No one in the family, save Auntie Pelegeya and Grandfather, could deduce where my height and strength came from.

Out of the three brothers, my Grandfather was the unlucky one who sprout the outlandish height of over six feet. Then, his daughter, my Auntie Pelageya, inherited this regrettable trait. This passed over my father, who was a lean, wiry soul of average height.

Whatever bypassed my father visited upon me- sort of like an old sin. As a boy, by the time I reached ten, I a head and a half taller than all the boys in school and brawnier then most boys considerably older than me.

This confused the new schoolmaster, who insisted I was placed in the wrong year of class. It wasn't until after he made me take a test and spoke with my father (somehow my word and my classmates' word didn't satisfy him!) that he believed my age and class year.

"But no such-year old boy is that TALL! He'd have to be such-and-such year!" He sputtered in unbelief when my father grew sore with his questioning.

But everyone told me it was a blessing when, I reached being a man, my height hit the lintel and my weight packed on muscles not unlike a draft horse.

Of course, Auntie being so doggedly indulgent, insisted on referring me to as "darling, little lamb"  (often followed by a pinch on my cheeks and a bellowing "coo" from her plump lips)  with her old women friends-even though I towered over most of the young men in our town and my shoulders were so broad they split the seams on my cadet's uniform at the academy.

The school's tailor dubbed me in fond bemusement, his "Goliath". 

A wizened, blue-veined, bow-legged, old soul with a wiry white beard befitting a saint, Ilya, the resident tailor, always chuckled whenever he measured me for the new uniform each returning year I came back.

"Well, Goliath! At this rate, they'll think Muromets came back from the dead and grew 20 years younger by the looks of you!" His dry-boned body shook with a drier, brittle laugh as old men laugh.

My first year at my first fitting, I was incensed. I was too young to realize the old man meant this to hearten me, not insult me. By my third year, I understood, and I even laughed with Ilya when he laughed the hardest when he fitted me the last time.

"So you've split the shoulder seams again, have you, Andrei Danilovich?" He asked that last time before the stroke claimed him.

"You should've given half an inch extra for my shoulders, " I mock-grumbled. I was actually glad to see him- he had that old jesting spirit only the grey ones had back then. Our grey ones don’t jest now.

Ilyas clicked his tongue. "If I made all the jackets a perfect fit, I'd have no work. Of course, the way you boys spar and such, I'll always be well-employed. Well, let's have a look at you." With vein-knotted hands freckled with age, he threaded his needle and carefully stretched and hemmed the seams closed again.

"You know, "He snipped the thread at last, "If you're ever expelled and shame your family, with your shoulders, as broad as they are, you’d make a handy river Burluk*!" He joked. His dry laugh shook his body again.

I laughed as well. "Hah! That's peasant work, old man!"

"Work is work, you ingrate-still, I'd like to see what sort of peculiar Cossack you'll make- as big as you are, Andrei Danilovich!" He laughed and poked my shoulder in jest.

When I returned the following season, they told me he died from apoplexy.

He did leave me a small needle-kit of his. In it, he left me a note as well.