Apricot Jam: And Other Stories by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Page B

tiny windows of the cupola, in which she saw the solemn yet compassionate descent of the Almighty from the dome above. When she was eleven, at St. Nicholas in the Spring , Nastenka walked alone some twenty-five versts through the fields to the monastery. At confession, she would search her conscience for something to tell and then complain that she could find no sins. Father Filaret, speaking through his stole he had placed over her, would say: “ Now you, my girl, must repent for what is to come. Repent for what is to come, for there will be sins, many sins. ”
     
    The times were quickly changing. The fifteen desyatins of church land Father Filaret and his parishioners had been allotted were confiscated and he was given four hectares, in accordance with the mouths he had to feed, which included the two aunts. But then, to ensure that all of them would work with their own hands, even those were taken away. At school they began looking askance at Nastenka, and her schoolmates would taunt her as “ the priest ’ s granddaughter. ” The school in Milostayki, in any case, was soon closed. If she hoped to get any more schooling, she would have to leave her home and her grandfather.
     
    Nastenka moved the ten versts to Cherenchitsy , where four of the girls had taken a room. The boys in that school were bullies: they would line each side of the narrow corridor and let none of the girls through until each boy had felt her all over. Nastya made a quick exit to the schoolyard, broke off a branch of prickly acacia, then boldly walked back and whipped any boy who reached for her. They left her alone after that. And in fact she was red-haired, freckled, and not considered pretty. (And if one of the other girls read a passage about love from some book, she would feel vaguely troubled.)
     
    Like all priests ’ daughters, her two aunts—Auntie Hanna and Auntie Frosya—could see no future for themselves. Just as Uncle Lyoka had earlier bought himself a certificate stating that he was the son of an impoverished peasant and then disappeared in some distant province, so now Auntie Frosya went off the Poltava in hopes of “ changing her social origins. ” Auntie Hanna, on the other hand, had a fiance back in Milostayki, and would have stayed on there, but she happened to find out in the town hospital that a woman friend of hers had aborted a child fathered by her fiance . Auntie Hanna came home, scarcely able to breathe, and within a week, out of spite, married a Red Army soldier, a communist, one of the troops then billeted in their house. And what kind of a wedding could they have? They simply went to the registry office, and she moved to Kharkov with him. Father Filaret, shattered, damned his daughter from the pulpit for not having her marriage sanctified by the church. Now he was entirely alone in the house.
     
    Another winter passed, and Nastenka finished her seven-year school. What should she do now, and where should she go? Auntie Hanna, meanwhile, was doing rather well: she was the head of an orphanage on the outskirts of Kharkov, but she and her husband could not get on together and divorced, though he held an important post. She invited her niece to live with her. Nastenka spent a final summer with her grandfather. At his bidding she took with her a little paper icon of the Savior, “ Persevere and Pray. ” She hid it in an envelope and then put it inside a notebook: it was a bad idea to let anyone see it there. And when autumn came, she went off to her aunt.
     
    Auntie had already figured out which way the wind was blowing: “ So now what can you do? Work at the brick factory? Or scrub floors? You ’ ve got no choice, you have to join the Komsomol. Then you can come and work for me. ” For the time being, she took her on as a teacher ’ s assistant to play around with the kids. Nastenka liked that a lot, though it was just a temporary job. But she already knew what she had to do: to tell the children what was right