Varienikii
Marinka's voice on the phone was high and strained, like a collar caught cat
struggling against strangling.
Katerina knew immediately something was terribly wrong. Katerina
lived in Delaware in sight of the ocean. The wind had been
blowing in from the sea for three days. When it gusted it made
whistling noises through the trees and against the houses. Katerina
flew out to Michigan the next morning.
He thought he had the flu, wouldn't go to see the doctor.
Now Ned, her daughter's husband was in the ground under the
oak up on the hill by the pond where the geese were.
The sun was dazzling bright for the funeral. November wind
blew and sculpted hollows in the water.† A few late leaves,
brown and crisp, whirled down, hit and scuttled along the ground
until they stuck.† Ned had died of a heart attack in the night,
the same way his father had died at the same age, fifty-one.
He left four daughters. Only Veronica, the second was married.†
A short broad shouldered white-haired woman in a black dress,
Katerina stood shoeless in the middle of the brick red linoleoum
of the kitchen. She held her arms crossed, hugging her chest
just below her bosom. The neighbors had brought food in pots
and pans of all different shapes and colors. Crowding the counter
top by the sink and spilling over onto the stove, they made
a bright variegated society of their own.
Marinka was upstairs in the bedroom, maybe resting, maybe not.
Katerina knew Marinka needed to be alone. Her own husband,
Marinka's father, had died eighteen months earlier. It was
still hard for Katerina to believe he was gone. The separation
seemed temporary, a dream from which she might awaken at any
moment. But, then, all separations had started to take on this
dreamlike quality.
Death brought back memories. The longer you went on living,
the more of those you'd known and loved who were now under the
earth, the more memories it brought back. It loosened your
tongue and made you tell stories of things and people, times
and places you hadn't thought about in years and years.
Or if you'd thought about them it had been only in stray moments
while you cleaned or dusted or polished a table so that the
shine came back into it and you caught a quick glimpse of your
own face in it. Death brought life back into focus, sharpened
it and, in the midst of the grieving, bathed in it the clean
crisp light of a gentle entrancement.
Olga, the oldest of her grandchildren, sat in a chair at the
table. Tanya, the youngest at eighteen, sat cross legged on
the floor. Darjeeling, a ball of rust fur, lay content and full
oblivious on the table, purring with his paws tucked neatly
under his chin. Mona, a mongrel puppy the color of sand, was
stretched fast asleep on her side underneath the table.
Uncanny that she should still have breath in her lungs and be able to talk.
The beauty of these two young women who sat with their eyes
on her, waiting and watching, was bewitching. Had she herself
ever been that young? Had her skin ever been that smooth?
Had her eyes ever glowed the way theirs did? From the living
room, where a fire burned in the fireplace, came the hubbub
of other conversations, background music.
Katerina took a deep breath, let her gaze fall first on Olga,
then on Tanya.
"I was an orphan by the time I was nine years old. The spring
I was ten years old was a beautiful spring. It was during
the Civil War after the Revolution. The Whites and the Reds
fought back and forth. We were frightened of both. Food was
scarce and there was no telling what would happen.† When the
Armontovs left their estate in their carriage with three large
wagons behind it, the cherry trees were in blossom.
They were white as snow. On each side they lined the way
from the big house down to the lake. The grass wasn't kept
the way it had been. So dandelions bloomed everywhere like
pats of butter against the green of the grass. A few white
clouds floated in blue sky.† The cherry blossoms were whiter
than the clouds. We waved and called good-byes after them
and wept.
Eight of us stayed behind. Yelena Fyodorovna would not hear
of going. She said one place was as good as another. Yelena
Fyodorovna was in her late twenties. She had lost her husband
two years before in the fighting. She had a three year old
son, Vanya, a plump little devil with chestnut eyes. She'd
taken in four more orphans, three little girls and another
little boy, just five months younger than little Vanya. Yelena
Fyodorovna had a good heart. She was a second cousin of one
of the mistress's sisters-in-law. That was why the mistress
let us stay there.
My older brother Mitya was the only one I had left in the world.
We grew up in a village two hours' walk from the Armontovs'
estate. When Mitya was drafted, he arranged to leave me with
Yelena Fyodorovna. As a girl, my mother had worked for Yelena
Fyodorovna's aunt. Yelena Fyodorovna needed someone to help
her with the children. I worked hard and she was good to me.
The children were good for me, too. They kept my mind off
my own sorrows."
Katerina paused, sighed, took a deep breath after the sigh.
Olga struck a match and lit another cigarette. The flame cast
its glow across one side of Katerina's broad, kindly face.
Her presence ruled the room.
"No, it wasn't a bad time for us. We might as well have been
on an island. No one knew or cared what we did. The cellars
were well stocked, so we had enough to eat. The house was
grand. Usually, there were ten or even fifteen times as many
people in it. Old Pavel stayed behind with us, too. He said
his joints hurt too much for him to travel. He said he had
been born there and he wanted to die where he had been born.
I think he stayed because of Yelena Fyodorovna.
He hadn't anyone left in the world, either. In the evenings
we would walk down, all of us together, through the orchard
to the lake. We would sit, Yelena Fyodorovna on the stone
bench with little Vanya on her lap, me in the grass with the
other children, while old Pavel paced slowly back and forth
at the water's edge. There were all sorts of water birds on
the lake. We would listen to them and watch the sun set over
the water.
In that part of Russia, there are many nightingales. I knew
nothing of Yelena Fyodorovna's heart or her private thoughts,
even though my eyes were always on her. The sight of her soothed
me. She wasn't one of those women who talk about themselves
all the time. Her life was that little boy. I think she would
have been happy to have a big family, ten or twelve children
even. But it was too late. Her husband was already dead.
So what could she do?
Yelena Fyodorvna loved the song of the nightingale. I know.
I watched her go still to listen. It seemed that she had forgotten
everything else. The song of the nightingale was all that
there was. We all stopped and waited and listened. It was
because of Yelena Fyodorovna that we went so still. I imagined
that the nightingales knew that Yelena Fyodorovna was listening
and that they sang especially for her.
When it was still light, just after the sun disappeared below
the horizon, we would walk back up to the big house, exactly
as if we owned it."
Katerina laughed. The skin of her face crinkled and there was
merriment about the corners of her eyes.† She looked much younger.
Although her grand-daughters were rapt, Katerina didn't look
at them. She looked not straight ahead, but at an angle upwards,
as if what she described was reborn in the telling and immediately
present to her.
"Yelena Fyodorvna was an excellent cook. She made the bread
herself. There was nothing spoiled about her. When we got
back up to the house, old Pavel would make a fire in the fireplace
in the parlor, using birch logs he had split himself. There
were whole forests of white birch on the Armontov estate.
They were beautiful in the snow.
The children would say their prayers. Yelena Fyodorovna would
give each one a crust of bread amd off they would go to sleep.
Occasionally, old Pavel would tell us a story about his youth,
the old days, the harvests and the hunts, the celebrations,
the love affairs and the quarrels of times gone by. But mostly
he sat still and looked into the fire and watched the children
sleep.
Yelena Fyodorovna insisted on teaching me to read and write.
She said that sooner or later the world would come back to
its senses and life would go on as before."
Katerina shook her head and took another breath.
"It made no sense to me. But I would never go against Yelena
Fyodorovna. Whatever she said had to be right just because
she said it. I went along with the lessons, even though it
was often hard for me to keep my eyes open after chasing after
the children all day long. Even if I wasn't the best of pupils.
it seemed to please Yelena Fyodorovna to teach me. My mind
wandered. Sometimes I would just stare at the page.
She would get a little cross with me, not so very much, though,
because she was such a gentle soul. I felt badly when I disappointed her.
But what use did I have for knowing how to read
and write? It was another world from this one. Reading and
writing were for others who were much more important than a
simple orphan girl."
Katerina looked not at Olga, the scholar in the family, but
at Tanya, who loved horses, as if to ask if she could possibly
understand this. Tanya smiled back, a soft inward smile.
When her grandmother talked like this, what she said seemed
natural, obvious, inevitable. For all its strife and violence,
the world Katerina described seemed more peaceful, more at one
with itself than the one Tanya struggled to live in herself.
"So I would fall asleep over the book, sitting there in front
of the fireplace with Yelena Fyodorovna. She would put a
blanket over me and a pillow under my head and I would wake
up right there early the next morning when one of the children
stirred and the light of dawn was streaming into the big windows
through the mists that rose off the lake.
Life was sweet then and I would plunge into the new day without
a thought to my cares. Each day was like the one before, yet
each one seemed a new adventure to me, full of hope and expectation.
The children grew right before my eyes. Their little bodies
stretched out and they became miniature men and women. Can
you believe we were happy? We were happy, except for Yelena
Fyodorovna and old Pavel, because we didn't know any better.
It was in our hearts to be happy."
Katerina stopped. As she pursed her lips, her face grew sad
and serious.
It seemed to Tanya that her grandmother's face now, in this
kitchen, in this warm fragrant house full of life where, incredibly,
her own and only father had died barely three days before, looked
much as old Pavel's face must have looked in that other house
so long ago and so far away.
Tanya wondered if Katerina had any idea how rich and comforting
her voice was.
Mona's paws twitched in her sleep as she chased the rabbit or
squirrel or woodchuck of her dreams.
Olga stubbed out one cigarette and lit the next one. Olga would
remember the words. Tanya, herself, would remember the music.
A yawn spread her lips, stretched the muscles of her back and
shoulders, sore from weeping.
"But there were bitter moments, too," the old woman went on,
as if this pause had put her in touch with sorrow present that
rhymed with sorrows past.
"Yelena Fyodorvna had her moods.A darkness would come over her. Maybe she thought
of her dead husband, remembered his face and his eyes and the touch of
his skin."
Olga and Tanya knew their grandmother was remembering their
grandfather.
"I was just a girl myself, with no experience of such things.
For days, she was like a shadow, drifting here and there among
us. The spirit went out of here. She seemed to forget where
she was. Little Vanya noticed. I did my best to comfort him.
He would watch her with hungry eyes. He was afraid. We all
were.
Then a spark caught again. It brought the fire of life back
into her. She would be as gay and energetic as she had been
sad and forlorn. She was always dreaming up some project
to do, as if she meant to apologize to us, to little Vanya
in particular for having gone off and left us. That year
there was a wonderful crop of cherries. Yelena Fyodorovna
got it into her head to make varieniki."
Katerina looked first at Olga and then at Tanya.
"Varieniki are like blini, a cherry filling wrapped in dough.
When I was very little, before my mother or even my father
had died, we had a cherry tree, too. Just one. Not a whole
orchard like the Armontovs, because we were simple folk. I
remember she would make varieniki, too, in the springtime.
My own mother."
Memory had played another one of its tricks. The sadness was
gone from Katerina's face and also from her voice.
"It was a hot day near the end of June. Yellow and white cabbage
butterflies played tag, skipping over the top of the grass
that was going to seed. In the whole sky, there wasn't a single
cloud. Everything was a full rich green. Yelena Fyodorvna's
gaiety was contagious. You can imagine how excited we were
as we set off for the orchard to pick cherries.
I propped little Vanya up in the crotch of a tree. The ripe
cherries hung so red. Their sides gleamed. A breeze blew
and the leaves quivered. The cherries swayed on their stems.
With his dark curly hair, Vanya looked like a little angel, standing
there in the tree, reaching eagerly for cherry after cherry,
dropping them into the bowl between his legs. He laughed aloud
with delight as he grabbed them."
Marinka slipped into the room. It was Olga who first noticed
her presence.
"Grandma's telling stories," Olga said.
Marinka looked from her daughter's face to her mother's. Katerina's
face didn't change expression. Marinka was staunch in the same
way as her mother. Marinka smiled a small smile, sad and tender,
at Olga.
Then she sat down at the table. Darjeeling stirred, got to
his feet and walked to the table edge nearest her. He stretched,
made a welcoming noise deep in his throat, jumped into her lap.
Marinka scratched behind his ears. He settled.
"We filled the bowl. We made a heap of tart red cherries.
We carried the bowl back into the kitchen and set it down on
a wooden table. It was just before noon. It was a hot, still
time. Little Vanya stood next to the table. I lifted him
up so that he could look at the cherries. He beamed. He had
never tasted varieniki. I was as excited about watching the
little ones taste them, as I was about eating them myself.
Yelena Fyodorovna had just covered the bowl with a white linen
towel when Pavel came running in, all out of breath. He had
been up the road gathering mushrooms. He had seen soldiers,
Whites. They were coming this way. There were Reds near,
too. There was going to be a battle. Yelena Fyodorovna and
Pavel looked at each other.
Yelena snatched up little Vanya and I his little friend, five
months younger. I grabbed the littlest girl.† Without another
thought, we rushed out of the house and headed into the woods.
At the edge of the woods, we stopped and counted. Old Pavel
joined us. All eight of us set off together. Barely a quarter
of an hour later, we heard the first shots."
Tanya drew her legs up to her body and rested her chin on her
knees.
"I wasn't frightened at all. It was an adventure. Pavel led
us into the woods until we came to a place where there was
a small spring. We could still hear gunfire. But the birds
were singing, too. About fifty feet from the spring was a
small meadow. In the middle of the meadow was a zimlanka."
Katerina stopped. She looked perplexed. Marinka knew her mother
was trying to find the right English word.
"Tell us what it is," Marinka said.
"A house, a kind of house," Katerina said.
"A hut?" Olga suggested.
"No, no, no," Katerina objected, shaking her head indignantly.
It wasn't easy, Marinka knew, to help her mother. She asked
for help. Then, when you tried to provide it, the usual result
was that Katerina took the occasion to demonstrate she could
manage perfectly well on her own. Olga looked hurt. Marinka
saw her hide it.
Marinka was a widow like her mother. Now she and her mother
were like sisters. Only her mother was a quarter of a century
older than she was. A quarter of a century wasn't as long as
it used to be. Overnight everything had been transformed.
Marinka felt a floating sensation. She was grateful for the
weight of the cat in her lap.
"I will tell you what kind of a house," Katerina was saying.
"It is under the ground. Very cool in the summer. Very warm
in the winter. It has a round top made of earth."
"You mean an earthen igloo?" Olga tried again.
"No, no, no," Katerina shook her head.
Marinka saw Olga withdraw again. Olga had been this way since
she was a little girl. It was so easy to hurt her. Katerina
didn't notice. Marinka felt guilty. She was certain she'd
missed it, too, many times. She and her mother had so many
fo the same strengths and weaknesses. She hated the way her
mother brooded over grown children. Now here she was starting
the same thing.
"Zimlanka is not igloo."
Slavic in intonation, Katerina's voice was full of energy.
"I will tell you how to build zimlanka. You dig a hole in the
ground as deep as a man. Walls you make strong with wood.
The floor is bare. Floor is earth. Roof you make strong with
wood, too.† Then you cover it with earth.† Three feet, four
feet.† You let grass grow over it.† It is a little hill in
the middle of the field.† If you want, you can make window,
too."
Pleased with having overcome the difficulty, Katerina bobbed
her head and smiled.
"Da," she said.
"But Grandma," Olga asked, both because she wanted to know and
because she'd been hurt, "how do you get in and out?"
"On one side you leave an opening. You make..."
Katerina hesitated again.
"Like a ramp?" Olga finished, finally connecting, so that when
Katerina's head nodded approving agreement, her own face softened
and tinged with pink.
"Was no window in this zimlanka. Inside it was cool and quiet.
We couldn't hear the fighting. There were two sacks of potatoes.
Old Pavel brought water from the spring. There was kerosene
and a lamp, too. Old Pavel had grabbed a loaf of bread from
the house when we ran away. He had mushrooms, too. So we
had cold water and bread and mushrooms for lunch. The children
soon fell asleep. I fell asleep, too
We spent three days in the zimlanka. Each day old Pavel went
off by himself and came back. On the third night, he said
it would be safe for us to go back the next morning. The fighting
was over. The fourth day was very hot. Old Pavel left early
in the morning to make sure it was safe. He didn't come back.
So we spent the fourth day in the zimlanka. Yelena Fyodorovna
told me to go into the woods and listen. I heard only the
birds. Once I thought I heard shots. But it was only a wood≠ pecker."
Katerina stopped and took another deep breath. She had not
moved her feet since she started telling her story.
"On the morning of the fifth day, Yelena Fyodorvna sent me out
to listen again. This day was different. It was hot, but
overcast. There was a storm coming. Again, I heard nothing.
When I told Yelena Fyodorovna, her face darkened. She said
nothing. I didn't disturb her. I tried to soothe the children.
They were starting to get cross. After a half hour, Yelena
Fyodorovna said we were going to return."
Katerina's laugh was deep in her chest and melancholy.
"A child's world is so different. I hadn't thought about the
big house or what was happening there. Even when Yelena Fyodorovna
sent me out by myself in the woods, I didn't worry. Now we
were going back. Things would go on as usual.
It was slower going back. We didn't have old Pavel to help
us. Only just as we came to the edge of the woods did I remember
the varieniki. My mouth began to water.
The big house and the lake were both still. A battle had taken
place. A dead horse lay on its side in the grass. Flies buzzed
around its eye. A man lay on his back, staring up at the sky.
By the steps there was a red handkerchief. Also one boot.
I remember both the dead man's feet were bare.
All I could think of was the varieniki. It was a miracle.
The house was just as we had left it. The Whites and the Reds
must have driven each other off, so that neither had the time
to stop and loot.
I ran to the kitchen. There it was, the same bowl with the
linen towel covering it. It hadn't budged.† We could have
varieniki that very day. I would get right to work pitting
the cherries. I could already taste the varieniki in my mouth.
My heart raced. I took the towel off the bowl. There was
a sour smell. A terrible disappointment took hold of me.
I began to sob. While we were hiding, the cherries had fermented.
It was too hot for them."
Now Katerina was looking down at her stockinged feet.
"Yelena Fyodorovna found me there in the kitchen sobbing. She
tried to comfort me. She put her arms around me and held me.
She had never seen me like this. She said we could go and
pick more cherries. She said we could go that very afternoon.
I tried to stop sobbing. Just as I caught my breath, Yelena
Fyodorovna and I, both in the same instant, heard the first
thunder off in the distance.
We went back out onto the porch in front of the house. Lightning
danced across the sky beyond the lake. Black clouds were
rolling in. Within five minutes, the first drops fell. The
wind picked up. It drove sheets of rain against the house.
It rained all that afternoon and all that evening and all the
next day. When the sun came back out, the cherries were all
gone. The season was over. The birds had eaten their fill,
but we got no varieniki."
Katerina looked up. She turned her head towards Marinka.
"It's foolish, isn't it, but that's the pain I remember."
Marinka didn't say anything.
"But what about old Pavel?" Tanya asked.
"Old Pavel," Katerina shrugged her shoulders, "I don't know
what happened to him. We never saw him again."
