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Sweet Darusya
“Maybe the Poles have stolen
her away to the other side?!
She grazes the cow next to
the river. And now they want
a ransom?”
The chief of the gendarmerie
sighed a second time:
“Mihai, soon it’ll be a year
already since there haven’t
been Poles on the other side.
The Soviets are in charge
now.”
“I don’t have any interest
in that…,” he half-heartedly
interrupted.
“I have my own hernia….”
The lieutenant sighed a third
time:
“They, on the other hand,
do have a lot of interest in
many things… But, I think,
who-who, but they didn’t
abduct Matronka… there
was no reason… Go home,
gazda
, and I’ll give you help
with the search. God is good
— we’ll endure even this…,”
Lupul finished and for some
reason patted Mykhailo on
the shoulder.
*
For the second if not the
third full day the male
households of Cheremoshne
searched for Matronka – but
the woman disappeared like
a river Niavka nymph. It was
as if a living person fell into
the earth without a trace. It
was horrifying to think about
such a thing happening in an
inhabited place, and without
anyone
even
noticing.
Another time a chicken digs
up a bed in a neighbor’s
garden and at the other end
of the village the women
gazdas
argue about that
trifle. And here such a thing…
Yes, as though people on that
day simultaneously went to