"Zoya! Shura! Where have you got to? Come quickly. Mummy's arrived!" I heard a familiar excited, joyful voice.
"Why, we were beginning to lose hope of ever seeing you," said Grandma Mavra Mikhailovna, taking me in her arms. "The children are homesick. Especially Zoya. She is a big girl now—you won't know her. She's so restless. She was afraid you would never come."
"Well, how was the journey?" asked my father, addressing his remark half to me and half to the carter, who was unharnessing the horse.
"Good enough, but raining all the way. Lyubov Timofeyevna here has got herself a bit wet. And I was driving the horse for all I was worth, to get your daughter here quickly. So now, Timofei Semyonovich, you'll have to stand me a spot of something."
While the kindly, talkative carter was unharnessing the horse, my father unloaded my simple belongings, and the neighbour's boy dashed off to find Zoya and Shura. Grandma had already lighted the samovar and was bustling round the table. Neighbours began coming in as soon as they heard that Timofei Semyonovich's daughter, the one who used to teach the village children at school, had arrived from Moscow.
"How's life in Moscow? How are you getting on, fit and well? And how is Anatoly Petrovich? We are all in the collective farm now, almost the whole village. Not many individual farmers are left, we're all in the kolkhoz now."
"And how are you doing?"
"Fair enough. If we do our work we won't be so badly off!"
There was so much news that I had not the time to be surprised at each separate piece. How everything had changed! I was hardly inside the house and had already heard so much that was new! Tractors, of which Aspen Woods had only recently heard as a kind of miracle, had already appeared, and even combines. The first day the extraordinary new machines arrived, they said, the whole village had turned out to stare at them.
"It's sheer joy to watch them work!" I hear. "Just think, they cleared a whole field in one day!"
"Now, folks, you with your news are not giving the girl a chance to rest after her journey!" chimes in my father jealously.
"That's right, have a nice rest, Lyubov Timofeyevna. We'll tell you all about it later," responds someone awkwardly.
To be quite honest, I was not listening very attentively to the news, however surprising. I was brimming over with impatience to know where my children were. Where had they got to?
I went out into the garden, where every branch, every leaf still trembled, letting fall occasional drops of rain. As I looked about me I was steeped in memories.
The old house had been burnt down in 1917, and this new one was considered the finest in the village. Its log walls were boarded and painted a dark-cherry colour; the windows and the high porch were decorated with carving. Our house seemed especially tall because it stood on a mound, and there were quite ten steps up to the porch. In the last years the front garden had spread out, and the slightly faded walls of the house could hardly be seen now behind the acacia and lilac bushes. My favourite poplars and birch trees had grown even taller. They were lovely, washed clean by the rain. The sun peeped out, and sparkling rainbows glowed in the last drops clinging to the leaves.
I had watered that lilac and acacia myself some thirteen years ago, when I was a young lass. There was no recognizing them now—the bushes had grown up into a solid wall. And I had grown up too and was the mother of two children.
But where were they, those children of mine?
And then I saw them. There was a band of children tearing down the road, with Zoya at their head and Shura bringing up the rear, hardly managing to keep up. Zoya was the first to see me.
"Mama! Mama has come!" she shouted, and dashed up to me.
We hugged each other hard.
Then I turned to Shura. He was standing quite near, under a tree, staring at me. On meeting my glance he suddenly grasped the trunk of a young ash and began to shake it for all he was worth. Raindrops showered down on us. Shura was thoroughly upset by this. He flung both his arms round me and buried his face in my dress.
We were in a ring of ruddy, sunburnt boys and girls—black-haired and flaxen, freckled and without freckles, with scratched hands and legs. You could see at once that they were a hardy lot, fond of running about, swimming and climbing trees. They were all neighbours' children—Shura Podymov, Sanya and Volodya Filatov, chubby Shura Kozharinova and her little brother Vasya, Yezhik and Vanya Polyanski. And they were all surveying me with shy curiosity.
"I shan't be playing any more today! 'Cause Mama has come!" announced Zoya solemnly.
And the children trailed away to the garden gate.
Taking Zoya and Shura by the hand I went indoors with them, to Grandad and Grandma, who were already waiting for us at the table.
When you live constantly with your children the changes which take place in them are not so noticeable and surprising. But now, after a long separation, I could not take my eyes off my children and was finding something new in them every minute.
Zoya had grown very much. She had become quite thin, and her big grey eyes seemed to glow in her dark face. Shura had stretched up and grown thinner too, but he was very strong for his six years: he could carry a pail of water from the well without difficulty, and used to help Grandma when she was washing—by carrying the big bath of linen to the brook.
"Our Shura's quite a man," said Grandmother, looking at him proudly.
At first the children followed me everywhere, not letting me out of sight for a minute.
"We shall be leaving with you? You won't leave us behind any more?" they kept demanding, looking at me hard.
"Is it really so bad here?"
"No, but it's so lonely without you. And without Daddy. Please, don't leave us behind any more! You'll take us, won't you? Say you will!"
During that winter Zoya and Shura had had scarlet fever. They did not meet their friends for about three months; their only company had been Grandad and Grandma. No wonder the children had acquired a "grown-up" manner of speaking. And it was funny to hear how solemnly and weightily Zoya talked.
"Little boys should not smoke," she told the boys next door, in weighty, measured tones, just like Grandma. "Isn't there enough trouble without your setting the house on fire?"
Another time I heard her say to a friend:
"Paranya, what are you speaking like the backwoods folk for? You should try and listen how grownups talk."
Once Shura happened to break a cup and did not own up. Zoya looked straight at him and frowned.
"Why didn't you tell the truth? You should never lie!" she reproved him severely from the height of her eight short years.
Not a day apart did we spend that summer. We walked across the fields together, and down to the brook, together we helped Grandma with the house, and we even slept side by side. And we just could not reach the end of all we had to say to each other.
"Will I go to a Moscow school in the autumn?" asked Zoya. "Won't they laugh at me for reading badly? They'll say: you can see she is from the country, hark how she reads! You tell them that I was ill all the winter. Don't forget to tell them that, will you?"
"I shall go to school too," said Shura. "I don't want to be left alone. I want to go with Zoya."
They had become even closer friends. Even before, they had rarely compliained of one another. Now they made up all their quarrels and disagreements between themselves. They always made peace quickly after a tiff, and would always stand up for one another.
Grandma told me this story. Not long before my arrival, brother Sergei's wife and her children, Nina and Valery, had visited Aspen Woods. The days were hot and the nights stuffy. It was decided that Anna Vladimirovna and her children should spend the night in the hayloft. Zoya and Shura went there too. They lay down to sleep. And suddenly Shura who was lying near the edge decided it would be fun to frighten the guests. He covered his head and dived into the hay…and the stillness of the night was broken by a mysterious hissing.
"Mum, do you hear? It's a snake!" said Nina, in a frightened whisper.
"Nonsense. It can't be."
Shura burst out laughing, waited a little, and the hissing began again. Realizing what was going on, Auntie Anya said strictly:
"Shura, you are keeping us awake! Go back to your room and hiss there, if you want to."
Shura went obediently to the house. Zoya got up to follow him.
"Zoya, and where are you off to? You stay here."
"No, now you have sent Shura away, I won't stay either," answered Zoya.
And it was always like that: they always stood up for each other. But this did not prevent Shura from shouting angrily sometimes, when Zoya told him off:
"Go away! Let me alone! I'll do as I like!"
"No, you won't, I won't allow it!" Zoya would answer calmly.
Next: Together Again