light.
The light is different this morning. A blend of mauves and yellows, ruby-rich colours that, upon the moment of his awakening, make him wonder if he has overslept: surely the dawn has already arrived. He feels an instant tightening, the sensation particular to this crime, familiar to him from those rare days when he has emerged late for school or for milking, the surge of panic that sweeps over the muscles when time has stolen precious minutes or hours from their hold. He sits up and looks at the small clock and his brain assures him back to a relaxed state. The clock is never wrong and, even if it were, surely his father would have come to place a hand on his ankle, waking him gently.
Artyom is thirteen; the age has finally come when he can rise with his father, when he can hold a gun and listen to how men talk when they are alone. He is not of the age when he can add to the conversation—he knows this—but someday, this too will come.
This hour is new to him, the prerising hour, the hour when nothing is required but thought. Before this spring, his life was comprised only of activity, eating or preparing food, walking the cows down the rutted lane, lining them up for milking, then walking them back once more. Endless days defined by school and work and sleep. Occasionally there would be a party, on V-Day or Labour Day, when they would walk to the Polovinkins’ izba and join all the other families in the village. Where Anastasiya Ivanovna would play the balalaika and the men would sing army songs, solemn and low, until someone would turn the dial on the radio and they would spread into the lane and dance together, or if rain was falling, bump around on the porch and laugh. But this was a rare occasion, maybe three times a year, the whole village coming together, a village of twenty-five families.
On the first morning, on Monday, when he woke at four, the anticipation turning something inside him, he could think of nothing, but decided not to rise: his older sister, Sofya, slept six feet away and it would be wrong to wake her any earlier than necessary. Besides, his parents slept in the next room and his father would wake and dress and then be angry with him for adding another hour to his already long day. There was a possibility he would be denied the trip and would have to wait another year to shoot grouse with the men. One more year. He had pleaded with his father for so long now that another year would drain away the joy of anticipation, leave him murky and resentful.
And so, on that first morning, he simply lay in stillness and watched the rise and dip of the blankets that covered Sofya and the slow wash of light from a wakening sky, light that climbed the wooden walls and spilled across their neatly folded clothes resting on the two shelves of the opposite wall.
So curious, the colours he sees now, much different from the other mornings, seeping through the glass, making each aspect of the room seem precious, as though while sleeping they had been doused in wealth. His threadbare shirts seem gilded, the walls fashioned from a deep, exotic wood. He tries to think of a word with which to describe the sight to his mother when they sit over dinner this evening, but he doesn’t know the word yet. When she says it to him later, he forms it on his lips, repeating it silently, “luminous,” the shape of the word causing his lips to move like those of a feeding fish.
He thinks of his babushka who died during the winter. His father took the door off its hinges and laid it out on their table and laid her on top of it. A simple ritual that lifted the weight Artyom had felt during those days. Seeing her presented like that, the moment wasn’t as final as he’d expected it to be. Even though her skin had gained a greenish tinge, and her forehead was as cold as the stones they picked from the bare earth before ploughing. That night, when he took his turn to watch over the body, he spent his time staring at the
The light is different this morning. A blend of mauves and yellows, ruby-rich colours that, upon the moment of his awakening, make him wonder if he has overslept: surely the dawn has already arrived. He feels an instant tightening, the sensation particular to this crime, familiar to him from those rare days when he has emerged late for school or for milking, the surge of panic that sweeps over the muscles when time has stolen precious minutes or hours from their hold. He sits up and looks at the small clock and his brain assures him back to a relaxed state. The clock is never wrong and, even if it were, surely his father would have come to place a hand on his ankle, waking him gently.
Artyom is thirteen; the age has finally come when he can rise with his father, when he can hold a gun and listen to how men talk when they are alone. He is not of the age when he can add to the conversation—he knows this—but someday, this too will come.
This hour is new to him, the prerising hour, the hour when nothing is required but thought. Before this spring, his life was comprised only of activity, eating or preparing food, walking the cows down the rutted lane, lining them up for milking, then walking them back once more. Endless days defined by school and work and sleep. Occasionally there would be a party, on V-Day or Labour Day, when they would walk to the Polovinkins’ izba and join all the other families in the village. Where Anastasiya Ivanovna would play the balalaika and the men would sing army songs, solemn and low, until someone would turn the dial on the radio and they would spread into the lane and dance together, or if rain was falling, bump around on the porch and laugh. But this was a rare occasion, maybe three times a year, the whole village coming together, a village of twenty-five families.
On the first morning, on Monday, when he woke at four, the anticipation turning something inside him, he could think of nothing, but decided not to rise: his older sister, Sofya, slept six feet away and it would be wrong to wake her any earlier than necessary. Besides, his parents slept in the next room and his father would wake and dress and then be angry with him for adding another hour to his already long day. There was a possibility he would be denied the trip and would have to wait another year to shoot grouse with the men. One more year. He had pleaded with his father for so long now that another year would drain away the joy of anticipation, leave him murky and resentful.
And so, on that first morning, he simply lay in stillness and watched the rise and dip of the blankets that covered Sofya and the slow wash of light from a wakening sky, light that climbed the wooden walls and spilled across their neatly folded clothes resting on the two shelves of the opposite wall.
So curious, the colours he sees now, much different from the other mornings, seeping through the glass, making each aspect of the room seem precious, as though while sleeping they had been doused in wealth. His threadbare shirts seem gilded, the walls fashioned from a deep, exotic wood. He tries to think of a word with which to describe the sight to his mother when they sit over dinner this evening, but he doesn’t know the word yet. When she says it to him later, he forms it on his lips, repeating it silently, “luminous,” the shape of the word causing his lips to move like those of a feeding fish.
He thinks of his babushka who died during the winter. His father took the door off its hinges and laid it out on their table and laid her on top of it. A simple ritual that lifted the weight Artyom had felt during those days. Seeing her presented like that, the moment wasn’t as final as he’d expected it to be. Even though her skin had gained a greenish tinge, and her forehead was as cold as the stones they picked from the bare earth before ploughing. That night, when he took his turn to watch over the body, he spent his time staring at the
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