true. Thanks to Taras and the arrangement, I would never marry. Never have children.
The old man bent and peered out our only window. “How much tillable land?”
“We’ve had no harvest since Taras sold the ox.”
“You could pull the plow.” He turned to me and squeezed the top of my arm through my linen sleeve. “You’re strong enough.” My skin burned as I yanked back my arm.
His hand slid across my chest and grazed my breast.
“Old pig,” I said under my breath.
Mr. A. directed his gaze out the door, looking like he’d tasted something sour.
“The tsar has sent people to Siberia for saying less,” the old man said.
“We tried tilling the land. Taras hitched me and Mamka to the plow and we worked the soil until she grew sick.” I waved toward Mamka on the bench. “She lies there ill with the cough, probably from pulling the plow like an animal.”
Both men took a step back.
“Soil quality?” the old man asked.
“Bad. Even with both of us hitched we could grow only beets.”
The old man shook his head. “Decreased harvest? Not good. Household budget?”
“We have no budget. I make peppermint oil I sell in town and use it to buy bread. Groats.” My scalded chest and arms pulsed with heat.
Mr. A. bent to speak to me. “We ask, for we must know to tax you fairly, Varinka.”
Such a kind man. How many times had he given Mamka thread on credit? She always tried to pay him back but he often told her to keep her money.
“Own any household items?” the old one asked.
I nodded toward the wide, tin basin leaning against the bench. “That washbasin there.”
“Things of value. Jewelry? You cannot expect to pay no tax while your neighbors sacrifice. The tsar needs this money to provide famine relief.”
“We are in famine,” I said.
The old man waved in the direction of town. “You could work at the linen factory.”
“They won’t have me.” I glanced at Mr. A. and he looked at his boots. He knew how those in town shunned us, three odd ducks living out there in the woods. They threw handfuls of dirt at me as I passed on the street. Accused me of being the witch’s daughter and living unmarried with Taras, and they called me bad names. “And if you don’t mind, I need to tend to my mamka.”
The old man bent at the waist, opened the iron oven door and peered inside. “Your father was an artisan? No wonder you’ve been left in this state.”
“Yes. But all we have left of him is this izba he made.”
“Seems fairly well-crafted,” the old man said.
How dare he doubt Papa’s skills? “Papa made every bit himself, sturdy in the old style. Cut his own logs, daubed it with river clay he carried on his back, carved the flowers above the door himself. Even buried a coin in each corner for good—”
I regretted those words even as they came out of my mouth.
“Coins?” The old man hurried to one corner and poked the dirt with his cane.
I hurried to him and pulled him by one bony arm. “It’s bad luck—”
He shook off my grasp, dug deeper, and soon the cane’s silver tip hit metal and he bent to retrieve Papa’s coin. The old man continued to the other corners and murmured happy little grunts as he dug up each of the coins Papa had planted so many years before.
How could I be so stupid? I took deep breaths to control my rage.
The old man stepped to me, leaving deep holes surrounded by horrid little piles of tilled earth. “You now owe the tsar four kopecks less.”
“And you now have years of bad luck for yourself,” I said.
He slid the four coins into his vest pocket and patted them. “Any other items of value?”
“Not a thing.”
All at once from behind the oven came a great hissing sound. At last the samovar water boiled.
The old taxman glanced at me with eyebrows raised and followed the sound behind the oven.
I trailed him. “Please—”
The old man waved Mr. A. over. “Really? You have not a thing?” He pointed with his cane behind the oven. “This seems to be a household item.”
Mr. A. lifted the boiling samovar from my hiding place, holding it by the silver swan-head handles, and placed it back on the table. “Jesus, it’s hot.”
“Well, that’s a start,” the old one said. He ran one finger along the samovar’s sterling silver band, fastened like a belt around a man’s waist, stamped with the