Nina had come in 1964, and Tanya had run around the yard while Tikhon sat on the bench and watched. He made it in time. Agrippina paid for the headstone herself. Gray granite, no star and no cross, just the name and the dates.
The village watched. Mitrofan took off his cap when he passed the cemetery. In 1964 Mitrofan came to her house. Knocked softly, came in, took off his cap.
Said, “My wife’s seriously sick. We need money for the trip to Poltava and for tests. We’re short. I don’t know who else to ask.”
Agrippina looked at him. The same man who had shouted about the chicken. And never apologized when he found it under his own granary. Yet here he stood, cap in his hands.
She got up, went into the other room, came back, and laid the money on the table. Said, “This isn’t a loan. Take it and go. No time to waste.”
Mitrofan looked at the money, then at her. Opened his mouth, shut it, took the money, and left. His wife was treated. It was stomach cancer, early stage, caught in time. Mitrofan lived another twelve years.
And for all twelve of those years, every time he saw Agrippina, he greeted her first. Loudly, taking off his cap so everybody could see. In 1974 Agrippina Vasilievna Nosova turned seventy-two. Semyon came with Tamara and their fourteen-year-old son Stepan.
He had named the boy after her husband. Semyon never explained why. He just did it. Agrippina found out when the boy was about three. Semyon mentioned it in passing, and she nodded and said nothing more.
Stepan wore glasses, fair-haired and serious, not a talker. He looked at Agrippina with the respectful politeness well-brought-up children show older people when things have been explained to them properly. Grisha made a cake.
Honey, walnuts, and flour, his own recipe. It was heavy, a little too sweet, with uneven edges. Agrippina tasted it and said it was good. Grisha nodded, and from the slight change in his face you could tell he was pleased. They sat at the table till dark.
Semyon talked about the plant, Tamara asked for the sauerkraut recipe, and Stepan mostly listened and ate. Grisha sat at the end of the table, a little apart from the others, the way he always had since those first days. He looked at all of it with an expression Agrippina, over twenty years, never quite found a name for. Not joy, not peace—something between them, something of his own.
When everyone had gone, her nephew Vasily came by from Poltava. He had made the trip specially for her birthday, his first visit in several years. The two of them sat down. He poured himself a shot, and she had tea. Vasily was quiet a moment. Then he said, “Aunt Grunya, can I ask you something?”
