Makar—Quail

Makar and Anton the Quail form a father-son household set apart both physically and socially from the village. Their relationship is shown through shared work, a readiness to defend one another, and the disturbing household arrangements the boy discovers, which expose a private world that village rumors only partly anticipate.

Household and Social Position

Makar lives with his adult son on a farmstead separated from the rest of the settlement; his wife had apparently died long before. The family is treated as alien by villagers, and Makar himself is considered a stranger who arrived only a few years earlier. Rumors about the household circulate, while villagers mutter that the family should be expelled and its home burned. Against this pressure, Makar and Anton remain together on the farm, outside ordinary village life.

Anton is twenty, red-haired, pale-eyed, and shunned much as his father is. His nickname, the Quail, reflects his habit of speaking to himself and not answering others. His silence gives the pair a contrast: Makar is watchful and actively tests whether the boy taken into his care is truly mute, while Anton turns away from other people without responding. The account does not describe Anton explaining or discussing his bond with his father.

Shared Work and Mutual Defense

The pair have practical routines that reinforce their connection. Makar raises rabbits and is an expert breeder; after a successful sale, he and Anton both drink. Anton also tends the farm’s goats, milking them and taking them out to pasture. When Makar travels with him to sell rabbits and skins in neighboring villages, Ewka remains at home. Their household’s work and movement thus depend on cooperation between father and son.

Their isolation is backed by force. Makar carries a long knife and is reputed to throw it with exceptional accuracy. Anton keeps a hand grenade found on a dead partisan and threatens anyone who might harm his father, sister, or himself. These defenses answer the villagers’ hostility with a shared capacity for intimidation; the account presents them as a family protection, not as a reconciliation with the community.

A Disturbing Household Secret

The boy’s observations complicate the picture of father and son as merely co-workers and mutual protectors. One night he sees Anton lead the male goat toward Makar’s room. Intrigued, the boy watches from above the rabbit hutch and witnesses Makar and Ewka in a disturbing encounter involving the animal. Anton’s role in bringing the goat into the room places him within the household’s secret routine, though the account does not state what he thinks about it or how he understands it.

For the boy, the scene makes the villagers’ talk of Makar being in league with the Devil seem suddenly intelligible. The episode does not resolve the father-son relationship or show a later change between them. Instead, it reveals how the household’s solidarity coexists with practices that deepen its separation from village norms, leaving their bond legible through shared labor, silence, and defense rather than open explanation.