When you came here, we thought you were a town girl. We said: 'Well there's one who's landed Ivan, a good catch and a Hero, too.' Then he told us your story. Go ahead, wear it and be beautiful. I cut it out myself. I knew you'd find it difficult with that hand of yours. My mother was keeping the material for her burial. The borders were all embroidered with crosses. She kept it in a little chest in the cellar. When the Germans burned the village my mother was burned, too. No more need for a winding sheet. I poked around in the ashes and found that chest there, still intact! Go ahead, wear it. You'll look lovely in it. It comes with all my heart…"

Toward the end of August the frame of the new izba could be seen rising up beside the ruins, filling the air with the scent of resin from freshly cut wood. Ivan began covering the roof. From the little shack they were living in they moved into the corner of the izba that was now roofed over. In the evening, dropping with exhaustion, they stretched out on sweet-smelling hay scattered over planks of pale timber.

Lying there in the darkness, they stared up through the framework of the roof at late summer stars as they soared and skimmed away in a dazzkng dance. All through the village the wispy blue scent from a wood fire in a kitchen garden hung over the earth. The already familiar scratching of a mouse could be heard in one corner. The silence was so intense you could believe you were hearing the shooting stars brushing against the heavens. And in one corner, above a table, you could hear the tick tock of an old chiming clock. Ivan had found it in the ruins, all covered with soot and rust, the hands stopped at a time frighteningly long ago.

Slowly they got used to each other. She no longer trembled when Ivan's calloused hand touched the deep scar on her breast. He did not even notice the scar anymore, or her little crippled fist. On one occasion she held on to his hand and drew it over the folds of the wound.