Oles' Honchar The Cathedral Translated by Yuri Tkach and Leonid Rudnytzky Originally published by the St. Sophia Religious Association of Ukrainian Catholics in Philadelphia in 1989. Chapter I You won't find the village Zachiplianka in any encyclopedia. Yet it does exist. It might even sound somewhat funny to the unaccustomed ear Zachiplianka. Someone once got hooked on something here. And so the name stuck. In the distant past, before the factories appeared, people say there was a large village on this spot, which made spears for Zaporozhian Cossacks. When the Cossacks journeyed to the Sich they stopped here to replenish their supply of spears. Perhaps back then some Cossack got hooked on some girl here and laid the beginnings of a dynasty. People living in Zachiplianka are mostly righteous, or as Mykola the student would put it — the right people: hardworking steelworkers, people whose lives are split into shifts, day and night. A lake glistens at one end of the village and at the other end a dilapidated cathedral shimmers white in the square — an ancient Cossack cathedral. Before the village's windows, beyond the cherry orchards, across the Dnipro, the blast furnaces blaze night after night like crimson volcanoes. The sky trembles and deepens each time the foundries spill out their glow, exploding down the steep bank in a blustering stream of molten slag. Brown skies and brown smoke hover over the town. At midnight, after the night shift whirs by on bicycles towards the smelters and Zachiplianka finally plunges into sleep, weary from its daily cares, and the green-horned moon hangs above in the spacious sky, the cathedral looms over the villages, deep in thought, alone in the silence of the bright acacia night, which no longer even resembles night, but rather, an anti-night. It is very unusual here, this anti-night, as if bewitched by the specter of the cathedral and captivated by the silent music of its rounded, harmoniously-united cupolas, its mounting stories, and its singing lines. For the night, possessed by a desire to solve some ancient riddles and to decipher secret writings of past ages, the cathedral still brims with distant music; it thunders with an avalanche of hymns, echoes with Orthodox liturgies, chants and ardently whispered penance. It is still filled with repented sins, and confessions, and tears, and the ecstasy of human passions and hopes... The factories produce metal. A red glow bursts into the sky, whose depth, suddenly catching fire, begins to breathe, to pulsate; at night the sky's reflections dance on the cathedral walls and on its domes. If the student Mykola Bahlay returns home from the Metallurgy Institute at this time, he stops in the square, tilts his head and listens as usual to the cathedral, to its silence, to that “music of the spheres” not accessible to everyone. Sensing a person nearby, a marsh stork fidgets in its nest on the scaffolding erected around one of the cupolas. And so it is now: as soon as he stops, it begins to stir and fret, roused perhaps by the glow, or anxious that its young might fall out of the nest. It rises in the nest, and balancing on one leg paints a graceful long-legged silhouette among the smooth contours of the domes. The bird stands there looking down from the cathedral's heights onto its favorite frog-filled lake glimmering in the moonlight some distance away. It surveys the silvery tents of the acacias which envelope Zachiplianka in a heavy scent of honey. The student's past lies here, the spirit of his forefathers. The ages speak to him in this midnight hour, when pumps no longer buzz in the orchards and water no longer rustles from the hoses. Zachiplianka is cradled in the moonlight, only the red vigilance in the sky and serene glow of the cathedral watch over its quiet streets. At night the cathedral seems even more majestic than in the daytime. The student Mykola never tires of looking at it. It is one of those millennial giants strewn about the planet which stand like sullen citadels with gaping apertures, or scrape the Electronic Library of Ukrainian Literature Oles' Honchar. The Cathedral 3 clouds with their arrowy steeples, or recast the outlines of the sky in the ample bulges of their cupolas... In the sea of human generations, in the flow of ages, they tower immovable. Vested in symbol and allegory, stone chimera, they have the passions of the ages carved into them. And when those distant travelers emerge from the depths of the universe one day and approach our planet, the first thing to amaze them will be ... the cathedrals! And they, those galactic travelers, will also search for the secret proportions, and ideal harmony of mind and matter, seeking the unsolved formulas of eternal beauty! It will be so; our student is certain of this. The air is still and free of smoke from the coking plant. Zachiplianka's Vesela Street is fragrant with acacia honey. Knotgrass spreads out along the fences while in the middle of the street lies a soft carpet of dust and the student's running shoes, well-worn from many training sessions, huff lightly on it. Though the boy has never flown, he walks on this Zachipliankan carpet like a cosmonaut. For him, for young Bahlay, the epicenter of life is here. Here, more than anywhere, the surrounding world speaks more audibly with its wise nightly silence, its wondrously entangled vegetation woven into the moon drenched slag walls. At night the baroque fullness of Zachiplianka's acacias and abundant grapevines is overpowering. Everything has changed, expanded, become entangled, and in everything, in the unity of all things, harmony is achieved. Isn't the true sense of life to savor the beauty of these nights, to live in wise harmony with nature, to delight in work and the poetry of human associations? — and to learn to value these things, to realize that they must be preserved? Vesela Street rests now, having toiled and clamored all day, dispersing its gray throng of troubles. It sleeps soundly under the narcosis of the acacias whose rich, silvery blossoms droop down to the open windows. The verandas, fences and sheds are all hidden from view by the acacias' nocturnal fantasies, their chimerical shadows. Silence, sleep and blossoms — there is something magical in the mystery of nocturnal blossoming, in the moonlit mirage and silence of these bright acacia nights. Everything rests, only the sky breathes deeply, and the cathedral looms over the villages guarding Zachiplianka's dreams and visions. Bahlay the student plods along in his knitted track-suit, humming something as he walks. A late whoop rises from Klynchyk and is echoed from Tsyhanivka or Koloniya. The student wants to shout at the top of his voice too, but conscience will not let him; people are asleep, and so he continues softly humming something as unintelligible to Zachiplianka as his integral calculus. In addition to young Bahlay, there is also the older Bahlay, who, because of his temperament and irascible character, used to be known in the villages as Wild Ivan; more recently, however, he is better known as the red-haired Bahlay who is in India, or simply Virunka's Ivan. Ivan and Virunka are perfectly matched — two souls living in harmony. Outside their home a comfortable bench stands under the acacia blossoms as a sign of idyllic family accord. The bench, it can be said, has a history. Ivan built it with his own hands soon after his marriage so that he could step outside in the evening and sit with his wife by the light of tranquil stars. He must have chosen the right spot, building the bench where his ancestors once sat on logs, for as soon as dusk falls a crowd always gathers around it. The young flock from all ends of the street, as if a treasure were buried here. They lounge about under the windows all evening strumming their guitars. When Electronic Library of Ukrainian Literature Oles' Honchar. The Cathedral 4 Ivan was still at home he often chased them away, rushing from the house in his shorts, his ribs showing, hair disheveled, wide-eyed and angry. “Beat it, you bums! I'm sick of your strumming. A man can't even get a decent night's sleep after work.” He chases the strummers away today, but tomorrow they will be back, strumming and guffawing under the windows as if deliberately testing Ivan's temper to see if he really is so “wild,” if the slightest provocation makes him explode like gunpowder. Right now the bench is empty. Perhaps because its owner is not at home and there is no one to dash out and startle them? The bench itself seems to invite him: “Sit down young man, rest after a day of righteous toil.” He can even lie face up here and continue humming to the stars. Just as the student stretched out and felt himself steeped in serenity, a sleepy Virunka appeared in the open window. Round faced, broad-shouldered, she leaned over the sill, her bosom reflecting white in the moonlight. The student's idiosyncrasies are well known to Virunka; only he, Mykola, has a habit of stretching out on a strange bench at this late hour to entertain the stars, even though home is only two steps away. “You look comfortable there,” Virunka observed from the window. “And you sing nicely too, yet if you were quiet it would be even better ... You'll wake my children.” “I'm silent, if singing is forbidden, but may I think?” “Got some girl on your mind?” “No, my thoughts are of a different nature.” “What kind, if it's no secret?” “I'm thinking, Virunka, whether I should join the Committee for Class Struggle.” “Now, that's something new.” They've posted a notice “on the bulletin board next to the dean's office: 'Sign up for the Committee for Class Struggle'..