Kurkuyan

The Udmurts are pagans.

In the villages of the Udmurt people there was and still is a custom - when a person begins to be haunted by misfortune, he "talks" all the bad things into a ribbon and ties it to a tree, as if he were giving it all his troubles and illnesses.

Near every Udmurt village there is a forest gully where the locals throw old combs, washcloths, rags used to wash the sick and the deceased.

This gally is called Kurkuyan. It is forbidden to pick mushrooms or berries in this place, or you will immediately bring misfortune upon yourself.

As my Udmurt grandmother Luda assured me, in addition to a ribbon, you can "talk" an illness into anything - a coin, a candy, a child's toy, or clothes.

As children, she forbade us to pick up money, dolls, and handkerchiefs from the street, and to take candy from strangers - who knows what kind of crap they might have put in it. A skilled sorcerer can put a spell on food or drink easily.

That's why at all Udmurt feasts the hostess should be the first to drink from every unopened bottle and only then offer it to the guests.

Bewitched poplars

Everyone in our region knows these poplars.

They grow in the village of Pudvai, on the border of Udmurtia and the Kirov region.

Legend has it that any attempt to cut them ends with the death of the culprit.

- Cursed place! - Vera, the postmistress we met in front of the village store, waves in the direction of the green giants. - Three generations of Zolotarevs lived here - grandfather, father and son. Their house is on the main road.

- Nikolai, the father, was the head of the family, a very strong sorcerer! He could cast a spell on anyone he did not like. He could also transform himself into animals. I'm not lying! - Vera swears. - I saw him turn into a turkey, a cat and a dog. And when his magic didn't work, he would shake with rage and beat his wife with his fists. She was not a sorceress herself, so he took his anger out on her.

Nikolai also planted the nine poplar trees along the road.

Before doing so, he cast a spell on the trees - that no living soul would dare touch them, or no good would come of it.

The locals still try to avoid these poplars. They say they have several lives on their consciences. One villager foolishly swung an axe at a poplar and hanged himself a week later.

Another man was building a house nearby, and the poplars were leaning against the fence, blocking it. He decided to remove them. He cut down two trees and gave his soul to God - the heart attack.

Another misfortune connected with a sorcerer's curse happened in Pudvai in the 80s. A villager, Gena Zolotarev, the namesake of the sorcerer, climbed a poplar tree with an axe to cut its branches - he wanted to bring electricity to the house and fell.

- He didn't have an axe, - says Gena's wife Lyudmila, peeling potatoes on the veranda and looking curiously at the uninvited guests. - I don't know why he climbed up the poplar. But he was a little drunk, that's for sure. He got to the top and someone called out to him. So Gena looked back and fell to the ground. He broke his spine. When the people gathered, he was dead.

- All these stories about poplars are nonsense! - disagrees with Lyudmila her neighbor Nikolay Zolotarev (in Pudvai almost all namesakes, natives of Zolotarevo village). - Gena was drunk as a fish, that's why he fell, and trees have nothing to do with it. Recently I also sawed off a branch of a poplar, and nothing, as you can see, I am alive.

- If it were up to me, I would cut them all down! - said the sorcerer's namesake. - Why are they needed here? They only breed dampness. The sun can't get through them, so our street is like a swamp. I would rather have an apple tree or a cherry tree.

But no one in the village shares Nikolai's determination to massacre the poplars. No one wants to tempt fate.

Years passed. Sometimes I thought of "Doubting Thomas". What had happened to him? Had he managed to escape the sorcerer's curse? Or maybe Nikolai was right - people slander poplars for no reason?

Once, when I came to Pudvai on newspaper business, I inquired at the post office about the fate of this fearless man.

- Nikolai hanged himself a year and a half ago! - The postmistress shocked me.

Nobody knows why he did it.

And how not to believe after that?

Seven of the nine poplars in Pudvai are left. The mighty giants whisper to each other in the wind, making the Pudvais tremble with fear.

How old are they - sixty? More? No one can remember. There are hardly any old people left in the village. The Zolotarev sorcerers have long since been buried in a local cemetery. With them went the secret of a dark curse. Vera, the wordy postmistress, told me that after the soreccer's death, his son sold the family's nest and moved to the city. There has been no sign of him since. And the wizard's house itself had changed hands three times.

The devil's work

A few years ago, an old woman named Anna settled there with her son. But when I asked her if she knew that the house had once belonged to sorcerers, she shook her head:

- No, my dear, how could I? I'm from another village. But believe it or not, as soon as I moved here, I started getting sick. I've lived here for three years, and I'm still sick. Last winter, the devil misled me: I was sitting at home and suddenly my mind went blank, I couldn't understand if it was day or night. I opened my eyes when I was standing in the field. I don't know how I got there. I'm walking as if in a dream, knee-deep in snow. I see a familiar bus stop. My neighbor's shopkeeper came running up to me: "Anna, what's wrong with you? Why are your clothes wet?"

- But I can't even tell her anything. I barely made it home, my head and ears were buzzing. I heard men's voices inside me threatening to kill me: "Get out of here," they ordered, "or we'll burn down the house, hack you up with an axe, and drag your body into the woods". I don't remember anything else. People say I ran around the house, struggling with someone invisible, screaming, until my neighbors took me to their house for the night. My son decided I had lost my mind, took me to town and put me in a mental hospital.

- But I still hear those voices, - Anna sighs. - They drive me away. And where would I go? I'm too old now, and I have no money for another house. I'll probably die here.

The locals confirmed that none of the previous tenants had stayed in the wizard's house for long. They would live for a year or two, pack up, sell the house for nothing, and run away from this cursed place and the poplars.

Ventriloquist Poshibka

As it happens, the strongest sorcerers in Udmurtia are considered to be representatives of other nations. Russians are afraid of Udmurts, Udmurts are afraid of Tatars, and Tatars are afraid of Chuvash and Mariy.

There is a belief that the darker the skin and hair of a witch or sorcerer, the greater her or his witchcraft power. People try to avoid them for fear of the evil eye or something worse.

Once I visited the village of Sergino, on the border of the Kirov region and Udmurtia.

In conversation, one of the villagers mentioned the Poshibka - a creature that, for some reason, local sorcerers put mainly in women.

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- When you look at such a woman, she looks like an ordinary one," he said, describing women in the village who had been "spoiled" by the Poshibka. - But suddenly she rolls her eyes and screams curses in a man's bass, it's scary! And the main thing is that the words come not from her mouth, but from her stomach. As if someone is sitting there cursing. That is Poshibka there.

Someone in the village remembered that the Poshibka is usually implanted in the body in the form of a fly or a mosquito, or it can fly into your open mouth.

But the magician can also put it in your drink in the form of a hair or a blade of grass.

- Does it live as a fly in the stomach?

- No. It develops inside! I once saw a Poshibka exorcised from a neighbor's wife. It was horrible! A black hairy ball with eyes came out of her mouth and started rolling on the floor screaming.

Poshibka can't live without a human being, it has to get inside someone. So don't hesitate, catch it as soon as possible, put it in the oven and burn it. Otherwise it will turn back into a fly and fly away.

- Sometimes, my interlocutor continued, this evil waits for years for an opportunity. It sits on a gate or in a tree and waits for the victim. Have you ever seen trees with hernia-like growths? That's what sorcerers do. Some of them do not want to spoil a people, but the demons tell them: "Do it!" So they send the spoil to the tree.

However, according to the people of Sergino, not all Poshibkas are bad. There are those who behave quite decently and even predict the future. The person in whom the Poshibka lives acts like a ventriloquist. Moreover, a Poshibka always tells the truth, even if it is unflattering. Therefore, with its help it is easy to find a thief and learn about the bad deeds of enemies.

Portraits with stuffing

Many years ago, I read in a reputable Russian newspaper about a sect of black magicians who operated throughout the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

They came to kindergartens and schools disguised as photographers and offered their services. They dressed up boys in sailor suits, girls in frilly dresses with ruffles.

Many families kept these photos. The clients received them in a thick cardboard frame and hung them on the wall. But under the frame, the newspaper said, lurked a terrible "surprise" - a picture of a dead or crippled person. This is how the sorcerers inflicted their spoils on the living. For what purpose they did this is not clear.

But one of the villains decided to repent publicly. What a sensation! People panicked and rushed to uncover the portrait frames in search of witchcraft.

My friend Masha also had such framed portraits at home - they were on her cupboard.

Out of curiosity, because she didn't really believe the newspaper, she decided to open them. There was nothing under the picture of her mother. Masha put it aside and picked up the picture of her father. She had just bent the rivets with a knife when a small black and white photo suddenly fell on the table. An ordinary passport photo of a stranger.

But for some reason, just looking at it sent a chill down Masha's spine. Her father had died recently, and before that he had been seriously ill for a long time...

Masha told her neighbor about her discovery. She grabbed her daughter's portrait and shook it out of the frame. And there's another picture! A girl with arms and legs coiled up like a spider. The neighbor was horrified because her daughter was in gymnastics...

From the neighbor Masha ran to her friend Marina. The girls took out their family photo album.

Under her own portrait Marina found nothing, but under her brother's portrait there was a picture of a man in a military uniform with his head cut off.

Marina's brother had served in Chechnya. By a strange coincidence, that same evening a telegram arrived from Grozny saying that her brother was being treated in a military hospital.

A frightened friend decided to look for a witch. The witch told them to take the pictures to the intersection of three roads at midnight, burn them, and bury the ashes. And so they did.

Marina's brother came home injured but alive. Nothing terrible seemed to have happened to the neighbor's gymnast either. So I started to forget the story.

But then my grandfather died in Tagil.

After the funeral I noticed two color portraits of my grandfather and grandmother on the wall.

With trembling hands I took the pictures out of their frames. They were empty!

- What are you looking for? - Lenka, my cousin, was interested.

After listening to me, she suddenly started to worry:

- Sasha has such a portrait, too, - she explained. - I'll go home and have a look.

Sasha, her fiancé, had recently been drafted into the army.

Lenka came back white as a sheet. It turned out that under the portrait of her beloved she had found a magazine photo of an unknown conscript.

The picture had been cut in half, and all that could be seen next to the man was a piece of a bride's veil.

My cousin tore up the strange picture and threw it in the toilet. She decided not to tell her beloved. As soon as he came home from the army, the young people began to prepare for the wedding.

And suddenly the news: Lenka and Sasha had separated.

Many years later my cousin told me the truth:

- I don't know what came over me, but Sasha became unpleasant to me. Everything about him irritated me - the way he looked at me, the way he ate, the way he sat at the table. You wouldn't believe it, he still disgusts me even now, although he seems to be a kind, good man, but I can't help it.

Lenka got married a long time ago, she has a family, two children.

Whether Sasha met his soul mate is a question, but as far as I know, no one told him about the strange photo under his portrait.

Who Punishes Whom?

Many people envy witches and sorcerers, the special power they have to practice black magic and keep others in fear.

But are the black magicians themselves happy about it? Hardly. Evil, like a boomerang, has a tendency to return, and in multiples - in "percentages".

And if a black magician can pretend to be a good guy at first, he will find it harder and harder to hide his evil deeds as he grows older. He darkens his face, dries up, shrinks and bends. And how many legends are told about how hard it is for witches and sorcerers to die when they have no one to pass their gift on to!

A friend of mine named Svetlana once told me about such a case.

She knew a woman from the Udmurt village of Bolshoi Ludoshur who was known to everyone as a witch. Her husband had died tragically, and her ten-year-old son had drowned in the river.

Raya lived alone and was often sick. Once she confessed to Svetlana that she had quarreled with her neighbor and in revenge had caught her cat and broken its spine.

The next day the cat's owner fell down the stairs and broke her spine as well.

- I punished her! - gloated the witch.

Another time, Raya quarreled with Svetlana and started spreading dirty gossip about her. Svetlana's husband couldn't stand it and hit the witch on the lips.

- May your hand wither and drop off! - cried the witch.

And at that moment, the man's hand hung lifeless as a whip.

He tried all kinds of folk remedies and doctors, but no one could help him.

Meanwhile, the doctors discovered that Raya had an incurable disease.

- And for some reason I felt so sorry for her," Svetlana recalls.

She decided to help get her into a good hospital.

And, coincidence or not, the very next day Svetlana's husband's hand "came back to life.

As for Raya, she could not be saved. She died in terrible agony on the hospital bed.

A fig in your pocket

How do you recognize a sorcerer?

Knowledgeable people say to stick a needle or knife pointing down into the doorjamb. This will prevent the villain from entering or leaving the house until the owners remove the protection.

A friend of mine did just that. When her neighbor, a strange woman who everyone thought was a witch, came to visit, she stuck a needle in the joint.

- You won't believe this," she said, "but after that, the neighbor really couldn't leave. She'd sit there, fidgeting. She would go to the door, stop at the threshold, and turn back, as if something was in her way. She stayed like that until the evening, when I finally took pity on her and pulled out the needle.

To protect themselves from the evil eye, Udmurt people never allow strangers to touch them - to stroke their backs and hair, to hug them, kiss them, touch their hands.

Someone folds a fig of his fingers and hides it in his pocket, wears a pin pinned to his chest in the heart area, and if he notices a suspicious bundle of wool in the house, a thread with knots, another person's handkerchief, or a black wax candle, he will never touch it with his bare hands. He will sweep the "gift" across the threshold, take it far away to the forest or the ravine, and burn it there.

If, after communicating with someone, you suddenly get a headache or a bad mood, you should wash your face with cold running water, or better - wash your head.

You can mentally draw a protective mirror screen or dome around yourself and say: where it came from, there and gone. Then bad thoughts will return to their owner.

Pig's jaw

I do not know for sure if my great-grandmother Matrena was involved in black magic - spoils, charms, and other witchcraft. I think she was not.

But if her appearance matched my childhood image of fairy tale witches, then Grandma Luda was nothing like a witch at all. A plain, freckled face, mischievous eyes, a mop of small, henna-dyed curls - the appearance is quite ordinary.

However, she had inherited some paranormal abilities from her mother. For example, she could see and hear the dead. Frankly, for my grandmother, there was no difference between the world of the living and the world of the dead - the usual thing among Udmurt people.

But I knew my grandmother more as a healer, a witch doctor. She set the bones, read spells, took away people's spoils.

She kept many "items of power" in her home.

My grandmother used them to heal broken bones, colds, skin diseases, and fear.

A pig's jaw, a copper bell, red wool threads, a spindle, a bundle of goose feathers, canvas sacks filled with medicinal herbs, a sieve, even a plastic plug in the shape of a bull's head - everything was used for witchcraft.

We children were strictly forbidden to touch these things.

But we touched them anyway, as long as Granny didn't see us. If they were tools for her work, they were just trinkets for us.

I often watched through the half-open door as my grandmother burned wax candles, whispered spells, and spat three times over her left shoulder.

She gave the sick people herbal infusions to drink, and with a pig's jaw she moved back and forth over their bodies. And the people got well! They came back to thank her.

They paid with money or with products - sugar, candy, eggs, milk.

How I envied my grandmother! I also wanted to have secret knowledge, to see and hear more than others, to be exceptional, not like everyone else.

But I didn't know how to do it. I always doubted my strength and myself.

To be continued