The Sky Unwashed by Irene Zabytko

Author:Irene Zabytko [Zabytko, Irene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Literary
ISBN: 9781616202439
Google: 00Cv70-8ruEC
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2012-05-20T12:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

THE FIRST TIME Marusia took the lonely path toward the church, she was very afraid of what she might find. She imagined that all of the icons of the rapturous saints bedecked in their rich robes, always forgiving the earthly sinners with their mute eyes, might be replaced by skeletons of death. She looked up at the tower and saw that the two bells still hung in their tower.

She knocked on the doors and then found they were unlocked. She stepped into the dark building. The familiar scent of old beeswax candles and frankincense reassured her. The sanctuary was cool except for the unexpected warmth emanating from the small window. The icons and iconostasis at the altar front were still nailed to the floor, just as before. She crossed herself several times, bowed low to the floor, and opened the large central altar doors of the iconostasis.

She held back her breath. The golden communion chalice was gone. So were the gold candlesticks and the big gold and silver crucifix. Fortunately, the tabernacle remained as before, in its place on the dusty white linen altar cloth. Above it the red lamp hung from the round ceiling by its thick golden chains.

There were withered flowers in the vases, probably the same ones from the very last time she and the other villagers attended Mass that terrible Palm Sunday. The bouquets of white daisies had turned a putrid brown, the leaves were transparent, and the pussy willows had long ago let go of their fuzzy balls, which were scattered all over the floor. She went outside to throw away the abandoned flowers and left the vases on the steps to air out.

Marusia stepped to the right of the altar, where a well-varnished door opened into the priest’s sacristy. There he had kept his vestments and the ritual objects needed to celebrate the Mass. What had happened to Father Andrei? Did he die that horrible night, or was he alive in a refugee camp, or slowly losing his life in a filthy hospital? Did his crazy old mother, old Paraskevia, ever see him again?

Marusia opened the door to the closet and was glad that the vestments had not been touched. She knew where things were kept because she and the other babysi in the village had taken turns cleaning the church and mending the vestments. She fingered the rich gold brocade, then searched for a box she knew was hidden in a drawer and found that nobody had taken the other chalices and incense.

Really, it would have been such a low sin to steal the vestments and chalices and sell them for Western cigarettes, she thought. Only a rotten thief would sell his mother for those sinful, stinking cigarettes.

She lit a candle and left the room through another door that led into a cold, clammy area of the building that stank of peat moss and rancid water. From there, she climbed to the bell tower. The winding wrought iron staircase creaked and swung out each time she laid her heavy foot on a slippery stair.

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