I miss the large, roomy kitchen of my grandfather’s house, with its earthen floor, its warm, broad hearth and the long, heavy bench placed in front of the hearth. It was here that we would sit in the evenings, listening to endless tales of hunting expeditions, of treasures unearthed in ancient fortresses, and of our own fearless mountaineers who fought against the Russian tsars. On this same bench my uncle would sit cutting tobacco with his sharp hatchet. After a while he would seize a burning coal from the hearth and throw it into a heap of freshly cut tobacco. Then, with slow satisfaction he would stoke this smoking heap, making sure that it became thoroughly dried and saturated with the sweet aroma of wood smoke.
I miss the women’s evening calls from hilltop to hilltop, from valley to mountain, and from mountain to valley. How lonely and pure is the sound of a woman’s voice in the cool of the evening!
Just before sunset the chickens would remind us that they had, after all, been born to fly. First they would begin their restless cackling; then, eyeing the branches of the fig tree, they would suddenly fly upward, only to miss their mark and fall back to earth. After a second try they would finally reach the desired branch and settle in place behind the angrily squawking golden rooster.
At about this time my aunt would come out from the kitchen with a pail clanging in her hand. She would cross the yard with a light, nimble gait, stopping on her way to pick up a dry branch with which to chase away the calf. As she approached the cow pen, she would be greeted by questioning moos, while from under the elevated corn granary the baby goats would be heard, as noisy and playful as schoolchildren.
Before long Grandfather or one of the other men would appear with the rest of the goats, driving them home from pasture. Herded together in a noisy throng, the goats would come pouring into the yard, their stomachs bulging curiously to one side. Full of good spirits, the males would rear up on their hind legs, only to fall back, jostling and colliding with their neighbors and eventually entangling themselves in a welter of horns. And whenever they played like this, we knew that the grazing had been good.
Then the baby goats would be let out, so the nursing could begin. The kids would go running up to their mothers, who would assume an expression of foolish vigilance, not wishing to confuse their own offspring with someone else’s — which they nonetheless did. But it was all the same to the kids — they would greedily attach themselves to the first udder that came along. Only after several eager tugs at the nipple would the mother recognize her own offspring and then either push the hungry mouth away or grow calm and contented, as if the pain caused by her own offspring were somehow different from that caused by someone else’s.
As the years went by, there came to be fewer and fewer of these goats — and fewer cows too. We even began feeling a shortage of milk at home — of that same milk which, according to my grandfather, had been so plentiful in past summers that they had not had time to process it. And now this milk was all gone, and no one knew where it had disappeared to.
I remember our attic and the handwoven rug on the attic wall. Embroidered on the rug was an enormous bushy-browed deer with sad eyes and a feminine face. In the background of the rug, behind the deer, was a tiny little man. This little man stood in a hunched position and was taking aim at the deer with cruel zeal. Even as a child I could tell that this little man resented the deer and could not forgive it for being so large when he, the man, was so small. No doubt it would have been as impossible for the little man to forgive this difference in size as it would have been to change it — to make the little man large and the deer small.
And although the deer was not looking at the man, one could tell by its sad eyes that it knew exactly who he was and what he was doing. And the deer was so enormous that the man could not possibly help hitting it. The deer knew this too, but had nowhere to hide; it was so big that it could be seen from every side. In the beginning it had probably tried to flee, but now it realized that there was no escape from this hunched little man.
I would often gaze at this handwoven rug, and each time I looked at it, I was always filled with love for the deer and hatred for the hunter. And more than anything else I hated the cruel zeal of his hunched shoulders.
I miss the feel of warm muslin sheets which, after hanging all day on the porch, exude the fresh, sunny fragrance of summertime.
We children always had to go to bed before the grownups, and as we lay upstairs listening to their voices coming from the kitchen, we would also hear the voice of our own inner fears, which were somehow mysteriously bound up with the darkness of the room, the pensive creaking of the walls and, staring down from these walls, the portraits of deceased relatives, now fading away in the twilight.
And I miss even the walls of my grandfather’s house, with their chestnut beams naively papered with posters, cheap reproductions, and newspaper and magazine pages. The latter dated back to the nineteen-twenties and thirties and occasionally contained some interesting items. And what fun I had reading those pages, either lying supine on the floor or standing up on a chair or couch. And sometimes, unable to restrain myself, I would tear off a particular page so that I could turn it over and read the continuation on the other side. And before long I had read each and every wall in my grandfather’s house.
And what those walls did not contain!
An enormous oleograph of Napoleon abandoning the burning city of Moscow: horsemen in cocked hats, the walls of the Kremlin, and in the background a fiery glow stretching the length of the horizon.
Some pre-Revolutionary pictures on a religious theme: Christ ensconced in the clouds and wearing sandals which were laced with thongs and somehow reminiscent of our Caucasian rawhide moccasins.
Skillfully manouevering his prancing steed, the Archangel Gabriel slays the loathsome dragon. And right beside him, our own Soviet posters on anti-religious and agricultural themes. One of these posters I remember very well. A peasant stands at one end of a bridge which has suddenly opened up as if from some Biblical curse, and with hands thrown up in despair he watches as his horse and cart plunge downward through the gaping hole. And beneath this instructive picture appears the no less instructive caption: “If you’d thought to insure for a rainy day, at a moment like this you’d be okay!”
I never found this peasant very convincing. There was something too womanish in his reaction to the situation. The horse had barely fallen through, and yet there he was, standing idly by, throwing up his hands in despair.
Everything I had observed in real life led me to believe that no peasant would part with his horse so easily, but would do everything in his power to save it. And if, as in this case, he had lost hold of the reins, then at least he would have tried to grab hold of the horse’s tail.
Once when I happened to take a long look at this peasant, I thought I detected a smile peeping out from under his mustache like some small beast of prey peering through the bushes. This smile was so unexpected that it actually startled me. I may have imagined it, of course, but if I did, I was able to do so precisely because I had always felt that there was something false about him.
The picture’s caption was equally ambiguous. I could never quite figure out what was supposed to be insured — the horse or the bridge. I assumed it was the horse, but then the implication would be that the bridge should be left there to collapse, since if it were repaired, there would be no reason to insure the horse.
Perhaps the most touching and profound characteristic of childhood is an unquestioning belief in the rule of common sense. The child believes that the world is rational and hence regards everything irrational as some sort of obstacle to be pushed aside. Even when confronted by the most irrational of circumstances, the child instinctively looks for some underlying element of reason. And not doubting for a moment that it is there, he concludes that it has merely been distorted or hidden from view.