Rusalka

CHAPTER 6

PYETR SLEPT, at least, laid his aching head down on his arm and waked in the morning in somewhat less pain than he had been feeling. That encouraged him for a moment, until he heard the crack of thunder and saw the forbidding gray of the sky.

“Damn,” he said, and shut his eyes again, not wanting to move, not believing any longer in anything. Kiev was a dream. Like dreams, it was for people more fortunate. What Pyetr Kochevikov got was a cold bed on cold ground in an endless forest and both he and the boy he was with starving to death in a very stupid series of mistakes.

Mistake to have come this way. Mistake to have hoped, mistake to have expected, mistake to have left the fields at all. Hanging was better than this. Surely it was better than this.

A raindrop hit him in the face. Another did.

“Father Sky,” Sasha said, on his knees, desperate. “Don’t do this.”

“Father Sky isn’t listening,” Pyetr said in a voice more ragged than he had thought. “Father Sky was drinking late last night and he’s in a rotten mood.”

“Please don’t do that!”

The boy was scared as he was. The boy believed in banniks and Forest-things and they had proved as treacherous as the thunder-rolling heavens.

The boy came and helped him to his feet and found his sword for his hand while the chill rain came spatting down through the branches and pattering against the leaves.

The boy found a berrybush while they were walking in the drizzle and the thorns raked him cruelly while he gathered the winter-old black fruit. Blood ran in the rain spatters on the backs of his hands.

“Breakfast,” Sasha said, and Pyetr took a handful and tried to eat, but his throat hurt when the tart flavor ran down, and he had no appetite for it. He felt warm this morning despite the drizzle that slicked the branches and turned the leaf mold treacherous. “Take the coat a while,” he said. “I’m warm from walking.”

But the boy would not. “So am I,” he said; but Pyetr knew he was lying.

He slipped once. It should have hurt. He caught himself, pain-free, giddy with relief. He made a flourish of his hand past Sasha’s white, frightened face, laughed at the heavens and said,

“Let it rain. Father Sky missed us with his lightnings. He’s having a tantrum. Rich men are like that.”

“Be careful,” Sasha begged him; and tried to take his arm, but he flung off Sasha’s hand and walked down the slope, slid to a stop in a clear space and looked up into the rain, blinking stupidly at the drops.

“Pyetr!”

“Old Father,” Pyetr called out, holding up his hand. “One more chance! Best shot!”

“Pyetr!” Sasha came running down and slipped, himself, to one knee.

Pyetr shrugged and spread his arms. “No thunder, even. The old fellow’s shot his bolts. He’s an old householder. He’s thrown all his pots and his brickbats. Now he’s just down to complaining.” He shook his head and watched Sasha get to his feet again, then turned and walked on the way the forest gave them, perhaps the road, or not the road, one could lose it now and never know. It was a ghost, a dream, like distant Kiev.

False, like the promise of gold.

Dangerous, like the warmth that protected him against the rain, that made him think he had no need of the coat. He walked with white daylight coming through the branches and once found himself on his knees, with the boy shaking his wrist and telling him he had to get up, he had to walk. The day passed in memories of branches, of leaf-strewn slopes, of bleak dead trees and the boy, always the boy with him, saying, “Pyetr, Pyetr, come on, you’ve got to keep going—”

And himself saying finally, in the hoarse voice remaining to him, “I’m too tired. I’m too tired, boy,” because suddenly he was, and his head was hurting, and the whole world seemed one never-ending muddle of branches. All the places in this forest had become cruelly the same, one tree and another, one leafy bank and another, one dimly lit stream and another, and the pain was threatening again, less from his side than from his skull. That was what the fall had jolted, and he found himself near blinded.

“Listen,” he said, “this is foolish. It’s near dark.”

“Get up,” Sasha said. “Please, Pyetr Illitch—it’s smoke, don’t you smell it?”

He could smell nothing, with his nose running and his throat so raw. The boy was lying: he was sure that Sasha was lying, only to make him walk.

But he walked, with Sasha holding him up on one side, guiding his wandering steps. They were on clear road again, more leaf-strewn ground among dead trees the bark of which was peeling as if they had died years ago.

And so desperate he was that he could imagine the smell of smoke, and that he could imagine among the dry trees a clear, wind-swept road ahead, and then a gray board shed, a fence, and a gray, ramshackle house, spotted with lichen and bearded with moss like the trees that concealed it.

He stopped, winced with the boy pulling at him, and gripped Sasha’s shoulder. “Speak of bandits—”

“What else can we do? Where else can we go for help?”

Pyetr leaned on his sword and tried to take his arm from Sasha’s shoulder—truth to tell, he had no idea why he was a fool. It only seemed sensible which of them should walk up to that door. But he wobbled badly, and Sasha held on to him and half-carried him down the road, the two of them weaving in their steps. The gray boards and the gray trees blurred together in the twilight as if the barren limbs had grown to the house or the house had grown and died and weathered with the trees.

The closed shutters showed no light. The porch posts leaned, mere gray wood spotted with lichen; the yard was grown up in weeds, slanting down toward more of the forest.

But beyond those trees, they could see from the front gate, was the river, a landing, a bell post, and a boat as decrepit as the house.

“God,” Pyetr said in a painful whisper, “it’s a ferryman’s house. It’s an old ferry. We’ve come back to the road again.”

Pyetr thought about bandits as they passed the gate and walked a bare dirt path that showed usage, headed for the long wooden walk-up to the porch. He thought of the chance of them being murdered, he thought of the terrible things that could happen to both of them, while he leaned against the wall by the door and listened to the boy batter away with his knocking.

“No one’s home,” Sasha said in a voice which had begun to be as hoarse and as desperate as his own.

Pyetr passed a glance up where the latchstring came down. “Evidently they don’t mind visitors,” he said, “and it’s no time for niceties. Probably the ferryman’s in back somewhere. Just pull the string. We’ll invite ourselves. Country manners.”

Sasha pulled the string. The bar came up inside, and the door swung in when he pushed it.

“Hello?” Sasha called out, for fear of startling someone sleeping and perhaps a little deaf. He stood there in the doorway, looking about him at the firelit shelves and the bed and the table and the general clutter of small pots and herb bunches and bits of rope and tackle, all casting shadows from the small fire in the hearth. Warmth and the smell of food gusted out at them. “Hello, anyone? We’re looking for hospitality.”

“Or whatever we can get,” Pyetr muttered at his shoulder, and pushed him across the threshold, himself in no good way to stand. Sasha flung an arm about his left and helped him across to the warmest place in the cottage, the hearthside, where someone’s supper simmered in an iron pot.

It smelled like fish stew. It smelled wonderful. Pyetr was intent only on sitting down there on the warm stones, but Sasha swung the pothook out a little to put his finger in and taste a little. It was indeed fish stew, with turnips.

Pyetr rested back against the fireside with a groan and leaned his head back, saying, “All I own for a drink, boy. Do you find any?”

Sasha felt a pang of doubt about that—kitchen-nipping being a sin of one magnitude and searching the house like a burglar being quite another.

But Pyetr’s condition was excuse enough for pilferage, he was sure. He filled the washing bowl from the water barrel by the door and washed the dirt off his own hands, spattering little pockmarks into the old dirt on the board floor. There was no cloth to dry his hands, and he wiped them finally on his muddy shirt, hearing in his imagination aunt Ilenka’s stinging complaint of this cottage, its debris, its dust-But it was wonderful. It was with its rustic clutter rich as a tsar’s palace in terms of things they needed; and he laid eyes on a bowl and took it back to the fireside, dipping up a little of the stew for Pyetr, and kneeling to put it into his hands.

“I’m looking for the drink,” he said. “Eat what you can.” He thought then that if he was borrowing stew for two people, he ought to add a bit to it, so he pulled down a couple more large turnips from the strings, found a knife on the table and diced them up fine, added a bit more water, a little bit of salt—a touch of dillweed and savory were what it wanted, he decided, after one and the next tastings that amounted to several mouthfuls.

He found the dill hanging in a bunch from a rafter, crushed it in his hands and tossed it in and stirred it; and took a bowl for himself before he swung the hook back full over the fire to boil.

Pyetr had finished his, down to scouring the bowl and licking his finger; and Pyetr said, wistfully, “Can you find that drink at all?”

“I don’t know.” Sasha set his stew down on the hearth and investigated jugs one after the other, staggering, he was so tired, and afraid he might crack one, his hands were so unsteady. He found mostly oils of various sort, and once something that made him sneeze; he was anxious about meddling with things that smelled more like poisons than cooking oil. Untidy housekeeping, he reasoned to himself; simples; poisons to kill vermin: The Cockerel’s shed held such things. Aunt would never approve them in the house; but, then, The Cockerel had too many hands in the kitchen to be proof against mistakes.

He found the trap in the floor, a cellar as dark and cellar-smelling as he feared it would be as he got down on his knees and gingerly peered inside. He could see nothing but the wooden steps, the wooden floor below, the hint of jars along the wall, hanging bits of rope and such…

It was plainly thievery he was contemplating; and there were warders in a house, no matter what Pyetr believed. The hair prickled on his nape as he eased his way down the narrow steps into the damp, cool air, only five or so steps down into the musty dark, a short search of the shelves down below. He found jugs of likely shape, took one into his arms, unstopped and sniffed it.

Indeed. No doubt about this one. No poison and no noxious oil.

He heard something then on the far side of the cellar, a small scratching that might be vermin.

He did not fly up the steps; he was calm and brave and quietly whispered, reasoning with himself that no House-thing was going to object to a jug of vodka if it had not objected to the door opening:

“Please excuse me. My friend really does need it. We’re not thieves.”

He poured a little on the floor for the House-thing, if it was listening. Then he scrambled up the steps and let the trap down gently, his heart thumping with fright.

He felt the fool, then. Talking to rats, Pyetr would say—he wished Pyetr would say, and show some liveliness; but Pyetr looked much beyond jokes at the moment, his dirty, stubbled face lined with pain and patience.

“I’m hurrying,” Sasha said. He found a bowl on the kitchen table and poured, and brought it to Pyetr; he spied a pile of quilts in the corner by the bed and brought them to Pyetr too, heaping them around him against the warm stones while Pyetr drank, cupping the bowl in dirty, bloody hands and looking so weak and so miserable—as if Pyetr was suddenly beginning to sink, the way sick people would when their strength ran out and fever set in.

Someone had to do something soon, he thought. He had doctored horses enough to know that, but the thought of dealing with a wound going bad all but turned his stomach. He hoped for the ferryman returning, hoped he would know better what to do; but at least he could have hot water ready for compresses, and if there was only wormwood and sweet oil somewhere in the house that was a start on things.

So he put water to heat on a second pothook, and sat down a moment with his bowl of cooling stew—not even his sore throat and the prospect in front of him could discourage him from that. Pyetr at least seemed happier and more comfortable, placidly watching him.

But Pyetr looked to be in pain for a moment. Sasha watched him, the spoon in midair. Pyetr said, “It’s all right.” And extraneously, a line between his brows: “What’s in the cellar?”

“I don’t know, stuff. Jars. Turnips.” He almost said, rats; he wanted something to distract Pyetr from his misery, which was what he thought Pyetr wanted. He was afraid, making light of things: it went against his nature. He made the effort, nonetheless. “Something went bump. I came up.”

“I thought you did,” Pyetr said muzzily, and the line left his brow, as if he had been worrying about his quick run up the steps, but, then, he was a little drunk. “Not the owner, then.”

“No,” Sasha assured him, waiting for Pyetr to make some gibe about bogles, but the line came back to Pyetr’s brow and Pyetr’s lips made a white line.

That finished Sasha’s appetite. “I’ve got some water warming,” he said. “Want to wash?”

Pyetr seemed to agree with that. Sasha got up and got a cloth and soaked it for Pyetr to wash his face and hands. And carefully then, delicately, Pyetr not objecting, he worked Pyetr’s coat loose.

Blood soaked the shirt beneath it, repeated old stains and a large, bright new one.

“Wounds do that,” Pyetr said confidently. But Pyetr looked both sick and worried at the sight of it.

“Another drink?” Sasha asked.

Pyetr nodded. Sasha fetched him one, and Pyetr sipped at it slowly, resting his head back against the stones while Sasha untied his belt, pulled up his shirt beneath his arms, and tried to work the bandaging loose.

“Ow!” Pyetr gasped suddenly, and drink slopped from the bowl onto his stomach and rolled down; some had spilled on the bandaging. “Oh, god,” Pyetr moaned, while it soaked in, “oh, god—” He went white then and all but fainted against the fireside stones. He could not hold the bowl any longer. Sasha took it from his hand and Pyetr sank back against the wad of quilts, broken out in sweat.

Sasha’s own hands were shaking. It was a worse wound than anything the horses had ever done to themselves. It was far worse than he knew how to deal with, and he knew absolutely nothing other to do than to soak the bandage free.

“A little tender,” Pyetr gasped, between breaths. “Just let it alone tonight. Morning’s soon enough.”

“It’s going bad,” Sasha said, shivering despite the fire beside him.

“Wounds always get a little fever. It means it’s healing.”

“Not with the horses,” Sasha said. “I’d soak it in warm water and pack it with herbs.”

Pyetr shook his head. “We don’t know who owns that pot of stew. If you go at that again I won’t be fit for anything, and I don’t think that’s—”

Someone was walking outside. Someone slowly stumped up the log walk and Sasha’s heart began to beat with a heavy thump-thump-thump as Pyetr groped after his sword. “Get me on my feet,” Pyetr said, and Sasha, finding no other protection for them, put his shoulder under Pyetr’s good side and heaved, desperately, while Pyetr flailed out after the stonework and got a grip on the mantle.

The bar lifted, the door swung back, and a skinny, thin-bearded old man in a ragged cloak stopped still in the open doorway, firelit against the dark.

“Bandits!” the old man said, indignant. “Thieves!” He had a scowl like a carved devil’s, and he had a stout staff in his hand which he showed every disposition and capability of using.

“No!” Sasha cried, holding Pyetr by the arm half for fear of Pyetr using that sword and half because he was all that was holding Pyetr on his feet. “Please, sir! We’re not thieves. My friend is hurt.”

The old man shifted his grip on his staff and glared at them—one eye seeming better than the other, those hands on the staff gnarled with age but strong enough, with two sharp butt-end blows, to do for a boy and do terrible damage to a man in Pyetr’s condition.

“Drop the sword!” the old man ordered, staff poised. “Drop it!”

“I think we’d better,” Sasha pleaded with Pyetr, whose weight was heavy on his shoulder. “Pyetr, it’s his house, we’ve nowhere to go, do what he says!”

“Drop it!” the old man said again, and angled the butt of the staff perilously toward two unprotected skulls, while Pyetr ebbed slowly, helplessly toward the floor, banging his head on the stones of the fireplace as he sank.

Quite, quite unconscious.

Sasha let him to the quilts and looked up at the old man, past the butt of a staff that trembled a scant arm’s length from his face. “Sir,” he said, trying not to let his teeth chatter, “my name is Alexander Vasilyevitch Misurov. This is Pyetr Illitch Kochevikov, from Vojvoda. We’re not thieves. Pyetr’s hurt. We were coming through the forest—”

“No one honest comes through the forest.”

“We ran away!”

“At his age.” The staff made a threatening jab. “Tell the truth.”

“He was in love with a lady and the lady told lies about him and her husband stabbed him; and I helped him get away.”

“And steal my food and my blankets and make free of my house!”

“Money,” Pyetr murmured, with a weak move of his hand. “I’ve money. Give it to him.”

“Money! What’s to buy here? Do you see anybody? I fish the river and I break my back in my garden and you offer me money!” He poked Sasha’s shoulder with the staff, poked it twice with an attitude that reminded Sasha most uncomfortably of a wife at the town market. “On the other hand—” The staff lowered, thumped against the floor, and Sasha glanced from that point of impact up to the old man’s face, thinking he had never seen a grin like that except on a carved wolf, or eyes like that except on painted devils.

“On the other hand—you don’t have the look of thieves.”

“No, sir. I promise you.”

“Do you know how to work, boy?”

“Yes, sir,” Sasha said on a breath. It sounded like a bargain, it sounded like food and shelter and of a sudden he had at least a small hope for them both.

Except he did not like the old man taking hold of his arm and pulling him up to his feet, or staring him in the eyes until he had the feeling he could not look away. The old man’s fingers were strong. His eyes were watery and dark and they let nothing go that they examined.

“Do you follow instructions, boy?”

“Yes, sir.”

Pyetr tried to sit up, and the staff came down, clang! on the sword Pyetr reached for at their feet.

Sasha dropped to his knees between that stick and Pyetr’s skull; and stayed there, his heart pounding.

But of a sudden the fire hissed, stew boiling over apace.

“Get that!” the old man said. “Fool!” And Sasha jumped for it, wrapped his sleeve over his palm and pulled the pothook around to rescue the stew from the heat, as the old man collected Pyetr’s sword from under the heel of his staff, took it across the room and swept the scraps of the turnips from the table with the sword edge.

“I see. You eat my supper, you steal my stores—”

“I only added more turnips, sir, it seemed with two more of us—”

“I’ll have my supper,” the old man said, kicked the bench up to the table, set his staff and Pyetr’s sword against the wall, and thumped the table between them with his bony knuckles. “Boy!”

“He’s crazy,” Pyetr whispered, trying without success to push himself up against the stones. “Be careful.”

“Boy!”

Sasha grabbed a bowl from the untidy stack, grabbed up the ladle and filled it full from the pot, brought it and a spoon to the old man, and while he ate, poured him a little drink into a second bowl.

“Knew where that was, did you?” the old man snarled. “Thief!”

“I beg your pardon, sir.” Sasha made a nervous little bow, and stood with his hands behind him while the old man took a sip.

The old man’s wispy eyebrows lifted a little and came down again. “What did you do to this?”

“Salt, sir. Just salt. A little dill. It—” But it seemed presumptuous to say it had needed it. Sasha shut his mouth and bit his lips.

The eyebrows moved again, not in so profound a frown this time. The old man took another and a third spoonful and seemed quite pleased with it. He had a drink, a fourth spoonful, and finally he picked up the bowl and drank it dry, leaving pale drops on his wispy beard.

“Another,” he said, thrusting the bowl toward Sasha’s hands.

Sasha filled it again; and the old man took his spoon to it.

“Walked clear from Vojvoda,” the old man said without looking up.

“Yes, sir.”

“Him too.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Stabbed in Vojvoda.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Stubborn fellow.”

“Yes, sir.”

The old man let his fist fall onto the table. “My name is Uulamets. Ilya Uulamets. This is my house. This is my land. Only my word counts here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I take it you want your friend taken care of.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Food, doctoring, that kind of thing.”

“Yes, sir—If you can, sir.” Sasha was at once hopeful and very uneasy. It was much too fortunate. “Do you know doctoring? I’m good with horses, I—”

The old man rapped on the table, and took another spoonful. “Doctoring, herbs, what you like, boy, trust me I know what I’m doing. But there’s a fee for my services. There’s a fee for what you eat and what your friend eats, supposing he survives. There’s a fee for my blankets and my fire and the nuisance he poses me. You I have use for. Shut up,” he said, the instant Sasha opened his mouth. “Do as you’re told and don’t be a bother to me or I’ll turn you both out in the cold and the drizzle, and how will your friend fare then, hmmm?—How do you think he’d fare?—Die, wouldn’t he?—Would you like that?”

“No, sir,” he said, and swallowed at a lump in his throat.

“Keep that crazy man away from me,” Pyetr called out from the fireside behind him. “Let me alone. I don’t need his help.”

“Please don’t listen to him,” Sasha said. “He’s fevered. He’s been fevered for days.”

“I don’t need his help!” Pyetr shouted, and made to get up.

“Excuse me,” Sasha said with a hurried bow and ran and laid hands on Pyetr only in time to keep him from hurting himself. “Please,” he whispered, “please, Pyetr, don’t—”

“That old man’s crazy,” Pyetr whispered furiously. “Keep him away from me, that’s all, I’m all right—”

“I’ll watch him,” he said, but Pyetr just leaned the shoulder of his bad side against the stonework and said,

“He’s not touching me.”

While the old man, Uulamets, slopped more vodka into his bowl and got up from his bench and rummaged on a nearby shelf, found a bottle and poured a blackish liquid into the same bowl—medicine, as Sasha supposed, watching the old man bring it toward them.

“I’m not drinking that,” Pyetr said.

“This is for the pain,” Uulamets said. “There will be pain.” He made then as if to pour it on the floor, and Sasha sprang up with a cry and righted the bowl, which Uulamets let him have.

“Please,” Sasha said to Pyetr, kneeling down again, offering it. “Please drink it.”—Because there was nothing else to do and no one else to ask and no other hope but the old man’s medicines, with the fever starting to set into the wound. “You’ll die, else.”

Pyetr frowned, reached after the cup of black stuff. He tossed it off in a single mouthful and gave a sudden shudder, as if it tasted as bad as it looked, then glanced around where Uulamets was clattering about in a cupboard, with a rattle of knives.

“What’s he doing?” Pyetr asked. “Boy—what’s he after?”

Sasha did not want to answer. He saw what Uulamets was taking from the cupboard, the array of knives and bowls and pots and boxes, and he felt Pyetr sinking against his arm and heard him saying, “Stop him, boy, for god’s sake, don’t let him cut on me—”

But one had to, sometimes, horse-doctoring, Sasha understood that. He held on to Pyetr as carefully as he could until Pyetr’s head dropped and Pyetr went half-dazed, he laid him out and helped Uulamets cut away the bandages.

“They’re stuck, sir,” he said, wiping his nose quickly on his sleeve. “Please, be careful.”

“Do you tell me my business? Boil water. Hot! Make yourself useful.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, shoved the hook with the water pot back over the fire and was quickly back to be sure Uulamets was doing nothing crazy.

“Front and back?” Uulamets asked. “It went entirely through?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Sword?”

“I think so, sir.”

The old man muttered to himself, and pressed, and Pyetr screamed.

“Not good,” the old man said, but Sasha could have told that for himself. Uulamets soaked a bit of moss with oil and set it on the remaining square of bandages, got up and poured more vodka into a bowl.

And drank it, sip by sip, while he selected this and that from the cupboards.

Sasha dared not a word, only folded Pyetr’s limp hand in his and sniffed and mopped his running nose and shivered, despite the fire, despite the old man’s promises.

It was bad, he knew that it would be when Uulamets came back to lift the bandage off; he wanted to shut his eyes, but he had told Pyetr he would not.