Capítulo 29 de 80

I was mistaken when I took the people sitting around those fires for drovers. They were simply peasant boys from neighboring villages who were watching over the herd. In the hot summer season, horses are driven out at night to graze in the fields: during the day flies and horseflies 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, flailing 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 all, tail raised and constantly changing legs, gallops some red shaggy horse with burdock in its tangled mane.

I told the boys I was lost and sat down with them. They asked me where I was from, fell silent, and moved aside. We talked a little. I lay down under a gnawed bush and began looking around. The picture was wonderful: near the fires there trembled and seemed to fade, pressing against the darkness, a round reddish reflection; the flame, flaring up, occasionally cast beyond the boundary of that circle quick gleams; a thin tongue of light would lick the bare branches of the willows and instantly disappear; sharp, long shadows, rushing in for a moment, in turn ran right up to the little fires: darkness struggled with light. Sometimes, when the flame burned weaker and the circle of light narrowed, from the encroaching darkness there would suddenly emerge a horse's head, bay with a winding blaze, or all white, looking at us attentively and dully, briskly chewing long grass, and, lowering again, would immediately hide. One could only hear it continuing to chew and snort. From an illuminated place it's hard to make out what's happening in the darkness, and so nearby everything seemed draped with an almost black curtain; but farther toward the horizon, hills and forests were dimly visible in long patches. The dark clear sky stood solemnly and immeasurably high above us with all its mysterious magnificence. The chest tightened 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 weakly, barely stirred by the running wave... Only the little fires crackled quietly.

The boys sat around them; there also sat those two dogs that had so wanted to eat me. They couldn't reconcile themselves with my presence for a long time and, drowsily squinting and glancing sidelong at the fire, occasionally growled with an extraordinary sense of their own dignity; first they'd growl, and then whimper 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 introduce them to the reader.)

The first, the eldest of all, Fedya, you would have given fourteen years. He was a slender boy with handsome and delicate, somewhat fine 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 just for fun. He wore a colorful cotton shirt with a yellow border; a small new peasant coat, thrown on loosely, barely held on his narrow little shoulders; a comb hung on his light blue belt. His boots with low tops were definitely his boots—not his father's. The second boy, Pavlusha, had tousled black hair, gray eyes, wide cheekbones, a pale, pockmarked face, a large but regular mouth, a huge head, as they say, like a beer kettle, and a squat, clumsy body. The lad was unprepossessing—what can you say!—but still I liked him: he looked very intelligent and direct, and strength rang in his voice. He couldn't boast of his clothing: it consisted entirely of a simple homespun shirt and patched trousers. The face of the third, Ilyusha, was rather insignificant: hook-nosed, drawn out, dim-sighted, it expressed a kind of dull, sickly anxiety; his compressed lips didn't move, his knitted brows didn't part—he seemed to squint constantly at the fire. His yellow, almost white hair stuck out in sharp wisps from under a low felt cap, which he kept pushing 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 coat. 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, shining with a liquid gleam, made 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 a puny build, and dressed rather poorly. The last one, Vanya, I didn't notice at first: he was lying on the ground, quietly curled up under an angular bast mat, and only occasionally stuck out his light-brown curly head from under it. This boy was only seven years old.

So I lay under a little bush to one side and glanced at the boys. A small pot hung over one of the fires; potatoes were boiling in it. Pavlusha watched over it and, kneeling, poked a stick into the boiling water. Fedya lay propped on his elbow with the flaps 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 didn't stir under his mat. I pretended to be sleeping. Gradually the boys started talking again.

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

"So what, did you actually see the house spirit?"

"No, I didn't see him, and you can't see him," answered Ilyusha in a hoarse, weak voice, the sound of which corresponded perfectly to the expression of his face, "but I heard him... And I wasn't the only one."

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

"In the old rolling room." ("Rolling room" or "dipping room" at paper mills is the name given to the building where paper is dipped out in vats. It's located right at the dam, under the wheel.)

"So you go to the factory?"

"Of course we do. My brother and I, Avdyushka, work as burnishers." ("Burnishers" smooth and scrape paper.)

"Well I never—factory workers!..."

"So how did you hear him?" asked Fedya.

"Well, here's how. It happened that my brother Avdyushka and I, with Fyodor Mikheevsky, and Ivashka the Cross-Eyed, and another Ivashka from Red Hills, and also Ivashka Sukhorukov, and there were other little boys there too; there were about ten of us boys altogether—a whole shift; so we had to spend the night in the rolling room, that is, not exactly that we had to, but Nazarov, the overseer, forbade us; he says, 'Why,' he says, 'should you boys drag yourselves home; there's a lot of work tomorrow, so you boys don't go home.' So we stayed and were all lying together, and Avdyushka started to say, like, 'Boys, what if the house spirit comes?'... And no sooner had he, Avdey, spoken these words than suddenly someone started walking above 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 right over our heads; the water suddenly started to rush and rush over the wheel; the wheel began to knock and knock and turn; but the sluice gates at the sluice were lowered. We wondered: who raised them so the water started flowing; however, the wheel turned and turned, then stopped. That one went to the door again upstairs and started coming down the stairs, and you could hear he wasn't hurrying; the steps under him positively groaned... Well, that one approached our door, waited, waited—the door suddenly flew wide open. We were alarmed, we looked—nothing... Suddenly, look, at one vat the mold started moving, rose up, dipped, walked and walked through the air as if someone was rinsing it, then back in place. Then at another vat a hook came off a nail and back on the nail; then it was as if someone went to the door and suddenly started coughing, choking, like some sheep, but so loudly... We all just tumbled in a heap, climbed under each other... How frightened we were at that time!"

"Well I never!" said Pavel. "Why did he start coughing?"

"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's a little star falling."

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

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

"You know Gavrila, the village carpenter?"

"Well yes; we know him."

"And do you know why he's always so cheerless, always silent, you know? Here's why he's so cheerless. 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 night had already fallen. So he sat down under a tree; 'I'll wait,' he thought, 'till morning,'—sat down and dozed off. So he dozed off and suddenly hears someone calling him. He looks—no one. 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 was shining strongly, so strongly, the moon shone clearly—everything was visible, brothers. So she's calling him, and she herself is all so bright, so white sitting on the branch, like some dace or minnow,—or like a crucian carp, they're sometimes whitish like that, silvery... Gavrila the carpenter just froze, brothers, but she kept laughing and calling him to her with her hand. Gavrila was about to get up, to obey the rusalka, brothers, but—apparently the Lord put it in his mind: he made the sign of the cross over himself... And how hard it was for him to make that sign of the cross, brothers; he says his hand was just like stone, wouldn't move... Oh, the devil!.. So when he made the sign of the cross, brothers, the rusalka stopped laughing and suddenly started crying... She's crying, brothers, wiping her eyes with her hair, and her hair is green like hemp. So Gavrila looked and looked at her and started asking her: 'Why are you crying, forest demon?' And the rusalka speaks to him: 'If you hadn't crossed yourself,' she says, 'man, you would have lived with me in merriment till the end of your days; but I'm crying, I'm grieving because you crossed yourself; and not I alone will grieve: grieve you too till the end of your days.' Then she, brothers, disappeared, and Gavrila immediately understood how to get out of the forest, that is... But since then he's been cheerless all the time."

"Well I never!" said Fedya after a short silence, "but how can such forest uncleanness spoil a Christian soul,—after all, he didn't obey her?"

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

"Your father told this himself?" continued Fedya.

"Himself. I was lying on the sleeping bench, heard everything."

"A strange thing! Why should he be cheerless?... Well, apparently he pleased her if she called him."

"Yes, pleased!" picked up Ilyusha. "Of course! She wanted to tickle him to death, that's what she wanted. That's their business, these rusalkas."

"Well, there must be rusalkas here too," noted Fedya.

"No," answered Kostya, "this is a clean place, open. Only one thing—the river is close."

Everyone fell silent. Suddenly, somewhere in the distance, there rang out a prolonged, resonant, almost moaning sound, one of those inexplicable night sounds that sometimes arise in the midst of deep silence, rise up, stand 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 had cried out for a long, long time under the very horizon, as if someone else had responded to 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. "Why are you alarmed? 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 did you hear, boys," began Ilyusha, "what happened the other day at our place in Varnavitsy?"

"At the dam?" asked Fedya.

"Yes, yes, at the dam, the breached one. Now that's an unclean place, so unclean, and so desolate. All around there are ravines, gullies, and in the gullies all sorts of snakes live."

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

"Well, here's what happened. You may not know, Fedya, but there's a drowned man buried there; and he drowned long, long ago, when the pond was still deep; only his grave is still visible, and even that barely visible: just a little mound... So the other day the steward calls the dog-keeper Ermil; he says, 'Go,' he says, 'to the post office, Ermil.' Ermil always goes to the post office for us; he's killed all his dogs somehow: they don't live with him for some reason, never have, but he's a good dog-keeper, took after everyone. So Ermil went for the post and lingered in town, but when he's riding back he's already drunk. And it's night, a clear night: the moon is shining... So Ermil is riding across the dam: that's the way his road went. He's riding along like this, Ermil the dog-keeper, and sees: on the drowned man's grave a little lamb, white, curly, pretty, is walking. 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 little lamb—nothing. So Ermil goes to the 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: he's holding the lamb in front of him. He looks at it, and the lamb looks right into his eyes. Ermil the dog-keeper got frightened: 'I don't remember,' he thought, 'rams looking people in the eyes like that'; however, nothing; he started stroking its wool like this,—he says: 'Baa, baa!' And the ram suddenly bared its teeth and said back to him: 'Baa, baa!...'

The storyteller had barely uttered this last word when suddenly both dogs jumped up 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 could be heard. Pavlusha shouted loudly: "Grey! Zhuchka!.." In a few moments the barking stopped; Pavel's voice already came from far away... A little more time passed; the boys exchanged puzzled glances, as if waiting for what would happen... Suddenly the tramping of a galloping horse rang out; it stopped short right at the fire, and, clutching the mane, Pavlusha nimbly jumped off. Both dogs also leaped into the circle of light and immediately sat down, sticking out their red tongues.

"What's there? What happened?" asked the boys.

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

I couldn't help but admire Pavlusha. He was very fine at that moment. His plain 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 coward Kostya.

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

He settled down again before the fire. Sitting down on the ground, he accidentally 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 again burrowed under the mat.

"And what scary things 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 devil made the dogs start barking... But it's true, I've heard this place of yours is unclean."

"Varnavitsy?... I should say so! 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 coat and keeps groaning like this, looking for something on the ground. Once grandfather Trofimych met him: 'What,' he says, 'father, Ivan Ivanovich, are you pleased to be looking for on the ground?'"

"He asked him?" interrupted the astonished Fedya.

"Yes, he asked him."

"Well, Trofimych is quite a fellow then... Well, and what did he say?"

"'Bursting herb,' he says, 'I'm looking for.' And he spoke so hollowly, hollowly:—'Bursting herb.'—'And what do you need bursting herb for, father Ivan Ivanovich?'—'The grave presses,' he says, 'Trofimych: it presses. I want to get out, to get out...'"

"Well I never!" remarked Fedya, "didn't live enough, apparently."

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

"You can see the dead at any time," Ilyusha picked up confidently, who, as far as I could notice, knew all the village superstitions best... "But on Parents' Saturday you can see the living too, those 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 going 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?" asked Kostya with curiosity.

"Of course. First she sat for a long, long time, didn't see or hear anyone... only it seemed a little dog was 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 peered and peered,—oh Lord!—she herself is walking along the road, Ulyana herself."

"Really herself?" asked Fedya.

"By God, herself."

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

"But the year hasn't passed yet. And you just look at her: the soul barely clings to the body."

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

"Must have strayed from home," noted Pavel. "Now it'll fly until it bumps into something, and where it hits, there it'll 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.

"But tell me, please, Pavlusha," began Fedya, "what, did you also see the heavenly vision at Shalamovo?" (This is what the peasants call a solar eclipse.)

"When the sun disappeared? Yes indeed."

"I suppose you were frightened too?"

"We weren't the only ones. Our master, though he explained to us beforehand that, he says, there'll be a vision for you, but when it got dark, he himself, they say, got so scared it was incredible. And in the servants' quarters the cook woman, when it got dark, listen to this, took the oven fork and broke all the pots in the stove: 'Who'll eat now,' she says, 'the end of the world has come.' So the cabbage soup just flowed. And in our village, brother, such rumors were going around that, they said, white wolves would run over the earth, would eat people, a bird of prey would fly, or they'd even see Trishka himself."

"What Trishka?" asked Kostya.

"Don't you know?" picked up Ilyusha eagerly. "Well, brother, where are you from that you don't know about Trishka? Real stay-at-homes you have in your village, real stay-at-homes! Trishka—he'll be such a remarkable man who will come; and he'll come when the last times arrive. And he'll be such a remarkable man that it'll be impossible to catch him, and nothing can be done to him: he'll be such a remarkable man. The peasants will want, for example, to catch him; they'll come out against him with clubs, surround him, but he'll deceive their eyes—deceive their eyes so that they'll beat each other up. They'll put him in jail, for example,—he'll ask for some water to drink in a dipper: they'll bring him a dipper, and he'll dive into it and that's the last you'll see of him. They'll put chains on him, but 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 nothing can be done to him... He'll be such a remarkable, cunning man."

"Well yes," continued Pavel in his unhurried voice, "such a one. So that's who they were waiting for at our place. The old men said that as soon as the heavenly vision begins, Trishka will come. So the vision began. The whole population poured out into the street, into the field, waiting for what would happen. And our place, you know, is open, spacious. They look—suddenly from the settlement, from the hill, some kind of man is coming, such a strange one, with such a remarkable head... Everyone started shouting: 'Oh, Trishka's coming! oh, Trishka's coming!'—and scattered in all directions! Our headman crawled into a ditch; the headman's wife got stuck in the gateway, screaming bloody murder, frightened her own yard dog so much that it broke off its chain, over the fence, and into the forest; and Kuzka's father, Dorofeich, jumped into the oats, squatted down, and started calling like a quail: 'Maybe,' he says, 'the enemy, the soul-destroyer, will at least spare a bird.' That's how alarmed everyone got!.. And the man who was coming 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 coolness of late evening had given way to 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 murmurs 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 with each other in twinkling, toward the Milky Way, and truly, watching them, you seemed to feel dimly yourself the impetuous, ceaseless running of the earth...

A strange, harsh, painful cry rang out suddenly twice in a row over the river and, after a few moments, repeated farther away...

Kostya shuddered. "What's that?"

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

"A heron," repeated Kostya... "But what, Pavlusha, is this that I heard yesterday evening," he added, having fallen silent for a bit, "maybe you know..."

"What did you hear?"

"Well, here's what I heard. I was walking from Stone Ridge to Shashkino; and I walked at first through our hazel grove, and then went across a meadow—you know, there where it comes out at a steep bend,—there's a deep pool there; you know, it's all overgrown with reeds; so I was walking past this pool, brothers, and suddenly from that pool someone started moaning, and so pitifully, pitifully: oo-oo... oo-oo... oo-oo! Such fear took hold of me, brothers: it was late, and the voice was so sickly. I felt like crying myself... What could that have been? Eh?"

"Last year thieves drowned Akim the forester in that pool," noted Pavel, "so maybe it's his soul complaining."

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

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

"Frogs? Well, no, those weren't frogs... what kind of..." (The heron cried out again over the river.) "Damn it!" Kostya involuntarily exclaimed, "it cries like a wood goblin."

"A wood goblin doesn't cry, he's mute," picked up Ilyusha, "he only claps his hands and rattles..."

"And have you seen him, the wood goblin?" Fedya interrupted him mockingly.

"No, haven't seen him, and God preserve me from seeing him; but others have seen him. Just the other day he led a peasant of ours astray: led him, led him through the forest, and all around one clearing... He barely made it home by daylight."

"Well, and did he see him?"

"He saw him. He says he stood so big, big, dark, muffled, like behind a tree, you can't make him out properly, like he's hiding from the moon, and stares, stares with those huge eyes, blinks them, blinks..."

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

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

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

Silence fell again.

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

He stuck his fresh little face out 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 tenderly, "is your sister Anyutka well?"

"She's well," answered Vanya, lisping slightly.

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

"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 one. Give it to her instead: she's so kind, our girl."

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 a drink."

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. Anything can happen: he'll bend down like this, start scooping water, and the water spirit will grab his hand and drag him down to himself. Then they'll say: the boy fell, they'll say, into the water... What kind of fell?.. There, he's gone into the reeds," he added, listening.

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

"But is it true," asked Kostya, "that Akulina the fool has been mad since she was in the water?"

"Since then... Look at her now! But they say she used to be a beauty. The water spirit spoiled her. Apparently he didn't expect they'd pull her out so soon. So he spoiled her there, at his place on the bottom."

(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 stamps for hours on end in one spot, somewhere on the road, pressing her bony hands tightly to her chest and slowly shifting from foot to foot, like a wild animal in a cage. She understands nothing, whatever anyone says to her, and only occasionally laughs convulsively.)

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

"That's exactly why."

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

"What Vasya?" asked Fedya.

"The one who drowned," answered Kostya, "in this very river. Oh, what a boy he was! ee-eh, what a boy he was! His mother, Feklista, how she loved him, Vasya! And it's as if she had a foreboding, 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 aflutter. The other women don't care, they walk past with their washtubs, waddling, but Feklista would put her tub on the ground and start calling him: 'Come back,' she'd say, 'come back, my dear! oh, come back, my falcon!' And how he drowned the Lord knows. He was playing on the bank, and his mother was right there, raking hay; suddenly she hears, as if someone's blowing bubbles in the water,—she looks, and only Vasya's little cap is floating on the water. Ever 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, brothers, and start a song,—remember, Vasya always used to sing such a song,—so she'll start it, and she'll cry, cry, complain bitterly 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 not right."

"What?" Kostya asked hurriedly.

"I heard Vasya's voice."

Everyone started.

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

"By God. I'd just bent down to the water when suddenly I hear someone calling me in Vasya's voice and as if from under the water: 'Pavlusha, oh Pavlusha!' I listen; and he calls again: 'Pavlusha, come here.' I stepped back. However, I scooped up the water."

"Oh Lord! oh Lord!" said the boys, crossing themselves.

"That was the water spirit calling you, Pavel," added Fedya... "And we were just talking about him, about Vasya."

"Oh, that's a bad omen," said Ilyusha deliberately.

"Well, never mind, let it be!" pronounced Pavel decisively and sat down again, "you can't escape your fate."

The boys quieted down. It was evident that Pavel's words had made a deep impression on them. They began settling down before the fire, as if preparing to sleep.

"What's that?" Kostya suddenly asked, raising his head.

Pavel listened.

"Those are sandpipers flying, whistling."

"Where are they flying?"

"To where, they say, there's no winter."

"And is there such a land?"

"There is."

"Far away?"

"Far, far away, beyond the warm seas."

Kostya sighed and closed his eyes.

More than three hours had passed since I had joined the boys. The moon finally rose; I didn't notice it right away: it was so small and narrow. This moonless night seemed to be just as magnificent as before... But already many stars that had recently stood high in the sky had declined toward the dark edge of the earth; everything had completely quieted all around, as everything usually quiets only toward morning: everything slept a deep, motionless, pre-dawn sleep. The air no longer smelled so strongly,—dampness seemed to spread through it again... Short are the summer ni