Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

Noi Nikolayevich Pyatkonov, known to the world as Goat’s Foot, watched with satisfaction as the steaming stream of his urine arched and fell through the bottomless bucket at his feet. The bucket had been his own invention. For months it had hung, derelict, from the rafters of his gornitsa, its bottom rusted away from years of neglect. The sight of it had irked his wife and she lost no opportunity to remark upon it whenever she had occasion to enter the outbuilding and interrupt his work there, calling him a collector of other people’s rubbish and a useless tinker. But Goat’s Foot had just smiled and kept digging the hole in the corner and when it was deep enough, even she had had to admit that a bottomless bucket could have a purpose. Scavenging a broken door from Belinsky’s yard by dead of night, he had placed it over the excavation and then had rough sawn a small hole into which he forced the bucket. By standing over it, it became a funnel through which he could relieve himself, no matter how drunk he was, without turning the floor of the gornitsa into an evil smelling slurry. What more could anyone ask?

His wife had not praised her husband for his ingenuity – what woman ever did? – but at least she had stopped nagging about the bucket. Now she had a new complaint: the privy was unsafe; it would collapse beneath her.

Why should the board give way, he had shouted, except at the grotesque sight she presented to it? What more could she want besides warmth and privacy? If he hadn’t suspected that she would stay in there all day and neglect her duties around the home, he would have built her a seat so that she could sit there like a Tsarina on her throne, shitting on the heads of the People. No, there was the board, there was the bucket and there was an end to it.

It had taken him weeks to persuade her that she need never again leave their shack to go and squat out in the middle of the marshy field in full view of the road. In the end he had had to forcibly drag her, clucking and squawking like a startled hen, to the gornitsa and stand over her until she had consented to try his new invention. But, even after this demonstration, she had persisted in her refusal to use it, fearing that one day the board would give way beneath her weight.

For three days the war between them had raged: she refusing to go near the bucket, he preventing her from using the field. She had become more and more irritable, while on his part, he had deliberately visited the gornitsa so often that he feared his bowels would become shrivelled like dried fruit. On the third night, after dropping three extra cloves of garlic into her stew, he had witnessed her capitulation. Feigning sleep he had listened as she had crept from the bed and made for the outhouse. Despite the cold night air he had followed her, grinning to himself in the darkness as he listened to her grumbling voice heap curses upon his head, quickly followed by her cry of terror as she overbalanced and landed four square on top of the solid door panel. As he knew it would, the board had held and his victory was made complete shortly after by her groans of satisfaction as she found relief.

Thereafter she had used the bucket without complaint. To satisfy the honour of both parties a leather strap and chain, fashioned out of a discarded piece of bridle that their son Osip had found in the road, had been added for her to cling onto, and a candle was provided for nocturnal visits. Despite his assurances, he had been alarmed at hearing her lose her balance. The board had definitely creaked and he knew the hole to be deep. He had taken as his guide the military adage that in a year a man would shit his own height and weight, and had dug deep enough to cater for all three of them until the snows melted. He reckoned that in the event of a catastrophe, at least he would be able to pull his way out somehow. His wife, being shorter and broader, was at a disadvantage. As for Osip, like any boy, he would have to take his chances.

Ineffectually shaking his last few drops over the hole, Goat’s Foot hawked and spat against the rim of the bucket. Jagged rocks thundered and clashed together inside his head, reminders of the drinking session he had had with the courier the night before. Tucking himself away in the folds of his undershirt, he made his way out into the grey morning light. He scooped a handful of snow from the low roof and pressed it like a cloth against his face and neck. For once, his homespun remedy for a blistering hangover failed him and he was strongly tempted to return to the warmth of his rough cot. Only the thought of his wife and the courier being there drove him on. Wiping the last of the snow from his cheeks he set off along the road towards the town.