THE HEALING
The old man looked at him wearily in the
half-dark of the stone cell. He had been up since five that morning, and the
ache in his left hip had not lessened in the least. But still he did not allow
himself to sit to pray. Now it was almost ten and he ached to lie down, to
stretch out and let sleep carry him away. Had he battled against such things as
this for fifty years with such futility?
‘I am asking if I can go to the island.’
The young man was only a shadow in front of
him. He stood and did not move, and did not know what it meant to be sore and
old. Silence lay between them and as a paw of wind came and caught the tower so
it shuddered, they heard the pattering of snowflakes against the glass. The
track would be buried by morning, and the last of the wood was still to be
brought in.
Only eight were ever chosen each December,
and six of those were there year on year: they did not ask if they might have a
place. His hip throbbed so he wanted to weep; a dull, deep drumbeat. The candle
fluttered and he found himself nodding, though he did not look at the boy.
‘Why do you want to go?’
He tried to keep the question steady and was
not sure he had managed. The boy was seventeen: once he too had been seventeen
and sure of nothing but the knowledge the sun would rise the next day. He
looked through the gloom to find the boy’s face. If there had been no kindness
in his question then may there be some in his eyes.
‘My sister.’
Just a whisper, and the young head bowed and
shuddered. The boy wept. It took the old man by surprise, caught him almost
like that breath of wind and knocked him softly sideways. He did not know what
to do or say. He waited and heard his own heart. He watched and waited.
‘All right,’ he said in the end, quietly,
hearing the strangeness of his own words. ‘You may go.’
*
The chapel on the island belonged to St
Lucy. It had been hers since the days she lived herself (leastways that was
what the farrier would have said, had you disturbed him at his labour on a good
day and he had the time to answer). The chapel belonged to St Lucy, and the
legend was she went there herself, however many hundred years back into the
darkness of time. A family lived on the island, survived on what little they
grew and on the sweet fish from the lake. The youngest girl fell ill with fever
(local people still maintained it was at harvest, for the father was gone to
help in the mainland fields, though how anyone knew that was a wonder). But word went out of the girl’s fever, that she
was sick unto death and nothing more could be done for her. In those days
children were like apples from a tree; carry a bunch in your arms and you could
be sure one or more would fall. But word went out of the girl’s illness, and
perhaps with the father himself as he went to gather the harvest. For that part
of Russia
So it was Lucy herself heard of the girl’s
dying, and came to the village as night was falling. (The farrier would tell
you how many generations ago that was, for his family had been there since Eve
put them all out of Eden
So she walked. Lucy left the ferryman’s
house, went into the moonless night and down to the shore and walked. Even now
the farmer will tell you there were three that stood and watched as she started
onto the water as if it was no more than a dry path. And they say she walked barefoot,
shoes in her hand; that her mouth moved and she prayed as she went. All the way
to the other side and the island shore.
She went to the house where the girl lay in
the last throes of fever, babbling words of nonsense. And Lucy’s hand smoothed
her forehead and she spoke soft words over and over, like the dripping of cool
water, till at last the girl was still. But she was not dead, she slept.
*
The boy had been the third son. He had
almost not survived, came into the world like a bundle of lamb that slips into
the sleet-white grass with the tiniest cry. Born a month early and it was his
sister who watched over him until at last he was stronger and the flags of the
daffodils blew triumphant in the spring wind. Only five she was and she watched
over him, for their mother could do nothing that first month, so ravaged was
she from the long birth. That set a bond between them for ever, a bond that ran
deep and strong. He was often ill in those first years. He struggled to
breathe, to climb the hill of each new-drawn breath. It was she who sat with
him through the long hours of the night, drawing the forefinger of her left
hand across his cheek, slow and gentle, whispering the name she’d given him.
She would not let him be scolded. When the
birch rod was raised by a mother half-mad with tiredness in a house with too many
children, the girl shrieked and implored her to stop. That only maddened the
mother the more, and set her against the girl. In summer the two escaped into
the hills behind the house like leverets, laughing; the tin pails they carried
for berries clanking against their thighs as they ran.
Their mother called them outlaws; she
carried the washing out shouting at them still though they were far beyond
hearing. They came back home, barefoot and weary, when the moon was orange in
the river and the windless skies were all but dark. There was no point raising
the birch rod then; she knew it was far too late.
Was she punishing the boy by sending him to
the monastery or thanking God for the miracle of his birth? By that time his
sister had gone to work as a servant at the big house of the landowners from Petersburg
*
It was when he was out by the well he knew she
was ill. The wind rushed through the autumn trees and he thought of them
running in the thrill of it as once they’d done, and as he dipped his bucket
into the stars on the surface he knew she was ill. Not just that she was ill but
that it was something on her right side, and he touched the place with his free
hand as he set the pail down with its shining.
He knew he should pray for the world, for
its suffering, but he prayed for it somehow through her. When he knelt and
words poured through him like a wild stream’s babble it was her face he saw
beyond him. He even prayed something of
his strength might be given to her, that he might give it back all these years
later.
And so he was told he could go to the
island. As if by magic, the days froze and the eye of the lake glazed a strange
white. He heard the ice crystals in the trees at night, the high song of them
playing in the darkness. The sun climbed into the sky but it was a snowball,
weak enough to look at full. And there were wolves; somewhere in the hills
their voices held and echoed. He thought of them as the living sound of the
Northern Lights; he told no-one yet that was what he thought.
She
was weakening. She had fallen and was weakening but he was kind to her.
Those were the words he woke with, one morning when he rose and went to the
window and six slow geese beat a path into the light. It was only six days till
St Lucy’s Day, until they went to the island.
*
And so they walked across the ice. They held
their shoes, in memory of St Lucy, and walked in bare feet. At first the pain
was almost too much to bear, until he realised that he felt nothing at all. He
looked at his feet and thought they were like marble, and remembered the one
time he visited the Winter
Palace
The men who walked with him now were old. He
felt that as they walked they carried not only their shoes but their stories.
They had lived through the story of Russia
He knew somehow that he loved them even now,
those men, although he had been with them only days. He did not understand the
meaning of years as they did. The one who fed the birds at dawn, who held
fragments of bread in his cupped hand until they came and ate without fear. The
one who was all but blind, but who sang in the morning with a voice as sweet as
a child’s. The one who did not talk any more, who had gone so far into silence words
were not needed now. He had found a place where there was no more fear or
anger.
That night the moon did not shine. There
were stars, yet not as he had seen them before. Now they were like breath across
the sky; a mist far beyond counting. The monks did not look back as they
walked; that was also a part of their pilgrimage. And the ice was strange and
patterned; he thought of the Northern Lights, and it was as if they had been
imprisoned there, a moment of their fire frozen for ever.
It was only when they reached the other side
he knew how cold it was.
*
It was two days later, when they had
returned to the monastery, that he woke from a dream and knew he must go. He
dressed in the dark, hands trembling, and fled down the stone steps as though
the dream had not ended at all. It did not even occur to him to ask if he could
leave.
It had snowed in the night and the silence left
behind was bigger almost than silence itself. When the spines of dawn came, it
was as though a bonfire burned somewhere ahead of him; a conflagration setting
fire to the trees. When the sun had all but risen into the woods, its brightness
was so great his eyes could not bear it. But he knew he was walking the right
way; he knew he must walk into the sun.
He had no sense of time. He had walked
countless miles with her all those years of his childhood; they had not known
what time meant. For hours now he walked straight on; no path except the one
his feet found. But he knew he was right; he knew without a shadow of a doubt
there was no other way but this. He came at last to the road; looked left and
right and listened. He held his breath and heard the rustling of birds in the
trees. Everything was dry; made of tinder dry fragments.
He turned left and knew now he was not far
away. And it was only then he seemed to waken and wonder what they would think
and where he had gone. Then he saw a house and forgot everything as he began
walking again. He could not walk but had to run, so hard his chest seemed
burning and about to burst. He staggered on because he knew it was there, that
she was there, that he must get there. And a beautiful garden and a long drive
and the scent of wood smoke and at last, after however many hours, a doorway
and his fist on the hard wood, hammering and hammering and hammering.
She answered, for she was a servant there.
And her face smiled, even though she cried.
‘Sasha,’ she said. ‘I knew you would come.’
Copyright: Kenneth Steven 2016
