As a spouse, we have a small piece of real estate in one of the provinces. Modest one-room apartment.
Vasilina lives in the apartment opposite. Quiet, slightly inhibited woman. She comes to life in the spring, when her daughter and her grandchildren come to visit from a distant polar city.
Talkative peizans once told me that out of five memorial signs on the road leading to the village, three are in memory of Vasilina's sons.
One after another, they crashed on a country road with a difference of a year. Only the daughter remained. It was then that I understood the reason for the woman's oddities.
Once a neighbor told me a sad life story herself. Over the years, I spoke about my sons without grief, just stated a fact. To my timid question why so many people died on this site, maybe the place is not good, Vasya answered wisely. "You need to drink less," the neighbor typed without any hesitation. I again tried to reduce the conversation to mysticism. Like, after all, there were similar cases before, people told me. Vasilina looked at me, narrowed her eyes and chuckled. - There is no mysticism in this: both horses were drunk and crushed, and carts were broken. You, writer, do not look for hidden meaning where there is none. You have to invent everything, but paint beautifully so that people can fool their heads. But you are not like that. Why are you pretending.
Vasilina told how one day, yielding to the persuasions of her neighbors, she went to a local healer so that her youngest son, and her husband, now also deceased, would be discouraged from alcoholism.
- Do you think it helped? Whatever it is! They did not drink less. The son died six months later. The deceased husband still creaked. And he died from vodka. So, all lies about these healers, bad places, and other mysticism. No one appears in my dream and does not disturb me.
On Vasilina's thin neck, I saw a silver chain with an image darkened with time, carefully hidden from strangers. She caught my eye and grinned.
Promotional video:
- Yes I wear. I think maybe he will remember me someday.
I have never seen Vasya buy cakes on Easter, she does not cross herself on domes and does not go to services on Sundays. A piece of silver on a chain is worn as a tribute to tradition, but no more.
- Look, they will put on crosses, until … here Vasya used a word that cannot be written. They go to matins, and come home and curse each other, whip vodka and wave their fists. And they think, once they prayed, they beat their heads on the floor, then all sins were washed away. And you do not sin, and you will not have to beg for forgiveness. Am I right in thinking?
It was always surprising to me myself how such an explosive mixture gets along in our people. It would seem that do not commit immoral acts and you will not be ashamed. But no, they sin, and then selflessly repent, beg forgiveness and atonement. And it would be fine with the one who was offended. Not. Almighty. Go to your friend whom you betrayed, fall to your knees, grab your clothes, ask not to hold evil! What for? You can then justify in bulk. He prayed to the Lord, told about his sins, and seemed to be cleansed. This is slyness that I do not accept. As is customary to say on Forgiveness Sunday: "God will forgive, and I forgive." I can't take responsibility myself, let them judge up there.
Shifting responsibility from ourselves to the "Higher Forces" we forget about the basic principles of humanism. But it is on them that relationships are built in the entire enlightened world. It was in vain that great minds - Walter, Diderot and other contemporaries proclaimed their triumph! It turns out that in vain. Relationships are not determined by a person, but by a certain deity who will judge.
And how Vasilina is right about our duplicity. Sometimes you look at a married couple: they are married in the church, and the spouse has a cross up to the navel and on the pectoral signet is also a cross. And then you find out - he beats his quiet wife with a mortal battle, but drinks in black. But then he crosses himself on icons in the red corner, and on Easter he breaks his fast, although he never fasted.
And this "sweet" custom of christening and painting eggs. Draws people, who are in what is much: green, blue, yellow. But according to the canons, it is red, and only this way, not otherwise. All forty days, the townspeople and peasants, who ate meat, and pickles, sharply remember about the holiday. And you will think that the fast was not followed in all senses, it is important to “paint the eggs”, put them in a wicker basket and go to church decorously. And it doesn't matter that the night before they yelled at their home, so they wouldn't get confused underfoot, but they drank beer on the bench with their friends after hard work in the kitchen. It doesn't count! God will forgive.
And that all forty days my husband and I had fun, and whispered with a mother tongue, so it is in the order of things.
And on religious holidays, at least turn off messengers: Orthodox spam is pouring in from all numbers. You don't have time to send funny "gifs" with the image of leafy eggs and Easter bunnies to the trash can. Musical postcards wander back and forth: a holiday, national, as one madame told me. Indeed, nationwide! Triumph of hypocrisy and obscurantism. Recently, I have been doing this: I answer shortly to all Christmas and Easter cards: I am an atheist. Everything, no comment. The desire to send Orthodox rubbish discourages new subscribers "once". It's cheaper to be blacklisted once than to explain things. Consider me an evil, not tolerant witch. Say whatever you want, just don't call it Orthodox! I don’t want to belong to your camp, it’s better to have no friends left at all than such: deceitful and narrow-minded.
Do you even know that the Easter bunny and funny kittens are not Orthodox symbols? These cuties came to us from Catholicism. Have you read the Gospel at all, well, at least a brief summary? I doubt it. And it makes me so disgusted, scary and dreary. It's scary that I walk along the same streets with people living by double standards. For God, they have their own rules, for people - others. So it’s not far from trouble.
And the cake, which in Soviet childhood was bashfully called "spring cake", I bought on Monday with a big discount, it doesn't matter to me when I have it, I'm an atheist.