In one village there lived a woman, her name was Varvara, whom everyone considered a blessed fool. She was unsociable and unattractive, and no one even knew how old she was - her skin seemed to be without wrinkles, smooth, but her gaze was such as if everything in the world had long since become hateful to the woman. However, Varvara rarely focused it on anyone's face - she was too withdrawn to communicate even with her eyes. The strangest thing was that no one remembered how she appeared in the village. After the war, everything was mixed up, many left, strangers, on the contrary, came, some stayed forever. Probably, this woman was one of those wanderers in search of a better fate. She occupied the outermost of the empty houses, near the forest, very dilapidated and small, and in a decade or two she brought it to a state of complete desolation. Sometimes a compassionate neighbor would fix her roof and then mumble into his smoke-stained moustache: no gratitude, no thanks, rainwater would pound her from the ceiling into a basin, I did everything, it became dry, and this Varvara not only didn’t say “thank you,” she didn’t even look at her face. No one knew how she lived, what she ate. She always wore the same sackcloth dress, the hem of which was heavy with dried dirt. She wore the same dress – but she didn’t smell like the thick musk of human excrement that doesn’t wash off the skin, but like a cellar and mold. And then one day, in the early sixties, one of the local guys, having had too much vodka, broke into her house – either someone egged him on, or the desire for abstract femininity was so strong that the object no longer mattered. It was a quiet, clear, full-moon May night, with the rich aromas of blossoming grasses and awakened crickets – and before that the whole village had been celebrating Victory, the accordionist was playing, it smelled of pies, they were drinking, eating, and partying. The guy's name was Fyodor, and he was going on twenty-five. He broke into Varvara's house, and right away, in the entryway, he felt uneasy. The house had a strange smell – of emptiness and decay. Even the house of the village alcoholic Uncle Seryozha smelled completely different, even though he had drunk his soul away back in the days when Fyodor was a baby. Uncle Seryozha's house smelled of a warm stove, strong sweat, unwashed feet, sour milk, a rotten floor rag - it was disgusting, and yet in the cacophony of foul aromas one could sense life, albeit almost degraded into existence, but still life. And Varvara's house smelled as if no one had entered her house for decades - a damp basement, dusty curtains and mold. Fyodor suddenly wanted to turn around and run away, but somehow he convinced himself that this was "not manly." And he moved forward - by touch, because the house was dark - the windows were curtained from the moonlight with some rags. He poked his hands out in front of him at some door - it gave in and creaked open with a quiet creak. Fyodor carefully stepped inside, hitting his head lightly on the crossbar – Varvara was short, and the doors in the house were just as tall. Because of the darkness, Fyodor quickly lost his bearings,but suddenly someone stirred cautiously in the corner, and the animal terror that darkness brings to most people in combination with an unfamiliar place suddenly awakened the warrior and barbarian in the boy. With a short cry, Fyodor rushed forward.
“Go away,” Varvara’s voice rang out, quiet and muffled, and Fyodor could have sworn that he was hearing it for the first time. Many were generally sure that the eccentric woman from the last house had gone mute during the war years and had never come to her senses. She stretched out her hand to the window, pulled back the curtain, and Fyodor finally saw her – in the bluish light of the moon, her calm, ugly face seemed dead.
- Oh, no! - He tried to make his voice sound cheerful, but due to excitement, as they say, he "kicked the bucket", and, annoyed with himself for this, he poured out his anger on Varvara, jabbing his fist into her lifeless face.
- Come on, come on… I'll be quick.
She did not resist, and this calmness gave him strength. “She probably dreams about it herself, she is happy to death and does not believe her happiness,” he thought. “She probably hasn’t had a man for twenty years, if not more.” Varvara was completely wrapped in some kind of rags, like a shroud. Fyodor seemed to have unbuttoned her top blouse, a woolen one, but underneath it was some kind of chlamys, and even deeper - something that looked like nylon, slippery and cool to the touch. In the end, angry, he tore the rags, and they cracked and almost crumbled to dust in his palms. Varvara lay just as silently, her arms stretched out at her sides, like a dead woman being prepared for ablution. Her eyes were open, and out of the corner of his mind Fyodor suddenly noticed that they did not shine. Matte eyes, like a doll’s. But the volcanic lava was already boiling in his blood, wanting to pour out, freeing him from the fire, and he almost didn’t care who would open the mouth – a warm woman, a slobbery fist, or this gray doll. Varvara’s breasts were like empty canvas bags in which Fyodor’s mother kept the nuts he had collected in the forest. There was neither fullness nor milky softness in her breasts, and her nipples resembled tree mushrooms, rough and dark, he didn’t want to touch them. At that moment, Fyodor’s consciousness seemed to split in two: one part did not understand how one could desire this withered waxen body – it was scary, disgusting, and the other, as if bewitched, simply submitted to a blind will, impulse, and passion. With his knee he spread Varvara's thighs - just as cool and grayish, as if wax, and with one jerk he entered her - and that part of Fyodor's consciousness that was scared and disgusted felt as if his flesh was entering not a woman, but a jug of cold fermented baked milk. Inside Varvara it was loose, cold and damp. And so, having spilled his seed into her, Fyodor left, getting tangled up in his pants along the way. He felt as if he had been plowing all day cutting down trees, but he attributed this weakness and dizziness to the vodka. He wandered home and, without undressing, fell asleep. All night he was tormented by nightmares. He dreamed that he was walking through a village cemetery, between graves, and from all sides hands covered in earth were reaching out to him. They were trying to grab him by the pant leg, and their fingers were icy and hard. There was a hum in his ears – voices deprived of life’s juice begged: “And to me… And to me… Please… And to me…”
Here on the path in front of him appeared a girl - she stood with her back turned, fragile, short, long wheat-colored hair scattered over her shoulders. She was wearing a wedding dress. Fyodor rushed towards her as if she were a goddess-savior, but then she slowly turned around, and it became clear - she was also dead. Her pale face was covered in greenish spots, her once plump upper lip was half rotted away, revealing her teeth, there was no sparkle in her eyes.
- To me… to me… - she repeated dully. - Come here… They buried me in my wedding clothes on purpose… I was waiting for you…
Fyodor woke up when his mother splashed ice water from a ladle in his face:
- You've gone completely mad, you drunk! You drank yourself into oblivion and screamed all night as if you had nerves of steel!
Several weeks passed. At first, Fyodor could not shake off the feeling of melancholy, as if it had spread heavy wings over him, blocking out the sunlight. His appetite, the desire to laugh, work, and breathe were gone. But gradually he somehow recovered, came to his senses, and began asking his mother for morning pancakes again, glancing at the most beautiful girl in the village, Yulenka, with her long thick braids and devils in her eyes. He tried not to meet Varvara, although this was not difficult – she rarely left her house and front garden, and if she did go out onto the village street, she pressed herself to the curb and looked at her own dusty galoshes, and not at the people she met. Gradually, the strange night evaporated from his memory – and Fyodor was not even entirely sure of its reality. His consciousness had molded a snowball out of real facts and subsequent nightmares, and he could no longer tell what was true and what was a terrible image fabricated by his inner darkness. Winter had come. On winter evenings, Fyodor usually did carpentry – his father had taught him the craft, both of them had golden hands. People came from all over the neighborhood: someone wanted to knock together a dining table, someone wanted to fix a fence, someone wanted to add a terrace to the house. And then, at the end of November, something strange happened – there was a knock on the door, insistently, as if it was an urgent matter, and when Fyodor opened it – there was no one on the street. The person who had disturbed the family’s evening peace seemed to have dissolved into the icy space spitting wet snow. Only on the floorboard, pressed down by a wet stone, was an envelope white. Fyodor looked around, picked it up, looked inside and was even more surprised – there was money inside. Not millions, but a solid sum – that’s how much he would have asked for just for building a summer terrace. For the village reality, this was something out of the ordinary – the neighbors, of course, weren’t starving, but there was nothing to save money from, and everyone preferred to pay for the work in installments. A note fell out of the envelope along with the bills.
"I ask you to make a coffin, length - 1 meter, material - oak or pine. Take the money right away, and I will come for the finished work as soon as possible."
Fyodor was not a timid person and certainly not a superstitious one, but something inside him went cold when he finished reading. Length – 1 meter. So, it was a child’s coffin. Why were they willing to pay so much for it? If the customer had asked him the price, Fyodor would have named an amount twenty times smaller, and he would not have considered himself offended. Why did they choose such a strange way to place an order? Such grief that strangers’ faces make you sick? But it turns out that they didn’t even leave him a choice – who should he return the money to? Of course, he could keep it in an envelope, and when the customer showed up, hand it back to him right away. On the other hand… What if there was a child dying there. And then the person would come and nothing was ready. Should he be buried in a towel or something? Fyodor’s soul was heavy, but he still got the job done. He finished in two evenings. He took the best boards, tried as if he were making a casket for imperial jewels. He even decorated the lid with carving – there was nothing to do on winter evenings anyway. A week passed, then another, and then a third began, but no one came to work. The small coffin stood in the already cramped entryway and got on everyone’s nerves. Passing by it, Fyodor’s father would say gloomily: “Damn it…”, and his mother, tripping over it once, automatically kicked the wooden thing with her foot, and then came to her senses, sat down on the step and cried briefly. And then, just before New Year’s, there was an evening when Fyodor was left all alone at home. His parents and little sister had gone to a neighboring village to visit relatives, and they were planning to spend the night there. The evening turned out to be dark and snowy – behind the thick shawl of snowfall, neither the earth nor the sky could be seen. And suddenly there was a knock on the door – the same persistent, hurried knock, Fyodor recognized it right away, and the boy’s heart sank – as if from an endless ice slide. Carefully approaching the door, he asked – who, but there was no answer. For some reason, crossing himself, he opened the door – a short woman, wrapped in a quilted jacket and a large woolen shawl, was standing on the porch. Fyodor didn’t even immediately recognize her as Varvara – and when he saw her emotionless gray face, he recoiled.
- What do you want? Why did you come here? - He tried to draw strength from deliberate rudeness.
“It’s time,” she answered dully and walked past him inside. “I thought I’d wear it for a few more weeks, but now I see that it’s not. It’s time.”
- What are you babbling about, you fool? Go away from where you came from.
And then Varvara raised her face to him. Fyodor retreated a few steps, his gaze helplessly darting around the entryway until it rested on the small hatchet with which he and his father were chopping wood to light the stove. "What nonsense… I won't go after her, a weak woman, with an axe… I can knock her down with my finger, what can she do to me, the wretched thing…" And the woman simply looked at him calmly, and her eyes were like ice-covered puddles. Just as dull and doll-like as that night, which he had been trying to forget all these months. Varvara smiled - still emotionless:
- What's wrong, Fedya? You thought you'd have some fun and not have to answer? Bring water and rags, I'm giving birth.
“What the hell…” And only then did he notice a huge round belly under her open quilted jacket.
- It's about to start, why are you hesitating?
She didn't look like a woman who was worried about the arrival of her first child. A bloodless, calm face, chapped lips, an even, quiet voice:
- Besides, I paid. Everything was fair. Did you do what I asked? Did you manage to do it?
Fyodor didn't even immediately understand what she was talking about, and when he did, he suddenly felt small and defenseless. Like in those years when his father scared him with the wood goblin and the bathhouse spirit, and Fyodor then tried to calm his breathing all night long - he kept imagining rustling and knocking sounds, some other life, hidden from adults, that begins in the house when everyone goes to bed. He wanted to rush to his mother, to breathe in her calming warmth, but shame got in the way.
“Why do you need a… coffin?” he breathed the last word almost in a whisper into Varvara’s face.
- Of course, - she smiled. - He needs to sleep somewhere. He'll be born dead, - and she stroked her tight belly. Fyodor felt sick.
“Put on the water,” Varvara commanded. “And bring the rags. It’s starting.”
As if in a dream, he reached the stove, took the kettle, then climbed into his mother's chest, found some old sheets. Everything that was happening seemed like a stupid joke to him. He could not believe that the village idiot was really going to give birth in his entryway, that he would have to take part in it. And that damn money, and that coffin. "She'll be born dead…" When Fyodor returned to the entryway, Varvara was already lying on the floor, her skirts lifted and her bloodless legs spread out to the sides, her back arched as if the woman had been struck by lightning, but her face still did not express fear, pain, or anticipation. Fyodor's little sister was also born at home - the contractions began suddenly, it was also winter, they would not have had time to get to the village hospital. He remembered his mother's flushed, sweaty face, her guttural cry, more like an animal's growl, he remembered how her hair, matted with sweat, was scattered across the pillow, and what a smell there was in the room - hot, thick, visceral, and how uneasy he, too - but that was a different fear, the fear of the presence of some eternal pattern. His mother asked for a drink, or for a handful of snow to be put on her forehead, or for the window to be opened, or closed. And then he heard the muffled cry of his little sister, and she and his father drank a glass each, exulting, and his mother looked so happy, despite the fact that all the blankets were soaked with her blood. Varvara, silently, gritting her teeth, brought new life into the world; she worked her hips and back – deftly, like a snake, and the entryway was also filled with a foreign smell – peat bog, humus, wet tree roots, earthworms.
Suddenly, something gushed out of her, as if a tap had been opened – the waters had receded, greenish-brown, like a stagnant pond. Fyodor had to jump back – there was so much fetid liquid that the entire floor in the entryway was flooded. He didn’t even immediately notice that in this liquid, a tiny creature had crawled out of her womb into the world, a baby, as gray and lifeless as its mother. Varvara sat up, wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, and lifted the baby from the floor – he was sluggishly moving his arms. His eyes were open and seemed to be covered with a whitish film. Fyodor looked away – for some reason it was unpleasant to look at the child, something was wrong with him. He didn’t even scream, but was already turning his head, clearly trying to look around.
- What are you standing there for? - Varvara called gloomily. - You need to cut your umbilical cord. Ali hasn't read any books.
“I don’t know how,” Fyodor mumbled, almost losing consciousness from fatigue and disgust.
- What do you need to know? There's a hatchet right there - just chop it with it.
- What are you talking about? Is it possible to do this with an axe? I'll call Granny Alekseeva now, - a saving thought suddenly occurred to him. - I'll just run and get her. She knows how to do this.
“You don’t need to call anyone,” Varvara stopped him. “It’s your own fault, and you’ll be held accountable. Bring the axe… I’ll teach you. And carry the coffin. He already wants to sleep, see?”
- Varvara, why does he need a coffin? What are you saying that's so scary? - Fyodor couldn't resist. - Where have you ever seen a child sleeping in a coffin? You said he would be born dead, but here he is, moving.
- So I'm dead too. - The gray lips stretched, but it didn't look like a smile. - Or didn't you understand yourself?.. Carry the coffin. And you yourself need to rest. Otherwise, he'll get hungry soon. When you wake up, I'll teach you how to feed the dead.
The last thing Fyodor saw before he was covered by a velvet wing of darkness was an old ceiling with branching cracks. When his parents and sister returned the next morning, the boy's body had already cooled down, but his wide-open eyes retained an expression of incredulous melancholy. No one understood what had happened to him, but the entire floor of the entryway was flooded with thick swamp water, which Fyodor's father had not been able to scoop out in a day. And when he scooped it dry, the smell still remained - of decay, mold and rot - remained for many years, sometimes promisingly subsiding, but inevitably returning at the beginning of each winter. Varvara was never seen in that village again - but for many years there was gossip that supposedly the dull and monotonous cry of a baby could sometimes be heard from her empty house.