The Stairs Kept Silent, the Sour Cream Spoke

Yesterday I was pouring kvas for a traveler, and he told me a story. A certain man had creaky stairs in his house. They creaked as if the house were complaining about its old bones. And that man dearly loved his midnight salo. His wife heard his every step, so he took it into his head to lull that music to sleep. He waited until his wife fell asleep and greased every step thick with oil. At night he creeps up - silence, pure bliss.

He had just begun rejoicing when his foot slid. Down he went, headfirst, and plopped straight into the barrel of kvas. His wife muttered through her sleep - either it was raining, or the frogs had gone mad. The next night he laid pieces of an old felt boot under the stairs. He creeps up - the stairs keep silent, but the felt crunches like rusks in a giant's teeth. Louder than before, even.

He froze halfway up and fell asleep right there on a step, hugging the railing like his own mother. On the third night he decided not to carry the salo at all, but to dip it right there in the pantry. He grabbed the clay jug of sour cream, but in the dark he caught on a beam. The jug flew up, he tried to catch it, but it flipped over and slapped him square in the chest and face. The crash was like nothing ever heard.

A candle flared. There stands the wife in the pantry doorway. And he sits on the floor, white with sour cream, only his eyes gleaming and a piece of salo in his hand. She looked at the ceiling, then at him, sighed and held out a slice of bread - eat, then, because I'm not the one scrubbing this off. A husband thinks he's a cunning hunter, and the wife simply waits for the prey to season itself.