Praskovya Chinks Her Windows Against the Stilling

First true chill reached Mulov Street this morning. Praskovya was already out with her basket before I got there, the wool rolled into cords on her knee.

This is how it is done. Last summer’s shearings, kept dry in a sack since Dryheat, rolled thin between the palms until they hold a shape. Pressed into the gap between frame and wall with a flat stick, not a finger — a finger leaves air behind it, and air is what the cold wants. Clay smoothed over the top, wet enough to take a thumbprint, left to dry hard by evening. One window takes the length of a kettle boiling. She has six.

She did not have enough wool this year. Said so plainly, no complaint in it. The notice on Pavel Gorin’s door took more out of the street than anyone meant it to — wives giving up what they’d meant to clip for their own gaps once they heard a living man wanted it warmer than the dead kept theirs. Praskovya gave two good handfuls herself. She pressed what was left thinner this morning to make it stretch, and called it good enough. I watched the sixth window. It held a thumbprint the same as the first five.

Rebrov’s sign is still on the gate post beside her, soft now with simple age more than rain. Nobody has touched it. Nobody has touched the gulls at the mole either, four mornings the same, and the rope men say that means nothing. I don’t know that it means anything. I know six windows are chinked on Mulov Street that were not chinked yesterday, and that the Stilling, whenever it comes, will find them closed.