Pelga on the bank of which the doctor and Vasya now sat conversing. Vasya’s sisters, Alenka and Arishka, according to unconfirmed information, were in another district, in an orphanage. The doctor took Vasya with him to Moscow. On the way he told Yuri Andreevich all sorts of horrors.
4
“That’s last autumn’s winter crop spilling out. We’d just sowed it when the disasters began. When Auntie Polya left. Do you remember Auntie Palasha?”
“No. I never knew her. Who is she?”
“What do you mean, you don’t know Pelageya Nilovna! She was on the train with us. Tyagunova. Open face, plump, white.”
“The one who kept braiding and unbraiding her hair?”
“The braids, the braids! Yes! That’s it. The braids!”
“Ah, I remember. Wait. I met her afterwards in Siberia, in some town, in the street.”
“You don’t say! Auntie Palasha?”
“What is it, Vasya? You’re shaking my hands like a madman. Watch out, you’ll tear them off. And you’re blushing like a young maiden.”
“Well, how is she? Tell me quickly, quickly.”
“She was safe and sound when I saw her. Told me about you. That she stayed with you or visited you, as I recall. But maybe I’ve forgotten or confused something.”
“Well, sure, sure! With us, with us! Mama loved her like her own sister. Quiet. Hardworking. Good with her hands. While she lived with us, we were in clover. They hounded her out of Veretenniki, gave her no peace with their slander.
“There was a muzhik in the village, Rotten Kharlam. He played up to Polya. A noseless telltale. She didn’t even look at him. He bore me a grudge for that. Said bad things about us, me and Polya. So she left. He wore us out. And then it started.
“A terrible murder took place hereabouts. A lonely widow was murdered at a forest farmstead over by Buiskoe. She lived alone near the forest. She went around in men’s boots with tabs and rubber straps. A fierce dog ran around the farmstead chained to a wire. Named Gorlan. The farming, the land, she managed by herself, without helpers. Then suddenly winter came when nobody was expecting it. Snow fell early. Before the widow had her potatoes dug out. She comes to Veretenniki. ‘Help me,’ she says, ‘I’ll give you a share, or pay you.’
“I volunteered to dig her potatoes. I come to her farmstead, and Kharlam’s already there. He invited himself before me. She didn’t tell me. Well, it was nothing to fight over. We set to work together. The worst weather for digging. Rain and snow, sleet, muck. We dug and dug, burned potato greens to dry the potatoes with warm smoke. Well, we dug them all out, she paid us off honestly. She let Kharlam go, but winked at me, meaning she had more business with me, I should come later or else stay.
“I came to her another time. ‘I don’t want my potatoes confiscated as surplus by the state,’ she said. ‘You’re a good lad,’ she said, ‘you won’t give me away, I know. See, I’m not hiding from you. I could dig a pit myself and bury them, but look what’s going on outside. It’s winter—too late to think about it. I can’t manage by myself. Dig a pit for me, you won’t regret it. We’ll dry it, fill it up.’
“I dug her a pit the way a hiding place should be, wider at the bottom, like a jug, the narrow neck up. We dried and warmed the pit with smoke, too. Right in the middle of a blizzard. We hid the potatoes good and proper, covered the pit with dirt. Done to a tee. I keep mum about the pit, sure enough. Don’t tell a living soul. Not even mama or my little sisters. God forbid!
“Well, so. Hardly a month went by—there was a robbery at the farmstead. People walking past from Buiskoe told about it, the house wide open, everything cleaned out, the widow nowhere to be seen, the chain broken and the dog Gorlan gone.
“More time went by. During the first winter thaw, on New Year’s Day, the eve of St. Basil’s,2 it was pouring rain, which washed the snow off the hillocks, melted through to the ground. Gorlan came and started scraping the dirt with his paws on the bare spot where the pit with the potatoes was. He dug away, scattered the top layer, and there were the mistress’s feet in their shoes with straps. See, what a frightful thing!
“Everybody in Veretenniki pitied the widow, talked about her. Nobody thought of blaming Kharlam. And how could they? Who’d think of such a thing? If it was him, where would he get the pluck to stay in Veretenniki and strut around like a peacock? He’d have made tracks for somewhere far away.
“The village kulaks, the ringleaders, were glad of this villainy at the farmstead. They began stirring up the village. See, they said, what townies come up with! There’s a lesson for you, a warning. Don’t hide bread, don’t bury potatoes. And these fools all keep at it—forest robbers, they dream up some kind of forest robbers at the farmstead. Simple folk! Go on listening to these townies. They’ll show you better than that, they’ll starve you to death. If you villagers know what’s good for you, you’ll follow us. We’ll teach you a thing or two. They’ll come to take what’s yours, earned with your own sweat, and you’ll say, what extra, we haven’t got a single grain of rye for ourselves. And if they try anything, go for the pitchfork. And anybody who’s against the community, look out! The old men made a buzz, started boasting, held meetings. And that was just what telltale Kharlam wanted. He snatched his hat and was off to town. And there psst-psst-psst. See what’s doing in the village, and you just sit and gawk? What’s needed there is a committee of the poor. Give the order, and I’ll set brother against brother in no time. And he hightailed it from these parts and never showed his face again.
“All that happened after that, happened of itself. Nobody set it up, nobody’s to blame. They sent Red Army soldiers from town. And an itinerant court. And got at me straight off. Kharlam blabbed. For escaping, and for avoiding labor, and for inciting the village to mutiny, and for murdering the widow. And they locked me up. Thanks be, I thought of taking up a floorboard and got away. I hid underground in a cave. The village was burning over my head—I didn’t see it. My dearest mama threw herself into a hole in the ice—I didn’t know it. It all happened of itself. The soldiers were put in a separate cottage and given drink, they were all dead drunk. During the night somebody got careless and set the house on fire, the ones next to it caught. The villagers jumped out of the burning houses, but the visitors, nobody set fire to them, they just got burned alive to a man, that’s clear. Those from Veretenniki weren’t driven from their burned-down places. They ran away themselves, frightened that something more might happen. Those cheating ringleaders told them again that every tenth man would be shot. I didn’t find anybody here, they’re all scattered, knocking about the world somewhere.”
5
The doctor and Vasya arrived in Moscow in the spring of 1922, at the beginning of the NEP. The days were warm and clear. Patches of sunlight reflected from the golden cupolas of the Church of the Savior fell on the cobbled square, where grass was growing in the cracks between cobbles.
