Trafika Europe 7 - Ukrainian Prayer

Sweet Darusya

come back from work. As far as work goes, he’s not smart: till now he’s been working for people. Chopping wood, settingout foundations,doing woodwork. In the village they often hire Mykhailo: without any worry they can even let him into their root cellars, and he won’t tell a lie, and he hasn’t got a sharp tongue, even when he is asked to, and he won’t cheat, and he charges reasonably. Andwhat great woodwork he did – no one could compete with him from the time Petro Tsiptsiar died – the woodworker and carpenter for ten villages all at the same time. That summer Mykhailo was putting up fence stakes in the mountain pasture of the Cheremoshne caretaker Illya Dzhuryak, called Ilashka by the locals, so he would come home from the mountains

just on Sunday. And his wife in the village would take care of the household. There wasn’t too much to the household, but there was already a little: a cow, a pig, chickens, and three sheep. It’s true, they didn’t have much land besides what was near the house and in the garden, but Mykhailo girded himself with work like the rings on a barrel, intending to buy from Zaremba the miller a few acres of woods in Didkova Yama. He already even gazed at that expensive green patch so that he sometimes saw it in his dreams. But for the time being Matronka chased out all the cud-chewing animals before dawn to graze in themeadows above the Cheremosh River, and she has a peaceful mind till evening. Around sunset, she carried the cradle into

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