The Heat

There’s no doing without hay in the village. The cows eat it, and the sheep, and the hens need loads of it for their nests. And it comes in handy for people too, when they stuff their mattresses with it and lie on them forevermore, because the scent is just marvelous.

The collective farm is serious about hay-making. There’s tractors for that, and all sorts of technical stuff. But the smallholders are on their own. So they muster a few people together and are hauled to a hay meadow far away and off limits to any tractor.

They mow by hand, old school, with a scythe. And what’s a scythe? A wooden handle with a blade on the end (they call it a litovka around here). You have to have the knack of it, and the scythe has to fit you just right, the handle not too long or too short. The mowers always work in a staggered line, one behind the other, so you won’t poke your neighbor with the sharp end.

Mowing’s always the most bothersome time in the village. You can’t let so much as a day slip by, else you’ll be mowing when the rain comes down and the hay’s ruined. So in the sunny weather, the folk come together at four in the morning while the dew’s still on the grass. Because that’s the time for mowing. You work until noon, and by then you’re so roasted, you’d do anything to crawl to the nearest stream and dunk your head in it, so hot it is. Black flies and horseflies and mosquitoes eat you alive, and you can run faster than the wind but they’ll still catch up with you. Or you can lie in a patch of shade with your head covered, but when the sun moves, so must you.

In the towns they eat ice cream and drink beer, but for us in the village, it’s black-bread kvas and birch juice. In big cans that are put into a stream, and it doesn’t get any better than that. Especially when you’re lounging on the hay.

But once the mown hay starts drying, it’s time to turn it. So here come the gals again. They go in a line too, with their rakes, stirring the hay so it’ll dry all the way. Someone will come along later with pitchforks, to pile it up. And if that isn’t the hardest part! The horseflies are biting, you’re sweating buckets, three yards feels like a thousand.

Now the hay’s in piles, and they sit in the shade, get ahold of some kvas or some milk with a frog in it, sit themselves down, and take a break. [No kidding. Frogs are supposed to keep milk drinkable for longer because of the antibacterial properties of their skin: bit.ly/frogs-in-milk] The gals are dressed every which way, some in frocks, some in jogging pants, and the young ’uns are stripped right down to their lacy underwear. The main thing, though, is to keep your head from baking.

Men are in short supply, just Vaska the stable boy, squint-eyed old Sashka, and our livestock specialist, who’s been named Ivanych the Uzbek.

Melya’s lying at the foot of a hay pile, with her legs stretched out. “Oh, I don’t like the heat, not one bit,” she says. “I don’t even go to the bathhouse in summertime. My mama taught me that when it’s hot, you take a white hen, feed her some soaked peas and, and put her on your head.”

“If that isn’t the stupidest thing! Isn’t the hen hot too?”

“But what if you’ve slit her throat first, eh?” Melya’s trying to remember. “And what if it’s not a chicken? What if you eat the peas yourself?”

“Ah... She was talking about a pillow. If you fill a pillow with white chicken feathers, you need to put that on your head, to keep it from baking.” Vita has covered her face with her headscarf. “I get so toasty in the sun, I turn into a stove. Put a teakettle on me” – she slaps herself on the belly – “and it’ll boil, eh?”

“I’m cold in Russia,” says Ivanych the Uzbek. “I love it in Fergana, sit in a tearoom, eat pilaf, drink tea, so good. Hot! And good! Cotton’s good in the heat. And the pilaf’s lovely, rich, with lamb in it.”

“Oh, I couldn’t swallow a bite.” Ninka fishes the frog out of the jar and puts it on the ground. Blinking angrily, the milk-drenched frog hops to one side, where it is promptly eaten by one of the storks that hang around here in mowing season. “All I can do is drink.”

Vita bites into a boiled egg. “You drink plenty when it’s cold too,” she says. “But I eat when I’m hungry. You shameless hussy, you could at least put on a smock. Running around in your undies and riling up the menfolk!”

“At least their pitchforks are standing up straight,” Ninka sasses back, straightening her lacy shoulder strap. “Why swelter, anyway? And you get a better tan when it’s hot like this. Let ’em think we’re down by the sea...”

Ivanych the Uzbek pours tea from a thermos into a bowl. “At home in Fergana, women can’t never be bare-naked,” he says. “We be strict with our women. I ain’t standing for no woman without a veil. They only go naked in the bathhouse.”

“Yes, but your women wander about in sacks.” Melya pulls a well-laundered towel out of her basket. “Vaska! Go down to the stream and wet this rag for a girl, won’t you?” Vaska, who’s dozing in a scrap of shade, turns his back. “They put on sacks and go about dripping with sweat. I saw a movie at the club. About the sun in the desert. Just awful.”

She heaves herself up and goes to the stream, but it’s run dry. So instead she dampens the rag with the murky water in the big can and wipes herself off. Turns around to see if anyone’s looking. And scoops up water to splash herself.

“I love eat baklava too,” says Ivanych the Uzbek. “Love meat and noodles, that’s beshbarmak. No vodka, though.” But while he’s talking, Vaska, the sometime tractor driver, is pouring vodka into his tea on the sly. “Oh, tea, tea! Tasty tea!” Ivanych goes on. “Bad to drink vodka, good to drink tea!”

Squint-eyed Sashka wipes his damp forehead with his cap. “Aren’t you sweating in your robe, Ivanych?” he asks. “Isn’t it like if I was to go mowing in a quilted jacket?”

“Their robes work like thermoses,” Zoya explains (she’s a schoolteacher). “The body stays at the same temperature. But Ninka’s naked, and she’ll get sunstroke. And then peel like a shedding cat. Enough chitchat now. On your feet!”

Reluctantly, the gals get up and figure out whose rake is whose, while the men get ahold of their pitchforks. Vaska brings up the horse-drawn cart, and the work goes into full swing.

An inky-black cloud is swelling on the horizon. The gals go faster and faster across the field, stacking the hay into ricks without even looking, just to get finished before the rain.

When the first fat drops fall, leaving spots on their clothing, the gals clamber into the cart, old Sashka jumps up front with Vaska, and the horse plods off toward the village.

They all get down at the collective farm office, but that’s when Melya throws up her hands.

“Lordy lord! Where’s our Uzbek? Where’s Ivanych? How are we going to report this? Where’s he gotten to? Oh rats, our agronomist’s gone missing!”

“Hey, guys, and where’s Ninka? Where’s naked Ninka? Struck by lightning, d’you think?”

They’re all standing in the rain, looking at each other. Well, of course: if people are lost, they need to be found. But who wants to, in a storm? One lightning strike, and you’re for a goner.

They trail into the office, to sit and wait out the storm. Toward evening, everything quietens down. The gals are sent home, except for the teacher, who heads back to the hayfield with the stable boy. And they start walking around and hallooing.

“Ivanych the Uzbek! Ninka! Halloo! Where are you! Are you alive?”

No one. Silence. It smells of new-mown hay and horse manure.

“They must have run into the woods,” Vaska says hopefully. So off they go, to yell in the bushes. Silence. And not until it’s completely dark, when they decide to comb the field one more time, do they hear the snores coming from beneath a rick. They pull it apart, and there’s our Ivanych the Uzbek fast asleep, hugging his thermos and smacking his lips. They shake him.

“Oh, such tasty tea! Oh, such strong tea! I had a dream, slept so hard.”

“Uh-huh. It’s hot in a rick, just like in a robe, right?”

Laughing, they rummage around in the other side of the rick, and there’s the sleeping Ninka, curled into a ball.

“Ninka!”

“Oh!” She wakes up. She’s got hay in her hair. “Where am I?”

“Must be in Fergana,” they laugh. “Why’d you crawl into the rick?”

“I was freezing cold,” she confesses. “And it’s warm in the rick, just...”

“Just like in a robe?” That’s Vaska, being smart.