He would wave the flies away from the table, and suddenly look with interest at the swatter, at the thin, sturdy, wooden stick that cut into the black triangle.
Dropping the swatter, he would wrinkle his face in disgust, wiping his hand on his shorts and sucking in his belly. There was a pain in his chest as if he had drunk a class of ice-cold water (but there was no remaining taste of moisture, just an oppressive pain).
Why am I given this… Why are we all given this… Couldn’t it somehow be otherwise?
“Is Grandpa going to eat breakfast?” Grandma would ask, turning off the burner.
“Of course he is,” the grandson would answer cheerfully, glad to be distracted from himself. He knew Grandpa never sat down at the table without him.
He would go into the room and loudly shout:
“Grandma says to come and eat!”
“Eat?” Grandpa would reply pensively. “I don’t really want to… well, alright, let’s go sit down.” He would take off his glasses, carefully laying down the screwdriver and the pliers, and stand up with a grunt. His slippers slapped across the floor.
Calmly, with a light, gooselike movement, he would bow his head in the doorway and enter the kitchen. With the passing glance of a proprietor he looked the table over, as if checking to see if something was missing. But everything was always in its place, and seemed to have been there for decades.
“You wouldn’t like a drink, Zakharka?” he would ask with well-concealed craftiness.
“No, not in the morning,” the grandson would answer briskly.
Grandpa would give a barely perceptible nod: a good answer. He ate with dignity, with the occasional stern glance at Grandma. He asked about some household matter.
“Sit where you are!” Grandma would reply. “As if I wouldn’t know what to feed the chickens if you weren’t around…”
An almost undetectable expression crossed grandfather’s face: …foolish woman… always been foolish… he seemed to be saying. But it ended there.
The old couple never argued. Zakharka loved them with all his heart.
“I think I’ll go visit my cousins”, he said to Grandma, after finishing his breakfast.
“Go on,” Grandma quickly answered. “And bring them back for lunch.”
His cousins lived right here in the village, two houses away. The younger one, Ksyusha, was short and pretty, with crafty eyes. She had just reached adulthood. The older one, with the gentle eyes, was the dark-haired Katya, five years her sister’s senior.
Ksyusha would go to the dance hall on the other side of the village, and return at four in the morning. But she didn’t sleep much, and always woke up discontented, examining herself for a long time in a hand mirror, sitting next to the window so the daylight would fall on her face.
By noon she would be in a good mood, and looking attentively into the eyes of her visiting cousin, flirting with him, asking personal questions and desiring to hear honest answers.
Her cousin, who has come for the summer, understood that Ksyusha had just recently experienced something important, something female, and that she was glad of it. She felt more self-confident, as if she had gained one more interesting support in life.
Her cousin ducked the questions, and was happily sidetracked by a bare-legged kid, Katya’s three-year-old son Rodik.
The older sister’s husband was serving his second year in the army.
Rodik spoke very little, although it was high time that he did. He tenderly referred to himself as “Odik,” with a tiny, barely audible “k” on the end. He understood everything, but did not remember his papa.
Zakharka played with him, sitting him on his shoulders, and they wandered around the neighborhood, this suntanned young man and the white child with puffy hair.
Katya sometimes came out of the house to respond to Ksyusha. Zakharka heard: Well, of course you’re the smartest one of us in the room… or: I don’t care what else you do, but you’re going to peel some potatoes!
Her severity wasn’t very serious.
She came out and watched intently as Zakharka, with Rodik on his shoulders, walked slowly towards the house.
“Stones,” said Zakharka.
“Tones,” Rodik repeated.
“Stones,”, Zakharka repeated.
“Tones,” Rodik agreed.
They were walking over gravel.
Zakharka understood that Katya was thinking about something important while watching them. But he didn’t take any time to consider what that might be. He liked to take it easy, lazing in the sun, never thinking about anything too seriously.
“I suppose you merry-makers are hungry?”, said Katya in a clear chesty voice, smiling.
“Grandma invited us to eat with them,” answered Zakharka, without smiling.
“Oh well, fine. Miss Priss refuses to do any work in the kitchen anyway.”
“My name is Ksyusha”, her sister answered with all the seriousness of a sixteen-year-old, walking out of the house. She had already fastened on a skirt, carefree in the wind, flitted into a pair of little shoes, and had on a t-shirt that invariably exposed her belly. Her face remarkably reflected two emotions at once: vexation with her sister, and intrigue at the presence of her cousin.
See how stupid she is, Zakharka! said her entire look.
But look how cute my tummy is, and everything else… Zakharka seemed to read, but he wasn’t completely sure if he understood correctly. Just in case, he turned away.
“In the meantime we’ll go eat some apples, right, Rodik?” he said to the boy sitting on his shoulders.
“I’ll go with you too,” Katya attached herself.
“Le’s go” Rodik replied belatedly, to Katya’s delight. It was the first time she had heard him use the phrase.
They walked through the orchard, looking at apples which were still green and heavy, and the yellow sort, and then headed towards the apple tree which bore fruit that was already good and sweet in July.
“Apples,” repeated Zakharka distinctly.
“Apoos,” Rodik agreed.
Katya was overcome with youthful, bright, rich motherly laughter.
When Zakharka took a bite of a firm apple plucked from the branch, it occurred to him that Katya’s laughter resembled that moist, fresh, crisp whiteness.
“Us little ones, we can’t reach the branches,” joked Katya, picking up the fruits that had fallen overnight. She liked them softer, redder.
They took turns feeding small pieces of apple to Rodik, who had been placed on the ground (Zakharka was afraid that the branches in the orchard might accidentally scratch the boy).
Sometimes, without noticing, they both fed him a piece of apple at the same time: the compliant Rodik stuffed his mouth with both pieces and chewed, staring raptly.
“Ooh”, he said, pointing to an apple that had not yet been picked from the branch.
“You want me to pick that one too? What a little… carnivore,” answered Zakharka sternly; he liked being somewhat stern and a bit morose when inside everything was bubbling from joy and the irrepressible charm of life. When else could you be a little morose, if not at seventeen? And especially at the sight of women.
A little later Ksyusha showed up in the orchard: she was bored at home by herself. Plus there was her cousin…
“Did you peel the potatoes?” asked Katya.
“I told you, I just painted my nails, I can’t. What, do I have to repeat it ten times?”
“You can tell Father about your nails. He’ll cut them for you.”
Ksyusha picked an apple from another tree — not the one that her older sister liked. She didn’t want to follow her example in any way. She ate grudgingly, all the while looking at her cousin.