Petka climbed up on the Morozov fence and started looking around, waiting for the procession and his grandmother.
“I’ll find it somewhere in the yard,” Petka would suddenly remember his poor coin. “It won’t be lost!”
From the coin to the procession—Where? which church was ringing its bells?—Petka kept listening, and from the procession to Morozov’s coachman, from the coachman to grass and pilgrimage rambled the thoughts of little Petka, Petushok her little cockerel, as Grandmother called the boy.
Grandmother came with her umbrella, hoisted herself up to join Petka on the Morozov fence.
They pealed at Vvedenie in Barashy—they could see the procession of the cross: the heavy gonfalons burned with golden fire and the bells of Ilya the Prophet rang out.
And Petka was consoled.
Grandmother would give him a new coin, and if she didn’t, he wouldn’t starve without gooseberries and ice cream!
Grandmother had no one but Petka, Petka was the son of her nephew, a grandchild. The nephew was missing, used to be a floor polisher, then got caught at something, spent a long time in Moscow without a job, found one at last in a tavern at Nikola-na-Yamakh, worked the winter there, left the place, went to work at Guzhon’s factory and then left Guzhon as well, and then must have ended up on Khitrovka and disappeared among the lowlifes there. He came to Grandmother, albeit rarely, he came to ask for money, hung over. Grandmother feared her nephew and called him a robber.
Petka lived with his grandmother on Zemlyanoy Val near Nikola Kobylsky church; they rented a room in the basement. Before, when she had strength, Grandmother never sat around without work and could not complain, she never sat down to a table without a loaf of bread, as the neighbors used to say, but now her eyes were weak and she couldn’t work anymore, and she was very old—she was six when Alexander I’s body was brought from Taganrog through Moscow in 1825, so she was so old! Kind people supported Grandmother, she received monthly funds, and they got Petka into a city school. Everyone in Zemlyanoy Val and on Vorontsov Field and in Syromyatniki knew Grandmother Ilynishna Sundukova. They got by somehow.
Their room was cramped. Before the Sundukovs, the two old Smetanin ladies lived there, as pious as Grandmother, the Smetanins died, and Grandmother and Petka moved to their place. Before that Grandmother had had a bigger room, now the house painters lived there.
Grandmother’s tiny room was stuffed. Grandmother had a chest of drawers, its dilapidation made a secret drawer, you couldn’t open the middle one except from the right side and just with a finger, and only Grandmother knows about it, hidden in the drawer are a silver tea glass holder with grapes and two silver spoons, the handles engraved with fine little flowers with black silver, all that is Petka’s, it will be his after Grandmother.
Grandmother has a wardrobe that also has a secret: you can open the door all right, but then you’re stuck, the door will fall off—only Grandmother knows how to stick a bolt into some hole and the door goes back into place and the wardrobe can be locked.
Grandmother has an oak trunk, iron clad, for her death; in it Grandmother keeps a shirt, shroud, backless slippers, toweling, which she prepared for her death; this was the trunk in which Petka secretly collected cabbage stems in the fall, when they were chopping cabbages: the scamp thought he was helping his grandmother, with snacks for the afterlife.
Well, there’s also a couch, which doesn’t look bad at all, but if you’re not careful when you sit down, you’ll bump yourself on a piece of wood.
In the corner are icon shelves with three images: the top shelf holds small icons from holy places and all sorts of brass crosses and icons, lower down, the icon of the Moscow miracle-workers—Maxim the Blessed, Vasily the Blessed, and Ioann the Holy Fool—standing one behind the other, Vasily is naked, Maxim wears a belt, Ioann a white tunic, with his arms like that, in front of the Moscow Kremlin, the Trinity above the Kremlin, and over the saints an oak forest—the mother desert—the mountains with caves—and the mountains were like tongues, fiery, as Petka thought, it was an ancient icon; and another icon, painted on gold, the Four Holy Days, four Mothers of God—the Intercession, All Sorrows, Akhtyrka, and the Sign—falling apart, also ancient.
Beneath the icon shelves were three balls of rope: one of heavy rope, one of thin rope, and one of multicolored laces, collected over many years by Grandmother. And finally, the turkey hen—and that was all they had.
Grandmother would feed Petka and not forget the turkey. The turkey lived in a shed in the yard, the shed was next to the cowshed, the turkey was wasting away, it was as old as Grandmother, and while it couldn’t repeat Grandmother’s “Lord Jesus!” it seemed to understand everything, through its life, its old age.
When he was very little, Petka was afraid of the turkey, but with the passing years he got used to it and liked looking at her: he’d squat in the shed in front of the turkey and look—Petka was interested in the turkey’s head, pink with small pink warts. The turkey would stand there, then fluff its feathers and also sit down. And so the two of them would sit like that: Petka and the turkey.
“The deacon’s chickens have chicks, Pushka has kittens, but the turkey doesn’t have anything. Why?” Petka wondered more than once.
And more than once, it goes without saying, Grandmother said, “If God would only send our turkey an egg, we’d have little cockerel turkey chicks!”
“It’s all in the egg, if God sends the turkey an egg, cockerels will come out!” Petka understood.
“Grandmother, what if God sends the turkey an egg?”
“May He grant it!”
“And then what?” wise Petka tested Grandmother.
“She’ll sit.”
“How will she sit, Grandmother?”
“On the egg, Petushok, she’ll sit like this.” Grandmother sat down, exactly like the turkey. “She sits twenty-one days, three weeks, getting up only to eat, and then only every other day, or sometimes every third day, and then a cockerel turkey comes out.”
“Grandmother, where will we put the cockerel?”
“He’ll live with us.”
“Grandmother, if we put him in a cage, will he sing? Like a nightingale, Grandmother, yes?”
“Yes, Petushok, he’ll be so little, yellow with a crest …”
“Grandmother, we’ll make a balloon and we’ll fly, Grandmother!”
“What are you going on about, Petushok!”
“We’ll fly, Grandmother, we’ll move into the balloon with the cockerel, we’ll live in the balloon. All right?”
Grandmother was silent for a long time. Petka was staring out somewhere, through Grandmother, probably already seeing the balloon where they would live: he, the cockerel, and Grandmother.
“I won’t,” Grandmother said. “I’ll die here, but not on the balloon.”
“Grandmother,” Petka didn’t hear his Grandmother, he was thinking his own thoughts. “It’s all from the egg?”
“Send her one, Lord!” Grandmother truly wanted the turkey hen to lay an egg, and she started dreaming about a cockerel no less than Petka.
Petka forgot about the Ilya coin, did not blame the cow for eating his money, he didn’t need money, he needed a turkey cockerel. But how could he get an egg, how could he get God to send the turkey hen an egg, out of which everything would come, the cockerel would come?
“I could take one from the deacon, and put it under the turkey,” Petka pondered. “The deacon has lots of hens, they lay lots of eggs … And I need just one, that’s all, just onе egg! But what if the deacon notices, they’re all marked”—Petka had sneaked into the deacon’s storehouse!—“with the date and day, they’ll catch me and I’ll be a thief. I’ll have to go to Khitrovka as a thief. And Grandmother? How will she live alone? ‘I’m only alive for your sake, Petushok, I should have died a long time ago!’ he recalled Grandmother’s words. “No, I can’t take one from the deacon. But where, how, where will I find an egg? And I need just one, just one little egg!”
Chance showed Petka the way. Grandmother decided to pamper her Petushok and make him some fried eggs, and she sent him to the store for eggs, to buy three eggs. Petka brought Grandmother two eggs and kept the third, telling her he had broken it.
“See, Petushok, the cow ate your coin and now you broke an egg!” Grandmother was saddened by the broken egg.
But Petka … another time, he wouldn’t have touched the eggs out of regret, but now, with the egg from which everything would come, the cockerel would come, in his pocket, he felt little grief: let Grandmother say whatever she wanted about him.
He quickly ate the eggs, didn’t even wipe his lips before heading to the shed. He put the egg under her tail and waited to see what would happen, but the turkey didn’t even look, as if there were no egg at all, she didn’t sit on it.
“What does that mean? What if she doesn’t sit on it?”
“Sit down, turkey, please sit!” Petka crouched, staring at the turkey’s pink warts and froze in his crouch, not breathing, not moving, with a single stubborn thought, a single burning wish, a single request: “Sit down, turkey, please, sit!”
The turkey hen fluffed up her feathers and sat, right on the egg, she sat on the egg.
Petka stayed a long time, not taking his eyes off the turkey with a single stubborn thought, with a single burning desire.
The turkey sat calmly and firmly on the chicken egg.
Petka rose quietly, walked out of the shed quietly, and ran to the back where he fastened his eye to a crack: the turkey was sitting calmly and firmly on the chicken egg.
Should he tell Grandmother? No, let her see for herself. How happy Grandmother will be when she sees the turkey on an egg!
Petka kept watch all day at the crack in the shed: he watched the turkey and waited for Grandmother. She came to the shed and brought feed for the turkey hen.
“Glory to You, Creator!” the old woman whispered, crossing herself, bumbling around the shed, unable to believe her eyes, unable to understand: the turkey had laid an egg, the turkey was sitting on an egg.
That evening, after a long day, a marvelous one, Petka went to bed, and so did Grandmother. Petka tossed and turned, waiting for Grandmother to start about the turkey. Grandmother kept turning from side to side: she wanted to tell him the news but she was afraid to jinx it.
She held out and held out, but couldn’t stand it: “Petushok!” she called.
“Grandmother!” The scamp understood what was coming and pretended to have been asleep.
“Are you sleeping, Petushok?”
“What is it, Grandmother?”
“The Lord sent mercy!” Grandmother even laughed, she was choking with joy. “An egg! The turkey is sitting …”
“Sitting, Grandmother?”
“Sitting, Petushok, sitting …” Grandmother said in a singsong voice and coughed.
“So, Grandmother, will we have a turkey, a cockerel?”
“A turkey cockerel, a very turkey one,” whispered Grandmother, as if the turkey cockerel held the secret to all the happiness of her life and Petka’s.
“He’ll live with us?”
“With us, Petushok, where else?”
“And we won’t eat him, will we, Grandmother?”
Grandmother did not reply, she fell asleep, pampered, overjoyed by God’s mercy—the turkey cockerel that would come out of the chicken egg in twenty days and one.
The flame crackled gently in the votive light before the icons and crosses, before the Four Holy Days—Intercession, All Sorrows, Akhtyrka, and Sign—before the Moscow miracle-workers—Maxim the Blessed, Vasily the Blessed, and Ioann the Holy Fool. The mountain mother deserts, fiery in the candlelight, jabbed the Moscow Kremlin with their flaming tongues.
“Grandmother, I’m going to love the cockerel!” And Petka, Grandmother’s Petushok, fell asleep.
Every day, whether she needed to or not, Grandmother visited the shed to see the turkey hen, and each time she thanked God for the mercy sent down to her, and counted the days. Petka also counted the days and worried no less than his grandmother, he forgot about his kites, abandoned the serpent rattles, forgot that he himself had put the egg there, and believed in the chicken egg as if it were a real one, laid by the turkey.
The turkey, contrary to all turkeyish customs, sat calmly and firmly on the egg from the moment she sat down and didn’t even think of getting up to stroll around the shed. Whether it was because she had never into her old age laid an egg and had no idea about any eggs—her own or chicken eggs—or Petka’s will was at work, or Grandmother’s patience had been heard, the brooding fever came upon her, as though she were a real layer, and the pink warts on her head grew pale.
Twenty days and one day passed.
Petka had not slept all night—“What if there’s no cockerel, what if it’s a dud egg?” How could he sleep!
At first light, it was straight to the shed to see the turkey.
“The cockerel is coming, bringing the red sun!” Petka hopped on one foot, warming, breathing on the chick, there in the shed and there in Grandmother’s cellar room, as if the turkey cockerel held the secret to all the happiness of his life and Grandmother’s.
“Glory to You, Creator! Glory to Your patience!” Grandmother couldn’t even stand up with joy.
Fall that year was dry and warm. The sunshine, though short, feathered the turkey cockerel: he grew, crowing hoarsely, swaggered, attacked the deacon’s vernal roosters, and fought like a real cock. Everything about him promised a bright red and prickly comb, sturdy spurs, a loud voice—a turkey cockerel!
It wasn’t the turkey hen—how could she? she was wasting away and dying—it was Grandmother who took care of the cockerel, and when the warm weather turned cold, she brought the cockerel from the shed into her room. Grandmother would preserve Petka’s happiness, she would raise the cockerel the way she had raised Petka, preserving her happiness into her old age.
With the cold and the October sleet came anxious times, the memorable days of the sacrifices of people and freedom in the revolution of 1905.
That the electricity was out on the big streets in the city and that nearby at the Kursk Station shiny, polished locomotives stood and froze, and beyond the Pokrov gate the terrible red stacks at Guzhon’s factory did not send up smoke, and the red light did not puff beyond the Androniev Monastery, all that seemed to go past Grandmother’s basement room; Grandmother did not need electricity, she did not go out beyond the gates at night, and she didn’t have any place to travel to, and she had no business with Guzhon.
But Grandmother was not alone in the basement: the neighbors, just like her, basement dwellers, simple working people, were tightly bound by a heavy chain to both the Guzhon red smokestacks and the shiny Kursk locomotives, and the fact that the chimneys were not smoking and the locomotives were not moving knocked them out of their laboring rut, upset the order of their working lives, shook the earth, and became a doomsday for them.
And the sense that enveloped the streets, bursting into daily lives and thoughts as doomsday, traveled from gate to gate, from street to street, from lane to lane, from dead end to dead end, from factory to factory, from basement to basement as a vague premonition of trouble, inexorable misfortune, seized Grandmother’s old soul on the threshold of her death.
Grandmother’s nephew, the Robber, who had been lost somewhere on Khitrovka, suddenly appeared near Nikola Kobylsky in Grandmother’s basement room.
His hand, crippled by rheumatism, his nose, like three noses one on top of the other—elephantiasis—his black worn raincoat with nothing under it but unwashed, soiled underwear that barely stayed up, rags and tatters, filled Grandmother with fear and dread. And not because Robber would ask for money, would put a knife to her throat, for she would give him her last coin, even though it would be difficult, she and Petka would be very hungry after that, she was afraid because she sensed that her nephew, Petka’s father, Robber, would do something to Petka.
What Ro
bber could do to Petka, Grandmother could not explain to herself, but somewhere in her old soul, it was clear that Petka was in danger, that trouble had left its kingdom made of bones and was coming closer, creeping up on Petka’s small, simple heart, and the trouble was ruthless, inexorable, uncharitable.
Her nephew had not drunk or eaten; he was hungry. Grandmother lit the samovar for him. Petka came home from school and they sat down at the table.
Petka had heard many stories from pilgrims about the lives of saints, how they had come to their sainthood, and he dreamed about becoming a robber, taking sin upon himself and then going to God, living in a monastery, or in a cave. And there he was sitting at the same table with a robber, sharing tea from the same samovar, and that robber, Grandmother’s nephew, was his own father.
Petka could not tear his eyes away from his father, he looked at his trilevel nose with the same consuming curiosity that he had for the turkey’s pink warts. Not knowing how to please his father, how to show off, he jumped down from his chair, caught the cockerel hiding under the couch, and brought him over by his wings.
“Look at him,” Petka said, “he’s a turkey!”
“All Petka and I need is for the cockerel to be whole, Petka and I don’t need anything else!” Grandmother seemed to be apologizing for something, her hands trembling and her head shaking.
Robber winked at the cockerel—a fine cockerel! Robber was satisfying his hunger, he rushed, he was making up for his starvation—how a grouse can still leave you hungry!—he ate, he ate Petka’s dinner and Grandmother’s and then started on the tea. The hot tea heated him, made him sleepy, loosened his tongue. He began talking disjointedly, looking through Petka and Grandmother the way Petka had looked talking about his balloon on which he, the cockerel, and Grandmother would live.
According to Robber, almost everything was allowed now, there were no more laws, no law at all, and if not today then tomorrow capital will fall into his hands, and then the reprisals will come, a bloody battle …
The Little Devil and Other Stories Page 4