A Stove Named Yerofeyevich

Auntie Nina stood in the middle of her hut and wept. The place once occupied by the Russian stove built back in her grandma’s day, in the 1930s, the place where that unfailing dispenser of tender loving care once stood, was empty. A ragged hole yawned in the ceiling above, giving a clear view of a mournful sky and the white caterpillar of an airplane vapor trail. Auntie Nina even pinched herself in the side, but no – it wasn’t a dream.

Grandpa Yerofeyich had built that stove, so the family lovingly called it Yerofeyich too. And why not, because what’s most important of all in a Russian village? The stove, sure enough. In times past, after the war, only the stoves loomed like solitary monuments in the burned-out villages. The huts were rebuilt around them, and life began anew. Auntie Nina remembered her grandmother’s saying, that the Russian stove was the empress of the home. It warmed the whole huge hut, giving out a steady, welcoming heat, and everyone – grandpa, grandma, ma and pa, and the little ones too – would crowd around it, rubbing their hands. Grandma would sleep on the stove’s high wooden shelf, while the kiddies monkeyed around on the floor, and mom put a cast-iron pot of kasha and milk onto the stove to stew, and deep in its enormous, ship-like innards, the stuffed pies baked, and you could see the dough rising and the plate pies browning before your eyes. And as night fell, the coals were raked, and the children sat and watched, and to them it seemed that they were peering into the sky and the bright little embers were stars.

Auntie Nina wiped her eyes. For a long time the stove had been smoking and sneezing, and its flanks were no longer giving off heat. She’d been urged to bring in one of those new-fangled stove repairmen to clean the flue and the pipes, to replace the crumbling tiles, and fix the whole thing up.

So Papanin, a burly fellow with fists the size of footballs, appeared, asked for payment in advance, rustled up some buddies, and sent Auntie Nina off to stay with her sister on the outskirts of the village, so she wouldn’t get in the way. Nina left with a light heart, although she did take with her the satchel that held her cash and documents.

A week later, she came back. And gasped in dismay. The hut was full of smoke, it reeked of kerosene and exhaust fumes, and there, in the middle of it all, Papanin slept, his arms folded across his chest. “He’s kicked the bucket!” Nina moaned, and dashed off to fetch the medic. But when she came back with the medic in tow, Papanin and the can of home-brewed beer were long gone. There was nothing left of Yerofeyich either, except the foundation and a pile of broken bricks. Auntie Nina slumped onto a stool and bawled her head off. It would be turning cold soon enough, and how could anyone get through the winter without a stove? The visitors from town were putting in fancy water heaters and radiators because they looked nicer, but where was the sense in that? The village electricity supply was always here today, gone tomorrow, but a stove doesn’t need electricity to work. It runs all on its own, warming place and people, and even gives light when light’s needed.

And what about cooking? Auntie Nina sobbed some more. Where were the cast-iron pots supposed to go? Cooking with gas was expensive, and the food just didn’t taste right. What about baking milk? And drying socks? And felt boots? And what’s a girl to do with the sack of dried birch leaves? And how’s she going to warm the small of her back? On a radiator? Oh, what a disaster! Whatever fun is to be had indoors, it’s all because of the stove. Every proverb is about the stove, the dear and darling stove. Auntie Nina picked up a mat soiled by Papanin’s great clodhopping feet and went outside to beat it.

And she heard someone cough behind the fence. She looked, and there was a little man wearing a cap and carrying a bag.

“Who are you?” she wanted to know.

“I build stoves,” the little man replied. “Would you happen to need one installed, my dear lady? You can call me Fedka.”

“Do you drink?” Nina brandished a rolling pin and started thrashing the striped rug that she’d draped over the wattle fence. “Hear me? Do you drink?”

“In what way?” Fedka asked coyly, breathing into his cupped palm and bringing it back up to his mouth. Booze breath, for sure, but hardly noticeable.

“What d’you mean, in what way? In the Russian way!” Auntie Nina was pounding so hard with the rolling pin that the fence-post cracked. “In the way that the lot of you drink, you Herods of Judea.”

“I, madam,” said Fedka, truckling just enough to disgust even himself, “drink only on public holidays. Like New Year’s, Easter, and such … and Women’s Day. And what of it?”

Nina wiped her forehead with her house coat hem. “This is what,” she said. “You’ll spend at least a week building it, and you’ll never touch a drop, else I won’t pay your bill. Now tell me what you need to get the job done.”

Fedka shuffled his feet, shrugged his backpack strap off his shoulder, and struck a dignified pose.

“You, my dear lady, don’t pussyfoot around. No, you make straight for the target, like Marshal Budyonny, and we’re the White troops that he fought and beat. Except that fear has no place in this business of ours.”

With a sigh, Auntie Nina kicked her outside shoes off at the door and went in with nothing on her feet but gray, hand-knitted socks. Fedka plucked up his courage to follow. He wanted to slip by still wearing his shabby boots, but he was stopped short.

“Off with ’em!”

“To make it more awkward to do my job? How’ll I manage, going back and forth?” He waved his arms right and left to show how he’d be here, there, and everywhere. “I won’t have the time to be putting them on and taking them off.”

“I’ll lay some sacking down. What a chatterbox you are.”

Fedka stood in the middle of the room, eyed the holes in the floor and the ceiling, seemed to run his fingers over an invisible wall, and asked in an unexpectedly intimidating tone: “Where are we putting the stoking hole? What are the specifications for the sleeping ledge, how many interior channels do you want, what dimensions do I have to ponder?”

And Fedka gave Auntie Nina a menacing look.

No longer armed with her rolling pin, Nina was a whole lot less fiery. Instead, once she’d grasped the true scope of the work, she was back to her moaning and groaning.

“Oh, Fyodor Mikhalych, work with me, do! I want our stove, a Russian stove, a stove like my grandma had. Yes?”

“With an arched opening?” Fedka gasped. Until that very moment, he’d been hoping this would be a piece of cake. “An arch! That’ll cost money, big money. I was told it’d be an ordinary stove with a straightforward baffle system, and then along comes milady with a task like this. Who builds a Russian stove that way anymore? Buy a gas stove, why don’t you? What’re you going to do for bricks?”

“Use the bricks from before, from before.”

“Reclaimed ones, you mean,” Fedka said, bringing the debate to a screeching halt. “So they’ve to be cleaned up. And who knows where the clay’s to come from? And the sand with pebbles in it? And the only help I’ll have is you, old girl. And to top it all off, ‘No drinking, no drinking.’” he taunted, maliciously mimicking his new client. “You try building a stove under conditions like that.”

“Have pity!” Nina collapsed to the floor, but not to crouch at the stove builder’s feet in humble supplication. Rather, she seemed to have been poleaxed by disbelief at the likely cost. “Do it! How can I live without a stove? See, that Herod of Judea, that odd-job man, that swindler if ever there was one, see what a mess he’s made! And as if that wasn’t enough, he’s made off with the cast-iron pots and the milk cans. Help an old lady!” Nina shot a look at Fedka, and Fedka visibly softened. “And you’ll have a nip of something now, long and far as you’ve traveled. Won’t you, dearie?”

“No!” Fedka said proudly, rolling the bitter saliva around in his mouth. “When we’ve got the job done, that’s when we’ll wet our whistles. Take me to the bricks, so I can see if they’re good for anything. And then off you go, my old girl, and find me some horse manure wherever you will, and some coarse salt, rock salt.”

Auntie Nina’s jaw fell. “But what d’you want manure for? And why horse manure? Where’m I going to find a horse? There’s a cow, and that’s all there is.”

“To seal the seams. Cow manure’s not one bit of good. Too sloppy. But a horse makes nice, dry manure, and the hay in it is as good as it gets. Like for when you’re installing the facing, and the hay burns off in the heat, so the cladding takes hold just as tight as them Dutch tiles ever could.”

Stepping out over the threshold, Fedka crammed his feet into his boots, squashing the backs down. Then he glared at Auntie Nina, made an unexplainably threatening gesture at the gray sky, and strode off toward the barns. And behind him, scampering in figures of eight, came Nina.

Once stern and unbending, out of nowhere she’d become all meek and docile, daunted by the presence of this true craftsman. A Russian stove? No laughing matter, no indeed! And to mark this solemn occasion as it deserved, there’d surely be no harm, after all, in raising a glass or two.