The Black Wreath

****

On the first winter morning, eighty-year-old Petrov did not get out of bed, even though he had planned a visit to the gastroenterologist and then a trip to the market for fresh cottage cheese and Portuguese strawberries, which he bought in tiny portions and then carefully carried home in a little paper bag.

Petrov loved to spoil his wife Nina with delicacies. He had loved her for half a century. Nina was from Leningrad and remembered how her mother once boiled leather shoes, while her father whispered, “Ninka won’t survive anyway, we have to do something.” Nina was only eleven, but she understood perfectly well: “do something” meant condemning the weakest so that the stronger could continue living. A few weeks before the day her mother stood over the pot where her wedding shoes were softening in boiling water, the smell of meat broth drifted from the neighbors’ apartment. And their younger son, Nina’s classmate—a frail, dreamy boy who hoped to become a pilot, though it was obvious to anyone that someone so nearsighted would never be allowed into the sky—was never seen again. The neighbors didn’t even hide their eyes; on the contrary, they looked with a certain defiance, as if the alternative morality that had brought a flush to their cheeks and a sparkle to their eyes had become their backbone.

At that time Nina didn’t even have the strength to be afraid, much less to resist, but somehow her mother managed to save her. Ironically, out of the whole family, only she—Nina, the weakest—survived.

After the war, Nina never went hungry again. But berries, good cheese, little custard tarts delighted her like a child for the rest of her life. They were more precious than pearls and warmer than embraces.

It was very important for Petrov to go to the market for strawberries, yet he could not get up, as if invisible bonds were holding him. He didn’t rise on the second day of winter, nor on the third, and by February it was clear—he would not recover. He faded quickly, like a candle covered by a bell jar, and strangely—doctors never understood what was wrong.

Even at the beginning of autumn, no one would have guessed Petrov’s age—he had that distinctive bearing that betrays former military men. Broad shoulders, neat gray mustache, thick hair, leather jacket—at eighty people still said behind his back, “What a man!” And Petrov’s wife had heard all her life: “Be careful, someone will steal him from you!” And they tried—many times.

The last time was almost ridiculous—they hired a woman to help clean the apartment. Nina’s fingers had been twisted badly by arthritis; it was hard for her to wash the floors in all three rooms. So they found a helper through an ad. Her name was Galya. A simple village woman, the kind people often describe as “without face or age.” She could have been twenty-five or fifty. Stocky, with dry skin on her cheeks and nimble, strong fingers. She always carried a faint scent of sour sweat, and when she left, Nina, a little embarrassed, would still air out the rooms.

Galya came every other day. She worked well—among other things, she knew how to polish parquet with wax. She wasn’t lazy; she even vacuumed the ceiling, washed the windows monthly, laundered all the curtains. But there was one flaw—she had taken a strong liking to Petrov. He possessed that habitual gallantry that unspoiled women often mistake for personal affection. When he greeted the housekeeper in the morning—“Glad to see you, Galyushka!”—she would blush like a schoolgirl who had secretly read a chapter of her parents’ copy of *The Decameron*. Petrov, meanwhile, thought she had flushed from vigorous floor scrubbing. In such matters he was rather naïve.

Among men, lifelong monogamists are so rare that most people don’t even believe they exist. Petrov was in love with his wife—sincerely and simply. Over the years the feeling had grown calm—the ardor and passion had faded—but even after fifty years he still sometimes admired her in secret.

Nina would sit under the floor lamp with a book, and he would pretend to read *Soviet Sport*, while actually watching her. She had become so fragile, her once thick hair now completely white and thin, her skin yellowed with age, that he was almost afraid of her weightlessness. If Petrov had wings, he would have spread them over his wife to protect her from drafts, from the seasonal colds that swept through Moscow every autumn, from overly bright sunlight, from the rude nurse at the local clinic, from the bad news pouring out of the television.

And Galya would come to wash the floors in a short brocade skirt and, if politely offered tea with jam, never refused. She pitied Petrov. Such a handsome man, forced to live beside a wife who had aged unattractively, whom one might easily take for his mother. Noble, that was why.

Galya endured for a long time. She was used to proactive men and kept waiting for Petrov to notice her interest, lose his head over such unexpected happiness, and first drag her to bed and then to the altar.

The explanation was difficult. Galya was nervous—she was experienced on the field of coquettish laughter, but words always came hard to her. Petrov blinked in astonishment. Even if he had been alone, this sweaty, flushed woman in her inappropriate festive skirt would have been the last person to hold his gaze. He was wary of vulgar, noisy women.

Still, her awkward confessions touched him, and Petrov tried to choose words that would not wound her. He seated her in an armchair, poured good cognac, which Galina downed in one gulp like vodka.

The sturdy Galya could not understand why the juice of her life did not stir Petrov, while that dry, ever-chilled little old woman with bony collarbones, arthritic fingers, and faded eyes did.

After some time she said she could no longer clean their house. And, honestly, the Petrov family breathed a sigh of relief. This all happened in mid-October.

And then—this.

On the first day of spring, Petrov stopped breathing. It happened at dawn. Nina felt it immediately, in her sleep. She turned toward her husband. Even when Petrov fell ill, she had continued to sleep beside him. Habit. Dead Petrov lay next to her, smiling at the ceiling. During the months of illness he had shrunk so much that he no longer resembled himself.

At Petrov’s funeral and afterward, returning to the empty house where his pills and glasses still lay on the bedside table, Nina felt that her husband was somewhere nearby. As if, having left his body, he had truly grown those very wings with which he had dreamed of shielding and protecting her.

Nina was calm—she even smiled. She gave the neighbors the new winter jacket bought for Petrov but never worn, and an antique porcelain tureen. She wouldn’t beautifully set the table for herself alone. That would be too sad.

On the fortieth day, Nina decided to unstuff the pillow on which her husband had slept. An expensive pillow, goose down—but sleeping on a dead man’s pillow was a bad omen. She invited an acquaintance, a seamstress, who promised to finish in an hour or two. But after only a few minutes, she called Nina into the bedroom, her face dark.

“Look what I found. Who did this to you?”

On the bed lay a black wreath. Coming closer, Nina saw it was woven from crow feathers.

“What is this?” she asked in surprise.

“You should be the one to answer,” the seamstress smirked crookedly. “Whom did you offend so badly that someone cast a death curse on your house? Good thing you didn’t sleep on this pillow yourself—it would have finished you off, so thin as you are, in a week.”

Nina Petrov, who had once survived the siege of Leningrad, knew for certain that God did not exist. When she heard church bells, she always saw the smiling face of the neighbor boy who had been eaten by his own parents so they could survive. And no one condemned them; no one would have dared. It seemed to Nina that anyone who believed in God was either fainthearted or had simply never tried chewing wedding shoes boiled in salted water. She regarded faith as weakness, superstition as foolishness. For many years she and her husband had subscribed to *Science and Life*. At another time she would have laughed at the ignorant seamstress.

But the wreath of crow feathers—was there.

And Petrov—was dead, and the doctors had never found the cause of his decline.

“Nonsense…” Nina said, not entirely confidently. “And there was no one who could…”

“Think about it,” the seamstress narrowed her eyes, already anticipating how she would tell this vivid story to colleagues and relatives. “Did anyone outside your family come into your house? I recall you mentioning a woman who came to clean.”

Nina vividly saw Galya’s full red face before her; her upper lip trembling with anger, her pupils narrowed like a rabid dog’s.

“You’ll remember me yet,” she had said, taking her final wages from Nina’s hands. “You can’t treat me like this! You, quiet little thing, used to everything… to you, everything’s like holy water in your eyes. But I’m different. I can stand up for myself!”

“But for what…” Nina had blinked in confusion. “I don’t understand, my dear… Have we ever offended you in any way? And if you mean my husband, well, he simply…”

“Be quiet!” Galya had interrupted. For her, hatred was like a steam bath in a Russian sauna—her face flushed and beaded with sweat. “I just warned you!”

And now this… Death, so suddenly entering the house, the wreath in the pillow… No, Nina of course did not believe the seamstress—it was obvious to her that a single fact could not serve as a basis for conclusions. A coincidence, just a terrible coincidence.

For some reason, she buried the wreath of crow feathers in a vacant lot.