The frosts bit hard throughout Shrovetide. A frigid sun sailed in a pallid haze and flicked its ears. Wide-eyed stars burned by night, and the snow sparkled with austere purity. In the open steppe, a ground wind drove a smoking powder and gripped the roads in eddies of snow.

Winter was broken at a stroke.

At a breath of warmth, the roads were swallowed in slush and soon awash. The rooks held wild swirling parliaments, the dung-covered streets were flushed by sunbeams and the sun crowed like a cock on the crown of the day.

A trickle became a torrent …

A draggle-tailed carnival time came crawling and snorting through the thaw. Spring came seeping through every cranny. The dun stripes of manured tracks struck out across the meadows, the tops of the ancient kurgans melted, the ice on ponds began to break up and meltwater licked the banks.

The village wallowed and swam in moonshine, gulping it down by the ladle-and bucketful. Revellers rode their carts along the lower street with the wind rushing past their ears. Some roamed the village in twos and threes, arm in arm, knocking on windows:

‘Anybody in?’

In strained creaking voices they bawled their bitter peasant songs, with bitter refrains. Ragged drunken shouts and the barking of stupid village dogs scourged the shy and timid village night.

Forgiveness Sunday came round, the very last day when every living soul drank deep, so as to last to the end of Lent. Festive church bells chimed with dancing notes. The women and girls in their Sunday best made their way home from church. Whole families gathered at oak tables in their clean-scrubbed, overheated homes to cram their ample rye-fed bellies with best baked and roasted fare, washed down with tea and baked milk.

The festive street was filled with jollity.

The sun hung in the heavens like a shock-headed sunflower. Dogs stretched out on the warm ground, listless and dead to the world. In the thawed patches, hens pecked at manure. Squawking cocks fought.