In Klenotochi village the farmers urgently called into the council on a Sunday morning are listening to the speaker intently.
Myron Danylovich is leaning against the wall next to the far window and watching the speaker. "A scary person, very scary!" – he keeps thinking. "Such a person would step over."
Stand there and suffer quietly while the loved ones are waiting at home and the morning over the fence, in the garden, is shimmering like a lamp; the spider webs are dotted with dew and are sparkling against the clear sky. And you – suffer in vain because the gloomy one decided to get you, bones and all. The thought comes again: "Such a person would step over the law and everything!" If one could look into the red one’s eyes they would be taken aback: his massive, as if cut from ice, glasses are flickering over his brown eyes with the tangible rising temper of the men in the room reflected in them. His brow, oblique and white, contrasts with the maroon shadows of his cheeks.
Threateningly and with deliberation, the speaker carries on: from the very tsarism. He takes upon strong topics: industry, sub–kurkuls [translator’s note: kurkul – a derogative term used by the Soviets to describe a person owning over 8 acres of land], sabotage, grain collection, and, in the end, “uprooting”.
Myron Danylovich is upset to no end: “He could have just said: give us all the bread or we’ll kill you! – like a bandit. Why circle around like a snake and torture us?”
“We will crush the resistance and destroy the nests!” – the speaker raises his voice until it starts ringing; the earth will shudder – that’s how we’ll destroy.
Hryhoriy Otrokhodin as a speaker is used to elevating feelings to the point of a burning threat against the listeners. His speech is flowing as an expression of his self–righteousness, as a proclamation to the unworthy scum that resists the message, shone upon them from the Party beacons.
“The workers, fighting under the flag!..” – Otrokhodin hammers on.
In his imagination, “the workers” have replaced the people present in the room before him, the ones with coarse blisters on their hands; he speaks of different ones. The instruction papers smelled like April when he dreamed of how happy the workers will be. Distant and vague workers. But their way of thinking and development is a source of vigor for Otrokhodin. On their behalf he lays the demands, like razors, to the farmers, watching them with stranger's eyes.
They collected this first group well. The militia is by the doors: for control and influence. Why don’t the others answer to the Party and leave things half–baked for the organizing committee? No, he is stronger than borscht–eaters think. If they start something – they’ll get squashed. The dead will rise, pour grain into their caskets, and come running to the collection centers laying it at his feet. They'll bow while they're at it, too.
The orders are given – now to carry them out! Here they are in a suitcase under the brass clasps next to the hand. A hand that is stronger than your stubbornness.
In the capital at the meeting someone would ask: what if the villagers start dying, resisting the grain collection? The leader with an officially–sour face of a sovereign, who until now had been steadily growing more and more yellow and moving his hand lazily, uttering slow, stone–cold sentences from under his moist mustache suddenly jerked and opened his lips in such a grin that a chill washed over Otrokhodin… "Evil!" – a thought flashed about the "master" whose eyes then glanced at him and stopped, frozen, as if a wintery creature of yore came alive and bared its teeth behind them.
Otrokhodin extinguished the thought immediately, distrusting his own impression. He was scared of the change in his consciousness and listened to the reply as if it was the ultimate truth cut in granite.
"Take the grain from the dead – all of it!"
The respect for the chief is endless: the jacket is made to order, semi-military cut, same as his, and greenish because it’s a war.
He knows: although the farmers are disrespectful, they are scared. "Look at these kings… Bugs with rotten brains yet they act like nobility. Before whom?"
From the platform, a little dramatic, he could see their faces: deep disgust everywhere, fire in the eyes, anxiety, and gloom in the entire room. Some lost interest.
One of them, the one by the window, catches his eye with the gleam of phosphorus bitterness in his gaze that is hard to ignore.
Worth checking him: that's a sneaky one, like an "Indian"; as a rule, these are the ones that congregate resistance around them.
Effortlessly weaving his narrative, Otrokhodin studies the elongated face in the sharp light from the window. Raised eyebrows, as if surprised, or maybe patient? Gray eyes with a hint of blue in splotches.
Something moves inside Otrokhodin's heart, touched by the flame, and he gets mad; he speaks angrily at the eyes by the window.
Myron Danylovich stood steadily. An ordinary man at the glance, and his last name – rural and unoriginal: Katrannyk. The impression of poverty is emphasized by the unshaved chin: they rudely caught him off guard on a Sunday. His skull stretches up marked by lines that stand out on his sunburnt brow below the brown hair and under an elongated face. His eyes look almost ashen at the bottom of the sockets, even though they have a blue tint, shaded by the eyebrows: earthy color, same as the mustache turned down at the corners.
His satin shirt, dark blue once, but washed–out now, with stains forming by the collar, is covered by a jacket of murky grayness, like old stubble left in the field under a steady downpour.
Katrannyk can see out the window: there is a cart, a tired horse tied next to the picket fence. It tries to catch a stem in between the pickets, reaches for it, turning its head this way and that and sticking colorless lips into the crack. "We are just like that horse!" – a thought stings Myron Danylovich. "The Party tied us and we can't grab the weeds".
The men grew quiet like sunflowers under the storm that covers half the sky and shoots arrows at the defenseless yield. Otrokhodin shakes both his fists at them and his wide golden tooth contrasted by a chipped one next to it is glowing, same as the lenses of his frameless glasses with metal brackets.
He slams his palms into the table covered with a fiery cloth:
"We'll treat you like enemies in case of insubmission! Your families will answer too…"
He's still. Like a rock. The members of the Party and the village council with pistols in their pockets, and militia with revolvers on their belts are all there to defend Otrokhodin. And against them is a group of lean men, thin like reeds.
Myron Danylovich dropped his head. He knew: they would get him. The same thing happened when they forced them into kolhosp [TN: same as kolkhoz: a collective farm/commune in the Soviet Union]. They'd throw him to the north, just as full of tears as it is of snow.
His eyes travel farther, way behind the horse where he can see, stark against the sun, the moon that falls all torn to pieces; a chalk seal on blue paper.
"An image for us" – thinks Myron Danylovich. "One brother holds the other on a pitchfork. Hit him below the chest and lifted him up until – death. A picture to remind us of Kain's sin that has been happening and getting worse now that whole families are threatened."
The terrifying image keeps still like a white ghost, and before it – poplar trees like witnesses or the doomed.
Myron Danylovich's heart hurts: "I don’t care if I die, but what does the family have to do with it?.. Whom to turn to? Why are they coming from the other capital, why won't they just stay home… Fine, take some, and leave us some – but no! Give all the bread and die. We've never bothered them. What if we came to Moscow, too, to this rat's house, and started rummaging: flour here, potatoes there – all of it, all of it. And you may starve! We don't do it. Even if we could we wouldn't. Now to deal with these threats! Will mother stay in the church till the end? She'll be worried I'd get in trouble here. Some little food is left for the children, to give it away means death to both them and us. These ones say "give" – turns out they just want to kill us. Somewhere out there the children are waiting like skylarks for their dad to return safely from this scrape. Poor little ones – who'll take pity on them when we're gone?"
Myron Danylovich stopped listening to the speaker. "Don’t have to guess where this is going. Heard it all before. The main task now is to get out of here. The people from the Party enjoy our woes like the wolves enjoy the sheep screaming... And the Sunday is ruined – the golden tooth barked all over it."
Behind the window, the horse is trying to get the stem.
“...Look at it go. No, that’s in vain! – the lips are too short for such a fence.”
Katrannyk holds the speaker’s stare: piercing!
They are open before each other in that stare. Like on a narrow bridge over the abyss: pass each other calmly or – death.
Through the eyes, tiny windows, the souls saw that their complete honesty would be fulfilled; so hostile towards each other even though they are much more similar than the animosity has them believe.
Katrannyk feels desperate as if his nerves fill with bitter sparks. And then the next moment it’s all gone. The quietest calmness washes over him, like a dream. And then bitterness again, but lighter this time with an odd curiosity towards the speaker, after the immense disgust.
Otrokhodin decided on the spot that the villager is “bad”, he can be uprooted. There is softness in the disobedience. But for some reason he is boiling with rage: strong, wild rage; his eyes with the sharpest glimmer are turned upon the villager. Deep–brown at the surface they lack the usual transparency as if pushed from the inside in hard stillness like it sometimes happens to courageous people with nerves of steel.
Given the power – and he is, no matter how you look at it! – Otrokhodin takes to the extremes.
Compliant villagers are the ones with heavy stares! For them, the line in life is set in white stone: an ancient mark of divided ownership, more certain than any legal papers. For it is legitimized through generations at the edge between one soul and another proclaiming the law for the world of the good and the kind, which apparently has to crumble now. It has been decided to bring ruin. A new order pushes in, like a thicket. No mercy. They’ll take the last crumb from a child’s hand! Myron Danylovich’s mind is heavy: “Someone devilish out there decided to make quick money, to forge tears into gold, to satiate their greed.”
Upon reaching this conclusion Myron Danylovich looks away from the speaker. Speak! Your job for the next few months is clear.
The horse reaches for the stem; stretches its entire neck, pushes its lips through the planks, but this attempt is vain, too. Exhausted and hungry it shakes its mane to get rid of the pesky bugs that get in the eyes.
“...Its eyes are oozing, look, the bugs are swarming them, they always know to get the weakest spot; poor creature, its owners worked it to the bone but don’t have a moment to throw it some hay; we too are whipped to death just like that – look where it got us!”
Otrokhodyn is done. Suddenly a farmer pushes his way through the tight crowd, he is small and dry, both his face and his clothes seem somehow sharpened, like a little bird: flattened strands of hair like feathers on a slanted roof.
“Can I ask a question?” – he addresses Otrokhodin.
The man is troubled, his voice cracking – also like a bird’s squeak. Not having gotten an answer he bursts with anger:
“Who takes the children?”
“What children? Whose?”
“Children’s children!” – desperately screams the man. “My children, there are seven of them and nothing to eat. Who will feed them when there is not a crumb in the house and my wife and I die – who?”
Otrokhodin is quiet, his face changing. A clamor is rising amongst the men:
“That’s a good question! What happens to the children? That’s right! You tell us – what? There is no grain – it’s all taken already.”
Otrokhodin is furious:
"To order! Arrest those who disturb the silence!"
Quite. At once. In a short moment, the voices are gone: like a candle flame taken by a gust of wind. Then shuffling movement begins: people are heading towards the door.
(fan translation by Natalie K. for educational purposes only)