‘Go outside, Little Kiy,’ his mother said tactfully.
As he came out, he saw Mal.
It had not been a good night for Mal. Together with one of the older hunters he had set a trap for the bear cub in the woods, and they had nearly been successful. He’d have had the cub now if he hadn’t lost his head at the last moment, made a false move, and been chased away by an infuriated mother bear. It made him blush just to think of it.
He had been planning to help the men get the hay in that day – attract the attention of the elder with his hard work and avoid embarrassing conversations with Kiy.
It did not occur to the little boy that his uncle was hurrying by the hut in order to avoid him. He ran over to him and stood looking up at him expectantly.
Mal glanced guiltily right and left. Fortunately the cart was unattended now and they were alone.
‘Did you bring him? Where is he?’ Kiy cried. The sight of his uncle had raised all his hopes again.
Mal hesitated.
‘He’s in the forest,’ he prevaricated.
‘When are you bringing him here? Today?’ The little fellow’s eyes were sparkling with excitement now.
‘Soon. When winter comes.’
The boy’s face clouded with puzzlement and disappointment. Winter? Winter seemed half a lifetime away.
‘Why?’
Mal thought for a moment. ‘I had him. He was walking beside me with a rope round his neck, Little Kiy; but then the wind took him away. There was nothing I could do.’
‘The wind?’ His face fell. He knew that the wind was the oldest of all the gods. His uncle had often told him: ‘The sun god is great, Kiy, but the wind is older and greater.’ The wind blew by day, and also by night when the sun had departed. The wind blew whenever it wished, over the endless plain.
‘Where is he now?’
‘Far away, in the forest.’
The child looked heartbroken.
‘But the snow maidens will bring him back,’ his uncle went on. ‘You’ll see.’
Why did he have to lie? He gazed down at his trusting little nephew and knew very well. It was for the same reason that he lived with the two old men and defied the village elder. It was because they all despised him and because, worse, he was ashamed of himself. That was why he could not admit the truth to the eager child. I am foolish and useless, he thought. Yes, and he was lazy too. He had planned to work hard in the field that day, but now he felt like fleeing into the forest again to escape the ugly truth about his character. He could feel his resolution slipping away from him.
Yet perhaps there was still hope.
‘I know where the wind is hiding him though,’ he said.
‘You do? You do?’ Kiy’s face lit up. ‘Tell me.’
‘Deep in the forest, in the land of Three-times-Nine.’
‘Can you get there?’
‘Only if you know the way.’
‘And you know the way?’ Surely a fine hunter like his uncle would know the way even to magic lands. ‘Which way is it?’ he demanded.
Mal grinned.
‘To the east. Far to the east. But I can be there in a day,’ he boasted. And for a moment, he almost believed it himself.
‘Will you fetch him then?’ the little boy pleaded.
‘Perhaps I will. One day.’ Mal looked serious. ‘But that’s our secret. Not a word to anyone.’
The boy nodded.
Mal walked on, glad to have escaped from his embarrassment. Maybe in a few days he would think of another trap for the bear cub. He did not want to disappoint the little boy, who trusted him. He would find a way.
He felt better. He would work in the field that day.
Kiy watched him go sadly. He was thoughtful. He had heard the women laugh at his Uncle Mal, and the men curse him. He knew they called him Lazy-bones. Was it true after all that he could not be trusted? He looked up at the huge, vacant morning sky, and wondered what to do.
The line of women spread out across the golden field in a broad V, like a flight of swallows in the summer sky.
In the centre, with the line of women sweeping behind her to right and left, moved the large form of Lebed’s mother-in-law. The wife of the elder had died that past winter, and she was the senior woman of the village now.
It was a hot day. They had already been working for several hours and now it was nearing noon. For this work, the women wore only simple linen-like shifts, and shapeless bast shoes of woven birch bark. Each carried a sickle.
As they inched their way up the long field of barley, they sang. First the senior woman led with a single line, then the rest would chime in behind her, singing in a high, nasal tone that sounded sometimes harsh, sometimes mournful.
Lebed was covered in sweat; but she felt comfortable, working in that steady rhythm under the sun. Although they sometimes treated her scornfully, each of these women was in some way her kin – another wife, the other wife’s sister, her husband’s sisters and their daughters, these daughters’ aunts and cousins. For each there was a precise form of address which noted their complex relationship, the appropriate degree of respect, and to which was usually added the diminutive so beloved of all Slavs, and which turned every form of address into an expression of affection. ‘Little mother’; ‘little cousin’: how else would one speak to another speck of poor humanity here in the immensity of the endless plain?
These were her people. They might call her a Mordvinian, but she was part of them. This was the community: the rod as the folk in the south called it, or the mir further north. They held their land and village in common – only a man’s household possessions were his own; and the voice of the elder was law.
Now her mother-in-law was calling to the women, encouraging them with the soft, caressing names.
‘Come, my daughters, my swans,’ she called, ‘let us reap.’ Even to Lebed she cried softly: ‘Come, my Little Swan.’
In a way, Lebed loved even her. ‘Eat what is cooked, listen to what is said,’ the older woman would tell her sternly. Yet apart from her outbursts of rage, she could sometimes be kindly.
Lebed glanced across the field. Beyond, a few hundred yards away, her husband and the men were loading hay on to carts in the meadow. Her brother was there too. By the side of the field, three of the oldest women were quietly resting. She looked for Kiy. He had been sitting with the old women a little earlier, but perhaps he had gone to watch the men.
‘The golden sun is in the sky
Moist Mother Earth will never be dry.’
The women sang and swung their sickles, stooping once more, as though in prayer to the greatest goddess who fed them all: Moist Mother Earth.
The great goddess of the Slavs took her finest form in that region. For the hamlet lay on the edge of the best of all the bands of soil on the great plain: the black earth.
There was nothing else like it on the Eurasian plain.
Up in the north, under the tundra, the soil was a peaty gley, poor for cultivation; next, under the forests, lay the sandy podzol soils – grey under the northern deciduous forests, brown as one came to the broad-leaved forests further south. In these soils, too, the yields were relatively poor. But as one came towards the steppe belt, a very different soil appeared. This was the black earth, the chernozem – glistening, soft, thick, rich as honey. And it stretched, for hundreds upon hundreds of miles, from the western coasts of the Black Sea, eastwards across the plain, past the great River Volga and far into Siberia. The Slavs who lived at the forest’s edge had only to clear a field and then crop it continually: on that rich black soil, they might raise crops for many years before the soil was exhausted, and then they would leave the field to grass over and clear another. It was a primitive and wasteful form of agriculture, but on the chernozem, a village could survive in this way for a long time without having to move to fresh soil. Besides, what need was there to worry – were not the forest and the plain both endless?
It was as the women paused between songs that
she saw Mal strolling towards them. His face was red and covered with sweat.
‘Here comes Lazy-bones, looking for more work,’ one of the women cried mischievously. Even her mother-in-law laughed, and Lebed couldn’t help smiling. It was obvious from the slightly guilty look on his face that he had sneaked away on some pretext for a rest. She was only surprised that her son had not come with him.
‘Where’s Little Kiy?’ she asked.
‘Don’t know. Haven’t seen him all morning.’
She frowned. Where could the boy be? She turned and called to her mother-in-law.
‘May I go and find Little Kiy? He’s gone off somewhere.’
The large woman scarcely paused as she looked impassively at Lebed and her good-for-nothing brother. Then she shook her head. There was work to be done.
‘Go and ask the old women where he went,’ she said to Mal quietly.
‘All right.’ And he ambled amiably towards the edge of the field.
It always amused Mal to compare the lives of the people in the village. Those of the men were more vivid, perhaps, but shorter. A man grew strong, either fat or thin; and when at last his strength deserted him, like as not he would suddenly die. But the lot of women was quite different. First they would blossom – pale-skinned, slim, graceful as a deer; then, all and without exception, they would thicken – first at the hips as his sister had done, then about the midriff and the legs. And they would infallibly continue to get stouter and rounder, burnt by the sun, like a pear or an apple, year after year, until the taller of them might reach the stately massiveness of Lebed’s mother-in-law. Then slowly, still keeping their comfortable, rounded shape, they would begin to get smaller, shrinking gradually until at last in old age they shrivelled up, like the little brown kernel inside a nutshell. And thus the old woman – the babushka – with her wrinkled brown face and shining blue eyes, would live out her long last years until finally, as naturally as a nut that has fallen, she sank at last into the ground. It was the pattern for all women. His sister Lebed would go that way too in the end. When he looked at an old babushka, he always felt a wave of affection.
There were three babushki sitting together at the edge of the field. Smiling kindly, he spoke to each in turn.
Lebed watched him as he spoke to them and wondered why he was taking so long. Finally he returned, grinning.
‘They’re old,’ he explained, ‘and a bit confused. One says she thought he went back to the village with the other children; the second thought he went to the river; and the third thinks he went off into the forest.’
She sighed. She couldn’t think why Kiy should have gone into the forest, and she doubted that he had strayed to the river. The other children were back in the hut in the charge of one of the girls. Probably he was there.
‘Go and see if he’s in the village,’ she asked. And since it was better than working, Mal wandered off contentedly.
As the women worked, they continued to sing. She loved the song – for though it was a slow and mournful one, its tune was so beautiful it seemed to take her mind off her troubles:
‘Peasant you will die;
Plough your bit of earth.
Neither water nor the fire
Comfort you at your last hour;
Neither the wind
Can be your friend.
In the earth
Is your end:
Let the earth
Be your friend.’
The long line of women moved slowly forward, stooping as they cut the heavy-eared barley. The field was full of the soft swish and rustle of their sickles cutting through the browning stalks. The thin dust from the toppled barley hung low over the ground, smelling sweet. And Lebed, as she often did, experienced that half-pleasant, half-mournful sense – as though a part of her was lost, unable to escape from this slow, hard life in the great silence of the endless plain – half-mournful, because one was forever trapped; half-pleasant, because these were her people, and was not this life, after all, as things should be?
Some time had passed before Mal returned. His face still wore its usual vacant smile, but she thought she noticed a hint of uneasiness in it.
Wasn’t he there?’
‘No. They hadn’t seen him.’
It was strange. She had assumed he would be with the others. Now she felt a trace of anxiety. Again she called to her mother-in-law.
‘Little Kiy isn’t at home. Let me go and find him.’
But the older woman only looked at her with mild contempt.
‘Children always disappear. He’ll come back soon enough.’ And then with more malice: ‘Let your brother look for him. He’s got nothing to do.’
Lebed bowed her head sadly.
‘Go to the river, Mal. See if he’s there,’ she said. And this time she saw that he walked more quickly.
The work went on steadily. Soon, she knew, it would be time to stop and rest. She suspected that her mother-in-law was keeping them at it for longer so as to have an excuse to stop her leaving. She looked up from her work to the long horizon. Now it seemed almost to mock her, to remind her as brutally as her mother-in-law: ‘There is nothing you can do – the gods have already ordered all things as they are destined to be.’ She bent down again.
This time Mal came back in only a few minutes. He looked worried.
‘He didn’t go to the river.’
‘How do you know?’
He had met the old man he went hunting with, he told her, who had been at the river bank all morning. The old man would surely have seen the little boy if he had come by.
She felt a stab of fear.
‘I think he’s gone into the forest,’ Mal said.
The forest. He had never wandered there before, except with her. She gazed at her brother.
‘Why?’
He looked embarrassed.
‘I don’t know.’
Obviously he was lying, but she knew better than to cross-examine him about his reasons.
‘Which way would he have gone?’
Mal considered. He remembered his foolish words to the little boy that morning: ‘To the east. Far to the east. I can be there in a day.’
‘He’s probably gone east,’ He blushed. ‘I don’t know where.’
She looked at him scornfully.
‘Here, take this.’ She thrust the sickle into his hand. ‘Cut!’ she ordered.
‘But this is women’s work,’ he protested.
‘Work, fool,’ she shouted at him, and strode towards her mother-in-law, while the other women, watching the scene, burst into laughter. ‘Let me go and find Little Kiy,’ she begged once more, ‘my brother has sent him into the woods.’
Her mother-in-law did not at first look at her, but glanced across at the meadow. The men had stopped work there and several, including Lebed’s husband and the village elder, were walking towards them.
‘Time to rest,’ she called to the women, and then, curtly to Lebed: ‘You can go.’
As her husband and the elder arrived, Lebed told them briefly what had happened. The elder was a large, grey-bearded man with small impatient eyes. He showed little interest. But her husband’s softer face creased into a look of gentle concern. He glanced at the elder.
‘Should I go too?’
‘The boy will turn up. He won’t have gone far. Let her find him.’ His tone was bored.
She saw the flicker of relief pass across her husband’s face. She understood. He had other wives and other children to worry about.
‘I will go now,’ she said quietly.
‘If you’re not back when we start work again, I’ll come after you,’ her husband promised with a smile.
She nodded, and went upon her way.
How pleasant the woods seemed, how friendly. Above, in the brilliant blue sky, billowing white clouds passed from time to time, gleaming in the reflection of the late morning sun. They came from the east, over the green forest, from who knew what parched and endless steppes. By the forest’s edge wh
ere the little boy walked, the wind passed softly over the tall grass, making it whisper. Half a dozen cows grazed there in the dappled shade.
It was already some time since Kiy had slipped away from the old women. Now he made his way happily along the familiar path that led into the woods. He had no sense of danger.
All morning he had brooded about the bear cub. His Uncle Mal knew where it was – in the magical kingdom far to the east. And had he not said he could reach it in a day? But somehow, young as he was, Kiy knew his uncle would not go. And the more he thought about it, the more it had seemed to the little boy that he knew what to do.
As the long morning grew warmer, the field where the women worked had begun to shimmer in the heat. He had wandered to and fro, apparently listless, until at last, as though in a daze and guided by an invisible hand, he had found himself drifting towards the woods.
He knew the way. East meant away from the river, along the track where his mother and the women came to pick mushrooms. At summer’s end they would come this way again, to pick berries. East was where the white clouds were coming from.
He did not know how far it was, but if his uncle could get there in a day then so could he.
Or two days anyway, he thought bravely.
And so, dressed in a white smock with a cloth belt, little bast shoes, and still clutching a wisp of barley he had picked from the field, the chubby young fellow made his way along the path into the pine trees with dreamlike determination.
It was about a quarter of a mile to the series of small glades where the women went to pick mushrooms. More than a dozen varieties could be found there, clustered in the deep shadows, and he smiled with pleasure as he reached the place. He had never been beyond the spot before, but he pressed on with confidence.
The narrow path led down a slope, sometimes over pine needles, sometimes over gnarled roots, then up again into a coppice. He noticed that there were fewer pines now, amongst the oaks and beeches, but saw more ash trees. Squirrels watched him cautiously from the trees. One, by the path, seemed about to bound away, but changed its mind and instead sat alertly, crackling a husk between its teeth as he went by. After a little, the coppice thinned. Everything seemed very quiet. The path was grassy here. A few hundred yards more and it led to the right, then turned to the left. Another clump of pines appeared.
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