The Good Life Elsewhere

by Vladimir Lorchenkov

  “We won’t get away,” Vasily exhaled, breaking into a wheeze. “We’re not gonna make it. Goodbye, my brother.”

  “What are you talking about? You can’t give up!” Serafim pleaded. “What about Italy? Hold on! We’ll make our escape, catch our breath somewhere, and then we’ll make for Italy. And we’ll get there! I give my word, we’ll get there. I know you don’t believe … ”

  “I believe,” answered Vasily. “I believe … that you’ll get there. When you talk about Italy, I can see the truth looming in your eyes. If you don’t make it, it means there’s no God, and no truth, either.”

  “Can you forgive me for dragging you into all this mess?” Serafim begged.

  “Forget about it,” said Vasily, and waved his hand listlessly. “Fate is fate. What I want to know is, does it exist? Italy, I mean?”

  “Yes, yes, believe me. And we’ll be there together. Listen to me. Listen! We’re going to cross this ravine and throw ourselves into the little river. The current will carry us. We’ll make it out of here, brother!”

  “I won’t survive … ”

  Serafim stood up again, lifted Vasily onto his back and broke into a run. “Forget about that! We’re getting out of here. We have to get out of here.”

  The security guards crowded together at the edge of the hill and silently watched Serafim, with Vasily on his back, hop his way across small rivulets as he made for the river, which lay directly beyond the hill. He ran unabashedly, like a woman who’s not embarrassed to show a strange man her underarm.

  “They’ll get away,” said Footloose, who’d been promoted to head of security. “We won’t catch them. The dogs, either. We’re supposed to take ’em alive.”

  “I’ll aim for the leg,” said the best sharpshooter among them. “Here goes … ”

  Serafim ran and ran, like in a dream where you expend titanic effort but nothing ever changes. As if in slow motion, the water splashed high when his legs came crashing down. The golden leaves of the Moldovan autumn sank into the mud; it was impossible to tell where the shore ended and the river began. The icy fog provided cover for the path to the river and Serafim greedily sucked the cold air into his hot mouth. As he sank in up to his belt, he had decided he was a goner when the river’s waters whirled and twirled and carried him and Vasily away. They’d broken clear.

  Using his left hand as an oar, Serafim grabbed Vasily with his right and said what he hadn’t managed to say in the ravine. Vasily smiled.

  “We’re gonna make it to Italy. Everything’ll change,” said Serafim. “There’ll be no more Moldovan mud in our lives, no more terrible poverty hanging over our heads like a scab on a bald tramp’s noggin. No more of this interminable, hellish work, which makes you want to howl louder than a dog on the doorstep of a penny-pinching priest.”

  The noise of the chase dissipated into silence, and the warm water of the river quietly lapped against the faces of the friends; the willow branches hung lower along the banks.

  “Museums, culture, even the air there shines with light. The sky glitters with rays of sunshine, and the earth itself blossoms with unfading, fragrant flowers and beautifully blooming eternal trees that yield blessed fruits,” Serafim went on, dreamily.

  And to the friends, it seemed that this fragrant smell was already hovering above them and above the Prut, that ancient Moldovan River.

  Serafim went on: “And Italians aren’t as sneaky, rude, mean and lazy as we Moldovans are. They aren’t such knuckledragging knuckleheads. They even dress differently. Their clothes are just like their country. Happy and festive! The people are beautiful. They all sing Italy’s praises, because there’s what to sing about. Not like Moldova, which asks you for love, but is less of a motherland than a step-motherland!”

  Serafim went on for a long time about this fairytale land of Italy, and the water of the river seconded his opinion in a whisper. The moon shone in the black sky and the friends were no longer afraid. They were no longer afraid of the two hundred pound catfish that, it was rumored, had been grabbing people by the legs in the past two years and dragging them down to the riverbed of the Prut. They weren’t afraid of snakes that could climb into the very sky itself by the light of the moon and fall onto the head of a person who, laying down to sleep, hadn’t made a sign of the cross above his head with the proper two fingers. The men floated in the very center of the river, and the whirlpools, upon seeing them, covered them with their black, swirling ink. The gnarled tree branches floating in the river became soft, like the hair of a drowned woman. The fish leapt out of the water like mischievous dolphins, in order to say hello to Serafim and Vasily. From the lake that lay close by, a chorus of frogs reached their ears. And above the mellow, low din, the tinkling of bells rose up to the reaches of the universe, along with the footfalls of a flock of sheep, wandering somewhere along the well-worn pasturelands and bringing with them their bells. And in Serafim’s heart for the first time there began to shine the emptiness of the impending separation from his unbeloved homeland, but his homeland nonetheless …

  Vasily, however, no longer had a heart, since it had been torn asunder by a guard’s bullet.

  40

  UP TO HIS KNEES IN WATER, SERAFIM SPENT A FEW MINUTES looking at the pale face of his friend one last time, then began sending Vasily off for a final float. He wrapped Lungu’s hands in a dead grip around his admiral’s cap. Serafim was sorry he didn’t have a rifle for a final salute but he had to content himself with a speech.

  “My dear friend,” Serafim began nervously. He was holding Vasily tightly, so as not to let the water carry him off too soon. “At this difficult moment of parting … No, that’s too official-sounding … I’m sorry, Vasily… Hmm … On his best days, the dearly departed … No, that’s not right … The deceased …”

  His knees were in sharp pain from standing in the cold water. Serafim thought for a minute, sliced his hand through the air and started over:

  “I have a dream. If God does exist, after all, I hope that sooner or later He gathers us all together. The humble and the destitute, the dejected and the wretched. That He gathers your wife, Maria, you, me, Old Man Tudor from our village of Larga and another three million Moldovans, and possibly a few gypsies, and gives us all a seat at His right hand. So that we can look at each other and forget the pain we inflicted on our loved ones, and so we can begin to live in heaven, like in Italy. And so that, in the Italian afterlife, we receive everything we never had in our lifetime in Moldova … ”

  Having finished, Serafim cocked his ears. The river was whirling with a disapproving rush. Even the broken tree around the nearest bend was creaking somehow discontentedly. Really, it wasn’t much of a parting speech, more of a conference talk, thought Serafim unhappily. He crossed himself, then sighed. “I’m sorry, Vasily, that even this last version was so … so … unfit. I’ll come up with something else right away… ”

  Serafim spent the entire day trying to come up with a speech, until even the dead man could take it no longer and grew angry.

  “Hey, Serafim, quit trying to catch a tiger by the tail! Be a man! One, two, say goodbye to your friend, you were a reliable comrade and a faithful husband, three, four, now send his body off to the water.”

  Guiltily shaking his head, that’s just what Serafim did. And he cried, watching Vasily’s corpse disappear around the bend; he cried all the way home to Larga, where he arrived the following evening, toward twilight, which hung so darkly beneath the celestial dome that a torch could be seen burning on the outskirts of town. As he approached, Serafim looked at the burning column. It was a giant pillar, some three meters high. All ablaze, it crackled, showering sparks and hot grease, as well as dirty slanders and dying curses.

  The villagers were grandly setting fire to Old Man Tudor.

  41

  FOR OLD MAN TUDOR, THE LOSS OF THE BICYCLE VASILY and Serafim had “borrowed” for its pedals was a heavy blow. It was too difficult for Tudor to reach the fields on foot, which were some si
x miles from his house. His workday extended by four hours and Old Man Tudor, sweating his guts out sixteen hours a day, understood that this was the end.

  The first two months after his bicycle disappeared, all Old Man Tudor could do was pace his yard like a freshly-widowed swan, and lament.

  “Where could it have gotten to? Where?” Tudor would ask at a loss. “It’s too bad Serafim’s gone off somewhere. That fellow’s got eyes sharper than a falcon. He would have helped me find my bicycle. I must have put the damned contraption somewhere, and in my old age, I can’t remember where.”

  The leaves on the calendar flew off the wall like kernels of corn during husking. Meanwhile, the bicycle was still missing. Winter spread its white bedsheets across the hilly breast of Moldova, but the bicycle never showed. Spring managed to pull off the soiled, snowy blanket, but the bicycle hadn’t bicycled on back. Finally, summer came and healed the dirty puddles, like open wounds, in the village roads. And still, no bicycle.

  In the fall Old Man Tudor found out the truth, which his fellow villagers had carefully hidden from the old man out of pity.

  “Serafim took Tudor’s bike to use for the submarine he and Vasily swam off in,” Tudor overheard somebody say at a christening. “Just don’t tell the old man, else he’s liable to lose his mind. He loved Serafim like a son.” Suddenly, everything was clear.

  The next day, Old Man Tudor arrived at church, pushed Father Paisii from the pulpit, raised his hand and asked for the floor.

  “Good Moldovans,” he began, “ I greatly wish to tell you my thoughts about Italy. Listen, and remember well: Italy … DOES NOT EXIST.”

  The church broke into the usual collective groan. From somewhere the shriek of a baby could be heard. But Uncle Tudor was inexorable.

  “Italy is an old wives’ tale, and pretty soon they’ll have you chasing your tail, while they’ve got your four thousand euros. Italy doesn’t exist. When the priest took you on that holy crusade to Italy, he fooled you. There’s no such thing as heaven! There’s no blessed earth where you get honey from the tap instead of water, where people breed big fat carp fish in their bathtubs, and where the housemaids get paid a thousand euros a month. None of that exists!”

  The congregation looked at him in terror. Just like Martin Luther, Tudor banged his fists on the pulpit and made an appeal.

  “Open your eyes, people! They’re leading you by the nose with their fairy tales about Italy. You leave behind the place where your ancestors settled, you discard your homeland in order to travel to God knows where and do who knows what. And your flocks grow sparse, your earth wastes away, your women and children whither without you!”

  “Aww, come on, everything wastes away even when we’re here!” a voice from behind the icon wall timidly objected. “Boy, it sure does collapse and waste away!”

  “And it’s all because you leave this place, quit your inheritance, and don’t maintain order in your homes!” howled Tudor. “They feed you these cock and bull stories about some Italian paradise. They distract you from your pain, from what really needs to be fixed. People, open your eyes. Italy doesn’t exist!”

  The people listened, unable to believe their ears. One person cried; another crossed himself. Tudor went on.

  “Understand, you wretched of the earth, we should strive to improve what we can. Here. Right here, in Moldova. We can clean our own houses; fix our own roads. We can trim our own shrubs and work the fields. We can stop gossiping, drinking and loafing. We can become kinder, more patient, more tender with each other. We can stop ripping pages out of library books and spitting on a cleanly swept floor. Quit deceiving. Start living honest lives. Italy—the real Italy—is in us ourselves!”

  The crowd grew loud with threats. Unfriendly hands stretched out toward Old Man Tudor. With a deep breath, he managed to say a few last words:

  “Henceforth, I will be the village priest. And I declare that belief in Italy is heresy! Because the real Italy is located within each one of us. And from now on, that’s what we believe in. Let me g—”

  42

  OLD MAN TUDOR, THE HERETIC FROM THE VILLAGE OF LARGA, was the cause of the Second Holy Crusade to Italy. Father Paisii, our leader, came from the same village. It was said that only Larga, the birthplace of our true spiritual father, could also be the birthplace of an antichrist such as Old Man Tudor. It was said also that even in all his diabolical stubbornness and malice, Old Man Tudor was fulfilling a role ordained for him by God. For it was precisely Tudor’s heresy which awoke our beloved village priest Paisii from his spiritual slumber. After the unfortunate First Crusade, Father Paisii was guilty of the sin of despair, and was nearly ready to lay down his arms – those same arms which bore the miracle working crucifix of the true Moldovan Orthodox faith.

  After appearing in church one day, Tudor stood at the pulpit and prophesized his true heresy. By all accounts, he declared Italy does not exist, it was all fairy tales. He delivered various other ungodly heresies, from which the hearts of the true Christians blazed up in anger. And they joined their numbers, and they tied up Old Man Tudor, and they stood him before an Orthodox tribunal, in which I took part – I, the former village teacher, now the Chronicler of the First and Second Holy Crusades to Italy. And I recorded some of the questions put to Tudor, who was chained to an enormous pillar for his refusal to believe in the one true God and in Italy. And they beat him without mercy, torturing him also with their words.

  In accordance with our duties, the prosecutor demanded Tudor take an oath with one hand resting on the Gospels, as per court protocol. This was in order that he should vow to tell the truth in reply to each question they asked him. And the one called Tudor answered saying: “I know not what you will ask me. It is possible you will ask me that which I will not tell you.” We said to him, “Swear to speak the full truth when they will ask you concerning your faith and what you are aware of.” Again he answered that as for what he is aware of, he will gladly swear. But as for what he is not aware of, he claimed the right not to answer the tribunal. In response to this, Father Paisii ordered for boiling water to be poured down Tudor’s throat. He asked where Tudor learned his heretical ideas about the nonexistence of Italy as earthly paradise. And Tudor, despite his torture, spoke evil things, declaring that God does not exist, nor Italy, and offending the court in every possible way. And we, having considered his delusions, took the difficult decision to save the heretic’s soul by destroying his earthly body.

  Even as he was set on fire, he delivered an heretical speech wherein he claimed that Italy is not paradise but an inner state of existence inside each one of us, which claim was rejected by Father Paisii. Further, Tudor said, one can reach that state of existence without paying four thousand euros, without clergy and without Holy Crusades. We spat and crossed ourselves upon hearing these abominations, and summoned Satan to burn the wretched Tudor verily with speed.

  And the heart of the burned one, and his black ashes, we tossed into the waters of the Dniepr River, so that even the memory of Old Man Tudor the heretic would be washed away.

  And afterwards Father Paisii, as if waking from a dream, ordered the people to gather for a Second Holy Crusade to Italy.

  And unto each one was promised:

  the forgiveness of sins;

  a place in Heaven upon their death;

  the full property of the heretics, who do not believe in the true Moldovan Orthodox God and Italy;

  and also the spoils of the cities and towns;

  guaranteed employment in Italy;

  and an Italian residency permit.

  And on the morning of the Second Crusade one hundred and ninety thousand people gathered in Larga, of whom one hundred thousand were children. And having mounted his horse, Father Paisii rode at the head. And as the multitude moved across Moldova, the numbers of the Holy Army increased.

  And the children, being warriors for Christ, were exceedingly joyful and blessed with pure hearts, and strong in their intentions to make the pil
grimage to Italy, the land promised to every faithful Moldovan. And they joined in circles and sang songs, and praised Father Paisii and Italy, and their beloved parents, whom they would see again in Italy. And though there were many teenage boys and girls among these children, Father Paisii permitted them to move in one column, unafraid of sin, saying:

  “What is pure at heart cannot be foul in the flesh. And even if a lad sins with a lass, for their participation in our pious activities I guarantee these young ones, by my oath, forgiveness of this mild sin.”

  And Father Paisii became even more popular among the youth. And very soon in many regions of Moldova, young men and women became apostles. They drew close to them throngs of likeminded people and led them, with banners and crosses, and with majestic song, to the miracle-working Father Paisii. And when an onlooker asked these young men and women whither they traveled, he received the same answer:

  “To Italy. To our parents.”

  One year before the Second Holy Crusade many Moldovans had arrived to Italy in roundabout ways and were laboring there, but could not bring their children. The children shot up like weeds but did not forget their parents. And when Father Paisii promised to bring them to Italy, not through the servant’s entrance but through the main gates, they rejoiced and followed after him. And nobody could restrain the children from this undertaking, nor were there those who wanted to.