A Picnic under the Hayricks

For visitors from the city, summer is a time for some good old R & R, but for country folk, that’s when the work really kicks in. Grandma Nastya and Grandpa Vanya rise with the sun and get straight to it, with the cow to be milked and driven out to pasture, grass to be cut for the rabbits, grain to be sprinkled for the chickens, and the pig fodder to be soaked. And Pally in his doghouse needs some attention too, by way of a bone tossed into his bowl. Then it’s off into the vegetable garden to pull weeds, and hill the potatoes, and tie up the tomatoes and cucumbers, and pick caterpillars off the currant bushes. Up in the morning, collapse in the evening, wiped out.

The vacationers from Moscow that year were Edik, the dad, Natasha, the mom, and the boys Senya and Venya, no more than a year apart. And a long dog on short legs, a dachshund. Grandma put them in the annex, which had its own kitchen and a porch that overlooked the river. And it had garden all around. Sheer bliss.

And there they slept and slept, and Grandma couldn’t figure out when they were going to have their fun. Edik asked what exactly she had in mind, and Grandma Nastya thought a while, then said that, well, it was going to a dance or a movie at the club. “I don’t know what else to tell you,” she added. “We’re not much for having fun – we work all the time. I mean look at what we’ve got going here. Or would you be talking about the Saturday visit to the bathhouse?”

Edik had a quiet word with his wife and announced to the two old folks that they were going to give them a day off, the way it was done in the city. “Don’t you worry about a thing,” he said. “Just enjoy yourselves. Because you must be so tired, working your fingers to the bone the way you do.”

Grandma Nastya allowed as how that was true and what was the harm in giving the soul a breather for an hour or two? It would be just like going to the bathhouse in the middle of the week.

Edik and Natasha haggled for a side of mutton at the market and marinaded it, then bought a whole slew of things: grapes and melons and dry-smoked sausage and moldy-looking cheese, and wine and vodka, and assorted enigmas in jars. They loaded Grandma and Grandpa, the kids, and all this bounty into a boat and sailed off toward the other shore, to have a picnic in nature, as picnics should be had. Their long dog did fall into the water on the trip, mind you, but he was fished out and dried off, so that was OK.

They made it a good long way before the outboard motor’s gasoline ran out, then they picked up the oars, which was actually more fun, what with the singing and all. It was lovely over on the other side too, with weeping willows, silver sand, and warm water, so everyone went off to splash and swim, except Grandma and Grandpa who just sat there, not sure what to do. Grandma had never in her life owned a bathing suit, and Grandpa was far too shy to go into the water in his undershorts. “What am I?” he asked. “Some young whippersnapper?” So he went to catch crayfish by the dam instead, as their contribution to the feast.

After the visitors were done swimming, they made a campfire. And it burned up to the sky, bright and hot and … wow! It saw the mosquitoes off in no time. True, Grandpa did scorch his felt slippers a touch from sitting too close, and a spark made a tiny burn in Grandma’s skirt, but she didn’t mind because the fire was nice anyway. She did ask about the size of it, though. “We only make them big like that just before Lent when we burn the straw woman to scare the winter away,” she said. “Else never like this, so as not to be wasting good firewood.”

The visitors threaded the meat onto metal rods with a fancy name and turned them over the fire, and the aroma was so marvelous that the dogs in the village started to howl, annoyed at not having been invited. Natasha spread a tablecloth on the grass, and everyone lay down like at bedtime and had at it. The meat was really tasty, just a bit too hot. Grandpa was sorry he hadn’t put his new teeth in, but he chewed on it as best he could. To go with the meat there was chilled wine and icy vodka, plump grapes, and tomatoes, pomegranates, and peaches. Wow, all over again. A banquet fit for a tsar, it was.

And they lay and ate until evening, even forgetting about the crayfish, which made a hole in the net bag and headed off back to the river. The children started turning their noses up, not wanting to eat or drink another thing, but then Grandpa baked a potato in the ashes, and they were on it until they’d eaten it all up.

On their way home, the stars were already out and the new moon too. And Grandma clutched her head in horror because the cow hadn’t been milked, the rabbits’ water bowl was empty, the chickens were scratching up the vegetable garden, and it was one disgraceful mess. And the vegetable garden was all wilted from lack of watering.

Grandpa was tipsy. He fell asleep on the bench, while Grandma bustled to and fro well into the night, putting to rights everything that had been so sorely neglected.

A day or so later, Grandpa said, “We should show you city folk how country folk take their ease, since the subject has come up.” Edik and family were delighted, thinking that there’d be a pig slaughtered for shashlik, but Grandpa shook his head. “No,” he said. “The pig is for the November holidays, never before. She needs to fatten up, and the meat would spoil in this heat anyway, ’cos we don’t have none of them refrigerators like you do in the city.”

The visitors waved this away. “We don’t need any of that. We’re just keen to learn about your lives from the inside,” they said.

So Grandpa ordered them to be up at five and not a minute later. They replied that there’d be no point in going to bed, then, because life didn’t really begin in the city until nightfall, and the electricity was on all the time.

No sooner had Grandma shaken them awake the next morning than she was handing them all bags with straps, like backpacks. She gave Edik a scythe, and a wooden rake to Natasha, and pitchforks to the boys. And the long dog was brought along too but properly leashed, and Pally came as well, off his chain. Lucky dogs, the both of them.

Off they went, and walked on and on, up hill and down dale, taking a pathway here, crossing the river there. The visitors were barely plodding along by now, moaning that this wasn’t the sort of picnic they’d been bargaining on, and it was terribly, awfully far. Why, they wondered, not make a campfire right here?

Then the field came into view, part of it already mown and the rest still with standing grass. Grandpa set to mowing, yelling at Edik to lean into the heel and make hay while the sun shone. Edik stamped his heel on the ground, understanding precisely nothing. “Lean into what, exactly?” he wanted to know, and that sent Grandpa off: “Not your heel, the scythe’s heel, you citified numbskull!”

But it only took a little coaching before Edik and Grandpa were able to finish off the rest of the field. While they were busy with that, Grandma, Natasha, and the boys were raking up the grass that had been left to lie earlier and piling it into hayricks. Everything went along so briskly that they were all done by lunchtime.

They sat in the shade and opened their bags to find new milk, bubbly homemade kvass flavored with horseradish, bread fresh from the stove, boiled eggs, curd cheese pancakes, sour cream in a jar, salt in a twist of cloth, and pink-tinted lard. Oh, and a ring of cured, store-bought sausage.

They attacked this simple fare without so much as a thought of the missing shashlik, the children stuffing their sunburned little faces, as happy as could be. “Well now!” Natasha said. “In the city you can’t get those two brats to eat even the most scrumptious goodies.”

When that phase of the R&R was over, they lay under a hayrick and slept for three hours or so, and Grandma took off into the woods to pick butter mushrooms, chanterelles, and birch boletes. Then the horse showed up, pulling a cart. They loaded the cart with roped bales of hay, and the boys perched on top, and such a pretty sight it was. Then away they went, gazing at the sky and singing songs.

Back home, sitting around the samovar under the old linden tree, Edik said, “My goodness you two, if that kind of hard work is what you call taking it easy… My arms and legs are aching. I could never get used to taking it easy your way.” And Grandpa poured himself his sixth glass of tea and replied, “If we country folk didn’t take our ease as we do, what would you city folk have to eat?” And they all agreed with him that shashlik is for the city but haymaking is for everyone.