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Page 22
I will now relate to you one of his marvellous tales. I know that there
are a great many wise people who copy in the courts, and can even read
civil documents, who, if you were to put into their hand a simple
prayer-book, could not make out the first letter in it, and would show
all their teeth in derision--which is wisdom. These people laugh at
everything you tell them. Such incredulity has spread abroad in the
world! What then? (Why, may God and the Holy Virgin cease to love me if
it is not possible that even you will not believe me!) Once he said
something about witches; . . . What then? Along comes one of these head-
breakers,--and doesn't believe in witches! Yes, glory to God that I have
lived so long in the world! I have seen heretics, to whom it would be
easier to lie in confession than it would to our brothers and equals to
take snuff, and those people would deny the existence of witches! But
let them just dream about something, and they won't even tell what it
was! There's no use in talking about them!
* * * *
ST. JOHN'S EVE.
No one could have recognized this village of ours a little over a
hundred years ago: a hamlet it was, the poorest kind of a hamlet. Half a
score of miserable izbas, unplastered, badly thatched, were scattered
here and there about the fields. There was not an inclosure or decent
shed to shelter animals or wagons. That was the way the wealthy lived;
and if you had looked for our brothers, the poor,--why, a hole in the
ground,--that was a cabin for you! Only by the smoke could you tell that
a God-created man lived there. You ask why they lived so? It was not
entirely through poverty: almost every one led a wandering, Cossack
life, and gathered not a little plunder in foreign lands; it was rather
because there was no reason for setting up a well-ordered khata (wooden
house). How many people were wandering all over the country,--Crimeans,
Poles, Lithuanians! It was quite possible that their own countrymen
might make a descent, and plunder everything. Anything was possible.
In this hamlet a man, or rather a devil in human form, often made his
appearance. Why he came, and whence, no one knew. He prowled about, got
drunk, and suddenly disappeared as if into the air, and there was not a
hint of his existence. Then, again, behold, he seemed to have dropped
from the sky, and went flying about the streets of the village, of which
no trace now remains, and which was not more than a hundred paces from
Dikanka. He would collect together all the Cossacks he met; then there
were songs, laughter, money in abundance, and vodka flowed like
water. . . . He would address the pretty girls, and give them ribbons,
earrings, strings of beads,--more than they knew what to do with. It is
true that the pretty girls rather hesitated about accepting his
presents: God knows, perhaps they had passed through unclean hands. My
grandfather's aunt, who kept a tavern at that time, in which Basavriuk
(as they called that devil-man) often had his carouses, said that no
consideration on the face of the earth would have induced her to accept
a gift from him. And then, again, how avoid accepting? Fear seized on
every one when he knit his bristly brows, and gave a sidelong glance
which might send your feet, God knows whither; but if you accept, then
the next night some fiend from the swamp, with horns on his head, comes
to call, and begins to squeeze your neck, when there is a string of
beads upon it; or bite your finger, if there is a ring upon it; or drag
you by the hair, if ribbons are braided in it. God have mercy, then, on
those who owned such gifts! But here was the difficulty: it was
impossible to get rid of them; if you threw them into the water, the
diabolical ring or necklace would skim along the surface, and into your
hand.
There was a church in the village,--St. Pantelei, if I remember rightly.
There lived there a priest, Father Athanasii of blessed memory.
Observing that Basavriuk did not come to church, even on Easter, he
determined to reprove him, and impose penance upon him. Well, he hardly
escaped with his life. "Hark ye, pannotche!" [Footnote: Sir] he
thundered in reply, "learn to mind your own business instead of meddling
in other people's, if you don't want that goat's throat of yours stuck
together with boiling kutya." [Footnote: A dish of rice or wheat flour,
with honey and raisins, which is brought to the church on the
celebration of memorial masses] What was to be done with this
unrepentant man? Father Athanasii contented himself with announcing that
any one who should make the acquaintance of Basavriuk would be counted a
Catholic, an enemy of Christ's church, not a member of the human race.
In this village there was a Cossack named Korzh, who had a laborer whom
people called Peter the Orphan--perhaps because no one remembered either
his father or mother. The church starost, it is true, said that they had
died of the pest in his second year; but my grandfather's aunt would not
hear to that, and tried with all her might to furnish him with parents,
although poor Peter needed them about as much as we need last year's
snow. She said that his father had been in Zaporozhe, taken prisoner by
the Turks, underwent God only knows what tortures, and having, by some
miracle, disguised himself as a eunuch, had made his escape. Little
cared the black-browed youths and maidens about his parents. They merely
remarked, that if he only had a new coat, a red sash, a black lambskin
cap, with dandified blue crown, on his head, a Turkish sabre hanging by
his side, a whip in one hand and a pipe with handsome mountings in the
other, he would surpass all the young men. But the pity was, that the
only thing poor Peter had was a gray svitka with more holes in it than
there are gold-pieces in a Jew's pocket. And that was not the worst of
it, but this: that Korzh had a daughter, such a beauty as I think you
can hardly have chanced to see. My deceased grandfather's aunt used to
say--and you know that it is easier for a woman to kiss the Evil One
than to call anybody a beauty, without malice be it said--that this
Cossack maiden's cheeks were as plump and fresh as the pinkest poppy
when just bathed in God's dew, and, glowing, it unfolds its petals, and
coquets with the rising sun; that her brows were like black cords, such
as our maidens buy nowadays, for their crosses and ducats, of the Moscow
pedlers who visit the villages with their baskets, and evenly arched as
though peeping into her clear eyes; that her little mouth, at sight of
which the youths smacked their lips, seemed made to emit the songs of
nightingales; that her hair, black as the raven's wing, and soft as
young flax (our maidens did not then plait their hair in clubs
interwoven with pretty, bright-hued ribbons) fell in curls over her
kuntush. [Footnote: Upper garment in Little Russia.] Eh! may I never
intone another alleluia in the choir, if I would not have kissed her, in
spite of the gray which is making its way all through the old wool which
covers my pate, and my old woman beside me, like a thorn in my side!
Well, you know what happens when young men and maids live side by side.
In the twilight the heels of red boots were always visible in the place
where Pidorka chatted with her Petrus. But Korzh would never have
suspected anything out of the way, only one day--it is evident that none
but the Evil One could have inspired him--Petrus took it into his head
to kiss the Cossack maiden's rosy lips with all his heart in the
passage, without first looking well about him; and that same Evil One--
may the son of a dog dream of the holy cross!--caused the old graybeard,
like a fool, to open the cottage-door at that same moment. Korzh was
petrified, dropped his jaw, and clutched at the door for support. Those
unlucky kisses had completely stunned him. It surprised him more than
the blow of a pestle on the wall, with which, in our days, the muzhik
generally drives out his intoxication for lack of fuses and powder.
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