But it wasn’t for him to ask. He would feel embarrassed.
His mother saved him the trouble. “Fenya! Run and fetch Katya!”
Fenya hadn’t waited to be asked; head scarf on, shawl on, felt boots on, and off she dashed to the threshing floor.
“They’ve been braking the flax. Fenya came home for a bite to eat. We finished chopping the cabbage and put it up for pickling yesterday. Today it’s the flax.”
They trooped back into the cottage, little Sevastyan leading the way. His grandma opened the door for him. He rested a hand on the high step, swung one leg over, then the other, straightened up, burst out laughing, and ran off. Arseni remembered from his own childhood how warm the unpainted, broom-scratched yellow boards were to bare feet.
A startling realization: this is me, the spitting image of me, from his little forehead down to his little toenail. Not just my son, a son of mine might look different from me. There aren’t any words to say just what it is, but it’s a shock to see just how like me he is, it’s me all over again! A second me!
Through a gap in the partition he could see a cradle, still gently swinging.
Asleep.
The little daughter I’ve never seen, look how tiny she is! No size to her at all yet, her eyes closed, no bigger than little fingernails, her nose just two turned-up nostrils, no telling whether she’s like me or Katya, only women are good at that. But still my heart beats faster. This is my flesh and blood.
My daughter. I have a little daughter too.
He ran his finger over her cheek, so gently she didn’t feel it.
He didn’t know which one of them to look at. He’d tried to hold his darling son, but the child wouldn’t have it, there he was now hiding behind Grandma, peeping out from behind her skirts.
Elisei stood silently, shifting from one foot to the other, staring at his bombardier, just as the bombardier was staring at his own precious son. Maybe wishing he could hoist Senka in his arms just once more.
That’s how it goes: you don’t make much fuss over the old folks, and when he’s grown up your son won’t make much fuss over you.
The soldier took off his greatcoat, and his mother perched on a bench to light the lamp before the icon. Joy had come among them one day early and caught them with the house still unprepared for the feast of Our Lady.
Senka’s mother got down from the bench, looked around at her family, and a movement of her hand told them to kneel.
Senka’s father sank to his knees behind her. His head was an elongated oval, egg-shaped. But not bald, he had quite a lot of hair, flattened now by his cap, grayish but with a sprinkling of yellow.
Senka too knelt.
Domasha began reciting a prayer. She didn’t drone, didn’t stumble over words like someone struggling through bushes at night. She made the few prayers she knew meaningful, not so much praying to the Virgin as conversing with her, heart to heart.
Little Sevastyan too—would you believe it?—without being made to, knelt next to his grandma, waved his little hands in the air when the others crossed themselves, and stared unblinkingly at the icons. How had he learned all that? He was barely two years old.
They rose from their prayers, and it was one mad whirl. Where did you start? With the presents perhaps? But what presents could you buy on a soldier’s pittance? A kerchief for one, a ribbon for another, lump sugar saved from his rations for someone else. What mattered was the thought, the ceremony, not the present itself.
But his mother was ahead of him.
“No, you’ll eat now, Senka, my dear. Sit down and eat first. I’ve got onion pie. And baked bream. And there’s beetroot wine already brewed, only it really needs to stand a bit longer.”
Yes, he’d seen it, Senka had, coming through the hallway, pitchers stopped with twists of straw, and the fermenting froth oozing through.
Ah, here she was at last! She flew into the cottage like a bomb into a dugout, just one flash of a black-and-yellow skirt, her feet hardly seeming to touch the floor, then she was butting Senya, in his ribs, here, there, everywhere, fit to break his bones. He still hadn’t got a look at her face, she was pressing it against his ribs, and he couldn’t tell whether she was crying or just out of breath, but he could see the white nape of her neck, see that her sleeves were gathered at the shoulders, see the black squares and yellow stripes of her skirt, see the homespun girdle high on her back, with tassels on either side.
Like a little bird, all that there was of her no higher than his elbow, Katya, my little Katya! I would like to pick you up and toss you in the air like little Sevastyan, but not with my parents looking. When I got off the train at Rzhaksa, when I walked down the highroad and saw Kamenka looking down on me, when I lifted the latch on the gate—all that was in a dream. I didn’t feel that I was at home. Now I know I’m home—with Katya under my arm.
He breathed hard.
Tipped her head back. She blushed, said nothing.
Soldier’s wife—neither widow nor wedded woman, that was the saying.
They kissed.
Nothing for it—had to let her go.
All together now, under one roof, and Senka could have held them all in one embrace, except that his mother was too wide. Back in the battery Senka had felt at home—but no, this was the only place for him.
“Have you had a look at Proska?”
“Yes.”
“Well, take another look.”
They went to the cradle behind the screen. The little girl was asleep, her cheeks bright red, she meant to go on sleeping. Nine months—how far back did that make it?
“She can crawl already,” Katya boasted, uncovering the child’s head, so that he could see her better.
Senka was looking at Katya, though, the gathered sleeves, the tasseled girdle.
“Why are you all dressed up today?”
She raised her head and looked into his eyes. “I just felt like it.” Then quietly: “I dreamt about you.”
Just that—and his heart was on fire.
But little Sevastyan had toddled over to his mama and was clutching her leg.
And Domanya was ordering them to the table. Why hadn’t he written? Why hadn’t he sent a telegram? Your father would have been at the station with the buggy, I would have baked sponge cake and pies … Never mind, it’ll all be there tomorrow, I’ve got the dough made.
“See, Mama, it all happened in a rush, in a single day. They’d turned me down already, and I’d written to tell you. Then that same evening the lieutenant sent for me and said hold the letter, maybe they will let you go, then the next day he calls me in and says it’s been granted, go and get some paper from the letter writer.”
The months and years had washed over Senka, none of them empty, you might think, it was all service orders, the Germans, never a minute’s rest, forever on the go, but he’d never felt pushed so hard, so ready to burst as now, at home! Two eyes, two ears, two hands, one mouth not enough to eat your mother’s food, answer your father’s questions, reach out to caress the children, all at the same time. Katya had fed Proska, and was holding her out to him. He took his daughter in his arms for the first time, and she wet him. All this was so new, and he had to take care not to upset anybody. Katya didn’t seem altogether at ease either, she kept eyeing him as if he was almost a stranger, watching to see how he looked at his daughter, and how often he would hold out his hand to little Sevastyan, wondering whether he really loved them or was just pretending.
No good, though, these women would keep you talking forever if you let them. What Senka wanted to know was: How are you managing by yourself, Dad? What jobs are marking time, what hasn’t gotten done? I’m here now, and I’ll get cracking with you! Double harness, you know what a team we make! That’s what I came on leave for—not to fool around.
They went out of the cottage.
His father had been thinking along the same lines. I can still pull my weight, and my back isn’t too stiff. Your Katya’s a big help—even with the pit
chfork—or carting.
Need help? I certainly do! But the time for work will be after the holidays. We can look around now, though, while the women are busy in the cottage.
They went out into the yard. Quacker jumped up to lick Senka’s hands.
His father’s woodpile had not dwindled during the year: he had replaced all that he had used. Anyway, they used mainly dung bricks for fuel—the black earth of Tambov needed no manure. Where forests are thin you burn dung.
His father explained things. Look, you have to understand our situation here, before you can get to work. For a start, there may be nobody to take a job on, it’s mostly women now, or say the plows aren’t right, we’ve got nothing to mend them with, and the ground doesn’t get sown. For another thing, why do we need to grow so much grain, why should we sow if we’re worse off for it?
What could be more galling: to plow and sow, knowing before you started that you would only be worse off by doing it? Arseni felt hot under the collar. But his father went on.
“We can get by, for a year, or maybe two, on our own grain, without sowing. We’re not in such a hurry to sell grain as we used to be. The whole village has cut down on autumn plowing. We’ve got money nowadays. We got paid for the horses taken over by the army and for the stock. We pay taxes with the same money, and money has gotten cheaper, so our taxes are a lot lower than they were. The same goes for the Peasants’ Bank. Lord above, all this crazy money will destroy the people.”
The words reached Senka’s ears, but it was all strange to him. The village had never before had to ask itself why it should grow so much grain. He couldn’t make head or tail of it. He couldn’t remember ever hearing anything like it.
His father hadn’t finished yet. The state vodka shops were no longer there either—another reason for people not to break their necks for money. Then again, soldiers’ wives got their allowances. Some women had gotten out of hand as a result, and didn’t give their fathers-in-law anything toward expenses, but blew the whole bundle on fancy clothes and dainties. To hell with the holding, it won’t run away. If our husbands come back from the war in one piece we’ll start earning again. If their husbands do come back they’re not going to like it.
“What about Katya?” Senka asked anxiously.
“Katya? No, never. She hands over her money, every last kopeck. I give her her share afterward. Besides, she has to help her mother out. Not just with money but with her hands.”
Their yard, strewn with gravel from the river, was not muddy, although out in the street you had to walk on duckboards in some places and the whole road from Rzhaksa was a black morass after the recent rains. Hens wandered about the yard, and a bay foal came over to butt his master and nuzzle his hand. Arseni tickled him behind his ears.
“So how many have you got left altogether?”
“Well, there’s Strigan here—he’s one of Kupavka’s—Kupavka herself, and a gelding. And Kudesy.”
Two workhorses and a trotter, then.
“You handed the other two over?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm, we’ll have to stock up again after the war.”
“We’ll have to make a fresh start with a lot of things after the war, Senka, but where do you begin? I handed one cow over as well, and a bullock, they made me.”
“So how many are left?”
“Two cows. An eighteen-month bull. And a yearling calf.”
“We’ve come down in the world, Dad.”
“Suppose we save that money—what’s the good of it? It’s rubbish. Easy money, money for nothing, but you can’t buy a thing with it. Money’s got so light you can change it into coppers and empty a mountain of them onto the scales, it won’t weigh as much as a piece of calico, let alone a pair of boots.”
Their cowsheds, pigsties, and henhouse covered an area of twelve by twenty arshins* under a single roof, while the horses occupied the space between the mangers and the water trough. There were horses at the front, with the battery, and Arseni knew and loved every one of them, but there were none so dear as his own here at home. His heart thumped at the sight of them.
The gelding stood still and didn’t look around. Kudesy started, pricked up his ears, and a shiver ran down his spine. But Kupavka knew him! She recognized the young master, snorted, smiled. Arseni felt a warm glow as the horse greeted him, embraced her head, caressed her.
He fed the horses some hay from the open shed.
“Remember, we used to get seven poods of nails for a pood of grain. Now you get one pood. Shoeing nails were always ten kopecks—and suddenly it’s two rubles. So we didn’t market much of the summer crop even, and surely we won’t take much of this crop in. It’s over there in the bin, and the other’s in ricks by the drying barn. We’ll thresh some more for seed before snow comes.”
“Has it all been brought in?”
“Yes.”
“So now the mice will be nibbling it!”
“They will. But that’s the problem—where can we store it? Why should we keep more than we need for food and seed? We’ve never kept more than eighty poods over the winter. We aren’t equipped to keep it. Some people have started leaving it in the field, in stooks, instead of threshing it.”
“What do they do that for?”
“Well, some people say you can have your grain taken from you by force at train stations or river ports, or if it’s going from one province to another.”
“But you get paid for it, don’t you?”
“If you call it paid—at fixed prices. It’s less than nothing. We’ve got these government agents dropping in on us all the time, prowling and prying, say they’ve got to write down all we’ve got in stock. So they write what’s in my granary—and likely as not come and take it from me tomorrow.”
The light was poor outside, it was dimmer still in the barn, and Elisei’s face was shaded by his well-worn, shaggy cap, but his eyes were bright and keen. From the beginning of time being a peasant had meant having a hundred things to do, wondering at every turn: Rain or drought? Windy or calm? Dew or ground frost? Sand or soil? The birds, the worms, the state of the roads and the barn, the market. And when you’ve taken all this into consideration and invested your labor it’s a toss-up whether you have a profit or a loss. And the way things were now, rack your brain as you might, there’d never been anything like it, and Senka didn’t know what to advise.
After the cowshed they looked into the pigsty, the empty sheep pen—the sheep were out on the common field—and the hen run. The geese walked around freely, fending for themselves.
Some people make it a rule never to bring the crop to market right away. Better careful than quick, they figure. Maybe the fixed prices will go up? And what if we get a famine on top of everything else? The grain will come in handy then, for us and our cattle. How long will this war go on? Should we really be in a hurry to move the crop? And what’s it going to be like after the war? We’ve lost so many cattle already, and a lot more will be slaughtered.
They went outside. Early that morning the sky had been clear, and it looked as if they were in for a fine day. But now it was overcast, darker. Was that rain? Not yet, just a few drops.
There had been two spells of morning frost, before and after the feast of the Intercession of the Virgin. But the weather had become milder again.
“So what are we going to do, Dad?”
“On your way here, was the road in bad shape?”
“For the first five versts after the Likhovat gully the horses nearly left their shoes in the mud.”
“No good trying to get anywhere. Now, at hay making we had lovely summer weather, got a bumper crop in. How long are you going to be here?”
“I’ll be staying till after Michael’s day. But not till the Presentation. About a month.”
“Aha,” his father said happily, “so we’ll have you till the first sledging, and you and I can go down to the meadows and get the hay in. We’ll get thirty sledge loads or maybe more.”
The
hay barn beyond the fence stood empty, waiting. There was only a scattering of hay on the loft floor, where somebody had been sleeping.
“And then we can stook the hemp and bring it in. We’ll caulk the barn, there’ll be time before the big frosts.”
What about the roof? Senka took a quick look at the cottage from this side—he’d already seen it from the street, no sign anywhere of damage to the thatch—neatly trimmed bundles of straw “under clay.”
“You’re keeping on top of things, Dad, no doubt about it!”
All the letters written to Arseni consisted of greetings and best wishes. There was never anything specific about how they were making out, never any details. But now, walking around and casting an eye, you saw that things were going well! They were managing!
His father was flattered to hear it from his son, as from an equal.
Not as well as that, though. The fairs weren’t as lively, not so many people showed up at those two dozen yearly fairs.
From Tugolukovo to Sampur, from Tokarevka to Rzhaksa—horse fairs, wood fairs, potters’ fairs, honey fairs … In Kamenka too the fair had come and gone quietly that year. You didn’t get carters teaming up for long-distance jobs, they were just roped in for compulsory local transport duty. Life was turning in on itself, retreating into its own backyard, its own four walls.
“Another thing—we’ll do some drying and threshing, there’s a lot waiting to be threshed after the wet summer. And maybe we can dig a trench for the pig food while you’re here. We’ve got to stock up for the bad weather.”
“Of course, Dad. We’ll get it dug. In no time.”
All that strength—alive, your own son’s, ready to work for you. But it all depended on whether one little jagged piece of shrapnel flew past. An inch nearer—and your son’s no more. You’re left to howl alone. And that one inch, that one metal splinter, won’t make Tsar or zemstvo spare a thought for you. It’s all in God’s hands, and for now—your son’s alive.
“You’re a bit low on manure. Remember how we used to have piles of it?”
“They’ve taken so many cattle, dung’s worth its weight in gold.”
November 1916 Page 72