Page 55 of Spinning Silver
So when the tsarina asked me how she could pay me, I did not know what to say. I did not do it for her. I did not know her. Maybe she was the tsarina, but I did not even know what her name was. One day when I was ten one of our neighbors came to the house and said the tsar was dead and when I asked what it meant they said that there would be a new tsar. So I did not really see why a tsar mattered. And now that I had seen a tsar, I did not want anything to do with one. He was terrible and full of fire. I would have told her that to repay me, she could make the tsar go away, but he had already gone out of the house with the guards who were leading the Staryk.
But Miryem’s father heard her asking me, and he saw I did not know what to say. He had a big bruise all on the side of his face, and his hands were all hurt and shaking where he had been holding tight on that silver chain with me, and he was sitting with Panova Mandelstam and they had their arms wrapped around Miryem and they were kissing her head and touching her face like she was worth more to them than silver kopeks, more to them than gold, more than everything they had. But when he saw I did not know what to do, he kissed Miryem’s forehead and he got up and he came limping over the floor to the tsarina and said to her, “This brave girl and her brothers came to the city with us because they are in trouble at home.” Then he put his hand on my shoulder and he said to me softly, “Go and sit down and rest, Wanda, I will tell her about it.”
So I went away and sat down with Sergey and Stepon and put my arms around them, and they put their arms around me. We were too far away to hear what Panov Mandelstam was saying because he said it very quietly. But he talked to the tsarina for a little time, and then he came limping over to us and told us that everything would be all right. We believed him. The tsarina was going out of the house then. She walked out those big doors into the courtyard where some more of the guards were waiting for her. Two of them reached inside and took hold of the doors and they pulled them shut. And we were inside the house without them.
There was a big mess in the room. Around the edges of the room there was still some food on the tables going bad and flies were already buzzing around it. Chairs were knocked over everywhere and coming out of the fireplace over the floor there were black scorch marks like the footprints a man leaves walking through snow in heavy boots. The big golden crown Miryem had been wearing was on the floor near the fireplace and it was all bent out of shape and almost melted. Nobody could have put it back on. But it did not matter. We looked at Miryem’s family, and they looked at us, and we all got up and Panov Mandelstam put his arm around Sergey’s back, and I put my arm around Panova Mandelstam’s, and we were a circle all together, the six of us: we were a family, and we had kept the wolf away again; for another day we had kept the wolf away.
Then we went upstairs and went to sleep. We did not clean up the mess. I slept a long time in that beautiful big quiet room up at the top of the stairs, and when I woke up there was spring outside, spring everywhere, and it felt like that spring outside was inside me, too. Even though my hands had blisters, I felt so strong that I did not even worry a little about what would happen to us. I kissed Sergey and Stepon and I went downstairs to help the other women in the house, and I did not care anymore that I did not understand what they were saying. When someone said something to me that I did not know, I only smiled at her, and she smiled at me and said, “Oh, I forget!” and told me over again what she was saying except in the words I knew.
I carried dishes to the tables: there were tables in all the rooms for people to sit and eat, not as many people as yesterday but still so many that they had tables in every room and chairs crammed tight around them. There were tables in the other dancing room, too. Somebody else had cleaned up the mess, and I could not see the black marks on the floor anymore because someone had unrolled a big carpet over the floor and brought in tables, and there was no fire in the fireplace because it was so warm that instead they had opened the windows to the air. The smell of smoke was gone.
And there was food everywhere, so much food that we could almost not find places to put food down because already every spot had food on it. When I was hungry myself, I sat down at the table and ate until I was full, and afterwards I helped again to put out more food for more people. I kept doing it. Later on in the day, Miryem and her mother came, too, and still we all worked together.
But I had just put down a pair of buckets, with water that I carried from the fountain down in the city, when I heard a noise out in the room with the tables, and then I heard Miryem asking, hard and clear, “What are you here for?” as if someone had come again to hurt us. I pushed out of the kitchen and came into the doorway and there was a guard with a sword and fine clothing in the room who said my name. He said he had a letter for me. Then I was afraid for a moment, but I was in this house, with all these people, and I thought, I was strong enough for this too; so I stepped forward and I held my hand out and I let him put the letter into it.
On that letter there was a heavy thing of wax as red as blood, pressed with a shape of a great crown. I broke it open and I looked at the words. I knew how to say them, because Miryem had taught me, so in my mouth I silently made the words with my tongue one after another, and what it said in that letter was,Be it known to any who come into Our domain of Lithvas that by Our imperial command the woman Wanda Vitkus and her brother Sergey Vitkus and her brother Stepon Vitkus are pardoned of any and all crimes of which they stand accused. Let no man’s hand be raised against them, and every one of Our people do them honor for the great and courageous service which they have done for Us and Lithvas. And they are furthermore granted by Our will permission to go into the Great Forest and therein take freehold wherever they so choose, in any untenanted property, and there claim from Our hand title to whatever land they can put into crops, or enclose for herding, in three years’ time, and they shall have it for themselves and their heirs.
And underneath those words there was a great scrawling of ink that was not a word, it was a name,Mirnatius,and then after itTsar of Lithvas and Roson, Grand Duke of Koron, of Irkun, of Tomonyets, of Serveno, Prince of Maralia, of Roverna, of Samatonia, Lord of Markan and the Eastern Marches,and last after all that list,Lord and Master of the Great Northern Forest.
I looked at that letter and then I understood why a tsar mattered. It was magic like Miryem’s magic. That tsar, that terrible tsar, could give me this letter and now we were safe. I did not have to be afraid anymore at all. Nobody from town would look at that letter and try to hang Sergey or me. They would look at the tsar’s name on that paper and be afraid of him, even if he was far away.
But we did not even have to go back to town at all. We did not have to go back to our father’s house, where maybe he was still lying on the floor, and we did not have to go back to that farm where nothing much would grow and the tax collector came every year. That letter said that we could go into the forest and take any land that we wanted. It could be the best land we found. It could be full of big trees that we could cut down and sell for lots of money. I knew a big tree was worth a lot because the year before my mother died, there was a tree on our neighbor’s property and one year it fell down and he worked very hard and cut it up quick before the boyar’s men came to take it, and he hid two big pieces of it in the woods. Da saw it and came in and said at dinnertime what he saw and said sourly, “That’s a clever man, he will make ten kopeks off that wood.”
But Mama shook her head and said, “It’s not his property, there will be trouble,” and he slapped her and said, “What do you know,” but the next day the boyar’s men came with a big wagon and they put the pieces of the tree in it, and there was a man with them who looked at those pieces and somehow knew that some of the tree was missing, and they beat our neighbor hard until he told them where he hid the pieces, and they put the pieces in the wagon and left him on the ground bloody. He was sick for a long time because of it, and his wife had to try and sow the crops alone because he could not walk. One day that winter she came to beg for food, and Mama gave her some. Da beat her for it that night even though her belly was already getting big.
But nobody would beat us for cutting down trees, because in this letter the tsar said we could. He said they were ours. He said all that land, as much land as we could take care of, would be ours. We could have goats and chickens and we could plant rye. And we did not even have to build a house. We could go to the little house, the house that had saved us, where there was already a garden and a barn, and we could make a farm all around it. This paper said that it was all right because there was no one living in it. I thought we would go there and we would go into the house and promise to take care of it, and we would promise that if anyone who had ever lived there wanted to come back, we would give them the best bed, and all the food they wanted, and they could stay there with us as long as they wanted.
And then I thought, if anyone came to the house at all—if anyone came to the house who was hungry and in trouble—we would let them stay. There would be food in our house for them, and we would be glad. Like Panova Mandelstam. That is what that letter said. We could make a house like her house and we could feed anyone who came.
I took the letter upstairs to Sergey and Stepon. Sergey had helped with the horses and Stepon had helped him for a while also even though it was still very noisy, but then he had to go upstairs and he was still afraid, so Sergey went upstairs with him. I went upstairs and I came into the room and I showed them the letter, and they did not know how to read the letters, but they saw the big red seal, and they touched the heavy soft paper, and I told them carefully out loud what it said, and then I asked them if they wanted to do what I wanted to do, I asked if they wanted to go to the little house in the woods and make a farm there, and let anyone come to us in trouble. I did not say,We are going to do that,even though it was what I wanted. I asked them if they wanted it also.
Sergey carefully reached out and took the paper in his hands. I let him have it. He very lightly touched the shape of one of the letters on the paper with his finger just to see if it would come off. It did not come off even a little. “Yes,” he said softly. “Yes.”
Stepon said, “Can we ask them to come live with us?” He meant Miryem’s family. “Can we ask them to come? And I can plant the nut, and then Mama will be there too. Then it will be all of us together, and that would be the very best thing.”
When he said it, I started to cry because he was right, it would be the very best thing, it would be so good that I had not even been able to think of it. Sergey put his arm around my shoulders, and he said to Stepon, “Yes. We will ask them to come,” and I wiped the tears away from my face, carefully, so I would not get any of them on the letter.
When I left my grandfather’s study, I went to my parents’ room. They were sitting by the fire together, and Wanda and her brothers had come down to them; Wanda had brought the tsar’s letter, and had given it to my father, who was looking at it surprised. “We can go and fetch the goats,” Wanda was saying, to him and my mother, “and the chickens. It is warm now. We can build more of the house by winter. We can cut down some trees. There will be room,” and as I came around and looked at the letter, where the tsar had signed himselfLord and Master of the Great Northern Forest,I understood: Irina was already stretching out her hand. She had given Wanda a farm in exchange for taking her brothers and her strong arms into the forest to clear trees and plant crops and build a house and a barn, the first of many to come.
“Leave our house?” my mother said slowly. “But we’ve lived there so long,” and then I understood also that Wanda was asking my parents to come and live with them, there on the farm the tsar had given them; she wanted them to leave our town, our house, our little narrow island in the river that was always in danger of being flooded.
“And what is there to stay for?” I said. “It’s not ours. It’s the boyar’s. Everything we’ve ever done to improve it, we’ve done for him, for nothing; we’re not even allowed to buy it if we wanted to. But with help in the house, Sergey and Wanda can clear more land and make the farm richer. Of course you should go.”
My mother stilled; they all looked at me and heard what I hadn’t said, and she reached for my hand. “Miryem!”
I swallowed hard. The words were on my lips:Go tomorrow, stay one day more,but I thought of Rebekah, thin as a sliver of blue ice. How long before she would melt away? “You should go now,” I said. “Today, before the sun goes down.”
“No,” my father said flatly, standing up: my kind, gentle father, angry at last. “Miryem, no. This Staryk—he was right! Hedeserveswhat has come to him! It is the reward of the wicked.”
“There’s a child,” I said, my throat choked and sore. My mother’s hand tightened on mine. “I gave her a name. Will I let a demon feast on her, becausehewas wicked?”
“Every winter they come from their kingdom of ice, to steal and murder among the innocent,” my father said after a moment, just as Irina had said, but then he asked me, as a plea: “Are there even ten righteous among them?”
I drew a breath, still afraid but half relieved, too: it made the answer so clear. “I know that there are three,” I said. I put my other hand around my mother’s and squeezed back. “I have to. You know I have to.”
I took the deformed golden crown to Isaac’s stall, where his younger brother was minding things for him, and he carefully melted the whole thing down for me into flat gold bars, and then I went out with them hidden in a sack, out to the great market in the center of the city. One after another I traded them, not caring if I made a good bargain, so long as I made a quick one. I traded for a cart, for two strong horses to pull it, for a crate full of chickens, for an axe, a saw, hammers, and nails. I bought a plow and furrows and two sharp scythes, and sacks of seed for rye and beans. Sergey and Wanda came with me; they loaded everything into the cart and piled it high. And last at the end, I bought two long hooded cloaks, exactly the same, a dull grey: thosewerea good bargain, their price come down far from what they’d been yesterday, on a table full of others.
It took us a long time to drive the heaped cart back to my grandfather’s house: the streets were crammed full of traffic and moving almost not at all. As we crawled along, Wanda said, “There is a wedding,” and looking down a side street towards the great cathedral I glimpsed a princess coming down the steps, wearing my Staryk dress of gold and white with a thin crown upon her head; she was smiling and triumphant, and her husband beside her equally so, among a crowd of splendid nobles. The dress fit better there than it had in my grandfather’s house. I looked for Irina: she was already at the foot of the stairs, with the tsar beside her, climbing into an open carriage. The sunlight caught on her silver crown, and he only sat leaning on an elbow, looking irritated with boredom, and no sign of the demon lurking beneath his skin. I looked quickly away.
