A Helping Hand

Grandpa Pashka, Pashka Strochkin, was a major. In a tank regiment. He had retired now, and come back to the village. But without his tank, of course, he was as bored as he could be, didn’t know what to do with himself. He started out by buying a tractor, but what kind of fields do we have around here? Only vegetable plots, and you can’t even turn a tractor round in one of those. So he wandered around the village for days on end, wondering how he could make himself useful, what good deed could he do?

The old ladies of our village are a faint-hearted bunch, though, and there was plenty they needed, what with the potatoes, carrots, and cabbages to plant, and the wood to lay in. Grandpa Pashka decided to take charge of them, since nobody else had them in hand. He stopped by at Granny Nyura’s on his tractor. “It’s a fine thing, you digging your potato trenches with a shovel,” he says. “Let’s plow this up properly. Never despair, I’m here.” Uh-huh. So he knocked down Granny Nyura’s fence and her woodshed, and churned up the ground so bad you could neither walk nor drive across it. It looked like a tank training ground by the time he was finished.

Then he decided to redo Granny Zina’s banya stove, as a sort of surprise. Being hard of hearing, she never heard him proceeding to remodel her banya. But he broke a bunch of bricks while he was dismantling the stove, so Granny Zina had to buy a new cast-iron one, and that ran into some money.

Granny Matryona kept chickens. Grandpa Pashka decided they should be free range not cooped up, and he let them out. A fox took the one, and a hawk took the other.

The grannies started running away from him. The minute he’d come through the gate, they’d be flapping their hands. “Stay away, for the love of Christ – be off with you,” they’d say.

But you can’t hold a good tank soldier back. He fixed up one with an antenna, so she could watch television, but she didn’t have a television. He started digging a well for another one, but there’d never been any water up on that little hill. It was all down on the flats.

The grannies were in tears, plain and simple. “Leave us in peace,” they’d beg. “What a fuss and bother you cause us, it’s horrible. Split us some wood and have done.” But what’s firewood splitting? It’s a week wielding an ax and that’s all. Boring.

So Grandpa Pashka decided to take a crack at carpentry. He bought himself a bench and set up a workshop in his little barn. He made benches. But how’s a tank soldier supposed to know about wood? He installed his benches all over the village, but they had skinny legs, and our grannies are nothing if not hefty, so when they sat down, the benches tipped over and the grannies would be sprawled on the ground, roaring with laughter. Then he made a kennel for Granny Lena’s dog, and it was huge as a house. The dog didn’t even want to go in there. He was scared he’d get lost.

Meanwhile, Grandpa Pashka was saying how much he liked making things from wood and urging people to write notes on what they needed.

Then winter was on its way. Our grannies sleep on top of their stoves in the winter, to stay warm and not get sick. It’s quite a clamber to get up there, but the grannies have been making it work for the longest time. They scoot a trunk over and stack a stool on top of that, and up they go.

Grandpa Pashka gave that a good look and said, “This’ll never do. I’m going to make ladders. I’ve seen them in pictures, with railings and all. Just what the doctor ordered – evenly spaced rungs, and you’re up and down in a snap.”

And didn’t the grannies just run from him, but he finally caught one. Granny Nyura was built big – as broad as a ship’s stern, when you looked at her from behind. She could only go through doors sideways, that’s how big she was. And getting up on the sleeping platform took her half a day, with rest breaks. Grandpa Pashka couldn’t have been happier. “You’ll remember me all your life,” he said. “I’m going to make your life so much easier.”

He spent a week loitering around Granny Nyura’s hut, measuring everything with a tape measure, writing down his measurements, and shoving pictures under her nose. Meanwhile, Granny Nyura was crossing herself. “Heck with him, the hobgoblin,” she said. “Let him do what he wants, just so long as he doesn’t knock my stove down.” And she went on about her business.

In the meantime, Grandpa Pashka got the ladder done.

He’d made it like they showed in a book, so it would take Granny Nyura’s weight, and that’s why it came out so heavy, he couldn’t lift it by himself. And there you go, he made a deal with some men from the neighboring village. It took three of them to carry the big heavy thing. But they couldn’t get it into the hut. They took out a window to squeeze it through, and broke the glass. Granny Nyura was crying, but who was going to listen to her? They got it in, but then it wouldn’t fit between the wall and the stove. Grandpa Pashka had got his measurements mixed up somehow.

So they had to take down the room divider, because what wouldn’t you do to make things good for Granny Nyura? She came up, looked warily at the ladder, stepped onto the bottom rung, and it was sound. Good. “Well,” she thinks. “Now I’ll be like a queen in winter!”

When winter came, and everyone was snowed in, Pashka Strochkin had up and gone hunting with his friends. Now the grannies were crying their heads off. “Wouldn’t you know?” they said. “Just when you need him, he’s not here. Who’s going to shovel the paths through the snow for us?”

They set about it themselves, got out their shovels and flung the snow every which way, roaring with laughter like young things. But Granny Nyura’s such a size, she didn’t need a track cleared, she needed a highway. After stomping around a while on her porch, she thought she’d climb up on the stove to warm up. The stove had been stoked, the heat was floating round the hut, there were potatoes in a cast-iron pot on the stove, and some milk, and water boiling in the kettle and rattling the lid.

Granny Nyura took a bit of bread and climbed up. Big rungs, just right for her feet. She was praising Pashka, was tickled pink. Once on her sleeping platform, she made herself comfy, plumped her pillow, then managed to give the ladder an accidental knock with her foot, and it teetered for a moment and toppled over. Pashka had forgotten to attach it.

What a picture it was, with Granny Nyura sitting on top of the stove, chewing on her bread, and weeping bitter tears. And it was snowing like mad outside. The whole night went by, and the next day, and the next. The grannies couldn’t clear a way for themselves, so they were stuck at home: they’d all stocked up on wood, and they had water. But they were sitting close to the ground, while Granny Nyura was up under the ceiling. Oh dear. She looked down and her head spun. It was no joke, nearly five feet, as far down as she was tall. Her cat came to join her, and there they sat. She’d probably have to live like that until spring, because there was no way she could get herself down.

The good thing was, the mail lady had started bringing round the pensions. “Where’s Granny Nyura?” she asked. They dug her place out and went in – and no granny. Oh dear. Surely somebody hadn’t stolen her away? No, granny’s in tears on the stove, calling, “Dear hearts, get me down!” And that’s when they put the trunk back where it belonged and stacked a stool on top of it.

After Grandpa Pashka got home, he went to see Granny Nyura. “Now then,” he asked her. “How are you?” And didn’t he get an earful! Pashka’s not easily scared, though. “I made a teeny mistake with the ladder height,” he said. “And besides, what business do you have climbing up so high? I’ll make you a sleeping bench down below. Like a bed it’ll be, and we’ll put a little stove underneath it. What about that?”

She hurled a cast-iron pot at him, but how’s that going to frighten a tank soldier? He was already making mouse traps for Granny Zina, and the other grannies were arguing about whether she’d get caught in them or get lucky for once.