1
In their rich, clean, luxurious apartment in the dirty, cramped factory town in the gorge, our director’s rather plain, thin, beloved little daughter had dreamed a child’s fairy-tale dream, awakened and was telling it to her tiny, all-powerful father. But it was also the father’s dream, also the hundred-year-old grandmother’s dream.
“So, a butterfly,” the little girl was saying, “a butterfly.”
“The butterfly Alla, or one from the riverbank?” prompted the father, who had not yet risen from bed either. The little girl was loved and knew she was loved.
“A real butterfly, red, green,” the little girl said.
“So the butterfly Alla flies by the river with a red butterfly,” the father added.
“But you’re not listening,” the little girl said. “You’re not listening.”
“I’m listening,” the father said. “Old apple trees...”
“Why old?”
“All right, pretty trees. Then?”
“So, a pond, little fish, flowers,” the girl told him.
“A little bridge,” the father put in.
“A little bridge,” the girl accepted the addition, “over the stream, a little bridge. But you won’t build it, you won’t, you won’t.”
“Oh, Allochka, you have no imagination. What is it you’re asking for, that we should build something?”
Our director’s hundred-year-old mother was giving her son coffee and was much surprised by the girl’s dream. “Did this child dream it herself, or is she telling my old dream?” the old woman said. “Oh my, I dreamed it, and my princely papa made it come true.”
“Let’s hear what the child is saying. Tell us.” Our director was directing the child’s new dream and the old woman’s old dream towards a practical goal.
“A butterfly,” said the girl, her eyes shining in the morning, still within the dream, “a stream, trees, me and Tuzik...”
The old woman gave herself up to old memories.
“My papa built it. If the peasants hadn’t spitefully burned it, the water, tree, rose and nightingale would all be ours now; the peasants would bring yoghurt and honey.”
“Their dog will bite our Tuzik,” said the girl.
“They’re uncouth themselves, and so are their dogs,” said the old woman.
Meanwhile our director had grown serious, alert, and with open eyes was seeing the loveliest corner of our land, where our grandfather’s mill and orchard had stood, now ruined and abandoned.
2
But we too are human and have our dreams. Lying half asleep, half awake, we saw the same riverbank: as though we were still young, our trouser legs and shirtsleeves rolled up, bathing our horse in the stream, while Hovit’s young wives and girls returned from the blackberry thickets, nudging one another, pointing us out and saying shyly, “Girl, he’s engaged,” “Look who the scoundrel’s won,” and laughing secretly.
We woke at the noise of tractor and motorcars, rushed out of the room, looked: up the steep slope of the old threshing floors went the little passenger-and-cargo vehicle of the man called the head of the combined farms of Hovit and Tsmakut; behind it a truck with its bed full of people, behind that a bulldozer tractor.
Our lean wife was setting out tea on the veranda. She said:
“It’s not forestry business. They probably have work at the threshing floors.”
We scowled and rushed inside to dress.
3
The detachment assigned to build a riverside house for our forestry director climbed to this village of Tsmakut’s abandoned threshing floors, stopped at the doors of the old, large cowshed and got out of the vehicles. There were the Hovit man who headed the combined farms, secretly considered our brother; his driver; the livestock farm manager, our sister’s son; the Murads’ son, secretly considered by the people our offspring; the farm head’s two brothers, sawmen; a group of other working lads; and three incomprehensible beings jacketed in leather jackets, whom you could not tell whether to consider criminals, secret police or sportsmen. They had come to dismantle the old, large, empty shed and provide the timber for the house. Heartless, soulless, indifferent and businesslike besides, they set up a ladder, climbed onto the roof with its loft, went into the shed to examine the ceiling beams and oak pillars, counted the beams and pillars—“Two hundred”—threw tiles from the loft, poked their heads through the hole, called “cuckoo” and praised the building material: “The building’s fully supplied.” They marvelled at the figure that had once been this poor village’s livestock count: “Two hundred head of cows alone were tied up here.” Someone proposed not lowering and stacking the loft’s tiles one by one—“Who needs them? There’ll be painted sheet metal over there, won’t there?”—but throwing ropes over and pulling with the tractor: “Ten days’ work done in two.” And America simply blows old buildings up: “Saw it in a film.” “Wraps it in steel and blows it up.” Our sister’s son did not leave the farm head for a second: things were bad, he hoped to please with his readiness, and here, although he belonged here, he had no voice, no will, no compassion for his dying village. Beside those businesslike, soulless people, our horse was the only poor, old and living thing: a little way from the shed, in the bygone, abandoned fields, he stood watching the commotion. Gathered at the shed door, they were already opening a bottle of vodka to mark the start of work. Only the farm head had a little doubt, but not the doubt that could make him oppose the work; he simply hesitated a little. They put a glass in his hand, and just then he noticed our horse, laughed and said:
“Our brother Rostom.”
The name did not leave our sister’s son indifferent. He said:
“The less we mention his name, the better for us.”
One of the leather-jacketed men crouched and explained to the other two with cigarettes, arranging them like the timbers of a log house, what the house should be like. It was interesting, interested the others too, and some understood that “the house’s log structure alone will take thirty cubic metres of pure oak.” “This’ll have it”—the cowshed. Our sister’s son had an answer: “If it doesn’t, there it is standing alive.”
“Standing alive” was the ancient forest.
4
Wheezing and choking, we came out to the threshing floors, said of the horse, watching us with pricked ears, “It’s you,” and went towards the shed. It had entrances at both ends: the cattle entrance, where the wreckers were clustered, and the other. At this entrance stood a plank annex, the milkmaids’ and herdsmen’s lodging; it was locked. Through a narrow crack, with two fingers, we took the key from inside, opened the lock, went in. People had lived here, rejoiced, grieved, felt pride; now it was abandoned. A couple of signs of the old life still remained: the red flag in the corner and the honours board with milkmaids, with cows and milkmaids, cows, the heavy bull Donbas and beside him our poor uncle, as small as a child, a child’s switch in his hand. We closed our eyes against the memories, approached and took the furled flag from its place in the corner. “Why,” we said, “is that how it is?” We approached and pushed open the doors that joined the annex directly to the shed.
The row of windows cast sheaf after sheaf of light into every section: straight pillars, straight stalls, a boarded floor and deep silence. Sadness devoured us. We stopped, lowered our heavy lids, remained so, then went towards the exit where voices came from and human figures could be seen.
The flag’s old place was on the doorframe. For a minute we stood frozen in the doorway against the light, then thrust the flagstaff into its old place, pulled the double door shut behind us, held out our hand and demanded, “Give us the lock.” We waited with our heavy lids lowered and said again:
“There was a lock on it. Give the lock here.”
Trampling their cigarette log house, we cut through the leather-jacketed men and stopped among those we considered more or less local: our sister’s son, the director considered our brother, his brothers, the others. We looked at them one by one and said:
“You are strangers who don’t know this land. Who brought you here?”
The farm head considered our brother gave himself the right to mediate between us and the people. Trying to take our arm, he said:
“We didn’t want to disturb your sleep. We knew we should inform you of our decision.”
We turned our back on him and said:
“You are this land’s foremost enemy. Let us not see you in our land another time.” And we repeated: “Who brought these hostile people, these strangers, into this unfamiliar land?”
Our sister’s son sensed we would explode at him and was preparing an answer within himself. “You?” we said; then the ladder leading to the loft caught our attention. Cutting through the leather-jacketed men and this time earning their belligerent mockery—“Who’s this ox?”—we went and flung the ladder into the loft, told the Murads’ son standing there, “Come down. Come down the way you climbed up.” We returned, answering the leather-jacketed men’s words and hostility as we passed: “We’re not an ox, we’re a bull, a breeding bull; know your herd properly.” Then we charged at our sister’s son. Slapping our neck, we said, “You grew up on these, these, these shoulders. We didn’t know we were raising a dog for someone else’s door.” It was a family member’s anger, but he took us precisely for an enemy. Nevertheless our act too was that of the household elder: taking his nape in one hand, we pushed him aside and drove him away, saying, “Don’t let me see you here, wrecker.” We returned and, passing, deliberately and accidentally collided with and shoved away the farm head, saying, “He betrayed Tsmakut’s fiery colt beneath you, you unworthy man, and got a farm. Again you’ve appointed yourself leader, have you? What have you promised from this poor graveyard now?”
We went and set our back against the shed door, saying, “We are dead, but not so dead. Who are you?”
The man called the farm head tried with a leader’s weighty, ponderous gestures to explain the circumstances: “But there’s a decision, it’s legal, in this country without the appropriate right...” Yet he was precisely a drunkard and hanger-on; he irritated us most of all.
“Quiet!” we shouted. “You know your sight drives us mad, and every time you come and plant yourself here.”
We turned to the leather-jacketed men.
“Who are you, my dears?”
They had no voice, only a murderer’s calm hostility, needing merely a slight instruction from the side. We said:
“Have we entered your village and burned your house? Looked askance at your mother, my dears? Why do you look at us like enemies?”
Our offspring jumped from the loft, dropped before us, rose with proud dignity, measured us from head to foot and stepped aside.
“You’ve nothing to say about that one,” said the man considered our brother. “He’s from your land, the son of Elya of the Murads.”
We had heavy memories of Elya of the Murads. We shouted:
“Has he no father? Has his father no name? Have you come to laugh at our sorrow? Two hundred cows were tied up in this shed; every May two hundred calves came out of this door. There was life and joy here, and now what are you doing, like carrion crows...”
The man called the farm head abandoned hope here. “Ah, all right,” he said, “two hundred,” waved his hand and turned to leave. But his words enraged us.
“If you want the truth, two hundred and twenty. Two hundred and twenty-four!” we corrected. “It’s no accident this flag has been here forever.”
5
Afterwards we had tied our unsaddled horse at the old office door and climbed ourselves onto the veranda, where the clerk, our contemporary, was. We muttered disconnected words and, thinking we had won, looked with hostility and contempt at the line of vehicles crossing the little ravine and reaching the houses opposite. Before us at the office door stood the bronze, triumphant monument to the fallen lads, and facing the monument stood we. The resemblance between our postures did not escape the clerk’s mocking eye. He said:
“They went around with a camera. Could they have secretly taken your picture, made the statue from it?”
We grew modest and said:
“Oh, come now... Forty-eight lads died. If only we had a part of one of them. They were saints,” we concluded.
“They died and became saints,” he said.
The vehicles stopped on the road, the people got out and, talking among themselves, climbed to the Murads’ old door. They walked around the house, opened the door, went inside. We grew alert and anxious. The clerk said:
“Is anyone from that family among the people?”
The director’s little truck came back towards the village centre, but before it arrived and we heard the nature of the matter, we guessed their intention. We whistled loudly and called in our ringing voice:
“What are you doing in that ruin, what do you want from that wretched ruin, hey?”
They were talking among themselves and seemed not even to intend to answer. Then the so-called director said to them, “Say: is this your business too? What’s it to you?” Enraged, we shrieked, “Hey, what do you mean?” The director’s vehicle arrived; they had sent it for vodka. Going into the shop ahead of the clerk, the driver reported:
“They want to pull it down. There are two good fireplace stones.”
Towards the slope opposite—
“Can you see us?” we shouted. “Can you see us well? This is our place. That house is our view. Our view, not yours. We shall stand here, and that house must be there. Get your gear out of this land!”
The so-called director answered:
“The owner is here. You have no say.”
“We’ll come and bring you a master you’ll live to regret!” we shrieked. The clerk and driver laughed in the shop, while we said again to the people opposite, “We’ll turn your laughter black! Get out of my view!” and gathered ourselves to go...
An excerpt is published here. You can download the complete version as a PDF.