed all night beside his father’s body. He was finally found by his mother, who’d somehow managed to get up and set off for the next town herself, also to see the doctor.

Now this woman, having buried her husband, was left without any resources, and the little boy had never quite recovered, so now every day the woman sat in front of the courthouse, begging, but everyone was afraid to give her any money.

As soon as he was able to walk, the monk got up and went to the courthouse and gave this woman his tiny little bundle of coins. And in doing so he said: “Tomorrow morning the both of you are to get up and head for the monastery in the hills, following the path above the stream. I will meet you at the big rock-I will be lying on my back next to a young spruce tree. At first two young men-Red and Blondie-will be with me, and I’ll be lying with a knife when you arrive. You have to stay with me for thirty days. After that your little boy will get better.”

The young pauper pressed the little bundle of change to her heart and kissed the hem of the monk’s coat.

For his part the monk began to wander around and finally found what he was looking for: a bar on the edge of town.

The two young criminals, Red and Blondie, were inside, in garish cowboy outfits, with gold chains everywhere they could fit them. All around them hovered the shadows of the people they had killed-though no one saw them except the old monk.

The shadows hovered sadly and quietly: little children, young girls in their white burial robes, with wreaths on their heads, and stooped old people-there were lots of those.

Two restless shadows of bloodied men also flitted about-they hadn’t been buried yet, apparently.

The two robbers were unhappy, their faces filled with loneliness and anger: no one went out after sunset anymore, or if they did go out they traveled in groups, in entire bands practically, armed with rifles. The people around here weren’t stupid. Last time the robbers went out they managed to kill only two people-a man and the doctor he was leading to his house because his wife was giving birth. When the baby was born in the morning, he was already fatherless.

The trouble was that neither the doctor nor the expectant father had any money on them, and so today the two entrepreneurs didn’t have a kopek between them.

They sat and drank-they’d been served a large jug of wine.

But they knew that in daylight the people wouldn’t let them leave the bar without paying-they’d start yelling, bring a crowd, beat them up if they were lucky, maybe even take all their gold chains and rings.

By the time the police arrived, it would all be over for the two cowboys.

The tension in the bar grew.

Already the bartender was surrounded by a small crowd-an enormous cook, a rude waiter holding, for some reason, an ax in his hand, and the local idiot, an unshaved kid with small eyes, big fists, and a wide smile on his face.

The local people didn’t like the judge’s son very much.

The monk approached the two gloomy customers and sat down at the next table.

He ordered a glass of wine and said loudly to the waiter: “Do you have change for a gold coin? I’m going to the monastery tonight with happy tidings-a parishioner has bequeathed us a pile of gold!”

The waiter wasn’t a fool. He knew monks were crooks just like everyone else. They were always complaining about how poor they were, how impoverished, and yet they lived. And so the question was: what did they live on, eh?

The waiter gave the monk a glass of wine and a crooked smile and said: “No, no change. The customers haven’t settled up yet.”

This conversation was heard very clearly, of course, at the next table, where four ears pricked up-professionally, so to speak-and ten fingers tensed.

When the monk got up, without having touched his wine, and limped toward the door, the waiter didn’t follow him-that was done by the two who’d just drunk a free jug of wine.

“We’ll pay you double tomorrow,” they told the waiter.

The waiter shrugged and said: “I haven’t lost my mind just yet. Leave some collateral, then you can go.”

It was light out, and people were still about, and there were cars and wagons on the road. The monk was a very well-known personage in the town. People said hello to him on the street, and he’d bless people’s backs as they walked by-but of course no one had time to talk about holy things with old Trifon. The whole town saw how the monk walked out, and the whole town knew that he was carrying a sackful of gold, and that it wasn’t even his gold-they knew that, too. They also knew the monk was drunk, having polished off a whole jug of free wine.

And no one so much as blinked, seeing the two following the monk in broad daylight, brazenly, just ten steps behind.

Those two walked angrily, which was understandable: a waiter, swinging a butcher’s ax for emphasis, had just taken a gold watch and chain from them.

The whole town also knew that those two would be back at the bar as soon as it grew dark. Whereas the monk would return to his monastery without any gold, and humiliated, with a black eye-and it was just what he deserved, too, as the town was perfectly well aware.

But things turned out differently.

Early in the morning a young woman left town with her little child on her back.

She walked ahead with determination and did not make way when she spotted two figures in cowboy outfits covered in blood.

For some reason the woman remained alive, whereas the police station soon received a visitor-the judge’s son-who confessed to the murder of old Trifon the monk, and said that his friend had had nothing to do with it.

As always, no one listened to him. They grew bored and returned to their offices.

No one knew that on the road outside town the following conversation had taken place between the woman and the two killers.

Blocking her way, they’d said: “Where’s a pretty young thing like you off to?”

“I’m going to meet Trifon the monk,” said the woman, growing pale.

“The monk?” said the two, looking at each other.

“Yes, Monk Trifon-he’s waiting for me.”

“He’s not waiting for you,” said the first, laughing a little and then putting his hand, with blood caked under its fingernails, on her breast.

“He’s waiting for me,” repeated the woman, moving back and taking her child off her shoulders. “He’s waiting for me on the high road above the stream, under a young spruce-he’s lying there with a knife, under a big rock.”

“How do you know that?” asked the first, his voice suddenly grown hollow.

“He told me that you two-Red and Blondie-would meet him by the big rock. And… he’d be lying there with a knife.”

She suddenly realized what had happened, and continued confidently: “You were going to kill him, Trifon said, and leave the knife in his chest.”

“That’s exactly what he said?” the red-haired one asked, laughing nervously.

“Yes! And he told me to sit with him for thirty days, at the end of which my boy would walk again.”

She placed the boy on the ground, but his legs gave way under him. He couldn’t stand.

“Good-bye,” said the woman, picking up her child and going on her way.

The two cowboys exchanged a glance and then went into the town without looking at each other.

Their confessions at the police station were so stubborn and determined this time that finally the detectives went up into the hills to gather evidence. But when they arrived at the scene, there was nothing there.

The only thing under the young spruce near the big rock was a small mound of dry earth, with a thin candle atop it. Three monks sat there praying alongside a woman as pale as death, holding a child. Next to them some mushrooms in a tin can cooked over a fire.

Still the two young men insisted they be put to death-they kept naming the time and place of the murder and showing their nails, which were still stained with blood.

Moreover, they named one hundred twenty-three other crimes they had committed and even took the police to the man who’d bought all their stolen goods, though he claimed not to know them. And yet he gladly invited everyone to drink a bottle from the wine cellar of his brand new home.

The two outlaws were told to go away, and they slunk out of town.

But the murders and robberies stopped.

A month later, two people entered the town: a woman, and a small boy who held her by the hand. He was walking slowly, uncertainly, but nonetheless walking on his own.

The mother and her child walked through the town-and the women of the town, seeing them pass, would turn their heads toward them, like sunflowers, and remain watching like that for some time.

“He’s walking,” they’d say quietly.

Immediately the mothers, wives, and daughters of the sick-and there turned out to be more in the town than anyone knew-learned about the miracle that had taken place, and all of them came to see the widow, who told them all the same thing: She’d lived for a month next to the grave of the holy monk Trifon, and at the end of it she’d hung her boy’s shirt on a branch of the spruce to dry, and he’d immediately stood up on his little feet.

A month before, she said, she’d taken the path above the stream to the big rock and found the monk lying there, dying, with a knife in his chest-he was holding it with his hand. He blessed her and the boy and asked her to bring his friends from the monastery, and he bid farewell to them all and asked them to bury him right there by the rock where he lay.

He didn’t say anything to the woman, but she remembered his testament, that she should live a month beside him. She was frightened that the two bandits would return, and she kept a fire going every night, for exactly one month, and then it was summer, and it was very hot, and she’d hung her boy’s shirt on the spruce branch-and he’d stood up and walked.

The town was in a frenzy. They carried the boy from house to house, and entire processions set off on the path above the stream. Sick people went, and people who wanted to ask the holy monk for a husband, or for riches, or to be released from prison, or that their unpleasant neighbors receive a punishment from God.

The monks from the monastery built a chapel next to the holy grave. More and more people flocked to it, and soon the town’s mayor built a hotel to house visitors from other towns, and the people began selling water from the stream. The spruce was fenced off, and admission was charged to the grave. But this didn’t affect the monastery at all. The monks continued to live in poverty, eating very little, and giving everything away to the poor.

It quickly became clear that the old monk didn’t help everyone-only those who were honest, virtuous, and poorly treated, and especially widows with children. But everyone went anyway, because who after all is not honest, virtuous, and poorly treated in our day and age? And what old woman is not a widow with children?

Incidentally, the number of monks at the monastery increased to seventeen. The two new monks never show their faces, just pray day and night in the upper monastery, afraid to go down to the grave by the rock, where lies the old monk whom they killed, and who saved their lives by giving up his own.

The Black Coat

THERE ONCE LIVED A GIRL WHO FOUND HERSELF IN AN unknown place, on a cold winter night. She was dressed in a strange black overcoat. Underneath the coat she was wearing a tracksuit, and on her feet some sneakers.

The girl didn’t remember her name or who she was.

It was winter, and she began to feel very cold, standing there by the side of the road. There was forest all around; it was growing dark. She’d better start walking, it occurred to her-it didn’t matter where-for it was getting really cold, and the black coat didn’t keep her warm at all.

She began to walk down the road. Suddenly a small truck appeared. The girl signaled, and the truck pulled over. The driver opened the door. There was another passenger in the cabin.

“Which way are you headed?” asked the driver.

The girl blurted out, “And which way are you headed?”

“The train station,” the driver answered with a laugh.

“Me, too,” said the girl. (She remembered that people should look for a train station when they’re lost in the woods.) “Then let’s get going,” the driver said, still laughing.

“But there’s no room for me in the cab!” said the girl.

“Of course there is. My companion is nothing but bones.”

The girl climbed in, and the truck began to move. The second man made some room for her, grudgingly. His face was concealed under a hood.

They drove quickly past snowdrifts down the darkening road. The driver didn’t speak but continued to grin, and the girl didn’t speak either, in case they’d notice she’d lost her memory.

They drove up to a train station. As soon as the girl got out, the door slammed behind her, and the truck darted on ahead. The girl walked up to the platform, where a local train was getting ready to depart. She remembered that one needs to buy a ticket. She checked her pockets for money, but all she could find was some matches, a scrap of paper, and a key. She was too shy to ask where the train was headed. Anyway, there wasn’t a single passenger on it; her compartment was empty and also poorly lit.

Finally the train stopped, and she had to get off. It was, apparently, quite a big station, but at this hour it was completely deserted, and the lights were turned off. Around the station there were traces of what seemed to be a construction site: the ground was covered with ugly black pits. There was nothing for the girl to do but walk into the tunnel under the platform. It was dark, but the tiled walls emitted a strange light, and the sloping floor was uneven. The girl raced down the tunnel, her feet barely touching the floor, like in a dream, past more black pits and some shovels and carts (probably another construction site).

The tunnel finally ended, and the girl found herself on the street, trying to catch her breath. The empty street was in ruins. The buildings were dark, some missing windows and roofs, and the street was blocked by roadwork signs and covered with potholes. The girl stood on the curb, freezing in her thin black overcoat.

Suddenly the same truck pulled over. The driver opened the door and told the girl to hop in. Sitting by the driver was the same passenger in a black hooded overcoat. He seemed to have gained some weight and now almost filled the seat.

“There’s no room in here,” the girl said as she climbed in. Actually, she was glad to run into the only people she knew in this unfamiliar place.

“Sure there’s room,” the driver laughed back, turning to face her.

And there was plenty of room, she discovered: there was even space left between her and the gloomy passenger, who turned out to be very skinny: it was his coat that took up the most room.

The girl decided she would go ahead and tell them she didn’t know anything.

The driver, too, was very thin; otherwise they couldn’t have made themselves so comfortable in that tiny cabin. The driver’s nose was very stubby, and he was pretty ugly; he was completely bald and yet seemed very merry-he was constantly laughing, baring all his teeth. In fact, he never stopped grinning but somehow never made a sound. The other passenger kept his face hidden under his hood and was silent. The girl was silent, too: she had forgotten everything. They were passing empty streets, riddled with holes. The residents of that neighborhood must have been fast asleep in their homes.

“Where to?” asked the merry driver, showing all his teeth.

“I need to get home,” replied the girl.

“And where would that be?” the driver asked, laughing noiselessly.

“Well, we should take a right at the end of this street,” the girl said hesitantly.

“And after that?” the driver asked, chuckling.

“And then we’ll just keep going straight.”

The girl was afraid they’d ask for the exact address.

The truck was going very fast, but making no sound, even though the road was all holes.

“Where now?” asked the merry driver.

“Right here is good, thanks,” said the girl, and she began to open her door.

“And who’s going to pay?” the driver widened his cavern of a mouth. The girl once again searched her pockets and again found matches, a scrap of paper, and a key.

“I don’t have money on me,” she confessed.

“Don’t accept rides if you can’t pay,” cackled the driver. “We didn’t charge you the first time, and so you decided to make it a habit. Bring us money or we’ll eat you. We’re skinny and starved, isn’t that right? Isn’t that right, you dummy?” he addressed the other passenger with a laugh. “We feed on the likes of you! Just kidding.”

They all got out of the truck together. They were in some empty lot now, sparsely strewn with new apartment buildings that appeared deserted (at least, there were no lights). Some lonely streetlamps cast light on the lifeless windows.

The girl, still hoping for something to happen, walked as far as the last building and stopped. Her companions also stopped.

“Well, is it here?” the grinning driver asked her.

“Maybe,” the girl said, as if she might be joking, but she felt very awkward: in a moment they’d discover she’d forgotten everything.

They entered the building and began to walk up the dark stairs. Luckily, one could see the steps. The stairwell was very quiet. The girl chose a random floor and stopped at the first apartment, took out a key, and easily unlocked the door. The foyer was empty, and they walked through the apartment. The first room was empty too, but in the second room they discovered a tall pile of rags in the far corner.

“You see, there’s no money, but you can take these things,” said the girl to her guests.

She noticed, as she spoke, that the driver’s mouth was still open in a grin, while the other man kept looking away, hiding his face.

“And what is all this stuff?” asked the driver.

“These are my things. Take them-I won’t need them.”

“You mean it?” the driver asked.

“Of course.”

“Well, then,” the driver said, bending over the pile. Together with the passenger he examined the pile, and they began putting some of the things into their mouths.

The girl stepped back noiselessly and tiptoed into the corridor.

“I’ll be right back,” she called out, seeing the two heads turn in her direction.

In the corridor she tiptoed to the door and then out onto the stairs. Her heart was pounding, and she couldn’t catch her breath. “Thank God the very first door opened with my key. No one noticed that I don’t remember anything,” she thought.

She walked down one flight and heard loud steps behind her.

Immediately she thought of trying the key again and, to her surprise, it opened another door. She sneaked inside and locked the door behind her.

The apartment was empty and dark.

No one was pursuing the poor girl; no one was knocking at the door. Who knows, maybe the two strangers finally gave up on her and walked away with their pile of rags.

Now she could consider her situation. The apartment wasn’t very cold-that was good. She’d found a shelter, finally, albeit a temporary one, and she could lie down somewhere in the corner. Her neck and spine ached with fatigue. The girl walked quietly through the apartment. The windows let in light from the street, and the rooms were completely empty. When she entered the last room, her heart began to beat faster-she noticed a pile of rags in the corner, the same corner as in the apartment upstairs.

The girl waited for something else to happen, but nothing happened, so she walked to the pile and lay down on the rags.

“Are you crazy?” She heard someone’s choking voice and felt the rags moving beneath her like snakes. Immediately two heads and four arms poked through them: her two companions were vigorously making their way through the pile until, finally, they were free.

Her knees weak, the girl fled to the stairwell. Directly behind her, someone was slithering into the corridor. Then suddenly she saw a streak of light underneath the nearest door. Again, the girl used her key to unlock that apartment.

A woman stood on the doorstep, holding a burning match.

“Please,” whispered the girl, “please save me.”

Behind her, her two companions slithered down the stairs.

“Get in,” said the woman, lifting the match.

The girl tumbled inside and shut the door.

The stairs were quiet; they must have stopped to think.

“What do you think you’re doing, bursting into other people’s apartments at this hour?” the woman asked her roughly.

“Please, let’s get away from this door. Let’s go somewhere we can talk,” pleaded the girl.

“I can’t, the match will die if I walk,” the woman said hoarsely. “We only get ten matches each.”

“I’ve got some right here-please, take them.”

She found the matchbox in her pocket and offered it to the woman.

“Light one yourself,” the woman said.

The girl lit a match, and in its flickering light they walked down the corridor.

“How many do you have?” asked the woman, glancing at the matchbox.

The girl shook the box.

“Not many,” said the woman. “Now you probably have only nine left.”

“Do you know how to escape?” whispered the girl.

“You can wake up, but not always. I won’t wake up anymore. My matches are all gone-bye-bye,” and she began to laugh, baring her large teeth. She was laughing quite noiselessly, as if she simply wanted to stretch her mouth.

“I want to wake up,” said the girl. “I want to end this horrible nightmare.”

“As long as your match is burning, you can escape. I’ve just used my last match to help you. Now I don’t care what happens. In fact, I’d rather you stay. You know, it’s all very simple-you don’t have to breathe. You can fly wherever you want. You will need neither light nor food. The black coat will protect you from all your problems. I will soon fly over to check on my children. They were little brats-they never listened to me. The younger one spat at me when I told them their father wasn’t coming back. He cried, and then he spat. I can’t love them anymore. I dream of how I’ll fly to look at my husband and his new girlfriend. I don’t care about them, either. I’ve understood everything, finally. What a fool I was!”

And she laughed again. “With the last match my memory came back. I’ve remembered my entire life and know I was wrong. Now all I can do is laugh at myself.”

Indeed, she was grinning widely and soundlessly.

“Where are we?” asked the girl.

“I can’t tell you, but soon you’ll find out. There will be a smell.”

“Who am I?”

“You’ll find that out, too.”

“When?”

“When the last match is gone.”

The girl’s match had almost burned down.

“While it’s burning you can still wake up. I don’t know how. I couldn’t.”

“What’s your name?”

“Soon they will write my name with black paint on a small metal plaque that they will stick into a pile of dirt. When I read it, I’ll find out. A can of paint has been opened; the plaque is ready, too. Others don’t know yet-neither my husband, nor his new girl, nor the children. It’s so empty here! Soon I’ll fly away. I’ll see myself from above.”

“Please don’t go,” pleaded the girl. “Do you want some of my matches?”

The woman thought and said, “I suppose I could take one. I think my children may still love me. They’re going to cry. No one wants them-their father with his new wife doesn’t want them.”

The girl stuck her free hand into her pocket and pulled out not the matchbox but a scrap of paper.

“Listen to what it says! ‘Please don’t blame anyone. Mother, forgive me.’ A moment ago it was blank!”

“Aha, so that’s what you wrote on yours. Mine said, ‘Can’t go on like this. Children, I love you.’ Just now the words appeared.”

And the woman pulled out her note from the black coat’s pocket. She began to read it and suddenly exclaimed: “Look, the letters are disappearing! Somebody must be reading it. Someone has already found it… The ‘c,’ the ‘a’ are gone, the ‘n’ is disappearing, too!”

The girl asked her, “Do you know why we’re here?”

“I do, but I won’t tell you-you will find out yourself. You still have a few matches left.”

The girl took the matchbox and offered it to the woman: “Take them! Take them all! But please tell me.”

The woman divided the matches and asked, “Do you remember who the note was for?”

“No.”

“Then light another match-this one is out. With each match I remembered more.”

So the girl took out her remaining matches and lit all four of them.

Everything became illuminated: she could see herself standing on a chair; on the desk she could see the note that said “please don’t blame anyone”; outside the window lay the dark city, and her lover, her betrothed, wouldn’t pick up the phone after she’d told him about her pregnancy; instead his mother would answer, “Who is it and what do you want?”-knowing perfectly well who it was and what she wanted.

The last match was burning down, but the girl wanted to know who was sleeping in the next room, who was moaning and breathing heavily as she stood on that chair, tying her thin scarf to the pipe under the ceiling. Who was that person sleeping in the next room, and the other one, who was lying awake, staring into space, crying?

Who were they?

The match was almost out.

A little longer-and the girl knew everything.

And then, in that empty, dark apartment, she reached for her scrap of paper and lit it with the dying match.

And she saw that on the other side, in the other life, in the next room her ailing grandfather was asleep, and her mother was on a cot by his side because he was dangerously ill and constantly needed water.

And someone else, someone who loved her and whose presence she could sense was there too-but the note was burning so quickly-that someone was standing in front of her, offering her consolation, but she could neither see nor hear him, her heart was too full of pain. She loved only her betrothed, him and only him; she no longer loved her mother or her grandfather, or him, who was offering her consolation that night.

Then, at the very last moment, when the little flame was licking her fingers, she felt the desire to speak to him. But the poor little scrap of paper was burning out, as were the last fragments of her life in that room with a chair. And then the girl pulled off the black coat and touched its dry fabric with the last flame of her note.

Something snapped. She smelled burning flesh, and two voices outside shrieked in pain.

“Take off your coat now!” she cried to the woman, who was smiling peacefully, her mouth stretched wide open, the last match dying in her hand. And the girl, who was still here, in the dark corridor with the smoking overcoat, but also in her room perched on a chair, gazing into those loving eyes-she touched the woman’s coat with her burning sleeve, and immediately a new double howl was heard from the stairs. A revolting smoke came from the woman’s coat, and the woman threw off the coat and immediately vanished.

The room around her vanished, too.

That same moment the girl stood on a chair with a scarf tied around her neck and, choking with saliva, was looking at the note on the desk, fiery circles dancing before her eyes.

In the next room someone groaned, and she heard her mother asking sleepily, “Father, want some water?”

As quickly as she could, the girl untied the scarf and took a breath; with shaking fingers she loosened the knot on the pipe, jumped off the chair, crumpled the note, and flopped on her bed, pulling the covers over her.

Just in time.

Her mother, blinking from the light, peeked into the room. “Dear God, what a terrible dream I’ve just had: a pile of earth in the corner, and from it some roots were growing… and your hand,” she said tearfully. “And it was stretching toward me, as if asking for help… Why are you sleeping with your scarf on? Is your throat sore? Let me cover you up, my little one. I was crying in my dream…”

“Mom,” the girl replied in her usual voice, “you and your dreams. Can’t you leave me alone? It’s three in the morning, for your information!”

On the other side of the city a woman vomited up a handful of pills and washed her mouth thoroughly.

Then she went to the nursery where her fairly large children, ten and twelve years old, were sleeping, and rearranged their blankets.

Then she got down on her knees and prayed to be forgiven.