MAHOGANY
425
town, he always stayed with
his
aunts, Kapitolina and Rimma.
By 1928 Yakov Karpovich's oldest grandsons were already mar–
ried, yet
his
daughter, the youngest of
his
children, was still only
twenty. She was the only daughter and, in the tumult of the
Revolution, she had received no education.
This daughter, Katerina, lived in the house with the old
man and her mother, Maria Klimovna. In wintertime half the
house, and the second floor, were not heated. The household
lived as people lived long before the time of Catherine, or even
before the time of Peter-though the mahogany, which brooded
in the house, was only of Catherine's day. The old couple lived
off their garden. Matches, kerosene and salt were the only pro–
ducts of industry in the house and the old man controlled the
use of all three. From spring to the fall Maria Klimovna, Kater–
ina and he tended their cabbages, beetroot,
turnips,
cucumbers,
carrots and licorice, which they used instead of sugar. In the
summer one could meet the old man at dawn in
his
nightclothes,
barefoot, his right hand thrust into the slit in
his
trousers and his
left hand holding a long switch, pasturing
his
cows in the dew
and the mist on the outskirts of the town. In wintertime he lit
the lamp only in
his
waking hours and at certain times
his
wife
and daughter were obliged to sit in the dark. At mid-day the old
man went out
to
read the newspapers in the public reading room
and there absorbed the names and the news of the communist
revolution. Katerina would then sit down at the spinet and prac–
tice the hymns of Kastalsky-she sang in the church choir. The
old man came home at dusk, ate his meal and went to bed.
The father would wake towards midnight, have something
to eat and apply himself to the Bible, reciting aloud from mem–
ory. At about
six
in the morning he fell asleep again. No longer
afraid of either death or life, the old man had lost all sense of
time. His wife and daughter were silent in his presence. The
mother cooked gruel and cabbage soup, baked pies, made scalded
and sour cream, and prepared jellied meats from pigs' trotters,
