The Sky Unwashed

by Irene Zabytko

  Then she heard a dull thump followed by a low cry that sounded like an old woman’s moan.

  “What’s that?” she yelled.

  She peered into the growing darkness. Two coal-lit eyes stared at her from atop a ceiling beam.

  “Oh, hello kotyku,” she said. She brought her dripping candle closer to its face. The cat’s fur stuck up in spikes as though it had tried to wash the poison out of its coat. It sat there watching her, slowly heaving its cavedin chest.

  “How long have you been here, kotyku? Are you crazy, too? Like the dogs. And me,” she said. “Well, be careful that the man with the gun doesn’t get you.”

  The cat meowed, but softer than before.

  She was afraid to touch it. It hissed its fear, then scampered away down the stairs and out her sight.

  The next morning, she brought along a small bowl of powdered milk mixed with water and left it at the foot of the winding stairs. The cat jumped down from its place in the shadows and briefly rubbed against her ankles like an electric shock before it darted straight for the dish. It sniffed the milk for a long while before lapping it up.

  “Oh, once you were a pretty one,” Marusia said. The cat was matted and filthy. Its front paws were caked with dried blood, and both of its ears were torn. “You’ve been fighting,” she told it. “Be careful—there are wild animals out there. Fierce, like bears.” The cat looked up at her, blinked its filmy eyes, and purred.

  “You’re welcome. Now, excuse me, I have to ring the bells,” she said, climbing the stairs. She rang them for a long time and was surprised to find the cat waiting for her when she came down from the tower. “Well, how nice. But are you deaf? I swear I will be in no time.” Her body swayed from dizziness, and she had to steady herself against the clammy wall.

  The cat followed her inside the church but stopped short of going outside the door. “No? Stay here, then. You’re such a skinny one. I wish I could feed you so that you could plump up like a pillow.” She herself ate only once a day—mostly from her stored supply of dry staples and what was left of the canned vegetables she had preserved in the summers before the accident.

  She thought about her limited pantry. She did have jars of applesauce, green beans, peas and carrots left, and a few more jars of compotes she had made of dried apples, pears and apricots. But those supplies would get very low in a matter of weeks. She feared the approaching winter. “Getting cold out there.” She hesitated in the doorway.

  “Well, then, I’ll just go back to Chornobyl and demand that they give me some food. Or maybe that zaraza dogcatcher will be back. But it’s been three weeks already…. would he let an old woman starve?

  “Yes, he would!” She turned toward the cat, who meowed its sickly croak at her. “I won’t starve. And you are invited to share my food. I won’t starve! I haven’t lived this long to die like that. Don’t you worry! Sleep well.” She stood in front of the iconostasis again, bowed low, and left for home.

  From then on, Marusia brought the cat milk every morning. Sometimes the animal came to her, other times she had to search for it when she found the milk untouched. She was surprised how much she missed it when she didn’t see its mangy body curved over the bowl at least once a day.

  HER MORNINGS WERE spent gardening. Her hoe sometimes turned up old potatoes, green and withered, that she took in gladly. She would wash and boil them carefully. Everything counted.

  She liked to hoe in the early morning after she had rung the bells, before the sun beamed its heavy rays on her. She searched and found some old seeds in her kitchen for beets and squash which would survive the light frosts. She sprinkled holy water over the dirt, so that the seeds would gain strength and not be poisoned by the evil lurking in the soil.

  ONE MORNING SHE didn’t see the cat in the church, but found it staring at her in her garden. It looked grayer than in the dark tower, and its fur was slicked back with wet streaks, as though it had groomed itself before coming to visit her. Then it moved, pulling at the neck of a large dead rabbit.

  The cat dropped its gift at Marusia’s feet.

  “What’s this? Do you want me bury that thing or eat it?” She laughed and prodded it with her hoe. It looked healthy enough, but who could know.

  “I’ll make it for you,” she said. “You’ll be my guest. My first one since I came back home.”

  She found that the rabbit’s skin tore off easily enough, and its flesh was pink. She roasted the legs and boiled a generous portion of potatoes and carrots.

  She didn’t notice the cat silently following her into the house. It sat on the sink, where Katia’s cat used to rest, and it stared at the old woman, ready to pounce.

  “We’re going to die, so let’s at least eat well and look good in our coffins.” She smiled at the cat. “But who will bury me? Will you?” She laughed and felt giddy because of the live presence of the animal. “Will you drag me into a field and bury me? No, I suppose not. Dogs are better at burying. Cats—what good are they? Except that you at least let me talk to you. Oh, and you did catch this feast for me.” She thought briefly about the dogcatcher and hoped that she wouldn’t be forced to turn the cat in to him.

  For dinner they shared the rabbit. Marusia declared that it tasted as sweet and fine as the ones her father caught for Christmas dinner. “Not one difference,” she told the cat, who scuttled to a window ledge and licked its bloody paws.

  Chapter 15

  THE END OF summer was hot and fetid. Marusia believed that her life was saved because of the garden. Whenever she felt the unbearable loneliness weigh her down and the sinking feeling of betrayal, she worked in her little patch of land, and its capacity for life humbled her. Once her hoe cut deep into a long blond horse-radish root she had planted years before the horrible event. It would be precious for Easter breakfast, and she dug it out, amazed that it was over two feet in length. Another time she found a neglected patch of tiny wild strawberries but decided not to eat them. It was enough for her merely to look at them in quiet reverence.

  She cried more in her garden than inside her house. Whenever she poked seeds into the overturned earth or patted a mound of dirt down around potato eyes she thought of her son, and always cursed her luck that she could not bury him here at home.

  September was nearly over, and the air was still warm and balmy. The first turnip appeared in its row next to a large green squash that had come up between the snarly new potatoes. Marusia was harvesting some of them and threw them into her battered wheelbarrow. She thanked God on her knees for the harvest and buried her hands into the silt, where she felt one ribbony earthworm caressing her fingers.

  Her beets were meager—small pinkish beetroots only the size of baby fists. She dug them up anyway. The tomatoes were small and a sickly greenish-yellow. The onions had all died early in the season. Still, she hoped that more potatoes and cabbages would come through all right before the first frost.

  In the past, autumn had been a bountiful time for collecting the white mushrooms that had made Starylis famous. Marusia spotted them growing wild along the forest paths she sometimes took on her way to and from the church. Unlike the living things in her garden, they looked large and healthy with their rich and feathery umbrella caps. She feared them, as though the mushrooms thriving in the unholy and evil soil were a defiant rebuke.

  When she wasn’t working, Marusia felt ill. Her joints were achy like a flu that wouldn’t leave her body. She coughed too much, and her eyes itched and felt dry despite the tears she shed whenever she prayed for Yurko and her lost, scattered family and neighbors.

  There were many harsh moments when her prayers and tears were not enough balm to soothe the loneliness that overwhelmed her. Sometimes she would chew on the hemp gum or, better, locate the last of the fine, mellow rose-petal vodka she had kept hidden all these years. It was Yurko’s last batch. The recipe was handed down to her and her son from her husband, and every time she allowed herself a forbidden sip, she always thought of the man she had had the m
isfortune to marry—his strong good looks, his white teeth and easy laughter that rang out every time he coaxed her to drink another glass of the evil brew. In their early years together, they would dance after drinking a bottle, and he would kiss her shy lips and hold her firm young body close enough so that she could hear his sweet words caressing her ears with the scent of rose petals.

  The fragrant elixir laced her tongue, and she knew that if he appeared in front of her right now, she would still offer him the world. “I’m such a fool for that bad man,” she cried. “And he would leave me again for that kurva!” She downed the rest of her glass, and the warmth of the liquor soothed her chest. “This is all you left me, you bastard. A son who is now a ghost like you, and this damn vodka.” She cried a bit more, then felt tired enough to fall into a deep sleep for which she was grateful the next day.

  THE CAT BECAME her companion and visited her more often at home than in the church. It kept its distance from her and still would not let her pet it, nor would it rub itself again against the old woman’s ankles. But at unexpected times it came close enough for her to hear its bronchial purr. Marusia saw that its eyes flowed with mucus and heard its consumptive breath rattling heavily. One time the cat breathed and whistled through its nose so loudly that Marusia, feeling sorry for its misery, gave it a bowl of warm potato soup broth and boiled a spoonful of the precious rice she kept hidden in the back of the cupboard.

  The cat slept well after eating the soup, but its nose still dripped. Often it limped and kept its tail, clotted with burrs, upright in the air to help its balance. Its head was usually bloodied with fresh sores. Marusia caught it constantly licking its paws and hind legs and noticed that more clumps of fur were missing on its shivering body.

  The breezes were turning cooler. It was time to get ready for the long, lonely winter. She would have to bring in more firewood from the shed because she had used so much keeping the chimney smoking. The kindling box was low, and that meant chopping some firewood into smaller pieces. Then she had to seal up her windows and doorways with cloth strips. The very thought of these preparations tired her. Maybe, she thought, I could just take some wood from the neighbor’s shed. But no, she cautioned herself. They will be back, and then what will they say to me? They’ll call me a thief, and I’ll get angry, and that would be a fine welcome for them. No—I’ll get by even with the stove going in the daytime. Someone might come back and see that I’m here. She could not believe that no one would come.

  SEPTEMBER MELTED INTO October, and the mild autumn sharpened into brisker weather. One noontime, Marusia had just returned from ringing the church bells and was in her house boiling some cabbage for her soup when she heard the cowbells jingle. The sound startled her, and at first she dismissed it, thinking it was only the wind shaking the bells. Then she heard an impatient knock followed by a woman’s demanding voice calling, “Is there anybody alive in this house?”

  Marusia dropped her wooden mixing spoon and hurried to the door. On her doorstep stood a much older Evdokia Zenoviivna, carrying a cardboard suitcase without handles that was held closed with a thick rope. Behind her was old man Oleh. He looked the same, but Marusia was a bit shocked to see that Evdokia had aged and wasn’t as stout as when she last saw her at her granddaughter’s wedding right before the catastrophe.

  “You came back!” Marusia shouted, grabbing the suitcase to set it down. She and her old friends hugged together. “Welcome back! Welcome back home!”

  “Slava Isusu Christu,” said the old man, his face ruddy. He rubbed his chapped hands and sniffed the air. “Cooking something?”

  “Yes, come in! Sit down, sit down. I’m so happy to see you!” Marusia’s eyes blurred with tears. “Oh Lord, how I prayed for someone besides me to come back here.”

  Evdokia and her husband sat down near the woodstove and took off their boots. Marusia rushed to fetch them some felt kaptsi for their feet.

  “Well, we would’ve come earlier, but my old man here had to take so many leak stops.”

  Marusia was relieved to see Evdokia’s high cheeks bloom and redden and that familiar pug nose twitch when her old friend lifted the soup lid and sniffed the pot. “Smells good, but needs more salt, Marusia,” Evdokia said. She sat down at the table. “But thank God we came before it got too dark. We heard the church bells when we came to the village and I felt so much better. I said to my old man, ‘See, we’re not all dead yet.’ Then we saw your chimney smoking. No one else’s, although we knocked on just about everybody’s door along the way.”

  Marusia kept crying and wrung her hands and rocked back and forth with joy. “I’m all alone here, I came back first. Just me. Nobody else. Now you’re here. Slava Bohu. Praise God!”

  “But how did you manage by yourself like this?” Evdokia asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m so alone. I prayed someone would return. But, even better, I’m so glad it’s you, my friends!”

  Marusia insisted that the old couple sit at the table, where she set out three shot glasses and a special bottle of the rose-petal vodka she and Yurko had prepared so many years ago. She served them huge portions of the cabbage soup that was bubbling in her pot.

  The three of them raised their glasses. “Bless you. You came back. Dai Bozhe,” Marusia said. They downed their drinks.

  “Okh, that was good,” Evdokia said. “It’s been so long since I had that.”

  Marusia refilled the glasses.

  “Let’s see,” Evdokia continued, “the last time we saw you was in town, before we left on those bumpy buses. Yoy, my butt still hurts from that ride!” She and her husband slurped the hot soup. Evdokia took out a hard piece of dark bread from the pocket of her sweater and gave half of it to her husband. She dunked the other half into her bowl. “We ended up in the Carpathians,” she said.

  “Karpaty!” repeated the man dreamily. His mustache was wet and dripping from the soup he drank without using the spoon Marusia had given him.

  “The mountains! Is that where our people went? I was in Kyiv.”

  “That would’ve been better. Many of us were put in with families near the Polish border. They spoke so differently from us, who could understand anything? But so many of us won’t be back. Old Paraskevia, the priest’s mother, got sick. She refused to eat anything. They took her to some hospital. I heard she didn’t last long after that.”

  Marusia made the sign of the cross.

  Evdokia named many others from Starylis who had died—too many young ones who caught leukemia. “Well, my son-in-law gone as well,” Evdokia said, her eyes streaming. “He had cancer anyway. He was a commie, but you know toward the end, he asked for a priest.

  “And you know, Marusia, Hanna stayed with us for a while. But that wasn’t good enough for her. She went to Lviv—the big city. She lost the baby, and then her stupid husband got sent back to clean up in Chornobyl. We never heard again from him. She got involved with some Party big shot—an old fart who left his wife and six children. She’s living with him in a dacha in Odesa. And before I left, her mother—my own daughter—was about to move down there with them. What sins! Of course, we didn’t want to go with them.”

  Oleh laughed.

  “This old fool is too stupid to know anything. Just as well,” said Evdokia, grinning at her husband.

  “My Yurko is dead,” Marusia said. She sobbed through her own story, and appreciated her friends’ echoes of sympathy.

  After a while the tears were wiped, and Oleh asked for more soup and poured himself another shot glass full of vodka.

  “How is my home? Is it all right? Tell me if it’s not,” Evdokia said.

  “I don’t really know. I never went into anyone’s house except my own and the church.”

  “I worried about my house. I had my vegetables and my root cellar. It may have all gone bad. And this one here”—she pointed to Oleh—“cried himself to sleep over his wine and his still. But my cow is dead I suppose,” she said quietly. “And my pigs and ducks…”

&
nbsp; “My bees!” Oleh cried out.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know. I just couldn’t go into the houses to look. I went into the Metrenkos’ when I first came back—for only a few minutes—and it made me so sad and lonely that I didn’t have the heart… you know. I was so lonely.”

  Evdokia nodded her head. “Well, we should go back to our own home. I don’t care how bad it is. I won’t sleep until I know that it’s at least standing.” She rose and collected the soup bowls.

  “Leave that, I’ll take care of it. Stay here tonight. You can see your house in the morning.”

  “No. I want to see it now. Hey you, old man,” she scolded her husband, “leave that bottle alone and put on your boots.”

  “Wait.” Marusia jumped out of her chair. “Let me get a candle. I’ll go with you.”

  The three of them walked down the road in the cool darkness. Evdokia lived three houses away from Marusia, and just like her, she fell on her knees and kissed the earth before entering through the door. Oleh laughed and shuffled a little dance, his mouth black except for one front tooth. Inside, Evdokia lit the candles that were left over from the last Easter, because there was no electricity. She stumbled around until she found a kerosene lamp and set it on her kitchen table. The house was musty. Evdokia immediately attacked a large cobweb with a broom. A dried dead spider fell to the ground, and its brittle shell shattered when it hit the floor.

  “What a mess! Feh!” Evdokia complained. Although the light was dim, her quick eyes darted around to see if anything was stolen. She hurried to the pantry. “Well, looks all right. But who knows….” she muttered. “My food!” she said. She lit another kerosene lamp and coaxed Marusia to follow her down to the root cellar. But something made Marusia stay in the room with the old man. She watched Oleh head toward his favorite rocker, which was where he left it, in front of the brown-tiled stove. It was dark in that corner, and he didn’t bother to light a candle and set it near him. He sat down, found his pipe in his coat pocket, but didn’t know where he had left his matches.