“ Listen to me.” He got down on his knees and took the cloth away from her, but she would not look at him. She got up and wont away to the counter, so he scrubbed the boards and the stone where the ash had landed, and got up to hang the rag on an empty peg to dry.
Stop, she wished him, so violently he looked at her. “Not with the good ones,” she said. “Hang it by the fire. I’ll get it later.”
He hung the offending rag where she wanted it, on the spare pothook, anxious to keep the peace any way he could. Aunt Ilenka had been that way about her kitchen. One supposed it came with marriage.
He did not want to think that, either. Eveshka eavesdropped; he was doing it now, he felt it plain as plain. She knew he felt it and wished he would go outside with Pyetr and leave her be.
“I think,” he said aloud, standing his ground, “I think our not getting a bannik must have been my fault. I think with what happened yesterday—we need one, badly, and we ought to try. Hut I don’t want to be wishing it on my own, I don’t want to be wishing things about the house that you don’t want.”
“What does a bannik have to do with anything? Or with the horse? That’s done, that’s all. We don’t need anything else mudying the waters. Just stop worrying about it, Sasha!”
“It might stop things we haven’t done yet. It might tell us—”
“It won’t.”
“It might stop things from going wrong.”
“Who said they were going wrong?”
“They’re not going exactly right, are they?”
“Banniks don’t like wizards. They don’t talk, any more than Babi, any more than the domovoi: they show you things, and they never make sense.”
“But if we had the least idea where what we’re wishing might take us—”
“It never helps. We change things, we’re constantly changing things and you can’t tell, you can’t tell anything by what they say and they don’t like it. Papa used to say.” Every time Eveshka mentioned her father she would frown guardedly and look at him as if she were looking for echoes. “And we don’t need it.”
“I still think—”
“Our bannik didn’t help us. I didn’t see what was going to happen to me. We didn’t see anything about Kavi Chernevog.” She never talked about her dying. She scrubbed furiously at the last dish, bit her lip and said, “I’m sure I’ll like the horse. If it makes Pyetr happy, I’m happy.”
She hardly looked happy. Sasha said: “Is there some reason not?”
“What?”
“About the bannik. Is there some reason not to want one?”
“It doesn’t help. It didn’t help, I’m telling you! Why don’t you go help Pyetr?”
“Eveshka. Why wouldn’t you want it here?”
“For the god’s sake why should I care? Why should I care if we do or if we don’t? What’s that to do with anything?”
“Things just aren’t right,” he said, thinking of the shelf, thinking of—
—the stability of everything. Everything in balance. Chernevog, in the leshys’ keeping; Uulamets; all the hundreds of wishes that might be loose about this place and all the dangers for as long as they lived and worked magic here.
“Things have been perfectly right,” she said, drying the bowl. “Things have been perfectly right for years before this, and what you did is done, and there’s not a thing we can do that doesn’t make a bigger thing of it than it is, so just let it be, Sasha Vasilyevitch, for the god’s sake, just forget about it, you’re the one who’s making an argument out of it.”
“I want your help.”
“If you want a bannik, if you want a horse and a pig and a goat besides, god, I’m sure I don’t care. It’s your house.”
“It’s not my house.”
“I’m sure papa intended it.”
“Your father gave me the book. Nothing else.”
A spoon clattered onto the counter. “Papa gave you a lot else.”
There was long silence.
“Not as much as you imagine,” he said. He had been wanting to say it for years. He had tried to say it that way for years. But it fell short, he saw the set of her chin. “You don’t know what I imagine.”
“Eveshka,” he said, treading further and further onto dangerous ground, “Eveshka, you don’t want me here, do you? Not really.”
“I never said I didn’t want you here. I don’t want you here now, that’s all, I don’t want you in my kitchen and I don’t want to talk about that damned horse. I’m sick of talking about the horse!”
“You’re mad at me.”
“I’m not mad at you!” She flung down the dishtowel. “You’re being stupid, Sasha Vasilyevitch, I don’t know what put this idea of a bannik into your head, but you’re acting the fool—you’ve been acting the fool for a month, and I wish you’d stop it! If you want a bannik, wish up a bannik, wish up whatever you like.”
“That’s what I’m worried about,” he said. He wanted her to know he was confused, and scared, because he was not her father, he was not even sure he knew what her father would have wished except to keep them out from under the same roof, and he did not even know if it was his idea to leave the house and live elsewhere Or if it was Uulamets’.
That set Eveshka off her balance. She wanted him outside, wanted him to quit bothering her with his wishes and his worries, forbade him to talk about building another house, wanted him not to upset Pyetr with his ideas and never to talk to her about her father—wanted three things and four all at the same time, and stopped wishing at all, folding her arms tightly and biting her lips before something else escaped her.
“I’m inconvenient,” Sasha said carefully, “and even if none of us wants that to be true, it is, I know it is. It’s very hard to get along just with Pyetr—”
“I’ve no trouble getting along with Pyetr!”
“But I do,” he said, wishing she would be honest. “At least enough, and I’ve lived in town with people…”
“I’m not a fool! Don’t treat me like one!”
“I know you’re not.”
“I’m tired of hearing about that damned horse! I don’t want to want anything, I just want peace—”
She stopped herself and bit her lip, and hoped that wish desperately to safety. He tried to help.
“Please.”
“—peace with all of us,” she said firmly. “Leave it at that”
“Eveshka, I’m not sure about things, I’m not sure about what we’re doing.”
“Leave it alone!” Eveshka said. She turned away from him and started straightening up the counter.
He said, “Will you help me find a bannik?”
“I don’t see why. I don’t see why it matters, I don’t see how it can stop you from anything you want to do. Certainly nothing else does.”
“That’s not fair,” he said.
“What isn’t fair?”
“You’re very strong.” He knew it would make her mad: every time he told her she was stronger than she knew it made her mad, but he intended she think about that. “You can do anything you really want in this house, you know that.”
She wanted him not to say that. Her mouth made a straight, unhappy line.
“It’s true,” he said. “You’d probably be stronger than I am if you really wanted something.”
“That’s papa’s damned nonsense. I’ll tell you what I have my mind made up to: I don’t want to be stronger than you, I don’t want to be stronger than anybody, and that’s finished, then, isn’t it? I have everything I’ve ever wanted to have, and there’s nothing else I need or want, Sasha Vasilyevitch, which is more sense than Kavi had, and between you and me, more sense than my father had! If you want a bannik, fetch one. I’m sure I’m not standing in your way!”