An Apple for Luka

Today's village tale will be a bawdy one, like a spring tomcat on the roof, but with no filth - only life's truth and life's cunning. A mead-brewer from Podillia told it to me. It happened at a fair, where the dust stands in a pillar and the geese scream louder than the village headman. The hero was Luka - a handsome, hardworking lad, but so shy that one glance from a girl made his very ears turn red. The village decided: enough of him sitting at home, time to marry him off.

His kums took him under the arms and hauled him off to the fair, between the carts with barrels and the rows of kerchiefs. Luka squared his shoulders, puffed out his chest and thought he was the master here - he would choose his own fate himself. But at a fair, as in the forest, the hunter often becomes the prey. He had barely stepped up to the first stall when the women surrounded him.

Not with tender glances, but with the kind of appraisal you'd give not a lad but a sack of choice grain that has to be checked for mice. The first to come up was the widow Motria, a woman sharp of tongue and strong of hand. She did not ask about love. She said: open your mouth. Luka, bewildered, opened it. Motria peered inside, nodded and said: teeth all there, so he'll crack nuts, not just eat soft porridge. Then she took him by the arm and squeezed his elbow hard.

Satisfied, she let go: broad bone, big hands - he'll haul a sack of flour up to the loft. Luka stood there neither alive nor dead. Before he could come to his senses, Baba Teklia, who sold dried mushrooms, poked him in the belly with her stick. A firmness test. Then she asked: is your mother living? Luka nodded. Teklia sighed: that's bad, a mother-in-law in the house is like a second rooster in the yard, there'll be no peace.

And can you, lad, keep quiet when a woman says she's right, even when she's not right? Luka answered honestly: no. Teklia waved her hand: well, at least he doesn't lie, and that's half the battle already. The third trial was staged by the young widows over by a cart of firewood. One of them, Oksana, tossed him an axe: go on, show us whether those hands are only good for a spoon or for real work too. Luka, so as not to disgrace himself, started chopping.

Chips flew, sweat poured down in streams. The women stood around in a circle and commented, as if at a blacksmiths' contest: good swing, but the back is sagging, so by autumn the lumbago will get him. Luka felt not like a bridegroom but like a breeding bull at a viewing. Worn out, he threw down the axe and hid behind an empty herring barrel. He sits there, breathing hard, smelling of fish and despair. Suddenly he hears a quiet laugh.

Beside him sits a girl with a basket of apples that nobody would buy because they were too small. She didn't measure his shoulders and didn't peer into his mouth. She simply held out an apple and said: eat, lad, or they'll soon cut you up into straps here and sell you off piece by piece. Luka took the apple. It was sour but juicy. He looked at the girl - an ordinary girl, freckles on her nose and fingers dirty with earth.

And suddenly he understood that he did not want to be chosen for the strength of his elbow or his skill at keeping silent. He wanted to choose for himself the one he would eat these sour apples with come winter. The village said afterwards that Luka had failed the fair, because nobody took him. But he did not leave the fair alone.

And that is how Luka figured it out: at a fair you can squeeze a goose, knock on a barrel and check whether a sheepskin coat has holes. But you can't pick a wife that way, because she's not a coat that you take, pull on and go about in. And a man is no stallion, good only for holding his tail high.

In a house it soon shows: who bragged about the plough, and who, after the night, went and brought in the water too. And love, it happens, begins with an apple behind a barrel, when you already smell of herring, sweat and truth.