Chapter Four
Friday and Saturday passed by uneventfully and, as for Anya finding Oleg, she had no reason or chance to. In fact, if anything she had less reason than ever to suspect Ivan of mischief; for Ivan was slowly becoming a new person.
For one, he stopped running off to look for treasure. He began helping more around the house; he swept and stirred, he chopped and stocked wood, and he finally broke the soil. Anya was dumbfounded and attributed it to the healing qualities of her stew.
Finally, Saturday evening descended upon Sankt Alexi, shrouded in spring mists and the aroma of freshly baked bread. Ivan was in his nightgown and sitting beside the fire, watching Anya slide the loaves into the earthen oven.
„Anya," he asked, „Is it true that there is no treasure here?"
Confused for a moment, Anya suddenly remembered that night three days ago when she had exasperatedly told him 'Ivan, there is no treasure...'. Her heart sank. Just when she had thought he had finally abandoned his childish fantasies of riches and comfort...
But then again, she thought, had she any right to take them away from him? Let him be a child for as long as he was one; the hardships and disappointment of adult life were plentiful, and nobody knew that better than Anya. Plentiful, and simply waiting for a chance to take away innocence and replace it with...well, with an adult's life.
„I am sorry I said that," she quietly answered. „To tell you the truth, I really don't know. I was just angry with you...there could be, I mean, nobody knows everything, except God..." Anya crossed herself and lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, shoving the last loaf of bread into the oven.
„I think I've found it," Ivan murmured to himself, his eyes lighting with the joy of discovery.
„Hmm...?" Anya mumbled tiredly, slumped against the wall on a chair.
„I've found the treasure," he repeated, louder this time.
„What do you mean?" Anya inquired, startled.
Ivan pushed his chair over to Anya's, this time making sure not to drag it across the floor. Without any warning, he threw his arms around her and hugged her.
„Anya, the treasure is love!" he declared. „Love and friendship and our family, that is the treasure!" Anya looked down at him, amazed.
„Now that I obey you more, I don't make you sad or angry anymore...and even though I stopped digging, I found your love instead. That's the treasure!"
Tears of happiness were forming in Anya's eyes. „Vanya, I love you too," she whispered, hugging him back. „Forgive me if I don't always show it, I..." She trailed off and hugged him tighter. Natalia giggled from her wooden crib, just waiting for someone to pay attention to her, so Anya got up slowly and reverently, afraid to shatter the moment, and picked up the baby. They all embraced each other, holding each other tight in the sacred silence – but perhaps the sweet moment meant most to Anya, the hard-working teenaged sister who struggled so hard to keep up the family. For as she held her two siblings to her, she knew that, united as a family by the strongest bonds in the universe – love and mutual respect – they could face anything that the world threw at them.
Morning came in an exasperating flurry of rising as the cocks crowed all over the village, dressing in their best clothes and getting Natalia to calm down long enough for Anya to get the basket of food for the priests ready. It was as if the warm, peaceful atmosphere had vapourously dissipated so completely that it had left no trace, save the sweet, fragrant memory that it had embedded in each heart.
„Ivan, do stop moping about and help me with the basket!" Anya ejaculated, with a sleepy edge to her voice.
„Yes, Anya, I'm coming!" he called, dashing to her side. „What do you need help with?"
„Help me load the bread into the basket, there are two more loaves in the oven," she answered. Ivan dashed off and returned quickly with the two loaves. He had brought them wrapped in a towel, making sure Anya would have no reason to complain. Disgruntled as she had woken that morning, this only seemed to irritate her more – but for the sake of the tender boy who had hugged her and spoken to her of love the last night, she tried her best to contain it.
„Yes, yes, good thing you remembered at last," was all that she found to say. Ivan smiled to himself. How well he knew his sister!
„Now, please hold Natalia or play with her or something, keep her quiet as I get her dressed," she yawned. Through the small windows of the cottage, the cold blackness of the early morning sky was slowly lifting, giving way to a deep royal blue, tinged and threaded through with the orange-tinted stratus clouds of the dawn.
Ivan picked Anya up tenderly as Anya had taught him how and petted her childlike blond curls. „Natalia, I have a secret to tell you, but since you can't talk yet, I don't need to tell you to tell no one." Natalia carried on with her sniffing and tears, but her babyish sobs subsided somewhat. „I have a little pet," he explained in an almost inaudible whisper. „His name is Oleg, like Anya's sweetheart, remember? He's a little brown caterpillar, and he's very fun to watch...he eats leaves and grass, and cabbage that I didn't want from dinner two days ago...and he is fond of little children."
As the sleepy, grumpy baby listened to her older brother's soft voice, his soothing whispers comforted her mind, and she gradually drifted into a tranquil, milder state. When Anya came over to dress and wrap her warmly, to protect her small body from the crisp morning, the usually fussy baby made no protest. She didn't even squirm.
„Getting her dressed in the mornings is normally such a trying task," the dumbfounded girl remarked. „I wonder, how did you make her so calm?"
„Well, I only whispered in her ear, really," Ivan uncomfortably mumbled.
„What did you tell her?" Anya wanted to know.
Ivan blushed heavily. „Well...stupid things. I...I told her that caterpillars eat grass and leaves and cabbage and that they're fond of children..."
Anya looked confused for a moment, but then simply shrugged, putting on her heavy linen cloak. „If it got her so calm, I shan't complain," she said, stepping out the door. „Who can understand the mind of a child?"
Ivan's legs ached with tiredness as he stood, thoroughly bored, before the kneeling pews in the small, wooden village church. As Priest Markov crooned on with the interminable service, with an occasional sneeze interrupting the flow of the Scripture reading, Ivan's mind drifted randomly to other subjects. Had Vasily managed to fix that kite of his? Was Oleg feeling lonely? When had Alexandr Teyovich Markov gotten such a serious cold?!
Ivan looked over at Vasily, standing stock-still two rows ahead of him. His eyes were firmly fixed on the sneezing, red-nosed priest as his mouth moved constantly and his hands oscillated between turning the pages of the cloth-bound bible and blowing his nose into his thoroughly used handkerchief. Ivan stomped his feet; he needed new shoes, the cold was seeping in easier and easier as the years slipped by. But Vasily never moved an inch, he looked like a prim, snub-nosed statue. He was so well-behaved, that Vasily! Every grown-up in the village of Sankt Alexi said he was a ‚true jewel', but it never went to his brown-haired head, the little angel! Ivan mentally snorted.
Thorougly sick of staring at the pious little statue ahead of him, Ivan attempted to fix his eyes on the priest as well, but his bearded face was so plain, so completely immemorable that it gave Ivan an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach just looking at it. Ivan looked over at the other young Ivan of the village, Ivan 'Volkyushka' as the other village children nicknamed him. The volk part of his nickname came from his father's trade – he hunted wolves and made thick coats of their pelts. The diminutive was a sarcastic suffix that Ivan and Vasily had fixed to the nickname – sarcastic because Ivan Volkyushka was the cruellest, worst-natured boy in the village. An endearing diminutive at the end of his name was like the word 'Little' in Little John.
Volkyushka, beside the fact that he was almost a head taller than Ivan, was also strong, angry and dim as an ox. He hated his sneering nickname and had a bone to pick with Vasily and Ivan, who had come up with it. Nobody used it in front of him if they had any brains at all - well, none of the village children did.
But when the strong lads took off in their wagons, to the big cities to sell the beeswax and honey that the Kyiv region of their country was so famous for, they'd call out, "Goodbye, Mama! Goodbye, little Nikolenka, you'll be joining us someday! Oh, and goodbye, Volkyushka!".
Ivan Volkyushka's temper was something to be reckoned with...and there was always something to trigger it.
He especially seemed to have a grudge on Ivan, who bore the same name as he but no such nickname. He constantly jeered at and grinded on Ivan whenever he met him, and Ivan sincerely loathed him.
Priest Markov had said once in one of his sprawling sermons that when someone strikes you, you must turn the other cheek, meaning that you should never repay evil with evil but only with meekness. But Ivan was as sick of turning the other cheek as he was of being struck, and he knew that the day would come when he'd show Volkyushka that he couldn't simply treat everyone as he wished and go unpunished.
Priest Markov's singsongy voice was waning and growing more solemn – that usually meant the sermon was coming to a close. Hope rushed through Ivan's heart, and somewhere within him he found the patience to not fall asleep before it ended.
