Behind me I heard the distinct squeak of a floorboard, and I spun around in absolute terror. Varya, dressed in her nightgown, was making her way toward me. I nearly slammed my father’s door.

“Is Papa still up?” asked my sister. “I want to kiss him good night.”

In total panic, I held my fingers to my lips. “Shh! He’s asleep!”

Hurrying toward Varya, I grabbed her by the arm and spun her around. What had I just seen? My heart pounding, the only thing I knew for certain was that tonight was not the time for my younger sister to learn what I now knew, that our dear housekeeper, who was like our second mother, was in reality just that.

“We can’t disturb Papa,” I snapped.

“Hey, let go of me!” Varya whined. “That hurts!”

“Come on, Papa needs his rest…and so do we! You have to go to bed.”

“But-”

Like an angry schoolmarm, I dragged Varya back to our room, where I practically shoved her into bed.

“Now go to sleep, Varichka,” I said, heading out as quickly as I could lest she see the tears welling in my eyes. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. I’m just going to finish the dishes.”

“Oh, all right!” She was yawning as she crawled under the covers. “But I hate it when you push me around like that.”

Back in the kitchen, my tears fell one after another into the dishwater. Did this mean that Papa didn’t love our mother? Was he going to leave us? What about the sanctity of marriage he so often preached?

“To hell with him!” I cried aloud, slamming my fist into my thigh.

Biting my lower lip, I thought of the many stories told back home over the kitchen sink, of how my parents were married when Papa was twenty and she a few years older. I had come to understand that my mother, like all peasant wives, had been chosen not so much for her beauty, which was limited, and certainly not for her wealth, which was nonexistent, but for her strength and ability to manage farm life, which were exemplary.

Through the cracks in the family stories, however, I had also come to understand that while my mother always loved Papa, in time she had turned away from him. Now that I thought about it, I remembered how things had changed between them after Mama had had an emergency hysterectomy. Had the operation that saved her life in fact killed something else-namely, her need for amorous attention? Mama always claimed she tolerated my father’s long absences from home because she supported his religious life-but that was a total lie, wasn’t it? And what kind of lie was my supposedly holy father-who spoke so often of the blessings of love-living as well?

Right then I hated them all-Mama, Papa, and especially Dunya. Dunya, who was always so sweet to us but who was nothing more than a conniving wench who’d wormed her way into our home and into my father’s pants. A fresh wave of tears burst from my eyes. Everything felt dirty and horrible: this apartment, my entire family, and me. I wanted to run away, flee this place and this life.

And then I heard it again, more knocking at our rear door. Oh, God, I thought, flooded with a kind of bitter joy, Sasha was back. Shaking the dishwater from my hands, I took a towel and dried my eyes. I was just about to reach for the door and pull it wide open when it came, an all too familiar chant that in this case was more like a threat. In an instant I knew it wasn’t Sasha.

Half muttering, half growling like a cat, a woman’s voice called, “Chri-i-ist is ri-i-isen!”

I had no doubt it was Madame Lokhtina, the former beauty of great society and influence who had abandoned husband, daughter, and fortune, all to become Father’s greatest-and most annoying-devotee. She was the one I had discovered attacking Father, ripping away his pants, hanging on to his member, and demanding sin. What in the name of the devil did she want this late, and what was she even doing here in the capital? The last I’d heard she had been walled into a cell at the Verkhoturye Monastery, where soup and bread were slipped to her through a small hole.

Lest her muttering turn into a scream that would wake the dead, not to mention the entire building, I had no choice but to unlock the back door and crack it open. Staring into the darkness, I saw not even a remnant of her former delicate beauty but rather a haggard, filthy woman in a long torn coat of homespun. She leaned on a tall staff decorated with little ribbons, while on her head sat a most strange hat made of wolf fur, torn and muddied, that in a strange way resembled the headgear of a nun. Around her neck hung a multitude of little books with crosses that represented the twelve Gospels.

She leaned forward like a mole, squinting and half whispering, “Christ is risen! Christ is risen! CHRI-I-IST IS RI-I-ISEN!”

“Da, da,” I replied quietly, hoping to appease her. “Christ is risen.” Madame Lokhtina was known and dreaded for this, her habit of walking down any street and barging into any room, screaming these words. Father had commanded her to stop and later taken to beating her, all to no avail. Indeed, the more he struck her, the louder she screamed.

“Yes, go ahead!” she had pleaded whenever she was thrashed. “Strike me! Beat me!”

Our newspapers wrote that my father had driven her mad-why else would a woman of such good breeding now be living on alms, her feet wrapped in rags in the winter and bare in the summer? The truth, however, was that Papa had healed her of neurasthenia, from which she had been bedridden for five years. After her recovery she had forsaken the material world and become the truest of believers. There were even some, including several highly placed bishops, who wanted to bless her as the holiest of the living, a yurodstvo-holy fool-revered in my country for choosing to suffer in the name of Christ.

“Is the Lord of Hosts at home this eve?” she inquired, eyeing me most suspiciously.

Without even hesitating, I lied for the second time that night. “Unfortunately, nyet. Papa left not too long ago.”

“Do you know where he has gone?”

“Well, I’m-”

“Not supposed to say, eh?”

“I…I…”

The forlorn Lokhtina stared at me, and I was afraid she was going to burst into more of her hysterics, but she asked, ever so quietly, “Do you perhaps know, my child, if he has gone out for radeniye?” Rejoicing?

“Yes, absolutely,” I replied, without thinking.

As soon as I said it, I saw a distinct look of appeasement melt across her grimy face. That’s when I realized what I’d told her. I hadn’t implied that my father had gone to dance with the Gypsies, or that he’d gone off to drink at the Restaurant Villa Rode or at the Bear, or even that he’d been whisked away to some fancy party with Prince Yusupov. No, in their own secret code, I’d just informed Madame Lohktina that my father had gone to participate in the principal Khlyst ritual, when members washed away sin with sin via the act of svalnyi grekh-group sinning-an act that was widely rumored to be nothing more than frenzied grupa seksa.

“Ah, ochen xhorosho, ochen, ochen xhorosho.” Very good, very, very good, said the filthy woman before me. “The flying angel,” she continued, referring to the one who passed news and warnings from one ark to the next, “was afraid your father would refuse us again.”

I had never seen Madame Lokhtina so quickly pacified. I had never seen the faintest trace of a smile upon her face, either. And yet she had a pleased look as she turned and started back down the rear steps.

It suddenly occurred to me what I must do. The Khlyst community was a closed one, deeply secret, almost impenetrable. And yet right here and now it was not my door but theirs that had been opened. Did I really want to do this?

“Wait a minute!” I called after her.

Madame Lokhtina turned and stared strangely at me. “What is it, my child?”

“I have been learning the greatest secret of the group,” I ventured.