The wind subsided after they entered the forest. Sometimes they could find their tracks there. Those tracks were also snow-sprinkled, and other tracks—a wild animal’s or bird’s—sometimes intersected them, but they existed. They did not vanish without a trace, or so it seemed to Arseny.
It was not as cold in the forest as it was on the way to the forest. Perhaps it was even warm. A shroud of snow on branches, accumulated over the days, looked like fur to Ustina. She loved to shake it from the branches and delight in how it settled on their shoulders.
Will you buy me a fur coat like this? Ustina asked.
Of course, answered Arseny. I will certainly buy one.
He very much wanted to buy her a fur coat like that.
The snow began melting in the middle of April and immediately looked old and shabby. And porous from the rains that had begun. Ustina no longer wanted a fur coat like that. She stepped from one melting hummock to another, cautiously watching her feet. All the forest’s grime had emerged from under the snow: last year’s foliage, pieces of rags that had lost their color, and yellowed plastic bottles. Grass was already breaking through in glades that the sun reached, but the snow was still deep in denser places. And it was cold there. Even that snow finally melted, but the puddles it made remained until the middle of summer.
In May, Ustina traded her boots for shoes Arseny had woven from bast. Ustina liked the bast shoes because they were woven for her feet and—this was the main thing—woven by Arseny. He carefully wound the shoes’ ties around each leg, not allowing her to bend, and she liked that, too. The shoes were light but they leaked. Sometimes Ustina came home with wet feet, but she did not want to return to wearing boots, no matter what.
I will just be more cautious when I walk, she would tell Arseny.
Their outings became much longer. Now they did not just walk in the near forest but also in places far from any homes, places Christofer had once showed Arseny. Arseny felt calmer in those places. Sometimes they saw people in the near forest and hurried to hide after noticing them from a distance. Now that they were going far away, though, they did not meet anyone.
You are not afraid to get lost, Ustina asked Arseny.
I am not afraid for I have knowen these valleys since the very cradle.
On these outings, Arseny brought a bag with food and drink. There was also a sheepskin for them to sit on during lengthy rests: Arseny took care that Ustina did not strain herself. As they strolled, they gathered herbs that nature had sprouted as it revived. Arseny described for Ustina the properties of the herbs, and the breadth of his knowledge astounded her. He also told her about how the human body is built and the habits of animals, about the movements of the planets, historical events, and the symbolism of numerals. He felt like a father to her in those moments. Or, if he was thinking of the source of this knowledge, a grandfather. To Arseny, the red-haired girl seemed like clay in his hands, clay from which he molded himself a Wife.
By now it would be an exaggeration to say nobody knew of Ustina’s existence. People had seen them both in the forest, more than once, if only from a distance. Of course they were not acquainted with Ustina, but they could recognize Arseny without difficulty, even from a distance. And when they visited Arseny in his home they heard Ustina on the other side of the wall, because a person cannot be noiseless forever. Many guessed someone was living at Arseny’s, but since he was hiding it, nobody asked him anything. Arseny was their doctor and people were always afraid to annoy the doctor. For his part, Arseny apparently guessed about those hunches, too. He did not attempt to either confirm or deny them. It suited him that nobody asked him anything, no matter what their reason. It was enough for Arseny that nobody came in contact with his world, the world where only he and Ustina existed.
At the beginning of summer, when Ustina began to find long walks tiring, they sat outside the house ever more often. A few logs and boards were left over from repairing the house, and Arseny decided to construct a shelter in the yard. As he was fitting one board against the next, he remembered, pained, that Christofer had been managing a similar repair project less than a year ago. Using his grandfather’s voice, Arseny asked Ustina to give him this or that tool, but it didn’t sound as good as when Christofer spoke. And the boards didn’t fit together as well. What would Christofer have said about his project? And what would he have said about Ustina?
The shelter abutted the back of the house and was not visible from the road. Arseny hung up some strings and several weeks later they were overgrown with dense bindweed. The roof was covered with thatch and did not leak. Now they could get fresh air in any weather. They most loved sitting under the shelter in the evenings.
On one long July evening, Ustina asked Arseny to teach her to read and write. That request initially surprised him. He could read everything they needed to read and that was a part of their complementariness. Arseny broke a flower off the bindweed and cautiously placed it on the tip of Ustina’s nose. Why do you need to know? Arseny wanted to ask her, but he did not ask. He went into the house and came back out with the Psalter. Arseny sat alongside Ustina and opened the book. He touched the very first cinnabar initial with his index finger. The letter glowed, reddish, in the rays of the setting sun.
This is the letter B. The word “Blessed” begins with it here.
Blessed is the man that doth not walke in the counsell of the ungodly, Ustina recited, unhurried. Nor standeth in the waye of sinners, nor sitteth in the seate of the scornefull.
Arseny silently watched Ustina. She laid her head on his shoulder.
I know many psalms by heart. From hearing them.
That proved very useful for her in learning to read and write. After reading a few letters, Ustina would remember an entire phrase, which helped her instantly recognize the letters that followed. Arseny had never expected her learning to go so quickly.
More than anything, Ustina liked that letters had names that carried meaning. She pronounced them to herself, her lips constantly moving, as she went through the old Russian alphabet. Az. Buki. Vedi. I. Know. Letters. She would break off a branch and write the names of the letters on the tamped earth in the yard and on forest paths. Glagol’ Dobro. Say good things. The names gave the letters independent lives. The names gave them an unexpected meaning that bewitched Ustina. Kako Liudie Myslete? Rtsy Slovo Tverdo. How think you, people? Speak a firm word.
To top it all off, the letters had numerical meanings. The letter az under a titlo meant the numeral one, vedi was a two, and glagol’ was a three.
Why does v come after a, asked Ustina, surprised. Where, one must wonder, is b?
The designation of the numerals follows the Greek alphabet, and it has no such letter.
Do you know Greek?
No (Arseny placed his palms on Ustina’s cheeks and rubbed her nose with his), that is what Christofer said. He did not know Greek, either, but he felt many things intuitively.
Ustina’s astonishment at the properties of the letters was reinforced further by their numerical properties, which were no less surprising. Arseny showed her how the numerals added and subtracted, multiplied and divided. They denoted the acme of human history: the year ҂ЕФ (5500) since the Creation, when Christ was born. They also signified the end of history, which miraculously appeared in the ghastly numeral of the Antichrist: ХѮЅ (666). And letters expressed all that.