Russka Read Free Page B

well into morning; and further yet, at the north-eastern end of the huge landmass opposite Alaska, it was already high noon. Huge weather systems could be lost in the night upon the plain. Two thousand miles north-east of the hamlet, a shattering electric storm was raging over the forest: yet here, all was still. And who knew what storm clouds crossed the forests, what tents were pitched upon the steppe, or what fires burnt upon that endless land in the many chambers of the night?
    The little boy smiled as soon as he woke.
    The breeze was coming through the window; the sunlight from the square window frame made a large pale rectangle across the earth floor.
    ‘Awake, my little berry?’
    His mother’s broad face, close to his. Beyond her, people weremoving about the room. In one corner, a cradle hung from a long, curved stick attached to the rafters.
    It was a large room. The walls, made of clay plastered on to a wooden frame, were a grimy colour. This was because, like the other huts in the hamlet, the little house with its long, turf roof had no chimney: instead, the smoke from the big stove was left to fill the room before being allowed to escape through a small shutter which could be opened in the ceiling. It was an efficient way of warming the place quickly and, to the occupants, the darkened walls seemed familiar and friendly. Today, however, the stove was not lit. The air within was clear and the room pleasantly cool.
    The hut had two other compartments: behind the stove was a passageway where one entered the hut, and on the other side of this passage, another space, a little bigger than the main room, which served as a general workplace and store. In this stood a loom, various barrel-like containers, hoes, sickles, and hanging on the wall in a place of honour, one axe belonging to the master of the house. The whole building, framed by oak pillars, was dug about eighteen inches into the ground so that one stepped up from the passage to pass through the outer door.
    His mother was washing his face with water from a brown earthenware pot. He gazed past her at the strip of gleaming sunlight on the floor.
    But his mind was elsewhere.
    She smiled, seeing his eyes on the sunlit floor. ‘What do we say about the sunlight?’ she asked softly.
    ‘Sweet milk poured
On her floor;
Neither knife nor your teeth
Will ever get it off.’
    He chanted obediently, looking out of the window. The breeze from it stirred his fair hair.
    ‘And what about the wind?’
    ‘Father has a stallion fine
Not all the world can him restrain.’
    Already he knew a dozen such sayings. The women knewhundreds of them – homely riddles, word games, proverbs – likening light to spilt milk, the wind to a stallion. In these countless sayings the simple folk delighted in the gentle wordplay of their Slavic tongue.
    In a moment she would let him go. He longed to run to the door. Would the cub be there?
    She quickly examined his teeth. He had lost two milk teeth but grown two new ones. One more felt loose, but at present none was missing.
    ‘Two little perches, full of white hens,’ she murmured happily. Then she let him go.
    He ran to the doorway, into the passage and to the outer door.
    There was a vegetable patch opposite the hut from which, the day before, he had helped his mother pull a large turnip. To the right of it, a man was loading farm implements on to an old wooden wagon with sturdy wheels each carved from a single block of wood. To the left, a little further off beside the river, was a small bath house. It had been built only three years before and was not for the present members of the village, who had a bigger one of their own, but for the ancestors. After all, Kiy knew, the dead liked to take their steam bath, just like the living, even if you did not actually see them. And as everyone in his young life had told him, the ancestors became very angry if one left them out of anything.
    ‘You wouldn’t want people to forget about you,