Free The Dark Valley by Aksel Bakunts Page A

far in their stories, would invent such scenarios, that even their closest neighbors would not believe a word they said, but would keep quiet anyway, and laugh inwardly while nodding outwardly so that the government official would believe them. After all, wasn’t the argument over the Apricot Field? Over the thorny shrubs that grew on the riverbanks and over the further expansion of the village borders?
    But the disagreement could not be settled by merely talking a lot and raising voices. When the government official was ready to leave, the people of Mrots would secretly collect a sum of money between them that the government official, who had come from the city, alluded to during dinner the night before.
    “It’s for your own benefit that I’m saying this, you know. It’s not for me.”
    The government official also went to Mir. The village below worked to welcome him even more grandly. They collected possessions from here and there: a clean pillow from one house, the best carpet in the village from another. They decorated houses and warned brides not to leave a single speck of dust when cleaning the rooms. They humbly bowed to their visitor and ushered him into their houses.
    They tied up the visitor’s horses, gave them fodder, and obediently smiled with common wretchedness at the government official’s guards, hoping that if they treat the guards well too, they could benefit from the endless feud over the Apricot Field.
    In Mir, too, people raised their voices. They knew what the above village had said and they refuted the story about the “blueprint.” One of the villagers would approach, show a gash in his head and tell how the villagers of Mrots had hit him with clubs. Another villager would push his child through the grieving throng, pull up the child’s pants and show a dog bite on his leg.
    The child would look at the government official in awe and fear as the father tightly held the child’s leg and lifted him so that the government official would have a better view of the wound. But the government official would shift his eyes from the wound on the child’s leg to the colorful carpet on the ground and put a price on it in his mind, comparing it to the bribe that Mrots had promised.
    And it was not unusual for the people in Mir to roll up the thick carpet and take it to the city to the government official’s house the next day to keep Mrots in a bad light. In Mir, too, the villagers secretly taxed themselves, giving the price of the carpet to its owner so that brides and daughters could make a new colorful carpet in the winter nights and tell of age-old mischief.
    If it so happened that the visitor agreed to see the Apricot Field in person the following day, practically all of Mir would go with him, some on foot, others on horse. The intellectual and influential people of the village would hold the bridle of the government official’s horse and tell him again about the Apricot Field and, with the same drive as the intellectual and influential villagers, the village messenger would tell the same to the government official’s guards.
    It was unheard of that someone would not tell the government official an old tale in broken Russian on the way to the Apricot Field about a rich man who had a hideous wife and a beautiful maid who both went to the mountain to milk the sheep and were confused for one another by the Khan’s servant, who thought that the beautiful one was the Khan’s wife, and when the Khan arrived, the servant pointed to the hideous woman and asked the Khan astonished: “Long live the Khan, has she been brought to be married off as well?”
    And in telling that story, the story-teller would have to ask whether the grounds of Mrots were comparable to the grounds of the Apricot Field, but the government official would only laugh loudly, and a few simple-minded villagers from Mir, who knew the tale by heart, would take the government official’s laughter as being favorable for Mir.
    In this