11
The Promised Land
Christmas and beyond into the New Year. It never let up as the cold
wind blew steadily from the east.
On that particular January day he had risen as usual at dawn to relieve
himself into the night bucket and then he put his face outside the
door to look at the weather. He sensed immediately that something
was not right. Quickly going back inside and dressing in a panic,
he started to go out again. "What's wrong?" asked Veronika, looking concerned
and bleary eyed as she pulled on her long skirt. She
checked to see if her two younger children were alright but they were
sleeping soundly, one at each end of a low cot. The other older ones,
huddled sleeping around the warmth of the oven. The dog was going
this way and that under their feet alternately yelping and crying quietly as
their panic communicated itself to him. The children stirred.
His sister Marija also appeared, looking worried.
"I don't know what, but something's happened."
He took up his axe from the porch and opened the door as the dog
almost knocked him over in its eagerness to get out. Jurgis skirted the
house following the dog and approached the rear of the ramshackle
building. Then he realised there was no sound coming from the sty.
Normally they would be able to hear squealing or grunting as the pig
optimistically expected to be fed when it heard movement from the
house first thing in the morning. The dog was barking by now running backwards
and forwards sniffing the ground from side to side.
Jurgis approached the door of the sty and found it was open.
There were signs of a struggle but it had been an unequal one and
the pig was gone. The mess around the sty told the full story even
before they spotted the wolf's pawprints in the snow. Normally the
wolves from the forest kept away from the farmstead but the extreme
conditions and lack of food had forced this one to take a chance. It
must have waited until the early hours as no one had heard anything.
The sty was a long way from the house, downwind and the pig's
squeals had been borne away. The howling wind must have carried
its terrified protests in the opposite direction.