Do you like folk tales?

XXII. Snegurochka Sarafan

Once upon a time, there were an old man and woman. They lived well, and were happy, but for one thing: they had no children. And when the cold winter came, the neighborhood children would run out to play in the snow, and the old man and woman looked at them, and a sad longing filled their hearts.

The roads were slippery, wet. She wondered when the carriage would turn over and send her bouncing over the cobble-stoned street. All she could think about was her grandmother's voice.

When she had been small, her grandmother would tell her fairytales before she went to sleep. But unlike her brother, she only wanted to hear one story every night, and no matter how many times she would hear it, she would never tire of it. Even now, she heard her grandmother recite the story in her mind.

So they decided to make a daughter from snow. They went out into the winter day, and started building her – a head, hands, feet…when she was finished, they stood and watched, and suddenly, her lips became pink, her eyes sparkled. She moved her head, her arms, and shook off the snow; out stepped a girl, real and alive.

She left the carriage and walked down the street on her own. She would walk back to the house, the house she would never call home. The hem of her dress soaked up black water that ran in the street with the rats and carriage wheels. When she got back, her father would probably be snoring by the fire, an unread book in his lap. Her father hated reading, but always pretended he loved it. He had piles of philosophy on his table, the same old book by Voltaire in his lap while he snored, he book for which his scant English was no match, and yet in private he would read forbidden poems by outlaws such as Lermontov, and she was probably the only one who could sneak up on him quietly enough to catch him reading the poem for which Lermontov was deported to Caucasus as valuable cannon fodder.

When she got home, perhaps she would catch her father packing his bags, his eyes alight with excitement, saying her brother wrote to them to say they had sorted their debts and gotten back their mansion, with all the serfs and possessions intact. It was a hope she felt diminish every day. Too good to be true. Her grandmother's voice continued to tell her the story, the story that always succeeded in soothing her troubles.

The girl grew quickly, almost by the hour, and became more and more beautiful every day, a fair braid to her waist, her skin pale as snow. She was clever, thoughtful, good with her hands and dear to everyone she met; if she sang, one could not stop listening; if she worked, she worked well. And yet, as the winter passed, here came spring: the grass grew green on the patches of earth where the snow melted, the larks began to sing. And the warmer it became, the more Snegurochka became sad.

The larks sang in London, too, perhaps; perhaps it snowed sometimes. And yet, it would never be the same snow. It would never sound the same when the birds sang here. Nothing tasted the same, nothing looked the same – even if it was the same things she saw and heard.

She stopped to look around. Why were the buildings unfamiliar? Where had she ventured? She looked behind her, and saw the dark alley along which she had, unknowingly, been walking. A shiver traveled down her spine. This was no village where everyone knew each other. This wasn't even the bright, gold-topped city she knew. This was London. She shivered again. She was lost. Rubbing her hands together, she looked right and left, wondering how she could have gotten there. Opposite her stood a pie shop, and beside it she could see a staircase leading upwards, a doorway marked with a barber's red-and-white sign.

Snegurochka grew sadder by the day, and always hid from the sun, always wanted to be somewhere cool, and she was happiest when it rained. One day, the dark purple clouds got together and hail began to fall. Snegurochka was so happy, she ran out into the yard and caught the hailstones in her hands, and to her, they looked like pearls; when the hail was over and the little balls of ice melted, she wept bitterly, as if crying over a dear brother.

A man was sitting at the foot of the stairs. He wasn't doing anything in particular, leaning onto his knees, a frown etching lines between his black eyebrows. Suddenly, he turned and looked at her square in the eyes. Instantly blushing, she looked down, down at the wet pavement. His eyes lingered on her for a moment, and then, almost too hastily, hastily enough to be deliberate, he looked at the floor, his frown even deeper, the edges of his mouth turned down. Her cheeks still burned red. Not that she'd ever stay here, and he looked too old – and yet, he was attractive. Perhaps she would ask him how to get there. Even so, there was something menacing about him, that kept her feet rooted to the spot.

One day, Snegurochka's friends came to ask her to join them for a walk in the woods. After eventide came, and the girls had picked berries and mushrooms, they started playing around the fire. Each girl would take her turn to jump over the fire, over the dancing flames…

When she said that, her grandmother's own eyes would seem to twinkle in the fire of the bedroom hearth, and she would imagine her when she was young, her own braid coming down to below her waist, running down with sugar in her pockets to give to the horses in the stable.

No matter how much she lingered, thinking of her grandmother and her fondness for horses, she realized that unless she wanted to remain lost until midnight, she would have to ask for directions, and this man seemed like the only one whom she wouldn't have to run after. Londoners seemed to be in some sort of permanent hurry. As she approached the man, he did not notice her: his attention was elsewhere; in fact, his head turned to the right, and whatever he saw there made his brows unclench and his eyes soften.

She squinted, trying to see what he saw. She gasped lightly and pressed her hand to her mouth in pleasure. Grey against grey, she hadn't noticed him at first – the little grey kitten that wobbled side to side, making its way along the road, its tiny paws slightly wet.

The man she had first perceived as menacing was looking at the kitten with the eyes of a young boy. It swayed from side to side, and he reached out hesitantly, and stroked it once on the head. A while later, the kitten settled at his feet, and he stroked its tiny head with his fingers; she could imagine it purring with its little eyes squeezed shut.

To simply address him and ask for directions would be rather banal. He was too absorbed in the purring bundle of fur at his feet to notice her approach him. And yet, when she, too, kneeled, and stroked the kitten, he looked up, and looked her in the eyes. Something flickered there, he seemed to teeter on the edge of speech, opened his mouth slightly, and then shook his head, allowing that frown to crease his forehead once again. He turned back to stroking the kitten. It seemed to her that he was purposefully trying to ignore her. Any indignation was overpowered by her curiosity.

The girls danced around the fire, and Snegurochka with them. Round and round the fire, and then one by one, the girls, braids jumping along their backs as they ran, jumped over the fire, over the crackling flames they had lit in the clearing. Now Snegurochka ran, closer and closer to the fire…

"Excuse me," she paused slightly. She hoped he wouldn't laugh at her accent. Laugh…quite an irrational fear, seen as this man seemed to have forgotten how to laugh, how to smile. His eternal expression seemed to be a deep frown that had etched deep lines in his skin. "sir…I'm lost…Do you happen to know the way to High Holborn?"

He frowned, and watched the kitten for a while, which was playing with his shoelaces.

"God's creature," she said, smiling as she watched its tiny paw toy with the laces. "Doesn't wish anyone harm."

Her words did not seem to have an effect on him, except, perhaps, for a minor raising of the eyebrows. "I…I will show…you…" She cocked her head to the side and observed him, observed him curiously. He seemed to make a tremendous effort to say those few four words…his voice was slightly cracked, very low, and it seemed like it had been silent for a long time. Suddenly, he turned at looked at her, straight in the eye again, and his eyes seemed to turn sad.

"Is something wrong?" It wasn't an intelligent question. Perhaps it would have been more realistic to ask him if anything was right.

"You…" he paused, and looked back down at the kitten, which was now rubbing its tiny black nose against his hand, which hung limply at his side. "Remind…me of…of someone…let me..let me show you…" he gave the kitten one last stroke, and stood up, motioning to her to follow him.

They walked in silence, and she had not imagined otherwise – and as usual, in her instinct to break the ice, even with a person she had never known and would never know, she was the first to speak. She had learnt her lesson with her quiescent brother.

"Who did I remind you of, sir?"

Neither was this an intelligent question.

Snegurochka ran towards the fire, watching the flames licking upwards, upwards…

"Someone…" she instantly regretted asking him. His voice was broken, from misuse, and from some kind of inner torment. Her mother's voice had been like that when she asked her to stay. Not to leave home. Not to leave her. Not to leave forever, for it could be so. She was not in perfect health. "Someone long…gone…" his voice made it clear that he no longer wished to pursue the subject.

Snegurochka jumped over the flames, and as she flew over the fire, her friends watched as she disappeared in a puff, disappeared into thin air, evaporated into a white cloud that hung above the flames. Her friends shouted, "Aou! Aou! Snegurochka! Aou!" And yet, she had vanished; all that answered them was the echo of the forest.

One of the reasons she had so loved this story, was because she had always been a dreamer. She had loved to think. To analyse. To recall. To reminisce. She had always liked to think, for hours after her grandmother had blown out the candle, about how the old man and woman felt. What they did. Could anyone – anything – ever replace Snegurochka for them? And did the December snow remind them of her laughter, echoing, bouncing off the pine trees, of her feet crunching on the white carpet of the forest floor; did they grow to hate winter as an eternal reminder of a child they once had? Did this man see this kitten, see her, and remember some time long lost, some time when the person she reminded him of, the person the kitten reminded him of, was by his side?

"We met…she bent down to touch a kitten, and I…"

"You do not have to continue, sir, its alright. Forgive me for prying."

An awful paradox. It seemed that it was so hard to keep pain bottled up, and yet so hard at the same time to let it come to the surface, to talk. To talk…

The cloud soared up above the trees, and ever since then, Snegurochka traveled over the land, watching over the old man and woman that were her parents, watching over the trees and the berries, the mushrooms and the flowers, the seasons, and hail and the snow, the snow of which she had come…

When she got home, after she would thank the man, look once more into his eyes and try to understand what hid beneath the surface, she would take out the old sarafan her grandmother gave her. The Snegurochka sarafan. Perhaps she would walk in it down the street, singing about the thin birch and ryabina tree.

Singing about home.