I used to think I knew what people should do, that I had a good sense of right and wrong. But since I’d been out here with Kolya, I saw the true tragedy—that everyone was right from his own point of view, everyone was suffering and needy. The workers didn’t want to be in those brigades, but once they’d grimly accepted their duty, they transformed themselves into men who could perform those tasks—in exactly the way armies turned peasant boys into killers. All I knew now was that what we were doing was dangerous indeed, that I was not well, and that I was homesick for Petrograd.

I leaned against Kolya as we rode through a pine forest, mile after mile, the wall of trees and a strip of sky. It made me nauseated, the regularity of the trunks, the way they passed. I couldn’t even look at them. I worried about returning to the city. It would be so easy for Arkady to find us, especially if Kolya had all this grain to sell—surely we’d be traced. But Kolya insisted it had to be Petrograd, to bring the most money. “Then we can get on a ship and go anywhere,” he said. “Where shall we go?”

“Argentina,” I said. “Spain.”

“Not Paris?”

“Too wet. Take me somewhere hot and dry. With mosaics and a little fountain in the courtyard. And guitars. I’ll dance with a black mantilla, and I’ll break men’s hearts.”

“They’ll die in droves for this redheaded Carmen.” He leaned over and kissed me. A few weeks ago, our kisses would have caught fire, and we would have made love right here. But now I was so tired that it was hard to believe there was even a place called Spain, somewhere the sun was hot and the little burros climbed the rocky hills, and great cathedrals rose like pastry, with pigeons bursting into the sky. My body ached, and an unnamed foreboding, heavy and thick, sat on my stomach, the sense of something coming. I remembered my mother’s nervousness just before the revolution broke. She’d been like a cat sensing a storm. I lay down again with my head on Kolya’s thigh, curled up on the wagon’s seat, the hard wood biting into my bones. How much longer could we go on? I slept and dreamed of grain, bags of grain heaped on a wagon over our heads, coming loose and crushing us.


Kolya woke me, shaking me gently by the shoulder. I sat up to see gentle columns of white smoke rising from a copse of trees. Chimney smoke, thank God. The eerie red sun was already low on the horizon as we drove into an enclave of izbas, nicely maintained and well spaced, the gates and fences in good shape. A fairly prosperous village, it had done well without a landlord. The inhabitants we saw did not melt away into the yards, but watched us curiously. We pulled up in front of a proud house with four windows to the street—red windows, as they were called under the tsar. Krasniy, krasiviy—red meant beautiful, because they had glass in them. The peasants had once been taxed on every window and on the chimney, too, so this was an announcement to the world: we can afford light and fresh air. Many of the poorer huts we’d visited had been little better than smokehouses.

Our horse stopped, snorting plumes of vapor into the cold air. Kolya handed me the sweat-smelling reins, leaped lightly from the wagon, and walked off whistling In the meadow stands a little birch tree. The gray threw back his head, making his bridle jingle. He couldn’t wait to be unhitched. Dogs barked as Kolya knocked on the small door next to the gates protecting the yard from the street. “Privet!” he called out. He wore a patched sheepskin over his jacket, his pants in his boots. With his little cap and homemade pipe, he looked like something you’d put in a wheat field to frighten the crows.

I sighed and stretched. I couldn’t wait to get out of this cursed wagon. My back hurt, my hips ached. I felt a hundred years old and stupid as the feeble-minded boy peeking at me from around the corner of a neighboring house. To think I’d once been a poet. Had placed word next to word just for the thrill of it, the burr of zh and the arch-throated ya. But the miles had reduced me to an ache and a queasiness, a certain melancholy, an animal’s desire for warmth and a moment’s safety.

The small door opened and a woman poked her head out, a beauty with a blue kerchief over her blond hair, pink cheeks, and upturned wide-spaced eyes. A big dog came out in front of her and sniffed at Kolya, then barked at the horse. I had not seen a beautiful peasant woman on this trip. I watched her take us in, the wagon, Kolya’s deferential stance. She was suspicious but also curious, a tiny girl in a little kerchief clinging to her skirt, and a bit more belly than that short jacket could conceal.

They spoke for a while, then she leaned over and said something to the tot, who went trotting back into the yard. Kolya waved for me. He helped the woman open the big gates and I drove the horse in. “You can put the horse in the stable, devushka,” the woman called up to me. “You’ll see where.” And Kolya followed her into the izba.

“Put the horse in the stable,” I grumbled as I began to unhitch him. “You can water and feed him, too, if you like. And would you mind fetching some more water while you’re at it?” Now that I was a peasant wife, all the work was left for me. It had been a joke at first, a delicious imposture. But now I was getting tired of it.

I was still unhitching the horse when she brought out the two pails on a yoke. “To water the horse. The well’s across the road.” She wasn’t that much older than me, maybe twenty-five, but she was already the mistress of the house. She set the pails down on the porch and went back inside. “The well’s across the road,” I imitated her to the horse. He swiveled his ears intelligently. He was sweaty, he’d done his part, too.

I put him into their barn, dark and close after all the fresh air and light, heady with rich smells—urine, animals, and straw. A cow lowed, and her calf replied. Cow and calf meant milk. Goats bleated, hoping to be fed—more milk and meat. In the dim light, I made out a manger and a watering trough. Their own horse must be out with the husband. I led our big gray in. A pig grunted, and I heard the higher notes of piglets. Around my feet, chickens made their crackling, irritable racket, filling the air with down, and the rooster wandered around in the doorway crowing, trying to peck at me. Eggs, milk, bacon… a prosperous family. They would have grain as well. I wondered where they stored it.

I made myself laugh. I was starting to think like a thief.

I scooped out some oats from our wagon for the horse. I gave it to him first in handfuls, to enjoy the softness of his nose as he ate from my hand. “We’ll be out of this soon, Comrade,” I said, petting his steamy neck, listening to him chew. Then I put the feed bag on his bridle and went to fetch the water in the reddening dusk.

Two women stood chatting at the well, their pails already full. I greeted them politely and lowered the well bucket on its chain. The splash came quickly—that was good, I wouldn’t have to haul it up so far. I groaned and huffed as I cranked the handle.

“You ought to watch your man with that one,” one of the women said, a sturdy peasant of around forty. “She’s a witch, you know.”

The other one said, “She might turn him into a pig, or a duck.”

“A duck would be easier to train,” I said, and they laughed.

“She flies around at night,” the second woman said.

“She dances in the woods,” said the first one.

“May God protect us,” I said, crossing myself piously, feeling sorry for the woman for having gossips like this as neighbors. The world always envies the beautiful and the rare.

I squatted down like a strong man at the circus and lifted the buckets straight up, the yoke across my already aching shoulders. I’d filled the pails too full, and the water splashed as I tottered through the smaller door of their gate, banging one end of the yoke so water drenched my soft boots. I was so tired I didn’t even care. I filled the horse’s trough, barely visible now in the warm darkness of the barn, and left him with the other animals, eager to be inside and sitting down.

Oh the warmth and the smell of cooking! Herbs and tea and smoke and meat—and people. Kolya already occupied the place of honor—the bench in the red corner—where a boy of around five sat at his elbow and gazed up at him, fascinated, as if my lover were a seven-league prince or a hut on chicken legs. An old man with a spade-shaped beard sat on the other side, and an old woman sat by herself at the end of the bench, mumbling. A cradle hung from the ceiling and I could see a baby sitting up in it, like a man in a boat.

The mistress stood at the stove, stirring something into a big earthenware pot. How on earth could she be so lovely, even from the back, with her figure concealed under padded clothes and her hair hidden by a kerchief? I imagined the woman’s braids under the flowered kerchief, two great ropes of gold wound crownlike around her head. Her breasts and hips were full, her belly—she was bursting with life. No wonder Kolya was trying so hard to be charming. I envied the self-confidence of her face, the bold eyes, the little upturned nose, the firm chin and wide bones. I could feel her pleasure at the unexpected company.

I was more interested in the food. The smells! The place was crammed full of produce as a storehouse, the season of preserving having just passed. Fragrant herbs and ropes of dried fruit and mushrooms hung from the ceiling, and jars of pickles and sacks of vegetables were tucked everywhere, along the shelves and under the benches, their earthy breath adding to the smell of dinner and the dog and wet clothes and the tea in the samovar.

On the bare, scrubbed table sat a crock of milk and a bowl of salted cucumbers, a loaf of black bread and a bowl of smetana—sour cream. Kolya drank milk and smetana-slathered bread, telling a story about the bandits we’d encountered on the road, how he scared them off with his gun and they turned into magpies and flew away. The woman laughed, showing her even pearly teeth, and the melody of her laughter turned Kolya rosy and garrulous. How that man loved an audience, especially if it was a beautiful woman.

The tantalizing aromas issuing from the oven distracted me from my jealousy, and the sight of that bread, the milk. Since we’d been on the road, there had been so much lovely food, and I was as hungry as a bear in spring. Sometimes Kolya would buy me a chicken or some eggs or shoot a grouse and cook it out in the open for me. We’d devour it in the wagon. Now my stomach growled, while the rest of me politely pretended not to notice the savory bounty. As a good peasant wife, I could not ask for it myself.

“Please, have some bread,” the woman finally invited me. “The milk’s from the goat. I’d just finished milking when you came. Ilyosha, give her a cup.” The five-year-old got up and brought me a tin cup, then tucked himself back in next to Kolya. Big-eyed and sharp-chinned, he had long eyelashes just like Seryozha’s. He looked afraid to blink lest the visitor disappear on him. And I remembered so vividly how my brother would become obsessed by people, just like this. I poured myself warm milk, sweet and grassy. The bread was fresh and smelled of coriander. I slathered the thick sour cream on top. “God bless you and your household,” I said.

“You are most welcome,” she said.

“So you’re from Danilov,” the old man cut in on our womanly exchange. A real old-time patriarch, chewing his toothless gums in his untidy beard. “Pack of thieves, if you ask me. I bought a horse there once—this was back in the seventies. Remember that horse, Faina? Had the wheezes. Didn’t last the winter.”

“In the seventies?” our hostess snorted. “How old do you think I am?” It must be the husband’s father—clearly no love lost there.

Kolya lit his pipe. “I remember that horse,” he said. “A noble beast. The noblest.”

Faina laughed out loud. I was sure she’d never seen such charm in her life. She lowered her eyes to her pots. She had the big fork out and was moving earthenware jars inside the oven, but whenever she looked up, there was hunger and pleasure in those eyes. She barely noticed I was there. The old granny next to me played with a little doll, dancing it on the table. She smelled sharp and, I hated to say, urinous. My envy for the good wife melted away. The village wives were all against her, she had nobody but these old people for company, three children to take care of, and a husband she kept nervously watching for out the windows. How could I begrudge her the fun we’d brought, the relief from boredom and labor?