Babayaga

more diligent than Max. He labored at the catechetical courses and zealously obeyed the rules and rituals of the order, while the more mischievous and prankish Max was regularly caught and beaten. Once they were ordained, they both lived in the monastery, where Max continued to try the elders’ patience. When they were sent off on missions to other eparchies, the elders made them travel as a pair, hoping Andrei would be a moderating influence on his errant brother.
    On their last mission together, their destination was a small, remote village in the northern Ural Mountains. They never arrived there. On the eighth day of their journey, Max absentmindedly let their small carriage drift off the edge of the road into a deep, dry rut, splintering the wheel and breaking the axle. In the blistering heat, the two brothers loaded their luggage onto the back of their bony gray mare and trudged five miles to the nearest town, Ivdel. Arriving at dusk, they found the blacksmith’s shop closed and so they dragged their weary bodies to the inn for the night. The town was crowded and the innkeeper tried to gouge them at first, but ultimately, out of shame and reverence, he offered the two young priests a narrow room above the saloon with a small horsehair mattress to share.
    Ivdel was a prosperous gold town, booming in those days, and the brothers had arrived on the night of a saint’s festival. The bars and hotels were choked with loud miners, all scrubbed pink clean and roughly cologned with the scent of sweating vodka and pipe smoke, all of them hungry for rough stimulation after their deadening days of labor. Raucous music, shouting voices, and the rhythm of loud, dancing boots rattled and shook the thin paneled walls of the brothers’ small room, keeping the young priests awake. A grinning, invigorated Max finally insisted they go down to investigate, and a nervous, tired Andrei hesitantly followed.
    The bar was packed with the broad-shouldered miners and their rouged, laughing whores. Unused to scenes such as these, Andrei blushed at each flirty wink and batted eye, and the barman roared when he timidly asked for a pot of hot tea. Max meanwhile had wandered over to the far corner of the room, lured in and transfixed by the rattle of the ball on the roulette wheel. Later, Andrei realized it had been the perfect trap, neither of the two had ever faced any true temptations and yet here they were sunk deep in the bottom of the devil’s great belly. Before the next clock chimed, Max had coaxed their last coins from Andrei and was busy, betting fast and winning slow; it did not seem like he would last long. Nobody appeared surprised to see a young man in a clerical cassock throwing money down on the table, and they only roared the louder as his winning streak began and then picked up its pace. “You’re truly blessed, my father!” shouted the roughnecks, slapping him on the back as the nine other players dropped to five and then the five to one. When the last ball rattled and dropped into the red slot, Max’s pants and jacket pockets were stuffed full with rubles and kopecks, and, in a sight that made his brother blush, he had his arm firmly wrapped around the waist of a full-breasted grinning brunette. Grabbing a tall bottle of beer, Max announced he was off to find them better accommodations, and amid cheers from the host of drunken miners, the young priest swept the girl out the side door. Looking back over his shoulder as he left, Max held the bottle up, toasting an embarrassed and crestfallen Andrei with a wide, beaming smile. That was the last time the priest ever saw his brother, Max, in the flesh.
    The next day, waking alone on his stiff horsehair mattress, Andrei had waited until midafternoon before finally going out in search of his brother. He was not worried at first, sure that he would find Max in some nearby brothel, sleeping off his sins. Wandering through the town, Andrei prepared a sternly worded sermon for the foolish Max. But by nightfall he had begun to worry. The desk clerk claimed not to have seen Max since he had first checked in, and the local constable only shook his head—it was the sort of town where people came and went all the time, the policeman said. Perhaps his brother had eloped? Who could blame him, after all. Why remain a priest when you can run off, rich and happy, with a pretty young girl?
    Andrei remained a few more days in the town, walking up and down Ivdel’s streets, knocking on