The Gamblers Teeth

You die, I do;

I die, you do.
You cant save me,
I cant save you.
Only one crying.
we all cry it,
bear it.
Ursula K. Leguin, Always Coming Home

I.
Marjenas house was built on a layer of gravel and clumps of silt and clay; her village rested on
a hollow, gentle anticline and her country balanced itself precariously against the invading tides
of the sea. Her strong lips concealed a diseased tongue, the result of generations of plague and
cousin-marriage that permeated the isolated island, barely reachable by the mainlanders but
somehow accessible to its pioneers in a cruel twist of fate.
Marjenas life was dominated by housework: whenever the morning bells rope was jerked
downward by the struggling hands of some ancient gray monk, she descended into ennui, feeding
chickens and goats and staring intently at the North Woods without any clear desire, and eyeing
the lone mountain that held sovereign over the landscape.
On the fifth Sunday after Pentecost, in the period following the Wars which had plagued her
homeland, she sunk down the stairs with her vodka (brought from Ukraine in a rickety cedar boat)
and onto the vinyl tiles (acquired from Slovenian women who had stolen them from traveling
American businessmen). She tossed a weary gaze at the cat bones decalcifying on the weedy lawn,
grabbing her husbands gray woolen scarf and walking resolutely out the door.
The old Parish, whose stucco walls could only be reached by a path filled with rocks and clinging
coastal cliffs, illuminated the village in its heyday with its bright pigments. After the Wars, its
icons gildings and pigments chipped and cracked away, a fact frequently lamented by the
parishioners. As Marjena approached the thinning wooden doors, she heard the Morning Vespers
rising to heaven like weary pleas, fading weakly and being intercepted by the faint sunlight.
Zdravo, Marijo, milosti puna,
Mary- Theotokos- an icon of purity, the holiest of women. Bearer of God. Marjenas namesake.
Her icon was favored most by the women of the village, although the men regarded her shamefully,
as a feminine rival for their wives devotion.
Gospodin s tobom,
The Lord is with thee, recited the women, as if the Wars had erased anything godly or holy about
the village and the Theotokos was their only pathway to Divine Light, to whatever lay beyond the
cliffs or the North Woods or the mountains.
blagoslovljena ti meu enama
The older women chanted humbly, in eerie solidarity; the younger, unmarried women grumbled
quietly. The Virgin was a threat, in their eyes, to their youthful monopoly on the parish mens
attention, even though Stvani the fisherman had led his crew of half the village off the cliffs earlier
in the morning.
i blagoslovljen plod utrobe tvoje, Isus.
The word Isus led some womens eyes to glaze in irritation. How would God interrupt the
purity of their Mother, after He had abandoned them in the Battle at the North Woods three years
ago? That was, in the view of the nuns, the exact moment when the Lord had departed their Island,
a permanent loss. The trees had exhaled and the boulders had shook and the mists had swirled
about as the island took one final breath and became worldly, secular, profane.