Capítulo 25 de 80

I quickly pulled back my raised foot and, through the barely transparent twilight, saw far below me a vast plain. A broad river encircled it in a semicircle curving away from me; steel reflections of water, occasionally and dimly glimmering, marked its course. The hill on which I stood descended suddenly in an almost sheer precipice; its enormous outlines stood out, blackening, against the bluish aerial void, and directly below me, in the angle formed by that precipice and the plain, beside the river, which in this place stood like a motionless, dark mirror, beneath the very steepness of the hill, two fires burned and smoked side by side with red flame. Around them people bustled about, shadows swayed, sometimes the front half of a small curly head was brightly illuminated...

I finally recognized where I had wandered. This meadow is famous in our parts under the name of Bezhin Meadow... But there was no possibility of returning home, especially at night; my legs were buckling beneath me from fatigue. I decided to approach the fires and, in the company of those people whom I took to be drovers, to wait for dawn. I descended safely, but had not yet released from my hands the last branch I had grabbed, when suddenly two large, white, shaggy dogs rushed at me with vicious barking. Children's ringing voices rang out around the fires; two or three boys quickly rose from the ground. I responded to their questioning cries. They ran up to me, immediately called off the dogs, which were particularly struck by the appearance of my Diana, and I approached them.

I was mistaken in taking the people sitting around those fires for drovers. These were simply peasant boys from neighboring villages who were guarding a herd. In the hot summer season, horses are driven out at night to feed in the fields: during the day, flies and gadflies would give them no peace. Driving out the herd before evening and bringing it back at dawn is a great holiday for peasant boys. Sitting without caps and in old sheepskin coats on the liveliest nags, they race along with merry whooping and shouting, waving their arms and legs, bouncing high, laughing loudly. Light dust rises in a yellow column and rushes along the road; the friendly tramping carries far; the horses run with ears pricked; ahead of them all, tail raised and constantly changing legs, gallops some red shaggy horse with burrs in its tangled mane.

I told the boys that I had lost my way and sat down with them. They asked me where I was from, fell silent, moved aside. We talked a little. I lay down under a gnawed bush and began looking around. The picture was marvelous: around the fires trembled and seemed to freeze, resting against the darkness, a round reddish reflection; the flame, flaring up, occasionally cast beyond the boundary of that circle quick reflections; a thin tongue of light would lick the bare branches of the willows and immediately disappear; sharp, long shadows, bursting in for an instant, in turn ran right up to the little fires: darkness struggled with light. Sometimes, when the flame burned more weakly and the circle of light narrowed, from the advancing darkness a horse's head would suddenly emerge—bay, with a winding blaze, or all white—looking attentively and dully at us, briskly chewing long grass, and, lowering again, would immediately hide. One could only hear how it continued chewing and snorting. From an illuminated place it is difficult to make out what is happening in the darkness, and so nearby everything seemed draped with an almost black curtain; but farther toward the horizon long patches dimly showed hills and forests. The dark clear sky stood solemnly and immeasurably high above us with all its mysterious splendor. The chest constricted sweetly, breathing in that special, languid and fresh smell—the smell of a Russian summer night. Almost no sound was heard around... Only occasionally in the nearby river a large fish would splash with sudden resonance and the riverside reeds would rustle faintly, barely disturbed by the running wave... Only the little fires crackled quietly.

The boys sat around them; there also sat those two dogs who had so wanted to eat me. They could not reconcile themselves with my presence for a long time and, sleepily squinting and glancing sideways at the fire, occasionally growled with an extraordinary sense of their own dignity; first they would growl, and then whine slightly, as if regretting the impossibility of fulfilling their desire. There were five boys in all: Fedya, Pavlusha, Ilyusha, Kostya, and Vanya. (From their conversations I learned their names and intend now to acquaint the reader with them.)

The first, the eldest of all, Fedya, you would have given fourteen years. This was a slender boy with handsome and delicate, somewhat small features, curly blond hair, bright eyes, and a constant half-cheerful, half-distracted smile. He belonged, by all signs, to a wealthy family and had ridden out to the field not from necessity, but for amusement. He wore a colorful chintz shirt with a yellow border; a small new peasant coat, thrown on carelessly, barely held on his narrow little shoulders; on his light blue belt hung a comb. His boots with low tops were truly his boots—not his father's. The second boy, Pavlusha, had disheveled black hair, gray eyes, broad cheekbones, a pale, pockmarked face, a large but regular mouth, a huge head, as they say, like a beer cauldron, and a stocky, awkward body. The lad was unprepossessing—what can one say!—but I liked him all the same: he looked very intelligent and direct, and there was strength in his voice. He could not boast of his clothing: it all consisted of a simple homespun shirt and patched trousers. The face of the third, Ilyusha, was rather insignificant: hook-nosed, elongated, weak-sighted, it expressed a sort of dull, sickly anxiousness; his compressed lips did not move, his drawn brows did not part—he seemed to be constantly squinting from the fire. His yellow, almost white hair stuck out in sharp tufts from under a low felt cap, which he kept pulling down over his ears with both hands. He wore new bast shoes and leg wrappings; a thick rope, wound three times around his waist, carefully tightened his neat black caftan. Both he and Pavlusha appeared to be no more than twelve years old. The fourth, Kostya, a boy of about ten, aroused my curiosity with his thoughtful and sad gaze. His whole face was small, thin, freckled, pointed at the bottom like a squirrel's; his lips could barely be distinguished; but his large, black eyes, gleaming with a liquid shine, produced a strange impression: they seemed to want to express something for which there were no words in language—in his language at least. He was small in stature, of sickly build, and dressed rather poorly. The last, Vanya, I did not notice at first: he lay on the ground, quietly curled up under an angular mat, and only occasionally stuck out his light brown curly head from under it. This boy was only about seven years old.

So, I lay under the bush to one side and glanced at the boys. A small pot hung over one of the fires; in it "potatoes" were cooking. Pavlusha watched over it and, kneeling, poked a stick into the boiling water. Fedya lay propped on his elbow with the skirts of his coat spread out. Ilyusha sat next to Kostya and still squinted tensely. Kostya lowered his head slightly and looked somewhere into the distance. Vanya did not stir under his mat. I pretended to be sleeping. Gradually the boys began talking again.

At first they chatted about this and that, about tomorrow's work, about horses; but suddenly Fedya turned to Ilyusha and, as if resuming an interrupted conversation, asked him:

"Well, and so you really saw the house spirit?"

"No, I didn't see him, and he can't be seen," answered Ilyusha in a hoarse and weak voice, the sound of which perfectly matched the expression of his face, "but I heard him... And I'm not the only one."

"Where does he live at your place?" asked Pavlusha.

"In the old rolling room."

"Do you go to the factory?"

"Of course we do. My brother and I, Avdyushka, we work as glazers."

"Well, look at that—factory workers!..."

"Well, so how did you hear him?" asked Fedya.

"Well, here's how. My brother Avdyushka and I had to stay, along with Fyodor Mikheevsky, and Ivashka the Cross-eyed, and another Ivashka from Red Hills, and Ivashka Sukhorukov, and there were other boys there too; there were about ten of us boys in all—a whole shift; and we had to spend the night in the rolling room, that is, not exactly that we had to, but Nazarov, the foreman, forbade us; he says: 'Why should you boys drag yourselves home; there's a lot of work tomorrow, so you boys don't go home.' So we stayed and lay down all together, and Avdyushka began saying, 'Well, boys, what if the house spirit comes?'... And he, Avdey, had barely spoken those words when suddenly someone began walking over our heads; but we were lying below, and he was walking above, by the wheel. We hear: he's walking, the boards under him bending and creaking; then he passed over our heads; the water suddenly began to rush, rush over the wheel; the wheel began to knock, knock, to turn; but the sluice gates at the flume were lowered. We wondered: who raised them so that the water started flowing; however, the wheel turned, turned, and stopped. Then that one went again to the door above and began descending the stairs, and you could hear he wasn't hurrying; the steps under him just groaned... Well, that one approached our door, waited, waited—the door suddenly flung wide open. We got scared, we look—nothing... Suddenly, look, at one vat the form started moving, rose up, dipped, walked, walked through the air, as if someone was rinsing it, and back in place. Then at another vat a hook came off the nail and back on the nail; then as if someone went to the door and suddenly started coughing, choking, like some sheep, and loudly... How frightened we were at that time!"

"Well, well!" said Pavel. "Why did he cough?"

"Don't know; maybe from the dampness."

Everyone fell silent.

"Well," asked Fedya, "are the potatoes cooked?"

Pavlusha felt them.

"No, still raw... Listen, it splashed," he added, turning his face toward the river, "must be a pike... And there, a little star fell."

"No, I'll tell you what, brothers," Kostya began in a thin voice, "listen, the other day what my father told me when I was there."

"Well, we're listening," said Fedya with a patronizing air.

"You know Gavrila, the carpenter from the settlement?"

"Well yes; we know."

"And do you know why he's always so gloomy, always silent, you know? Here's why he's so gloomy. He went once, my father said—he went, my brothers, to the forest for nuts. So he went to the forest for nuts and got lost; he wandered—God knows where he wandered. He walked and walked, brothers—no! he can't find the road; and it's already night. So he sat down under a tree; 'I'll wait, he says, till morning'—he sat down and dozed off. So he dozed off and suddenly hears someone calling him. He looks—nobody. He dozed off again—they call again. He looks again: and before him on a branch sits a rusalka, swinging and calling him to her, and she's dying of laughter, laughing... And the moon is shining strongly, so strongly, the moon shines clearly—everything, my brothers, is visible. So she's calling him, and she herself is all so bright, whitish, sitting on the branch, like some roach or minnow—or else carp can be such whitish, silvery... Gavrila the carpenter just froze, my brothers, and she just keeps laughing and calling him to her with her hand. Gavrila was about to get up, about to obey the rusalka, my brothers, but the Lord must have advised him: he made the sign of the cross over himself... And how hard it was for him to make that cross, my brothers; he says his hand was just like stone, wouldn't move... Oh, you devil!.. So when he made the cross, my brothers, the rusalka stopped laughing and suddenly started crying... She cries, my brothers, wipes her eyes with her hair, and her hair is green as hemp. So Gavrila looked, looked at her and began asking her: 'Why are you crying, forest creature?' And the rusalka spoke to him: 'If you hadn't crossed yourself, she says, you man, you would have lived with me in merriment to the end of your days; and I cry, I grieve because you crossed yourself; but not I alone will grieve: grieve you too to the end of your days.' Then she, my brothers, disappeared, and Gavrila immediately understood how to get out of the forest, that is... But since then he always goes about gloomy."

"Well!" said Fedya after a short silence, "but how can such a forest unclean thing spoil a Christian soul—he didn't obey her?"

"And there you have it!" said Kostya. "And Gavrila said that her voice, he says, was so thin, plaintive, like a toad's."

"Your father told this himself?" continued Fedya.

"Himself. I was lying on the shelf, heard everything."

"Strange business! Why should he be gloomy?... Well, she must have liked him, since she called him."

"Yes, she liked him!" Ilyusha picked up. "How could she not! She wanted to tickle him to death, that's what she wanted. That's their business, those rusalkas."

"But here there must be rusalkas too," remarked Fedya.

"No," answered Kostya, "here the place is clean, free. Except—the river is close."

Everyone fell silent. Suddenly, somewhere in the distance, rang out a prolonged, ringing, almost moaning sound, one of those incomprehensible night sounds that sometimes arise in the midst of deep silence, rise up, hang in the air, and slowly spread at last, as if dying away. You listen—and it's as if there's nothing, but it rings. It seemed as if someone cried out for a long, long time under the very horizon, someone else seemed to answer him in the forest with thin, sharp laughter, and a weak, hissing whistle rushed along the river. The boys exchanged glances, shuddered...

"The cross be with us!" whispered Ilya.

"Eh, you crows!" shouted Pavel. "What are you scared of? Look, the potatoes are cooked." (Everyone moved closer to the pot and began eating the steaming potatoes; only Vanya didn't stir.) "What about you?" said Pavel.

But he didn't come out from under his mat. The pot was soon completely emptied.

"And have you heard, boys," began Ilyusha, "what happened the other day at our Varnavitsy?"

"At the dam?" asked Fedya.

"Yes, yes, at the dam, at the broken one. That's truly an unclean place, so unclean, and so desolate. All around are ravines, gullies, and in the gullies all sorts of vipers live."

"Well, what happened? Tell us..."

"Well, here's what happened. You, Fedya, maybe don't know, but there a drowned man is buried; and he drowned long, long ago, when the pond was still deep; but his grave is still visible, though barely visible: just a little mound... So the other day the steward calls the dog-keeper Ermil; he says: 'Go, he says, Ermil, to the post office.' Ermil always goes to the post office for us; he's killed all his dogs—they don't live with him for some reason, never have lived, but he's a good dog-keeper, has everything. So Ermil went for the post and lingered in town, and when he was coming back he was already drunk. And it's night, and a bright night: the moon is shining... So Ermil is riding across the dam: that's the way his road went. He's riding along, this dog-keeper Ermil, and sees: on the drowned man's grave a lamb, white, curly, pretty, is walking about. So Ermil thinks: 'I'll take him—why should he go to waste,' and he got down and took him in his arms... But the lamb—nothing. So Ermil goes to his horse, and the horse shies away from him, snorts, shakes its head; however, he calmed it down, got on it with the lamb, and rode on again: holds the lamb in front of him. He looks at it, and the lamb looks right into his eyes. Ermil the dog-keeper got spooked: 'I don't remember, he says, that rams look people in the eyes like that'; however, nothing; he began stroking its wool, says: 'Baa, baa!' And the ram suddenly bares its teeth and says back to him: 'Baa, baa!..'"

No sooner had the narrator uttered this last word than suddenly both dogs rose at once, rushed away from the fire with convulsive barking, and disappeared into the darkness. All the boys were frightened. Vanya jumped out from under his mat. Pavlusha with a shout rushed after the dogs. Their barking quickly receded... The anxious running of the alarmed herd was heard. Pavlusha shouted loudly: "Gray! Beetle!..." In a few moments the barking fell silent; Pavel's voice came already from afar... A little more time passed; the boys exchanged puzzled glances, as if waiting to see what would happen... Suddenly the tramping of a galloping horse rang out; it stopped abruptly right at the fire, and, clutching the mane, Pavlusha nimbly jumped off it. Both dogs also leaped into the circle of light and immediately sat down, tongues hanging out.

"What was it? What happened?" asked the boys.

"Nothing," answered Pavel, waving his hand at the horse, "just, the dogs caught scent of something. I thought it was a wolf," he added in an indifferent voice, breathing quickly with his whole chest.

I involuntarily admired Pavlusha. He was very fine at that moment. His unattractive face, animated by the quick ride, glowed with bold daring and firm resolution. Without a stick in his hand, at night, he had galloped alone after a wolf without the slightest hesitation... "What a splendid boy!" I thought, looking at him.

"And did you see them, the wolves?" asked the timid Kostya.

"There are always many of them here," answered Pavel, "but they're only troublesome in winter."

He settled down again before the fire. Sitting on the ground, he laid his hand on the shaggy neck of one of the dogs, and for a long time the delighted animal didn't turn its head, looking sideways at Pavlusha with grateful pride.

Vanya burrowed under the mat again.

"And what terrors you were telling us, Ilyushka," began Fedya, who, as the son of a wealthy peasant, had to be the leader (though he himself spoke little, as if afraid of lowering his dignity). "And the devils made the dogs start barking... But truly, I've heard this place near you is unclean."

"Varnavitsy?... Of course it is! What an unclean place! They say the old master has been seen there more than once—the late master. He walks, they say, in a long-skirted caftan and keeps groaning like this, looking for something on the ground. Once grandfather Trofimych met him: 'What, he says, sir, Ivan Ivanovich, are you pleased to be looking for on the ground?'"

"He asked him?" interrupted the astonished Fedya.

"Yes, asked him."

"Well, Trofimych is brave after that... Well, and what did he say?"

"'I'm looking for tear-herb,' he says. And he speaks so hollowly, hollowly: 'Tear-herb.' 'And what do you need, sir Ivan Ivanovich, tear-herb for?' 'The grave is crushing me,' he says, 'Trofimych: I want to get out, to get out...'"

"Well, look at that!" remarked Fedya, "he must not have lived long enough."

"What a marvel!" said Kostya. "I thought you could only see the dead on Parents' Saturday."

"You can see the dead at any time," Ilyusha picked up with confidence, who, as far as I could observe, knew all the village superstitions better than the others... "But on Parents' Saturday you can see the living one whose turn it is to die that year. You just have to sit at night on the church porch and keep looking at the road. Those who are to die that year will walk past you on the road. Last year old woman Ulyana went to the porch."

"Well, and did she see anyone?" Kostya asked with curiosity.

"Of course. First she sat for a long, long time, saw and heard nobody... only it kept seeming like a little dog was barking, barking somewhere... Suddenly she looks: a boy is walking along the path in just a shirt. She looked closely—Ivashka Fedoseev is walking..."

"The one who died in spring?" interrupted Fedya.

"That very one. He's walking and doesn't raise his little head... And Ulyana recognized him... But then she looks: a woman is walking. She peers, peers—oh Lord!—it's herself walking along the road, Ulyana herself."

"Really herself?" asked Fedya.

"By God, herself."

"Well, what of it, she hasn't died yet?"

"But the year hasn't passed yet. And you look at her: how does her soul stay in her body?"

Everyone fell silent again. Pavel threw a handful of dry twigs on the fire. They turned sharply black against the suddenly flaring flame, crackled, smoked, and began to warp, raising their scorched ends. The reflection of light struck out, trembling fitfully, in all directions, especially upward. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a white dove flew right into this reflection, fluttered fearfully in one place, bathed all over in the hot gleam, and disappeared, wings ringing.

"Must have strayed from home," remarked Pavel. "Now it will fly until it bumps into something, and wherever it bumps, there it will spend the night till dawn."

"Well, Pavlusha," said Kostya, "wasn't that a righteous soul flying to heaven, eh?"

Pavel threw another handful of twigs on the fire.

"Maybe," he said at last.

"And tell me, please, Pavlusha," began Fedya, "did you also see the heavenly portent at your Shalamovo?"

"When the sun disappeared? Of course."

"I suppose you were frightened too?"

"We weren't the only ones. Our master, though he explained to us beforehand that, he says, you'll have a portent, but when it got dark, he himself, they say, got so scared. And in the servants' hut the cook woman, as soon as it got dark, you hear, she took the oven fork and smashed all the pots in the stove: 'Who's going to eat now, she says, the end of the world has come.' So the cabbage soup just poured out. And in our village such rumors went around, brother, that white wolves would run over the earth, would eat people, a predatory bird would fly, or they'd even see Trishka himself."

"What Trishka?" asked Kostya.

"Don't you know?" Ilyusha picked up eagerly. "Well, brother, where are you from that you don't know about Trishka? Homebodies in your village, real homebodies! Trishka—he will be such a remarkable man who will come; and he will come when the last times arrive. And he will be such a remarkable man that they won't be able to catch him, and they won't be able to do anything to him: such a remarkable man he'll be. The peasants will want, for example, to catch him; they'll go after him with clubs, surround him, but he'll deceive their eyes—he'll deceive their eyes so that they'll beat each other. They'll put him in jail, for example—he'll ask for water to drink in a dipper: they'll bring him a dipper, and he'll dive into it and vanish without a trace. They'll put chains on him, and he'll just clap his hands—and they'll fall right off him. Well, and this Trishka will walk through villages and towns; and this Trishka, a cunning man, will tempt the Christian people... well, but they won't be able to do anything to him... Such a remarkable, cunning man he'll be."

"Well yes," continued Pavel in his unhurried voice, "that's him. They were expecting him at our place. The old people said that as soon as the heavenly portent begins, Trishka will come. So the portent began. All the people poured out into the street, into the field, waiting for what would happen. And our place, you know, is open, with a good view. They look—suddenly from the settlement, from the hill, some person is coming, so strange, with such a remarkable head... Everyone shouted: 'Oh, Trishka is coming! Oh, Trishka is coming!'—and scattered! Our elder crawled into a ditch; the elder's wife got stuck in the gateway, screaming at the top of her lungs, scared her own yard dog so much that it broke off the chain, over the fence, and into the forest; and Kuzka's father, Dorofeich, jumped into the oats, crouched down, and started crying like a quail: 'Maybe, he says, the enemy, the murderer, will take pity at least on a bird.' That's how frightened everyone got!.. And the person was our cooper, Vavila: he'd bought himself a new tub and put the empty tub on his head."

All the boys laughed and fell silent again for a moment, as often happens with people conversing in the open air. I looked around: the night stood solemn and majestic; the damp freshness of late evening had been replaced by midnight's dry warmth, and it would lie like a soft canopy over the sleeping fields for a long time yet; much time remained before the first babbling, before the first rustlings and whispers of morning, before the first dewdrops of dawn. There was no moon in the sky: it rose late at that time. Countless golden stars seemed to flow quietly, all vying in their twinkling, in the direction of the Milky Way, and truly, watching them, you seemed to feel dimly yourself the headlong, ceaseless course of the earth...

A strange, sharp, painful cry rang out suddenly twice in succession over the river and, after a few moments, repeated already farther off...

Kostya shuddered. "What was that?"

"That's a heron crying," Pavel calmly replied.

"A heron," repeated Kostya... "But what was it, Pavlusha, that I heard yesterday evening," he added after a short pause, "you might know..."

"What did you hear?"

"Here's what I heard. I was walking from Stone Ridge to Shashkino; and I walked first all through our hazel grove, and then went through a meadow—you know, where it comes out at the sharp bend—there's a deep pool there; you know, it's all overgrown with reeds; so I went past this pool, my brothers, and suddenly from that pool someone groans, and so piteously, piteously: oo-oo... oo-oo... oo-oo! Such fear took me, my brothers: it was late, and the voice was so sickly. It seemed I would cry myself... What could that have been? Eh?"

"Last year thieves drowned Akim the forester in that pool," remarked Pavlusha, "so maybe his soul is complaining."

"Well, that could be it, my brothers," replied Kostya, widening his already enormous eyes... "I didn't know that Akim was drowned in that pool: I would have been even more frightened."

"And then, they say, there are such tiny frogs," Pavel continued, "that cry so piteously."

"Frogs? Well, no, that wasn't frogs... what frogs..." (The heron cried out again over the river.) "Damn it!" Kostya involuntarily said, "it cries just like a forest spirit."

"The forest spirit doesn't cry, he's mute," Ilyusha picked up, "he only claps his hands and rattles..."

"And you've seen him, the forest spirit, have you?" Fedya interrupted him mockingly.

"No, I haven't seen him, and God save me from seeing him; but others have seen him. Just the other day he led one of our peasants astray: led him, led him through the forest, and all around one glade... He barely made it home by daylight."

"Well, and did he see him?"

"He saw him. He says he was standing there, big, big, dark, wrapped up, sort of like behind a tree, you can't make him out well, like he's hiding from the moon, and stares, stares with those eyes, blinks them, blinks..."

"Oh!" exclaimed Fedya, shuddering slightly and twitching his shoulders, "ugh!..."

"And why has this filth bred in the world?" remarked Pavel. "I don't understand, really!"

"Don't curse, watch out, he'll hear," Ilya remarked.

Silence fell again.

"Look, look, boys," Vanya's childish voice suddenly rang out, "look at God's little stars—swarming like bees!"

He stuck out his fresh little face from under the mat, propped himself on his fist, and slowly raised upward his large quiet eyes. The eyes of all the boys rose to the sky and didn't lower for a while.

"Well, Vanya," Fedya spoke affectionately, "how is your sister Anyutka, is she well?"

"She's well," answered Vanya with a slight lisp.

"You tell her—why doesn't she come to us?"

"I don't know."

"You tell her she should come."

"I'll tell her."

"You tell her I'll give her a treat."

"And will you give me one?"

"I'll give you one too."

Vanya sighed.

"Well, no, I don't need it. Better give it to her: she's so kind, ours is."

And Vanya laid his head on the ground again. Pavel stood up and took the empty pot in his hand.

"Where are you going?" Fedya asked him.

"To the river, to get some water: I want to drink some water."

The dogs got up and went after him.

"Watch you don't fall in the river!" Ilyusha called after him.

"Why should he fall?" said Fedya, "he'll be careful."

"Yes, he'll be careful. All sorts of things happen: he'll bend down, start scooping water, and the water spirit will grab him by the hand and drag him to himself. Then they'll say: the boy fell, they'll say, into the water... What kind of fell?.. There, he's gotten into the reeds," he added, listening.

The reeds indeed were "shurshing," rustling, as we say.

"And is it true," asked Kostya, "that Akulina the fool went mad after she was in the water?"

"Since then... What she's like now! But they say she used to be a beauty. The water spirit ruined her. Must not have expected they'd pull her out so soon. So he, there at the bottom, ruined her."

(I myself had met this Akulina more than once. Covered in rags, terribly thin, with a face black as coal, a clouded gaze and eternally bared teeth, she tramples for hours in one place, somewhere on the road, pressing her bony hands tightly to her chest and slowly swaying from foot to foot, like a wild animal in a cage. She understands nothing, whatever anyone says to her, and only occasionally laughs convulsively.)

"And they say," continued Kostya, "that Akulina threw herself in the river because her lover deceived her."

"That's exactly why."

"And do you remember Vasya?" Kostya added sadly.

"What Vasya?" asked Fedya.

"Well, the one who drowned," answered Kostya, "in this very river. What a boy he was! oh, what a boy! His mother, Feklista, how she loved him, Vasya! And it was as if she sensed, Feklista, that he would perish from water. Sometimes Vasya would go with us, with the boys, in summer to swim in the river—she'd be all in a flutter. Other women don't care, they walk past with their washtubs, waddling along, but Feklista would set down her washtub and start calling him: 'Come back, she'd say, come back, my dear! oh, come back, my falcon!' And how he drowned, God knows. He was playing on the shore, and his mother was right there, raking hay; suddenly she hears, as if someone's making bubbles in the water—she looks, and only Vasya's little cap is floating on the water. Since then Feklista hasn't been in her right mind: she'll come and lie down on the spot where he drowned; she'll lie down, my brothers, and start up a song—you remember, Vasya always sang that song—so she'll start it up, and she cries, cries, bitterly complains to God..."

"Here comes Pavlusha," said Fedya.

Pavel approached the fire with the full pot in his hand.

"Well, boys," he began after a pause, "something's wrong."

"What?" Kostya asked hurriedly.

"I heard Vasya's voice."

Everyone shuddered.

"What do you mean, what do you mean?" stammered Kostya.

"By God. I'd just started bending down to the water when I suddenly hear someone calling me in Vasya's voice and as if from under the water