Spring Sonata

Life opens doors, then shuts them tight. Fate scripts the episodes yet to come. Whether you're a kindly soul or an evil genius, Your road is paved with one cruel shock after another.

— Rustaveli

On this first fine day of spring, the gentle sun beamed with all its might, embracing the city with quiet affection and coaxing its frostbitten streets out of February’s grip and that of its bone-crunching brethren.

Birds traded lilting trills, broadcasting the arrival of spring to the world at Twitter speed. Spring herself hurried to awaken the earth and all its inhabitants, stirring them from their drowsiness and melancholy with the delicate scent of blossoms and the breath of a refreshing breeze. Perhaps she was trying to shake off her own lingering sleepiness, too.

If we follow one of the countless sunbeams, we’ll see it hesitate at first, peering in shyly, like a kitten, through the window of a small, rather cosy café called Gourmet & Haze. The place was decorated in Scandinavian style. Inside, the rich aroma of freshly brewed beer and meat stew crept stealthily towards the street, teasing the noses of hungry passers-by. Faux animal hides hung on the walls, while an elaborate stag’s skull crowned the bar, looming in the gloom with an almost primordial menace. A tiny easel bearing the café’s own ornate sign—Soup of the Day: Beer—served as something of a doorman, though it was rather poor at opening doors. Every item in the interior had been carefully chosen and purchased on eBay.

Yet neither the sign nor the enchanting aroma could tempt a single passer-by inside that day. People emerged, crawled, perhaps even flew out of their lairs, all in search of a little sunshine for their weary bones. In those blissful moments, nothing could have lured them back into their concrete, brick or wooden boxes, however inviting those boxes might be.

Follow another sunbeam, though, and we’ll find a very different scene. Two junkies had put their planned high on hold to bask in the sunlight filtering into a miserable little room, its walls eaten away by mould and its air saturated with the stench of krokodil. The filthy curtains, the crusted sofa and every other piece of furniture bore such a comprehensive assortment of stains that the room could have served as a training manual for a professional cleaning company.

Ha! Did you fall for it?

What bloody sunshine? The only thing likely to distract a junkie from a fix is Death herself.

And there she stood around the corner, finishing a cigar potent enough to give a person lung cancer with a single drag. Every so often, she glanced at her smartwatch. Well, what could you expect? Even Death was a tech-savvy creature.

“Hold the spoon steady, you idiot,” his fellow user snapped.

The man was trying with every last ounce of his strength, but he could already feel himself soaring towards that dizzying otherworld, where he would dissolve into nothingness and, at last, grow wings and be free.

The third sunbeam fell upon a passer-by who squeezed his eyes shut beneath its attention. Warmed by the sun, his thoughts curled into a loose iambic rhythm, only to dissolve into the immaculate blue of the sky. He wandered aimlessly down the street, swaying slightly in the intoxicating warmth.

He was no ordinary passer-by. His clothes marked him as a clergyman, while his face revealed his youth. He left a trail of candle wax and incense in his wake. People turned to look, stirred by the scent and the sight of his black cassock. Reverence, curiosity and even apprehension flickered in their eyes like minnows in clear water. It wasn’t every day that a priest appeared in the bustle of the secular world, almost as though Christ himself had once again been revealed to the people.

He continued on his way, a peaceful smile resting on his lips.

Or so it seemed at first glance.

Anyone who took a closer look might have noticed the tears suspended in the corners of his eyes, poised but unable to fall. Those two tiny droplets had no idea that they were holding back a waterfall. A raging, deadly one.

The damned sun only made matters worse. Desperate for shelter, the priest slipped into the first café he came across. It happened to be Gourmet & Haze.

Ignoring the astonished looks of the manager and two waiters, he headed straight for the restroom.

Only there could he finally breathe out.

Breathe out the whole day.

It was my seventh service.

I was proud of that, though pride was a sin. Proud in the way a small child is proud after taking his first step towards a vast world, so wondrous and strange that all he wants to do is run towards it, stumbling and falling along the way.

Inside me, a lamp seemed to burn, fuelled by the unwavering conviction that I had found my calling. To carry the word of God in my hands, to bring its light to lost souls, to offer them hope of salvation and eternal life: it had all seemed like an extraordinary grace.

Throughout my years at the theological seminary, that life-giving enthusiasm had coursed through me like blood, nourishing my dreams of a future in which faith would no longer be a bargaining chip and the Church would free itself from the sinful grip of spiritual decay and the corrupting influence of its own senior clergy.

Perhaps my dreams reeked of youthful idealism, mixed with a desire to overturn the established order. But I had never worn rose-tinted glasses. Not once.

Sunday service was drawing steadily to a close, and the queue for confession was dwindling. I was about to return to the altar after hearing the confession of a man who looked utterly wretched when Providence—or something else—intervened.

My eyes were drawn to a young woman who had just entered the church.

She was impossible to overlook. The first thing I noticed was her delicate figure, like one of those porcelain ballerinas that live inside musical jewellery boxes, turning when the lid is lifted.

For a moment, the church choir seemed to be drowned out by a sudden, inexplicable music. Framed by those imaginary notes and the shafts of sunlight passing through the stained-glass windows, she appeared to glow from within. Her radiance was faint and ethereal, yet no less powerful than sunlight reflected from a mirror.

The man’s words reached me as though they were coming from behind a thick wall. His head was bowed guiltily over the Bible.

“...I wish I could find some way to ease my suffering, but I doubt even God could forgive me. What I’ve done is unforgivable. I’m going to burn in hell.”

His voice trembled on the brink of despair. I forced my attention back to him.

“This happened the day before yesterday.”

He began nervously rubbing the thumb of one hand.

“My wife had been sober for three weeks after undergoing treatment meant to keep her from drinking. I was so happy. Every single day she stayed sober felt like a gift,” he said, his voice breaking.

“For the first time in ages, I began to hope we might have a happy life again.”

He drew a deep breath, the way people do when they are trying to hold back a sob.

“Going to the cinema again. Walking in the park on long evenings. Making strawberry cheesecakes, the ones Anna loves so much—our little princess. Taking trips into the countryside at weekends. There are so many beautiful places in Bashkortostan we’ve never been to.”

He tried to wipe away a tear without drawing attention to it. It ran down his face like a drop of pain that had finally found a way out.

“I was coming home from another successful job. I’d repaired a lathe on a floating barge, and I planned to put the money aside for a trip. To the sea or the mountains. It doesn’t matter now.”

Desolation seeped from every word, spreading across the floor in invisible, bitter pools.

“When I got home, there were no parking spaces in the courtyard, so I had to drive around for a while. Eventually, I found a spot near a twenty-four-hour supermarket.”

Like anyone who has suffered a devastating blow, he was delaying the moment when he would have to tell the worst of it. Some part of him seemed to believe that if he said it aloud, the whole thing would become real: a stain on the canvas of his soul that could never be scrubbed out.

He went on, describing how he had popped into the shop to buy Anna a Kinder Surprise. On his way to the checkout, he had spotted a little bunch of red tulips, his wife’s favourite. He usually bought her flowers for special occasions, but something had moved him to make her happy for no reason at all.

With his purchases in hand, he had walked home imagining a delicious dinner and the joyful embraces of his wife and daughter, whom he had missed terribly.

“As I climbed the stairs, I kept thinking, Lord, when will these bloody steps end? I even cursed myself for not taking the lift.

“When I reached our door, something felt wrong. The flat was too quiet. I couldn’t even hear the television.

“The moment I opened the door, I understood.

“The stale, sour smell of alcohol was wandering through the flat like it owned the place. I felt sick. Some part of me refused to believe this was our home, that I hadn’t somehow opened the wrong door.

“But I had.

“I took off my shoes slowly, set the flowers and the Kinder Surprise carefully on the cabinet, and ran to Anna’s room.

“It was a disaster. Toys, books, dollhouses—everything had been dumped into a heap in the middle of the floor.

“But Anna wasn’t there.

“Neither was my wife.

“The kitchen was littered with empty bottles of whisky and vodka. There were two glasses on the table: one empty, the other filled with cola, still fizzing.

“Something savage took hold of me. All my dreams of a normal life cracked apart and crumbled into dust.”

He had gone looking for them.

“It didn’t take long to find my wife. She was in the basement, relieving herself on a homeless man who was asleep on the floor.

“And beside them... there she was.”

His voice broke. He stopped to catch his breath.

“Anna wasn’t breathing. Her skin was ice-cold, and there were red blotches all over it.

“I called an ambulance and carried her upstairs to the flat. While I waited for it to arrive, I tried to make her little heart beat again.”

Suddenly, his voice became unnervingly calm, the calm of a man already condemned to death.

“When the ambulance crew arrived, they pronounced her dead.

“You don’t have to be a genius to know what lividity means. Those dark marks on a dead body tell you that death has already set in. That it’s final. Irreversible.

“But I couldn’t accept it. I screamed at them to do their fucking jobs. Then I fell to my knees and begged them to save her. She was only five. No one deserves to die at five years old.

“I cried and begged them. I begged God not to take Anna away so soon.

“But no one answered.

“They took Anna to the morgue for an autopsy. They took my wife—the creature she had become—to the hospital.

“And I was left alone in a flat that suddenly seemed to belong to strangers. I couldn’t understand how my whole world had been reduced to rubble in the space of two days.”

He fell silent for a moment.

“The doctors said Anna had suffered a severe allergic reaction. The swelling had affected her throat, and she’d suffocated. They called it angioedema.

“I think my wife wanted to turn her into a drinking companion. Maybe she gave her something she shouldn’t have. Maybe it was the alcohol, or something else entirely. I don’t know. I can’t stop thinking about it.

“Anna died gasping for air. A horrible death for a little girl.”

He finished his story and raised his eyes.

They were the eyes of a dead man, ringed with a web of bloodshot vessels.

I could not hide the horror and confusion on my face. Inwardly, I begged God to help me, to give me something to say, some word that might reach this man before he slipped beyond all reach.

But God remained silent.

“Thank you for listening, Father. I can go now.”

With those words, he drew a Beretta and shot himself in the head.

His body fell with a dull thud. A thin stream of blood wound its way down his face like a little brook. Sunlight caught the droplets, scattering bright red glints that seemed to creep on tiny, sharp legs into the pupils of the stunned congregation.

I splashed cold water over my face.

It did nothing to help.

Could I have prevented what had happened? I stared at myself in the mirror, asking the question over and over.

There was no answer.

One thing, however, I knew with terrible certainty: if I hadn’t been distracted by that girl, perhaps I would have noticed the strange bulge in the man’s pocket. Perhaps I would have seen the way his hand kept returning to it, touching and stroking the weapon hidden inside.

Perhaps.

The word lodged in my mind like a splinter.

I had been standing there, a priest, entrusted with another person’s despair, and I had allowed myself to be distracted by a pretty face. I had let the man’s words fade into the background while I watched a stranger walk into the church.

I had wanted to believe that my calling made me different. Better, perhaps. I had imagined that faith would make me attentive to every suffering soul, that I would recognise the moment when someone needed me most.

But I had looked away.

And now a man was dead on the church floor.

Could I still wear the cross after that? Could God still trust me?

A line from the film Corpus Christi came back to me:

How can I be made in Your image? You are so pure, and I carry so much filth inside me.

For the first time, I felt the filth clinging to my cassock. Not the literal grime of the world, but something far more stubborn: the stain of my own weakness, my vanity, my failure to be the man I had promised God I would become.

I had committed a terrible sin—or so it felt. A sin for which no service, no prayer, no ritual could mend the desecrated walls of that church.

And yet, beneath the shame, another thought kept beating against the edges of my consciousness. I tried to push it away, but it returned.

Could God have prevented that little girl’s death?

I had no answer for that, either.

I wanted to believe that everything had its place in some divine design. That suffering, however unbearable, belonged to a pattern beyond human understanding. But what pattern could contain a five-year-old girl dying in terror? What purpose could possibly justify a father’s final, desperate act? And if God had been there all along, listening to the man’s confession, why had He not intervened?

I was ashamed of my questions. I was even more ashamed that I could no longer silence them.

Perhaps my faith had not disappeared. Perhaps it was still there, somewhere beneath the wreckage, refusing to die. But for the first time, I could not tell whether I was holding on to God or merely clinging to the man I had once believed myself to be.

I left the café, apologising for the disturbance.

Later, one of the customers would find a substantial cross lying in the sink, its metal dulled by water. Whatever faith and warmth had once clung to it had long since been washed down the drain.

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