“Yes, a lot of cattle have been slaughtered with this war. We eat meat in the army like we never did in all our born days. Fresh-killed meat every day, Dad.”
His father was surprised. “They never fed us like that when I was a soldier.”
“They say the army’s changed for the better in a lot of ways these last few years. Anyway, what are we going to do for the holiday?”
“I killed a wether yesterday. I can kill another if you like.”
They stood for a while at his father’s bench, looked at his work, and were on their way to the orchard when a sudden thought struck Arseni. “What about the bees, though? Are they settled?”
“They’re settled!” Question and answer made father and son happy. Not just a matter of husbandry. Beekeeping stirred deeper feelings. “Yes, they’re in the winter hive now.”
Katya dashed toward them, her black-and-yellow skirt fluttering. The cape she had hastily thrown over her shoulders did not meet in front, and was rucked up at the back.
“Senya, Mama wants to know what you want done about the bath.”
Ordinarily the family would be heating a bath the next day, in time for the holiday, but for Senya it had to be done now. His mother said well, yes, only she had more than enough to do, with just the one pair of hands. Katya spoke up quickly. “It’s got to be today, Mama, of course it must! After all that traveling! And when do they ever get a real wash back there? I can make the fire while I’m doing other things, it won’t hold me up.”
And off she dashed to the bathhouse.
Senka was eager to help.
“Should I fetch the wood, or water?” His father, of course, had the wood all ready, and the water came from the well right by the bathhouse, but it would give him five minutes for a chat with his wife somewhere along the way.
Fenka, coming home from the threshing floor, was also eager to help, but Katya shooed her away: “Mama’s told you what to do! Anyway, it’s time to steam the mash for the horses.
Fenka had learned to do a lot of jobs, she could milk a cow properly, she was at the age when a girl must pick up these skills. But she hovered around, clung to them, wouldn’t let them out of her sight, because she was growing up fast, and she was curious: how would husband and wife behave on his first day home? She wanted to see for herself, to take note for the future.
It was no use! The gate banged once, twice, three times—neighbors dropping in to take a look at the soldier and touch his medals. Nobody had been invited, nobody had been told, but one neighbor had spotted him from a window, another over his fence, a little bird had told another … you can’t keep anything secret in a village. First came Yakim Rozhok, a man bent double at the waist, the one who always had to be the first to know. No neighbor, he had toddled over from the far end of the village, the part called Past-the-Church. Then came Agapei Derba, a dark, lanky man, walking as stiffly as if he had poles for legs. He was the only one Quacker barked at, but he didn’t turn his sullen head. He listened to everybody, staring morosely at the ground. You’d wait a long time for a word from him. Next was old Ilyakha Bayunya, wearing striped shalwar with a gaudy tobacco pouch tucked under his belt, leaning heavily on his walking stick nowadays. And Nisifor Stremoukh—hey, not called up yet, and his brother already back home on crutches?
“Come on, soldier! Let’s have a look at you!”
“What’s it like being in the army?”
Fatheads! Only one way to find out. Go and try it yourselves.
“What’s it like? Nothing to it. You lay your head on your fist and your ribs on whatever. Wondering what the quartermaster will dish out tomorrow—a pinch of tea or a lick of sugar. You’re short of everything, we’re short of nothing.”
“They say it’s a good life, being a soldier, but nobody much wants to join.”
“Look at him, the guy’s getting ahead fast—more stripes than last year. So what are you now?”
“Bombardier.”
“Come on, show us your medals.”
The medals were on his greatcoat, and the greatcoat was in the cottage. You couldn’t sit around outside. Anyway, it was too cold. But it was a bad time to ask them in—there was nowhere to sit them, the cottage hadn’t been tidied up, the women were busy cooking, bustling about like mad things. But the men were already rolling cigarettes, flint grated on steel, and the sparks were caught on tinder—matches were saved for the stove these days, and the menfolk didn’t get any. Only old Ilyakha had crossed himself before the icons as they entered. Now they had started raising a cloud of smoke in the cottage. The Blagodarevs never smoked, not one of them.
So many men still at home in Kamenka. Not only old men either.
“Dammit! Why are you all hanging on at home here? It’s your fault we just can’t get on top of Fritzy.”
“It’s coming along, though, isn’t it?”
“Who’s winning?”
“A lot of his have been knocked off,” Arseni answered easily. Then more heavily: “Quite a few of ours as well … The number of little birches we’ve chopped down for crosses, the number of holes we’ve dug. And we’re not one little bit further on.”
Now something was bothering little Proska. She suddenly let out a wail, and Arseni, unused to it, was worried—that’s my daughter, not somebody else’s, crying. But Katya was there like a flash, plucking the child out of her cradle, changing her diaper, washing her, rocking her a bit, making her a pacifier by chewing some rusks and wrapping them in gauze, popping her back into the cradle again. While the men of the village laid siege to Arseni, hoping to hear that there was some promise of peace. Had he heard tell of it?
“No, never a whisper, not a whiff on the breeze. Poison gas is all you can smell.”
“Gas? How d’you mean? What gas?”
“I can tell you, boys, I wouldn’t even wish it on the enemy. If you get hit by a piece of shrapnel—well, you expect that in a fight, you don’t really mind all that much. But swallow enough of that other stuff and it’ll tie your innards in knots.”
They wouldn’t let go, they wanted to know this, they wanted to know that … What did you get your second George for? Tell us everything that’s happened to you.
Arseni started telling them about his battery, about the Dryagovets forest, about the communication trenches, how you couldn’t stand up straight in them, and hardly dared hope you’d reach the dugout. He began lightheartedly, occasionally catching Sevastyan and hugging him to his knees—the little rogue was wandering about among all those legs, staring wide-eyed and prattling to himself. Began lightheartedly, but couldn’t keep it up. There wasn’t much to laugh about. Back there in the battery, among themselves, there was never a whimper, except perhaps when they thought of home. They took things as they came, without thinking about it too much, but here, in his native village, talking to his neighbors, he could not help seeing that other life in all its sadness. Back there they were used to the idea that a soldier’s tears are cheap, but here, in his own home, with little Sevastyan by him, stealing glances at the cradle and at Katya, looking at his mother and father, the sadness of it all could not have weighed more heavily upon him. His brother Adrian, twice wounded, was back at the front line. Nisifor’s brother was on crutches. Old Ilyakha had been robbed of his two sons. War was only bearable so long as you knew you had a home to return to, wooden walls of your own to rub your back against, a wife to take hold of at night. But back there at Dryagovets, where the sergeant major gave out the sugar, to lie down while the priest swung his censer, to go to sleep forever under a cross made of sticks—that was a thought to wipe the grin off anybody’s face.
Yakim Rozhok, squatting against the wall, chimed in from down below: “Still, Adrian’s been wounded twice and you never have, thank God, have you?”
“Well, a bullet doesn’t always hit bone, it may hit a bush.”
Talk like that grated on Arseni’s father. He rose and left the room.
The visitors started in on another subject. There’s a ru
mor going around that we’re exporting sugar, grain, and leather to the Germans, through Finland or somewhere. Is it true?
That was not one of the things Arseni knew about. His battery got no more news than Kamenka did.
“I only know,” he said with a sigh, “that the Germans can’t keep it up forever.”
Domasha herself confronted the guests. She was always firm and outspoken, famous throughout the village for it, and the menfolk respected her.
“Now then, neighbors, I need more elbowroom! Let me have my son for the first day at any rate! There’ll be plenty of time for chatting when you come to church for the festival.”
No harm done, the men weren’t offended, they collected themselves and went out, taking some of their smoke with them: first Rozhok, bent double, craning his neck to look up and back, then Stremoukh, old Bayunya, tap-tapping with his stick, and Agapei Derba, looking gloomier and more morose than when he had come, still hiding both hands in his cap, eyes fixed on the floor, high-stepping over the threshold and catching his foot in his shalwar.
Arseni’s mother held the door open behind them for a while, to let the smoke out. Then she set about preparing for the holiday, first scraping the table white so that she could knead dough on it.
Arseni saw the visitors off and made for the orchard. His path crossed Katya’s as she hurried back from the bathhouse in her cape.
“How’s it going? Want any help?”
“No, Senya love, it’ll be hot soon.”
She was like quicksilver, but he kept hold of her. So she started talking about little Sevastyan: what d’you think of him, do you love him?
She knew the answer was yes or she wouldn’t have opened her mouth.
“He’s very much like me, I can see it now. He even sticks his lip out like this.”
“You haven’t seen anything yet. He’s as simplehearted as you are. And he’s going to be big and strong. Look at the size of his little paws already, just like yours, finger for finger, and what a grip he’s got! He always wants to try out your father’s pitchfork! He’s got a back just like yours as well.”
His back? Arseni didn’t know his own back all that well, and would never have thought of studying Sevastyan’s. How could you tell whether his back was like his father’s, at two years old?
Takes a woman to remember her husband’s back!
Katya wriggled and shook off his hold without another word.
He caught up with her for a moment as she reached the yard.
“Katya! Remember how we felt that time we didn’t sleep separate for Lent?”
She blushed and looked down.
Nobody had any thought of war as yet, and the rule was that even newlyweds had to take a break after Shrovetide. But Katya wasn’t pregnant yet, and they were both hungry for it. So they told each other in whispers, “If we are committing a sin, maybe God will forgive us.” And they kept it up till Palm Sunday. But God must have forgiven them, because look what a fine son she’d borne! If they’d bowed to the law Katya might still have been childless when the war came.
Father Mikhail had frowned over his calendar and threatened Katya. Quick-witted as ever, she said, “It’s the honest truth, Father, I’ve been carrying him past my time! Just didn’t seem to want to drop out somehow!”
“During the Great Fast! And that’s how he’s turned out! A great big boy!” Arseni wouldn’t let her run away. “Anyway, all my leave is before Lent now. So we’re all right for a long way ahead.”
And nights were longer in autumn.
“Senya love, don’t be in such a hurry, let me go, Mama’s waiting, Fenya’s waiting!” Then, looking back at him: “We won’t be in the house. And the storeroom’s full up. If I make our bed in the hayloft, will it be too cold?”
“Cold? Never!” She had vanished before the words were out of his mouth.
He went walking again with his father. To the winter hives. Around the orchard. Discussing which trees and bushes to transplant. His father had a lot to tell him, and no other listener could have given him such pleasure. The day before yesterday I was fishing in the fen at the Savala—bream longer than your forearm, you were eating one of them, you know. And this week the red sandpipers will be on the wing. What about it?
Elisei was one of the best hunters in the village. And he had fired Senka with his own enthusiasm.
You don’t get much of a day at the end of October. It wasn’t so far into the afternoon, but the light was already draining away. Senka and his father stayed out a bit longer, sizing up the digging to be done, but smoke was rising from the bathhouse, and Katya was calling, “Senka! Come on!”
The floor just inside the bathhouse was strewn with clean straw, and Katya had laid out clean linen for her husband on a bench under the little window. Arseni stripped off his army shirt, his boots, and his foot rags—and dived into the steam room. She hadn’t overheated. Senka didn’t like it too hot.
Back in the battery they’d built a bathhouse in a dugout, a roomier one—but no, it wasn’t like your own at home. Here, your foot knew every floorboard, every plank of the sweating shelf, that tub, those buckets, those dippers—one of them no good, but it didn’t get thrown away.
She showed him where everything was, and turned on her heel.
“All right, Senya, I’m off.”
In a twinkling she could have slipped through the door, but no, another twirl, another quick glance.
“What d’you mean, you’re off?” Arseni said, slowly reaching out to take her by the shoulder.
Katya looked sideways and downward. “We will have all night.”
“Na-a-a,” Senka heard himself say, “I’m not waiting till night!”
Katya looked up at him demurely. “Fenya’s all worked up, can’t take her eyes away. She’ll be on tenterhooks, counting the minutes till I get back.”
But Senka wouldn’t take his hand away.
Katya pleaded with him: “She’ll be asking questions. I’ll be ashamed.”
This girlish, womanish “shame,” supposing it really still lingered and wasn’t just invented, Arseni had never been able to understand.
“So what!” he roared, wide-mouthed, as if yawning. “Just tell her. Who else can the poor girl find out from?”
Head lowered again, very quietly, in a whisper: “And the bench is too narrow, Senka love.”
“Who needs a bench?” Senka retorted cheerfully. He grabbed her with both paws and pulled her close.
Katya raised her head slowly, slowly looked her husband straight in the eye, and (she sounded frightened. Why? He had done nothing to frighten her: some woman’s game perhaps) said, “Aren’t you going to thrash me with the birch twigs?”
“No, I’m not,” Senka said.
“Maybe you will, though?”
What had gotten into her? One minute she was afraid of being thrashed, the next she seemed afraid of having to go without it. Senka laughed even more heartily.
“All right, I’ll thrash you! Right now if you like.”
Katya, just as she was, still fully dressed, reached for the birch twigs. And holding them in front of her, raising them carefully above her head, but not as high as Senka’s, held them out to him!
She looked up from under the twigs, waiting to see what he would do. Silently pleading—thrash me then, thrash me, lord and master.
Senka was dumbfounded. He felt frightened himself.
“Whatever for? You mean you’ve …? You haven’t … have you?”
The hell you have!
*Arshin: A unit of length equal to twenty-eight inches. [Trans.]
[36]
Arseni was not a cruel man, he was never hard on anybody, and with Katya he was as gentle as could be. So that their relationship was loving and serene, pure joy, with never a thing to complain about.
The days of Arseni’s courtship, and those first few months before the war, when she was carrying Sevastyan, had been warm and sunny—never a harsh word, not a single blow from his great paw. Not t
hat she had ever done anything to anger him; she always knew his wishes before he did and was quick to carry them out.
Then the war had gnawed holes in everyone’s life and left it in tatters. His first leave had been a fleeting dream, this was his second, and in between she had been husbandless: carrying a child, giving birth, feeding her baby, and all the time, wondering what her husband would be like when he returned and how they would get along. Wondering above all whether he would return. And pining, pining, pining for the man of her choice, whether she was getting the stove ready, milking, feeding chickens, harvesting, raking hay, retting flax, combing wool, spinning, weaving—whatever she was doing she would picture his return, now one way, now another. What time of year would it be? At what hour of the day? What would he find her doing? Would his first kiss be on the threshold, in the hallway …?
But deeper down and more insistently another feeling smoldered, one she wondered at herself. One she couldn’t put a name to.
Something ungraspable, something you couldn’t ask even a true friend to help you understand. Something so elusive you had to fathom it for yourself or give up and resign yourself to not knowing. She couldn’t put her complaint into words. Their life together could not have been sweeter. Too short, that was all. And their time apart so terribly long. But during that second separation, after his first leave, Katya got it into her head that she would like her husband to come back from the war … not quite as he had been. She wanted him to be just as serenely good-natured, just as kind and loving … But … there must be something more. He would sweep her off her feet like a child (she was no heavier to him than little Sevastyan). But then—that something more.
Pluzhnikov’s wife, Agasha, was two years older than Katya, but they had gone to the same dances as girls. Agasha had always been such a dolled-up show-off, and she was just the same after her marriage—the same, yet, with a husband at her side, completely different. It was a mystery—she was the same, and she was completely different.
One day Katya couldn’t help saying something about it.
Agasha showed her big pearly teeth and said, “Well, you’ve got a husband yourself, haven’t you? Only you’ve hardly lived together yet. Just wait a bit till he starts feeling his oats and comes down a bit heavy on you—and you’ll change like I did.”
November 1916 Page 73