Telling Fortunes

When they turn the electricity off here in the village, everybody promptly shows up at Granny Shura’s. Because it’s so boring, sitting at home with no light. Granny has many a tale to tell, and she knows lots of sassy little ditties and funny jokes. The girls plump themselves down to knit socks, while granny’s at her wheel, spinning her wool and telling her stories. The girls are laughing their heads off, the samovar’s steaming, there are little poppy-seed bagels and gooseberry jam on the table. So there they sit, swigging tea. The candlelight sways, and the darkness lurks in the corners, so scary. Meanwhile, though, Granny Shura always has plenty to say.

“There now, you Natashkas, Lenkas, and Lyubkas,” she tells them. “You lot know nothing about life. A bunch of airheads, and you go shopping for a fiancé in the newspapers. What’s he like, in the paper? He promises you the moon and the stars, he’s a looker, doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, got all the money you could wish for, but how’s it come out? Psssht! What an eyesore! He looks a fright, and he drinks like a fish, and all he’s got in his pockets is moths.”

“But Granny Shura, how can you find out if he’s lying?” asks Natashka, who’s divorced already but is still young, with her white teeth, a braid down to her hind end, and her fresh-faced complexion.

Granny Shura breaks off a piece of one of her little bagels and dips it in the jam. “Fortune-telling’s what you need,” she says. “You have to figure him out before you even meet. The old folks knew what they were doing. They didn’t just throw themselves into something like dummies. They’d go, they’d find things out, and they’d wait. Cross-eyed but rich, or good-looking, with a forelock like Yesenin, but poor.”

“And can’t we have everything at once?” That’s Lyubka, the youngest. Still in the homely stage of youth, her body has yet to fill out where it needs to, and she’s as boney as can be, to her mother’s dismay. “How about good-looking, and rich, and not a drinker?”

“Go watch a movie at the club for that.” Granny Shura waddles over to the sideboard for her bottle of fruit brandy. “In life, you get one out of three.”

They all have some brandy that brings the color to their cheeks, and then they start pestering Granny Shura with their “Let’s tell fortunes, c’mon, let’s do it.”

“I know!” Lenka runs into the entryway and brings back one of her felt boots. “You have to throw this from the porch. And whichever way the toe points, that’s where your fiancé’s going to come from. I need for mine to point toward Moscow. Where is Moscow, anyway?”

“It’s a long train ride away,” says Granny Shura. “And first you have to get a ride to the train. And then you go by bus. What d’you want – to have your boot give you a taxi ride all the way there?”

“Oh, right. Or you can go to a crossroads, and the first person you run into there, you ask him his name, and that’ll be your fiancé’s name.”

Natashka pours herself another glass. “Oh, don’t make me laugh! These days, there’s nobody roaming the roads except Grandpa Nikifor. And where are you going to find a Nikifor in Moscow? And what if it’s a gal who comes by?”

“Oh, well, I don’t know. We could read cards, then?”

“If you want, I’ll let you in on an ancient kind of fortune-telling.” Granny Shura wipes her fingers, which are slippery from the sheep’s wool, and runs her palm over the tablecloth. “You can go to a banya. But it has to be on the dot of midnight. You won’t be spooked, will you?”

“To a banya? Oh, but not the one in the forest!” Lyubka wants to get married so bad. Her ma nags the life out of her, and there’s no money, and there’s the cow to be milked, and the hay to mow, and she’s all set to waste away, a sad old spinster, while other folks are abroad somewhere, lying on a beach. “Let’s go, girls, shall we? And what then – are we going there to bathe?”

“No.” Granny Shura puts a greasy deck of cards on the table and spreads them out. She’s not looking for the king of diamonds but for the king of hearts, the marriage card. “We’ll go to grandpa’s banya, on the village outskirts. And in the anteroom, you have to bare something, whatever you’re brave enough to show: bosom or backside.”

“And why’s that?” Natasha’s actually blushing. “What if somebody pinches us?”

“That’s just it! That’s what the fortune-telling’s all about. You need to whisper the words and wait. If you’re pinched with a smooth hand, your husband’ll be a trouble maker and a skirt chaser. If you feel a stroking, he’ll love you. If it’s a rough hand, he’ll be a mean drunk. A crippled hand means he’s a pauper. If there’s a bruise left on you, he’ll be a thug. And if there’s like a coin stuck on the bare spot, he’s rich.”

“How’s money going to get stuck to my breast?” Natashka’s actually groping herself, to make sure there isn’t some there already.

“That’s what makes it sorcery,” Granny Shura yawns. “Now be off with you, girls, because they won’t be turning the lights back on until tomorrow, and besides, I need to get some shut-eye.”

The friends leave. There’s a bright moon in the sky; the snow’s glistening; the village sleeps. Even the dogs aren’t yapping.

“Shall we go, then?” Lenka’s evidently had a fair bit to drink, or she wouldn’t be so bold. There’s plenty of tattling about her in the village, her being so very keen on folks of the male persuasion. So everyone here knows about that, and who’s going to take her to wife? Probably only somebody from Moscow.

Natashka elbows Lyubka. “Let’s go,” she says. “Maybe it’ll work. Or you’ll just go on putting one ad after another in the paper, and waiting for what never comes.”

And off they go, off down a path that’s narrow, but where they can see everything plain as in daylight.

“Wait a minute. I’ll fetch a bottle,” Lenka says as they draw level with her house. “We’ll have a nip or two in the banya.”

When they get to grandpa’s banya, the bolt’s drawn, so it’s not locked. Grandpa must have been bathing and forgotten to lock it back up. They somehow find a candle stub in the darkness, and light it, then they drink straight out of the bottle, to work up the nerve.

“Go on, Lyubka. You go first,” Natashka says. “It’s more important to her. She’s a virgin.”

“No, I’m first!” Lenka bristles. “Lyubka’s young, and I’m ripe and ready and still on the shelf.”

“Then it’s me.” Natashka peels off her sheepskin coat. “I’ll be up for my pension soon. You people wait your turn. We’ll do it by age.”

Well, so she unbuttons her dress down the front and goes into the banya. It’s dark and scary. And all she can think is, why’s it so warm? It’s not Saturday, so grandpa won’t have been heating it. She stands in the middle of the room and rattles off Granny Shura’s charm: “Come, my intended, don’t leave me here stranded. Transform into another’s hand, show yourself at my command. Deceive me well or love me well...”

Nothing. Nobody grabs her, and there she stands, like a big ninny. But the other girls are piling in from the anteroom, wanting to be next. Lenka’s completely undressed, down to her undies, and Lyubka’s got nothing on but a t-shirt. And they’re all bawling, “Hey, betrothed – one for the road!”

And then the electricity comes back on. The bulb’s dim, but you can see everything clear as day. The girls freeze in their tracks. Because on the benches, three guys lie sleeping. They’d come to put a barn up for grandpa, and he’d let them stay in his banya.

Oh, and what a squealing there was! The guys had the scare of their lives, and the girls bolted away in whatever they’d managed to gather up.

And ever since that day, they’ve trusted nothing but the cards.