The district lay buried beneath snow and decrees.

The silent forests beyond the Volga lay slumbering. The wintry fields rested in deep silence. The village slumbered comfortably, sleepily letting fall cock-crows and peals of church bells.

One village stood above the gully, another one lay in it, another before you reached the forest, another beyond the forest, one in the valley and one beyond the little river.

How rich in grey villages you are, oh my homeland! And there lies the village of Khomutovo.

Its hip-roofed, five-walled houses stood scattered, with roofs of iron or timber and yards securely covered. Shutters of blue and fiery red, with decorative curlicues. The spacious family homes were warm and cosy, and you could scoop up cockroaches by the shovelful. Icon-stands occupying a whole corner. Paintings showing war scenes, the holy Mount Athos, and the torments of Hell. And the people of the village were tall, wholesome and talkative. In times past, on feast days, the village basked in the milk and honey of its fairs: cereals, mercery, painted pottery, wheel rims, harness hoops, pitch, gingerbread, honey cakes, herds of cattle and steppe horses, shouting, raised voices and Gypsy oaths, the doleful songs of blind beggars and holy fools, the merry-go-round and a two-storey tavern. This was the most important village in the district. And the Tsar's war hardly touched it: some of the villagers went to town to hide in the munitions works, and some simply bought themselves out and worked at home for the war effort, and worked well. Every year the women produced one or two babies, as if they were baking pancakes. The revolution struck the wealthy village like a thunderstorm – trade dried up, traffic along the highway ceased and things went downhill.

Ivan Pavlovich Kapustin grew up in Khomutovo as a poor orphan. He could not remember his mother, his father had been killed in the war with Japan and Vanya had to go out to work for strangers for a handful of rye crusts. Later the tavern owner Barmin took him away to the town.