426
BORIS PILNYAK
putting aside the knuckles for her grandchildren
8
-in other
words, she lived as Russians lived in the fifteenth and seven-
i
teenth centuries, and even the food she cooked went back to
those days. Maria Klimovna, very old and shrivelled, was a
wonderful woman, the sort of woman who is still found
in
the
heart of provincial Russia, together with ancient icons of the
Mother of God. Fifty years ago, on the day after her wedding,
when she had donned her rich red velvet jacket, her husband
said: "What's that for?" She did not immediately understand
and he repeated his question: "What's that for? Take it off! I
know you well enough without these fiddle-faddIes and the
others had better keep their eyes off you!" Then he moistened his
finger and gave her a painful lesson in how she should brush her
hair back from her temples. The cruel will of her husband forced
her to put away forever her rich red velvet jacket and sent her
to work in the kitchen. Whether her will was broken by his, or
whether she was tempered by her subjection to it, she was at all
times meek and dignified, silent and sad, but never devious or
dishonest. Her world went no farther than the gate and her only
path beyond it led to the church and the grave. She sang Kas–
talsky's hymns together with her daughter. She was sixty-nine
years old. At night the old man, who was no longer afraid of life,
declaimed aloud from the Bible. Very rarely-every few months
or so-the old man would walk to his wife's bed, in the silent
hours of the night, and whisper:
"Mariushka, yes ... ha, h'm ... yes, h'm, Mariushka, this
is life, Mariushka!" He held a candle in his hand, his eyes
watered and twinkled, his hands trembled.
"Mariushka, he-he ... here I am, yes.... That's life, Mari-
ushka, he-he!"
Maria Klimovna made the sign of the cross.
"Have shame, Yakov Karpovich! ..."
Yakov Karpovich put out the light.
8. These bones--babki-are used
by
Russian children for various games.
