She didn’t answer right away.

In the darkness of the hut, the air seemed thick, saturated with the scent of dried herbs, old wood, and the barely perceptible sweat of a man’s body. Varvara lay motionless, feeling the sheet beneath her become damp with internal heat. Her fingers, resting on her chest, slowly clenched into fists, her nails digging into her palm—not painfully, but enough to sense the boundary between herself and the world.

“Varya, what are you talking about?” Tikhon repeated, and that same note she had once loved slipped into his voice: a light, almost boyish resentment that could melt away any severity.

But now the note sounded out of tune, like an old balalaika with one string stretched too tight.

She didn’t answer right away. Let the silence hang between them, like a cobweb in a dark corner. Let him hear how heavily it was breathing.

“You know what,” she finally said. Her voice was even, almost lifeless, as if it were someone else speaking, someone colder and more ancient. “Don’t go to her alone. And don’t look at her like that.”

Tikhon rolled onto his side. The mattress creaked softly under his weight. Varvara felt his knee accidentally brush against her thigh—a familiar, once warm touch, now foreign, almost offensive.

“What are you making up, stupid?” he whispered, and she caught the faint but distinct scent of moonshine on his breath. Not yesterday’s, but today’s. Fresh. “Sima is my brother’s wife. Blood relatives. Are you jealous of your own daughter-in-law?”

He said the word “jealous” with a hint of mockery, but Varvara heard a thin crack of fear beneath it. As if he himself was afraid of what might burst out if she pressed harder.

She closed her eyes. The previous evening flashed before her mind’s eye again: how Tikhon, thinking no one was watching, lingered on Serafima longer than necessary. How his hand, holding out a mug of kvass to her, paused for a moment, as if unwilling to part with the warmth of her fingers. How Serafima, usually pale and quiet, suddenly flushed—not from shame, but from something else, something secret, like hunger.

“I’m not jealous, Tikhon,” Varvara said quietly, almost tenderly. “I just see. And seeing is worse than being jealous. Jealousy can be shouted out, cried out. But when you see… all that’s left is to decide.”

He fell silent. In the silence, a mouse could be heard scratching quietly behind the stove—a small, stubborn creature that wears out its life on other people’s walls.

The next morning, Varvara rose before everyone else. The sun was just touching the edge of the roof, painting the world in a cold, watery light. She walked out into the courtyard, barefoot, feeling the dew bite into her soles like icy needles. It was pleasant. Painful and clean.

She headed not toward the well or the barn, but toward the old bathhouse, which stood at the far end of the garden, half-hidden behind the elderberry bushes. There, in the anteroom, on a dusty shelf, lay a small tin box. Inside were letters. Old ones, from before the war, when Tikhon had courted her. And one—very recent, without an envelope, folded in four.

Varvara didn’t bother rereading it. She already knew every word. “Sima, my darling, be patient a little longer… When Yelisey leaves again…” Her husband’s handwriting. The same one, slightly slanted, with long tails on the “ya” and “f.”

She hid the letter back, but not in the box. She tucked it into her bosom, closer to her heart. Let it warm. Let it burn.

During the day, when the men went to mow the grass and Nastenka and her grandmother went to collect sorrel, Varvara went to Serafima.

The daughter-in-law was alone. She sat on the porch, shelling peas. Her hands moved quickly, almost convulsively, as if trying to escape her own thoughts. When Varvara’s shadow fell on the wooden floor, Serafima shuddered so violently that several peas slipped from her fingers and rolled down the steps like little green hearts.

“Varvara Petrovna…” her voice was thin, like a cobweb in the wind.

“Don’t call me that,” Varvara said softly. “We’re practically sisters.”