Trafika Europe 7 - Ukrainian Prayer

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

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