In the days of the gentry, it had been a farmstead. Immediately beyond the orchard there had been six dessiatins of good fields, a big new threshing floor, two cow-houses, and a little cottage built in the old style. The thatched roof, sloping on four sides and green with moss, hung low over the tiny dim windows so that the cottage frowned at the world like its master, old Danka Khamenok, whose head seemed to have grown into the shabby old winter hat which, if he was to be believed, had once been an astrakhan hat bought in the city.

That hat was still lying somewhere in the attic, but Danka Khamenok was buried on a grassy hillock under the pines. All that was left of the farm-stead was the orchard, a creaking sweep over the framework of the well, and the small cottage.

Of the Khamenok family only the daughter-in-law, Halya, and her children, a boy and a girl, remained in the cottage.

It was a serene evening in August. The sun had set. (Halya’s son, Antos, had gone to the thresher in the field. The leaves on the crown of the old linden-tree behind the kitchen-garden had lost their glow end the starlings had flown away, taking their noisy chatter to the village. After the evening milking, the cow was lying on a bed of fresh straw under a shed behind the porch. In the cottage, black-haired little Sonechka was sitting at the table and washing down a piece of bread with fresh milk. Like all children who tended cattle, her thin, tanned legs were covered with stubble scratches. She had washed them in cold water from the well, and now they were tingling all over. She kept rubbing them against each other and swinging them under the high stool.

Sonechka was in a talkative mood.

"Mummy," she said, "Lyonya Stepanov teased me today. ‘You’re gentry,’ he said. ‘You own a farm-stead.’ Why did he say that? Why did he laugh at me?"

Halya was leaning against a small cupboard, half sitting on it. On the wall above her head was an old clock with some foreign words on its dusty face. In the many years that it had been hanging here no one had bothered to find out what they meant. But then, only the men-folk and Halya knew how to tell the time. Her mother-in-law bad lived seventy years without ever thinking of the date, let alone the time. The minute hand had fallen off during the war and the hour hand had stopped two or three weeks ago.

It was harvest time and Halya’s arms, tanned to the elbows, were aching with weariness. She felt as if she was still in the field. Heavy sheaves, bound by nimble fingers, passed endlessly before her eyes, piling up on the stubble. The rattle of the reaper, words, snatches of song, laughter, the murmur of the rye and the rustle of straw still echoed in her ears.

"Mummy, why?"

Halya tried to remember what her daughter bad been saying.

"Why what?" she asked, puzzled.

But Sonechka provided the answer herself.

"He said they live in the village and we live on a farm," she repeated through a full mouth. "He said Grandfather and Daddy were gentry and that I am, too."

"Tell him he's a foolish boy," Halya said in a tired, dull voice. She wanted to add something, but stopped. Again her ear caught the hubbub that for a moment bad died away. Again, as she stood here under the clock, a part of her seemed to be still out in the fields. "Get on with your supper, dear," she said. "Finish it quickly. It's time you went to bed."

"Are you going anywhere, Mummy?"

"I’ll soon be back.’

Beyond the cherry-trees, Halya stopped and leaned her hands and breast against the grey cross-bar of the old fence. She looked out over the fields, her feet wet with the cold dew, her gaze fixed somewhere far, far away. Grasshoppers ware chirping in the wheat, which spread like a sea right up to the cherry-trees. Farther off to the right stood great piles of flax still warm with the sun and as fragrant as freshly crushed oil seeds. High above the wheat, the flax and the rich, calm earth floated the full, contented moon.

But all this meant little, it was all meant to carry the distant drone over the fields. Somewhere out there he was sitting behind the steering wheel, he, to whom alone she longed to cry with all the pain in her heart, with all her deep sorrow:

"Ser-yo-zha-a! Ser-yozh-ka-a!"

Long ago he had ceased to be Seryozha, and had become Sergei.⁽¹⁾ He had surely long forgotten, erased from his memory all thought of the past. Now he was Seryozha for somebody else. And you, foolish one, you can cry your heart out till it bleeds, remembering, the past. . . . But there had been a time when he had been

Seryozha for her. But that was long, long ago! No, no, it seemed only yesterday.

Halya was just growing out of girlhood when the tailors who made sheepskin coats, two burly, morose brothers, came to their village of Garositsa from Kostyuki. Both wore fine sheepskin coats, as though to disprove the old saying that a shoemaker always goes barefoot. Both wore huge hats that seemed to have been made of whole sheepskins, both were in bast shoes and both had moustaches.

"Girls, look! The Torbas are here!" cried one of the girls spinning tow, as she glanced out of the window.

The tailors were Tymokh and Tikhon Torba and people who knew them only slightly could never tell one from the other. "And there's a lad with them, girls! My but he's handsome! And he's got an accordion!"

Indeed, a young fellow was walking with the tailors – a mere boy! He wore a short jacket, topboots, and had an accordion slung over his shoulder. One of the girls rapped on the window with her spindle. He must have heard for he turned, waved a "Good day!" to them with a laugh.

He might have come in, but one of the Torbas, the one carrying a yardstick, also looked round, said something and the lad moved on. It was strange to the girls, and to everybody else in the village for that matter, that one of the Torbas should have such a son – so fair, so well knit, so unlike these two burly, moustachioed brothers.

He turned out to be their nephew, an orphan from a distant village. His name was Sergei, and his surname – Yurochka – was as odd as that of his uncles, but it suited him. So some people called him Seryozha and others Yurochka.⁽²⁾

What a gay, attractive lad he was, that Yurochka! His uncles, big as they were, could settle down in the smallest cottage. They would take off their hats and sheepskin coats and, with only their moustaches to uphold their dignity, set to work, breathing hard over their sheepskins. They were a silent pair. But for Yurochka, any room was too small. Not for him alone, of course, but for him and his accordion. Sometimes his patience did not last till the evening; he would stick his needle in his shirt, wind the thread round it, glance at his uncles and reach for his accordion. He liked to have his things in order. His accordion was not kept any old way, but was always wrapped up in his aunt's shawl. He would untie the shawl and there his accordion would be, always polished and shining. The moment he would start playing the room would seem to grow bigger.

He would play a dance, a second one, and his uncles would listen in silence. Then the elder Torba, Tymokh, the one who always carried the yardstick, would remark in his deep bass:

"Maybe that's enough, Sergei? Maybe people don't like it?"

Yurochkaҳ reply would be to swing from a waltz into Mikita.

That would instantly bring the spirit of youth into the room. As for the girls, they were always ready to spring up from their seats and go into a whirlwind dance, wide skirts flying. The master himself, if not too old, would start beating time with his foot. Even the grandmother, so old that she could remember the corvée, would peer down from her bed on the Russian stove. And Yurochka would shake his forelock and sing:

Mikita milks the cow,
And his missus feeds the sow.
Mikita! Mikita!
Put a skirt on, Mikita!

A fine, ringing voice he had, that accordion player.

His uncles were the only ones to listen in silence, without even pausing in their work. But you would hardly say they were not enjoying it, especially if you knew that it was they who had bought the accordion for Sergei.

That had been a gay month in Garositsa. They had dances every evening! It was a pity that there were not enough sheepskins to keep them there the whole winter!

Yes, it had been a wonderful time for everybody . . . . for Halya especially.

But that was all long ago.