Читать книгу Tales of Ghosts. Playing Another Reality. Edgar Allan Poe award - Alexandra Kryuchkova - Страница 24

After a small breakfast of scrambled eggs, taking with him a couple of cheese and sausage sandwiches, and only by chance remembering to take also the Gospel and the cross, the parish priest, Father Alexey, slowly went to confess a certain parishioner Pelageya, who was dying of a terminal illness. Father Alexey didn’t know her, as he had served in that church for a week only.

Entering a shabby little room, he saw a woman about forty. She seemed to no longer react to the surrounding sounds, and her gaze was fixed on the window overlooking the garden, where the birds were singing joyfully, and the cheerful wind was rustling.

Father Alexey came closer to Pelageya. Her features seemed too familiar to the priest, but in vain he tried to remember where he might have crossed paths with the dying woman, so, sitting down on a chair by her bed, as usual in such cases, he asked,

“I was told that you want to confess, my dear…”

“Yes,” the dying woman replied in a weak voice.

“Then tell me your sins and transgressions,” the priest crossed the woman and prepared to listen attentively.

Pelageya began to talk about her life from the very beginning: as a child she had broken her mother’s favorite vase, too often she had quarreled with her sister and friends, and she hadn’t believed in God. However, left without a livelihood at the age of fifteen, Pelageya went to play the flute in the streets of the city to get money for food, and by the will of the Almighty she found herself in a church for the first time, where a completely different world opened up for her.

What the dying woman had told him up to that point was not of particular interest to the priest, he even snored a little, and, waking up, only shook his head periodically. Sometimes it seemed to Father Alexey that he had already heard something similar before, but during his life the priest managed to serve in so many churches that thousands of stories confessed to him by parishioners had long been mixed up in his head and safely forgotten, and new ones were not remembered at all.

“Then I met him,” the eyes of the dying woman suddenly sparkled, and she smiled. “He was kind and caring, he courted me as a princess, but said almost nothing about himself, only that he loved me and we would get married after Easter. Once I found out by accident that my fiance was studying at the Theological Seminary, however, the prospect of becoming the wife of a priest didn’t frighten me at all! On the contrary, I was even delighted, since I already believed in God! But soon, when I told him we were going to have a baby, he forbade me to give birth to our son.”

“Son?” Father Alexey furrowed his brow and fiddled with the Gospel.

“Yes, thank God, I didn’t take at least that sin upon my soul! After all, we never got married. My fiance got scared, exchanged me for the daughter of a rich and influential official. And my son outwardly is a copy of his father, and I named him Alexey as well.”

“And how old is the boy?”

“Seventeen.”

“Did you tell him about his father?”

“No, Father. My son sings in a church choir and is going to enter the Seminary. I didn’t want him to change his attitude towards God because of such a father. All he knows is that they are too similar in appearance.”

Father Alexey shook his head. His hand touched Pelageya’s hand. He was silent for a while, but then, sharply withdrawing his hand, said menacingly,

“So, my dear, you seduced a priest, then disobeyed him, despite the fact that a woman should always be in obedience to a man, being created out of his rib, and on the top of that you also concealed the truth from him!”

“Father, but…” Pelageya tried to object.

“Oh, sinner! Isn’t it written in the Bible that everything I have listed is a grave sin?!”

“I sincerely repent of all my sins and ask you to forgive me!”

“And have that man forgiven you?”

“Where can I find him now?” the unfortunate woman whispered already in tears. “Is my soul doomed to wander the world like a restless ghost?”

“My dear, the Great pre-Easter fast is going on, so you must fast! Perhaps God will forgive you, but not I…”

The dying woman wept silently.

Father Alexey was returning to the church, obviously not in a good mood, but only one thought was spinning in his head, “God, what does time do with a female beauty!”

That same evening, Father Alexey left his cassock at home and went with friends to a pub. Having drunk heavily, the next morning he skipped the service and spent the entire Holy Week with friends, remembering the Passion of Christ without parting with the bottle.

On Easter, in order to avoid losing his job again, Father Alexey had to sober up. At the festive meal after the service, he was informed that Pelageya had been buried on Friday. The deceased had not been sung by the funeral vigil due to the lack of money from her son, who nevertheless ordered a special 40-days prayer for the dead mother.

Taking church wine with him, Father Alexey went to the grave of the newly departed and bumped into a handsome young man at the cemetery gate. The priest immediately recognized his son, but the son would have never recognized his father, since he looked too bad…

June 28, 1994