STORY BY ANTHONY CARRUBBA

The old man had hung a small mirror from the door frame before he’d gone to bed, as he had done for as many nights as anyone could remember, so that would-be intruders would break it on the way in, thereby cursing themselves with bad luck for seven years. He also packed the keyhole with fennel to ward off bad spirits, which had long since made the lock inoperable, hence the need for the nightly mirror as an added defence against corporeal threats.

Now it was nearing the end of winter, months after the robbery and the funeral, and bits of mirror still lay strewn across the entryway hall, having escaped the cleaners’ half-hearted efforts. The thieves found nothing worth taking, though they turned over most of the old man’s furniture and destroyed his garden shed, presumably in the search for a stash of pension money. When they reached his bedroom, they found him already dead, passed in his sleep. They went back outside, tore up the vegetable patch and then departed, leaving the corpse undisturbed. The cops found the body when they responded to a neighbour’s call about the break-in.

Pyotr stood in the doorway, surveying the remnants of his grandfather’s mirror. The criminals were never caught, and the police indicated that the investigation would soon be closed without resolution. The old man, Pyotr’s namesake, would have enjoyed the thought of the mirror’s curse exacting vengeance on his behalf, or indeed of his own spirit punishing the thieves where the police had failed to do so.

Pyotr had shared many arguments with his grandfather over the years, trying to convince him to stop with the embarrassing superstitions, to install a security door or alarm system. He said it did not matter, that nothing would happen to him. He was right, according to the coroner. Natural causes.

The worst was the vegetable patch. The old man had Pyotr out there for hours and hours as a child, working him like a farmhand. Endless lecturing, in his imperious manner, not only about gardening but also about the countless rituals and spiritual observances involved in cultivating plants successfully.

Deep winters like this one, that bite and linger, his grandfather had taught him, were the most important time to be out working in the garden, turning and preparing the soil in preparation for spring. It was vital to prove your commitment to life in this way, to show God your gratitude for his gifts even when the weather made you bitter and unwilling. Many such winters of Pyotr’s childhood were spent toiling in the garden which he now cast his bleary eyes over. Seeing it ruined sent pangs up and down his body. All his grandfather’s considerable knowledge and pointless superstitions mingled in Pyotr’s mind, one tenet standing out clearer than the rest, almost as a commandment among by-laws. “Only sow when the moon fades, before the next cycle starts, you must put aside time for this.”

He looked it up on his phone; two days until the new moon. Pyotr’s hands had lost the callouses he developed as a child. He could feel this acutely as he set to work with the old man’s worn shovel, setting right the disturbed soil.