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Updated: July 9, 2025
"Nothing-it slipped out!" "No, wait a minute! What's the point? What pinetree?" Our baker did not answer, working rapidly away with the shovel at the oven; flinging into it the half-cooked kringels, taking out those that were done, and noisily throwing them on the floor to the boys who were stringing them on bast. He seemed to have forgotten the soldier and his conversation with him.
In the lowering gray clouds, which hid the sky, there was something hard and merciless, as if they had gathered together to wash all the dirt off the face of this unfortunate, suffering, and sorrowful earth. There were six-and-twenty of us six-and-twenty living machines in a damp, underground cellar, where from morning till night we kneaded dough and rolled it into kringels.
She seemed to be surprised at this unusual reception; and suddenly we saw her turn white and become uneasy, then she asked, in a choking voice: "Why are you like this?" "And you?" the baker flung at her grimly, never taking his eyes off her. "What am I?" "N -nothing." "Well, then, give me quickly the little kringels." Never before had she bidden us hurry.
The baker took from his oven a shovel of the best and the brownest kringels, and threw them deftly into Tanya's apron. "Be off with you now, or the boss will catch you!" we warned her each time. She laughed roguishly, called out cheerfully: "Good-bye, poor prisoners!" and slipped away as quick as a mouse. That was all. But long after she had gone we talked about her to one another with pleasure.
And she came every morning to fetch her kringels, and was the same toward us as ever. This morning, too, we heard her voice outside: "You poor prisoners! Here I am!" We opened the door, and when she came in we all remained, contrary to our usual custom, silent. Our eyes fixed on her, we did not know how to speak to her, what to ask her. And there we stood in front of her, a gloomy, silent crowd.
In meal dust, in the mud which we brought in from the yard on our boots, in the hot, sticky atmosphere, day in, day out, we rolled the dough into kringels, which we moistened with our own sweat. And we hated our work with a glowing hatred; we never ate what had passed through our hands, and preferred black bread to kringels.
And then, to most likely, this was the chief thing we all regarded her as something of our own, something existing as it were only by virtue of our kringels. We took on ourselves in turns the duty of providing her with hot kringels, and this became for us like a daily sacrifice to our idol, it became almost a sacred rite, and every day it bound us more closely to her.
Besides kringels, we gave Tanya a great deal of advice to wear warmer clothes, not to run upstairs too quickly, not to carry heavy bundles of wood. She listened to all our counsels with a smile, answered them by a laugh, and never took our advice, but we were not offended at that; all we wanted was to show how much care we bestowed upon her.
And the whole day the simmering water in the kettle, where the kringels were being cooked, sang low and sadly; and the baker's shovel scraped harshly over the oven floor, as he threw the slippery bits of dough out of the kettle on the heated bricks.
Four weeks had passed by since then; during this time the soldier baked white bread, walked about with the gold-embroidery girls, visited us often, but did not talk any more about his conquests; only twisted his mustache, and licked his lips lasciviously. Tanya called in as usual every morning for "little kringels," and was as gay and as nice and friendly with us as ever.
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