The creature kept disappearing and appearing again. Behind them, on the right, on the left. And every now and then it made a noise like a cough . . . or a laugh.
'It's laughing!' Romka shouted through his tears.
It disappeared. Ksyusha stopped beside an immense pine tree, clutching Romka tight against her. Her little brother had given up on sissy stuff like that a long time ago, but this time he didn't struggle, just pressed his back against his sister, put his hands over his eyes in fear and repeated quietly over and over again:
'I'm n-not afraid, I'm n-not afraid. There's no one there.'
'There's no one there,' Ksyusha confirmed. 'And you stop that whining! The wol . . . the doggy had puppies here. She was just driving us away from her puppies. All right? We're going home now.'
'Let's go!' Romka agreed and took his hands away from his eyes. 'Oh, the puppies!'
His fear disappeared instantly the moment he saw the cubs coming out of the bushes. There were three of them – grey with big foreheads and soft eyes.
'P-puppies!' Romka exclaimed in delight.
Ksyusha jerked to one side in panic. The pine she was standing against wouldn't let her go – her calico dress was stuck to the resin on its bark. Ksyusha tugged harder and the cloth tore with a crack and came unstuck.
Then she saw the wolf standing behind her, smiling.
'We have to climb up the tree . . .' Ksyusha whispered.
The wolf laughed.
'Does she want us to play with the puppies?' Romka asked hopefully.
The wolf shook its head. As if it was answering: 'No, no. I want the puppies to play with you . . .'
And then Ksyusha started shouting – so loudly and piercingly that even the wolf took a step backwards and wrinkled up its muzzle.
'Go away, go away!' Ksyusha shouted, forgetting that she was already a big, brave girl.
'Don't shout like that,' she heard a voice say behind her. 'You'll wake up the entire forest . . .'
The children turned round with renewed hope. Standing beside the cubs was a woman – beautiful, with black hair, barefoot and wearing a long linen dress.
The wolf growled menacingly.
'Don't be silly,' said the woman. She leaned down and picked up one of the cubs – it dangled limply in her hands, as if it had fallen asleep. The other two froze on the spot. 'Now who do we have here?'
Paying no more attention to the children, the wolf moved sullenly towards the woman, who started chanting:
Dense wolf 's thickets dark with fear,
There's no way you can hide in here . . .
The wolf stopped.
The truth and lie I both can see,
Now, who do you look like to me?
. . . the woman concluded, looking at the wolf.
It bared its teeth.
'Ai-ai-ai . . .' said the woman. 'Now what are we going to do?'
'Go . . . a . . .way,' the wolf barked. 'Go . . . a . . .way . . .witch.'
The woman dropped the cub on the soft moss. As if they had suddenly woken from a trance, the cubs dashed across to the wolf in panic and jostled under its belly.
Three blades of grass, a birch-bark strip,
And one wolfberry from a branch,
A drop of blood, of tears a drip,
And skin of goat, of hair a lock:
I have mixed them in my crock,
Brewed my potion in advance . . .
The wolf began backing away, with the cubs following.
You have no strength, you have no chance,
My spell will pierce you like a lance
. . . the woman declared triumphantly.
Then four grey bolts of lightning – one large and three small – seemed to flash from the clearing into the bushes. Tufts of grey fur and shreds of skin were left swirling in the air. And there was a sudden sharp smell, as if a whole pack of dogs was standing there, drying off after the rain.
'Aunty, are y-you a w-witch?' Romka asked in a hushed voice.
The woman laughed. She walked up to them and took them by the hand.
'Come along.'
The hut wasn't standing on chicken legs, like the one in the fairy tale, and Romka was disappointed. It was a perfectly ordinary log house with small windows and a tiny porch.
'Have you got a b-bathhouse here?' Romka asked, looking around.
'Why do you want a bathhouse?' the woman replied. 'Do you want to get washed?'
'F-first of all you have to heat up the b-bathhouse really hot, then f-feed us, before you can eat us,' Romka said seriously.
Ksyusha tugged on his hand. But the woman didn't take offence – she laughed.
'I think you're confusing me with Baba-Yaga, aren't you? Do you mind if I don't heat up the bathhouse? I haven't got one anyway. And I'm not going to eat you.'
'No, I don't mind,' Romka said, relieved.
The inside of the house didn't look like a place any self-respecting Baba-Yaga could live either. There was a clock with dangling weights ticking on the whitewashed wall, a beautiful chandelier with velvet tassels, and a small Philips television standing on a shaky dresser. There was a Russian stove too, but it was heaped up with all sorts of clutter, and it was obvious that it was a very long time since any bold young heroes or little children had been roasted in it. The only thing with a serious and forbidding look to it was a large bookcase full of old books. Ksyusha went over and looked at the spines of the books. Her mother had always told her that the first thing a cultured person should do in someone else's house was to look at her host's books, and then at everything else.
But the books were worn and she could hardly make out the titles, and she didn't understand even the ones she could read, although they were all in Russian. Her mother had books like that too: 'Helminthology', 'Ethnogenesis' . . . Ksyusha sighed and walked away from the bookcase.
Romka was already sitting at the table and the witch was pouring hot water from a white electric kettle into his cup.
'Would you like a cup of tea?' she asked in a kind voice. 'It's good, made from forest herbs . . .'
'It is g-good,' Romka confirmed, although he was more concerned with dipping hard little bread rings into honey than drinking his tea. 'S-sit down, Ksyusha.'
Ksyusha sat down and accepted a cup politely.
The tea really was good. The witch drank some herself, smiling and looking at the children.
'Are we going to turn into little goats when we've drunk our tea?' Romka suddenly asked.
'Why?' the witch asked in surprise.
'Because you'll put a spell on us,' he explained. 'You'll turn us into little goats and eat us up.'
Clearly he did not completely trust their mysterious rescuer yet.
'Now, why would I want to turn you into smelly little goats and then eat you?' the witch asked indignantly. 'If I wanted to eat you, I'd eat you as you are, without turning you into anything else.'
Romka pouted sulkily, and Ksyusha hissed:
'Drink your tea and be quiet! Some wizard or other . . .'
They didn't turn into goats, the tea tasted good, and the bread rings and honey tasted even better. The witch asked Ksyusha all about how she was doing in school. She agreed that fourth grade was absolutely terrible, not like third grade at all. She scolded Romka for slurping his tea. She asked Ksyusha how long her brother had had a stammer. And then she told them she wasn't a witch at all. She was a botanist, and collected all sorts of rare herbs in the forest. And, of course, she knew which herbs the wolves were afraid of.
'But why did the wolf talk?' Romka asked doubtfully.
'It didn't talk at all,' the botanist-witch retorted. 'It barked, and you thought it was talking. Isn't that right?'
Ksyusha thought about it and decided that was the way it had really been.
'I'll show you to the edge of the forest,' said the woman. 'You can see the village from there. And don't come into the forest any more, or the wolves will eat you!'
Romka thought for a moment and then
offered to help her gather herbs. Only she would have to give him a special herb to keep the wolves away, so they wouldn't eat him. And one to keep bears away, just in case. And she could give him one to keep lions away too, because the forest here was just like in Africa.
'No herbs for you!' the woman said strictly. 'They're very rare herbs, in the Red Book of threatened species. You can't just go pulling them up.'
'I know about the Red Book,' Romka said, delighted. 'Tell me more, please.'
The woman looked at the clock and shook her head. Well-mannered Ksyusha immediately said it was time to go.
The woman gave each of the children a piece of honeycomb to take with them and showed them to the edge of the forest – it turned out to be very close.
'And don't you set foot in the forest again!' the woman repeated sternly. 'If I'm not there, the wolf will eat you.'
As they headed down the hill towards the village, the children looked back several times.
At first the woman was standing there, watching them walk away. But then she disappeared.
'She is a witch really, isn't she, Ksyusha?' Romka asked.
'She's a botanist!' Ksyusha said, taking the woman's side. Then she exclaimed in surprise: 'You're not stammering any more!'
'I am stam-stam-stammering!' said Romka, playing the fool. 'I didn't really need to stammer before, I was just joking.'
CHAPTER 1
WHERE DO WE get the idea that milk straight from the cow tastes good?
It must be something we learn in junior school. Some memorable phrase from the textbook Our Native Tongue, about how wonderful milk tastes, straight from the cow. And the naïve city kids believe it.
In fact, milk straight from the cow tastes rather peculiar. But after it's been left to stand in the cellar for a day and cooled off – now that's a different matter. Even those poor souls who lack the necessary digestive enzymes drink it. And there are plenty of them, by the way: as far as mother nature's concerned, adults have no business drinking milk, it's children who need it . . .
But people usually don't pay much attention to nature's opinion.
And Others pay even less.
I reached for the jug and poured myself another glass. Cold, with a smooth layer of cream . . . why does boiling make the cream – the best part of milk – so smooth? I took a big gulp. No more, I had to leave some for Sveta and Nadiushka. The whole village – it was quite big, with fifty houses – had just one cow. It was a good thing there was at least one . . . and I had a strong suspicion that the humble Raika had Svetlana to thank for her magnificent yields. Her owner, Granny Sasha, already an old woman at forty, also owned the pig Borka, the goat Mishka and a gaggle of miscellaneous, nameless poultry, but she had no real reason to feel proud. Svetlana just wanted her daughter to drink genuine milk. That was why the cow was never ill. Granny Sasha could have fed her sawdust and it wouldn't have changed a thing.
But genuine milk really is good. Never mind the characters in the ads – they can arrive in a village with their cartons of milk and that jolly gleam in their eyes and say 'The real thing!' as often as they like. They're paid money to do that. And it makes things easier for the peasants, who stopped keeping any kind of livestock themselves long ago. They can just carry on slagging off the 'democrats' and the 'city folk' and not worry about raising cows any more.
I put down my empty glass and sprawled back in a hammock hanging between two trees. The locals must have thought I was a real bourgeois. Arriving in a fancy car, bringing my wife lots of strange foreign groceries, spending the whole day lounging in a hammock with a book . . . In a place where everybody generally spent the whole day roaming about, searching for a drop of something to fix their hangovers . . .
'Hello, Anton Sergeevich,' someone said over the top of the fence – it was Kolya, a local drunk. He might as well have been reading my thoughts – and how had he remembered my name?
'How was the drive?'
'Hello, Kolya,' I greeted him in lordly fashion, not making the slightest attempt to get up out of the hammock. He wouldn't appreciate it in any case. That wasn't what he'd come for. 'It was fine, thanks.'
'Need any help with anything, around the house and garden?' Kolya asked vaguely. 'I thought, you know, I'd just come and ask . . .'
I closed my eyes – the sun, already sinking towards the horizon, glowed blood-red through my eyelids.
There was nothing I could do. Not the slightest thing. A sixth-or seventh-degree intervention would have been enough to free the poor devil Kolya from his hankering for alcohol, cure his cirrhosis and inspire him with a desire to work, instead of drinking vodka and thrashing his wife.
What if I had defied all the stipulations of the Treaty and made that intervention in secret? A brief gesture of the hand . . .And then what? There wasn't any work in the village. And nobody in the city wanted Kolya, a former collective farm mechanic. Kolya didn't have any money to start his own business. He couldn't even buy a piglet.
So he'd slope off again to look for moonshine, getting by on money from odd jobs, and working off his anger on his wife, who drank as much as he did and was just as weary of everything. It wasn't the man I needed to heal, it was the entire planet.
Or at least this particular sixth part of the planet. The part with the proud name of Russia.
'Anton Sergeevich, I'm desperate . . .' Kolya said pathetically.
Who needs a cured alcoholic in a dying village where the collective farm has fallen apart and the only private farmer was burned out three times before he took the hint?
'Kolya,' I said, 'didn't you have some kind of special trade in the army? A tank driver?'
Did we have any paid professional soldiers at all? It would be better if he went to the Caucasus, rather than just dropping dead in a year's time from all that cheap moonshine . . .
'I wasn't in the army,' Kolya said in a miserable voice. 'They wouldn't take me. They were short of mechanics here back then, they kept giving me deferrals, and then I got too old . . . Anton Sergeevich, if you want somebody's face smashed in, I can still do that all right! Don't you worry! I'll tear them to pieces!'
'Kolya,' I asked him, 'would you take a look at my car's engine? I thought it was knocking a bit yesterday.'
'Sure, I'll take a look,' said Kolya, brightening up. 'You know, I . . .'
'Take the keys.' I tossed him the bunch. 'And I owe you a bottle.'
Kolya broke into a happy smile:
'Would you like me to wash it too? It must have cost a lot . . . and these roads of ours . . .'
'Thanks,' I said. 'I'd be very grateful.'
'Only I don't want any vodka,' Kolya suddenly said, and I started in surprise. What was this, had the world gone mad? 'It's got no taste to it . . . now a little bottle of homebrew . . .'
'Done,' I said. Delighted, Kolya opened the gate and set off towards the small barn in which I'd parked the car the evening before.
And then Svetlana came out of the house – I didn't see her, but I sensed her. That meant Nadiushka had settled down and was enjoying a sweet after-lunch nap. Sveta came over, stood at the head of the hammock and paused for a moment, then she put her cool hand on my forehead and asked: