bits from my dissertation

Uncle Kolja Beastly King

I was always taken to the village during holidays. For the whole three months – from the beginning of June till the end of August. And it had to be a car journey. Of course we didn’t own a car, and every time our granddad managed to obtain some crooked black mastodon with a sheltered body but no seats. My sister and I sat on boxes of cans, clang to the sides and out of pride pretended that we weren’t sick. I managed better, because I only rarely really felt sick, but my sister by the end of the journey was usually very thoughtful and green; she sat, face buried in her knees, and occasionally moaned about why we hadn’t taken the train.
But we couldn’t have taken the train. We had to have a car. In order to take all those bundles and boxes with three months’ worth supply of food with us. Because in those days food wasn’t sold in the villages. There was indeed a shop, but there wasn’t any food in it.
What exactly was sold in that shop, I am not sure now. I remember that there was definitely garlic and vodka. All the walls were covered with bunches of garlic, as if the village was under threat from vampire invasion, and under it, along the walls, stacked one on top of the other were boxes with white bottles inside. And twice a week on the big car bread was bought. Immediately there appeared a queue for bread – every time it was equally long, because only two loafs were given to one person: one was white and one black. We also stood in the queue, because you couldn’t possibly stock up on bread for three months in advance. And we stood for a long time in this boarded space which smelled of garlic and straw, listened to sober old women’s curses and old men’s tobacco toothless laughs, and we anticipated how we would kiss the warm crust. For some reason we always kissed those loafs. Who started this tradition, I don’t remember, but I do remember that to kiss them was as pleasant and tasty as to eat them afterwards.
There were two members of the village the queue always allowed to go first. These were the village fools, they were both called Koljas but at the same time they were entirely different. Generally, there are two types of village fools: blessed and prophets. The first are loved and pitied, the second are feared and respected. Kolja Kylkin was blessed. He wasn’t yet old, always tipsy and always happy. He never took any loafs, and every time asked the seller to cut him the crust and to pour out a glass. With tenderness he looked at the glass, crossed himself in front of the corner with a garlic bunch, smiled warmly and said:
‘Take it, Lord, not as a sin, but as a remedy!’
He continued to treat himself with this remedy his whole life and lived till a very old age, without having been ill once. For some reason I didn’t like him and felt shy around him, although he was the gentlest of beings, who hadn’t done anyone any harm in his whole life. It was the other Kolja that invoked my deep interest, mixed with very explicable fear and a not so explicable admiration. This Kolja wasn’t a blessed; he was a prophet. Or rather, he could have become one, if only he could speak. But he was deaf-mute. Deaf-mute, bearded and scary. He walked around the village with a huge knotted stick, glared at those he met with his fierce prophetic eyes and sometimes sniffed in a nasty menacing way. He was scary and evil, or rather not evil but terrible.
When his neighbour Marinka crawled into the bottle and stopped milking her goats and they suffered, carrying their bloated bellows-like udders around the village, uncle Kolja came and beat Marinka with his stick, till she got up and swearing, went to milk them. Sometimes, when he couldn’t wake her up, he milked them himself and then poured the milk over her head. He fed all the dogs, cats and other creatures which wandered into his yard – so they refused to return to their owners afterwards and settled in his house. They say, he was a shepherd once, and cows obeyed him without whip. I didn’t see anything marvellous in it, because many times I witnessed how he grazed the goats. They followed him around the meadow, as if pioneers after their leader, huge vicious dogs walked on the sides following his every sign, and he himself, bearded, in a shaggy sleeveless jacket which smelled of chaff, as if he was himself a bit of a billy goat. The head goat. The goat leader. I saw it very clearly and for some reason found it very natural. And to myself I called him Uncle Kolja Beastly King. I knew it was more correct to say “the beast”, but I liked “beastly” much more, both in essence and in rhythm.
He was beastly indeed. Awfully scary and awfully fascinating, as if from a fairytale. The bread, which he took in the shop without queuing, he gave to his horde of cats and dogs, sometimes allotting a bit to sparrows and crows, who were also meticulously watching his frontage. Old women, his neighbours, spat but couldn’t bring themselves to fight him. God knows what charms he used to fill the whole village with a respectful, almost mystical fear. I, as well as everyone else, shared that fear, but in spite of it I ,somehow, inexplicably, absolutely unaccountably and devotedly loved this Uncle Kolja Beastly King. Why, what for? – to this day I don’t understand and can’t explain it.
Mother warned me to stay away for him:
‘Firstly, he is a mentally ill old man. And secondly, he is a misanthrope. It is the way his misanthropy shows.’ Mum often talked to me as with an adult, without caring about how well I understood her. ‘Sometimes it happens, that the more people hate other people, the more they like animals. But this is not right, this should not happen. You have to love everyone, otherwise it is some sort of pretence… And don’t even think of teasing him. Or he will smack you on the head and you’ll have a concussion.’
God knows, I had no intention of teasing him! It’s just that I watched him. It was a kind of game. I climbed into the tangle of bur in front of his house and through the hole in the fence I watched what he was doing. How he fed crows and they walked around his shoulders and head as if on a floor. How he for hours silently talked to chickens, holding them on his lap and stroking them tenderly, and they listened, covering their eyes with film, and their faces became serious and not at all silly as they usually were. How quickly, nimbly he made baskets out of ivy rods, and the rods seemed to burst from his hands and splice into plaits and braids. How he carried from one place to another a lame piglet, whose hinder legs, God knows why, were paralysed; and the piglet laughed merrily and looked into his bearded face.
‘Mum,’ I said in the evening at home, ‘uncle Kolja took away aunty Zina’s piglet. She wanted to kill it, but he took it away and left for himself. She swore at first and then gave it away. Because it is ill… this piglet.’
‘Oh God, what piglet?’ Mother sighed. ‘How many times have I told you not to go to this uncle Kolja!’
‘But I don’t go to him… Mum… What is he going to do with it, with the piglet?’
‘Well… What do people do with piglets? Probably he’ll also going to kill it.’
But I knew, that it won’t be so. Never would Uncle Kolja Beastly King kill a piglet. He could probably kill aunty Zina. But not a piglet. It is called mi-san-thro-pe. Very long word. A proper jawbreaker.
Sometimes during my watch under uncle Kolja’s fence, his dogs discovered me and howled and barked terrifically, and then rushed to uncle Kolja. Uncle Kolja Beastly King at once grabbed his stick and limping slightly rushed for the fence with a savage face. Growing cold with joyful terror, I dashed out of the weeds, covered in scratches, burdocks and dandelion fluff, and ran as fast as my legs could carry me across the warm dusty path to my house. He never pursued me, but with my back I felt as if he was, and bolted off, without seeing the road, my heart furiously thumping. This was also part of the game. I wondered if Uncle Kolja Beastly King seemed to consciously take part in it. In any case he never imposed any serious sanctions on me, and, mind you, never blocked up the hole in the fence. I took it as a silent agreement for the continuation of the game and after a day or two returned to my watch.
The house of Uncle Kolja Beastly King was right next to the shop. One day someone spread a rumour that ice cream was brought into the shop. It was unheard of: ice cream in a village. I begged mother for money and rushed there. But the rumour was false: there was nothing on the shelves apart from vodka and garlic. There weren’t even any bread, because it wasn’t a bread day. I remember very vividly how a sharp and hopeless disappointment pierced straight through me. It wasn’t about the ice cream as such. I looked forward to a miracle and a holiday. And neither of it happened. Even worse – it wasn’t even to be expected. I remember how I descended the warmed up by the sun shop steps, with my head hung low. Then I lifted it – and saw Beastly King.
He saw me too and beckoned with his finger. At once I became very afraid, but I came closer. Because it was common not scary fear. Somehow, I don’t know why, I knew that he won’t do me any harm. He showed me with a sign to wait for him near the wicket. And I understood and started to wait. Already fading lilac with dark green, almost black leafs, had fallen over the fence. It smelled of flowers and honey. When uncle Kolja stepped out I realised why it smelled of honey. He brought me honey in a huge enamelled cup. The whole cup filled up to the top. It was transparent, dark brown, with golden veins like mother’s amber ring, through which I liked to look at the lamp in the evenings.
God, what a smell it had, this honey! It was more than words could tell. But there was no spoon for it. Instead, there was a splinter of lime tree branch, without leafs and knots. I guessed immediately what I was supposed to do, took this branch and started to lick it. The honey was so thick, it stuck round the branch like tar and barely dropped onto my dress. And its taste, together with the taste of lime bark, asperous and slightly scratching my tongue, was absolutely indescribable. And I licked this splinter, and dipped it into the cup again, and laughed and behind the fence raged and wheezed uncle Kolja’s dogs, but I wasn’t afraid of them at all. I knew that he wouldn’t allow them to touch me.
After the honey I desperately wanted to drink, and I drank out of a pump, splashing chilling water onto my legs. And above me on a tree sat uncle Kolja’s friend sparrow and said “tee-weet” with a stressed first syllable. It was also my friend sparrow. I recognised him by his accent. During the whole of June he never built his own dwelling and always tried to invite his women into an empty crow’s nest, creepy and crooked. Women flew out of it like corks and didn’t return. Nearly half the summer was gone, and he never married.