EVEN the cold and empty izba did not depress the buoyancy of Katrinka's spirits. At once she set about building a fire, singing softly under her breath, gayly confident that before another day was over her parents would be restored to her. While she laid the birch wood, Mother Drovski looked about the kitchen, shrugging her shoulders at the spotlessness of the floor and at the glistening whiteness of the big oven. In the front of the little window stood a stand spread with a snowy cloth. On this were several geraniums in full bloom. Above the stove hung shining copper kettles and stew pans. The samovar that occupied the middle of the rough table in the center of the room was so bright that she could see her face in it. The bench that ran along the wall under the window was spotlessly clean.
"It is easy enough to keep one's kitchen like this when there are but two little ones," Mother Drovski muttered under her breath, balancing in her palm a ham that hung from the ceiling. "Your father has enough smoked meat for an army of Cossacks," she went on aloud, with a sidelong glance at Katrinka, who was watering the geraniums. "That is because he has never given to the church like the rest of us and he only has a few mouths to feed."
"And also he works harder than anybody in the village," replied Katrinka.
Then, fearing that she had hurt the feelings of her neighbor, she impulsively moved a bench into the middle of the room and springing upon it reached up and took down the largest of the hams.
"Take this home with you, Mother Drovski," she said, cordially. "I am sure father would want to do something in return for your kindness to little Peter and me."
Mother Drovski put the ham down on the bench and went to the sink where she studied the trough made from a hollowed block of wood. In this trough Katrinka's mother did her washing, and in it she frequently bathed little Peter, instead of steaming him in the oven, according to the village custom.
"They tell me that your mother washes your clothes every week in the winter, just as in summer," said Mother Drovski, running her hand around the smooth inside surface of the trough.
"Yes," said Katrinka, slipping some mushrooms from the long string that hung over the oven and placing them on the bench beside the ham.
Mother Drovski shrugged her shoulders. She washed regularly every week during the summer, carrying the clothes to the river and rubbing them between two stones. But in the winter it was difficult enough to get enough water for the tea and the steam baths, so like the other villagers she baked the family wearing apparel on Saturday, even the great sheepskin coat of Ivan Drovski going into the oven with the other clothing.
After her survey of the kitchen was finished Mother Drovski visited the sitting room, where she looked at the big loom, the glass case in which stood the sacred images, and some pussy willows that had been saved from Palm Sunday a year ago, when, as is the custom, they were carried to church instead of palm leaves.
Her big black eyes saw everything–the white lace tidies on the tables, the artificial flowers stuck in the sand that was poured between the double windows to keep out the cold, the braided mat on the floor, the porcelain stove that had come from St. Petersburg.
This stove was cold now, for the fire that had crackled in it during the meeting, two nights before, had long since gone out, and the room was so chilled that a frost rim began forming about Mother Drovski's mouth. With a shiver she hurried back to the kitchen and lighting a candle went into the storeroom. Presently Katrinka joined her, loading her with salt fish, potatoes, cabbages and beets. In fact it was all that the good Ivan Drovski and his wife could do to carry home in their arms the good things that Katrinka bestowed upon them, as she recalled with a pang of pity the empty storeroom in the Drovski house and the many mouths that her neighbors had to feed.
"We will send Marie to spend the night with you," cried Mother Drovski, when she found that it was impossible to persuade Katrinka to return with her. "She is a big girl, old enough for marriage. With her here you will not be afraid and we shall have more room on the oven at home."
Katrinka smiled. With the sun shining on the snow it did not seem to her that she would ever again be afraid of anything. But when darkness fell and little Peter cried for his mother, and through the stillness she heard the great wolf hounds howling in the village door-yards, she was glad enough that Marie Drovski had come to spend the night, although Marie told harrowing fairy tales of bad spirits that dwelt in the barnyards and amused themselves cutting off horses' tails, and of others that hid in dark storerooms, creeping out by candlelight to tangle the skeins and spoil the spinning.In truth, it is quite certain that when night came, Katrinka would have preferred spending it packed on top of the oven with the entire Drovski family, to passing it alone with Peter in their own clean and roomy izba.
This chapter has been put on-line as part of the
BUILD-A-BOOK Initiative at the
Celebration of Women Writers.
Initial text entry and proof-reading of this chapter were the work of volunteer
Rebekah Bishop.
