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I
To the south and north, to the east and west—in all directions for a hundred versts—lay forests and wetlands, wrapped, veiled with mosses. There were stands of tawny cedars and pines. Beneath these throve an impassable thicket of fir, alder, cherry, juniper and low-growing birch. And in the small clearings amid the brush, in the peat beds ringed by fox berries and cranberries, sunk into the moss were “wells”—terrifying, filled with reddish water, and bottomless.
The cold came in September—fifty degrees below zero. The snow lay hard and blue. For only three hours did sunlight arise; the rest of the time it was night. The sky appeared heavy and hung low over the land. There was silence; only in September did the moose roar as they battled; in December the wolves howled; the rest of the time there was silence, of a kind that can only exist in the wilderness.
On a hill by the river stood a village.
Naked, of tawny granite and white shale, worn down by water and wind, a slope led to the river. On the bank lay clumsy, tawny boats. The river was large, gloomy, cold, bristling with murky blue-black waves. Tawny huts could be seen here and there, their tall, over-hanging, shingled roofs covered with greenish moss. Their windows looked blind. Around them nets were drying. Trappers lived here. In the winter they would leave for long stretches on the taiga and there they killed game.
II
In the spring the rivers overflowed: broadly, freely and powerfully.
Heavy waves rolled along, shimmering—the body of the river—and from them spread a damp, muffled noise, troubling and troubled. The snows melted away. On the pines grew pitchy candles, and they gave off a strong smell. The sky rose higher and turned dark blue, and at twilight it was greenish-shimmery and bleakly alluring. In the taiga, after the death of winter, the foremost task of the animal kingdom was in train—birth. And all the forest-dwellers—bears, wolves, moose, red foxes, polar foxes, owls, eagle-owls—all entered into the spring-time joy of birth. Out on the river were loudly calling eider, swan, geese. In the twilight, when the sky became green and shimmery, so that at night it might become satiny dark blue and many-starred, when the eider and swans had quieted down, falling to sleep for the night, and the night air, soft and warm was barely ruffled by crickets and crakes—at the ravine the girls would gather to sing of Lada and dance round-dances. The young men would be returning from wintering over in the taiga, and they also gathered there.
The bank fell steeply to the river. The river rustled below. And overhead the sky unfolded. All was quiet, but at the same time one could sense life swarming and hurrying along. At the head of the ravine, where stunted moss and wayside grasses grew on the granite and shale, the girls would sit in a dense cluster. They all wore bright dresses, were all strong and healthy; they sang sad, broad, ancient songs; they gazed off somewhere into the darkening, greenish mist. And it seemed that the girls were singing those unforgettable, broad songs of theirs for the young men. And the young men stood as dark, hunched silhouettes around the girls, sharply hooting and behaving riotously, exactly like the males in the forest mating-grounds.
The gathering had its own laws.
The young men would come and choose wives, they would fight for them and attack each other; the girls were indifferent and submitted to the males in everything. The lads, hooting and beating each other, would fight, make an uproar, and the victor—he would choose a wife for himself first.
And then they, he and she, would leave the gathering together.
III
Marina was twenty years old, and she went to the embankment.
Her tall, slightly heavy body was remarkably well-formed, with strong muscles and matte-white skin. Bosom, stomach, spine, thighs and legs were sharply defined—strongly, resiliently and in sharp relief. Her rounded, broad bosom rose up high. She had black-heavy braids, brows and lashes. Her eyes were black, moist, with deep pupils. Her cheeks flushed bluish-crimson. And her lips were soft like a wild creature’s, very red and full. She always walked slowly, shifting her long, strong legs and barely moving her springy thighs.
She came to the slope to join the girls.
The girls were singing their songs—drawn out, inviting and spare.
Marina forgot herself in the cluster of girls, threw herself onto her back, closed her clouded eyes and also sang. The song went along, went out in wide, radiant circles, and into it, into the song, went everything. Her eyes closed languidly. Her lean body was gnawed by a secret pain. Her heart contracted flutteringly, seemed to grow mute and from it, with the blood, this muteness went into her hands and knees, weakening them, and clouded her mind. And Marina stretched herself out passionately, grew entirely mute, entered the song and sang: and was startled only by the aroused hooting voices of the young men.
And then, at home in her stuffy cell, Marina lay down on her bed; she threw her arms behind her head, which made her bosom rise; she stretched out her legs, she opened wide her dark, misty eyes; she pursed her lips and, once again fainting with spring-time languor, lay that way for a long time.
Marina was twenty years old, and from the day of her birth she had grown up like a thistle on the ravine—freely and alone—with the trappers, the taiga, the ravine and the river.
IV
Demid lived on the bluff. Like the village, the bluff stood over the river. Only the hill was higher and steeper. The taiga had crept close; the dark-green tawny-trunked cedars and pines reached out for it with their forest paws. You could see a good distance from here: the troubled dark river, the water-meadow beyond it, the taiga, toothy at the horizon and dark-blue, and the sky—low and heavy.
The house built of huge pine trunks, with its log walls and white unadorned ceilings and floors, was hung all over with the pelts of bear, elk, wolves, white fox, ermine. The pelts hung on the walls and lay on the floor. On the tables there were powder, pellets, shot. In the corners were piled nooses, snares, traps. Guns had been hung up. It smelled strongly and sharply here, as if all the smells of the taiga had been gathered together. There were two rooms and a kitchen.
In the middle of one of the two rooms stood a table, home-made and big, and around it were low benches covered with bearskin. In this room lived Demid, in the other room lived the young bear Makar.
At home Demid would lie on his bearskin bed, long and motionless, would listen to his own large body, to how alive it was, how the strong blood flowed through it. The bear Makar would approach him, put his heavy paws on Demid’s chest, and sniff him over in a friendly way. Demid would scratch the bear behind the ear and one sensed that they, the man and the bear, understood each other. The taiga would look in through the window.
Demid was thick-set and broad-shouldered, with black eyes that were large, calm and kind. He smelled of the taiga, healthily and strongly. He was dressed—like all the trappers—in furs and in a coarse homespun fabric, white with a red warp. His feet were clad in tall heavy boots sewn from deer hide, and his hands, broad and red, were covered with calluses like a thick rind.
Makar was young, and like all young animals—clumsy. He waddled about and often got into mischief: gnawed the nets and lines, broke the nooses, licked at the powder. Then Demid would punish Makar—thrash him. And Makar would roll over onto his back, make innocent eyes and howl piteously.
V
Demid went to the girls on the cliff, led Marina from the cliff to his house on the bluff, and Marina became Demid’s wife.
VI
In the summer the luxuriant, dark-green grasses sprang up, swiftly and succulently. During the day the sun shone from a blue and seemingly moist sky. The nights were white, and it seemed then that there was no sky at all: it had dissolved into a pale mist. The nights were short and white, all the time it was red liquid dawn—evening or morning—and shimmery mists crept over the land. Strongly, rapidly, life took its course, sensing that its days were short here.
At Demid’s Marina lived in Makar’s room.
Makar had been moved to Demid’s room.
Makar had greeted Marina in an unfriendly way. When he saw her for the first time he set up a howl, showed his teeth, and struck her with his paw. Demid thrashed him for this and the bear quieted down. Later he and Marina became friends.
During the day Demid would go out into the taiga. Marina would remain alone.
She fixed up her room in her own way, roughly and with a sort of emphatic grace. Symmetrically she hung up the pelts and the scraps of cloth embroidered in bright red and blue, with cockerels and stags; in the corner she hung up an icon of the Mother of God; she scrubbed the floors; and her room, motley-colored and still smelling strongly of the taiga, began to resemble a forest chapel, where forest folk prayed to their gods.
In the pale-greenish twilight’s, when the skyless night was coming on and only eagle-owls called in the taiga and crickets chirped by the river, Demid would come to Marina. Marina could not think—her thoughts tumbled like huge heavy boulders—slowly and clumsily. She could sense that she had surrendered everything to Husband-Demid, and through the pale, skyless nights, her body hot and redolent, thrashing about on her bearskin, she took Demid unto herself: and she gave herself over, surrendering everything to him, wanting to dissolve into him, into his strength and passion, wearing out her own.
The nights were white, shimmery, misty. There was only the night-silence of the taiga. The mists drifted. Eagle-owls and wood-doves called. But in the morning the dawn was a red fire and a huge sun arose in the damp-blue sky. The grasses sprang up swiftly and succulently.
The summer went on, the days passed.
VII
In September it snowed.
From August on the days had started to close in, to gray, and long dark nights had sprung up. The taiga suddenly quieted, became mute and began to seem empty. The cold came and shackled the river with ice. There were very long twilights when the snow and ice on the river looked blue. At night the elk would roar as they battled. They roared so loudly and so strangely that it became frightening, and the walls shook.
In the fall Marina conceived.
One night Marina awoke before dawn. The room was stuffy because of the stove, and it smelled of bear. It had just begun to get light and on the dark walls the blue patches of the window frames were barely aglow. Somewhere near the outcrop an old elk was roaring; by the rough voice with its hissing bass notes one could tell it was an old one.
Marina sat up on her bed. Her head was spinning and she was slightly queasy. The bear was lying next to her. He was already awake and looking at Marina. His eyes glowed like quiet green fires, as if they were chinks through which was visible the sky of spring twilights, peaceful and shimmery-quiet.
Again Marina grew queasy and her head began to spin, and the fires of Makar’s eyes subconsciously and deeply transformed themselves in Marina’s soul into an immense, unbearable joy, with which her entire body began to tremble painfully—she had conceived. Her heart was pounding as if she had fallen into a snare, and the head-spinning sensation came on, shimmery and misty like a summer morning.
Marina arose from her bed—from her bear-skin—and quickly, with awkward-unsure steps went naked into Demid’s room. Demid was asleep—she wrapped his head in her hot arms, pressed it to her broad bosom and whispered:
—A child … I’m pregnant …
Little by little the night was graying and a blue light was coming through the windows. The elk had ceased to roar. In the room fluttered gray shadows. Makar came in, sighed and lay his paws on the bed. With his free hand Demid grasped the scruff of his neck and, trembling with love, said to him:
—So, Makar Ivanovich,—do you understand?
Then he added, turning to Marina:
—What do you think—does he understand? Marinka! … Marinka! Marinka!
Makar licked Demid’s hand and intelligently and knowingly lowered his head onto his paws. The night grew gray, soon lilac stripes appeared on the snow, entered the house. Below in the ravine lay the river’s blue ice, beyond it in ridges lay the taiga.
Demid did not go into the taiga on that day, and for many days thereafter.
VIII
The winter came, stayed, was passing.
The snow lay in deep layers, it was blue—night and day—and lilac during the short dawns and sunsets. The sun, pale and weak, barely rising above the horizon, would come up for three hours, far-off and alien. The rest of the time it was night. At night the northern lights shot out their shimmery arrows. The frost was a milk-white mist, sprinkling rime everywhere. There was the quiet of the wilderness, which spoke of death.
Marina’s eyes had changed. Before, they had been cloudy-dark and intoxicated, now they had become astoundingly clear, peaceful-joyful, direct and calm, and a chaste modesty had appeared in them. Her thighs became broader and her belly much larger, and this had given her a certain new grace, awkward-soft and heavy, and again, a chasteness.
Marina moved about very little, sitting in her room that resembled a forest chapel where the people prayed to their gods. During the day she dealt with her simple housekeeping: lit the stove, chopped the wood, cooked the meat and the fish, skinned the animals Demid killed, tidied her clearing. In the evening—the evenings were long—Marina spun thread on her spindle and wove cloth on her loom; she was sewing for the child. And as she sewed she would think of the child, sing, and smile quietly.
Marina thought about the child—an unconquerable, strong, all-encompassing joy filled her body. Her heart would pound and an even stronger joy would arise. But about the fact that she, Marina, would give birth—suffer—there was no thought.
Demid, in the morning lilac dawns, when the round full moon stood in the south-west, would go out on skis with a rifle and a Finnish knife, into the taiga. Pines and cedars stood there, traced out in a firm, heavy pattern of snow; at their feet clustered prickly firs, juniper and alder. Silence reigned, dampened by the snow. In the dead soundless snows Demid went from trap to trap, from noose to noose, finishing off the game. He fired his rifle, and the echo would dance long in the silence. He tracked elk and wolf-packs. He went down to the river, lay in wait for beaver, caught wildly thrashing fish in the melt-holes, put out the cages. Around him was everything that he had always known. Slowly the red sun dimmed and the shimmery rays of the northern lights began to glimmer.
In the evening standing on the bluff he would gut the fish and the game, hang it up to freeze, throw the scraps to the bear, would himself eat, wash in icy water and sit down beside Marina, large, thickset, his strong legs spread wide and his hands on his knees—the room seemed crowded. He would smile peaceably and kindly.
The lamp burned. Beyond the walls lay the snows, the silence and the cold. Makar would come in and roll playfully on the floor. In the room that looked like a chapel it would grow cozy and peaceful-joyful. The walls would crackle in the frost, and darkness peered in at the frozen windows. On the walls hung the cloths sewn with red and blue, with stags and cockerels. Then Demid would arise from his bench, take Marina tenderly and firmly by the hand and lead her to bed. The lamp would die down and in the darkness would quietly burn the eyes of Makar.
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.
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 set 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.”
The women ran about for potatoes, the coffin maker measured up, the lads swung the coffins over their heads—carried them proudly around to the cottages. In the cottages people examined at length the excellence of their coffins, measured themselves against the coffins and stood them on their porches, where it could easily be seen: who had two, who had three. The snow turned a wintry blue, a deathly blue in the frost. The cottages were lit up with pine splits, out back gates creaked and there were women’s footsteps—footsteps to the barn to hay the cattle for the night. Nikon’s wife invited the coffin makers to her place. Cautiously, with no chatter, the coffin makers sold the coffins. Once inside the cottage, having stabled the horses, over their tea, with their shoes off and their belts loosened—the guests turned out to be gay dogs, talkative, game for anything. Nikon Borisych, the master, the village chairman, bearded from the eyes down, was sitting by the lamp whittling splits, wedging them one after another into a clamp over the washtub, entertaining his amiable guests and talking away:
“Now, all the same we’re by ourselves, alone. You die, and the coffin—there it is. You don’t feed your hound before a hunt. Rebellion, all the same, that’s troubled times. Soviet power—means that’s it for the towns. We’re just heading out to the mine to get our own salt.
Nikon’s wife, in a velveteen vest and homespun skirt with lilac polka-dots, wearing an old-fashioned horned headdress, her breasts bulging like udders, her face plump as a cow’s, was sitting at the loom with her shuttle clacking away. The torch burned smokily. It lit up the bearded peasant faces ranged in a circle in the semi-darkness and smoke (their eyes shone with the red glow of the split’s red light). On the stove shelf, a dozen of them piled on top of each other, lay the women. In the corner behind the stove, in a pen, a calf was lazily chewing its cud. Fresh faces kept coming in—to have a look at the coffin makers. The others left—the door steamed, it reeked of the cold.
“The rail-w-a-y!” says Nikon Borisych with great scorn. “The rail-w-a-y, all t’same! I wisht it was scrapped!”
“It’s hard labor and nothing but,” answered Klimanov.
“We got no need of it, f’r example,” asserted Grandfather Kononov. “The masters, y’see, need it to travel about to their government departments, or just for visiting. But we, y’see, are out on our own, without any bourgeoisse, I mean to say.”
“The rail-w-a-y!” said Nikon Borisych. “The rail-w-a-y, all t’same, … We lived without it before and got by. Wh-y-y-y-y! … Once a year I used to make the trip to town, all t’same! … I’d loaf about a whole day on the platform, I’d have to untie my bundle about five times: ‘What sort of goods you got, or it’s the butt-end for you!’ Well, we used to climb onto the roof, … and away we’d go … Stop! ‘What sort of pass have you got, show me!’ D’you think I’m an old woman or something?—I’d show the pass. Then I got hot under the collar. Such and such your mother, I say, I’m taking my lads to the Red Army to have a crack at the bourgeoisie, all t’same. I, I say—We’re for the Bolsheviks, for the Soviets, and you, obv’ously, are Kom’nists? … He takes off …… all t’same it riles you up …”
Night. The torch burns dimly, the windows of Nikon’s hut become dim, the village sleeps its nightly sleep, the white snowstorm whips up its white snows, the sky is dismal. In the hut, in the semi-dark, in a circle by the torch, in shag-tobacco smoke, sit the peasants, with beards from their eyes down (their eyes shine with a red glow).
The shag-tobacco smokes, red little fires become dim in the corners, the roof rafters crawl about in the smoke. It’s stuffy, steamy for the stove-fleas on the women’s bodies on the stove. And Nikon Borisych says with great severity:
“Kom’nists!” and with an energetic gesture (his eyes flashing in the torch light): —”We’re for the Bolsheviks! For the Soviets! We want it our way, the Roossian way. We’ve been under the masters—and that’s enough! The Roossian way, our way! Ourselves!
“One thing, f’r example,” says Grandfather Kononov, “we’ve nothing against him. Let him go. And the factory lads—We’ve nothing against them—let them stuff the girls, f’r example, and get married, those who have a trade. But the gentry—they’s at the end of the line, f’r example.”
A WEDDING
Winter. December. Christmas.
The clearing. Trees, enveloped in hoar-frost and snow, gleam like blue diamonds. At dusk the last bullfinch cries out, a magpie rattles its bony rattle. And silence. Huge pine trees have been felled, and their branches lie about like enchanting carpets. Among the trees in a murk that is dark blue, like sugar-paper, night comes creeping. Its movements light and unhurried, a hare hops by. Overhead, the sky—glimpsed through the treetops like tatters bits of blue with white stars. On all sides, hidden from the sky, stand junipers and somber pines, their slender switches tangled, intertwined. Constant and disquieting, the sounds of the forest run on. The yellow logs are silent. The moon, like a live coal, rises above the far end of the clearing. And the night. The sky is low, the moon red. The wood stands like a stockade forged in iron. The wind creaks and it sounds like the creaking of rusty bolts. Eerie in the lunar murk, lopped-off branches of felled pines lie about. Gigantic hedgehogs, their branches bristle sullenly. Night.
And then at the far end of the clearing, among the piney hedgehogs, in the moonlight, a wolf sets up a howl, and the wolves celebrate their own beast-yule, a wolfish wedding. A she-wolf howled lazily and languorously, the he-wolves licked the snow with burning tongues. Their young look sternly askance. The wolves play, jump, roll into the snow, in the moonlight, in the frost. And the leader howls, howls, howls. Night. And above the village—at Christmas, at the fortune telling; in the lanes, in the forest, in the settlements; before the wedding season a bold marching song is heard:
Chi-vi-li, willy-nilly, sway and swish—
Grab the one that is your wish!
And on their way to a doleful wedding-eve gathering, in the name of maidenly chastity, through their tears, the maidens sing:
Small hope had the Mother to empty her nest—
My Mother got shut of me one summer’s day
Sent me to strangers, a house far away
She banished me, seven years never to come to her.
Three years have gone since I’ve been with my mother,
But come the fourth summer the bird will take wing,
Light down by my Father in garden so green
His garden I’ll water with many a tear,
And give over my sorrow for Mother to bear.
My mother goes walking ‘round her new nest,
Calls to her children, her dear nightingales,
“Get up, darling children, my dear nightingales.
There’s one in our garden that sits and weeps sore,
It must be the wretched one, our kin no more.
Eldest brother said: I will go and see.
Second brother said: Fetch the gun to me!
Youngest brother said: I will shoot her down.
Youngest brother said: I will shoot her down.
On the roof peak—a hex-horse; on the ridge—a dove; the bridal sheet, the pillow cases and the towels—embroidered with flowers, grasses, birds; and the wedding goes on, according to the ritual, embroidered with songs, with rhythm, with centuries and tradition.
A sketch: By the torch-holder is an old man, a torch burns, in the place of honor sits Uliana Makarova—a bride in a white dress. On the table a samovar, refreshments. At the table—the guests, Alexei Semyonych with the mothers-in-law and fathers-in-law.
“Eat up, my dear guests, you’ve traveled so far.” this sternly, from the old man.
“Eat up, dear guests, you’ve traveled so far,” this with fear and self-importance, from the mother.
“Eat up, dear guests, and you, Leksei Semionych,” this is Uliana Makarova, hesitantly.
“Uliana Makarova, you haven’t walked out with other lads, haven’t sinned, you haven’t cracked your saucer?
“No, Lexei Semionych … I’ve not been shamed …”
“So, kind parents, how do you reward your daughter?”
“Her reward is our parental blessing—with the icon of Our Lady of Kazan.”
And the wedding, according to the ritual of centuries, is conducted above Black Creeks like a liturgy—in the thatched cottages, under the awnings, on the road, over the fields, through the snowstorm, by day and by night: it rings with songs and bells, ferments like home-brewed ale, it is painted and carved like the hex-horse at the peak of the roof—on evenings that are blue like sugar-paper. Chapter such-and-such of the Book of Rites, the first verse and further.
Verse 1.
When the mortgage is taken out, the house inspected, the terms agreed, and the party of maidens has arrived, then they bring to the groom the dowry goods which the groom redeems, and the mothers-in-law make up the bed with the blankets and pillows from the dowry with flowers and grasses and they decide on the wedding day.
Verse 2.
Verse 3.
Oh mother—oh mother of mine!
Why do you wish me to marry!
To sleep with this wife I decline,—
Where will I leave her or carry?!
They went to dance, they danced their feet right off,
The girls and women laughed so hard—that they had a calf.
Oo-oo-oo! Ahhhhhh! Ah! the cottage dances like a wench,
Fidgets back and forth, yelling up to heaven.
“Does the young girl know how to clean a chimney?”
“Does the young girl know how to bind a sheaf?”
“Does the young girl know how to build a nest?”
“They are nobles, they need rubles. Take the cheese and the cottage loaf, lay the money on the cloth.”
“Measure the hessian, give me twenty arshin.”
Oo-oo-oo. Ahhhh. Oooo. Eeee. In the cottage there’s no room to breathe. In the cottage there’s merrymaking. In the cottage there’s shouting, victuals, and drink —hic!—and out of the house to the open shed they run to get a breath, chase away the sweat, gather their thoughts and strength.
Night. The stars wink lazily, in the frost. Under the shed roof, in the darkness there’s a smell of manure, of cattle sweat. It’s quiet. Only now and then the cattle sigh. And every quarter of an hour, with a lantern, old Aleshka’s mother, the mother of young Alexei Semyonych comes—to inspect the cow. The cow is lying submissively, her snout thrust into the straw: the waters broke last night, any time now she’ll calve. The old woman looks carefully, nods her head reproachfully, makes the sign of the cross over the cow: it’s time, it’s time, Brownie! And the cow strains. The old woman—an age-old custom—opens up the back door to let in some fresh air. Outside the door is the empty cherry orchard, in the distance the barn and the path to the barn—covered with hay, coated with hoar-frost. And out of the darkness the grandfather speaks:
“I’ll go down, I’ll go down—I’ll have a look. We’ll need Egor Polikarpich, Egor, the squinting wizard. The cow’s pining, pining, fading away, the cow …”
“Run, grandfather, run dear …”
“What do you think I’m doing? I’m going. And you stand by. It’s cold.”
Under the shed roof it’s dark, warm. The cow is sighing heavily and lowing. The old woman strikes a light—two little hooves are sticking out … The old woman crosses herself and whispers … And grandfather trots through the fields to the forest, to Egorka. Grandfather is old, grandfather knows that if you don’t leave the path the wolf, ferocious and mean in this season, can’t touch you. Under the shed roof on the straw the wet calf lows and kicks. The lantern burns dimly, lights up the stakes, the partitions, the hens under the roof, the sheep in the fold. Outside there is silence, peace, but the cottage buzzes, sings, dances to every note and every string.
—And from the Book of Rites.
Verse 13. And when they drive away in the early hours and the guests disperse and in the cottage remain only the mother of the groom and the mother-in-law, the mothers-in-law undress the bride and lay her on the bed and settle themselves down over the stove. And to the young wife comes her husband and lies down beside her on the bed, embroidered with flowers and grasses and the husband sows his wife with his seed, breaking her maidenhead. And the mother and mothers-in-law see this and cross themselves.
Verse 14. And on the morning of the following day the mother and mothers-in-law take the young wife outside and cleanse her with warm water, and after the cleansing they give the water to their cattle to drink: to the cows, to the horses and sheep. And the couple drive to their dower fields and coarse songs are sung to them.
—The clearing. The trees are laden with hoar-frost and snow, motionless. Among the trees, in the gray murk, snapping twigs as he goes, the white haired grandfather goes trot-a-trot and in the blue murk, in the distance, a wolf barks. The day is white and motionless. And towards evening there is a snowstorm. And tomorrow there’ll be a snowstorm. And in the snowstorm the wolves howl.
OUTSIDE THE TRIPTYCH, at the end
The day is white and motionless. And towards evening there’s a snowstorm—mean, a January storm. The wolves howl.
—And white haired granddad atop the stove, white haired granddad tells his grandchildren the tale of the juicy apple: “Play, play, pipes! Comfort, dear father, my own dear mother. They ruined me, wretch that I am, in the dark forest they killed me for a silver dish, for the juicy apple.” The snowstorm flails like a windmill, grinding out a powder of snowy grit, of murk, of cold. It’s warm up on the stove, with the fairy tales, the fleas, the steamy bodies: “Awaken me, little father, from my deep sleep, fetch me the water of life.” “And he came to the forest, dug up the earth on a flowery knoll and sprinkled a twig with the water of life, and his daughter, whose beauty none could relate, awakened from her long sleep.” “Ivan Tsarevich, why did you burn my frogskin—why?”
—The forest stands sternly, a bastion, and the snowstorm batters it like a clutch of harpies. Night. Is the legend of how the bogatyrs met their death not truly the legend of the forest and the snowstorm? More and more snowstorm harpies batter the forest bastion, howling, shrieking, shouting, roaring like maddened women. Their dead fall, and after them rush still more harpies, they never decrease,—they multiply like dragon’s heads—two grow where one is severed, and the forest stands like Ilia of Murom.
Kolomna: Nikola-Na-Posadakh
25 December, Old Style. 1920
Translated by A.L. and M.K.