The Day of Saint Nicholas
In Serbia, most Orthodox Christian households celebrate a patron saint who is believed to protect the home. The commemoration of the saint’s day, known as Slava, follows the church calendar. Even today, these customs run deep. Some people will not switch on a washing machine, convinced it could bring bad luck or that something in the house might go wrong.
After the Second World War, the communist regime treated such beliefs as a threat. Religion was dismissed as a superstitious tool meant to keep the nation uneducated and obedient. Practicing faith openly became dangerous. People were interrogated, imprisoned, pushed out of their jobs, and sometimes killed.
This story is one of them.
*
On September 15, 1947, in a small Serbian village along the bank of the Timok River, Vitomir Vita Stojanović was born to his mother, Jelisaveta, and father, Živojin.
Like most peasants, his father, Živojin, was more preoccupied with the land than with his wife, so Jelisaveta felt somewhat lonely, and sometimes neglected. Although the marriage was planned and arranged against her will, in accordance with her father’s wishes, she knew she was marrying a decent man and did not regret it.
She listened to the stories of her female friends in the village whose husbands brutally abused them while totally drunk, and she thanked God that hers was not like that. It was never clear to her why these hardworking men, even though they had wine cellars in their own homes, would go to the village tavern and spend their hard-earned money there. Agriculture did not yield much profit, and these men would waste fortunes in a single night. Živojin made the best rakija (brandy) in the village. People said he learned it from his father, who was a true master of the craft. Živojin did not like to drink and did so very rarely, only when he could not avoid it, at celebrations and festivities. Jelisaveta was satisfied with her man, at least to that extent.
Because husbands in the village didn't care about their wives' needs, Živojin would only take his wife Jelisaveta when he felt like it, mostly when he wasn't exhausted from a long workday. He once overindulged in alcohol and became so comfortable that he even let Jelisaveta enjoy reaching her own heights. She actually enjoyed it for the first time and noticed a difference in her body as a result of that "mountaineering" experience. Even before they saw the doctor in the city, she already knew that she was pregnant.
Živojin’s mother, Sara, was a reasonably wise woman and did not succumb to the narrow-mindedness that had been entrenched in the consciousness of the peasants for centuries. She was a woman who had herself been enslaved, and out of the old mother’s compassion, Jelisaveta was freed from all chores that could harm her health or the health of her unborn child. Due to her condition, which was greatly different from the one she had been in before, Jelisaveta had done practically nothing for the last two months. Her only task was to feed the livestock and the people. That is why she remained alone in the house that day, preparing lunch, while her husband, father-in-law, mother-in-law, and husband’s two brothers with their offspring were in the vineyard, harvesting grapes.
The pregnancy was not hard on her, as she was looking forward to the day when her child would breathe the air as soon as it saw the light of day. Like every mother, she had big plans for her son. She spoke with her mother-in-law and said she would bear a pack of children for Živojin, but she would love for at least this first one not to live in the village, but to feel the charms of the city, which all country people longed for. They agreed that little Vitomir, as he was to be named if he were a boy, would get a city pedigree.
But fate also had a plan for little Vita.
While feeding the pigs, Jelisaveta felt fluid rushing down her thighs. She tried to step outside but felt a terrible pain and collapsed right in the middle of the sty, as if struck by lightning. The delivery ended just as it began, suddenly. She did not struggle much and expelled little Vita, like a stone from a shoe. She took him tenderly and, with her sweater, wiped off the pig feces that covered him completely. Jelisaveta bit through the umbilical cord with her teeth, and pressing the child to her chest, slowly fell asleep. She lost consciousness from severe bleeding and peacefully departed this world.
When Živojin returned home from the vineyard for lunch for the harvesters, he found a horrendous sight. Two sows were greedily gnawing on the legs of his wife. They had not expected such a feast, so they wholeheartedly took to gorging. Jelisaveta's left leg was eaten up to the hip, and her right leg was missing the lower part of the calf. However, the most morbid addition to this image was the smile on the face of the poor woman whose soul had serenely travelled to God's truth, and whose earthly shell was being dragged around by the pigs. As a result of the animals' jerking movements while tearing the flesh apart, Little Vita slid from his mother's arms and landed in the feces, staring quietly around him. The pigs didn't touch him. He had just been born and was already up to his neck in shit...
Leaving his dead wife in the sty, Živojin quickly grabbed his heir and, after vomiting violently, carried him to the house, where he bathed him and wrapped him in rags he found in the drawer of a large dresser. After placing Vitomir on a bed, Živojin sat on the bed and began to cry. His parents and brothers, concerned about his disappearance, discovered him weeping when they returned to the village. He had no idea how long he had been crying, but Jelisaveta had already been reduced to nothing more than a gnawed skeleton throughout that time. After regaining his composure, Živojin took his hunting rifle and entered the pigsty. Only two shots were heard.
Police vehicles and ambulances arrived from the city very quickly after this gruesome feast was reported. Following the thorough investigation and the taking of necessary samples, the tragic case of the death of the young mother was officially recorded as devourment by pigs, rather than an animal attack, as protocol required. The police officers took dead pigs for expert analysis, while the doctors secured the bones of the unfortunate woman. Instead of burying or burning the animals after the autopsy confirmed their undeniable guilt, the employee in charge of their destruction secretly butchered the pigs before secretly selling them to the most famous city butcher, according to an already established agreement.
Živojin's older brother, a 130-kg carnivore, went to the city the next day, bought a kilogram of pork mince from a butcher shop, and took it home without telling his brother. He had no notion he had increased his calorie intake by ingesting the flesh of his own sister-in-law.
Živojin never put pork in his mouth again. He fed solely on sorrow and drank his tears till he joined Jelisaveta six months later. He was laid to rest next to her gnawed bones in the family burial plot in the village cemetery.
Sara, Živojin's mother, though broken by grief over the loss of her son and daughter-in-law, found new meaning in life in little Vitomir. The old, wise woman knew that the little boy would forever be branded in the village as "the one whose mother was eaten by pigs," so she jealously guarded him from people, and hid the real truth about her daughter-in-law's death from her grandson. She sold parts of the large estate piece by piece to pay for tutors who came to the village daily, so that Vita could receive a basic elementary school education.
Even as a child, Vitomir showed an inclination towards art. He would draw anything and everything, first with pieces of broken brick on the yard concrete, and later with pencils on paper. His drawings, unlike the scribbles of children his age, were not predominant. His so-called early works had clear contours, and he even colored with a visible sense for shadows. Noticing this inclination for art, she sold two large pieces of land covered with forests and, pulling strings with the right people, enrolled him in a high school abroad. Before he set off into the wide world, his grandmother made him swear never to return to the village.
Despite her occasional visits to him, no one was aware of her little Vita's school location simply because the grandmother would not disclose it. After high school, he went on to study at the Academy of Fine Arts, God knows where. The grandma kept this secret location perfectly, but she also withheld something from Vita himself. She did not inform him that Grandpa Bora had been killed when the tractor he was driving, hauling hay from the farm, was hit by a train transporting pigs to the Western market. She did not write to him, even when his older uncle fell ill and died of trichinosis. During a wedding, the younger uncle choked after a piece of pork roast slid into his windpipe. The unskilled villagers desperately kept smacking his back and even tried the Heimlich maneuver, which always worked in movies, but no one could help him. The grandma also kept silent about that.
“Let the child study,” she thought. “He doesn't need to be distracted and burdened by these things.”
As Vita got older and years went by, Grandmother Sara continued to send money and letters. After finishing his studies, he continued to work as an academy assistant. He had no aspirations for a professor's title, as it carried many responsibilities and commitments that he did not want, due to his lifestyle. When the letters stopped arriving, and the money with them, Vitomir finally decided to return home. There was nothing in Vita's mind that could remind him of the faces of his closest relatives. He had been away for too long, so they had become strangers to him. He expected explanations, but what he found instead was a village without a single living relative. The house gaped empty, cold, and quiet. The estate surrounding the house was neglected and appeared to have been abandoned for quite some time.
Before he set off back to his homeland, his grandmother had sent him a huge sum of money, and he wondered about the reason for such extravagant behavior. He knew they were wealthy, but now, when he saw the misery of his grandmother's house, nothing was clear to him anymore.
“Did Grandma live like this so that he could spread himself around abroad?”
These were uncomfortable thoughts for him, so he quickly dismissed them. He still couldn't get rid of them. He recalled with difficulty getting drunk with colleagues in luxurious hotels and bars, spending his grandmother’s money on women of the night. Vita remembered that, in order to continue getting money from his grandmother, he also conveniently concealed from her the fact that, in addition to her transfers, he was getting substantial amounts of money for painting icons from the Serbian Orthodox Church in the diaspora.
The villagers, cautious by nature, would always come out and ask questions whenever they saw an unexpected stranger walking through their area, more out of fear than curiosity. When an outsider appeared in the community, the struggling peasants had learned that it was either to steal or to occupy. Regardless of whether the peasant was a foreigner or one of their own, everyone attacked them first in times of war or peace. He decided to find any villager and find out what had happened to his family. He passed the pigsty on his way out and stepped onto the wide village street. He moved carefully, hoping someone would notice him, stop him, or even welcome him inside. The curtains on the windows of a few houses appeared to be moving, but he couldn't be sure if someone was observing him from behind them.
Finally, in the courtyard of the village church, he came across an old man. He sat hunched over on a stump that had once been a large mulberry tree. He held a cigarette in his mouth and enjoyed every puff as if it were his last.
“Pomaže Bog, starče (God help you, old man).” Vita greeted him in a traditional manner.
“Bog ti pomog'o, junače (God helped you, brave one)” the man replied, honoring the tradition. “And who might you be? Do I know you?”
“I am Vitomir Stojanović... Sara’s grandson.”
“Sara Stojanović, Žika’s mother? You’re Sara’s kid?”
“Yes, Živojin was my late father. He died when I was still a baby...”
“I know that, son... So, you’re the only one left...”
“How am I the only one? Well, where are my people, old man?”
“None of your family members are among the living anymore, child.”
Vitomir was crushed by the weight of this new fact.
“You went to school abroad, right? Did you at least learn anything, my poor son?”
“I did, old man. I am an artist.”
“An artist?” the old man scoffed. “What kind of artist are you?”
“A painter, grandpa... and a sculptor...”
“Now, that’s pitiable, son... P I T I A B L E, I tell you...”
“Why pitiable, old man?”
“Because your destiny was painted and sculpted long ago...”
Vitomir looked at this strange old fellow and tried to understand his words, but he couldn't grasp them at all... “What are you talking about? I don’t understand you...”
The old man looked at him in surprise and asked him in a quiet voice: “Didn't your grandmother tell you anything?”
“Tell me what?”
“About the slava? About the church, the curse? About what happened on Saint Nicholas?”
All this sounded disconnected to Vitomir. “What does this grandpa know? And what curse is he talking about?”
“I see, child, by your bewildered look, that you know nothing about the past of your unfortunate family. Sit next to me, let me tell you. There's no point in dying in ignorance...”
This peaceful old man's words brought unrest to the heart of the young artist, but an irresistible desire for knowledge drew him to sit down on the stump next to the grey-haired man and listen to his tale.
“I'm listening, old man. You may begin...”
“Being a member of the Communist Party after the war was a great honor at that time, and your grandfather Bora was a party leader in the village, and a political commissar in the Timok Partisan Company during the war. On December 19, 1946, he received a delegation of his secret police colleagues from the city and had a drink with them in the local bar. They had been carousing since the morning, and as night fell, they became increasingly drunk. Bora suddenly realized that it was Saint Nicholas' Day, one of the most important dates for the Orthodox Serbs, besides Christmas and Easter. All the secret police agents in his group glanced at him out of the corner of their eyes, and he told them how to play tricks on Father Radosav, the village priest. Intoxicated minds quickly embraced the idea.”
“What idea?”
“According to Orthodox tradition, believers do not eat meat on Saint Nicholas’ Day. The saint is celebrated in the fasting atmosphere, with various dishes made of fruit and vegetables with exception of fish.”
“What’s up with that? I could never understand why believers can’t eat meat but fish is okay.” Vita interrupted the old man.
“Because cold-blooded animals differ from warm-blooded ones. Fish is traditionally considered a non-greasy food, so its meat has always been blessed and was available to believers during times of persecution and fasting. It signifies spiritual food and the unity of Christians. This is why fish is eaten on Lenten feasts, like on the day of St. Nicholas.”
“Got it. Please continue.”
“Your grandpa and his friends ordered a roasted pig from the tavern to be prepared for them and brought it to your house. You know, son, back then, you weren't allowed to have any connection with the church. Heads would roll if the communists even smelled you passing by the churchyard. Under the veil of darkness, grandmothers carried children to the nearby monasteries and secretly baptized them. Those were hard times. You couldn't even be a proper peasant. Everything was politics...”
“So what happened to my grandpa?”
“After welcoming his guests to his own home, Bora told your grandmother Sara to knead and bake the ceremonial slava bread. Sara saw that the Devil had taken the joke too far, so she told him not to play with such things. Bora, drunk as he was, slapped her so she wouldn't talk back, embarrassing him in front of his guests, and sent her to the kitchen to do what she was ordered to do. The poor woman could do nothing about it; she had to knead. Meanwhile, one of the agents went to the priest and tricked him into coming to Bora's house, telling him that President Tito himself had allowed the old tradition to be renewed and that it was now permitted to celebrate the slava without any consequences. He told the priest that Bora, the village party member, would officially announce it to the priest. The naive priest believed this story, rose from his own slava table, and followed the agent to Bora’s home, but when he arrived, he saw a sight. Next to the ceremonial bread, Stalin’s picture was propped up on one side and Tito’s picture on the other.”
“Well, well, well...Our guest of honor has finally showed up. Welcome to our Slava, Father,” inebriated Bora shouted.
“Father Radosav quickly made a sign of the cross when he saw this Devil's work,” the old man continued his story, and shouting, imitated the priest’s voice: “What are you doing, you infidels? How can you blaspheme against God and Saint Nicholas like this?”
“Look closely at these pictures, Father,,” Bora replied. “This one here,’ pointing to Tito, ‘is our God, and this other one is our saint,' he pointed to Stalin. 'Do you know who they are?'”
“The Devil has many faces, and I haven't seen them all...” the priest answered.
Bora scoffed. “I’m very happy that you willingly came to my slava, and it is proper that we treat you as a guest! Sara, bring rakija for the priest!” Bora shouted at the top of his lungs.
The poor, obedient woman entered with the bottle. She couldn't even look at the tormented man out of shame and quickly left with tears in her eyes. “What are you doing, Bora? I fast now, I don’t drink.”
"Well, you’re in my home, and this is my slava. You’re my guest, and you will drink when I tell you to drink!” Bora said sarcastically while one of his friends, who was sitting next to poor priest Radosav, sucker punched the priest so brutally that his thought was cut in half.
“Don't, Bora, for the love of God...” Radosav said, holding his red cheek.
“I don't know your God, Father, but I have seen Tito, just like I'm looking at you. He is my God!” Bora looked at his friends and issued a command: “Hold him!”
Two men jumped up and pinned Radosav to the chair, while Bora grabbed the priest’s jaw, opened his mouth and forcefully poured the rakija down his throat. As the priest choked while he swallowed, Bora told him: 'There you go, Father... You drank and stayed alive. As you can see, there was no punishment from above. Your fast is just nonsense...
“God will forgive me for this evil you are doing...” the priest mumbled through the beard soaked with alcohol.
“Evil??? I’ve just treated you to my drink, Radosav. Is it evil to treat a man? You, Father, tolerate alcohol poorly; you’re already raving nonsense. But I know why... You haven't eaten anything, poor soul! I have to feed you so you don’t talk tomorrow how Bora is a bad host, and how he gave you only booze and no food. Now, I will feed you like a man. Sara, bring the food,” he yelled.
The unfortunate woman entered carrying a plate with pork roast. Her hands were trembling, both from fear and from the furious impotence of being unable to prevent this shameful mockery. Father Radosav did not see the struggle in the poor woman's soul, but he did look wide-eyed at the pork before him.
“On this holy day, Bora? Your soul will go to Hell, you sinner!” he said and made the sign of cross.
“Father, where are your manners? Please don't insult my Slava and my saints. Until now you’ve made the sign of cross, and now we will teach you how to make the sign of the star.”
The brute agent hit Father Radosav again, and then, without feeling, the drunk man bent the priest's right arm so hard that those present thought they heard the cracking of the priest's bones. Then Bora spoke again: “Pay attention here, Father. I will show you how to make the sign of the star, and since you carelessly injured your right hand, now you will have to do it with your left. Look how it goes...” Bora said and touched parts of his body with his fingers to form a five-pointed star. “Left hip first, then head, right hip, left shoulder, right shoulder, and finally right hip.”
Vitomir listened to this confession without a word, truly ashamed of his ancestor.
“The priest, of course, did not want to desecrate his faith and refused to make the star sign,” the old man proceeded with the story. “Again, that big city agent hit the priest. The poor man cried out, and Bora, as if that was the sign he was waiting for, shouted: “Why are you yelling in my own home, Father?”
“Maybe he is hungry,” another agent commented.
“Are you hungry, Father?” Bora asked, while the agent, holding the priest by the hair, forcefully made movements with the priest’s head up and down. “Then why don't you say so, instead of letting me embarrass myself in my own house? Let’s feed you.”
Once more, the agents forcibly opened Radosav’s mouth, while Bora began stuffing greasy pieces of pork in the priest’s mouth. The poor man resisted, but they pushed the pork deeper and deeper into his throat, so he had to swallow the meat to avoid choking on it. Bora then said: “Father, Father, you're a fifty-year-old man, and we have to feed you like a baby. That’s not nice. Let's see if the baby has learned to eat by himself. Take some, Father, help yourself.”
When priest Radosav refused to eat from the plate Bora dropped in front of him, as if on command, all the agents present, except Bora, got up and started hitting the poor priest wherever they could. When he fell off the chair, they continued to kick him on the ground mercilessly with their heavy boots. After a few minutes of bashing, they picked him up, bloody as he was, and put him back in the chair.
“See, Radosav, not even my guests don't like your behavior. I apologize for not hitting you too, but does it make sense for a host to hit his guests? Of course not... And look what you're doing? You come to my Slava, you drink, you eat, but you don't respect the rules of my home. That’s not nice of you, Father...”
“And then, through his broken teeth, the unfortunate priest spoke...” the old man said and paused. He inhaled deeply, took a drag from his cigarette, and stared into the void in front of his existence.
Impatient to know what happened next, Vita asked, “Well, what did he say?”
“He said: “Cursed be this home of yours, Bora. God is watching. Today is Saint Nicholas. By this saint I swear, this pig will be the death of you, my poor Bora...”
Bora then burst out laughing and asked: “Are you cursing me, Father?”
The brute jumped again at the pious man, but Bora stopped him this time.
“Really, Father, you're not someone a person should invite over. Instead of having a good time, eating and drinking, you came here, made a fool out of yourself and caused my guests to beat you. Know that I won't invite you to my Slava anymore,” was the last thing Bora told Father Radosav, and nodded to the two agents, who grabbed the beaten priest, dragged the poor man outside and threw him in the snow in front of the house.
“Did my grandpa really do all that?” Vitomir asked.
“That wasn’t the end of the story...”
“There's more?” Vita asked in disbelief.
“Only one agent returned to your grandfather’s house. The other one waited for poor Radosav to gather his strength and rise up. It was the same one who had called the priest to Bora’s house. He followed the beaten-up priest, who was staggering down the street like a drunk coming back from a wedding. He waited for the first opportune moment and struck the tormented man with a large stone he had carried all the way from your house. That agent died in a terrible accident later. Somehow he fell asleep in a wheat field, returning drunk from a celebration, and was ground up by a combine harvester.”
"Just to kill a man like that? That’s preposterous,” the young artist shouted. “Isn’t there a law in this country?”
"My child, those guests of Bora's were the law in this country at that time... When the body of the unfortunate Radosav was found, the police conducted an investigation and, seeing the wound on his head, concluded that the priest was killed by an escaped horse, which, in a free gallop, ran into him and killed him out of fear. No one had seen the priest going to Bora’s house, so at first, everyone believed the story, wondering how it was possible that he died precisely on Saint Nikola's day and why God decided to take him.”
“Then, how do you know that story, old man, when no one saw anything?”
“No one but me, son... I was the one who witnessed Radosav's suffering...”
“How so?”
“I had just arrived in the village to work as a teacher. It was very cold, so that evening I went to Bora’s house to beg him for some wood to warm myself. Your family had huge forests, so they always had leftover firewood every winter. Through the window, I watched what the drunken, politically intoxicated maniacs did to the poor shepherd of God. When the priest tried to reach his home, I also saw the agent killing him with a stone.”
“Then why didn't you tell anyone?”
“It was a time when lives were lost for much smaller things. I couldn’t have gone against the machine, son. If I'd had, I would have probably ended up like the poor priest. I’ve carried my cross all these years. Eventually, consumed by guilt, I left my service, started drinking, and lived off the charity of the villagers. Now it’s time for you to carry that cross. The entire story was revealed to the village by your brave grandmother Sara after Bora died. You shouldn’t have come back here.”
“Why, old man?”
“Your grandmother decided to send you out of the country as soon as she saw what happened to your mother, but you were little, so she waited for you to grow up a bit.”
“What happened to my mother? Grandma always said she died peacefully… though even then, something about the story never sat right with me.”
“You really don’t know anything, you poor man,” the old teacher smiled and told him everything his grandmother had been hiding all these years.
"So, that's it... Sara sent you away hoping that at least you would escape the family curse. The pig and Saint Nicholas were the death of everyone. You are lucky that Sara kept you out of the loop. It's not good to play with such things...”
Vitomir listened but glanced blankly into the distance. He immediately remembered one incident at the academy. While painting icons for the church, he decided to play a joke on a priest who arrived to order a painting of none other than Saint Nicholas. Vitomir accepted the money and went out with his buddies to a Serbian national cuisine restaurant, where they had a roasted pig that evening. He finished the icon in fifteen days and summoned the priest to come get it. He presented the icon wrapped in a cloth.
“Let’s see how you painted the protector of our church,” the excited priest said.
Vita lifted the cloth, revealing a painting of a grey-haired old man in summer shorts and a white ribbed sleeveless undershirt, the type Bruce Willis wore in Die Hard, proudly holding a fishing rod amidst some reeds, wearing flip-flops. Horrified by this sacrilege, the priest muttered: “What is this, son?”
“Saint Nikola, Father.”
“This monstrosity is Saint Nikola?”
“Well, the church celebrates two dates, and you didn't really tell me whether to draw the summer or the winter one?”
Without saying a word, the priest rushed back to his parish. Vita, who already had an original ready-made icon of Saint Nicholas, took it to the church as soon as he realized he had gone too far with the joke. However, the church stopped knocking at his door after that.
“Sara lived modestly all these years,” the old man interrupted his memory. “When she felt her time was up, Sara slowly sold all the property, so that you would have some money to live on, wherever you were. After finally selling the house, she went to the monastery, where she died not long ago.”
These words brought tears to Vitomir's eyes. He remembered his binges and frantic partying, while his grandmother was taking food out of her own mouth so he would have enough money to squander.
“She sold the house, too? But I went to that house. I had the key, I entered, and...”
“What you saw is not yours. The house was sold twice, and both owners died. The last one had no heir, so it now stands empty. People in the village don’t usually have the custom of changing the locks. That’s why you were able to enter with your old key. Nothing holds you to this place anymore, son. Just pack up and run.”
But Vita knew that after the icon he painted as a joke, he had nowhere left to run. The curse had come full circle, and the only thing left to do was to now wait for his fate to be fulfilled. He slowly got up, thanked the old man, and went to the monastery to visit his grandmother's grave. Straight from there, he returned to the academy.
*
The following year, he was on a plane flying to Brazil. He had been invited to exhibit his paintings and sculptures in a small gallery in Sao Paulo. As the plane flew over the dense Amazon jungle, an alarm went off, and the whining voice of a flight attendant, poorly concealing her panic, boomed from the speakers. Both engines screamed in flames, and the plane plummeted towards the canopies. As oxygen masks fell from the compartments above the passengers' heads, a terrible crash made Vitomir lose consciousness.
When he opened his eyes, he saw a group of strange, dirty people, naked, smeared with mud, jumping around a fire in the middle of the forest, chewing parts of human bodies scattered around. To the left of this strange group, a pile of crumpled metal, where he had recently been, was burning.
Vitomir was made of mist. He had no physical body. His soul could only observe the horror unfolding before him. He saw his own torso lying on the ground the moment he looked down. The last thing he noticed was his own head, placed on a wooden platter of some kind, with a large red apple in his mouth.
Then he realized — it was December 19th.
The day of Saint Nicholas.