vicious by their nature, Nadya agreed, and scowled so fiercely that the myod spilled immediately, in order to absolve itself of any involvement. Vladimir Ilyich tried to encourage the lilacs to take the rain for themselves, going so far as to hang buckets from his eaves and distribute the water himself, sprinkling it evenly among the flowers with his long, thin fingers. But this did not suffice.
“What is to be done?” he demanded. “What is to be done?”
And one morning the village of Yaichka woke, and the heads of Vova’s roses had all been hacked off at the neck.
Vladimir and Nadya have two sons under their roof, Josef and Leon. They dream boys’ dreams: of getting a slice of their father’s fortune, of girls, of growing big mustaches. Several jokes concerning the brothers buzz through Yaichka, for one never hugged the other without making his hands into fists. Josef has chased Leon into the woods many times, red in the face, bellowing for his brother never to return. But of course, around dinner, Lyova slinks back, and Josef embraces him as if nothing was amiss. Leon, for his part, scowls in his room and breaks his toys to show them who their master is. After the incident with Vladimir’s roses, Josef stomped upon all the flowers of the garden—lilac, rose, peony, daisy, and even his mother’s flowerless savories, mint and dill and thyme. He stood in the middle of all his destruction, panting, his dark eyes wild as a kicked horse, looking to his father for praise.
“You are my favorite son,” said Vladimir Ilyich to Josef, which is all the boy ever wished to hear. “And so I forgive you for the flowers.”
This made the child smile, but did not really shine up his disposition. One spring day, as fine as a cake, the boy marched straight up to the very kindly Sergei Mironovich and shot him with finger pistols:
“Lyova did it!” cried Josef, frightened by Sergei’s silence, and ran off to hit his brother soundly. So it goes with Josef. Every village has one.
On Marya’s right-hand side lives Georgy Konstantinovich, who sits out on his steps and plays his birchwood gusli so prettily that the moon faints away from love, and whose wife Galina Ivanova has a lamb’s modesty. Everything in Georgy’s house proceeds with perfect precision. Even the eggs boil when he says so, and not a moment sooner. The bees in his garden sup only at the flowers he likes best. When the wolves in the forest howl, Georgy wakes up and stands watch with his daughters all in a line, their rifles on their shoulders, and it cannot be disproven that this is why wolves are heard but not seen. Georgy is more modest, even, than his wife. He would never say that he saves Yaichka each night with his strong antiwolf posture, but his neighbors say it for him, and bring to him and his girls hot tea and slices of pie wrapped in muslin when the cold snaps. Georgy herds the cows as well, for they recognize his authority, and proceed in formation into their pen without argument.
Now, just down the way lives Nikolai Aleksandrovich and his long-haired wife Aleksandra Fedorovna. Before their open door play their four beautiful daughters—Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia—and their sickly young son, Aleksey, who sits in the shade of a poplar and reads while his sisters kick pine cones between them on the green. Nikolai himself is a bit dim and distracted, but his mustache is thick, and he means very well, even if his garden half dies every winter for lack of water, even if his cow screams to be milked every so often, and he does not hear her. Vladimir Ilyich once tried to discuss his doctrine of roses and lilacs with Nikolai, who gave him a cup of kvass and listened intently. The sun passed behind a cloud. But Nikolai Aleksandrovich only laughed and sent old Vova on his way, his sympathies being rather with the roses. Aleksandra, her apron embroidered with a moth’s delicacy, her arms muscled from arguing with sheep, once told Marya Morevna that her husband was visited by the same dream as his neighbor, of the white ants and the red, and had wept in his sleep for weeks. She kisses Nikolai’s knuckles, where dreams live, until he quiets, but then she herself cannot sleep, and watches the stars spell out the words of a long poem from the warmth of her bed.
Many more folk bustle and quarrel and clap their hands over their ears in Yaichka. That is what villages are like. All day long, this or that grandmother could tell tales that stretch on like taffy concerning Vova’s plans for the distribution of the pregnant sheep’s lamb, or Josef’s somewhat more worrying plans for the goat, and they wouldn’t have even begun to recount the rumors of Aleksandra’s infidelity with a certain monk, let alone remember to name half the folk in Yaichka. That is what grandmothers are like. Cows moan in the grass; hens flutter when the rooster happens by; the earth turns blackly, wetly under plows; and for a while, just a little while, everything shines and nothing is the matter, anywhere, ever.
Yaichka has always been here, and never anywhere else. It has always possessed these people; their four horses; ten head of cattle; two hens and a rooster for every family; three sheep (one pregnant); the small and nameless river and its mill, owned by everyone and worked on a biweekly schedule designed by you-know-who; the solitary goat who would stop eating up everyone’s onions if he knew what’s good for him; and several fields whose deep, dark soil forgives everything done to it.
26
What Will We Call Her?
In the house of Marya Morevna, even the windows laugh. Long after the winter hearth has gone dark, the bodies of Marya and her husband glow. He is so alive in her that his skin tastes like an apple tree, full of sap and juice.
“Oh, volchitsa,” he whispers to her, his belly brimming with soup and good bread, “I’ve a dog’s luck! Butter in the barrel, a good smoke after supper, and you, my bootlace girl, drawn up so tight to me!”
“When you said that just now, I almost thought you were someone else,” sighs Marya. But Koschei is always himself, perfectly so, whole and bright.
And he sets on her like the sun, and all her teeth show when she smiles. Each day she looks at the iron keys hanging by their door, and tries to think:
On Wednesdays, Ushanka visits, her friend whom those old grandmothers most likely forgot to name, since she is the kind of girl who shows only half of her face at a time. No one knows her surname, but that’s all right. Surnames go politely unmentioned in Yaichka. Marya Morevna always makes sure she has a leg of rabbit and fresh bread with a little bowl of honey set out, and Wednesday is her day with the silver samovar that makes the rounds of all the houses, just like a horse.
“And how is your husband?” says Ushanka, a beautiful blue ribbon fluttering from the scalloped edge of her lace hat. Ushanka makes lace like a spider, and gives her shawls freely to the women of Yaichka. Just yesterday, gentle Galka pulled one up around her shoulders, feeling a draft.
“He feels sure the new calf will be a heifer, and so go to Aleksandr Fyodorovich. I’ve discussed the prospect of juniper-cheese with Natasha.”
“How lovely for all of us. And you, Masha? Are you well? Do the ladies visit when I am not about? Do the men let you drink with them when you’re thirsty?”
Marya Morevna puts her chin in her hands. “I believe I have never been so well, Ushanochka. I am so well that my glass fills before I think to be thirsty. To be certain, I am sad when the moon is thin. I remember friends long gone, and how one of them painted her eyes to match her soup, and how one slept curled next to me, and another kissed me, just once, by a river. I remember one with wet hair, and her baby. I wish they could drink from full glasses, too. I wish they could see the new lamb when it comes. But the moon waxes, and my sadness dries up. Life is like that, of course.”
“Of course.” And Ushanka puts her hand on Marya’s, for they have shared tea more often than tears. Her skin is like cloth. “The sweetness of it all is sharpest when placed alongside sorrow, close as knife and fork. But it is my job to interrogate your happiness, to prod its corners, to make sure it holds. When a sadness chews at the bottom of your heart, it’s as though you walk all day with your dress on backwards, the buttons facing the forest, the collar facing the village. To everyone else, all may seem normal, but my eyes are so keen.”
Marya Morevna poured tea, coppery and steaming. “I have sometimes wished for a child,” she confessed. “But when I ask Koschei about it, even while he tells me he loves me with a bear’s love, he says, ‘Can we not wait
