The Fifth Doll

by Charlie N. Holmberg

  Heat prickled beneath her skin, and before she could cage the words, she said, “I’m sure I’ll understand you if you speak bluntly, Tradesman.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Yes, I’m sure you will, Dairymaid,” and he smiled at the foolish nickname. “But there are some things I cannot merely explain, which is why you must open the dolls. But—” He added the last word hastily and set down Jaska’s doll without taking his eyes from her. “You must not open all of your dolls at once. Are you listening carefully, Matrona Vitsin? You must open them one at a time, slowly, and under my supervision, or else there will be grave consequences.”

  The kite watched her with both eyes.

  Matrona stiffened, her fingers clutching her doll as though they were talons. “What sort of consequences?”

  “You will see, if you are foolish.” Bitterness leaked into his voice. He looked over the large table, but Matrona could not determine which doll had caught his attention. Seconds later, his gaze returned to her. “You must also promise not to tell another soul about the dolls. Give me your word, on your honor, not to speak of it.”

  Matrona bit her lip.

  Slava’s gaze darkened. “You know what I can do. I did not intend to threaten, Matrona, but it is easier than the alternative. This is for the good of the village, as you will learn.”

  She found enough moisture in her mouth to say, “You would have me swear it? But the Good Book—”

  Slava grumbled. “You must swear it, regardless of God.”

  Regardless of God. It was near blasphemy. Still, the memories of her father’s condition forced her to bob her head.

  It was enough for Slava. “Very good. You will open your doll now, just one, and place it on the table.” He gestured to the empty spot on the leftmost tabletop. “Then you will return to me in three days’ time to open the next. Understood?”

  Again, she nodded, her hands sweating against the glazed paint of the doll, her dress too hot against her skin. Just open it, she told herself. Open it and leave. How desperately her lungs ached for fresh air.

  She twisted the two pieces a hair’s breadth. “What will happen?”

  “You will be unharmed.” Slava folded his arms. “The rest will soon become apparent.”

  The kite nodded his narrow head as if in agreement. The movement made his beak look longer.

  Closing her eyes, Matrona held her breath and wrenched the doll open.

  Nothing happened. She didn’t feel crazed. She didn’t feel different at all. Opening her eyes, she glanced down at the doll in her hands. Sure enough, inside the outer shell was another doll identical to the first, wearing the same clothes and expression. Matrona set the open halves of the larger doll on a sliver of free space on the large table and studied the smaller doll in her hand.

  “Close it and place it on the table,” Slava instructed.

  Matrona did so, her gaze lingering on her likeness.

  “Three days,” he reminded her. “I will be waiting for you.”

  Matrona nodded mutely. When Slava seemed to have no further words for her, she turned and let herself out of the house, happy to be done with it.

  She took two full breaths once the familiar dirt path appeared underfoot, then shook out her arms until her shoulders relaxed. Glancing behind her to the tradesman’s house, she wondered if it had all been some sort of ruse. Had Slava merely used her gullibility to frighten her? She felt no different.

  Perhaps she wouldn’t know the truth until she saw her father.

  She passed the children’s glade in the wood and saw Alena Zotov coming the opposite way with the cooper’s wife beside her, both carrying baskets to be filled by other village craftsmen. Matrona moved to wave, but the shadows on Alena’s face stilled her hand. The woman’s features only darkened as she drew nearer. The cooper’s wife, too, narrowed her eyes at Matrona, then turned and whispered something into Alena’s ear. Alena’s stare did not break from Matrona’s, and a scowl formed on the other woman’s lips. She nodded slightly, agreeing to whatever the cooper’s wife had told her.

  They did not make space on the path, forcing Matrona to step onto the tromped grass beside it. Alena had never looked at her so coldly before. Neither of the women had.

  They passed, sniffing as they went, and Matrona caught the words “—indecent. I feel sorry for—” and then they were gone.

  Matrona watched after them, tucking back those short, stray hairs. Surely the scowls weren’t meant for her. Had someone else in the village treated them poorly before they came this way? Was all well at Roksana’s home?

  Matrona shook herself. Father. Find father. She needed to ensure he was well, and that Slava was not playing some strange game with her. Picking up her skirt, Matrona returned to the path and quickened her step.

  As the west side of the village came into view, so did the other villagers. Perhaps Matrona imagined it, but they all seemed to be scowling at her. The cobbler’s daughter gaped with a wide O expression to her mouth, and old Irena Kalagin shouted out, “I was sick for three days, you wretched girl!”

  Matrona’s heart retreated until it hit her spine, and she quivered with its every beat. “I’m sorry,” she said too quietly. “What—?”

  But Irena simply spat on the ground before turning back to her laundry.

  Taking a deep breath to still her nerves, Matrona focused on the path beneath her and hurried toward her house, nearly at a run, avoiding the eyes of her other neighbors. Their gaze made her feel naked, and she without a clue as to where her clothes had gone.

  Slava’s words, “The rest will soon become apparent,” echoed against her skull as the scents of the dairy farm wafted over her.

  She glanced up to the safe haven of her izba and opened the door, letting out a long breath as she pushed it closed with her heel. Her mother looked up from the brick oven and hurried toward her.

  “Mama,” Matrona said, breathless, “the strangest thing—”

  Her mother’s open palm cracked against Matrona’s cheek.

  The force turned her head and pounded in her ears. Eyes watering, Matrona blinked rapidly and touched the tender bruise forming beneath her eye. She turned toward her mother, noticing the hardness in her eyes and the prominent vein drawn down her forehead.

  “You dare to humiliate me and the Popovs with such a scandal?” her mother snapped. “By the saints, he’s practically a child!”

  Matrona’s stomach sank into her hips, her heart plopping atop it. They had to be weighing down her lungs, for she found it difficult to breathe. “Wh-What?”

  “And a Maysak,” her mother spat, throwing her hands up into the air and plodding back to the brick oven to check on whatever cooked there. “His mother is a madwoman and his father a drunk!”

  Matrona’s skin turned cold, and she leaned back against the door to keep from falling over. Her fingers trembled. “Y-You know . . .” about . . . Jaska?

  “About your filthy yearnings for Mad Olia’s youngest? Everyone knows,” she spat again. “I did not raise my daughter to have such indecent thoughts. And toward a Maysak!”

  Matrona slid down the length of the door until her rump smacked against the floor. She pinched herself, but this was no dream. The beats of her pulse bled into one another, leaving her light-headed.

  Her mother picked up a wooden spoon and threw it against the front of the brick oven. “Your father is in a rage over it. I can’t imagine what Feodor will say, let alone his parents!” She spun back toward Matrona, fire inside her skin. “Get up. You think now is a time for rest? And I knew the cheese that made everyone sick two years past was your doing. I knew it, reckless girl!”

  Irena’s hard words surfaced in her mind. “I was sick for three days,” she’d said. The food poisoning. Yes, that had been her fault. She’d sensed the milk was turning wrong, but the demand had been so high . . . She hadn’t told a soul—not about that, and certainly not about Jaska.

  If Feodor cancelled the marriage, she’d be trapped inside this
izba forever, barely esteemed higher than the rag rugs.

  A murky image of her doll surfaced in her mind. It can’t be.

  The back door to the izba slammed shut, and her father stomped in, brow furrowed. When he noticed Matrona, his bearded lips pulled into a deep frown. “You have a great deal of explaining to do. How will we show our faces at church?”

  No slurred words. No twitching. Only anger. Yet Matrona could find no peace in his apparent recovery.

  “Well?” pushed her mother.

  “I—I never . . .” Matrona shook her head, and her mother stormed forward to grab Matrona’s sleeve and haul her upright. “I—I didn’t mean for the cheese to go bad . . .” Her face flushed, and tears stung her eyes. “I never . . . Jaska, I never acted on—”

  “It barely makes a difference!” her mother shouted. “The things you think about that potter—”

  Think about the potter? Matrona wondered, her bones feeling as hollow as flutes. How could her mother possibly know her thoughts?

  They bubbled up inside her, scraps of past and buried flights of fancy about the youngest Maysak. The times she’d measured his shoulders—his hips—with her eyes. How she’d imagined strolling in the wood with him, wondered about the taste of his mouth, and—

  “God help me,” she murmured.

  “He wants nothing to do with you,” her mother snapped.

  Her father shook his head. “Just . . . go to your room until we can sort this out. I can’t fathom what the Popovs . . .”

  He didn’t finish the sentiment. He didn’t need to. Matrona balled her hands into white-knuckled fists and rushed past her parents, hurtling down the hallway to her small room. Once inside, she shut the door behind her, and only then did she let the tears fall. She wiped at them, but that only wet her hands and wrists.

  Were all her secrets known, then? Every little sin that had ever crossed her mind, every sour thought toward her parents or other villagers? But they didn’t know about the dolls . . . Surely they couldn’t. No one had asked about the dolls.

  She thought of Jaska, and her cheeks burned as surely as if someone had sliced open hot peppers and rubbed them on her face. Even before Feodor, she’d never shared her thoughts about the potter with anyone. Not even Roksana knew about Jaska. Matrona never spoke of him or the Maysaks unless someone else mentioned the family first . . .

  Was this the reason for the cross looks Alena Zotov and the cooper’s wife had given her? Because they knew she was a twenty-six-year-old betrothed woman who harbored desires for a younger man—a boy, he was practically a boy—in the dark shadows of her thoughts?

  Could they hear what she was thinking right now? A passage from the Good Book bubbled up in her thoughts: “Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.”

  Matrona collapsed onto her bed and smothered her head with her pillow until her body craved breath. Did her fellow men suddenly possess the eyes of God? Her mind sought out any other secrets she’d buried over the years. Did the villagers now know about the triangle of moles on her left hip? The time she’d lied for Roksana so her friend could visit the granger? What of the test she’d cheated on in school some fifteen years ago? Did they know about that, too?

  Shooting up to her knees, Matrona grabbed her tear-spotted pillow and threw it against the wall. She’d spent her whole life trying to do what was right. Trying to keep her parents smiling enough that hard words would never leave their lips. Trying to be good. Even so, she could bear the whole village’s censure—she was sure she could bear it—were it not for the gossip about Jaska.

  She wiped her sleeves across her eyes. There was a reason she was twenty-six and unwed. There was not an abundance of bachelors in the village, and she had stayed away from them as a maiden should. As her father had always wanted her to. Only an occasional smile or nod of her head. She had chosen her words to any possible match with care to ensure they could not be misconstrued. Yet she would be punished for this? Who among her family, her neighbors, had not harbored indecent thoughts?

  She collapsed back onto her mattress, biting her tongue to control the urge to weep, wishing she could sleep and wake up to a normal world without secrets and without dolls. She did not sleep. Matrona never napped during the day—there was too much to do. Too much required of her.

  The walls of her room pressed into her, the slivers in their wood picking apart the rhythm of her breathing.

  Spitting Slava’s name like a curse, Matrona pushed herself off her mattress and stepped back into the hall. She heard the mumbling voices of her parents talking in the front room, but she slipped through the kitchen and out the back door to the cow pasture. Work would pull the strain from her body. Work would clear her thoughts. Work would make her sleep.

  Matrona churned butter with a vigor that would have surprised her had her mind been present enough to realize it. She lost herself in the familiar pain of her arms and shoulders. She muddied the bottom of her sarafan, hauling hay into the cow troughs and mucking out their tie stalls. She rubbed her hands raw twisting cheesecloths.

  She was separating the curds from the whey when a familiar voice spoke her name, startling her from her work.

  “Feodor.” She kept her focus on the curds. Rude of her, yes, but she just couldn’t—

  “I’ve been speaking to your parents.” His voice sounded deeper than usual, flatter. “I must say . . . you have shocked us all.”

  “I didn’t do so willingly.” She scrambled for something clever to say, but the sudden exposure had left her empty.

  Feodor scoffed. “I should hope not. The entire village is whispering about you and that Maysak boy. You’ve dragged my family’s name through the mud as well.”

  “Do they also talk of the dolls?”

  His brow furrowed as if she’d spouted gibberish. “What dolls?”

  So that secret had been preserved, no doubt by some sorcery of Slava’s. Matrona crushed the curds in her hand, took a deep breath, and let the cheesecloth fall to her worktable. Turning around, she bowed her head. “Please forgive me, and do not hold it against my parents.”

  The words felt like sand in her mouth, and her blood seemed to pump the wrong direction through her veins. Her head spun, and an ache formed behind her eyes. Did he have to confront her now? Could Feodor not allot her one day to process her humiliation?

  Could he not understand?

  “I suppose I should not.” From the corner of her eye, she saw him fold his arms. He was silent for a long moment, then sighed and said, “I don’t know what to do with you, Matrona. Hide you and myself away until the gossipmongers find something better to talk about? I need to sort out my own . . . feelings on the matter.”

  Matrona lifted her eyes to meet his, but Feodor stared at an unknown spot on the wall behind her. Feeling daring, Matrona asked, “Then you will not break the engagement?”

  “I have not decided,” he answered, too quickly, as though he had been waiting for the opportunity to say it. To let her know what a disappointment she’d become to him. His gaze finally met hers. “You know I value tradition, chastity—”

  “I am not unchaste.”

  “—the subjection of a woman to her husband,” he added, his lip curving downward. “You are well dispositioned and know how to hold your tongue and please your family. You strive to follow the Good Book. That is what drew me to you, Matrona. To know of these”—he scowled—“fancies—”

  “Matrona!” sang a new voice, Roksana’s, and the loudness of it was jarring. “Matrona, are you here? You never told me—”

  Roksana appeared in the doorway to the barn and stopped short, her eyes open and round as she took in Feodor and Matrona, who undoubtedly looked a mess. “Oh, excuse me.” She offered a small curtsy. “I didn’t think—”

  Feodor waved her apology away with a limp hand. “I have nothing else to say, only thoughts to think. Good day, Roksana.”

>   Roksana nodded, and Feodor pushed past her. Matrona picked at the cheese under her nails. She ached to tell her dear friend to leave her be, just for now. To give her time to sort through this strange mess that had been laid upon her lap. But the words wouldn’t come, and then it was too late.

  “Matrona.” Roksana glanced back at Feodor before stepping into the barn, guarding her full belly with her hands. “Oh, he must be livid. What did you tell him?”

  Matrona shrugged and turned back to the cheesecloth.

  “I’m sure you can mend it,” Roksana added, stepping up to the worktable, her own dark braids swinging over her shoulders. “I’m in terrible trouble with Luka, I hope you know. He had no idea the granger and I used to fancy each other, though I’m not sure why he cares so much. It was before Luka and I even noticed each other.”

  “Of course he does.” Matrona squeezed the cheesecloth, milky water streaming over her sore knuckles.

  “But Matrona,” Roksana urged, leaning against the worktable to better see her face. “You told me you had no fancy for anyone, and that Feodor—”

  “Roksana,” Matrona pleaded.

  “You always were good at keeping secrets.”

  Not anymore, I’m not, she thought, untwisting the cheesecloth and dumping the crushed curds into a bowl. Her eyes burned, but they stayed dry.

  “His father—Feodor’s, that is—is raving mad,” Roksana continued. “He was in my papa’s shop when we found out—”

  “And how did you find out?” Matrona snapped. How had any of them found out?

  Roksana paused, blinking, her forehead slowly crinkling above her eyes. “I don’t know . . . Where are you going?”

  Matrona was nearly to the door, wiping her hands on the dingy apron tied around her hips. She hastily loosened its strings and let it fall to the barn floor. She didn’t answer Roksana, only continued walking. Searching for some sort of respite. How she itched to go to Slava’s house, walk straight into that room of the nesting dolls, and choose one at random. Open that first layer and spill someone else’s secrets for the village hens. Surely there were darker truths than her own to occupy her neighbors.