Enchantment

"And if you were in Russia like Vanya, you wouldn't write to me either?"

He thought for just a moment. "I wouldn't go without you," he finally said.

"Very carefully chosen words," she said.

"I wouldn't be without you," he repeated. "Without you, I wouldn't be."

She kissed him and then washed the dishes as he returned to reading and grading student papers.

Cousin Marek was as good as his word, sitting there in one of the village trucks waiting for him. "Everyone's glad you're back," he said. "All grown." Marek laughed. "A Jewish scholar is supposed to have glasses and clutch a book."

"I do my share of book clutching. Can't help it that my eyes are still good."

"I was teasing you. Because you have shoulders. Seeing you as a boy, who would have guessed?"

The pole vault, the discus, the javelin, putting the shot, that's what had given him shoulders like a blacksmith. Sprints and hurdles, those were the cause of his thighs. Mile after mile of endurance ru

Marek looked puzzled.

"American joke," said Ivan. "A tall tale. The story is, a farmer carried a calf up the stairs every day. His wife asked him why, he says, 'I want to be strong enough to carry him when he's a bull.' "

Marek thought for a moment. "Bull won't let you carry him up the stairs, even if he'd fit."

"That's why it's a joke."

Marek burst out laughing and punched Ivan heavily on the arm. "You think I don't get this joke? Only it's a Ukrainian joke, Ukrainians must have carried this joke to America!"

Ivan laughed and tried not to rub his arm. He might have muscles, but it wasn't as if he'd ever boxed or wrestled or anything. He wasn't used to getting punched. He wondered if Cousin Marek had punched Father a lot when he lived here. That would explain why Father wanted never to come back.

It was after dark when they got to the farm. The place seemed strange, until Marek explained the differences. "New henhouses over there," he said. "There's more of a market for eggs now, so we grow them, ship them straight to L'viv in refrigerator cars. Capitalism! And everything looks so bright because we have enough electricity that you can turn on the lights in every room in the house at once."

"But you never actually do that," said Ivan.

"No, no, of course not," said Marek. "There are two of us, so there should never be more than two lights on at once, and only one when we're in the same room. Now you're here, sometimes three lights!" He laughed again.

Marek's wife, Sophia, had incredible quantities of food waiting for Ivan—crepes filled with cottage cheese and topped with sour cream, meat-filled cabbage rolls, broth with beads of fat floating on the surface, dumplings filled with fruit, mushrooms stewed in sour cream. He knew enough to plunge in and eat until he felt sick. There was nothing else he could do, unless he wanted to offend them his first night. "I never eat this much at home," he explained. "You can't fix so much food for me in the future, I'll get sick."

"Look at you, all skin and bones, complaining about too much food," said Sophia. She pinched at his arm, expecting apparently to find it as slender as when he was a boy. Instead, she found herself having to use two hands to span his upper arm. Marek roared with laughter. "Not so ski

"Hitch up the old oxplow," said Sophia. "As long as he's here to pull, we don't need to use the tractor."

They had prepared the same bed he had slept in as a boy, but everyone had to laugh when they realized that it was like trying to play a piano sonata on an accordion. He wasn't going to fit. So he ended up sleeping in the bed his parents had shared.

He didn't sleep well, however. The bed was softer than what he was used to, and it was a strange place; or maybe it's because it wasn't a strange place, but rather a familiar one from a time of great stress in his childhood, but whatever the cause, he kept waking up. Finally, just at dawn, he woke up needing to pee so badly that he couldn't lie in bed any longer. Tired as he still was, sore from tossing and turning, he had to wince his way out of bed and into some clothes. Here in the foothills, spring wasn't so far advanced, and it would be cold, heading for the outhouse.

Once he was outside, though, hugging himself against the cold and peering through a cloud of his own breath in the faint dawn light, he realized that the outhouse wasn't where he remembered. The henhouses were there now. He began to circle the house, looking for a well-worn path that would show where the outhouse was now. He made a complete circuit of the house, and then, thinking he must have overlooked the building in his weariness and the dim light, he began another circuit. It was only Cousin Marek on the porch, laughing at him, that made him realize his mistake.

"You never heard of indoor toilets, boy?" asked Marek. "Where did you pee last night?"

"I peed at the station," Ivan answered. "I ate and just fell into bed and slept when I got here."

Marek pointed out the add-on structure on the gable end of the house. "One bathroom upstairs, one downstairs, just like America," he said. "Cost me a whole year's profit plus half a beef each to the plumber and the electrician, but Sophia says it's worth it, not having to trudge outside all winter long."

"Lead me to it," said Ivan, "before I explode."

Breakfast threatened to be as heavy as di

She laughed as if it were a joke.

"Sophia, I beg you." He got down on his knees. "I'm an athlete, I run, I can't eat so much."

"Eat what you want, nobody's putting a gun to your head," she said.

"I'm afraid of seeing your frown, if I take small helpings. I'm afraid of hurting the feelings of the greatest cook in all Ukraine."

"What do I care about her?" she demanded. "You won't hurt my feelings, because I take no pride in my cooking, I know it's plain food, you must have much better food in America."

Ivan laughed and kissed her, but he knew he was doomed. If he didn't want to spend his whole visit hearing how much better American food must be compared to the miserable Ukrainian fare that she did such a bad job of cooking, he would eat copious helpings of everything.

So he'd better get in a good long run today, and plenty of work. Though what work there might be for him he couldn't guess—the farm must be fully mechanized by now, and Ivan had never driven a tractor in his life. He wouldn't know how to begin plowing or planting.

He jogged to the road, stretched against the stiffness of his joints and the cold of the morning, then took off at an easy loping pace that he knew he could keep up half the day, or longer. To survive Sophia's copious meals, he would have to have a good long run every day. Maybe two.

The roads had been improved a little, too. Not much, for these last few years hadn't been easy in the Soviet Union. Not a lot of money for capital expenditures or infrastructure maintenance. Yet the roads were smoothly graded. Maybe the locals got together and did it themselves, not waiting for government to come in with money. That's how government began, wasn't it? Collective labor. And then somebody got lazy and hired a substitute, and pretty soon it was all taxes instead of the sweat of your back. But it began here, on roads like these, villagers with axes cutting down trees, with picks and spades and prybars pulling out stumps, with sledges and scrapers leveling the road. That's work even I could do, thought Ivan. But it's already done.