The Slynx Read Free Page B

and remember her girlfriends, fair maidens, or dream about those de-portmunt stores. And all the streets, she said, were covered with assfelt. That's like a sort of foam, but hard, black, you fall down on it and you don't fall through. If it was summer weather, Mother would sit and cry, and Benedikt would play in the dirt, making mud pies in the clay, or picking off yellers and sticking them in the ground like he was building a fence. Wide-open spaces all around: hills and streams, a warm breeze, he'd wander about--the grass would wave, and the sun rolled across the sky like a great pancake, over the fields, over the forests, to the Blue Mountains.
    Our town, our home sweet homeland, is called Fyodor-Kuzmichsk, and before that, Mother says, it was called Ivan-Porfirichsk, and before that Sergei-Sergeichsk, and still before that Southern Warehouses, and way back when--Moscow.
    BUKI
    When he was small, Benedikt's father taught him all kinds of handiwork. Making a stone ax was a chore. But he could do it. He could build an izba--dovetailed, beveled, any old way you like. He knew how to build a bathhouse and heat the stones. True, his father didn't like to wash. Bears, he'd say, live just fine without any baths. But Benedikt liked it. He'd crawl into the
    bathhouse, into the warm insides, splash egg kvas on the rocks for the smell, steam up some elfir branches, and give his backside a good thrashing.
    Benedikt knew how to dress skins, cut a rabbit into rawhide strips, stitch a cap--he was good with his hands. But just try catching one of those rabbits. By the time you're ready to throw a stone at her-- poof! She's flown away. So most clothes are made from mouse skins, and that's not as good. Everyone knows that you can cut something from a big piece, but you can't keep your teeth warm with a mouse skin.
    In short, he could do anything around the house. And that's how it should be. Fyodor Kuzmich, Glorybe, had declared: "Household Work Is Everybody's Business--Figure It Out Yourself." Benedikt's father chopped timber right up to his death throes and was thinking about setting Benedikt up in the trade. But Benedikt wanted to try for the Stokers. It was tempting. A Stoker is honored and respected, everybody takes off his hat to a Stoker--but he doesn't bow to anyone himself, he just walks on by, all proud and conceited.
    And how can you argue? Where would we be without fire? Fire feeds us, fire warms, fire sings us songs. If fire dies out, we might as well lie down on our beds and put the stones on our eyes. They say there was a time when people didn't have fire. I low did they live? They just did, crawling around in the darkness like blind worrums. It was Fyodor Kuzmich, Glorybe, who brought fire to people. Oh, Glorybe! We would be lost without Fyodor Kuzmich, whew, we'd be goners! He fixed up or invented just about everything we have. That smart head of his is always worrying about us, thinking thoughts for us! Fyodor Kuzmich's terem rises high, covers the sun with its dome. Fyodor Kuzmich, Glorybe, never sleeps, he just paces back and forth stroking his fluffy beard, fretting about us Golubchiks: do we have enough to eat, are we drunk, are we upset or hurt? We have Lesser Murzas, but Fyodor Kuzmich, Glorybe, is the Greatest Murza, Long May He Live. Who thought up sleighs? Fyodor Kuzmich. Who got the idea to carve wheels out of wood? Fyodor Kuzmich. He taught us to make stone pots, catch
    mice and make soup. He gave us counting and writing, letters big and small, taught us to tear off bark, sew booklets together, boil ink from swamp rusht, split sticks for writing and dip them in the ink. He taught us how to make boats--scrape out logs and put them on the water--he taught us to hunt the bear with a spike, to take out the bladder, stretch it on spikes, and then cover the windows with it so there's light in the window even in winter.
    Only don't try to take any bear skins or bear meat for yourself: the Lesser Murzas keep watch. A