The Rod and the Knothole

Every rod in the fence needs a man behind it, my grandpa used to say. Mykyta was driving a wedge into an old plank when it cracked, a knot popped out - and through the round little eye he saw Palazhka. Naked, wet, steaming from the heat, in her washtub. His blood rushed downward all by itself, like running to a fire. The next evening he came again. Palazhka was combing her hair by the fence, a thin shift clinging to her shoulders.

She came closer, pressed her hip against the plank and said quietly: "Looking is free. Touching you'll have to pay for." Mykyta asked with what, exactly. She said: "First show me whether you've got anything to pay with." At the inn Mykyta asked the men how women decide whether a man's tool is any good. One said - by the length. Another - by the thickness. Old Luka answered: "A wise woman looks at whether there's a man attached to the tool."

Mykyta laughed, but that evening he washed, shaved his cheeks and put on a clean shirt. Palazhka was waiting. She slipped two fingers through the little hole and ran them across his palm. "So what was it you wanted to show me?" Mykyta started boasting that no woman had ever forgotten his equipment. She laughed: "Maybe they never forgot it because they spent so long trying to." And she ordered him not to hurry.

Mykyta unbuttoned his trousers and carefully eased his equipment through the narrow opening in the fence. Palazhka looked up at it from below, squinting: "So this is it, the famous one? Strange. Last night at the inn, going by the words, it seemed a good deal bigger." Mykyta took offense: "The hole in the fence is narrow, and you're looking from below - it seems smaller."

She touched him with her fingertips - slowly, from the base to the tip. He nearly moaned loud enough for the whole village. Then she ordered him not to move. "Men think a woman is waiting for just anyone. But she has a character of her own. Like a mistress of her house. A fussy one. She doesn't like braggarts. But the obedient ones she sometimes lets in."

At the hottest moment Baba Kylyna came walking down the road. Mykyta stood there with his trousers down and couldn't step away - Palazhka was holding him from the other side. The old woman asked what he was doing there. Palazhka, loudly: "The fence has gone wobbly. Mykyta put a peg in so it would stand till morning." Palazhka opened the gate. "That's the first time all evening your tongue has said something more useful than your equipment."

She took him by the shirt and pulled him into the house. The next morning at the inn Mykyta sat in silence, drinking mead, scratches on his neck. The men asked whether he'd managed to test the little hole. "The hole turned out deeper than I thought," Mykyta answered gravely.

Palazhka walked in and added: "And the peg is shorter than he claimed. But diligent. He can stay." I thought Mykyta would take offense. But he only nodded and finished his mead. Since then, he has never boasted at the inn again.