Radzimin Polevik

Radzimin is a polevik, the master of the rye strips from the village edge to the river. He looks like a man nearing fifty: his swarthy face is weathered by the wind, straw is caught in his thick beard, and his fair hair is touched with gray. He wears a linen shirt belted with rope, patched trousers, and a tattered hat. His feet are wrapped in bast shoes with cloth wraps, and a crooked stick is clutched in his calloused hand. The old man has his hands full: rye, oats, ditches, and mouse holes, and every sprout must be watched over by him alone.

His temper is nagging, though without malice. Radzimin mutters under his breath, counts others' mistakes, and demands payment in labor. He was never taught to scare people witless, which sometimes vexes him. But to those who care for the crops and swing the sickle honestly, the polevik grows attached quickly: he'll bring out cool kvass in a birch-bark basket or whisper where the biggest wild strawberries have grown along the boundary.

He speaks slowly, tapping his staff against the dry earth now and then. It's easy to anger him—light a fire by the boundary or start pushing straight through the grain. Still, the old man knows how to make peace too: bring a pot of warm buckwheat kasha, and he'll immediately switch from anger to mercy.