Makar that winter grew up and became what a mature bear is: somber-serious, ponderous and clumsy-clever. He had a very wide, high-domed face with somber-kind eyes.
IX
In the last days of December, at Yule, when the wolves took to howling, Marina began to feel inside herself, beneath her heart, the child beginning to move. He moved about inside, tenderly and so softly, exactly as if her body was being stroked by an eiderdown cloth. Marina was filled with joy—she sensed only the small being that was inside her, who from inside her had seized her firmly, and she spoke to Demid of this in fearless, disconnected words.
At dawn the child would move there, inside. Marina would press her hands—surprisingly gentle—to her stomach, would stroke it solicitously and sing cradle songs of how her son would make a hunter who would kill in his time three hundred and a thousand stags, three hundred and a thousand bear, three hundred and again three hundred ermine, and would take to wife the first beauty of the village. And within her, barely noticeable, extraordinarily softly, the child would move.
And beyond the house, beyond bluff there were:
A misty cold, the night and the silence which spoke of death, and only from time to time would the wolves set up a howl: they would approach the outcrop, sit back on their haunches and howl to the sky, long and troublingly.
X
In the spring Marina gave birth.
In the spring the river roused itself and broadly overflowed, began to shimmer with gloomy, bristling leaden waves, the banks were covered with white flocks—swans, geese, eider. Life began again on the taiga. The animal kingdom was astir, the forest alarmingly rang out with the noise of bear, elk, wolf, fox, owl, grouse. The dark green grasses blossomed and flourished. Nights contracted and days grew longer. The twilights were pale green and shimmery, and during them on the clearing by the river, in the village the girls sang of Lada. At dawn an immense sun would arise in the damp-blue sky, to spend many spring hours traversing its celestial path. The time came for the spring festival when according to legend the sun would smile, and the people exchanged red eggs, symbols of the sun.
On that day Marina gave birth.
Her labor began in the afternoon. The vernal, large, and joyful sun came in through the window and lay in bounteous sheaves on the walls and on the hide-covered floor.
Marina was to remember only that there was savage pain, contorting and rending her body. She lay on her bearskin bed, the sun shone through the window—this she remembered. Remembered that its rays lay on the wall and floor as if pointing to the noon hour, then moved to the left, to the half-hour, to one o’clock. Then, later, everything vanished into the pain, into the contorting spasms of her belly.
When Marina came to herself it was already twilight, green and quiet. At her feet, all covered in blood, a red infant lay and cried. Nearby stood the bear and he markedly, comprehendingly and sternly looked on with his kindly-somber eyes.
At that moment Demid arrived—he cut the cord, washed the infant and put it to Marina as was proper. He gave her the child—there was a surprising degree of chaste modesty in her eyes. In Marina’s arms there was a small red little being who cried incessantly. There was no more pain.
X
That night the bear left Demid. Likely, he had sensed the spring and gone out into the taiga to find himself a mate.
The bear left late, breaking down the door. It was night. On the horizon there lay a barely-noticeable strip of dawn. Somewhere far away the girls were singing of Lada. Above the ravine of tawny granite and white shale the girls sat in a dense cluster and sang, and around them—dark, hunched silhouettes—there stood the young men who had returned from over-wintering on the taiga.
(December, 1915)
Translated by A.L. and M.K.
From The Naked Year
CHAPTER VII
(the last, without a title)
Russia.
Revolution.
Snowstorm.
CONCLUSION:
THE LAST TRIPTYCH (notes, in essence)
INCANTATIONS
By October the wolf’s young is no smaller than a good-sized dog. Silence. A bough snaps. From the ravine to the clearing—where in the daytime the lads from Black Creeks were on sawing duty—drifted the smell of decay, of mushrooms, of that autumn’s moonshine. And this autumnal brew accurately proclaimed that the rains were ended: autumn would pour out gold for a week, and then, when the frosts hit, snow would fall. During Indian summer, when the hardening earth smells like spirits, over the fields Dobrynia Nikitich (he of the Golden Baldric, son of Nikita the Devil-Slayer) rides. By daylight his armor gleams like the cinnabar of aspens, the gold of the birches; the sky is blue (the strength of that deep blue, the blue of pure spirits). But at night, darkening, his armor is like burnished steel, rusted by the woods, dampened by the mists yet still tempered, sharp-edged, resonant as the first sheets of ice, starbursts of solder gleaming at the joins. Frost has settled, yet still from the ravine to the clearing drifts the smell of the last dampness and the last warmth. Towards October the young wolves leave the pack, and walk alone. A wolf came out of the clearing, in the distance the smoke from the guttering campfire circled, hovered a moment amid the felled birches and flowed down the bank to fields where the hares were trampling over the winter crops. In the black night and in the black silence one could not see beyond the dry valleys of Black Creeks. In Black Creeks, in the barns, girls began to keen their songs, and then as suddenly grew quiet, having sent their music to the autumn fields and the wood, a sorrowful shriek. Out of the woods, through the ravine, to Nikola’s, to Egorka’s, walked Arina. A wolf encountered her by the edge of the wood and dodged into the bushes. Arina must have seen the wolf—two points of green light flashed in the bushes—Arina did not turn aside, did not hurry her steps… In Egorka’s hut, a chimneyless one, there was a smell of autumn, of healing herbs. Arina blew on the embers in the iron fire-pot, lit a candle made of wax from Egorka’s beehive—it grew light in the hut, which was well-built, large, with benches along all the walls, with a gaily tiled stove. From the sleeping-shelf atop the stove protruded the heels of Egorka, the one-eyed wizard. The cock crowed midnight. The cats leapt to the floor. Egorka turned himself, hung his shaggy white head over the shelf edge; he crowed wheezily, in a sleepy voice:
“You’ve come?—Ah! You’ve come, you witch. Don’t turn away-y-y, don’t turn away-y-y-y, you’ll be mine, I’ll charm you, you witch.”
“So, what then, I’ve come. And I’ll never go away from you, you squinting devil. And I’ll torture you, and I’ll drink your blood, your witch-blood. I’ll hound you to death, you squint-eye.”
On the porch the bees droned excitedly, still free of their hive. The shadows from the candlelight ran and congealed in the corners. Again the cock crowed. Arina sat down on a bench, the kittens walked across the floor, arching their backs, leapt onto Arina’s knees. Egorka jumped down from the stove—his bare feet and toes glistened like juniper bark.
“You’ve come?!—Ah, you’ve come, you witch! I’ll drink your blood …”
“So what, then, I’ve come, you one-eyed devil. You’ve muddled me, you’ve got me drunk.”
“Take off your boots, climb up onto the stove! Get undressed!”
Egorka bent down at Arina’s feet, tugged at her boots, lifted her skirts, and Arina, in her shamelessness, did not rearrange her skirts.
“You’ve got me drunk, you cross-eyed devil! And you’ve got yourself drunk. I’ve brought some herbs, I put them on the porch.”
“I’ve got myself drunk, I’ve got myself drunk! … You won’t go away anywhere, you’ll be mine, you won’t go away anywhere, you won’t go away, my girl …”
Dogs began barking under the shed: a wolf must have been passing by. And again the cock crowed, the third cock. The night was nearing midnight.
By the first frosts at Black Creeks they were caught up with their labor in the fields—peasant life subsides along with the earth. The women se
t up house at the threshing floors, and the girls, summer’s harvest over, got themselves pregnant before their weddings. They didn’t leave the threshing floors at night, spent their nights in the barns, huddled together. They stoked the smoky earthen barn stoves, sang till cock-crow their vigorous melodies—and likely the lads, too, the lads who went out to saw wood during the day, were huddled together near the barns in the evenings. Dobrynia moved over the fields, cast handfuls of white stars (some of them fell back onto the black earth), through the icy, autumnal firmament. The earth lay weary, silent—like the burnished steel of Dobrynia’s armor, whose plates had thrown up forests of rust, whose buckles, chiming with icicles, were tarnished musty-white from the last mists of the year. In the evening the girls in the barns keened out their melodies; the lads arrived with a concertina; the girls locked the barn doors; the lads crashed in; the girls began to screech; they ran into the corners, dived into the straw; the lads gave chase, caught them, squeezed them, kissed them, embraced them. Ashes gleamed tawny brown in the belly of the stove, the smoke was blinding, the straw rustled a wintry rustle.
Chi-vi-li, willy-nilly, sway and swish—
Grab the one that is your wish!
a girl in a corner began to sing this soldier’s song, a sign of surrender. They all went into an adjoining room, and stood solemnly in a circle. The concertina shrilled. The girls sniffed sternly.
Oh you storks—long-leg cranes,
Missed your road and lost your ways!
the girls began to sing.
Apart from the smoke there was a smell of trampled straw, sweat and sheepskins. The first cocks crowed in the village. A star fell above the earth.
Alexei Semenov Kniaz’kov-Kononov caught Ulianka Kononova in a dark corner on the straw, where there was a smell of straw, rye and mice. Ulianka fell down, covering her lips with her hand. Alexei knelt on her stomach, pulled her arms away, fell, thrust his hands into Ulianka’s breasts. Ulianka’s head rolled back—her lips were moist, salty, her breath hot, there was the bitter, sweet and drunken smell of sweat.
Chi-vi-li, willy-nilly …
Dobrynia of the Golden Baldric scattered white stars across the icy sky, and in silence the weary earth lay itself down. The village slept—slept above the river, with woods to the right, fields to the left and behind—low to the earth, its cottages looking downwards with blind, cataract-covered windows, their thatched roofs combed like the pates of old men. The lads spent the night in the barn next to the girls’. At second cock-crow Alexei came out of the barn. The moon shone over the roof like a flickering candle, the earth was salted with hoar-frost, the ice crunched under foot, the trees stood like skeletons and the white mist crept almost imperceptibly among them. The girls’ barn stood at the side, mute, straw gleaming on the threshing floor. And just after Alexei emerged, the door of the girls’ barn creaked, and Ulianka came out into the moonlight. Alexei was standing in the darkness. Ulianka looked quietly around, spread her feet apart, began to urinate—in the biting autumn silence the splash of the falling stream was clearly heard. She drew a fold of her skirt over her privates, took one bow-legged step, and went off to the barn. The cocks in the yards began to sing—one, two, then many more. That night for the first time Alioshka had caught the scent of a woman, for true.
And two days before the Feast of the Intercession, at night, the first snow—a few hours’ worth—fell. Earth greeted the morning with winter, with a crimson dawn. But on the heels of the snowfall came warmth, and the day grayed like an old woman, turned windy, vagrant; autumn had returned. On this day before the Feast of the Intercession, at Black Creeks the bathhouses by the creek were fired up. At dawn the girls, barefoot in the snow, their hems tucked up, hauled in the water, and the chimneyless stoves were heating all day. In the cottages the older folk raked up the ashes, gathered the smocks, and towards dusk they went in families to steam themselves—the oldsters, the men, sons-in-law, lads, mothers, wives, daughters-in-law, young girls, children. In the bathhouses there were no chimneys. In the smoke, in the steam, in the red stove-glow, white human bodies were crammed tightly together, men and women. They all washed in the same wood-ash solution, and the elderly men scrubbed everyone’s backs, and they all ran down to the river for a dip, in the damp evening frost, in the cold wind.
And Alioshka Kniaz’kov on that day at dawn walked up to Nikola’s to see one-eyed Egorka—the wizard. The wood at dawn was silent, misty, frightening, and the sorcerer Egorka was whispering frighteningly: “In the bathhouse, in the bathhouse, I say, in the bathhouse! …” The evening came, damp and cold, the wind whistled in every key and tone. In the evening Alioshka stood guard at the Kononova-Gnedoi bathhouse. A crazed young girl jumped out, naked, with disheveled plaits, rushed down to the river and from there ran up the hill to the hut, her white body dissolving in the darkness. And an old man came out twice, plunged coughing into the water, and again went off for a steaming. A mother dragged her children down to the river, clasping them under her arms. Ulianka lingered in the bathhouse alone, she was cleaning up the bathhouse. Alexei made his way to the foreroom and began whispering, in great fear, what had been whispered to him by Egor:
I, Lexei, stand with my back to the West, my face to the East, I look, I see. From the clear sky flies a fiery arrow. I pray to that arrow, I submit to that arrow, I question it: Where have you been sent, fiery arrow?—To the dark woods, to the shifting swamps, to the damp roots—Come now, fiery arrow! fly where I send you: fly to Uliana, to Kononova, strike her ardent breast, her dark liver, her passionate blood, her wide vein, her sugary lips, so that she may yearn for me, long for me in the sun, in the dawn, at the new moon, in the cold wind, in days that have passed and in days to come; that she might kiss me, Lexei Semenov, embrace me, and fornicate with me! My words are complete and contain the powers of incantation, like the mighty ocean sea, they are strong and sticky, getting stronger and stickier than isinglass, firmer and stronger than damask steel and stone. For ever and ever. Amen.
Ulianka was wiping the floor, working quickly, the muscles playing lightly on her powerful croup. Suddenly the fumes went to her head—or had the spell clouded it? She opened the door, leaned on the door jamb wearily and submissively, breathed in the cold air, smiled weakly, stretched—there was a sweet ringing in her ears, a cold, refreshing wind blew around her. From the hill her mother called out:
“Ulianka-aa! Hurry-y-y! Milk the cows!”
“Right away-y-y-y!” She began to hurry, gave the floor three or so slaps with the rag, splashing the corners. She pulled on her shirt, and, mounting the hill, began to sing mischievously:
I won’t go to Coveside and wed,
I won’t be uncovered and shamed!
I won’t hop before times to bed—
My shimmy will never be stained!”
In the dark cow shed under the awning there was a warm smell of manure and cow sweat. The cow stood by resignedly. Ulianka squatted down, milk spurted into the pail, the cow’s udders were soft, the cow sighed deeply …
And at the Feast of the Visitation, at Matins in the dark church among the spindle-shanked and dark-faced saints, Ulianka composed her own, simple, virgin’s prayer:
“Holy Mother of God, cover the Earth with Snow, and me with a husband!”
And the snow that year fell early, the winter set in before the feast of Our Lady of Kazan.
CONVERSATIONS
The wind swept along in white snowstorms, the fields were covered with white powder, with snowdrifts, the cottages smoked with a gray smoke. Long since past was that spring when, blessed by the priest, their families riding in carts, the men had ridden off for three days to plunder the gentry’s estates—that spring the gentry’s nests flamed up like red roosters, burned to the ground for good. Then kerosene, matches, tea, sugar, salt, provisions, town shoes and clothes—vanished. The trains shuddered in their death throes; in their death agony the gaily colored rubles began to dance—the lane leading to the station was overgrown with roadside
wild chicory-asters.
The snow fell for two days, there was a hard frost, the wood turned gray, the fields turned white, the magpies began to chatter. With the frosts, the winds, the snow, Dobrynia of the Golden Baldric went bald—the road after the first fall of snow lay soft, smooth. In that winter contagion swept persistently like a black shroud through the cottages, it poured out typhus, smallpox, rheums—and when the road was fit for sledges, the coffin makers came, they brought the coffins. The day was on its way towards dusk. Gray. The coffins were of pine, in all sizes. They lay on the sledges in heaps, one on top of another. At Black Creeks they sighted the coffin makers when they were still on the outskirts, by the outskirts the women went to meet them. The coffins were all bought up within a single hour. The coffin makers measured the women with a sazhen-long stick, and allowed a quarter extra. First to come up and talk business was the old man Kononov-Kniaz’kov.
“What’s the price, then, roughly.” he said. “Coffins, y’see, got to be bought … got to be bought—there’s a scarcity of them in the town now. I need one, for the old girl, so, y’see … whoever’ll need one.
Then Nikon’s wife interrupted old Kononov, began to wave her elbows about, began talking with her elbows:
“Well, the price, then, what’s the price?”
“The price—you know, it’s ‘taters we’re after,” answered the coffin maker.
“We knows you’re not after money. I’ll take three coffins. Otherwise, somebody dies and there’s trouble. You feel easier.”
“It’s one thing to talk about feeling easier,” interrupted Kononov. “You wait your turn, woman, I’m a bit older … Well then, m’dear, measure me—see what size I am, measure me. Dying—well, everything’s in God’s lap y’see, when it comes to dying.”
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