Justice

Even on the hottest day of the whole summer, it was still cool inside the church. It was dim there, as if no light could ever really touch the sacred frescoes and icons anymore — they were too old now for sun or warmth. And had there ever been a time for the sun to kiss them anyway? They had been painted long ago in small monk cells, in half-darkness, by withered and meticulous hands. Then they were brought here — probably on a cloudy day, like most days in this country — to be hung on the walls, to guide those desperate enough to seek directions here, of all places.

It smelled of mold inside. And of dying. The rare parishioners who still came here smelled like that too — like dust and oblivion, like a slow, creeping madness.

Behind a crude gray column, in the dark corner of the church, a woman prayed before a crucifixion. Her hunched shoulders trembled silently, and heavy, full tears fell down on it. She slouched so deeply it looked as though the lightest breeze might knock her over onto it, onto the sharp stone edges, onto the nails carved from rock and painted carefully in deep red, like wine. Or blood. Or fire.

“Cry not, Mother Anna; your son is not lost, for he lives eternally in Heaven.” A hand rested gently on her back, patting softly as a quiet voice added, tenderly, “And in time, you shall reunite with him in the house of the Lord.”

Father Inokentiy had always been kind to her. Long ago, when her hair was still long and black and her eyes a deep green, he helped her through the death of her husband. Oh, how kind he was, how good — her dear Father Inokentiy.

But he didn’t know. He didn’t know her sin.

She shivered, and more tears fell — the only things that had ever truly kissed anything inside these walls.

***

She remembered it as if it were yesterday — not some distant, impossible fifty years ago — as she wept in that very spot, with the same hand around her shoulders, though it had once been much younger. You see, she lost a husband that fateful day. But she didn’t cry for him.

She cried for her eternal soul, which she believed was doomed to burn forever in the pits of Hell. Because it was she who had killed her husband.

Perhaps not with her own hands — though she had longed to strangle the last breath out of him — but it was her doing all the same.

Her only sin, back then, was naivety. She had believed him when he promised it would never happen again, when he swore he’d never lay a hand on her, when he vowed no drop of alcohol would ever touch his tongue. He brought her flowers and sweets. He got down on one knee.

Her mother had said he was a good man and deserved a second chance. Her girlfriends told her it was normal — every man beats his wife from time to time. They had a son together. Dimochka. A sweet little boy with blond hair and big blue eyes. He was five at the time.

But it was Father Inokentiy’s words that made her forgive him.

“Let not your heart be hardened, Sister Anna; forgive your husband, as the Lord forgives you.”

And it was his gentle presence in her life that made her believe a person might truly change.

But time went on, and her husband’s love for her drowned beneath the steady rain of the years — just as his promises sank into another bottle of green glass.

He was cruel to her — he had been beating her on and off for over a year. Her belly, her thighs, her back — blue-black bruises, like his eyes, like his heart. He rarely touched her face; society frowned upon that, after all.

Dimochka was seven. When he saw his father raise a fist, he stepped in and took the blow. Her little guardian crumpled to the kitchen floor, and the man’s foot slammed into his back. Then again. And again. And then no more — because Anna threw down her fragile, used body and wrapped herself around her angel, taking the blows instead.

Afterward, Dimochka wept into her ear and whispered, “Mother, sorry… I’m so sorry, Mother, Mother…”

She still heard that desperate voice. She might forget everything else — of old age or of weariness — but not that. Not the sound of her child crying.

That night, when Dimochka finally fell asleep, she rose from the creaky bed they shared and went to the prayer corner.

She took a box of matches with her.

She looked back at the boy once more. His left cheek was marred with blue — not at all like his eyes, but a nasty, dirty colour. Her resolve hardened at the sight of it, and her hands stopped trembling.

Her grandmother used to tell her stories.

Dark, sorrowful stories — stories that offended the Lord. Blasphemous stories she had spent years trying to forget, trying to pray away every night of her youth, kneeling in the dark. She was certain her grandmother never crossed the gates of Heaven, no matter how hard Anna prayed. Only the flames of Hell waited for women like her.

"You’ve got witch blood in your veins, Anna — just like your granny,” her grandmother would say, combing her hair, braiding it into intricate patterns with ribbons.

“If you’re ever in doubt, burn the face of God, and pray to the Fire,” she would whisper when the nights were darkest and the only light came from candles, their reflection flickering in her pale, glassy eyes. “It will always listen.”

“It will always listen…” That night, for the first time in her life, Anna said the words aloud.

She burned her most beautiful icon. With it, she lit a single candle and murmured:

"You will always listen, she used to say…

I pray —

Kill every man I see who beats his wife.

Kill every man I see who strikes his child.

Burn every man. Burn every man, oh mighty Fire…”

She spent that endless night on her knees. In all her years, God had never answered her. Neither had the Fire. But it was not words she sought, but deeds.

That very morning, they found her husband dead beneath a bench not far from home. He was naked. They said he’d gotten so drunk, he passed out in the middle of the street on a freezing winter night. He had been so frostbitten that, before dying, he woke up and tore off all his clothes. When the body freezes, they told her, there’s a moment just before death when it suddenly feels like you’re burning alive — and people strip down, trying to cool themselves.

They told her they were sorry. Sorry for her, and sorry for him. They told her she’d find another man, for sure. She never did. But she saved so many women from her fate.

Every couple of years, a bad man would suffocate, or burn, or be found scorched. Cursed town, they said. But the eyes of widows said something else. Blessed.

Anna hunted those men like an owl hunts mice. She listened in the dark for the softest sob in a pillow, the faintest cry behind closed walls. She lit church candles every Sunday and prayed to the Fire, begging it to burn every man who struck a wife or child. And it worked. Like clockwork.

***

Yesterday, she visited her son again. She did it every Thursday — they’d dine together: Anna, her son, his dear wife Mila, and their two daughters.

Anna was a grandmother now. But she never told her grandchildren the words her own grandmother used to whisper. There was no need — not anymore. Dimochka would always protect his girls, and one day their happy family would be reunited in Heaven. She wouldn’t join them, but that was alright. That was all right.

When she arrived at their flat, slightly earlier than planned, the door was ajar. Her Dimochka could be so carefree… Or perhaps it was Mila who had forgotten to close it. She heard voices from the kitchen — low, hushed voices — and she stepped closer, peeking around the corner.

She heard it before she saw it: the sharp thud of a fist hitting unguarded flesh, and the wet sob of a woman. Anna blinked. And blinked again. The bag with her signature raspberry pie slipped from her hands and fell to the floor. Big blue eyes stared back at her in horror.

“Mother, it’s not — ”

But she never heard the rest. Like in a fevered dream she fled back to her flat. She rushed to the prayer corner, dropped to her old knees, and begged God to forgive her son. “Just once,” she pleaded. “Just this once. It would never happen again. Please — please do not shut the gates of Heaven on him. He is a good boy.”

She prayed, and prayed, and prayed. But God, as always, was silent. The Fire, however… The Fire had always listened.

Early the next morning, she was woken by a knock at the door.

“There was a fire last night,” they told her.

***

She shivered and cried in the dark corner of the church — the same one where she had prayed for the last five decades. A warm hand hugged her shoulders. The glow from candles danced on the bloodied crucifix.

“Our Lord will guide his soul,” Father Inokentiy whispered calmly to her. And the words stuck in her mind like a bee in honey. Guide, she thought, looking at the icons without really seeing them. It was him who had made her forgive her husband. It was him who had led her to the Fire. It was his guidance that had killed her son.

“As you guide us here?” she asked at last.

And the tender voice answered, “Of course, Mother Anna. Just as I, a slave of our Lord, guide us here.”

Her sobs stopped. Carefully, she turned around and placed her old hands around his neck. He was taller than her, and stronger. But the hands of an angry mother can hold their own, just once. Until the last second, the look on his face showed he didn’t believe. And then, when he finally began to struggle, it showed something worse: he didn’t understand.

***

The next morning, the church was gone.

“Someone poured out a whole canister of petrol,” the police said.

It went up like a matchbox — faster than dry leaves — and burned to the ground. Father Inokentiy died in the fire. What a tragedy, they said. So lucky we are to have Mother Anna guide us through these terrible times. The most devout believer of them all, the church’s truest friend.

She told them then: never forget, never forgive. And they didn’t. They searched for the one responsible day and night for a very long time — to no avail.

She told them her days on this Earth were nearing their end. They always disagreed loudly, but they listened, as she promised to meet Father Inokentiy in the afterlife — to thank him for all the good he had brought to their town.

They said he was the best of them all. A guardian of souls. A man who kept them on the path to God. Surely, they said, he’d be waiting for them up there — with the keys to Heaven in his hand.