Chapter 1
And the Lord said to Cain: “The blood of your brother cries out to Me from the ground. Therefore, when you till the earth, pour out your sweat and your blood into the furrows, so that the earth may be saturated with the suffering of the righteous and yield fruit a hundredfold. For without blood there is no salvation, and without hunger there is no purification.”(The Righteous Book, chapter 4, verses 10–14)The little town was tiny — only three thousand inhabitants — and it lived as if time here did not move forward, but turned in circles, always returning to the same familiar days. People woke early, went to bed early, and lived, on the whole, quietly, yet beneath that quiet lay a weight — not anger, not melancholy, but a thick, sticky weariness. Everyone knew: things would never get better, but one still had to live. Old folks sat on benches by their gates and stared down the road with the expression of people who had long ago stopped waiting for change. The young dreamed of leaving — for a bigger city, even if only for a short while, to escape the crushing atmosphere — but those dreams remained dreams. And those who had resigned themselves years ago simply did their work and no longer even noticed the hopelessness surrounding them.There were only two paved streets, but each had its own character. The central one was livelier, with occasional but unavoidable crowds near the shop and the bus stop. There was always some sound: neighbors swearing, the clatter of carts that grandmothers used to haul groceries. Smells changed with the time of day — in the morning, bread and the exhaust of the old bus; at midday, the heat of sun-baked dust; in the evening, smoke from the stoves that were still lit in almost every house.The second paved street was quieter. Fewer people, less light, fewer events — as if it existed only so the town would not seem completely lifeless. Houses stood farther apart, and between them grew tall weeds. Sometimes teenagers walked along it — loud, insolent — but as soon as they vanished around the corner, silence returned instantly, as though someone had simply turned off the sound.All the other roads were dirt paths, snaking like little serpents between vegetable gardens and fences, through misty morning air and evening bonfires. People walked them slowly, as though every step required effort. Here it often smelled of damp earth, old wood, and just faintly — of sadness.The dairy factory had closed about ten years earlier. Its huge windows, broken and dark, stared straight into the heartbeat of the town, and it felt as if the factory was watching the people and remembered what this place had once been when it was still running: noisy, confident, necessary. Now the wind wandered through its empty belly, whistled through its metal ribs, and chased scraps of old paper around the corners like ghosts of what had once boiled here.And beyond the factory, where the asphalt simply ended — as though someone had ripped it off — began Zelyonaya Street.At the very end of the street stood the old house of Marfa and Faddey. Inside there were four rooms, but they lived in only two. The other two had long been boarded up from the inside with thick planks crossed in an X — “so the unclean one cannot slip through, cannot find a way in.” The doors were also draped with old blankets, and even in a strong wind no sound came from those rooms, as though they had died long ago. Almost no glass remained in the windows: someone had broken it years before and no one bothered to replace it. Instead they stretched cloudy plastic from old greenhouses across the frames. Light entered stingily, gray-green, as though you were looking at the world through the dull eyelid of a corpse. Even on a bright day the house remained in perpetual twilight, and eyes adjusted to it slowly, unwillingly. The smell inside was thick and heavy: incense burned every evening, bitter dried wormwood whose bundles hung in every corner, and something else repulsive — cold, earthen dampness that rose from the floor and soaked into every crack. Breathing here was hard, as though the air itself had grown old and refused to let strangers in.There had never been a television. Radio was sin. Newspapers, magazines, books — except for the One Book they read every day — were the mark of the beast. Even an ordinary Bible sold in the church shop was considered “corrupted by Jewish scribes.” If someone brought a calendar or a postcard as a gift, Marfa burned it on the threshold and buried the ashes beyond the fence.Furniture: a long table, two stools, Marfa’s iron bed, and Faddey’s cot by the stove. On the wall — an embroidered design in red thread on gray fabric: “The Body of Christ in Wounds,” and the inscription: “Die every day, that you may live forever.”The days had been the same for entire decades.Rise at four in the morning. Thirty-three prostrations. Morning prayer. Breakfast: a piece of bread soaked in boiling water. Salt — sometimes. Sugar and sweets — sin.The vegetable garden — ten hundred square meters behind the house. Only a spade and hands. No machinery, not even a hand cultivator. The earth was turned three times a year — spring, summer, autumn — “so the earth grows weary and submits.” They planted: potatoes, cabbage, onions, and garlic.Meat they ate very rarely, only when one of the “brothers” brought a piece. Marfa would say: “If the church gave it, then God Himself has ordained it.” They cooked thin soup without salt and ate in silence, thanking for every spoonful.A goat lived in the shed. The milk went to Marfa; Faddey drank the whey.On Saturdays — “going out into the world.” They took “worldly” clothes from the chest: Marfa — a dark blue dress and a flowered headscarf; Faddey — a gray shirt and old trousers. While dressing, they did not look at each other — it was shameful. They walked to the square by the bus stop. Marfa held up a piece of cardboard:“CHRIST SAID: HUNGER IS THE LADDER TO THE KINGDOM. SAVE YOURSELVES THROUGH SUFFERING, NOT THROUGH SATIETY.”They handed out leaflets.Once — Faddey could not forget it for a long time afterward — three young men, eighteen or twenty years old, approached. One snatched several leaflets from him, crumpled them, and threw them back straight into his face. Not hard, but precisely: the papers struck his cheek and fell into the mud. The second laughed. The third spat toward Marfa and added quietly, but loud enough to be heard: “Idiots!” The crowd around pretended nothing was happening. Someone even smiled faintly at the corner of the mouth. The bus arrived, everyone boarded. The young men rode off, still laughing inside the bus. Faddey bent down, picked up the wet leaflets from the ground. Marfa stood beside him, clutching the cardboard tightly to her chest, and said not a word. They walked home in silence. Longer than usual. From that day on Faddey never doubted again. Not because he suddenly became stronger in faith. But because he understood: if he backed down now — then those three would have been right. And all that laughter, all that filth — would stay on him forever.Returning home, at the threshold they removed their “worldly” clothes and placed them in a basin of “holy” water. Naked, they knelt. The knotted whip with bits of glass moved across their backs: thirty-three lashes for the son — thirty-three for the mother. Blood dripped onto the floor. Then they wiped it with a rag, wrung the rag into a bucket, and poured it under the roots of the largest potato plant — “the earth must drink our guilt for contact with the sinful world.”That was how every Saturday ended. That was how every new day began — with prayers and waiting.
