Genesis
The Russian earth is like a boundless sea. Scythians, Huns, Pechenegs, and Tatars crossed the swells and hollows of its vast spaces. The ground is dotted with the stone statues of its fallen heroes. Once the feared voice of Peter the Great thundered throughout the land and then fell silent.

Their dreams and hopes were scattered in dust. Like the sea, Mother Earth nourishes everything that lives, and swallows everything in her depths.

Stretching to the horizon are large plains, meadows, and dense forests inhabited by spirits. A great river flows to distant Asia, and white clouds float in the blue sky—so low they almost touch the earth. The land, rivers, and sky form a harmonious whole.

Through the air comes an echo.

“Hey, hey! Hear ye, all! Here comes Ilya Muromets! Ilya Muromets on his horse!”

In the meadow by the river a boy is shouting as he rocks on a wooden horse. His voice flies over the river into the depths of the dark forest. Suddenly the child stops, as if he’s heard his own voice fill the azure sky and return as an echo from the distant woods. He nods his head happily.

Ilya was born on a stormy night in the spring of 1952 in the village of Nanovka, Ryazan province. His mother, Frosya, had bled heavily during the birth and died in the arms of her own mother, Agafya.

“Lord, protect my Ilyusha!” were her last words.

“As she was dying, your mama was smiling at you. So you must grow to be strong and healthy,” Grandma Agafya reminded him whenever she could, and her words settled in the boy’s soul. They helped him to see the smile of the mother he couldn’t know.

“Where’s my papa? Don’t I have one?” Ilya often asked Grandma Agafya. But she just kept silent. And really what could she say?

Her Frosya, the daughter she was so proud of and had trusted completely, was a teacher in the small town of Kabanii Roi. One day she returned home unexpectedly, saying she was ill. At first Agafya didn’t notice that Frosya was pregnant, but when she understood she relentlessly began to interrogate her. Put on the spot, Frosya could only shake her head in fright. At last, she burst into tears.

“Believe me, Mama. Believe me! I haven’t done anything shameful in God’s eyes. The child’s father is an honest man. But I can’t tell you who he is. Please believe me, Mama!” Frosya sobbed.

During collectivization Agafya had suffered a terrible blow. Her husband, Pavel, was shot right before her eyes for refusing to give up their cows. For more than twenty years Agafya had struggled on her own to care for her daughter and son. And now there would be another fatherless child in the family.

Frosya was determined, however, and ignoring the gossip, she calmly worked in their garden. From time to time she would stop work and feel the child moving inside her and feel her own beating heart. Her face would lighten up.

So be it, Agafya thought. Let her give birth. It won’t offend God. If she can’t name the father, she doesn’t have to. She knows best. Maybe it’s better for the child not to know its father.

One day the mailman returned a package that Frosya had mailed earlier and everything became clear. The package was addressed in Frosya’s careful writing: “Ryazan province, Region N, Prison Camp 3, Ivan R. Volkhov.” But now it bore a stamp: “Returned. Addressee deceased.”

Frosya grabbed the package from Agafya, and turning pale, collapsed onto a bench, half-whispering, half-sighing, “Oh God! My baby, my little baby.”

From that time on she lived in a daze. She remained silent up to the delivery and then only managed to name the boy “Ilya” before she died. Agafya brooded over how to register the birth. So what if I know the father’s name. He’s a criminal. But if I don’t give a name, he’ll be a fatherless child. Whether he’s the son of a criminal or a bastard makes little difference. Ilya is fated to suffer his whole life.

At the registry office in Kabanii Roi the official in charge—a middle-aged woman—filled out the birth certificate. Without saying a word, she drew a line through the column for father and in the column for patronymic she wrote “Ivanovich.” She knew Frosya well. The town was small, there was little privacy, and who the father was was no secret. Still, the chairwoman wanted to help. She picked up the official seal and solemnly stamped the certificate.

With a sigh of relief Grandma Agafya went to the school where Frosya had taught. She gave the director some simple village presents—lard and eggs—and went straight back to the country. Later, Agafya heard a rumor that Frosya’s friend was a young scholar from Leningrad and that he had been arrested and sent away somewhere. Should she try to find him? In those days it was too dangerous. And it wouldn’t help. The only thing to do was to pray to God.

As Ilya grew and began to pester his grandmother with questions about his father, she would try to get around them as best she could.

“Well, your father… didn’t come back from the war.”

“Grandma, kids laugh at me when I say that. And call me a bastard.”

“Well, you see… Well, to tell the truth,” she said one day, “he did return from the war. He was an agronomist in Kabanii Roi. That’s where he met your mother. And then you came into the world. He was a very good worker and that’s why many people envied him. They got him sent to a prison camp and he never came back. But don’t you say a word to anyone about it!”

“I won’t. What was my father’s name?”

“Ivan Volkhov.”

This conversation became etched in Ilya’s memory. Gradually he became certain that his father was alive. There were times when he wanted to race into the fields and shout at the top of his voice, “Father, I will find you one day. I am like the knight Ilya Muromets! I’ll get you out of prison.”

The village of Nanovka lay snugly on a hill that fell gently to the river Moksha. On the hilltop the birch trees were lined up in orderly rows. Ilya loved to lie under the trees and watch the white of the clouds shine through the lacy web of leaves. Sometimes he felt that a mysterious force was lifting him above the earth and carrying him into the endless space of the sky. Unable to control his fear, he would run to Agafya as she worked in the fields.

“Why are you afraid, my warrior? You can mount the cloud and ride it all over the unseen world. Don’t be afraid of anything,” his grandmother would tell him.

At the foot of the hill the small Moksha River branches out into a wide backwater pond. Dense vegetation grows around its edges but the water there is clean and has a pleasant taste. Ilya heard that far from Nanovka the Moksha flows into the Oka River, and, still farther, the Oka flows into the great Mother-Volga. Even farther—very, very far away—is the Caspian Sea. From that sea an underground waterway leads to the river Jordan and then to the holy city of Jerusalem. And beyond lies Asia, where the Moslems live.

On the steep bank rising on the other side of the river the edge of an endless, thick forest is visible. The curved line of the treetops repeats the curved surface of the earth.

In the village there were some forty wooden peasant cottages, simple but roomy on the inside. The plots of land on which they stood were not fenced in. At the edge of the village were two silage pits, covered by a mound of earth that resembled the burial mounds of ancient heroes.

On long winter nights Ilya liked to lie beside his grandmother on the enormous clay stove in their house. He listened as the cold wind blew through the tops of the birch trees, howling angrily. Or else he would go outside on such nights and marvel at the diamond frost that sparkled in the moonlight and danced among the bare birch branches.

In the spring rapid streams of melting snow tear past the fence that surrounds the pastureland. At this time of year the villagers make notches in the trunks of the birch trees and collect the sap. Mixed with honey, it makes a wonderful, sweet-smelling drink.

In summer, following the short white nights, the birch forest rests in the early morning haze. The trills of nightingales ring out in the semi-darkness, and roosters crow shrilly to greet the dawn. And in fall the barely audible hum of insects calms the human heart. But the cold rain already signals the approach of winter, and so on clear autumn days golden birch leaves flutter in the wind as if to say farewell to the blue expanse of sky.

Long ago Ilya’s village had been founded by a group of Old Believers whose members had been oppressed for centuries for their religious beliefs. They named the village Nanovka (“new town”) in order to express their hopes for a new life. In Soviet times, fearing persecution, they listened to their priest’s sermons in a plain windowless house that was even without a cross. The priest was arrested all the same, and the house that was used for services gradually fell to pieces until all that was left was a frame hidden in weeds.

Collectivization under Stalin brought bad times to the village. People in Myasoyedovo, a village on the other side of the woods, were the first in the region to establish a collective farm, or “kolkhoz.” In no time at all a gang from there, who had always envied life in Nanovka, made a trip to the Old Believer village. The Old Believers worked hard, ran their farms efficiently, and kept a large herd of cattle. The gang began to steal their cattle, and a short time later the regime deported the wealthier peasants to Siberia—the process was called “de-kulakization” (though only two families, lacking the right connections with the local authorities, were deported). The houses of the deported were confiscated—one was turned into a school, and the bosses of the Myasoyedovo kolkhoz pocketed the funds the authorities had allocated for building a school.

Still, the village carried on somehow until the war broke out. Less than half of the men of Nanovka returned. Nonetheless, in keeping with the Old Believers’ traditions, there were many children, as in the past.

In summers, when Ilya was a young boy, he and his friends would do their farm work as quickly as they could, then climb on horses—two or even three to a horse—and with loud shouts recklessly race down the hill straight into the river. They rode into the deepest part and competed to see who could stay on the longest as the horses swam. An enormous number of crawfish lived in the Moksha. The children caught them while thrashing about on the silty bottom of the shallow water, and took them to the shore where they cooked them in a pot. At night the boys climbed onto a stack of fresh hay and carried on endless conversations while gazing into the starry sky.

In the fall they made bonfires and roasted mushrooms from the forest and freshly harvested potatoes. In winter they wrapped wicker baskets with straw on the outside and drenched them with water. As soon as a layer of ice formed, they sat on them and slid down the Moksha’s steep bank, shooting out all the way to the middle of the river. Or they played ice hockey on skates they made by fixing steel wire onto pieces of wood that they tied onto their felt boots.

When the hard work of harvesting was over, movies came to the village. The adults in Nanovka disliked them and didn’t believe the propaganda praising collective farm life. Usually the only grownup viewer who came to the schoolhouse was old Solomon, who sat in front of the screen stroking his long gray beard. Solomon had yielded to the pleas of his fellow villagers (“so that they won’t harass us”) and reluctantly agreed to be a “secret informer” for the city police. The children hid in the back of the hut and watched in the dark. They were completely absorbed in the action on the screen even though they couldn’t hear what the heroes were saying because the diesel generator made so much noise.

They perceived the films about model collective farms or the Kuban Cossacks as stories about some different world—interesting but totally foreign. But the war films took their breath away. The next day they’d put aside their usual game of pretending to be Cossack cutthroats in order to become Soviet Army heroes smashing the cowardly German generals. They only stopped when some old women from the neighboring yards angrily yelled at them to “stop the stupid killing games!”

The mailman, Uncle Andrei, his chest covered with medals, would ride down their dusty road on an old bicycle. He had lost his family during the war and afterwards left Leningrad and returned to the village. The children liked to gather around him and listen to his stories about Nanovka in the old days.

“In the mornings the shepherd came. Just imagine! He carried a long reed pipe. When we heard his “toot-toot, toot-toot-toot,” we led the cows out of the barn and drove them in a herd. That’s how our day began. And the shepherd ate at Semyon’s house one day and the next day at Vanka’s, and so on and so on from house to house. There were two hundred cows in the village. And in those days there were lots of wolves around here—you could hear them howling at night from the forest across the river. Especially when the moon was bright. Then it was terrible. When it got dark, we youngsters got together and we’d sing and dance to the accordion until the morning. Your mother was a fine dancer, Seryozha. Couldn’t take my eyes off her, you know. But at six in the morning we had to get up and go out to cut hay. We wanted to sleep like crazy. There was a blacksmith in Nanovka, name of Semyon. He died in the war. A jack-of-all-trades, he was. He could shoe your horse or fix your cart, or even plate your pans with tin. The children swarmed around him—they were amazed by his work. But today there’s no one left who can forge a proper horseshoe.

“Gypsies used to come here all the time. They came on their carts and they’d steal horses from our village. Well, wouldn’t you know it, once they stole my bay? And if you ran over to their camp, you’d just see a dappled horse grazing on the grass. What do you think those wily gypsies had done? At night they had slit open a sheep, disemboweled it, and smeared its insides all over the horse so the horse became dappled white. And no matter how many times you asked for the horse back, they’d say, “This isn’t your horse. Yours is reddish-brown, isn’t it?” They sure were swindlers, no doubt about it. No, sirree. And they also had bears who did tricks…”

Over the hills, about an hour’s walk from Nanovka, lies Lake Belokamennoye. The lake, which is too large to take in at one glance, makes a bend at midpoint. It’s surrounded on all sides by forest. There’s something mysterious about this lake (as if it were located far in the mountains): it doesn’t have any fish and people are afraid to swim in it.

According to legend, in the old days, a large and rich town stood on the lake’s shore. But when the Mongols came the townspeople refused to surrender to them and chose instead to let the water in and sink the town. Today you can hear the sound of bells coming from beneath the water. At night, hiding themselves from people’s eyes, monks descend to the church on the bottom of the lake. And if anyone sees them, he won’t live to tell about it.

One summer night Ilya and his friends set out to investigate Lake Belokamennoye. The night sky stayed bright until very late and the boys began to feel tired and sleepy. Suddenly from far away they heard the sounds of a bell ringing and a strange flickering light began to move along the surface of the lake. Terrified, the boys ran for their lives and didn’t look back.

Grandma Agafya had a strong sense of justice and an iron will. If you looked at her deeply wrinkled face, her narrowed eyes, and clenched lips, you’d think she was a stern woman. But in fact her heart was open to everyone, even those who were not Old Believers, if she saw that they were devout.

After her husband was shot for being a “rebel,” Agafya’s fellow villagers were afraid they would be punished themselves and so they pretended to shun her, though at night they left food and other provisions on her porch. That helped Agafya to raise Yegor and Frosya on her own. Yegor was blessed with noble virtues, and Frosya had a vivid imagination.

The women of the village expressed their anger when Frosya gave birth out of wedlock, as if they had been humiliated somehow. Yet, in due time, their resentment faded owing to Frosya’s sad fate and, even more, owing to the death of Stalin. Everyone considered Agafya the most knowledgeable person in the whole village.

Agafya knew how to remember good, and to reciprocate the neighbors who helped her, she helped them as best she could. She managed to keep cows, pigs, and even bees, and whenever there was a large enough store of honey, she shared it with the other villagers.

God gave Ilya strength and a sharp mind, and the village boys thought of him as their leader. And Agafya gave her orphaned grandson all her love. She often told him stories about the old days, especially at bedtime. Her singsong voice so enchanted him that without even trying he could remember the fairy tales and poems about Ilya Muromets, Dobryna Nikitich, the merchant Sadko, Prince Igor, and the other princes of Kievan Rus’. In Ilya’s dreams these heroes would always be fighting a decisive battle against the German commanders and tanks that he’d seen at the movies.

“Hey! Hear ye, all! It’s Ilya Muromets! Ilya Muromets on his horse!”

Nanovka was crowded with spirits and ghosts. They lived in the grass, in trees, in the forest, and in the river. These mysterious creatures gave people the jitters. For Agafya everything reflected the spirit of a god. Whatever she was doing—working in the fields or gathering mushrooms in the forest—she would always cross herself with two fingers and make a deep bow to the earth.

On quiet spring nights female spirits called Rusalki sat on the banks of the Moksha, combing their long hair in the moonlight and tempting men with their beautiful voices. Whenever Ilya and his friends came near to the river on moonlit nights, they rubbed themselves with leaves of bitter wormwood for protection against the spirits’ charms. The wily forest spirit, the Leshii, eagerly waited for someone to step into his rustling forest. And at home, from behind the stove, you could hear the whispers of the Domovoi, a house spirit. Agafya named their Domovoi “Uncle.” At the bathhouse Ilya would sometimes feel the Bannik who lived there. His touch could predict your future—a warm touch was a good omen, and a cold one meant misfortune. Agafya told Ilya that the spirit of his grandfather, her late husband Pavel, would always protect them.

Pointing to the blinding morning sun, she would say, “Look, Ilyushenka, there’s the sun god Dazhbog. He rides on a chariot pulled by a white horse that breathes out fire. He comes from the East, the land of eternal summer, to bring us blessings. All will be well in the world as long as Dazhbog is in the sky and watching over the earth.”

One time, early in the fall, the cold sky was lit up by a rare aurora borealis. It was as if God himself, the ruler of earth’s destiny, had appeared in the heavens in the form of light. The dark sky was flooded with color and then the light disappeared into darkness again.

“You see, Ilyushenka,” Agafya explained, “three goddesses live in the sky—the morning star, the evening star, and Aurora of the northern lights. They guard the dog that the Little Bear keeps on a chain, and if the chain breaks, the world will come to its end.”

Agafya strictly observed the customs and rites of the Old Believers, but she didn’t try to impose them upon Ilya. She only said, “Each of us must learn for ourselves to judge what is good and what is evil. Then we can live without shame before God.” She told this to Ilya time and time again.

Beyond the village stretched a vast expanse of land. Agafya always bowed deeply to the moist ground, almost touching Mother Earth with her hands. She spoke in a soft voice:

“Lord, forgive us sinners. With our blood we defiled the land you entrusted to us and we made it barren. No one wants to work anymore. All your blessings have fallen into the hands of the devil. And there is no hope in sight. Lord, why have you forsaken us?”

Hearing his grandmother’s plea, Ilya thought, No that’s not true. I will make it better for everyone. I have more than enough strength. No matter how long I run in the fields I still have enough strength to yell. I’m a descendant of the goddess Makosh, the almighty goddess Makosh. I am Ilya, Ilya Muromets! My horse can fly over the slumbering woods and under the clouds soaring in the sky. I can fly anywhere. My arrows will turn to lightning and destroy all evil!”

The soil, made black and muddy by the melting snow and spring sun, gave off a pungent, intoxicating smell that stirred Ilya. “O sea that I have not yet seen, you give rise to waves that flow far and wide and flow forever. But our earth is more vast and richer than the sea. Who would dare dishonor the earth? Who would turn it into a barren desert?

“Hear ye!” Ilya would shout as he ran along the edge of the newly sown rye fields. “Ilya Muromets has come!”

Ilya’s mother was buried in a forest of white birches on a small hill not far from the river. The spot was sacred to him. He never allowed his friends to play there. He would come by himself, bow low before the grave, and spend long hours there with his mother, quietly sitting in the shade of the birch trees and listening to the wind and the songs of the birds.

“Mama, I promise to find father someday. And then the three of us will have a good talk. Do you know the poem about Ilya Muromets?”

The years passed and on summer nights loud and merry noises no longer came from the gypsy camp at the far end of the meadow. Ilya was now old enough to go to school. One day a young woman teacher came to Agafya’s home to register Ilya. After finishing her studies in Moscow, she had been assigned to teach in Nanovka. She asked Ilya several questions while glancing at her papers, and as she was about to leave said with a smile, “See you on September first.”

On the first day of school the villagers brought their children to the house that had once belonged to the “kulak” Isaak and had now been turned into their school. Dressed in new clothes their parents had bought at the town’s general store, the children lined up in front of the school. Smiling nervously, their teacher, Zinaida, gave a disjointed welcoming speech, and then an old woman who lived near the house rang the school bell. As it rang, the second graders took Ilya and his classmates by the hand. Only the day before they had fought with each other, but now as the older children led the younger ones into the school they all seemed as gentle as lambs.

That fall, after the harvest ended, some officials from town came to Nanovka and forced the villagers to sell their livestock at absurdly low prices. Angry voices sounded all over the village.

“Those loafers from Myasoyedovo are here again!”

The arrogant officials broke into Agafya’s house. They threw a few rubles on the table and from her yard took two cows that were dearer to her than money. Grabbing a hoe, Ilya started after them, but Agafya quickly pounced on him and knocked him to the ground without saying a word. Ilya had never seen her look so furious.

That evening Ilya heard for the first time how his grandfather had been killed. The story, which mixed with the taste of blood still trickling from his mouth, would remind him for his whole life that cold-hearted violence is a part of this world.

“It’s just like collectivization! They’re picking us clean! The minute you grow something they come along and take it away!”

His grandmother’s words echoed in Ilya’s head. He couldn't sleep for a long time that night, thinking with hatred about this great and despicable power he hadn’t known about before. But I’m a descendant of the goddess Mokosha. I’m Ilya Muromets. How can such things happen?

The schoolchildren of Nanovka removed their red Pioneer scarves and threw them away to protest against the state’s theft of their cows. Blown about by gusts of wind, the scarves fluttered in the meadow like tongues of flame. With a frightened look on her face, Zinaida ran around trying to catch them. The villagers’ anger was somewhat assuaged when they heard that Larionov, first secretary of the Party regional committee, had been shot, since he had been in charge of the appropriation. But, bereft of their cows, many of the villagers began to think about moving to town.

Zinaida, the schoolteacher, was a native of Kaluga. She had a round face, a good-natured expression, and wore glasses. She pulled her ash-blonde hair back into a bun. Zinaida lived in a tiny room in the schoolhouse and when lessons were over she worked in the small garden there. The villagers admired her modest ways. They came on visits, bringing her vegetables or honey, and stayed to listen to her stories of life in Moscow and other lands. Her eyes lit up as she told them about the beautiful subways in Moscow, the stores jammed full of goods, and movie theaters where the spectators were jammed in wall to wall. But she never touched on politics or the church.

We’re not cunning thieves or robbers,
We’re not mighty Cossacks.
We’re a gang of merry Pioneers! Hey!

Ilya and his friends didn’t think of this as the Pioneers’ song, but they sang “Timur and His Company” as they walked home from school. Then they worked in the family fields until dusk.

Sometimes Zinaida’s mind began to wander, and looking out the windows she would recite the poems of Lermontov and Yesenin. Ilya was deeply moved by these poems. Zinaida opened his eyes to the “outside world.” He remembered that his Uncle Yegor and Cousin Olga lived in Moscow.

In second grade he asked his teacher for a book on history and world geography, and he became so absorbed in reading that he would turn pages by lamplight until late into the night.

The villagers began to abandon their homes, and gradually Nanovka was deserted. When Ilya was in third grade, the school closed. The pupils and their teacher were transferred to a school in Kabanii Roi. Every day Igor and his classmates had to walk two hours to town. Despite all of Zinaida’s efforts and attention, they felt out of place in their new school. The local kids looked down on Ilya and his friends, considering them to be country bumpkins. The atmosphere of groveling and lying at the school disgusted the children from Nanovka.

In the winter Agafya fell ill. After her cows had been taken, she and Ilya had to manage without milk. Their fuel, which Ilya made by rolling cows’ manure into balls, was also gone and they couldn’t cook their food properly. One by one even the neighbors who had shared their extra food with them left the village and moved to town. There were now no more than five families left living in Nanovka. That winter there were many blizzards. Ilya took care of his sick grandmother and rarely went to school. On many long winter nights the house spirit howled endlessly from inside the stove pipe and, as if she was delirious, Grandma Agafya kept repeating, “Pavel, Pavel, I’m coming. It’s soon now. It’s all right, don’t cry.” Agafya fought on until the summer. But on the sixteenth of June, when the poplars’ fluff was dancing like snow, she peacefully passed away.

The sparse funeral procession passed the edge of the fields, making its way to the cemetery overlooking the Moksha River. When Semyon Pavlovich, a Party member, performed the obligatory memorial service, their toothless neighbor Nelya cried out, “She passed away before me. Who is left for me?” Then Agafya’s coffin was lowered deep into the ground forever.

“Don’t lose heart, Ilya. We’re here to help you.”