The Iron Grip

Before I begin the story of my great-grandmother Matrena, I should mention that almost all the women in our family had psychic abilities. And the deeper a witch's ancestral roots went into the past, the more powerful her witchcraft was.

From generation to generation, my father's and mother's families were matriarchal. The head of the family was always a woman. To try to disobey her, to say or do anything against her, would be bad for men.

It is not surprising that a man in the house was not valued and had no voice. His mother and his wife always decided everything for him.

And what did the disadvantaged son and husband do in such cases?

He sat and kept silent. Or, wanting to assert himself, to prove his manhood to himself and others, he died young in an accident-drowned, crushed by a horse, hit by a train. Or he went to all sorts of trouble, finding solace in available women and wine. The most unfortunate committed suicide.

If some of them managed to change the situation, then such a man himself became a domestic despot and tyrant who listened to no one and held the family in an iron grip. But this rarely happened. The situation in which family members communicated with each other as equals, as partners or friends, never occurred in general.

Anna's Revenge

My mother's great-great-grandmother was named Anna.

She was a witch, a woman of strong temperament. She lost her husband early, never married again and lived her life alone, far away from her grown-up children - Petr, Matrena and Fenya.

In her old age, when it became difficult to keep house, Anna decided to move in with her son. The mother's decision was no accident. Petr was considered a rich man in the village, he lived with his wife and children, ran a single household, so his mother would hardly be a burden to him.

But Petr was in no hurry to take his mother to himself.

Perhaps he feared that the imperious Anna would seize the reins of power and begin to establish her own order in the house, perhaps he was overcome by greed, or perhaps there was some other reason, but it was as if a black cat had run between mother and son.

Petr sent his mother to his sister Matrena.

Offended by such a "warm" welcome, Anna threatened her son:

- When I die, Petr, I'll make you cry!

And she warned her daughter-in-law:

- See that icon in the corner? I'll scare Petr from there for forty days. Don't be afraid of me, I won't hurt you.

She said this and gave her soul to God.

Since the day of Anna's death, Peter could not pass the iconostasis in peace. His heart always ached and he turned pale.

But he evaded his wife's questions, saying that it was nothing.

One night he went to the wooden toilet in the yard and did not return.

There were rumors that one of the locals had played a joke on Petr - he had propped up the toilet door with a stick. Whether it was true or not, his wife found him breathless in the morning.

The old women of the village said that it was Anna's spirit that punished the proud son - luring him out of the house at night and scaring him half to death.

The bridegroom from the Looking Glass

My great-grandmother Matrena, Anna's daughter, was also known as a witch in the village. She could set bones, stop blood, heal with incantations and herbs.

There were rumors that she could even turn into a pig.

As far as I know, in our family, the pig or wild boar was considered the vorshud.

The Udmurt call the vorshud a spirit guardian, which can be anyone - a bear, a wolf, a pike, a moose, a crow, in short, any living creature.

Like Anna, Matrena was a young widow, left alone with three small children in her arms.

My grandmother Luda, Matrena's daughter, had told me a strange story about her mother's marriage.

On Christmas Eve, young Matrena decided to make a fortune on her future husband. She locked herself in her room, put in front of her and lit candles.

- Fiancé, fiancé, show yourself!

The mirror was covered with fog, but when it cleared, Matrena saw the silhouette of a man in the glass.

A handsome, curly-haired man she could only dream of.

The great-grandmother admired him, but suddenly the image in the mirror changed.

She saw a night, a log house on the outskirts of the village, not a soul around, just two strong young men beating a third man who was lying on the ground with all their might. One hit him in the face with a boot, the other in the head with a club, then they took the victim by the arms and legs and threw his senseless body into the ditch.

Then the strange vision disappeared.

Many years later, a guy named Yakov asked my great-grandmother for her hand in marriage. Matrena easily recognized him as her bridegroom from the Looking Glass.

They got married and had three children.

And everything seemed to be going well in their life, until one day Yakov, a convinced communist and the chairman of the collective farm, who was then 33 years old, decided to nail the local rich farmers - to seize the surplus bread for the benefit of the Soviet power.

It was 1927. The peasants held a grudge against the zealous communist. They caught him at night in the collective barn and beat him badly. In the morning they found Yakov in a ditch with a fractured skull. When they brought him into the house half alive, my great-grandmother gasped - she remembered the disfigured stranger from her Christmas vision.

After this fight, Yakov became insane and did not live long.

They buried him in a closed coffin - he was so ugly and unrecognizable.

A handsome boy

My grandmother Luda kept an old velvet photo album at home. Among the old black and white photos, a portrait of an unknown boy stood out.

As a child, I was even a little in love with him - I had never seen a more beautiful, spiritualized face in my life. The bangs on a parting, the big laughing eyes, the white-toothed, as they would say today, "Hollywood" smile.

- Grandma, who's that? - I asked my grandmother.

And this is the story she told me.

The boy in the picture was a distant relative. His name was Kolya.

This memorable photo was taken in Glazov in the late fifties, shortly before the mysterious and tragic event that happened to Kolya.

In the summer, twelve-year-old Kolya and his friends went to the meadows behind the Cheptsa River.

The boys safely crossed the wooden bridge over the river, reached the forest, and started screwing around - whistling, climbing trees, playing hide-and-seek.

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Someone offered to play a joke on Kolya (he was the youngest in the company). They lured him into a thicket, left him there alone, and ran away. They hid in the nearby bushes and waited to see if Kolya would soon find his way back. They waited for an hour, then another, but Kolya still did not appear.

The boys were frightened: what if he was killed by a bear or fell into the swamp?

The places behind Cheptza are remote, swampy. Suddenly the mist came from the river. The boys called for their friend, but no one answered. So they rushed to the town for help.

All night long, adults and children searched the forest with torches. They looked under every bush, under every tree, examined suspicious holes and pits. But the boy disappeared.

They called the police, they searched for the lost boy with dogs, but they did not find him.

And a week later, Kolya suddenly returned. The fishermen on the bridge said that he came to them dirty, ragged, with feverish eyes. He was crying and mumbling something incomprehensible about the "very tall, almost sky-high, old man" who had caught him in the forest and would not let him go. The boy then lost consciousness and collapsed on the sidewalk.

Werewolf

It was not until the third day that Kolya came to his senses.

Again he mumbled something about the giant old man and begged to be taken home to his mother.

Kolya's mother was very worried about her son, who did not recognize anyone and sat for hours, huddled in a corner like a wolf cub. He would stare with glazed eyes and not make a sound.

Or suddenly he would cover his face with his palms and whimper pitifully:

- Old man, let me go.

The boy is crazy! - decided his family.

Worst of all, Kolya's appearance began to change rapidly, from handsome to ugly. His face and body began to grow fur, and all his teeth fell out, replaced by yellow fangs. Now he looked like a werewolf.

He would lie in bed and howl long and hard. Sometimes he would jump down to the floor and run on all fours from corner to corner, knocking on the floorboards with his claws, listening for something, sniffing. In short, something terrible was happening to Kolya.

Everyone was afraid: how could it be?

The doctors shrugged helplessly and advised to hide the "werewolf" somewhere, away from human eyes, so as not to start rumors in the town.

And a neighboring witch whispered to her mother:

- He has the devil in his head, he'll die soon.

But Kolya suffered for a long time and made his parents suffer.

He died at the age of twenty-five. They say that he lay in his coffin all black, covered with coarse hair, with a frozen animal grin on his face.

And no one could think that the handsome young man in the portrait and the beast in the coffin were the same person.

Black Cat

I was about a year old when my great-grandmother Matrena became paralyzed.

She lay motionless on the bed - gray, thin, with sunken cheeks, looking like a bird of prey.

From time to time, my great-grandmother would squint at me her bird's eye and call out to me in a faint voice:

- Natá, come to me, baby.

I didn't answer, even when I was near. Pretending to be deaf, I continued to swaddle the doll or roll on the floor machine. Matrena's face frightened me too much.

At that time I feared two creatures more than anything else in the world - my great-grandmother and her devilish cat Anfisa, with coal-colored hair and round amber eyes.

I grew up a nervous child who ate poorly and slept restlessly.

Putting me to bed at night was a torture for my mother.

I would kick and throw the blanket on the floor. But as soon as the cat jumped on my chest, I calmed down. So my mother concluded that Anfisa had a beneficial effect on me, like a loving babysitter.

I don't know about the cat's love for me (anyway, Anfisa never scratched or bit me), but that's not why I was calm.

When the rumbling black beast used to jump on the bed and stare at me with its huge burning eyes without blinking, I was silent for only one reason - fear.

Sleep was the only way to get away from that terrible beast.

Defender

On Saturday evenings, according to the old village custom, my grandparents would lift my great-grandmother out of bed and carry her to the bathroom to bathe her.

Because of her illness, the old woman was so thin and weak that any touch caused her unbearable pain and forced her to scream wildly.

I, who thought that the relatives were hurting my great-grandmother Matrena, always rushed to her defense. I would shout:

- Don't hit grandma!

I remember it well. But the moment of my great-grandmother's death was completely erased from my memory.

All I remembered was a narrow red coffin standing on two stools in the foyer and rows of green mailboxes above my head.

I did not perceive Matrena as dead; it seemed to me that she was simply tired and had laid down to rest. She'll get some sleep and she'll get up.

When, many years later, I got hold of an old photograph taken in the cemetery in July of that distant year, I could not help but think that my great-grandmother was lying in the coffin with her eyes open. Of course, it could not be, the deceased always have their eyes closed, but I am ready to swear: the photo shows my great-grandmother's gaze, and a very meaningful one, looking up at the sky.

Heartache

At the wake, Matrena's son Vitaly drank too much and went out on the balcony to smoke.

I followed him. Without letting the cigarette out of his mouth, Vitaly picked me up under my arms and put me on the balcony railing (and we lived on the ninth floor!). He finished smoking, threw away the cigarette butt and went to bed. And I stayed where I was.

My mother was in the kitchen doing the dishes. Suddenly she felt a strong uneasiness in her chest. Her heart even hurt. Without realizing what she was doing, she rushed to the balcony - just in time! I was almost leaning over the edge. Just a little further and...

But at the very last moment my mother managed to grab me by the shirt and pull me back. And then she ran to Vitaly, who was snoring - she started slapping his cheeks and hitting him - she had a real nervous fit. And if it hadn't been for the relatives who came to the old man's rescue, my mother would certainly have sent him to my great-grandmother's grave.

In the future, there were many stories where I could have died but miraculously survived. It was as if some unknown force was trying to end my life, but another force, probably even more powerful, prevented it in every possible way. I think it was the same guardian angel that helped me. He always appeared at my side in moments of danger and gave me his reliable cherubic shoulder.

At the zoo

I'm four years old. My father and I are flying to his cousin in Volgograd on vacation, and we get into a terrible thunderstorm. The plane was thrown through the sky like a splinter.

The stewardesses had no time to change the paper bags for the passengers. Lightning zigzags through the night. One struck directly into the fuselage... Panic in the cabin.

The pilots decide to make an emergency landing in Kuibyshev.

As for me, I'm not even aware of the storm overboard, I'm sleeping soundly. And all the talk about how the plane miraculously avoided disaster does not bother me.

In the Volgograd zoo I manage to get sunstroke.

The city is stuffy. It's impossible to sleep at night. From dawn to dusk a ball of fire burns in the sky.

The sun must have decided to kill the townspeople forever.

In addition, my father and I, not used to the southern heat, forgot my Panama at home.

At the zoo, I suddenly realize that I am terribly thirsty, literally dying of thirst.

While my father runs to the soda machine, I go to the cage with the polar bears. The bears, sweltering from the heat, dive off the edge into the pool. They swim there, splashing loudly and raising a cloud of spray. The pool is clear and cool.

If only I could be in their place! - I think. From there, everything went dark before my eyes.

I woke up at home. My father said that when he came back with the water, he found me unconscious by the cage. A crowd had gathered around me.

People were trying to revive the pale girl, to pump her back to consciousness. In vain! I didn't react to anything. So they called an ambulance.

Of course, I don't remember any of this. It seemed to me that the fainting lasted a minute or two, no more. I was sure that my father and I had gone from the zoo to admire the mountain waterfall, and earlier we had met a crowd of gypsies who were leading a tame bear on a chain. The bear made funny faces and danced to a small concert harmonica.

I distinctly remember my father and I coming home in the evening and going to bed. In the morning, I was awakened by voices in the next room.

When I opened my eyes, I saw my father's worried face above me.

It turned out that I had been unconscious for almost twenty-four hours. My father thought he was bringing my dead body home, but fortunately I was fine.

Concussion

How many times did I break my head falling from the swings in kindergarten and school!

Once, while sledding down a hill, I crashed into a tree and got a concussion, but I was cured by Grandma Luda - with an ordinary sieve for sifting flour.

My grandmother held the sieve over my head and shook it gently from side to side. She called it "straightening the head".

.

The ambulance doctor was incredibly surprised by this method of treatment, but did not consider it necessary to take me to the hospital - the child did not vomit, was not dizzy, only a purple, black eye testified eloquently to what had happened.

Then I managed to poison myself with watermelon, and a little later with old cake. My parents put the box of uneaten "Kievsky" cake on top of the kitchen cupboard and forgot about it.

A week later I found it there. I ate it myself and fed my little sister as well. But I was greedy and gave her a tiny piece and broke off a big piece for myself.

So I was taken by ambulance to the infectious disease ward alone, without Tanya.

Cartoon on the wall

When I was five years old, a terrible sore throat nearly killed me.

As I fell deliriously into a deep, blazing pit of fire, I heard the doctor say to my father:

- She's going to die. She won't survive at this temperature.

I didn't care.

As I struggled to open my eyes, I saw a screen showing a cartoon in the pitch black. A giant sparrow was dancing on the wall in front of me.

Next to the sparrow was a strange red-haired man who winked at me.

He wore glasses and a yellow plaid shirt. Next to the man, I saw a girl about my age. Smiling happily, she held out her hand to the sparrow. The bird jumped on it and the girl's hand broke in half like a match.

The man laughed silently. One second - and the picture disappeared.

Before I saw the cartoon, I had been disgusted at the thought of food, but now I was dying for dumplings - I knew my parents had made them that afternoon.

Rising on my elbows, I crawled to the far end of the couch and looked out into the hallway. The kitchen light was on. A pot lid rattled impatiently on the stove, and water bubbled inside. The smell of vinegar and onions was appetizing. Mom and Dad were talking quietly at the table. I took a deep breath and shouted loudly:

- Let me eat at last!

After that my health improved rapidly.

To be continued