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  All these thoughts produced in Maria a powerful headache, as if she had strained herself lifting a weight heavier than she could bear, so it was with some relief that she did not find Hannusia at home when she returned. Vasyl said that the girl went to see the priest, so the same thoughts must have bored into her mind, too, she was Mother’s daughter, was she not, and Mother’s grief to recognize herself in her child at every turn—except that, thank the Lord, Hannusia had a quicker mind, had been taught to read, went to school for four whole years, so she’d have an easier time of it in this heavy quarrel with God—and with that Maria, in her mind, relinquished to her daughter the full right to judge herself, her sister, and all other people—as though giving her, once and for all, her ultimate blessing.

  However, Hannusia didn’t know herself what she wanted—she was driven to visit the priest by the simple impossibility of remaining for one instant longer in the house she’d come to hate—she could climb the walls from hopelessness, tearing out her hair like a wad of hemp, but you can’t leave your own skin, no matter how hard you try, can you?—the very notion that in everyone’s eyes she was no more than a rag used to stuff a pillow for Olenka and Dmytro burned her insides with fire, hot, and real enough she could almost hear her own screams, because it was unfair, unfair!—but nobody cared what was fair and what was not, so her quest for justice left her right where she started—all alone, by her parents’ hearth, doomed to her old fate—the dull, exhausting labor of waiting for her destiny, which clearly had fallen fast asleep somewhere: day after day, year after year until her hair turned grey, the only difference being that until now this labor didn’t feel to be in vain and therefore didn’t feel like work at all, whereas with Olenka’s future wedding everything was to turn against her—of the two of them, it was none other than Olenka who seemed to be touched by God’s grace, as though it was always meant to be this way, and Olenka knew it while she, Hannusia, had only been fooling herself with nonsense she picked up who-knows-where, and now, when the fiction has been revealed, she will never again know that pure untainted joy of exultation that she had relied upon as her chief and sovereign consolation—because something changed inside of her, which frightened her, she felt as if she aged ten years in the one evening of that matchmaking, if not by a whole lifetime—something evil was taking possession of her, so abruptly robbed of her invincible power, something ineradicable like an incessant hot itch pulsing through her veins: Where to run to, what to do with oneself? And all the smells she breathed around her were fetid, as if everything inside and outside the house had rotted to the core, and a sound tormented her constantly the way one gets a ringing in one’s ears sometimes, except this one was lower, duller—a pulsating noise like an echo after striking an ancient kettledrum, or the reverberating peal of someone’s deep laughter carrying over far distances: Who was laughing at her, what enemy was celebrating? In the priest’s chambers, where everything was cozy and pleasant, like walking on silk, and it smelled like church—of wax, communion wafers, old books, and something else dry and nice, medicinal herbs mayhap, the sound receded: it hid, and she knew that it would be lying in wait for her outside again—it grew darker, she could see the moon through the window, a full moon, orange and hot like a handful of coals, only etched slightly with broad lines of shadows where one brother lifted the other on a pitchfork. Only then did Hannusia realize what she was really after when she rushed mindlessly like a madwoman to see the priest, carrying with her the requisite donation of wheat and honey as if indeed she meant to invite him to the betrothal—and she asked the holy Father, How can it be this way, Father, that there were two brothers, Cain and Abel, children of the same man and wife, they couldn’t have been doomed for one to be the victim and the other a murderer? Of course not, replied the priest, man chooses for himself whether to follow the path of God or the path of the devil—To be sure, Father, it’s just that the Holy Scripture says the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering, but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect, and didn’t Cain work to produce his fruit just as hard as Abel did, without rest from toil? Did he not feel an injury that God rejected his work but gave his love to Abel?—she also wanted to add, but hesitated, not knowing immediately how to put it properly into words, that Cain perhaps wanted not so much to take revenge on his brother as to correct the injustice visited upon him by God: it was not against his brother that he raised the pitchfork, but to make the Lord know that he had upset the balance in the world, as though Cain personally wanted to place his hand on the other scale to make them even—but the priest was aggrieved by her visibly, as it were, scolded her for speaking sacrilege, ordered her to recite ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys, and not until she was about to kiss his hand and take her leave did the frown recede from his face, and he said, almost at the doorstep, as if it occurred to him just there: The whole thing is that the Lord could see Cain the way he really was, and gave a test to his pride, humiliating him in the eyes of his brother, and Cain, rather than repent, set out to duke it out with God and committed such a mortal sin that it will not be forgiven him for all eternity. The moon with the two brothers had risen higher and shone silently at them from above, flooding the porch and the path to the gate with such bright light you could gather needles, as the song goes, or letter psalms, and Hannusia’s heart suddenly squeezed so tight again, the way it had once before when she stood over the murdered man in the ground—with the same mighty and sorrowful torment as is known perhaps only by those condemned to death or irredeemable sinners: Holy Father, she pled desperately, but tell me, why did God respect Abel’s offering but did not respect Cain’s?—Well, there you go again, the priest shrugged, no longer angry, but more like grumbling at an unreasonable child—I’m giving you chicken, and you keep to your feathers!—and aimed a finger at her, as if finding he needed to add more to the bargain: And ten creeds!

  Turning down the third street—it was as bright as day outside, only strangely empty save for the voices reaching her from the far end of the village together with bursts of laughter: the young were looking for the next game, and Olenka was probably with them, betrothed and splendid—Hannusia stopped stock-still: a bright light flashed from right under her feet, a shimmering shower of sparks, she even cried out in wonder: in the dust of the beaten road lay unraveled, as if unfurled for sale at a fair, a wide and resplendent young man’s sash—its expensive silk glistened in the moonlight, myriad golden tassels sparkled like sequins on water, so soft your hand reached out of its own volition to stroke them. Who would have been careless enough to lose such a treasure in the middle of the street, there’s half a length of the most expensive cloth in it, enough for a skirt! One couldn’t imagine it would be anyone other than Dmytro, except that even Dmytro’s sashes, even the most festive, were roosters to a peacock compared to this one! Carefully, holding her breath, Hannusia touched the delicate fabric (and burned, almost to tears, with the distant memory of how, as a young girl full of hope, she likewise stroked the store-bought ribbons in her lap, the ones her father brought back from the fair: Father, Father, am I not your daughter!)—and as she touched it, everything suddenly came alive inside her, as if someone’s warm hand gently compelled her to awaken: the sash felt alive—cool and simultaneously warmed from inside, like her own skin after a bath—with a sharp gasp of pleasure Hannusia buried her face in it, and then quickly, looking around to make sure no one saw, hid it at her bosom, laughing—for the first time in many days!—from the tickle of coolness that spilled like water over her chest. At home she for some reason didn’t tell anyone of her find, keeping it even from her mother—she quickly did the dishes, made her bed, and lay down, stealthily shoving the sash under her pillow—and that’s the way she fell asleep on the bench that served as her bed, under the window, barely squeezing out one Our Father, not to mention the ten she was supposed to recite—she felt very tired, and her sleepy hand went numb under the pillow clutching in her fingers the heavy and at the same time soft tassels.
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br />   She awakened suddenly, and sat up: Lo, what is it? It was dark, silence hung in the air, a pregnant silence—when outside the window, right up next to it, a horse let out a short neigh, like a laugh—Hannusia realized that it was this sound that woke her: Open up, an unfamiliar voice said to her, compelling and tender, a golden shot of hot embers penetrating her to the bone—a man’s voice, deep and resonant, but where was it coming from? Open up, Milady Hanna, give me back my sash, or if you don’t give it back, then be my wife—Hannusia began to tremble with her whole body either from heat or from cold, as if she herself was about to spill in a tinkle of golden sequins, swaying tassels that tickled up and down her spine—this was it, this was precisely what was meant to happen to her, this was what she’d been waiting for since she was a little girl, and here, finally, it has come, her winning lot, her princely reward!—Who are you, show yourself, she asked, opening the shutters, although in the depths of her soul she already knew—whoever it was, he was her fate: in the yard stood a team of four horses, black as the moonless night, tossing manes on serpentine necks, and against their background stepped forward a tall, tall enough to block the moon, shape of a man, she felt a breath of fire from very close, under her heart, as if the whole world whispered softly at her in one voice: Let me in, Milady Hanna, be mine, rule with me, for you are worthy, and I’ll show myself when you show yourself first—Hannusia hadn’t even quite reached for the latch when the window flew open on its own, impatient—wide open, and at that moment a hot torrent lifted her up, burning and filling her entire body down to its most intimate crevices, blowing her nightshirt off to the ceiling, and before she had a chance to take fright or cover herself—for this was the first time she had shown herself to someone else the way she alone admired herself until now, worried who might come to possess such beauty—before she could draw another breath, she felt the same hot wind spin up inside her, out to meet, it seems, countless men’s arms, hard as flint, that all seemed to knead her at once, but these were no crude paws, like Dmytro’s—these, despite their painful clasp, were sentient, like the tip of each finger was a tiny tickling tongue, and she melted in those arms like wax, softening, becoming all eager receptiveness, ready to take into her body the whole wide world—and the world rushed into her, sudden, hard and honed, and so icy cold she screamed when it touched her insides, pierced as she felt by a bell tower roofed in blazing tin. Off that steeple, she whooshed, straight up with a hiss, into the black wasteland that resounded with the echo of her own scream, with a chance only to think, in some broken-off corner or her former self that that’s what it’s like to die—and then she was no more, only the stars sparkled and twirled around her getting all tangled with their fiery tails, and there was no more pain, only the mad, white-hot bliss, the rapture of parting with your soul again, and again—as if she had a myriad of them. Faces sped by her in the interstellar whirlwind, one of them stung her as it passed as familiar, but just as she was about to recognize it, that same deep voice inside her said, That’s enough for now—and the wasteland she’d spun in shrank away from her, with the fading clang of a bell, and Milady Hanna opened her eyes in her own bed, although there was no more bedding itself, only a bolt-upright whirl of sheets and the slow downward swirling of feathers from the burst pillows, like a hundred warriors had just laid down their lives inside this bed, and beside her lay, stretched naked to his full enormous length and, it seemed, glowing in the dark with every feature of his being, a most perfect man whose sight alone was enough to slay a human mind on the spot, sending it into madness. Something unthinkable, incredible, and off-putting lay in the fact that a man visible by mere mortal eye could be so magnificent—something that she could only vaguely intuit earlier, when with sweet terror she found in the outlines of her own body a vessel of the Holy Host, only then she thought that at the bottom of the abyss where she barely dared to peek, and from which she so gingerly shied, lay open and sparkling with the living light the gates of the afterlife—and here it was, this splendor, truly blinding, like the sight of it peeled off your skin, but what emanated from it was cold, ancient, and eternal, that same sorrowful, boundless-like-the-sea, mortal torment of a man condemned to perish that had so many times already crept up to squeeze her heart and now stretched out before her, made manifest and undeniable—and fixing her emptied eyes on the red stains of her maidenhood on the torn-up bed, she realized she had become that night wife to the most wretched man in the world.

  Then the rooster crowed—and in the flash of an eye her bed was empty, not even a waft of warmth from that large body left behind, and Hannusia dropped into sleep, deep as a well, and dreamless.

  The entire next day she wandered around like a sleepwalker, feeling only a steady issue that dripped down her thighs, from her womb, so agitated at night—and at night he came again, this time without a knock or a word of warning, a man coming for what was his own: no sooner did she begin to fall asleep than she felt beside her in the dark the familiar strong body, and she gave in to it, mindless like butter under a knife. Again they made love until dawn, and neither of them had had enough, because this time something new awoke in Hannusia: a thirst, the stronger the more she quenched it—it was akin to that salty, like the iron latch, taste of blood from Dmytro’s bitten throat—how long ago was that?—only back then it was only a taste on her lips, and this was in her entire being, and so insatiable it overwhelmed everything else: all the power she knew gathered and transformed into this welling black thirst, in whose greedy waters neither one of them could swim enough. My queen, he whispered, as he pulled out her soul again and again, my bride, for a thousand years have I not known one like you—exactly what she yearned to hear, the only words that could heal the wounds common people had dealt her, as they oh-so-stubbornly insisted on judging her by their own measure and when she didn’t fit that measure dared, their infinite meagerness nonetheless, disdain her—his healing words not only returned her to herself, it was like they took the whole world, with all the people who had been, were, and will be in it, and threw it down at her feet, and in this resembled that unknown song composed in her tribute she dreamed of hearing. Say it again, she pleaded, or perhaps it was her thirst that pleaded for more, the ecstasy of the body was no longer enough for it, it rose higher, spread wider, like high water in springtime—and he spoke to her, in different ways, with words and without, night after night. In daytime stupor—because she endured her days now solely in anticipation of night, indifferent to almost everything, except a bit vexed by the continued issue between her legs, which, shame to say, was acutely arousing to dogs: as soon as she stepped outside her door, they raised a ruckus across the whole neighborhood, or followed her in a line, sniffing after her like she was a bitch in heat—in her semiconscious wakefulness, which seemed to her less and less real than what went on at nights, she never once stopped to wonder why nobody in the house heard anything—the racket they made was enough to wake the dead and yet nobody woke up, nobody noticed anything, only Olenka complained that she started having nightmares, and Maria fretted that Hannusia seemed to sicken all of a sudden—Look at the rings under your eyes, and your face so grey, god forbid you’ve fallen ill—and disbelieving her own eyes, watched with fear as Hannusia’s hair curled wildly all over her head so that you could no longer see the discrete strand that marked her crescent-moon birthmark—You, daughter, should go out and have some fun with the girls, take your mind off things, Maria would venture, only to have her daughter lower her head like a dog, and show her teeth, as if she was about to bite. Only smells could sometimes bring her back to reality—mainly those, thick and red, that filled her mouth with iron-tinged spit—they woke her up inasmuch as they roused in her that insatiable, all-devouring thirst she knew at night: when folks butchered a hog two streets over; her mother killed the speckled hen that, Lord have mercy, suddenly began to crow like a rooster; Hannusia herself got her period; at the neighbors’ across the street, the daughter-in-law gave birth—in this last case she was pos
sessed by such mad arousal she had to flee out to the garden and roll around on the grass, just to keep from running into their house to suck on the birth bed, gulping and slurping up everything that was living, hot, and red. At night everything was different—the way it should be, this new power made sense: You’ve come, praise the Lord, she whispered not so much from joy as from relief when she felt him beside her—but he grew distant, frowning and displeased: Why do you praise God for my arrival and not me?—she herself was amazed at such obvious, and until now unremarked, folly: Of course!—but he went on: Is it not your sister who ought to praise him, is it not her that he favors much more than you, although she’s worth as much as a handful of sand to a handful of gold against you?—she trembled as if in fever with the joy of hearing, for the first time, her own thought spoken out by someone else: And why is that so? she cried, in anticipation of the answer that she had thus far been unable to find—neither from the priest, nor from her mother, nor from anyone in the world, and in her blind pursuit of which she kept coming up short against an invisible wall—he now promised her liberation, and she reached for him with her entire soul, yearning as if transformed into a pair of open, eager lips dripping with impatient spit, ready to slurp up his answer, whatever it was—and the answer rang out like a struck gong, but rather than setting her free echoed in her with the unutterable sorrow of perdition: Do you not know that he only favors his paltry creatures, only those meek in spirit are beloved by him, and as for the best and strongest, the most select, who are like diamonds on an earthly crown—he pursues them and humiliates them, and brands them with a mark of damnation to set them apart from the meek, for he fears they will take away his kingdom?—So it must be, she replied with some effort across the desolation of sorrow, having applied his word at once to herself and to him: it was wicked to be the best! That’s the way the song went, she remembered: The tallest tree dries out at the crown—Of course it is, who would know better than I, all the choicest souls belong to me, only I know their fair price, and only I can give them what they truly deserve—she smiled bitterly, irritated by this cheap fairground boasting, because she expected a more sincere consolation from him: Why is it always—me, me, aren’t you pretty miserable yourself?—he sucked in his breath, sharply, and she felt a waft of sulfur and burning in the air—so smelled his chagrin: her sympathy, which she had not dared to utter until now, obviously irked him: You womenfolk are a hex! Fine, I know the way around you—and he snorted with fire, sent quivering, caressing little tongues of it up and down her body, fixing to have his way, but she asked him, coarse because her voice caught in the terror of remaining forever banished to that desolation of the perished: Take me with you into your kingdom, I want to rule by your side, is this not why you chose me for your wife, why you gave me your sash?—she kept that sash wrapped around her waist under her shirt, so she could always feel her lover’s presence on her body—Don’t worry, he promised lightly, happily—too lightly, it felt to her, he could have been a bit more solemn at such an occasion—Do what I tell you, and I’ll grant all your wishes—and fell right to granting, zealously, like a priest at prayer, her wishes one after another, without respite—until the rooster crowed and she was overcome, as always, by a short, dead morning sleep.