A Cure for a Man's Head

When a man's main plough refuses to plough, he won't say so straight out. He'll start complaining about damp firewood, about the phase of the moon, or about the cat looking at him sideways. It was about this very thing that the godfather of my children, who could hold his tongue only until the second shot glass, told me the story of how Hnat slipped in to see Vira the healer. He kept looking over his shoulder that day as if he were stealing someone else's rooster.

He sat down on the bench, kneaded his cap for a long while, and finally squeezed out that on his farmstead the gate wouldn't sit on its bolt anymore. Vira understood at once: the man's body was healthy, but his head was making such a racket that everything else took fright. But she didn't say it straight out. She gave him an ointment for courage - spread it thin, or it'll burn. A tincture, so his thoughts wouldn't run ahead of his trousers.

And a strict order: not to check every half hour whether the Cossack was back at his sabre, and not to summon him as if to a fire. What has stood by you all your life doesn't like to be hurried. To keep his head from itching, Vira gave him a task. Every morning to bring his rooster a handful of grain in his right hand, and with his left to stroke the hen, murmuring words about the harvest. Hnat took to the business like ploughing.

He rose before dawn, fed the bird, whispered to it about grain so earnestly that the rooster began following him around the way a boy follows his father. Hnat even had heart-to-heart talks with him. He explained to the rooster what true manly responsibility was, and how to stand properly on one leg to look convincing. The rooster listened, nodded his comb, and came to respect Hnat so much that he chased even the neighbours' geese away from him.

And after a week Hnat was so worn out by the birds that in the evening he simply dropped off to sleep. A month later Hnat came to Vira, downcast. Says the rooster is thriving, the hen lays twice a day, the neighbours already want to buy his poultry, and the Cossack is still in retirement. Vira smiled, wiped her hands on her apron and glanced out the window. There stood Hnat's wife.

She was standing by the wattle fence, waiting for him so calmly, as if she had long known that all his ointments, roosters and tinctures would end right here. Vira nodded towards her: "There's your cure, Hnat. Not a jar, not a poultice, and not a rooster that already looks at you like a relative. Your wife." Hnat looked, and for the first time in a long while he did not start wondering whether he was man enough. He simply saw that he was being waited for.

Not as a hero, not as a Cossack at his sabre, but as her own dear man. That evening he did not drink the tincture. He just held her in the entry hall, and the fire in the stove flared up all by itself. The best ointment for a man's pride is when a woman loves you not for what you can raise, but for simply being there when you lose heart.

And the rooster went on strutting about the yard for a long time afterwards, as gravely as if it were he who had set Hnat back on his feet. Ah well, let him. In our village worse doctors than that have taken the glory for themselves.