Samovar Memories

Grandpa Vitya was peering at the thermometer scale, trying to make out whether it was showing above or below zero – because it should surely have been one or the other – and was getting exactly nowhere. Baffled, he pushed his nose right up against the chilly glass, but that didn’t work either. “Damn it all,” he thought. “The way things are these days...”

He slapped his jacket pockets looking for his matches, but they were no help, burning out too fast and lighting up the scale for only an instant, and then Grandpa breathed on it and the whole thing fogged over. He rubbed his knuckles across his back, rocked his head from side to side, enjoying the familiar crunching sound, and hurried back into the hut.

“You know, ma, I’m thinking it’s time to be getting into our warming ways, as folks say,” he solemnly declared, clambering onto a stool to open the stove damper and start things off.

“Whatever for?” Grandma Valya was snug on the sagging sofa under a sheepskin coat discarded by her eldest daughter, who just didn’t need it anymore. “It’s only August. Whaddya mean, fire up the stove, when there’s barely enough firewood for the winter, and he wants to go firing up the stove! You can warm up in the bathhouse, can’t you, and put some socks on, and you’ve a mohair vest over there, but the slightest thing and off you go firing up the stove. The collective farm’s long gone, so where’s the free firewood going to come from?”

“Well, anyway...” Grandpa said. “What if we go mushrooming? First thing in the morning or later in the day?.. And,” he went on, touching the side of the teapot, “isn’t it time for tea?”

Teatime is a long-drawn-out affair, although nobody’s keen on setting up the samovar anymore, except in summer, when the kids come and bring the grandkids, and Grandpa grits his teeth and hauls the samovar in from the storage room, and Grandma cleans the outside with elderberries, squeezing them so hard in her fist that the juice runs down her jacket sleeves.

The planks of the table, its legs sunk into the ground beneath a thick-trunked, gnarled rowanberry tree, are scraped with a piece of glass and drenched with scalding water, leaving them to steam in the sun and smell like a bathhouse, only sweeter. Grandpa rinses the samovar down, grumbles to himself, and thrusts an arm elbow-deep into its innards, either because he hopes to find hidden treasure or because he wants to disturb any spiders that might have built a quiet, cozy nest in there. Grandma is on him to sprinkle the inside with baking soda, but Grandpa waves her away because that would spoil the flavor (he says “flivver”), so he just keeps dousing it in boiling water with a handful of mint thrown in for good measure.

They get the water from the spring (wanting nothing to do with well water, which tastes fine but isn’t special enough for the occasion), pouring it gingerly from a jug, and it frolics inside the samovar, swirling around, until Grandpa puts the lid on and secures it by turning the timeworn wooden knob.

The whole family gathers pine cones, putting them in an old basket that has lost its handle but can still do an honest day’s work and is quite big enough for the job. The cones are dry, brown, and bristly, and the children start acting up and lobbing them at each other, dashing around the table, until Grandpa yells at them, “Hush, you scamps, or no samovar for you!”

The grandkids run off to help their grandma and organize themselves into a sniffling chain to pass, hand to hand, the best teacups, the colorful little teapot, the silver-rimmed crystal candy dishes and sugar bowl, the heavy teaspoons, the tiny little jam plates with a funny name (“rosettes”), and even a white tablecloth decorated with crisscross patterns that Grandma embroidered when she was just a girl. The oldest grandchild is the triumphant bearer of the copper samovar tray that Grandma never lets out of her sight and keeps hidden under her bed, on the strong suspicion that it’s worth plenty.

Grandpa takes off the chimney cap, lights the wood splinters in the chimney, and, once certain that the fire has taken, delights the small fry by covering the chimney with a smoke-cured boot kept especially for this reason and pumping it up and down, all the while warbling – no one knows quite why – “Dot-dot-dot-dot, our iron’s good and hot”...

Then he slots the pipe in place, and the family sits around the table waiting for the water to boil, and Grandma spoons the jam out onto the porcelain plates and gives the job of cracking the nuts to the most obedient grandkid, who crushes them carefully on a tree stump, pressing down on them with a heavy metal flatiron.

The candy wrappers gleam in a rainbow of colors, the halva is softening, the nut brittle glitters, the crisp bagels freckled with poppy seeds rustle like dry leaves, the cookies are stacked neatly next to the wafers, and the syrupy honey (a gentle amber, gathered in May, from the pollen of any number of grasses) nestles inside a little clay pot, and to top it all off there’s the promise of pie, and Grandma’s daughters-in-law crowd into the hut for the chance to get it off the baking sheet and onto a plywood board.

When the time is right, Grandpa puts the lid back on, grabs the valve handle – the wooden part, so as not to burn his fingers – and opens the spigot, and the cheery, steaming water, seething hot now, scurries into the brightly patterned cups. Grandma picks up the little teapot perched atop the samovar chimney and pours the strong-brewed tea, and everybody tries to guess what it’s flavored with – bright purple fireweed, or marjoram, or clover flowers, or linden blossoms, or currant leaves, or last year’s bilberries, or cherries, or all the splendor of summer, of sunshine, of happiness...

And they drink their tea, with Grandpa taking long sips from his own tea glass, holding the spoon down with his finger, and the glass rests in an old metal holder depicting a hero of folklore on a galloping horse whose mane coils behind in ringlets like the hero’s beard.

And wasps circle, and bees hum, and butterflies have come to the table, and evening falls, pink as cranberry marshmallows, and Grandma wipes her face on her apron and rises heavily to her feet, to go and meet the returning cow, but the family stays put as the warm evening gives way to early night and the milky-golden young growth shows silvery at the forest’s edge, and a bottle and a sausage have already put in an appearance, and the children, weary with happiness and stuffed with sweet things, have been put to bed a good while ago, while the grown-ups talk on and on, remembering the departed and wishing the living a long life. And the embers burn out, and the acrid, pine-needle smoke rises up, bearing sorrow away, and one merciful soul uses a teaspoon to fish out a wasp drowning in some cold tea, and, not believing its good fortune, it sits on the edge of the bowl, trembling and spreading its damp wings...