P. Bazhov - Malachite casket

“Less of your brag, ye long-legged stork! Wait till you’ve racked your bones a bit.”

But Timokha paid no heed to them.

“Every tree I ’ll climb,” he said, “ and grasp its topmost branch.”

The old folks tried to talk sense into him. Branches are no sure meas­ ure, what was the top can become the middle, and tops are different too— some higher, some lower.

But it was no good, they couldn’t make him see. So they gave it up.

“Have it your own way. But don’t say we didn’t warn ye.”

So Timokha started learning all the crafts practised in our parts.

He was a stout lad and a hard worker, the kind anyone would be glad to get. Whether it was felling trees or breaking ore— come and welcome.

And he’d no difficulty getting taken on for the finer work, either, for he’d good wits in his head and good fingers on his hands— not wooden, but with cleverness in each of them.

Timokha tried many a handicraft and everywhere he made a good job of it. No worse than anyone else.

By this time he was wed and had a houseful of children, but still he didn’t change. He’d learn one job inside out and right away he’d start learning another. He earned less, of course, but he didn’t bother about that, just as if it was the right and natural thing.

Folks in the village were used to his ways, when they met him they’d say: “Well, Timofei Ivanovich, are you still a locksmith, or have you gone over to the fire station to be a saddler yet?”

Timokha didn’t mind their jests, he’d answer the same way.

“The time will come when there’s not a craft that escapes my hands.”

Then one day he told his wife he was going to try the charcoal burning.

She nearly wept.

“Are you crazed, Husband? Can’t you think up something worse? The whole hut’ll stink of smoke. And I ’ll never be able to get your shirts clean.

Aye, and there’s naught in work like that, what’s there to learn?”

She said that because she didn’t know. Nowadays with the furnaces it’s easier, but in those times when they still burned charcoal in kilns, it took 95