“Grandmother always gives us larger portions than she takes herself,” said the younger Leonid, “so can’t it also show the opposite, as well? If someone can give when their body tells them to take, take, take, isn’t that good?”
The older Leonid had not noticed that Grandmother took less food at meals. Whenever the plates were set, he began eating right away, burying his face in the food like a wild animal. Red heat rose in his face, a hollow feeling at the base of his throat to match the one he always had in his stomach. Shame.
“Maybe hunger reveals the good and the bad in us,” said Mrs. Kharms. “Maybe it reveals what type of people we are.”
“Like Oksana,” said the older Leonid.
Mrs. Kharms smiled and looked sad at the same time. “She was a good one.” She rested her hand on the younger Leonid’s shoulder. “That’s one of the joys of being young, that most of your decisions are yet to come. I hope you boys have the chance to make many good decisions.”
She drummed each of her fingers on top of the box, four beats. She took ginger steps down the hill and into the village where she disappeared among the cottages.
The younger Leonid kicked under the mouth of the trap and dislodged the stick, pulling his foot out just before the box thumped to the ground.
“What are you doing?” asked the older Leonid.
“What Mrs. Kharms told us to do.”
“Ruining her trap?”
“Kasha is a good dog, yes? Then how can it not be good to protect her?”
“People are starving. They’ll still try to catch her. This trap isn’t the first try, and it won’t be the last.”
“We’re all already in the trap together. The valley itself is the trap.”
The younger Leonid walked in a direction away from the village, deeper into the forest. The sun had crested the mountain, and the trees cast latticework shadows, shifting stripes along the bony contours of his body.
“Where are you going?” asked the older Leonid.
“To Kasha’s cave.”
The older Leonid glanced back to make sure no one was watching. He followed.
GRANDMOTHER RETURNED to the cottage with a small basket half-full of objects that appeared to be mostly edible. She set the basket on the table and removed the items one by one, arranging them according to a system that Leonid did not understand. Objects that looked like tree nuts but shriveled and gray she put in a pile next to a stack of leaves that still had patches of green on them. Next to that, she clustered blades of the bitter grass that still managed to grow in the valley’s open areas. Some bark that she would boil into what she called, with a bitter grin, stew.
The older Leonid peeked into the basket, but she pulled it away before he could see anything. He suspected that, like many of the villagers, she had collected bugs, and that they were added to the stew with the tree bark. He decided he would rather not know if that was the case and did not try to look in the basket again. Grandmother placed it on the high shelf over the stove, next to the other empty baskets.
“Did you find anything?” she asked.
The older Leonid pulled a few sere and partially rotted blackberries from his pocket. They felt like pebbles and made a tapping noise as he dropped them on the table.
“And…” he said.
Kasha barked. Grandmother started and looked around the cottage, stopping at the bed where the younger Leonid sat, and beside him, Kasha.
“Kasha,” she said, looking from the dog to the younger Leonid and back again. “The villagers have been trying to catch her for weeks.”
The younger Leonid sprung to his feet. “We can’t let them.”
Grandmother turned to the older Leonid. He nodded. She reached her fingertips into the pile of nuts on the table and spread them around.
“If the villagers find out,” she said, “they’ll be furious. Perhaps even dangerous.”
“Then we won’t let them find out,” said the younger Leonid.
“We can keep her here?” asked the older.
“They shouldn’t have eaten their cats,” said Grandmother. “And the meat of one dog won’t make any difference in the long run. It’s better to be hungry than full in the belly but empty in the heart.”
She clapped her hands. Kasha bounded across the room, stopping at Grandmother’s feet. Grandmother scratched Kasha behind the ears.
“Strange that a dog should teach us humanity,” she said. “Have I ever told you the story of the man who our village is named after?”
“WHEN BOHDAN ZINOVIY Mykhaylovych Khmelnytsky escaped the Ottomans, he headed swiftly home. There were no trains then, of course, and he had no money, his only possessions his clothes and the sword he had seized and with which he had severed the head of his friend the admiral. Khmelnytsky found work on a boat heading up the Dnieper River, a route that would eventually lead him close to his family estate in Subotiv. He escaped slavery only to once again become an oarsman. The captain of the boat, though a Cossack, had none of the nobility of the Ottoman admiral. This captain whipped the oarsmen when he felt their progress up the river was too slow. No one could ever accuse Khmelnytsky of rowing slowly, but the captain didn’t need a real reason to whip someone. He was a man who enjoyed the pain of others.
“The first and only lash Khmelnytsky would receive across his broad back came as he helped maneuver the boat around a tangle of drifting branches in the middle of the river. The currents there flowed in unexpected eddies. The captain barked orders, and every time the crew followed them, they encountered another current or a fresh snag. The oarsmen grew weary. The captain and his hired hands, a group of brute men who stank of the baked sweat that they seldom washed from their skin, men chosen specifically for their viciousness, never offered to assist at the oars. To Khmelnytsky, these men were fat and lazy, and worse, incompetent. Any word they spoke impeded the boat’s progress. Their orders kept Khmelnytsky far away from his home.
“Bear in mind that he had no idea if his estate at Subotiv still existed, and if it did, if it still belonged to his family. His father was dead. Khmelnytsky himself had been absent for years. He had cousins, but they were still just boys. It would have been no matter at all for a rival to claim the land. Khmelnytsky’s family might be dispersed across all Ukraine. He might have no home to return to.
“These were his thoughts when the whip fell. He did not flinch. Blood welled up from the wound and soaked through the back of his shirt. He continued rowing. They were in a particularly quick current, and without his strength at the oar, the boat would slip back down the river. The captain ordered the boat hard to port, an order that would have exposed the side of the boat to the strongest current. No, called Khmelnytsky, and directed the prow through the oncoming water. He bade the men to row harder, and they rowed harder for him, harder than they ever had for the captain. The boat sliced through the strongest of the current and into the gentler stream near the inner bank of a bend.
“Once the boat was well clear of the current, Khmelnytsky barked his second order, to shore the boat. The captain tried to countermand him, but the oarsmen were exhausted and no one who heard it could disobey the booming voice of Khmelnytsky. The captain raised his whip, but Khmelnytsky sprung to his feet and grabbed the captain’s wrist with a hand that had spent years wrapped around the handle of an oar. The captain yelped, a sound like a small animal. Khmelnytsky spoke a single No and released the captain’s wrist and then helped to finish rowing. That was the last of the captain’s whipping.
“The oarsmen rested on the bank, Khmelnytsky off by himself. He heard, though, even from afar, mention of his name. The story of his escape from the Turks, it seemed, had spread quickly through the town at the end of the river. And to that tale, now the oarsmen added their own. At each port some men left and others joined the crew, and each who left took with them Khmelnytsky’s name.