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Maria Matios
the house, quickly ran to the
river, herded in the livestock,
milked them while singing,
latched the door closed, and
shut off the oil lamp in the
house – she was hardly even
seen.
But on a certain cloudy June
evening, or actually, it was
already even close to late
night, Tanasiy Maksymiuk,
who from time to time
loved to grope around other
peoples’ yards to find his
way to other peoples’ young
wives, noticed that the oil
lamp in Mykhailo’s house was
flickering somehowstrangely,
as though it already had no
intensity, and a child’s cry
wasn’t a cry, and a sob not
a sob – but a pitiful howling
broke through outside even
through the entryway door.
Tanasiy didn’t think for long
– he just abruptly grabbed
the door handle and shouted
across the threshold of the
dwelling:
“Are the
gazdas
at home?”
No one answered from inside
the house: just beneath the
window the cradle rocked
with crying and distressingly
sobbed and creaked in time.
“Matronka!” Tanasiy looked
into the large living room
and into the root cellar; and
then with a poker rummaged
through the house and porch;
and then again looked at the
entryway barrels and the
benches by the house: “Hello
to you, young woman, where
are you, where the hell have
you disappeared that your
child faints from crying so
much?!”
Tanasiy walked around the
yard, illuminated by the
moon that had grown white.
The stable gaped wide open
in the darkness; unusual