The villagers got up, prepared breakfast. And suddenly they surprised a strange silence reigning around their izbas. No crunch of footsteps in the snow; no wind whistling around the roof edges, no dogs barking. Nothing. A cotton-wool silence, opaque, absolute. This deaf outside world filtered out all the household sounds that normally went unnoticed. You could hear the sighing of a kettle on the stove, the slight, regular hiss of a lightbulb. We listened, my aunt and I, to the unfathomable depth of this silence. We looked at the clock with its weights. Normally the day should have dawned by then. With our foreheads pressed against the windowpane, we peered into the darkness. The window was completely blocked by snow. Then we rushed to the entrance hall and, already anticipating the unimaginable, which recurred almost every winter, we opened the door…

A wall of snow rose on the threshold of our izba. The village was entirely buried.

With a yell of wild joy, I seized hold of a shovel. No school! No homework! A day of happy chaos awaited us.

I began by digging out a narrow section; then, by packing down the light and feathery snow, I fashioned steps. From time to time my aunt sprinkled the depths of my cavern with hot water from the kettle to ease my task. I was climbing up slowly, compelled at times to proceed almost horizontally. My aunt encouraged me from the threshold of the izba, begging me not to go too fast. I was beginning to be short of breath, I experienced a strange giddiness, my bare hands were burning, my pulse was throbbing heavily in my temples. The light of the dim bulb coming from the izba now scarcely reached the corner where I was hacking away.