The Ancestral House

The eldest son asked his mother for her blessing on the road. Their goods and belongings were gathered up; his wife and children were ready to move to their own new courtyard. The mother spoke a good prayer over them. And the tears came. She knew that her first son's house was close by, but that now, since he would be keeping his own household, his own cloth and pot and dish, he was moving a step away. Then she comforted herself and gave thanks that her second son was her companion and her support.

That same summer the younger son built for his mother, apart from everything else, airy rooms with a hallway of their own. For in the autumn the mother intended to bring home a bride.

Thanks be, they came to what they had wished for. The mother had a grandchild again.

And from that time on nobody lived in the eldest son's old house. Firewood and coal lay inside it, and useless rubbish. There was no need any more to smear the roof with straw and clay so that the rain and the snowmelt would not come through. With the passing of time the colour went out of its doors and windows and its panes broke. Salt ate slowly into its foundation. The laths of its ceiling rotted, and spiders spun their webs. From the season it was left empty of people, no spring did the swallows build there again. The grapevine that stood before the sorrowing house was pruned in its proper season and sprayed, and still the dust struck its fruit from top to bottom.

In the meantime the grandson grew up. He studied, and in a foreign country he did his service to his homeland. One day, by chance, at an hour when both brothers with their wives and children had gathered at their mother's cloth, he opened his heart.

"I want to pull down that old house and build a new one out of brick."

The younger grandson waited for their consent.

The ninety-year-old woman drew a sigh and said:

"Almost sixty years ago my late husband raised the frame of this house with his own hands and set its doors and windows in place."

The eldest son remembered:

"My childhood, and my wedding too, passed in this house."

The eldest daughter-in-law joined the conversation.

"Thirty-six years ago, at the beginning of the season of falling leaves, I gave birth to my eldest son inside this old house."