The Child of the Rye

The rye does not rustle at noon. It listens. When the sun becomes a blind white eye, your shadow hides under your feet. Orysia ran out to the field boundary, because little Matvii had not come back. The heat was such that the air trembled and thickened like molten wax, flooding the lungs. She saw her son among the ears of rye. He was waving. And a moment later the rye cracked open, and from three different sides three more children, exactly the same, waved too.

All of them called out at once in her voice: - Mama. The moment Orysia stepped past the boundary, the world went out. The sounds of the village vanished, the wind, even breathing. The sky turned into thick white milk. Her own shadow tore away from her heels and dissolved into the soil. The rye stood motionless, like needles of bone. She called her son, and at once, out of the white blindness, from under the earth, children's voices answered.

They did not simply call - they vibrated in her teeth and her skull, trying to work their way under her skin like larvae. She rushed to the left. The boy stood among the stalks, smiling. But the smile was too even, and the eyes - like black grains. The rye beneath him was not trampled. Out of the white haze, inside her head, a voice sounded: - What is his name? Orysia, unable to hold herself back, whispers: - Matvii.

And at once all the children in the field began calling her in his voice. The field does not ask in order to hear an answer. It asks in order to tear out a piece of your memory, root and all. Another minute, and Orysia can no longer remember his laugh. The haze asks again, with the buzzing of a thousand flies: - What do you know him by? She thinks of the red thread on his sleeve, of the clenched little fist. In an instant the image of the false children begins to change.

From under their skin, like worms, red threads of veins sprout. Fingers break and knit together into identical clenched knots. She understands: every answer gives the field material. Five Matviis stand in the rye, and every one of them has her memories. The horizon curls up like burning paper. Every row of rye leads into an abyss. The poludnytsia stands at the edge of sight: a pillar of white ash, and instead of a face only a blinding emptiness.

She asks without sound: - What are you to him? Orysia almost answers ...mother... but bites her tongue until it bleeds. The copper taste gives her back her body. One of the Matviis opens his mouth unnaturally wide and whispers in a voice that creaks like millstones: - Say it, mama. Then I'll know how to eat you. Orysia shuts her eyes. She must not search with her sight. She clings to a memory: the real Matvii sniffles before he cries, hides his thumb.

But the memory slips away, as if it were being ground down with hot sand. The poludnytsia asks: - What are you afraid of? All the children at once turn their heads a hundred and eighty degrees with a dry crack. Somewhere close by the real Matvii sniffles quietly, but she no longer knows whether it is him or a trap of the white field.

She finds the boy who is not calling. He sits in the rye, hugging his knees, trembling. The real Matvii, when he is afraid, keeps silent. She grabs him. He is hot, heavy, his heart beats against her ribs like a small bird. The rye begins to scream in her own voice. The poludnytsia asks one last time: - Which one is yours? Orysia does not answer. She runs through the melting rows. Right at the boundary the child in her arms whispers into her ear: - Don't look back, mama.

The village struck her ears with noise and barking. People are running, crossing themselves. Matvii is in her arms. But the child is silent. The dog in the yard whimpers and digs at the earth as if it wants to bury itself. He calls her simply "mama", though before he always said "mamtsiu". She pressed him close, saying it was all over. In the evening, as the sun goes down, the child smiles for the first time.

The smile stretches a little wider than it should, and the house suddenly smells of hot, dead rye and scorched earth. Night. The house is quiet. Matvii lies on the bench, not blinking, not breathing, only staring at the ceiling. Beyond the window, the dark field. Suddenly, out of the black rye, comes a child's crying: - Mama, I'm scared, it's so white here.

Orysia freezes, the blood turns cold in her veins. The child on the bench slowly turns its head. In its eyes, in the middle of the darkness, a blinding noonday dream is reflected. A thin voice says: - Mama. You carried out the wrong one...