The Pig Of Gorgi

By Suzi Ayna

Old Gorgi died and left Petrov a gravid sow.
Petrov left the pig in the care of his partners.
Petrov journeyed to contact buyers for sucklings.
The great sow gave birth to many, thus future
wealth was assured for all.
Except that the progressive pig-sty system was
beyond the capacity of those contained.
And years prior to the Soviet collapse that of
the huge mother pig, Ummok did

• Language: English
• Publisher: Suzi Ayna
• Release date: Sep 10, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466146235

Suzi Ayna

Enough personal information is written in my books that any more here would be preemptively redundant (or something like that).

Book preview

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The Pig of Gorgi

There always came the time of year when the very air felt sad. It was when warmth left the sky and the clouds turned gray and ponderous even as the sun still shone between them. The contours of the mountains hardened as leaves flew down. And birds winged, arrowed, toward the southern distance over ridge exposed below them.

Mornings left night’s tears upon the ground or misted like an opaque shroud along the stream. Foliage that bent to touch the water shriveled, browned, and broke to drift slate-streaked reflections of the sky. And distant northern peaks with crowns of white presaged the sadder time to come.

The very houses seemed to fade this time of year, their weathered siding boards the gray of naked ledge. Roofs slanted more noticeably with the foliage’s background gone. And through the days of brittle silence, chimneys soundless sighed their breaths into the empty, quiet air.

Gorgi Popofsky felt the sadness stronger this year. This year the distance seemed to be a depth toward the endless southward closure of the glacial valley. This year he felt the cold within, no matter that he wore the great lambskin and fur coat which had protected him from raging winter blizzards that would bury ledges, river, even houses to their roofs. He felt, this eighty-fifth fall of his life, that he was somehow drifting in the air’s sad cold and distance-depth toward the valley’s disappearance into convoluted haze and hills conjoined.

Inside his slanted shelter the single room was furnished only with a rough pine table and two chairs. Along one side, across from a stone fireplace, pine boughs made a bed for the old man. In years before, he had gathered more of the fronds, for he shared his sleep and his life, the winter’s blizzards screaming through the building’s cracks and the warmer times of planting and harvesting survival. He had shared his life for eighty-four years with Olga Svenzk who had become Olga Popofsky. She had died early in the summer. Suddenly. Peacefully as they slept upon the fragrant boughs. And now as winter neared and the season’s sadness surrounded that of Gorgi, he felt that he drifted, suspended in a sea of memories with rippling crests of nearby hills or trees or river bends just skimmed with ice already on the colder mornings.

Gorgi walked bent now. And he wondered, as he walked, why he walked. But then he remembered, for the house was less than a mile away and, in the distance, he could see Petrov repairing the roof. The young man was the closest neighbor in that sparsely populated area of the Trans-Baikal region of Siberia. Along the narrow, rutted trail through Troitskosavsk and other villages of the sub arctic wilderness, the houses were far apart, even fields separated by woodlots of birch and pine. Neighbors saw each other only in infrequent trips to the village for supplies, to sell or barter harvest, or to attend holy day masses at the gold-domed church. Otherwise it was a life of isolation.

Now as Gorgi walked toward young Petrov’s farm, his steps faltered and he felt cold as if the icy waters of the nearby stream flowed through his ancient veins. He trudged along as if immersed in other times with Olga laughing, holding him, a blanket wrapping them, the telegas bouncing on the ruts and horses pulling it panting puffs of breath into the air . . .he could almost hear her voice and feel her touch . . . . .a day of cold with sky so clear and valley distance endless in the crystal air but her touch so warm. . . . now as Gorgi walked and remembered, the distance seemed to dissolve in haze, like the memories, and even moments and now again he wondered why he walked. To