The village itself is laid out around the village pond, where people swim, wash their clothes, and water the horses. Little naked boys were riding horses into the pond and swimming them about to get them cleaned. The public buildings are grouped around the pond: the club, which has a small stage and a dancing space and seats; the mill where the local grain is ground; and the office where accounts are kept and letters received. In this office there is a radio-receiver, with a loud-speaker on the roof. The loud-speakers in all the houses in the village are wired to this master set. This is an electrified village, it has lights and it has motors.

The houses of the people with their gardens and orchards climbed up over the small round hills. It was a very pretty little village. The houses were white with new plaster, and the gardens were green and rich, the tomatoes red on the vines, and the corn very high around the houses.

The house where we were to be guests was on the top of the rise, so that we could overlook the rolling country, the fields, and the orchards. It was a house like all the rest, like most of the Ukrainian farmhouses—an entranceway, a kitchen, two bedrooms, and a parlor. It was newly plastered. Even the floors were clean new plastered. The house had a sweet smell of new clay.

Our host was a strong, smiling man of about fifty-five or sixty. His wife, Mamuchka, was just what her name implied. She was the hardest-working woman I have ever seen.

They welcomed us to the house and gave us the parlor for our own. The walls were plastered in pale blue, and on the table there were bottles covered with pink paper, in which were paper flowers of all colors.

There was obviously more prosperity in this village than in Shevchenko I. The icon was larger and it was covered with lace of pale blue to match the walls. This had not been a large family. There had been only one son, and his picture was very large on the parlor wall, a tinted photograph, and they only mentioned him once.

The mother said, “Graduated in bio-chemistry in 1940, mobilized in 1941, killed in 1941.”

Mamuchka’s face was very bleak when she said it, and it was the only time she mentioned him, and he was her only son.

Near one wall was an old Singer sewing-machine, covered with a piece of cheesecloth, and against another wall, a narrow bed with a rug for blanket. In the center of the room stood a long table, with benches on either side. It was very hot in the house. The windows would not open. We decided that if we could, without seeming to be discourteous, we would sleep in the barn. For the nights were cool and delightful outside; inside the house we would smother.