“Don’t touch me! Let me go! Don’t!”
That desperate cry rang out over the river’s smooth surface and died away—heard by almost no one, understood by no one—swallowed up by heat thick as honey. The languid, exhausting swelter pressed the grasses to the ground, silenced the birds, and muffled sound itself, as if brushing aside the soul-freezing despair braided into that shout. Only the thin, needling whine of mosquitoes droned on in the dense waterside thickets, and grasshoppers chirred in the roadside weeds, as if nothing had happened at all.
Only Grandma Marfa’s old, gaunt, balding dog, Barbós by name, who was picking his way along the very edge of the water in search of coolness, suddenly froze as if rooted. He pricked up his ears, turned his gray muzzle toward a sprawling old willow, and trotted in that direction, from which—so it seemed to him—that strange call, full of pain and fear, had come. The dog was ancient, almost deaf; a cloudy cataract filmed his eyes; but this time he was not mistaken—his life-worn heart, always quick to answer kindness, had heard distress calling.
Grandma Marfa would have been astonished to see her Barbós at that moment. Where had the listless, perpetually hungry, shaggy, underfed creature gone—the one who spent his days dozing on her doorstep? On the rise at the foot of the willow there now stood not a dog but a true beast: teeth bared, his sparse, long-unmoulted coat bristling along a starved neck. He was ready to hurl himself into a fight with anyone, with the whole world, not thinking how it might end. A fire long unseen blazed up in his clouded eyes.
Barbós lowered his head, and his low, throaty, vibrating growl—more like a death rattle—let the unseen enemy know that he was not joking. In answer, something pale flickered in the brush, a shadow darted—and all fell silent. Too quickly, too unnaturally.
Wary, he sniffed the air—not relying much on a sense of smell gone dull with age—and, stepping carefully on the heated earth, began to make his way toward a strange bright scrap of fabric showing through the thick grass. The sun dazzled him, but he moved on stubbornly, driven by an incomprehensible inner impulse.
Coming closer, Barbós understood—it was no scrap. It was a sundress. Light, chintz, printed with little flowers. And so painfully familiar, so dear it brought tears, that the old dog suddenly began to wheel in place, whining thinly and piteously; then he sat back on his haunches, lifted his muzzle toward the pitiless, blazing sun, and howled. He howled in despair, piercingly, as loudly as his old strength allowed. He was calling for help. The girl who always slipped him food—sneaking him bits of pie behind her mother’s back—who would sit on the bench by the door stroking his scruff for ages, scattering such unusual, such precious tender words—she needed that help now more than ever. That girl with eyes as bright as forget-me-nots.
Artyom was coming back from town by the back road along the river. In his hand he gripped a hefty hazel stick he’d found on the way, knocking with boyish gusto at the heads of burdock and roadside thistles. A carefree, happy smile played at his lips, and in the pocket of his shorts lay a small, velvet-covered box whose mere presence made his heart both warm and anxious. Inside were two rings. One—a simple men’s band in white gold. The other—slender, delicate, with a tiny but startlingly clear diamond that flared with all the colors of the rainbow in the sun.
Lika had taken to that ring at once. They’d gone into the jewelry shop “just to look,” and she had turned it between her fingers, shyly tried it on her slim ring finger, sighed in delight, and then just as carefully set it back on the velvet pad in the display.
“Do you like it?” Artyom asked then, watching her glowing face with his heart in his throat.
“Very much. It’s beautiful. But this one isn’t bad either,” Lika pointed to a simpler piece.
“It’s so plain—nothing on it,” Artyom grimaced.
“So what? Are rings what matter? Is that the point of them?”
She turned to him, and her smile was the very one he remembered from kindergarten—tender, radiant, endlessly dear. It was how she smiled in every photograph: in kindergarten, where they stood side by side—Artyom, a frowning, solemn little lump, and Lika, laughing with her whole mouth—in school, and at graduation.
“What a pair!” their mothers would laugh. “Tyomka! Relax already! She’s not going to run away from you! Hear that? Your Lika isn’t going anywhere! Learn to smile first!”
And he truly was afraid—so afraid it made him sick, made his pulse drop, iced his gut. He feared Lika would vanish, dissolve into the world, leave him alone in this backwater.
But Lika never even thought of it. Why would she? There was no better friend than Artyom, and as the years passed she understood she simply couldn’t love anyone more. They’d grown together like roots, become part of one another. How do you tear a bond like that? So everyone in the village took it for granted they’d marry. But then, out of the blue, Lika dug in her heels.
“I’m going to study! In the city!” she announced one evening as they walked along the bank.
“What do you need that for?” he asked, honestly not understanding. “We have everything here. Work, a home… My parents will help; yours will too. We’ll make it.”
“I have to, Tyom! It’s the right thing! So no one can ever say I’m a half-educated village girl and you tied your life to a stupid, uneducated nobody!”
“Who would dare say that?!” Artyom flared.
“Oh, there’s always someone,” Lika shook her head stubbornly. “No, I’ve decided.”
Artyom waited. Where else could he go? They teased him, nudged him, but he tried not to pay attention. If you can’t believe the one who’s become the meaning of your life, who can you believe? And he believed Lika as he believed himself.
“Don’t listen to anyone, Tyomka!” she whispered when they said goodbye at the station, hugging him so tight he couldn’t breathe. “I have no one but you—and never will! Got it? Just wait for me a little longer, okay? I’ll finish college and come back. I swear!”
Almost no one believed it. Not even Lika’s mother.
“Why would she come back to this hole?” she confided to the neighbors on the bench. “There’s the city, opportunities—she’ll find a good job. And here what? Just Artyom? She’ll find someone better there. Our Lika’s no fool.”
Artyom knew all those talks. What can you hide in a little settlement where everyone’s under everyone’s eye? He grew gloomy, shut down, kept quiet—and waited.
And Lika returned. She got a job teaching at the local school and, smiling her happiest smile, asked Artyom herself:
“Well? Are you going to ask me to marry you, or should we wait some more?”
The house Artyom and his father had started building right after his army service was almost finished. And even Lika’s mother had nothing to say against it when the groom and his parents came to ask for her hand.
“Take her!” was all she said, fixing Artyom with a stern look. “But know this—hurt her by so much as a word, a glance, and I’ll hold you to account to the fullest! I won’t care that you’re like family! You’re taking a beauty, a treasure—so guard her like the apple of your eye! Understood?”
Artyom didn’t bother answering. He only nodded, squeezing in his big, work-scarred hand the girl’s thin but startlingly strong fingers. How could he ever hurt the one without whom even air ceased to exist for him?
Daisies along the dusty path were hardly the priciest or most glamorous gift for a bride, but Artyom knew perfectly well how Lika loved those simple, sunlit flowers. How many times had she, sitting under the spreading willow by the bank, told fortunes on them, plucking petals carelessly and laughing clear as a bell:
“Loves me—loves me not, spits on me—kisses me, presses to his heart—sends me to hell… Loves me! Tyomka, do you love me?”
“Do you even doubt it?” he’d always answer, kissing the crown of her head.
He heard the old Barbós’s howl at the very moment he bent to pluck another perfect bloom for the bouquet. His hand froze in mid-air, and the daisies he’d already gathered slipped from his fingers to lie at his feet, drooping and defenseless.
Only once in his life had Artyom heard a dog’s cry as harrowing and full of animal terror. A neighbor had fallen asleep with a cigarette; the old tar-soaked wooden house went up like a torch. The neighbor’s dog, sensing disaster, first lunged on his chain, wheezing and choking on smoke, and then, realizing his efforts were useless, sat and howled—just as terribly, just as piercingly, making the blood of everyone in the surrounding houses run cold. Artyom’s father had saved the neighbor then, getting serious burns himself. He pulled from the flames a man he’d once shared a school desk with, a friend later fallen out over drink—but how can you leave someone in trouble because your paths have parted?
And now, though he didn’t fully realize it yet, Artyom understood in his gut—something terrible had happened. An old dog doesn’t howl like that for nothing.
He reached the spot in seconds—where Barbós, bristling, paced, afraid to come closer to the figure sprawled on the ground. Artyom dropped to his knees, ignoring the snarling dog, rolled the girl face-up—and froze. His heart shrank to an icy lump, then fell into a void. It was Yanochka! The neighbor Katya’s daughter. A laughing, lively, kind girl. Every dog and cat for miles knew her yard as a place where you’d be fed and petted. Her mother was the same—never scolding her for dragging home all sorts of injured creatures.
In the village they called Yana Ivushka—Little Willow—for her slender, pliant figure, delicate features, and gentle, meek nature. She pitied everyone, rejoiced for everyone, and simply couldn’t hold a grudge.
“Yana! Yanochka!” Artyom’s voice broke into a rasp.
Fine, silk-soft fair hair lay in a tangled web across her face. With a trembling hand Artyom brushed the strands from her cheek. Yana opened her eyes—eyes filled with such mute, absolute, animal terror that Artyom felt physically sick. And she screamed again—the very scream that had torn the noon silence.
She screamed so loudly, so frantically, that Barbós howled once more; then, with a furious snarl, he launched himself at Artyom, no longer distinguishing friend from foe, seeing only a source of fear for the one he was defending.
“Barbós, down! Heel!” Artyom barked on reflex, jerking away from the dog, and let go of Yana.
She instantly covered her face with her hands and was wracked by soundless, hoarse convulsions. She had no strength left to scream.
“Yanochka, sweetheart! What happened to you? It’s me, Artyom! Tyomka! Look at me! Who… who did this?”
Yana suddenly went limp and fell silent, and Artyom realized she had fainted. Without a second thought he scooped her light, nearly weightless body into his arms and almost ran—stumbling over hummocks—toward the outermost huts. Grandma Marfa Potapovna’s garden, her gate…
“Granny Marfa! Grandma! Where are you?!”
Seeing Artyom with Yana hanging limp in his arms, Marfa Potapovna gasped and, forgetting her old woman’s limp, hobbled toward him.
“My dear boy! Tyomka! What’s happened? Yanochka?!”
“I don’t know! Found her on the bank! Granny, it’s bad—bad! We need Semyonych! And a car! Maybe the hospital…”
Marfa didn’t wait to hear more. She grabbed the sleeve of her grandson, who had popped into the doorway, and ordered him to run flat out to the feldsher, Ivan Semyonovich.
“And tell him to fly! One foot here, the other there! Then to Katya, Yana’s mother! Have her come here—no dawdling!”
Artyom laid Yana in the cool half-dark of Marfa’s front room on the wide bed and was about to step out so as not to embarrass the girl when she opened her eyes. Her gaze fell on Artyom—and that same soul-freezing scream ripped from her again.
“Child, my poor little one! Who did this to you?” Marfa, with a strength surprising for her years, boosted Yana up, pressed her to her bony breast, and stroked her hair and back. “Hush now, hush, my golden girl! I’m here. No one will touch you here. Who was it, eh? Tell Granny!”
The look Yana, shaking all over, shot at Artyom made Marfa Potapovna’s jaw drop.
“Tyomka?! Good Lord, no! How can you even! Child, are you in your right mind at all?”
It was a rhetorical question. Shoving the old woman away with sudden force, Yana scuttled into the corner of the bed, trembling so hard the springs squealed, and the fancy white shams on the plump pillows bunched into a heap, covering her like a queer shroud—or a bridal veil.
That look—pure, unthinking terror—made Artyom lurch back, clipping the edge of the table. The washed-till-they-shone cups neatly set upon it gave a plaintive clink, and that ordinary domestic sound, for some reason, brought him back to himself.
“It wasn’t me! Yanochka! What are you—? Granny Marfa, I wasn’t anywhere near her! I’ll swear on anything you want!”
“Don’t justify yourself, fool! I believe you,” the old woman cut him off with a heavy sigh.
She went around the bed, bent over the girl curled into a ball, and said firmly:
“Forgive me, child. It has to be done.”
The sharp, ringing slap ended the hysteria. Yana gasped, went slack, and suddenly began to sob—quietly, hopelessly, like a child—clinging with tear-wet fingers to Marfa’s hand and no longer looking at Artyom.
Katya burst into the house like a whirlwind. She flew to the bed, grabbed her daughter by the shoulders, shaking her:
“Daughter! My darling! What—who did this? Tell me! Tell me his name!”
Yana only shook her head, sobbing, her breath hitching. Katya’s face darkened; she slowly turned to Artyom and asked quietly, with an unrepeatable intonation:
“You?!”
“Katya! Come to your senses!” Marfa intervened briskly, steering the stunned Artyom toward the door. “Go, Tyomka. Breathe, smoke if you must! Have some water! We’ll manage here. Don’t go far. Semyonych will be here any minute—he’ll talk to you.”
What the women said inside, Artyom didn’t know. He sat on the sun-flooded steps of the old porch and stared blankly ahead. One thought spun like a stuck record in his head: “It wasn’t me… It wasn’t… So why did she look at me like that? Why?”
He didn’t at first notice the yard filling with neighbors, or that his own mother crouched down beside him, her face twisted with worry.
“Tyomenka! Son! What on earth has happened? Folks are saying Yana… someone hurt her. And they’re pointing at you.”
He didn’t get a chance to answer. The feldsher, Ivan Semyonovich, stepped onto the porch, crooked a finger for him, and Artyom rose obediently, shamefacedly lowering his eyes before the gathered villagers.
Yana was no longer crying. She sat on the bed, pressed to her mother, who was whispering something wordless and soothing in her ear. From time to time the girl shuddered and bit hard on the rim of the tin mug.
“Sit, Artyom,” Semyonych pressed his shoulder lightly, settling him on a stool. “Tell me everything in order. What you saw, what you heard.”
“Nothing special. I was walking by the bank. Heard Barbós howling—you know, the way they howl for the dead. It was awful. I ran toward the sound. And there… Yana. Lying there. I picked her up and brought her here. That’s all.”
“Meet anyone on the way? See anything suspicious?”
“No. No one around. She was alone. By the old willow.”
“Strange business,” the feldsher shook his head.
“What’s strange about it?” Zinka—ever present, the village’s chief gossip—squeezed through the door. “He fancied the girl, ruined her, and now he’s denying it! He’s no looker—no brides lining up for him…”
Marfa Potapovna, without a second thought, snapped a wet dish towel at her like a whip.
“Out, you poisonous toad! Not here! Go wag that tongue somewhere else!”
Grumbling, Zinka retreated.
“Don’t listen to her, Semyonych,” the old woman turned to the feldsher. “It’s nonsense! I’ve known Tyomka since diapers—he couldn’t! And to our Yashka of all people! He carried her in his arms when she was tiny! No, there’s something else here—something dark. Yaročka! Child, who did you see? Do you remember anything at all?”
Yana closed her eyes, shaking her head weakly. Her memory was a thick black fog. She didn’t remember how she’d come to the bank, though that spot under the willow was her favorite. She went there after school to dream, to sit in the hush and look at the water. Her thoughts came easy beneath that green canopy of thin, supple branches—so like herself: defenseless in appearance, yet surprisingly strong within.
The entry door creaked softly, and Lika walked into the front room. Artyom met her eyes, and his heart shrank again with a heavy, bad foreboding. What had they already whispered to her? Whom would she believe?
But Lika looked at no one. She went to the bed, knelt on the cool rag rug, and took Yana’s hands—softly but firmly clasping the girl’s thin, cold wrists.
“Yarisha. My good girl,” her voice was astonishingly calm and gentle. “Look at me. What do you remember? Anything at all?”
Yana shook her head again—nothing…
“Was he old?” Lika asked, quiet, almost insinuating.
Yana glanced up, startled.
“No…”
That hoarse, barely audible whisper sounded louder than any shout in the taut stillness of the room. Artyom flinched.
“Young, then,” Lika went on, keeping her gaze on Yana. “Was he in a dark shirt? Black?”
“I don’t remember…”
“White, then.”
“No… Something else…” Yana screwed her eyes shut, as if trying to see something in the dark. “I closed my eyes… I was so scared…”
“A tank top? A T-shirt? A white T-shirt?”
“I think… yes…” Yana breathed.
Marfa Potapovna cast a meaningful look from Artyom to Semyonych. The dark-blue, nearly new shirt Artyom’s mother had brought him from the spa was now soaked through with sweat.
“Yaročka,” Lika’s voice stayed even and calm, but Artyom heard steel in it. “Was it Artyom? Tyomka? Are you sure?”
Lika still didn’t look at her fiancé, afraid to break the fragile, hypnotic state Yana was in.
The silence in the room rang—absolute. You could hear the old Barbós shifting under the window and the neighbors murmuring in the distance, though Semyonych had asked them to disperse.
Yana’s fingers stirred in Lika’s hands, warmed a little. And a quiet, faltering whisper broke the stillness:
“No… Not him…”
Svetlana didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow. Knowing she couldn’t stop for even a second, she kept on, again and again, asking questions—gently drawing scraps of detail from the depths of memory. Yana answered some; to others she only shook her head.
Katya sat beside them, hardly breathing, hunched as if a concrete slab had dropped across her shoulders. The pain and fear for her daughter closed her throat and squeezed her ribs.
Her girl—her pure, bright child—and this… What sort of creature could do such a thing? She was afraid even to ask Yana to stand, afraid to see proof of what might forever cross out their happy, peaceful life.
Lika, it seemed, feared nothing now. She rose from her knees, helped Yana up lightly but confidently, and hugged her, catching Katya’s shaky sigh of relief.
“You’re a good girl, Yaročka. You did so well,” she murmured, stroking her back. “Tell me one more thing—do you know him? The one who… Did you see his face?”
From the way Yana turned to stone again in her arms, Lika understood—no. She didn’t know. She hadn’t seen.
“He… smelled like…” Yana said suddenly, very quietly.
“How, sweetie? What smell?” Lika tensed.
“Like in church… That strange, sweetish smell… Heavy…”
Lika, startled, loosened her hold a fraction.
“What did you say? Like in church?!”
“Yes… Mama and I went to service recently—for the feast day. It smelled the same there… Like frankincense, I think…”
Lika nodded to Katya, easing the weakened girl into her mother’s care, and decisively motioned to Semyonych with her head.
“Let’s go.”
“Where to?” the feldsher was surprised.
“I’ll explain on the way!”
Artyom, understanding nothing, took a step toward Lika, but as she passed she only brushed his hand and whispered:
“Stay here. Be with them. You can’t come with us now.”
Lika and Semyonych were back fairly quickly, with the local precinct officer in tow—just returned from the neighboring district.
Lika nodded to Katya, took Artyom by the hand, and led him out onto the porch.
“We’ll wait here. They’ll call us if needed.”
The evening air was shedding the day’s heat; breathing became easier. Lika lowered herself onto the crooked step, still warm from the sun, tugged the hem of her simple sundress over her knees, and patted the wood beside her.
“Sit, Tyom. Truth doesn’t stand on legs.”
Artyom sank down and looked at his fiancée—so composed, so resolute, and unbearably beautiful.
“And where does it stand, then—that truth?” he asked hoarsely. “Today they nearly branded me a rapist in front of everyone…”
“Cool it, Artyom,” Lika said sternly. “Yanochka’s a child. She was terrified—maybe hit her head; that’s why the memory’s gone. It happens. They told us in psych at the institute. Good thing those lessons paid off…”
“Svet—” he began, but she cut him off.
“Don’t even start! Did you really think, even for a second, that I’d believe you… did that… to her? Artyom! You’d sooner chop off your own hand than touch a child. Don’t tempt God—or me!”
She leaned her cheek against his shoulder, and he felt her tremble all over from strain.
“I just don’t understand one thing—why? Who needed this? Why set you up?”
“Wait…” Artyom drew back. “You know who it was?”
“I do. And you do—only you haven’t put it together yet.”
“How?!” He truly didn’t understand.
“Think. Who did your mama bring that scented water to as a gift from Kislovodsk? The one that reeks of frankincense and sweets? We even joked he wouldn’t need church anymore—could just spray himself.”
Artyom went still. In his head everything clicked into a single, dreadful picture.
“Maksim?! But he’s… He’s Yana’s third cousin! How could he!”
“Him. The crawling snake,” Lika’s voice shook with hatred. “He lay in wait when she headed to the river and tailed her. Says he doesn’t even know how it happened. ‘Something came over me,’ he mutters. Said he’d liked her for a long time, but she wouldn’t even look at him—a drunk and a layabout. He tried this way and that—no luck. Then he ‘short-circuited,’ imagine.”
“I’ll… I’ll—” Artyom shot to his feet, fists clenched, face gone purple with rage. “I’ll smash that perfumed mug of his!”
“Sit.” Lika jerked his sleeve with authority. “It’s dealt with—without you. Thank God he didn’t manage to do anything to her. He spooked when he heard Barbós and your shout, Yana, and bolted into the brush. But he frightened her badly… Ivan Semyonovich is speaking with his mother now. Speaking seriously. Let her have him examined and decide what to do. She says she’ll send the fool to her brother in the city—to be knocked into shape, since she can’t handle him herself. I hear the brother’s a hard man—a military type. He’ll beat all the nonsense out of him quickly enough.”
Artyom sank back down and, shyly, uncertainly, reached to put his arm around Lika. She nestled in herself, pressed close, and closed her eyes, exhausted.
“My head’s splitting… We were painting the school walls half the day. I breathed in all that paint—and now this… this nightmare…”
Suddenly she straightened, tugged Artyom’s sleeve.
“You bought the rings, didn’t you?”
“Uh… yeah,” he said, as if waking from a dream.
“Then why are you keeping quiet? Hand them over! I need a sedative for my shattered nerves—stat!”
The little velvet box dropped into her palm. The soft, rapt gasp that escaped her lips was the best reward Artyom could have asked for, pushing the day’s horror into the background.
“Tyomka… Is it… the one?”
Lika slid the slender ring onto her finger, turned her hand, admiring the tiny stone catching the last light of the setting sun, and reached for Artyom, looping her arms around his neck.
“Thank you,” she whispered against his mouth. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
They sat like that for a long time, silent, pressed together. Semyonych and the officer had gone, taking a stunned, wretched Maksim with them. Katya had led Yana home—shaky, but calmer. At the door she turned, looked at Artyom with a shadow of her earlier guilt, not knowing what to say; she exhaled in relief when he only nodded and gave a gentle wave: “Go. It’s all right.”
Marfa Potapovna stepped onto the porch, looked at the couple, muttered something to herself, and went back inside, leaving them alone. Let them talk.
“Svet…” Artyom began quietly, when the sun had almost slipped below the horizon.
“Mmm?” she purred lazily, nuzzling his neck.
“You… You really didn’t believe it? Not for a second?”
In the deepening dusk her eyes seemed bottomless, almost black.
“Have you lost your mind, Sorokin?”
“I mean it, Svet. I won’t be offended. I get it—how it all looked from the outside. The signs, the scream… her look…”
Lika’s warm palms cupped his face, and the cool scratch of the ring’s metal grazed his skin. Her gaze—dark and deadly serious—flared so hot Artyom felt flushed.
“I. Believe. You.” She spoke slowly, hammering each word into him. “Understand? Always. No conditions. Otherwise what is any of this for? What’s the point?” She opened his fingers, set the empty velvet box in his palm, and closed them again. “And besides… Artyom Sorokin, you’re worse at lying than a three-year-old. Everything is always written right here,” she tapped his forehead, “in big old letters.”
“And what’s written there now, Professor?” he smiled, feeling a weight finally drop from his soul.
“That you love me!” she winked slyly, and merry sparks danced in her eyes again. “Did I read the letters right? Those years at the institute weren’t for nothing, were they?”
“They weren’t,” Artyom laughed, pulling her closer. “Not at all. My wife’s going to be educated. The most educated in the world.”
