LAMPIUS
The first village, where we spent only one night, was notorious as an “odd” place among the locals. The local collective farm fields there were sown with crops on the days ordered by the local authorities. But private patches were seeded only when the go-ahead was given by Eulampius, whom the locals called Lampius for short, a decrepit old man who spent most of his time in bed on top of his own stove.
Before the spring sowing season, the village folk would drag Lampius off of his stove, wrap him up in a sheepskin fur coat, and carry him out to the porch of his ancestral house. They would sit him down on the bench and ask:
“So, what say you, Lampius? Is it time for us to sow, or not yet?”
Lampius would extract his right arm from the warm recesses of his fur coat, wet his index f
