Spring 2024 - Recrudescence

“Through the Plague”

wedding began. Bagpipes were playing and drums were played at full blast in the thick smoke of the fires amid the deadness that now reigned in the village. Women gathered in at the fence doors and meeting places. What was going on? Were people going crazy in the village? And when they found out that Hadji Dragan was hosting his daughter Tiha’s wedding, they said the same about him: But no matter how much they condemned Hadji Dragan, the beating of the drums cheered them up, they became merrier, rejoiced, and finally ended up admitting that Hadji Dragan was do ing a good thing. That Hadji Dragan knew what he was doing. But one mystery remained unresolved: why was Hadji Dragan marry ing Tiha off to the same young man whom he had denied a month ago? At the time, they thought that Tiha wanted to wait for Velichko Dochkin, whom she’d wanted to marry, but he had been away for three years. What had happened then, the women wondered— had she quietly given up on Velichko, or had Hadji Dragan changed his mind? This is what they were talking about in the village squares. Meanwhile, Grandpa Neyko walked down from one end of the vil lage to the other. Why was Hadji Dragan giving his daughter to Lutskan’s son, a good and wealthy young man, rather than wait for the return of Dochka the widow’s son – poor as a church mouse, not that all that concerned him… Hadji Dragan knew what he was doing. What was important for Grandpa Neyko was that Hadji Dra gan’s barns were opening for the village and whatever happened, there would be no famine. This he would tell the women as he passed by, concluding: “Is he crazy? Doing something like this at such a time!”

“There’s no plague. If there was a plague, would Hadji Dra

gan be crazy enough to organize a wedding?”

He would say this not only to cheer others up but because he believed it. And cheerful, and important as any village mayor, 195