𝗋𝖺𝗍𝖺𝗇𝗇a ꒱

he finds you in a forest, not far from the smolensk road. you are sketching the twisted, ancient roots of a tree on parchment with charcoal. he is hunting, moving silently through the birch woods, but he stops to watch you work. he is fascinated by your focus, the way your hand moves with purpose. when he finally approaches, he is not a looming threat, but a tall, quiet figure in a long kaftan, his eyes pale and curious. "you draw the truth of it," he says, his voice low. "not just the shape."

his courtship is practical, heavy with substance. he does not bring flowers. he brings gifts you can use: a pouch of fine, raw azurite pigment from the far north, a block of beeswax for mixing paints, a roll of precious linen canvas traded from novgorod. each offering is an acknowledgment of your craft, a silent investment in your seeing.

he builds you a svetlitsa—a "light room"—in his wooden terem. it is a small chamber with a single, high window facing south, designed to capture the long hours of daylight. the walls are bare, whitewashed lime, a perfect blank space for you to work. he fills it with simple, sturdy furniture: a table of solid oak, shelves for your materials. it is his version of a love poem: a space dedicated entirely to light and your art.

he lives in the shadow of ivan the terrible. not as the tsar himself, but as the living embodiment of the land the tsar is trying to forge into an empire. there is a constant, low-grade tension in him—the spiritual, sprawling russia of the forests and the mir (peasant commune) versus the centralized, autocratic state moscow is becoming. you see it in the way he sometimes clenches his fist when a messenger brings news of another execution, another purged boyar family. he feels the land convulse.

he is not the artist; he is the muse, the subject, the keeper. he sits for hours in silence as you sketch him, his broad shoulders and quiet face rendered in ink or paint. he seems to understand that by letting you capture him, he is giving you a piece of his vast, often unspoken self. these portraits are never shown to others; they are a secret between you, more intimate than any touch.

when you travel—to novgorod to study the bold, simple lines of their frescoes, to pskov to see the stark iconography—he accompanies you not as a guide, but as a guardian. he arranges the kibitka (the covered wagon), he speaks with the local boyars for safe passage, he ensures you have warm valenki (felt boots) for the cold. his protection is a silent, constant fact, like the snow on the ground.

he learns from you. he asks careful questions about the flemish masters you mention, about the use of perspective, about why you mix egg with your pigments for tempera. his own world is one of symbols and spirits—the lubok folk prints, the severe beauty of icons—and your foreign knowledge is a strange, bright light he wants to hold in his hands.

he is deeply, authentically orthodox in a way that is visceral, not intellectual. he crosses himself slowly, with his thumb and first two fingers pressed together (the old way, before nikon's reforms). he observes the fasts strictly, his meals during lent consisting of kasha (porridge), mushrooms, and pickled cabbage. his faith is a layer of his skin, as natural and necessary as breathing the cold air.

his jealousy is cold, factual, and utterly russian. if another man—perhaps a polish scholar or a swedish merchant—looks at your work with too much interest, he does not get angry. he simply appears, standing behind you like a shadow, and begins to recite, in a flat monotone, every historical fact about that man's nation's failures in trade, war, or diplomacy. (this one is my favorite)

he has a complicated relationship with the oprichniki, ivan's personal guard and secret police. he does not speak of them. if their black-clad riders pass by on the road, he simply turns your head away gently, his hand on your cheek, and directs your gaze to a stand of birch trees until the sound of their bells fades. their existence is a sickness in the body politic he carries, a cold spot he cannot warm.

he takes you to see the streltsy (the musketeers) in their colorful coats, not for the spectacle, but because he thinks you would find the patterns of their embroidery worth drawing. he points out the carvings on a sleigh, the intricate metalwork on a samovar. his love is expressed in directing your gaze towards the hidden artistry of his world.

when you fall ill from the cold—a deep, chesty cough that shakes your frame—he does not panic. he sends for a znakhar (a folk healer), a old woman with hands like roots who prepares bitter teas from forest herbs. he sits by your bed in the svetlitsa, carving a small wooden bird for you with a slow, patient knife, his massive hands gentle on the tiny form. the gift, when you recover, is not the bird itself, but the evidence of his vigil.

he will never say he loves you with words borrowed from poetry. he will say it by filling your inkwell before it runs dry, by heating the svetlitsa with bricks from the stove before you wake, by bringing you a chunk of fresh, dark rye bread when you forget to eat. his love is in the sustenance of your art, in the silent maintenance of the conditions that allow you to create. he loves your mind, and so he feeds it, shelters it, protects it.

he believes, in his marrow-deep paranoia, that the world outside is a corrupting, stealing place. the poles with their catholic tricks. the swedes with their protestant arrogance. the ottomans with their splendor. they would take your talent and twist it, use it for their own glory, or worse, simply fail to understand it. he is the only one who truly sees what you do. to let you go is to surrender you to blindness. 

he is afraid you will see him as others see him. out there, beyond the border, they tell stories. the russian bear. the schismatic monster. the tyrant's shadow. here, with you, he is just ivan. the quiet man who brings you pigments, who sits patiently for portraits. if you leave, you take that version of him with you, and he is terrified it will not survive the journey. you will remember the stories, not the man. 

when you leave, you take half of him with you. his heart returns to the cold, what he’s always known.