person
Father Mikhail
also: отец Михаил
The local priest Varvara instructs Pyotr Dmitrich to send for, so that the royal doors of the church icon screen may be opened -- a folk-Orthodox custom believed to ease a difficult childbirth.
Reading notes
- The Name-Day Party §246 the royal doors
The royal doors (tsarskie vrata) are the central doors of the icon screen (iconostasis) in an Orthodox church, opened only at specific points in the liturgy. Varvara's instruction to send for the priest to open them during a difficult labor reflects a genuine Russian folk-Orthodox custom, paired here with the equally traditional folk practice of leaving no drawer, chest, or casket locked in the house -- both understood to ease a difficult birth by removing any form of binding or obstruction, sympathetically, from the birthing woman's body.