PYOTER GRIGOROVICH
 

Pyoter Grigorovich gave us a bottle of fresh goat's milk.  His face, like his gift, was simple and kind.  He was tall, lanky--and pleasantly old-fashioned.  He could as easily have stepped out of an old book as out his back door, one of Tolstoy's meek, wellbred peasants of tsarist times.  When he took off his hat, his fine sandy brown hair was still neatly combed.
    He gave us his whole catch of fish in addition, as if his conscience had taken him aside and quietly scolded him for not being generous enough.  They were in a sack on the top rack of the refrigerator.  The other shelves held more jars of goat's milk.  The fish were freshly caught that morning, Pyoter Grigorovich assured us.  He did not want to keep any for his breakfast the next day.  He said he would get up at five and set his nets again.  He was happy to share them.    
    Pyoter Grigorovich's cat was as gentle as Pyoter was meek, with delicate strands of white and tan around her neck like a fine silk scarf.  She sat at his feet seeking neither fish nor attention.  She was simply happy to be there next to him, wholly unconcerned by the planting of his huge heavy boots all around her.  She looked up at him and blinked, waiting, you could tell, to sit on his lap and watch him fall asleep.  Except for his cat and his goats, Pyoter Grigorovich was now all alone, yet he was not the type of person who abided well alone.  And so, he had come to pay a neighborly visit, standing there at the gate with his hat in his hand, suddenly realizing that his neighbors had company.
    We were in Shalya at the dacha (the summer home) of a couple whose lives had seen more than a few difficult days.  Now, however, Vladimir and Luba both had good jobs, each other, and enough income to have acquired, just ten days before, a newly built dacha next door to Pyoter Grigorovich.  It was in the heart of a beautiful valley that was filled with a lake, the singing of birds and, by the time we arrived, the long golden rays of the afternoon sun.
    Pyoter Grigorovich was upset with himself for having been so dull as to not realize the presence of guests and apologized profusely -- though he had not intruded in the least.  This, after all, was Russia, where there is no need to change your shirt, or what you're doing, if someone unexpectedly turns up at the door.  Whoever appears, you simply pull up a chair and invite them to have something to eat (needless to say, whether or not you know them).
    Finally Vladimir and Luba convinced him to join us, though the only chair left was in need of repair and didn't have a back on it.  Nikolai quickly grabbed it, making the one he had been sitting on available.    Well then, said Pyoter Grigorovich feeling more than welcomed, would we give him five minutes and he would be right back?  When he again opened the gate, removing his hat and smoothing his hair with a sweep of his hand, he was now wearing a greenish-brown suit, with a white shirt buttoned carefully at the top.  He shook everyone's hand saying, with obvious sincerity, what a pleasure it was to join us.
    We had moved to the back, where a wood fire was being stoked for shashlik (Russian barbecue).  You do not often see someone wearing a suit at a barbeque.  It set him apart, of course, being, as he was, a bit old-fashioned.  Yet, you couldn't help but feel that there was something very right and good about Pyoter Grigorovich, even memorable, wearing his suit of many years.
    Vladimir and Luba had somehow managed to get fireworks -- the kind
you see at county fairs.  It was very likely the first time the village had had its own fireworks bursting overhead.  There were five large boxes of multiple flares that lasted about ten minutes.  The rockets would whistle importantly through the air, burst into a brilliant array of colors, bow to our cheers, and then escape into the next universe, leaving us wrapped once more in the stillness of the black Siberian night.  None was more pleased than Pyoter Grigorovich.  It was then, as the last red star-burst was sailing away, that he turned suddenly to Nikolai to say that he would like to give us a jar of goat's milk.  He lived right next door, he reminded us.  Thus it wasn't far.
    He then apologized for not being able to show us his goats.  (He had
five.)  But they were already asleep and he did not want to disturb them.  We smiled at his consideration.  I then looked down at Pyoter Grigorovich's huge boots and understood the perfect calm of his silvery cat, who could not have been in a more protected spot.
    We left Shalya with the milk and fish.  It was truly disappointing to find the next day that neither of us had taken a photograph of Pyoter Grigorovich in his greenish-brown suit, as if we hadn't noticed, though, in fact, it was something we would never forget.
    "Just think," Nikolai said a few days later, "He has, no doubt, lived his whole life that way."  You couldn't help but notice.
    In the end, but better from the start, you come to Russia not really to pick mushrooms (however Russian that is), or for the art museums (though they are magnificent), or even for a good banya (though Russia isn't Russia without one).  Neither did we come to Russia each year to merely restock the shelves of village libraries.  If the point was simply new books it would be far easier and cheaper to send the money.  In short, you come to Russia, and return to it again and again, for the people.
    It was what Nikolai's mother had said to me the first time I met her.  "Dear, the people, write about the people."  The words were born of her yearning to make the people known in a way they had rarely been made known: for all that was good about them.
    And why not?   //  End of excerpt.


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