He has just arrived on a big boat, which he has rowed with one oar, bringing fish, let’s say, and has taken off his tall black boots in the entry. She had wanted to help him, but he said sternly: I’ll manage myself…
Zakharka suddenly laughed at his stupid thoughts, and Katya, who was talking animatedly with Grandma, gave him a brief look, a look that was calm and understanding, as if she knew what he was thinking, and even seemed to nod slightly: …Well, do it yourself then… Just don’t leave them in the corner like last time: they won’t dry out…
Zakharka loudly ate a pickle, to return to his senses.
Grandpa, who had got up from the table a long time ago to listen to the evening news, walked past them from the second room to go outside, talking as if to himself as usual, without malice:
“Still sitting there? As if we’d only just seen each other, just arrived…”
The conversation happened to turn to the pig that had been slaughtered earlier. Katya waved her hands to show that she didn’t want to hear anything about it, and Grandma, who was unusually talkative, suddenly told a story about how a witch had lived nearby in her youth. She was ugly, bony and perpetually bareheaded, which was not the custom in the village. She dried herbs, or sometimes even mice, rats’ tails, and various bones of other animals.
Among other things, people said of the old woman that she turned into a pig at night. Naughty village boys decided to find out if this rumor was true, and sneaked into the old woman’s yard at night, to the pig barn, and cut off the pig’s ear.
Early the next morning, the old woman, who was hurrying to the river to get water at sunrise, was seen for the first time wearing a head scarf, and even under the black scarf it could be seen that her head was wrapped in a rag on one side.
Katya sat quietly, never taking her eyes off Grandma. Zakharka was looking over Katya’s shoulder, out the window, and suddenly whispered:
“Katya, what’s that at the window? Is it the pig looking in?”
Katya jumped up with a squeal. Grandma laughed, covering her beautiful mouth with the end of a handkerchief. Katya gasped, running from the window to the other end of the table, not completely seriously. But then she started scolding Zakharka quite sincerely:
“You idiot! I’m scared of all that stuff…”
They laughed a little more.
“Now you’ll go to your hut, and the pig will bite you,” Katya said quietly.
For some reason, Zakharka thought that the pig would bite him in a specific place, and that this was what Katya was talking about. Again, his heart skipped a beat, but he did not find anything to reply about the pig, because he was thinking about something quite different.
“You can sleep here,” Grandma said to Zakharka, half-joking, half-serious, as if really worried that an evil spirit would bite her grandson; Grandma herself had never been scared of anything. “There’s enough space, we’ll make beds for everyone,” she added.
“It’s a big hut — there’s enough room to go riding in it,” Grandpa said, coming back from outside. Usually, he was half-deaf, but sometimes he unexpectedly heard things that were said quietly, and not even addressed to him.
Everyone laughed again, and even Rodik crooked his pink lips.
Grandpa had long considered his hut to be the largest, if not in the whole village, then certainly one of the largest.
If he went to visit someone, for example to a wedding, he would come back and say:
“Our hut’s bigger, mother. It was kind of crowded there.”
“They have four rooms, what are you talking about?” Grandma would say. “And there were forty-three guests.”
“You call those rooms…” Grandpa would mumble in a bass voice. “Dog kennels, more like it.”
“We had eighteen people living here, when my father was alive,” he would inform Zakharka for the hundreth time, if he happened to be near. “Six sons, all with wives, mother, father, children… There were benches along every wall, we slept on them. And now she finds it crowded here with just the two of us,” he would complain about Grandma.
This time he didn’t mention the eighteen people, but walked past, pretending not to hear or see the laughter. He turned up the television in the other room — so that the hubbub could probably be heard in the house next door, where the alcoholic Gavrila lived, who did not have any electrical appliances.
Katya helped Grandma clear the table. Zakharka depicted a battle with forks for Rodik until the forks were also taken away from him, and put with the rest of the dirty dishes.
They went into the room, to the pillows and sheets, which always had a barely detectable, but pleasant, sour scent of mustiness: from the large chests and the pile of fabric that had lain in stuffy, close quarters for a long time.
Zakharka got the couch. He waited until the light was turned out, quickly got undressed and lay down, wrapping himself in the blanket, although it was quite warm.
Grandpa lay on his bed, and Grandma on hers. Katya and Rodik got the low bed that stood in the corner of the room, opposite Zakharka.
Zakharka lay there and listened to Katya, her breathing, her movements, her voice, when she tried to talk some sense into Rodik in a stern whisper.
As if afraid that she would see his gaze in the darkness, Zakharka did not look in Katya’s direction.
Rodik refused to calm down, he was unaccustomed to being in a new place. He sat up, banged his feet on the floor, and tried to make his mother laugh, squirming on the bed. When he crawled under the blanket yet again, getting caught up in the blanket cover, Katya suddenly sat up, and there was a crack and a crash: something had broken in the wooden bed.
Rodik got a slap on his head, set up a whine, and went running to Grandma’s bed.
They turned on the night lamp: the bed had collapsed on its side and could no longer be slept on.
“Go sleep with your cousin,” Grandma said simply.
Zakharka moved to the edge of the sofa, his arms alongside his body, eyes on the ceiling; but he still noticed the flash of a white triangular piece of fabric. Katya lay by the wall.
They both lay there without breathing. Zakharka knew that Katya was not asleep. He didn’t feel her warmth, he didn’t touch his cousin with a single millimeter of his body, but something inexplicable that emanated from her he could sense keenly, physically, with all his being.
They didn’t move, and Zakharka could hear the blinking of Katya’s eyelashes. Then in the darkness came the almost inaudible sound of slightly dry lips opening, and Zakharka realized that she was breathing through her mouth. He repeated this movement, and felt the air moving against his teeth, and he knew that she was feeling the same thing: the same air, the same inhalation…
Rodik lay still for about ten minutes, and it seemed that he had fallen asleep. But suddenly his voice was heard clearly:
“Mama.”
“Sleep,” said Grandma.
“Mama,” he said insistently.
“Do you want your mama?”
“Yes. Mama,” Rodik repeated clearly.
Katya didn’t respond. But Rodik had already clambered over his Grandma, and guessing his way in the darkness, he reached the couch.
Zakharka picked him up and put him between himself and Katya. The boy laughed happily and with his raised legs began playing a lively game with the blanket. Especially as he felt cramped on the sofa, and his sharp elbows pressed into both his mama’s and Zakharka’s sides.
“No, we won’t get any sleep like this,” Zakharka said.
Quickly, before anyone could say anything, he went out, picking his shorts up off the floor, and saying amiably as he left: