The Dark Valley by Aksel Bakunts Read Free Book Online Page B

quiet mind like a puff of white cloud in the light-blue summer sky:
    “If only it were true and Peti would want me…”
    As he lay on the fodder in the hayloft, Peti would suddenly recall the girls’ laughter and what Zar’s sister had said:
    “Get yourself a wife, good-for-nothing.”
    He would then wander past the village households in his mind, trying to remember all the girls. For a moment he thought it a good idea to have a wife so that when he came home in the evenings there would be someone there to cook a warm meal and make his bed. But he couldn’t find a suitable girl. No one would ever give him a girl. There were many more men in the village who were much wealthier and better off than him.
    His body was boiling hot and felt itchy. Sleepily, he would scratch all over his body with his sharp nails, like an ox does when it rubs its neck against a large rock or trunk. And then he would remember the crippled old girl. But, like a honeybee, his thoughts would fly to another flower and breathe a new fragrance.
    And that’s how he stayed.
    Years passed, and with the years, his youth passed. Like autumn grass, his secret thoughts of finding a wife and building a home dried out.
    *  *  *
    Spring was on its way. The snow was beginning to melt and its water was slowly dripping into narrow brooklets. The spring sun softly warmed up the ground, and the villagers who were tired of the long winter nights basked in the sun, sat under walls on pieces of dry log, and talked with each other.
    Spring was on its way, and the cattle in the barns were becoming increasingly more irritated by the heat and showed signs of restlessness, looking impatiently at the door and lowing at the top of their lungs. The two-year-old female calves were mad, and the three-year-old male calves capered in the snow and locked horns with each other as they were driven along the fresh water. The bulls were fat with meaty legs. They hunted for pleasant fragrances in the warm air with their wet nostrils, lowing and digging their hooves in the half-melted, hard ground.
    Peti too was restless.
    The heat was also bothering him. His body itched more and he looked toward Mount Ayu more frequently. The mountain was his sign. The spring sun caused the snow on Mount Ayu to melt and, as a result, to bare its rocky slopes.
    Sometimes he would go to the pasture by the village shoveling snow aside with his feet to observe how the green grass was starting to grow in the sun like stubble does into a beard.
    Peti felt a sort of vibrant bliss at the beginning of spring. Like the brooklets that were formed from the melting snow, the blood in his veins seethed quicker, and he laughed, gurgling at the same time. He was no different than a horse neighing in delight when its stable is replenished with golden barley.
    Peti was preparing for the spring. He sewed his moccasins, tightened the straps on his bag, and carried his worn-out rug on his shoulders to lay in the sun.
    “Peti has laid his rug in the sun,” the villagers would say. That was a sign that the cattle were going to be driven to the pasture in a matter of days.
    Like a caring mother, Peti would walk from barn to barn admonishing the owners to give their cows more to eat or to keep the barn warm. If someone wanted to know when a calf was to be born, they would ask Peti when the cow was last seen with a bull.
    Peti knew which bull was the father of which calf and which cow gives difficult births. Whenever a cow was giving birth, Peti had to be there to help the cow’s owner.
    And when the slimy calf would barely be able to open its wet eyes, it was Peti who massaged its nose and lips or caressed the cow.
    “The cow was in much pain… But, look here! It’s that red bull’s calf.”
    After the cow had given birth, it was usual for the owner to give Peti something in return for his services, such as an old coat, a dish with pudding, or a promise for a bushel of wheat for the threshing floor. Occasionally, a