Глава 27 из 80

I finally found out 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 giving way beneath me from fatigue. I decided to approach the fires and, in the company of those people whom I had taken for drovers, to wait for dawn. I descended successfully, but no sooner had I released from my hands the last branch I had grasped, than suddenly two large, white, shaggy dogs rushed at me with vicious barking. Ringing children's 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 back the dogs, who were particularly startled by the appearance of my Diana, and I approached them.

I had been mistaken in taking the people sitting around those fires for drovers. They were simply peasant children from neighboring villages who were watching over the herd. In the hot summer season, horses are driven out to feed in the field at night with us: 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 most spirited 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 beast with burdock in its tangled mane.

I told the boys that I had lost my way and sat down beside 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 to look around. The picture was wonderful: around the fires trembled and seemed to fade, resting against the darkness, a round reddish reflection; the flame, flaring up, occasionally cast beyond the circle quick gleams; a thin tongue of light would lick the bare branches of the willows and vanish at once; sharp, long shadows, bursting in for an instant, in their turn ran right up to the 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 appear—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 how it continued to chew and snort. From the illuminated place it was difficult to make out what was happening in the darkness, and therefore nearby everything seemed curtained with an almost black veil; 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 splendor. The chest constricted sweetly, breathing in that special, languid and fresh smell—the smell of a Russian summer night. Almost no noise was heard around... Only occasionally in the nearby river a large fish would splash with sudden resonance, and the coastal reeds would rustle weakly, barely stirred by the running wave... Only the fires quietly crackled.

The boys sat around them; there too sat those two dogs who had so wanted to eat me. They could not reconcile themselves to my presence for a long time and, sleepily squinting and glancing sidelong at the fire, occasionally growled with an extraordinary sense of their own dignity; first they growled, and then whimpered 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 them all, Fedya, you would have given fourteen years. This was a slender boy, with beautiful and fine, slightly 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 calico shirt with a yellow border; a small new peasant coat, thrown on carelessly, barely held on his narrow little shoulders; a comb hung on his light blue belt. His boots with low tops were certainly 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—the size of a beer cauldron, as they say—and a squat, clumsy body. The lad was homely—what can you say!—but still I liked him: he looked very intelligent and direct, and strength rang 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 quite unremarkable: hook-nosed, elongated, short-sighted, it expressed a kind of dull, sickly anxiety; his compressed lips did not move, his drawn brows did not part—he seemed to squint constantly at the fire. His yellow, almost white hair stuck out in sharp tufts from under a low felt cap, which he kept pushing onto 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 jacket. 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 say something for which there were no words in language—in his language at least. He was of small stature, frail 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 fair 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; potatoes were cooking in it. Pavlusha was watching 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, still squinting tensely. Kostya bowed 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 the horses; but suddenly Fedya turned to Ilyusha and, as if resuming an interrupted conversation, asked him:

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

"No, I didn't see him, and you can't see him," answered Ilyusha in a hoarse and 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."

"Do you go to the factory?"

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

"Well, fancy that—factory workers!..."

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

"It was like this. My brother Avdyushka and I had to stay, along with Fyodor Mikheevsky, and Ivashka the Squint-Eyed, and another Ivashka from Red Hills, and Ivashka Sukhorukov too, and there were other boys there; there were about ten of us boys in all—a whole shift; we had to spend the night in the rolling room, that is, not that we had to, but Nazarov, the overseer, forbade us; he says: 'What's the point of you boys dragging yourselves home; there's a lot of work tomorrow, so don't go home, boys.' So we stayed and lay down all together, and Avdyushka started saying: 'What if the house spirit comes, boys?...' And no sooner had he, Avdey that is, spoken these words, than suddenly someone started walking above our heads; but we were lying down below, and he was walking up 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 started rushing, rushing over the wheel; the wheel started knocking, knocking, turning; but the sluice gates at the mill-race were lowered. We wondered: who raised them so the water started flowing; however, the wheel turned, turned, and stopped. That one went again to the door upstairs and started coming down the stairs, and it sounded like he wasn't hurrying; the steps under him actually groaned... Well, that one approached our door, waited, waited—the door suddenly flew wide open. We were alarmed, we look—nothing... Suddenly, look, at one vat the mold started moving, rose, dipped, walked, walked through the air, as if someone was rinsing it, and then back in place. Then at another vat a hook came off the nail and back on the nail; then it was as if someone went to the door and suddenly started coughing, choking, like some sheep, and so loudly... We all just tumbled in a heap, crawling under each other... How frightened we were at that time!"

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

"I don't know; maybe from the dampness."

Everyone fell silent.

"What," 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 star just fell."

"No, I'll tell you something, brothers," began Kostya in a thin voice, "listen to what my father told me the other day when 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 gloomy, always silent, you know? Here's why he's so gloomy. Once he went, my father was saying—he went, my brothers, into the forest for nuts. So he went into the forest for nuts and got lost; he went—God knows where he went. He walked and walked, brothers—no! can't find the road; and night was already falling. So he sat down under a tree; let me, he thinks, wait for 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 there before him on a branch sits a water nymph, swaying and calling him to her, and she's dying with laughter, laughing... And the moon was shining strongly, so strongly, clearly the moon was shining—everything, my brothers, was visible. So she's calling him, and she herself is all bright, white sitting on the branch, like a roach or a minnow—or else there's a kind of carp that's whitish, silvery... Gavrila the carpenter froze, my brothers, but she just keeps laughing and calling him to her with her hand. Gavrila was about to get up, to obey the water nymph, my brothers, but it seems the Lord gave him sense: he did make 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... Ah, what a thing!.. So when he made the cross, my brothers, the water nymph stopped laughing and suddenly started crying... She cries, my brothers, wiping her eyes with her hair, and her hair is green as hemp. So Gavrila looked and looked at her and started asking her: 'Why are you crying, forest evil?' And the water nymph says to him: 'If you hadn't crossed yourself, man, you would have lived with me in merriment to the end of your days; but I cry, I grieve because you crossed yourself; but not I alone will grieve: grieve you too until the end of your days.' Then she, my brothers, disappeared, and Gavrila immediately understood how to get out of the forest... But since then he's always gloomy."

"Well!" said Fedya after a brief silence, "but how can such forest evil ruin a Christian soul—he didn't obey her?"

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

"Did your father tell this himself?" continued Fedya.

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

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

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

"And there must be water nymphs here too," remarked Fedya.

"No," answered Kostya, "this is a clean place, open. Except—the river is near."

Everyone fell silent. Suddenly, somewhere in the distance, a long, ringing, almost moaning sound rang out, one of those incomprehensible night sounds that sometimes arise amid 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 had cried out for a long, long time under the very horizon, someone else seemed to respond 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. "What are you alarmed about? 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.

"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 an unclean place, so unclean, and so desolate. All around are ravines, gullies, and in the gullies all snakes live."

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

"Well, here's what happened. Maybe you don't know, Fedya, but there's a drowned man buried there; 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; 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, taken with everything. So Ermil went for the post and lingered in town, and was riding back already drunk. And it was night, and a bright night: the moon was shining... So Ermil is riding across the dam: that's how his road went. So he's riding along, this dog-keeper Ermil, and sees: at 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 lamb—nothing. So Ermil goes to his horse, and the horse shies away from him, snorts, shakes its head; however, he calmed her down, got on her with the lamb, and rode on again: holding the lamb in front of him. He looks at it, and the lamb looks him right in the eyes. Ermil the dog-keeper got scared: what, he thinks, I don't remember sheep looking people in the eyes like that; however, nothing; he started stroking its wool—says: 'Baa, baa!' And the ram suddenly bares its teeth and says to him too: '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 vanished in the darkness. All the boys were frightened. Vanya jumped out from under his mat. Pavlusha rushed after the dogs with a shout. Their barking quickly receded... The anxious running of the alarmed herd was heard. Pavlusha shouted loudly: "Gray! Zhuchka!..." In a few moments the barking ceased; Pavel's voice came already from afar... 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 by the fire, and, clutching the mane, Pavlusha nimbly jumped off it. Both dogs also leaped into the circle of light and immediately sat down, hanging out their red tongues.

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

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

I involuntarily admired Pavlusha. He was very fine at that moment. His homely 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.

"Did you see them, the wolves?" asked the cowardly 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 dropped his hand on the shaggy nape of one of the dogs, and for a long time the delighted animal didn't turn its head, looking sidelong at Pavlusha with grateful pride.

Vanya hid again under his mat.

"What frightening stories you've been 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 that's an unclean place, your place."

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

"He asked him?" interrupted the astonished Fedya.

"Yes, he asked."

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

"He says he's looking for burst-grass. And he speaks so hollowly, hollowly: 'Burst-grass.' 'And what do you need burst-grass for, master Ivan Ivanovich?' 'The grave, he says, presses, Trofimych: I want to get out, get out...'"

"Well, fancy that!" remarked Fedya, "he must not have lived enough."

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

"You can see the dead at any hour," Ilyusha picked up with confidence, who, as far as I could observe, 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 will pass by you on the road who are to die that year. 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, saw and heard nobody... only it seemed like a little dog was barking somewhere, barking... Suddenly, she looks: a boy is walking along the path in just a shirt. She looked closely—it was Ivashka Fedoseev walking..."

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

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

"Really herself?" asked Fedya.

"God's truth, herself."

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

"The year hasn't passed yet. But you look at her: her soul barely clings to 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, began to smoke and curl up, raising their charred 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, circled fearfully in one spot, 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 where it bumps, there it will spend the night until dawn."

"What, 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.

"Tell me, please, Pavlusha," began Fedya, "was the heavenly portent visible at your Shalamovo too?"

"When the sun disappeared? Of course."

"I suppose you were frightened too?"

"Not just us. Our master, though he explained to us beforehand that there would be a portent, they say, when it got dark, he himself, they say, got so frightened, goodness me. And in the servants' hut the cook woman, as soon as it got dark, they say, 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 all ran out. And in our village such rumors went around, brother, that white wolves would run over the earth, would eat people, a bird of prey would fly, or they'd even see Trishka himself."

"What's this Trishka?" asked Kostya.

"Don't you know?" Ilyusha picked up eagerly. "Well, brother, where are you from that you don't know about Trishka? You must be real stay-at-homes in your village, that's for sure, stay-at-homes! Trishka—he'll be such a wonderful man who will come; and he'll come when the last times arrive. And he'll be such a wonderful man that you can't catch him and can't do anything to him: he'll be such a wonderful man. The peasants will want to catch him, for instance; they'll come out against him with clubs, surround him, but he'll blind their eyes—blind them so that they'll beat each other. They'll put him in prison, for instance—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 you won't be able to do anything to him... He'll be such a wonderful, cunning man."

"Well yes," Pavel continued in his unhurried voice, "that's him. So they were waiting for him at our place. The old folks 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, spacious. They look—suddenly from the settlement, down the hill, some person is walking, such a strange one, with such a wonderful 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 her head off, frightened her own yard dog so much that it broke its chain, jumped the fence, and ran into the forest; and Kuzka's father, Dorofeich, jumped into the oats, crouched down, and started calling like a quail: 'Maybe, he says, the enemy, the soul-destroyer, will at least spare a bird.' That's how frightened everyone got!.. But the person who was walking 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 quiet again for a moment, as often happens with people talking in the open air. I looked around: night stood solemnly and majestically; the damp freshness of late evening had been replaced by the dry warmth of midnight, and it would lie like a soft blanket on the sleeping fields for a long time yet; much time remained until the first babbling, the first rustlings and whispers of morning, 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, twinkling, in the direction of the Milky Way, and truly, looking at them, you seemed to feel dimly yourself the headlong, ceaseless rush of the earth...

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

Kostya shuddered. "What was that?"

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

"A heron," repeated Kostya... "But what was it, Pavlusha, that I heard last night," he added after pausing a little, "you might know..."

"What did you hear?"

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

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

"Well, perhaps, brothers," Kostya replied, widening his already huge eyes... "I didn't know that Akim was drowned in that hole: I would have been even more frightened."

"And then they say there are such tiny frogs," Pavel continued, "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 exclaimed involuntarily, "crying like a wood-demon."

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

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

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

"Well, and did he see him?"

"He saw him. Says he was so big, big, dark, wrapped up, like behind a tree, you couldn't make him out clearly, like hiding from the moon, and he looks, looks with those huge eyes, blinks them, blinks..."

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

"And why has all this vermin spread over the world?" remarked Pavel. "I really don't understand!"

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

Silence fell again.

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

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

"What, Vanya," Fedya began affectionately, "what, is your sister Anyutka well?"

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

"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 present."

"And will you give me one?"

"I'll give you one too."

Vanya sighed.

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

And Vanya lay his head on the ground again. Pavel got 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. But anything can happen: he'll lean over, start drawing water, and the water-spirit will grab him by the hand and drag him to himself. Then they'll say: the boy fell, they say, into the water... What kind of falling is that?.. Over there, he's climbed into the reeds," he added, listening.

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

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

"After that... 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 ruined her there, at 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 in one place, somewhere on the road, pressing her bony hands firmly to her chest and slowly swaying from foot to foot, like a wild beast in a cage. She understands nothing, whatever you say to her, and only occasionally laughs convulsively.)

"And they say," Kostya continued, "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.

"The one who drowned," answered Kostya, "in this very river. Oh, what a boy he was! Oh my, what a boy! His mother Feklista, how she loved him, Vasya! And it was as if she sensed, Feklista did, that he would perish from water. When Vasya would go with us, with the boys, in summer to swim in the river—she'd be all in a flutter. 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 bright one! oh, come back, my falcon!' And how he drowned, the Lord only knows. He was playing on the bank, and his mother was right there, raking hay; suddenly she hears, like someone's blowing bubbles in the water—she looks, and only Vasya's little cap is floating on the water. Well, since then Feklista hasn't been in her right mind: she'll come and lie down at the place where he drowned; she'll lie down, brothers, and start up a song—you remember, Vasya always sang such a 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 are you saying, what?" stammered Kostya.

"God's truth. 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: 'Pavlusha, Pavlusha!' I listen; and he calls again: 'Pavlusha, come here.' I stepped back. But I got the water anyway."

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

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

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

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

The boys grew quiet. It was clear that Pavel's words had made a deep impression on them. They began to settle 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?" asked Kostya.

"To where there's no winter."

"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 joined the boys. The moon finally rose; I didn't notice it immediately: it was so small and narrow. This moonless night, it seemed, was as magnificent as before... But many stars that had recently stood high in the sky were already inclining toward its dark edge; everything around had become completely quiet, as it usually becomes only toward morning: everything slept the unbroken, motionless pre-dawn sleep. The air no longer smelled so strong—dampness seemed to be spreading through it again... Oh, short summer nights!.. The boys' conversation was dying down along with the fires... Even the dogs were dozing; the horses, as far as I could make out in the barely glimmering, weakly flowing light of the stars, were also lying down with lowered heads... A slight drowsiness came over me; it turned into dozing.

A fresh stream rushed across my face. I opened my eyes: morning was dawning. The rosy flush of dawn had not yet spread anywhere, but something was already whitening in the east. Everything had become visible, though dimly visible, around. The pale-gray sky was growing light, turning cold, blue; the stars now twinkled with a dim light, now disappeared; the ground was damp, the leaves were covered with sweat, life sounds and voices began to ring out here and there, and a thin early breeze was already wandering and fluttering over the earth. My body responded to it with a light, joyful shiver. I got up briskly and went to the boys. They were all sleeping as if dead around the smoldering fire; only Pavlusha half rose and looked at me intently.

I nodded to him and walked on along the misty river. I hadn't gone two versts when all around me, over the wide wet meadow, and ahead, over the greening hills from forest to forest, and behind, over the long dusty road, over the bushes sparkling crimson with dew, and over the river turning blue shyly from under the thinning mist—streams of first young, hot light poured out... Everything stirred, woke, sang, rustled, spoke. Everywhere fat dewdrops gleamed like radiant diamonds; the pure and clear sounds of a bell came to meet me, as if also washed by the morning coolness, and suddenly, driven by my familiar boys, the rested herd rushed past me...

I must confess with regret that Pavel died that same year. He didn't drown: he was killed falling from a horse. A pity, he was a fine lad!