The snowy Siberian winter arrived. The river was locked with ice, the hosts reached 57° C. below zero, but there was no wind, and the children easily endured the cold.
I remember how overjoyed they were by the first snow: how they played tirelessly at snowballs; how they rolled, as if they were still haymaking, in the soft downy snowdrifts which had rapidly piled up round the house; how they made a huge snowman taller than Zoya herself. I could hardly get them in for dinner—they came back with glowing cheeks and fell ravenously on their porridge and milk and rye bread.
We bought the children winter boots of the kind worn in Siberia; Anatoly Petrovich built a fine sledge; and every day Zoya and Shura spent hours tobogganing, shooting down the hill at breakneck speed. Now they would pull each other along, now they would sit on the sledge together, Zoya in front, Shura behind, gripping his sister with his short chubby arms in red mittens.
My husband and I were busy the whole day. When I left the house of a morning, I used to tell Zoya: "Don't forget: there's porridge in the stove and milk in the pot. See that Shura behaves himself. Don't let him sit on the table, or he will fall off and hurt himself and start crying. Be good, play together and don't quarrel."
And in the evening when, we returned home from school Zoya would greet us with the words, "Everything is all right! We were good!"
The room is in complete disorder, but the children's faces are so happy and content that you have not the heart to scold them. A two-storied house, I see, has been erected from chairs and boxes piled on top of one another and covered with a blanket. The most unexpected things turn up in the most unlikely places: I almost tread on my husband's shaving mirror, and the next moment he trips over an upturned saucepan. In the middle of the room, in a heap with my cups and a plate, are the children's simple toys: a tin soldier, a horse on wheels with his mane half torn off, a one-armed doll, some papers, ribbons, blocks of wood.
"Today we have not broken anything," Zoya reports. "Only Shura scratched Manya on both cheeks. She cried a bit, but I gave her some jam and she stopped. Mum, tell Shura not to fight any more or we shan't play with him again."
Shura, who really is growing up into a little bantam, looks at me guiltily.
"I won't do it again…I didn't mean to scratch her," he says rather uncertainly.
We used to spend long evenings grouped round the table or near the stove, where the fire blazed cheerfully away. They were good evenings, they were! But even then we could not devote our time entirely to our children: I, and especially Anatoly Petrovich, had a lot of work left ever to do in the evenings. And our children came to know the meaning of the word "work" at an early age.
"Mummy's working…Daddy's working…
That meant complete quiet, which one must not disturb with quarrelling or questions or banging and running about. Sometimes the children would crawl under the table and play quietly there—you would not hear a sound from them for hours. As once in Solovyanka, a snowstorm would howl at the window, whining among the branches of the thick pine tree which grew just by the house, singing its plaintive and mournful song in the chimney. But in Solovyanka I had been alone, while here was Anatoly Petrovich, reading a book or checking his pupils' exercises, and Zoya and Shura, pottering about and whispering quietly. Yes, we were a loving, happy family!
Many years later, when they were already at school, my children loved to recall those evenings in the faraway Siberian village. True, while we were living at Sitkino Shura was too small—he was only four and a half—and his memories, though pleasant, had grown rather confused. But Zoya remembered those evenings clearly and vividly.
Finishing my work or laying it aside until it was time for the children to go to bed, I would draw up closer to the fire, and our "evening" would begin.
"Tell us a story," the children would ask.
"What is there to tell? You know all the fairy tales by heart already."
"That doesn't matter. Tell us something!"
And then it would start: the Golden Cockerel and Kolobok, Grey Wolf and Tsarevich Ivan, Sister Alyonushka and Brother Ivanushka. Who did not visit us on those long winter evenings! But their greatest favourite was the tale of Vasilisa the Beautiful.
"Once upon a time. . ." I would repeat for almost the hundredth time, and Zoya and Shura would look at me as if they had never heard the story before.
Sometimes Anatoly Petrovich would tear himself away from his work and join in the conversation, and the children would listen to his stories with special interest. This quite often happened unexpectedly. Sometimes when the children seemed to have forgotten all about us grownups, and were sitting in the corner quietly discussing their own affairs, Anatoly Petrovich would suddenly push his books aside, go over to the stove, sit down on the low bench next to it, take Shura onto one knee, Zoya onto the other, and unhurriedly begin, "And I remember on that score…
And the children's faces would light up at once with curiosity and expectation.: What story had Father in store for them?
I remember one such occasion. The children had heard a lot of talk of how the river would flood in the spring. In these parts floods were no joke: they would carry away houses, drown the cattle and submerge whole villages for several days. We newcomers had heard a good deal about these terrible floods.
"What shall we do then?" Shura asked Zoya once, after listening to such talk.
"We shall leave home, get into a boat and float. Or we'll run away into the hills."
A minute was spent in thoughtful silence.
"The water will come and drown everything," said Zoya, shivering as if from cold. "Shura, are you afraid?" "What about you?"
''I'm not."
"Well, neither am I."
Shura stood up, walked about the room unhurriedly, imitating his father, and added aggressively, "Let the flood come! I'm not afraid! I'm not afraid of anything!"
And at that point Anatoly Petrovich put in his usual, "And I remember on that score. . ." and told this story:
"Some sparrows were sitting on a branch and quarrelling about which one of the beasts was the most terrible.
"'The most terrible of all is the ginger cat,' said a sparrow without a tail. Last autumn the cat had nearly caught him—the sparrow had just managed to escape, but had lost his tail, all the same.
"'Boys are worse,' said another sparrow, 'they rob our nests and shoot us with slingshots…'
'You can fly away from little boys,' a third sparrow piped up, 'but there is no escape from the black kite. He is the most terrible of all.'
"And at that moment a very young and yellow-beaked sparrow chirruped out (Anatoly Petrovich began to talk in a thin voice), 'But I am not afraid of anything! I don't care about the cats or little boys or black kites! I'll eat them all up myself!'
"And while he was chirruping a big bird flew over the branch and cawed loudly. The sparrows nearly died of fright. Some of them flew away at top speed, others hid themselves in the leaves, but the bold little sparrow, frightened out of his wits, dropped to the ground and hopped across the grass. The big bird snapped his beak and hurled himself at the little sparrow, and the poor little fellow tore along as fast as he could go, and dived into a rat hole.
"And there, curled up in a ball, slept an old hamster rat. The sparrow got even more frightened, but decided: 'Well, he'll eat me if I don't eat him first!' And he gives the hamster a peck on the nose! 'What's this?' says the hamster in surprise and opens one eye (Anatoly Petrovich screwed up his eyes, yawned, and went on in a deep bass voice). 'Oh, it's you? Hungry, are you? Here, have a peck of grain.'
"The little sparrow felt ashamed of himself, and began to complain to the hamster, 'The black kite wanted to eat me!'
'Huh, the villain!' said the hamster. 'Well, come on, let's have a talk with him.'
"The hamster rat started to climb out of his hole, and the little sparrow hopped along behind. He was very frightened and sorry and vexed: What ever had he boasted for? The hamster climbed out of his hole, and the little sparrow peeped out after him and gasped in horror: just in front of him sat a big black bird, looking at him threateningly. The little sparrow took one glance and fell right over with fright. And the black bird cawed, and all the sparrows laughed! Because it was not the black kite at all, but Old Auntie… "
"Growl" shouted Zoya and Shura in one voice.
"Of course it was a crow. 'Now, you little braggart,' said the hamster to the sparrow, 'what you need is a good trouncing for your boasts! Well, let it pass, bring me some grain and my winter coat, it seems to be getting rather cold.'
"The hamster put on his winter coat and began to whistle tunes. The sparrow was the only one who wasn't very cheerful. In his shame he crept into the thickest bush he could find."
"That's the way it goes," Anatoly Petrovich added after a pause. "Now drink your milk and go to bed."
The children stood up reluctantly.
"Was the story about me?" asked Shura sheepishly.
"The story was about a sparrow," answered his father, hiding a smile.
Many years later I chanced upon that tale in the works of Alexei Tolstoy. As a boy Anatoly Petrovich had apparently read it in a children's magazine and remembered it almost word for word.
Next: An Indelible Impression