The Ears Of Rye Under Your Sickle
Uladzimir Karatkevich
INTO THE HANDS OF THE HUNGRY POOR
YOU GIVE THE ENEMIES OF ALL COUNTRIES,
INTO THE HANDS OF THE PRONE TO THE SOIL
TO BRING DOWN THE POWERFUL MEN OF DIFFERENT NATIONS.
The Qumran "War Story"
TO MY MOTHER.
Book One. The Source of Springs.
You are saying, "There will be weather, for the sky is clear;
And you say: Today is not weather, for the sky is cloudy.
O ye of little faith, are you able to recognize the sky, but are you unable to see the omen of the hour?
...Macieja, XVI
The pear blossomed for the last year.
All of its mounds, all of its sluggish growths, were covered with violent white flowers until the last twig. It hummed and swayed and swayed in the tingle, stretched out its limp hands to the sun and spread its small, wavy fingers of new flowers in its sight. And it was so bright and fresh, and the bees were so tired in her arms that it seemed that there would be no call for it and no end in sight.
And, however, it's time came.
The Dnyapro was preying on her quielty, like an outlaw. In his eternal ambition to hide his right hand, he stepped close to it in the village, ruined the halls, demolished it in order to land in another place and tugged at it with a yell or ashamedly drove it down in order to get the whole barrels of land into the water. Then, before the coming of the dawn, the grass mended its wounds caused by the Dnyapro. And he continued to work again: he washed and washed the pear out of all the tanks.
...Behind the pear was the end of the Kagut's village. A forty years or so ago there was still a black bathhouse behind the tree.
But at one point, at the end of the day, Dnyapro took it - not even the birches could be catched. In fact, the revolt from Azeryshch went down to Sukhadol itself, where the inhabitants were not allowed it to pass further.
Old Danila Kagut took the new bathhouse a hundred meters away from the town, which was better than the small house. His daughters-in-law said: while you are carrying water, your hands are weak and falling off. Danila listened to them and murmured to them in his sweet-hearted, lame-eyed voice:
- I wish my purse with money wouldn't fall off, but I don't need to buy hands...
And he had to take his sons to help the women to have two or three buckets.
The new bathhouse became overly luxurious for the Kagutov's area. The sons left, only the eldest, Michael, remained with their father, his wife and six of their children: five sons and a daughters-in-law. When they go to the first couple, it's a dog-eat-dog situation, and it's cold from this expanse.
And yet o one felt sorry for the old bathhouse. A dark story disappeared along with the bathhouse.
It was a few years after Prydnyaprodue fell out of the "Karona". Danila was still a child, a single son in his father's house and a single grandson in his grandfather's. How woeful it was. During the three generations the war, the halera double-crossed Azeryshch. Kaguts were somewhat lucky.. At least one man was left alive per household.
The rest of them died. It did not help that Raman, Danilau's grandfather, was considered a witcher. And he couldn't do anything, highly likely because the matter was new. Even the oldest ones were not aware of the problem.
Those who didn't go into the woods were unhappy. And Raman and his son Mark were not allowed to leave by their lord. He gave the gun and told them to stay in an empty village, so that bad people would not steal from their belongings. The shooting, however, not saved from the plague. And the bad people were afraid of Raman with his glory even more that they afraid of a gun.
Indeed, Raman would not have been Raman if he had not known the means. And he had healed his son to him with a rare, white kvass. He would not have given him out to death. But he didn't have time for the rest.
Cholera was gone. They forgot about her. But in Kagutov's house they lived like that.
TO BE CONTINUED