Fedor Abramov, Two Winters and Three Summers. 1968
Having winnowed the grain with a wooden shovel, Il’ia raked it into a pile and swept around with a twig broom, picked every little grain out of the cracks between the floor boards, and then took a large birch basket from the wall. The basket, if you fill it to the top, weighed exactly twelve kilograms. But he didn’t rely alone on the measure; he hung each basket on the scales. Three times. Then weighed out another fifteen kilograms. The homespun sack, long and narrow, was filled to the drawstrings. That’s the law.
The rest of the grain he poured into a tub.
There was a good grain crop on his private plot; the field by the marsh hadn’t been affected, even by the heat. But they began to eat it in the early part of August and in two months had used up a good half of it, And now, looking at what was left of the grain, he began to think about how Mariia and the children would live this winter. True, they should be getting a certain amount for workdays done, and he and Mariia had put in a fair number of them. But what if they don’t give anything? Everyone is saying that the south was completely burnt up-and that’s where the government should get the grain from.
Il’ia fastened the gates with the wooden bar, stamped out the butt of the splinter he used as a torch, climbed down, and went into the hut. His sons were already asleep-they were worn out from running around all day-and Valya, his favorite and his helper, was working on her lessons.
“Eat!” shouted Mariia at the child she was feeding at her breast. “The little devil! She hasn’t any teeth, but she bites. She’s chewed me up.,
The child began to cry.
“Well, cry for a while! You haven’t cried for a long time. You don’t give your mother any peace at all!”
Yes, the child had drawn them closer together. When his wife was pregnant, Il’ia rejoiced-“Let’s have another soldier!”-but now he wished the child had never come. Mariia had even had to leave the barnyard.
He rinsed his hands with water from the wash basin and got his ‘home office,’ a birch wattle basket with a cover, from the cupboard.
“Well, little girl, let your father get to use the table, too.”
In the wicker basket he kept various papers: commitments for deliveries to the state of meat, potatoes, grain, eggs, wool, hides; notification of agricultural taxes, of personal taxes, insurance, receipts for tax payments. Also, there were his prewar certificates for accelerated and Stakhanovite work in the lumber camps; military documents-reserve of the first rank, old prewar documents-the Society for Promotion of Defense and Aero-chemical Development, the International Aid Society for Assistance to Revolutionary Fighters; a pile of money orders which he had sent home from the front–Mariia had saved every one; and the decoration citations.
The decorations themselves lay on the bottom of the basket. He seldom thought of them now except perhaps at such times when he was going through his papers, and again when the wind is blowing outside in the street; it makes you cold, as if an awl were poking the holes in his field shirt over the pockets.
At first Il’ia shoved the papers wherever he could-in the cupboard with the tea things, on the shelf, behind the picture frames. But then he saw that you had to keep things in order, otherwise you’ll get mixed up. And it had been recommended that everyone now should keep his own records. They don’t trust your word for anything. As they say, you can’t file words. So he started this basket filing system; he had set it up this summer during the haymaking.
Putting on his glasses, Il’ia began to lay out the papers. Some papers, sewn together at the corners with brown thread, he placed on his left-these are receipts and paid vouchers. Others-which still need to be paid-to the right. From these latter papers he next pulled out a blue sheet folded in half notices of agricultural taxes and insurance which didn’t bother him-here he was orderly. And as for the grain-the gray sheet of paper-no need to look at it; he’ll deliver it tomorrow.
And there’s no point in his reading this one-still another faded-sheet folded in half. He knew it by heart!
OBLIGATION
For delivery to the state in the year 1946 of meat, milk, sheep’s milk, cheese, eggs, raw materials for tanning,
At the top of the sheet, a rake with cars of grain; below, the seal of the representative of the Ministry of Procurement of Arkhangelsk Oblast, and along the edges-his own seals. His fingerprints. This sheet had been in his hands many times.
He turned the sheet over and over and began to read from the bottom in reverse order.
6.Wool
(a) Sheep’s, semi-coarse, according to standard 900 grams 10% surcharge to kolkhozniks 90 grams Total subject to turnover to state, Wool 990 grams
PAID OFF!
5. Tanning material (hides), quality no lower than 11 grade. (a) Small hides (sheep or goat, by measure no less than 35 square decimeters each, in fresh condition) 0.5 pieces
There is an agreement with Luka Pronin: he will turn in a sheep skin. I promised to go shares.
4. Eggs 30 pieces
In the whole village, two chickens and two roosters. Paid off in money.
3. Sheep’s milk cheese-raw. Blank. Not heard of in Pekashino.
2. Milk. Of standard richness …
Il’ia smiled here each time. He smiled now. Osya, the agent, had been confused. He had put down 328 liters, and then struck it out. Il’ia had no cows. When Anfisa Petrovna was still chairman she had promised to give him a calf, but now there’s hardly hope that anything will come of that. The kolkhoz is lagging behind the plan for cattle raising. Clearly even the children will have to drink tea for maybe a year.
Il’ia didn’t read further. However crafty you are, however much you deceive yourself, whether you read from the end or the middle, it makes no difference. You come to the meat.
“What will we do about the sheep? Will you turn it over to them-or should I hold it back?”
“Better fatten it up first. I got it myself. It’s my sheep.”
Il’ia looked up along the ceiling where flies were buzzing; they hadn’t died yet, the damned things.
“You talk as though we weren’t living together.”
Mariia took the child from her breast, handed it to her daughter, and went into the shed.
“Our sheep, I think, will weigh out in meat about fifty kilograms. So, right away you’d have money. And later I’ll get pay in the forest.”
“I said I won’t give it up.”
“Well, let’s wait until they confiscate our property.”
“Let them come. What’s there to confiscate?”
“Well, you’ll understand some day. I am a party member …
“Oh, yes-a party member! And what the hell did they give you, party member? The party members all ran off and hid.”
Il’ia’s eyes met Valya’s. He smiled at her in embarrassment and nodded at the shed.
“That’s what she knows about things. She thinks they join the party to get a job.”
“But they do join for some reason. I think they could have made you a brigadier. It’s not an especially important job. Maybe a person wouldn’t have to be in the forest?”
To tell the truth, he himself didn’t understand exactly why they hadn’t named him brigadier instead of Mishka Priaslin. There’s no denying, the lad is industrious, knows farming, but if the brigadier is also a blacksmith, then would this be a loss to the kolkhoz?
” All right, all right. We won’t talk about that.”
“OK-and we won’t say any more about the sheep, either.”
“But understand, you idiot,” again Il’ia began to explain. Not for his wife, of course; you couldn’t drive a stake into her head. For their daughter. “The country’s been through such a war that there are shortages everywhere. Now there’s a drought. And don’t the cities have to be fed? You know they don’t reap there, they don’t sow.”
“Well, that’s obvious. And why is it city people can’t do without meat? But we can. just ask me-when did our children last eat meat?”
Il’ia took the papers from the table with both hands, stuffed them into the basket, then grabbed his padded jacket, and, to avoid any more unpleasantness, went outside.
Source: Fedor Abramov, Two Winters and Three Summers (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1984), Chapter IV, pp. 120-123.