Village life

 

Dasha was a healthy, golden haired girl, but strong willed. She had got into trouble with a boy in the city. Thankfully it didn’t go so far as to cause a lasting shame, but it was a close shave, and her parents decided to move her away before she got into trouble for real. She was to go and live with her sister, who had been married the year before to a peasant of the village of Zhukovo, the next village along from where their own family came from. The peasant, whose name was Simeon Likhranov, had six acres of his own and two milk cows, and only got drunk on Sundays and market days. Dasha would stay and help with the housework and the milking until she could find a position in service or better, and there was no reason to doubt it, a good match into a village family.

“A girl is better off in the country, out of harm’s way,” said Dasha’s mother. “Here no one knows what’s right and wrong any more.”

Dasha arrived at her sister’s home towards evening. Simeon Likhranov’s hut was at the end of the village, with a stake fence and a yard around it. Swallows were dancing overhead, and the air was sweet with honeysuckle and the haze of summer dusk. Chickens in the yard were pecking away under a plum tree. Behind the hut a birch wood shivered in the breeze, and beneath the silvery sigh of the wood Dasha could hear the deeper whisper of a stream not far away.

As Dasha moved to open the gate two scrawny black mongrels appeared and started barking and leaping at the fence. She froze there for a moment watching the dogs jump up at the gate, baring scummy anxious jaws. There was a flash of fear in her stomach. Was she really going to live in this empty, brutish place? Sweeping floors and carrying milk pails, cowering from dogs and waiting on her sister’s husband, who’d come home wielding his belt? This wasn’t the life she’d planned for herself. What did she have to hope for, her own ignorant brute of a husband and a litter of peasant kids? It was all very well for Sonya, maybe, but she’d seen a bit more of life in the city. There’d been a boy who told her she was beautiful and took her to the theatre, and read books and knew the names of stars. 

She started laughing, laughed out the panic. Look at you stupid dogs jumping and falling over yourselves when you’ll never get over that fence, you never have and you never will. Come on jump higher you idiots. I won’t be here long, just a few weeks and I’ll find a way out.

Here was Sonya at the door, shouting at the dogs. They didn’t stop barking though until Sonya threw something and hit one on the leg. The dog turned and growled at its mistress, then skulked off into the yard, the other one too.

“Is that you, Dasha? Oh, Dasha, come in. Those stupid mongrels won’t bite you, they just make a lot of noise. Come in sister.”

Dasha thought her sister looked very thin. She noticed there were no lights lit inside the hut. Inside was a sleepy, musty smell. Sonya went round lighting the lamps – “I’m sorry, sister, I don’t know … I wasn’t expecting you already.”

“Are you ill, Sonya? You look so thin?”

“Here, I’ll light the samovar, we’ll have tea. Here, sit on the bed, you must be tired. Don’t worry, everything’s well. That’s right, lie down, you must be tired. I was just lying down – I was tired too, but now I’m glad because I’ve got my little sister to talk to. We’ll be happy together, I won’t let you miss the city.”

The tea was good, there was sugar and bread, and they talked all evening. Sonya asked about mother and father and Moscow life, though she didn’t pry into what had happened to Dasha. There would be plenty of time for all that, no doubt. Whereas Dasha herself had a ton of questions. Her fear had passed as quick as it had come, now she felt playful and full of curiosity. What was Simeon doing away at the market? He sold the summer rye, and fruit from the orchard. Yes, they had an orchard, baskets of apples and cherries. They did well, Simeon worked hard. Not like some of the other peasants, who spent all their time in the tavern. So he was a good husband? They did well, everyone in the village respected Simeon. Would he bring Sonya back a present from the market, something pretty? Simeon was a careful man, he wanted to save and buy more land, he didn’t believe in any extravagance.

“So he’s a careful, sober, husband. But is that all – is he handsome, does he – does he make you feel butterflies in your tummy?”

Sonya laughed. There was something slightly bitter in that laugh. “Yes, he’s very handsome, and strong like a bull. And – and, he’s my husband, I don’t know there’s anything more to say about it. But you’ll see, when he comes back from the market tomorrow. You’ll be alright with him, just be good and make sure you don’t get in his way. Men have their own ways, Dasha. But they are our masters, that’s the way God has made the world. It doesn’t do any good to question them – bear it in patience, that’s all we can do.”

Dasha was stretched out on the bed, tired and dreamy now. “Maybe it’s not so bad,” she said, “here in the country. If I meet a husband who’s handsome like a devil and strong like a bull. Do you know any going with coal black hair and deep blue eyes? I won’t let just any man be my master, he’ll have to conquer me first. But when he does, I’ll melt, and I’ll be on fire for him. He won’t need to go to the tavern drinking vodka, he can drink me all up …”

“Dasha, silly little sister … you keep on dreaming.”

They were falling asleep. An owl was calling outside in the night, and one, then both of the dogs were howling, part of an intermittent chorus that relayed across the village. Wild things, they were, with the birch wood and the stream around them.

  

***

 

The sky was thick blue dawn outside, the bedclothes were damp with morning cool. Dasha woke to the sound of her sister coming through the door with the milk pail. One of the dogs had its nose in through the door after her, but Sonya shut the door on it, cursing under her breath. Then Sonya was lighting the stove and dusting the icons, washing the dishes, sweeping. Dasha roused herself, stretched, and went to help her sister. Yesterday by the lamplight the hut had been shabby, close and homely. Now all the windows were open as they worked, first with brooms then with mops and cloths, every surface wiped not once but two or three times. No, says Sonya, that cup goes here – here, let me, let me show you how to turn the sheet corners right. Then by mid morning when the house was – as far as Dasha could see – perfect, they were out feeding the chickens, collecting wood. Then Sonya put the pots on to boil for the washing.

            In the afternoon, Sonya lay down on the bed. She looked exhausted. Again Dasha was worried – she was sure her sister didn’t look well.

            Now Sonya told her – she had miscarried two weeks before. She had been pregnant so her belly showed, their first child after months of trying. Still she felt weak from it, like she wasn’t right inside. When she talked about it she bit her lip to keep from crying. It would have been their first child. Simeon worked so hard and saved their money to buy more land, so that there would be a living for his sons, and she had lost the child. Now she was afraid, that was the truth. What if there was something wrong with her? With her insides?

            “Oh, Dasha, when I lost the child, Simeon was silent – for two days he didn’t speak to me. Then for three days I didn’t see him, he was gone. When he came home, he beat me with his fists, but then he was drunk, he fell asleep. Then the next day … he was sober, and silent again. He said to come with him outside. I followed him, we went into the wood. He was walking fast ahead, not looking back at me, and I was following. Then we got to the stream and he stopped, he turned and looked at me  so cold… I had never seen his face like that before.

            “’Take off your clothes,’ he said. I was very scared, his voice was quiet, not like when he was drunk and shouting at me the night before. When he was drunk he called me terrible names, said that I had lost the baby on purpose. Now he was very calm and cold, but I was even more scared than in the night. I did what he said, I took off my clothes, all of them, while he stood there watching me.

            “’Now, you useless bitch, I am going to teach you how to be a wife,’ he said. He had some leather cord, he tied my hands together with it. I was crying and begging him, but I knew it was no use. He looped the end of the cord around the branch of a tree so that my arms were up above my head, so high and tight that it hurt, I was nearly standing on my toes. Then he left me there while he went and cut birch rods with his knife, I could hear him cutting the rods and stripping away the buds. I was so scared, Dasha, more scared now that he was sober, I knew he wouldn’t stop for anything. He beat me so hard I thought I would die. I wanted to die, it hurt so much. And all the time he didn’t shout or say anything, just used up one bunch of rods and then another and carried on …

            “Here, you can see … this was a week ago …”

            Sonya pulled up the back of her white cotton smock. All across her back the stripes of the birch rods were still plain to see. Bruising brown and blue in lines, like she had been pressed against a grill. And dark blotches of scabbing where the switches had cut into her skin. A fierce mess of hurt flesh and battered white skin.

            “Oh Sonya … your back. My god, what he’s done to your back.”

            “Not just my back, sister. There are marks like this all over me, front and back. This will remind me to be a good wife, he says. Now I hurt inside and out. But Dasha, there is nothing for me but to be a good wife, and pray to Our Lord that I won’t let Simeon down again.”

            Sonya was sleeping now. Dasha watched her sighing and shifting in her sleep, her mouth slightly open, her lips seeming to shiver. Dark under her eyes, worn out with worry. But now at least she had rest for a while.

 

***

 

Dasha sat in the yard in the sunshine. The dogs sat off by the barn. Some moments they appeared to be asleep, then they would open their eyes and look over at her. There was a challenge in their eyes – who was she to be sitting in their yard? Nasty, stupid, suspicious animals. Dasha threw a stone at them, but missed, and they just stared at her indifferently.

            Dasha walked towards the wood. The end of the road from the village turned into a path that led off into the trees. Soon she was out of sight and alone with the sound of the wind in the leaves and the stream. As well as birches there were aspens and thorn trees. When she got to the stream she took off her shoes and stockings and sat on a big round white rock with her feet in the water, letting the cold numb and rush over them.    

            Hiking up her skirt, she waded upstream. She came to where the stream widened into a deep brown pool, the sound slowed, and sunlight soaked into the thick calm water. She lay on a patch of grass on the bank and watched trout jump and pondhoppers skip on the filmy surface of the pool. This would be a good spot for bathing, she thought, maybe she would go in. But first just lie there a while in the sun and daydream.

            At first she resisted the thoughts that were coming to her, flowing soft and incessant like the water in the trout pool. But they became so delicious, she had to give in.

            She was imagining that she was following Simeon into the woods. A wave of luxurious fear swept through her. He kept walking silently, and she kept following, watching his strong back, shoulders swaying as he walked. When they got to the stream he turned and looked at her with eyes that ate her soul. There was no escape, he possessed her totally. He was going to beat her mercilessly she knew, it would be much more than she could stand, she would scream out to die. But it would be no use. However much she screamed or begged, he was her master, there was no escaping him.

            “Take your clothes off,” he said.

            She took off her smock. She could feel his eyes on her, assessing her like livestock at the market – horseflesh, or another milk cow. She wanted him to approve, nothing mattered more. She pushed back her shoulders, stuck her breasts out. She had full, round breasts, skin as white as milk, soft as the finest silk. Why buy a silk scarf for Sonya at the market? See how soft are my breasts, the white of my belly. Her nipples were purple buds of flesh, curling up and hardening under his stare. Only one little boy in Moscow has touched these breasts. Forgive me for letting him touch them, beat me for letting him touch them - now they are all yours, no one else will ever touch them.

            She was undoing her skirt, her fingers numb, struggling with the knot. Soon I’ll be naked for you. I long to be naked for you. Here, it’s gone. She bent down to pull down the skirt, breasts dangling under her, her nipples aching hard. This is your flesh to knead and press. If you want to squeeze on my breasts, pull them like a cow. My legs are shaking, darling master, I’m sorry I’m so slow for you, I can’t control my body shaking like this. I’m scared you won’t like me. But I’m bold as well, I know I’m pretty. Aren’t I pretty? I’m not all skin and bones like Sonya. You can grab me, pull me about, it’s all yours, dear master.

            Now she was pulling down her knickers. Here I am, now I’m all naked for you. Do you like it master? I always want to be naked for you. Yes I’m ashamed, but the shame shakes in my belly, it feels warm and good. I can see you looking at my cunt. Here, I’ll spread my legs a bit wider, push it forward. No one has ever touched this cunt before, I swear. It is waiting for you to touch it, grab it, sink your fingers in it. Only I have touched it. Forgive me for touching this cunt, beat me for touching your cunt, dear master …

            Dasha, lying on the bank by the stream, now had her knickers down around her knees and her hand up her skirt. Her fingers were working inside her lips and starting to probe in cruel, brusque strokes inside her. Rubbing back on her red flesh as they pulled out, pressing against her clit, against the bone. Her breath was heavy, pregnant with wetness, need to come. She thought she’d never been so excited before - when the boy in Moscow had his hands mauling her tits and his tongue in her ear, it was nothing like this. Oh god, this felt good, God forgive me. God forgive me? Never mind that, but just hold on - would she come already even before Simeon had even touched her, even before he’d taken the birch to her? Surely not, she had a little more pride than that still – he had to conquer her first. She would be all his, but he hadn’t broken her just yet. First the blows must fall …

 

***

 

When Simeon came back, two days late, he wasn’t drunk, and he wasn’t alone. He brought mother Likhranov with him. Until then she had been living with Simeon’s brother, who had a cobbler’s shop in the same town where they took the produce to market. But now mother wanted to go home to the village.

She told Simeon – “I’ll keep those girls in line for you when you are out working.”

“Well,” he said, “if I’m going to have a house full of women, one more won’t hurt.”

So it was both better and worse than Sonya had feared. The last two nights of waiting Dasha had seen the fear building up in her sister. She was sure he would come back after a terrible drinking spree and take it all out on Sonya in another terrible beating. Sonya was either cleaning neurotically, or praying in front of the icons, or sleeping. She was afraid in the house but she was even more afraid to leave the house – what if he came back and didn’t find her there, what would he think? So she sent Dasha in her place to sell the eggs and the milk in the village.

And when her sister was sleeping and there was no more she could do, Dasha walked down through the wood like she had the first day, went upstream to the trout pool and spent a delicious secret hour with her hand up her skirt. Spinning out her own fear into the same shameful, but irresistible, fantasy of Simeon stripping and beating her in the wood.

Mother Likhranov was a nag and had no love for her daughter-in-law, that was sure. But at least with her around, maybe, Simeon wouldn’t treat her so severely. In her honour, and because she had arrived on the feast of St Vladimir, they killed a chicken. Sonya waited on her, pouring tea, fetching and carrying.

Simeon was only in the hut with them five minutes, and went out to look over the fields. He was much as Dasha had imagined. Like Sonya had said, handsome and strong. He was absolutely certain in his mastery of the house. But outside the house, too, he would be afraid of no one. What she hadn’t expected was the touch of the dandy about him. His clothes were tidy, nearly new black boots and clean black trousers. His face was shaved, broad and very smooth, a little boyish, with a wide jaw and his mouth rather tightly clenched. She saw solemn cruelty in the way he held his jaw, the curl of his mouth.

But above all she couldn’t stop looking at his broad chest, his thick shoulders and arms. Yes, he was built like a wrestler, power in every sinew. Hard, conditioned by strong genes and a lifetime of work in the fields.

She caught herself imagining the feel of his hard chest, with his arm pressing her into him. He was solid, she was melting, gushing, woman flesh. He was still, thoughtless, hard. She was hot, writhing on his knee. He was her master, she was nothing. All the time he was in the room she couldn’t stop from trying to look at him, he was a magnet for her eyes. And he didn’t even glance at her.

God, yes, this was the man she had fantasised about by the stream. She had thought – my man will have to conquer me, prove that he is my master. But now she knew – he would just have to look in her eyes, and nod his head, and she would crawl over to him on her knees and prostrate herself in front of him. 

 

***

 

With Mother Likhranov in the house, there was no chance any more of escaping down to the stream for a dreamy hour. Dasha’s life in those next weeks became an endless cycle of drudgery. When it wasn’t milking, fruitpicking, or working in the kitchen garden then there was always housework to do. Mother was a scold, and woe betide them if a cup was out of place or a dustball left unnoticed in a corner. When Simeon came back at nightfall there must be hot water for his bath, food and tea on the table, and two attentive women to wait on him and Mother. Then they cleaned and scrubbed the last time while he sat over his tea, grunting now and again at his mother’s gossip and complaints. And then it was time for bed, to begin all again before dawn on the morrow. Sonya and her husband slept on the bed, of course, and Dasha had to curl up next to Mother on a thin rush mattress on the floor.

            How she hated that old woman, at night as much or even more than in the day. Exhausted as she was by the day’s hard labour, sleep was hard to find as she lay listening to Simeon pound himself into his wife on the bed. Every night it was the same. And Sonya, as well as she could make out, lay there motionless, thin and weak, letting out those little moans of pain and forbearance rather than pleasure. What a suffering little martyr her sister was, as her ox of a husband ploughed away in her barren cunt. Dasha, in her place, would have given him a ride to remember. And here with that old bat pressed up beside her she couldn’t even let loose and pleasure herself as she listened. The best she could get away with these days were a few minutes in the outhouse when Mother was away in the village.

            And so the days and nights dragged by. It was on a Sunday two weeks after Simeon’s arrival that the moment the girls had been dreading finally arrived. Simeon came home drunk and wild.

            They had gone to bed hours before. Yelping and barking of dogs in the yard woke them. Dasha woke up with a start, and it took her a moment to understand what was happening. The two evil looking mongrels were devils with her and Sonya, but they doted on their master, who liked to sit on the step and feed them meat from his hands. But it seemed in his drunkenness he had tripped over one or both of them coming through the gate, and now was lashing out with kicks and curses.

            Now, as the dogs whimpered off, he was at the door. And, as the door flew open with another kick, a terrible long growl of a shout.

            “Sonya!”

            And again, “Sonya, you devil’s bitch, where’s the light? Answer me Sonya!”

            Dasha lay stiff, every nerve stretched to listen. Next to her, the old woman was sitting up attentive. Through the moonlight that came in behind Simeon in the doorway Dasha could see her bony old face, and she could have sworn the old hag was smiling.

            “Go on,” Mother said, “stop lying there quivering and light the lamp for your husband.”

            Sonya got up and walked to the table, found the flint and, after a few attempts, the lamp was burning. Simeon could be seen clearly now where he stood in front of the door, leaning back on the doorpost with a lazy air of a sleepwalker, though his face was red and bestial with drink. Sonya put the lamp down on the table and stood there frozen, shivering.

            Simeon didn’t shout again. He walked up to his wife and swung his fist into her face. She stumbled and grabbed hold of the table. Blood was pouring out of her nose.

            “Useless bitch,” Simeon told her, “this is what I get for marrying a skinny little runt of a city girl. She can read and write, but she can’t light an oil lamp for her husband … or do what comes naturally to any other woman …”

            There was a fear in Dasha’s belly that was growing warm and strange. Next to her, mother was still sitting up, watching avidly, following the scene like a crooked old black crow. Sonya, for her part, just stood gripping onto the table and looking down terrified, her legs shaking.

            “You think I’m dead drunk?” said Simeon. There was an eerie calm in his voice. “You’re wrong. I’m not too drunk to give you the lesson you need. Have you forgotten that day at the stream? It’s due time to give you a reminder. You get back on the bed, Sonya, take off that nightdress, and we’ll have a little taste for you to remember.”

            Now here was Sonya, naked and thin and white, shoulder bones and hip bones sticking out like the wings of a scrawny chicken, kneeling up on the bed with her arms bent against the wall. Simeon was raining blows of his belt down on her back, her arse,  her thighs. And by the side of the bed on the little rush mattress, Dasha and Mother were sitting up on their haunches silently, not paying each other any attention, but both fixed watching the whole scene.

            “Well I’m as bad as her and she’s as bad as me, the old witch,” thought Dasha.

            And Simeon, with no thought to the audience, struck blow after blow.

            But what was happening to Sonya? She couldn’t hold herself up any more, she had stopped even screaming, and was collapsed against the head of the bed, shaking more wildly than ever. It was clear she was having some kind of fit.

            So then Dasha made her move. In one determined movement, before her legs could falter, before the old woman could clutch at her and hold her back, she stood up, walked over to the front of the bed, and stood in front of Simeon.

            “Please,” she said, looking up into his two wide cold eyes, “please brother Simeon, beat me.”

            Everything was still. Sonya lay collapsed, shaking on the bed. The old woman up on her haunches staring. Simeon with a blank look on his face, the belt in his hand, stared at Dasha, and didn’t move, waiting, becalmed.

            Dasha, still looking deep into his eyes, lifted up her nightdress and pulled it off.

            “Please, brother Simeon, beat me. Sister Sonya is so thin and weak, she can’t take any more punishment. But I am to blame as well. I am a stupid lazy girl, I know my sister is weak and tired, I should have rushed to light the lamp. Please beat me instead.”

            Dasha turned and got up onto the bed. She knelt on the bed and lowered herself onto her elbows, her head down with her golden hair splayed on the sheet. She offered herself to her sister’s husband. Her plump white arse up in the air, her thighs, her legs apart with her cunt exposed for the belt.

            Still the moment hung. The only sound was Sonya’s sobbing a hand’s breadth away. Dasha, her eyes shut tight, her face pressed into the bed, waited, feeling the cold air between her open legs, every nerve strained, alive. The die cast, utterly exposed, she was in a state of expectation that transcended hope and terror.

            Then the belt struck. Full against both cheeks of her arse. Her mind flashed red with pain. She let out a desperate animal cry.

            As he beat her Dasha lost all sense of herself. She was an animal, a bitch, moaning and screaming and gurgling on her tears and spit and snot. Pain came in flashes, a storm of lightning. Her knees gave way and she lay curled up, or kicking, writhing, as the belt fell on her back, her arse, her legs. She screamed broken noises from her throat. She begged – “please master, please, please …”  She was begging for it to stop, begging for it to continue, just begging. She was begging for nothing. He would beat her as long as it was his will. She who had no reason and no will, she would be beaten and grovel and choke, thrash about kicking her legs, open her legs and give up her cunt to be beaten, beg for him to beat her there, beg …

When he stopped and the pain was becoming numb, she even got back up onto her knees again, pushed her arse out waiting for more. But no more came. She heard him laughing. Then, for the first time, she felt shame. She was coming back to her senses again. He hadn’t said a single word to her. She had lost herself becoming an animal, become nothing, lost all will, given herself completely to him. Now he was just laughing at her, and walking away. She heard him walk away and sit down at the table, pour a glass of vodka. Her eyes shut all the time.  Pain was a rough tongue of fire licking over her again and again, licking into her blood. She lay down and sobbed. Her sister was just inches away, but Dasha was too alone and ashamed to reach out and touch her. The man, her master, was sitting at the table drinking.

Yes I am a disgusting worthless animal, Dasha thought. They all hate me now, and I hate all of them.

And if that’s what I am, she thought, that’s what I will be. She moved her hand down between her legs, and started to rub at her cunt. Just as she did by the river. Remembering now the real blows, her blood throbbing with them. As she rubbed herself she was saying silently – I am your whore, master. Look what a whore I am for you. I took all your blows and I could still take more. Kick me and beat me all you want. Keep me naked crawling on the floor like the lowest mongrel bitch. Just signal me with a nod of your head, and I will come back for more. My desire is stronger than anything you can give. All this I will give to you, and I ask nothing in return.

She came, shuddering, and laughing through her tears. She opened her eyes. Simeon was sitting at the table, drinking silently, and looking out through the window into the night. The old woman was standing over her by the bed, her mouth pulled back showing her the last of her rotten teeth. The old woman pursed her mouth and spat. The spit landed on Dasha’s thigh. Dasha, smiling, just stood up, not looking at the old hag, and went to lie down on the rush mattress again. Pulled the blanket over her, and went to sleep.