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Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (1809–1852) was a Russian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer of Ukrainian ethnicity. While in his early twenties, Gogol’s first volume of stories, Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka (1831), met with immediate success; and a second volume, Mirgorod (1835), was equally well received. By far the strangest story in the latter is ‘Viy,’ the title of which is the name given to the King of the Gnomes. It should be pointed out, however, that this grotesque entity is not an authentic figure from Ukrainian folklore, as Gogol had claimed in an introductory note to the story, but is probably based on an old folk tradition surrounding St Cassian, the Unmerciful, who was said to have had eyebrows that descended to his knees, whereas, in Gogol’s story, the King of the Gnomes is depicted as having eyelids that reach to the ground.

AS soon as the rather musical seminary bell which hung at the gate of the Bratsky Monastery rang out every morning in Kiev, schoolboys and students hurried thither in crowds from all parts of the town. Students of grammar, rhetoric, philosophy and theology trudged to their classrooms with exercise books under their arms. The grammarians were quite small boys: they shoved each other as they went along and quarrelled in a shrill alto; they almost all wore muddy or tattered clothes, and their pockets were full of all manner of rubbish, such as knucklebones, whistles made of feathers, or a half-eaten pie, sometimes even little sparrows, one of whom suddenly chirruping at an exceptionally quiet moment in the classroom would cost its owner some sound whacks on both hands and sometimes a thrashing. The rhetoricians walked with more dignity; their clothes were often quite free from holes; on the other hand, their countenances almost all bore some decoration, after the style of a figure of rhetoric; either one eye had sunk right under the forehead, or there was a monstrous swelling in place of a lip, or some other disfigurement. They talked and swore among themselves in tenor voices. The philosophers conversed an octave lower in the scale; they had nothing in their pockets but strong, cheap tobacco. They laid in no stores of any sort, but ate on the spot anything they came across; they smelt of pipes and vodka to such a distance that a passing workman would sometimes stop a long way off and sniff the air like a setter dog.

As a rule the market was just beginning to stir at that hour, and the women with bread-rings, rolls, melon seeds, and poppy cakes would tug at the skirts of those whose coats were of fine cloth or some cotton material.

‘This way, young gentlemen, this way!’ they kept saying from all sides: ‘here are bread rings, poppy cakes, twists, good white rolls; they are really good! Made with honey! I baked them myself.’

Another woman lifting up a sort of long twist made of dough would cry: ‘Here’s a breadstick! Buy my breadstick, young gentlemen!’

‘Don’t buy anything off her; see what a horrid woman she is, her nose is nasty and her hands are dirty …’

But the women were afraid to worry the philosophers and the theologians, for the latter were fond of taking things to taste and always a good handful.

On reaching the seminary, the crowd dispersed to their various classes, which were held in low-pitched but fairly large rooms, with little windows, wide doorways, and dirty benches. The classroom was at once filled with all sorts of buzzing sounds: the ‘auditors’ heard their pupils repeat their lessons; the shrill alto of a grammarian rang out, and the windowpane responded with almost the same note; in a corner a rhetorician, whose mouth and thick lips should have belonged at least to a student of philosophy, was droning something in a bass voice, and all that could be heard at a distance was ‘Boo, boo, boo …’ The ‘auditors,’ as they heard the lesson, kept glancing with one eye under the bench, where a roll or a cheese-cake or some pumpkin seeds were peeping out of a scholar’s pocket.

When this learned crowd managed to arrive a little too early, or when they knew that the professors would be later than usual, then by general consent they got up a fight, and everyone had to take part in it, even the monitors whose duty it was to maintain discipline and look after the morals of all the students. Two theologians usually settled the arrangements for the battle: whether each class was to defend itself individually, or whether all were to be divided into two parties, the bursars and the seminarists. In any case the grammarians first began the attack, and, as soon as the rhetoricians entered the fray, they ran away and stood at points of vantage to watch the contest. Then the devotees of philosophy, with long black moustaches, joined in, and finally those of theology, very thick in the neck and attired in shocking trousers, took part. It commonly ended in theology beating all the rest, and the philosophers, rubbing their ribs, would be forced into the classroom and sat down on the benches to rest. The professor, who had himself at one time taken part in such battles, could, on entering the class, see in a minute from the flushed faces of his audience that the battle had been a good one and, while he was caning a rhetorician on the fingers, in another classroom another professor would be smacking philosophers’ hands with a wooden bat. The theologians were dealt with in quite a different way: they received, to use the expression of a professor of theology, ‘a peck of peas apiece,’ in other words, a liberal drubbing with short leather thongs.

On holidays and ceremonial occasions the bursars and the seminarists went from house to house as mummers. Sometimes they acted a play, and then the most distinguished figure was always some theologian, almost as tall as the belfry of Kiev, who took the part of Herodias or Potiphar’s wife. They received in payment a piece of linen, or a sack of millet or half a boiled goose, or something of the sort. All this crowd of students – the seminarists as well as the bursars, with whom they maintain an hereditary feud – were exceedingly badly off for means of subsistence, and at the same time had extraordinary appetites, so that to reckon how many dumplings each of them tucked away at supper would be utterly impossible, and therefore the voluntary offerings of prosperous citizens could not be sufficient for them. Then the ‘senate’ of the philosophers and theologians despatched the grammarians and rhetoricians, under the supervision of a philosopher (who sometimes took part in the raid himself), with sacks on their shoulders to plunder the kitchen gardens – and pumpkin porridge was made in the bursars’ quarters. The members of the ‘senate’ ate such masses of melons that next day their ‘auditors’ heard two lessons from them instead of one, one coming from their lips, another muttering in their stomachs. Both the bursars and the seminarists wore long garments resembling frock coats, ‘prolonged to the utmost limit,’ a technical expression signifying below their heels.

The most important event for the seminarists was the coming of the vacation: it began in June, when they usually dispersed to their homes. Then the whole high-road was dotted with philosophers, grammarians and theologians. Those who had nowhere to go went to stay with some comrade. The philosophers and theologians took a situation, that is, undertook the tuition of the children in some prosperous family, and received in payment a pair of new boots or sometimes even a coat. The whole crowd trailed along together like a gipsy encampment, boiled their porridge, and slept in the fields. Everyone hauled along a sack in which he had a shirt and a pair of leg-wrappers. The theologians were particularly careful and precise: to avoid wearing out their boots, they took them off, hung them on sticks and carried them on their shoulders, particularly if it was muddy; then, tucking their trousers up above their knees, they splashed fearlessly through the puddles. When they saw a village they turned off the high-road and, going up to any house which seemed a little better looking than the rest, stood in a row before the windows and began singing a chant at the top of their voices. The master of the house, some old Cossack villager, would listen to them for a long time, his head propped on his hands, then he would sob bitterly and say, turning to his wife: ‘Wife! What the scholars are singing must be very deep; bring them fat bacon and anything else that we have.’ And a whole bowl of dumplings was emptied into the sack, a good-sized piece of bacon, several flat loaves, and sometimes a trussed hen would go into it too. Fortified with such stores, the grammarians, rhetoricians, philosophers and theologians went on their way again. Their numbers lessened, however, the further they went. Almost all wandered off towards their homes, and only those were left whose parental abodes were further away.

Once, at the time of such a migration, three students turned off the high-road in order to replenish their store of provisions at the first homestead they could find, for their sacks had long been empty. They were the theologian, Halyava; the philosopher, Homa Brut; and the rhetorician, Tibery Gorobets.

The theologian was a well-grown broad-shouldered fellow; he had an extremely odd habit – anything that lay within his reach he invariably stole. In other circumstances, he was of an excessively gloomy temper, and when he was drunk he used to hide in the rank grass, and the seminarists had a lot of trouble to find him there.

The philosopher, Homa Brut, was of a cheerful temper, he was very fond of lying on his back, smoking a pipe; when he was drinking he always engaged musicians and danced the trepak. He often had a taste of the ‘peck of peas,’ but took it with perfect philosophical indifference, saying that there is no escaping what has to be. The rhetorician, Tibery Gorobets, had not yet the right to wear a moustache, to drink vodka, and to smoke a pipe. He only wore a curl round his ear, and so his character was as yet hardly formed; but, judging from the big bumps on the forehead, with which he often appeared in class, it might be presumed that he would make a good fighter. The theologian, Halyava, and the philosopher, Homa, often pulled him by the forelock as a sign of their favour, and employed him as their messenger.

It was evening when they turned off the high-road; the sun had only just set and the warmth of the day still lingered in the air. The theologian and the philosopher walked along in silence smoking their pipes; the rhetorician, Tibery Gorobets, kept knocking off the heads of the wayside thistles with his stick. The road ran between scattered groups of oak and nut trees standing here and there in the meadows. Sloping uplands and little hills, green and round as cupolas, were interspersed here and there about the plain. The cornfields of ripening wheat, which came into view in two places, showed that some village must soon be seen. It was more than an hour, however, since they had passed the cornfields, yet they had come upon no dwelling. The sky was now completely wrapped in darkness, and only in the west there was a pale streak left of the glow of sunset.

‘What the devil does it mean?’ said the philosopher, Homa Brut. ‘It looked as though there must be a village in a minute.’

The theologian did not speak, he gazed at the surrounding country, then put his pipe back in his mouth, and they continued on their way.

‘Upon my soul!’ the philosopher said, stopping again, ‘not a devil’s fist to be seen.’

‘Maybe some village will turn up further on,’ said the theologian, not removing his pipe.

But meantime night had come on, and a rather dark night. Small storm clouds increased the gloom, and by every token they could expect neither stars nor moon. The students noticed that they had lost their way and for a long time had been walking off the road.

The philosopher, after feeling about with his feet in all directions, said at last, abruptly: ‘I say, where’s the road?’

The theologian did not speak for a while, then after pondering, he brought out: ‘Yes, it is a dark night.’

The rhetorician walked off to one side and tried on his hands and knees to feel for the road, but his hands came upon nothing but foxes’ holes. On all sides of them there was the steppe, which, it seemed, no one had ever crossed.

The travellers made another effort to press on a little, but there was the same wilderness in all directions. The philosopher tried shouting, but his voice seemed completely lost on the steppe, and met with no reply. All they heard was, a little afterwards, a faint moaning like the howl of a wolf.

‘I say, what’s to be done?’ said the philosopher.

‘Why, halt and sleep in the open!’ said the theologian, and he felt in his pocket for flint and tinder to light his pipe again. But the philosopher could not agree to this: it was always his habit at night to put away a quarter loaf of bread and four pounds of fat bacon, and he was conscious on this occasion of an insufferable sense of loneliness in his stomach. Besides, in spite of his cheerful temper, the philosopher was rather afraid of wolves.

‘No, Halyava, we can’t,’ he said. ‘What, stretch out and lie down like a dog, without a bite or a sup of anything? Let’s make another try for it; maybe we shall stumble on some dwelling-place and get at least a drink of vodka for supper.’

At the word ‘vodka’ the theologian spat to one side and brought out: ‘Well, of course, it’s no use staying in the open.’

The students walked on, and to their intense delight caught the sound of barking in the distance. Listening which way it came from, they walked on more boldly and a little later saw a light.

‘A village! It really is a village!’ said the philosopher.

He was not mistaken in his supposition; in a little while they actually saw a little homestead consisting of only two cottages looking into the same farmyard. There was a light in the windows; a dozen plum trees stood up by the fence. Looking through the cracks in the paling-gate the students saw a yard filled with carriers’ waggons. Stars peeped out here and there in the sky at the moment.

‘Look, mates, don’t let’s be put off! We must get a night’s lodging somehow!’

The three learned gentlemen banged on the gates with one accord and shouted, ‘Open!’

The door of one of the cottages creaked, and a minute later they saw before them an old woman in sheepskin.

‘Who is there?’ she cried, with a hollow cough.

‘Give us a night’s lodging, granny; we have lost our way; a night in the open is as bad as a hungry belly.’

‘What manner of folks may you be?’

‘Oh, harmless folks: Halyava, a theologian; Brut, a philosopher; and Gorobets, a rhetorician.’

‘I can’t,’ grumbled the old woman. ‘The yard is crowded with folk and every corner in the cottage is full. Where am I to put you? And such great hulking fellows, too! Why, it would knock my cottage to pieces if I put such fellows in it. I know these philosophers and theologians; if one began taking in these drunken fellows, there’d soon be no home left. Be off, be off! There’s no place for you here!’

‘Have pity on us, granny! How can you let Christian souls perish for no rhyme or reason? Put us where you please; and if we do aught amiss or anything else, may our arms be withered, and God only knows what befall us – so there!’

The old woman seemed somewhat softened.

‘Very well,’ she said, as though reconsidering, ‘I’ll let you in, but I’ll put you all in different places; for my mind won’t be at rest if you are all together.’

‘That’s as you please; we’ll make no objection,’ answered the students.

The gate creaked and they went into the yard.

‘Well, granny,’ said the philosopher, following the old woman, ‘how would it be, as they say … upon my soul I feel as though somebody were driving a cart in my stomach: not a morsel has passed my lips all day.’

‘What next will he want!’ said the old woman. ‘No, I’ve nothing to give you, and the oven’s not been heated today.’

‘But we’d pay for it all,’ the philosopher went on, ‘tomorrow morning, in hard cash. Yes!’ he added in an undertone, ‘the devil a bit you’ll get!’

‘Go in, go in! and you must be satisfied with what you’re given. Fine young gentlemen the devil has brought us!’

Homa the philosopher was thrown into utter dejection by these words, but his nose was suddenly aware of the odour of dried fish; he glanced towards the trousers of the theologian who was walking at his side, and saw a huge fishtail sticking out of his pocket. The theologian had already succeeded in filching a whole carp from a waggon. And as he had done this from no interested motive but simply from habit, and, quite forgetting his carp, was already looking about for anything else he could carry off, having no mind to miss even a broken wheel, the philosopher slipped his hand into his friend’s pocket, as though it were his own, and pulled out the carp.

The old woman put the students in their several places: the rhetorician she kept in the cottage, the theologian she locked in an empty closet, the philosopher she assigned a sheep’s pen, also empty.

The latter, on finding himself alone, instantly devoured the carp, examined the hurdle-walls of the pen, kicked an inquisitive pig that woke up and thrust its snout in from the next pen, and turned over on his right side to fall into a sound sleep. All at once the low door opened, and the old woman bending down stepped into the pen.

‘What is it, granny, what do you want?’ said the philosopher.

But the old woman came towards him with outstretched arms.

‘Aha, ha!’ thought the philosopher. ‘No, my dear, you are too old!’

He turned a little away, but the old woman unceremoniously approached him again.

‘Listen, granny!’ said the philosopher. ‘It’s a fast time now; and I am a man who wouldn’t sin in a fast for a thousand golden pieces.’

But the old woman opened her arms and tried to catch him without saying a word.

The philosopher was frightened, especially when he noticed a strange glitter in her eyes. ‘Granny, what is it? Go – go away – God bless you!’ he cried.

The old woman said not a word, but tried to clutch him in her arms.

He leapt on to his feet, intending to escape; but the old woman stood in the doorway, fixed her glittering eyes on him and again began approaching him.

The philosopher tried to push her back with his hands, but to his surprise found that his arms would not rise, his legs would not move, and he perceived with horror that even his voice would not obey him; words hovered on his lips without a sound. He heard nothing but the beating of his heart. He saw the old woman approach him. She folded his arms, bent his head down, leapt with the swiftness of a cat upon his back, and struck him with a broom on the side; and he, prancing like a horse, carried her on his shoulders. All this happened so quickly that the philosopher scarcely knew what he was doing. He clutched his knees in both hands, trying to stop his legs from moving, but to his extreme amazement they were lifted against his will and executed capers more swiftly than a Circassian racer. Only when they had left the farm, and the wide plain lay stretched before them with a forest black as coal on one side, he said to himself: ‘Aha! she’s a witch!’

The waning crescent of the moon was shining in the sky. The timid radiance of midnight lay mistily over the earth, light as a transparent veil. The forests, the meadows, the sky, the dales, all seemed as though slumbering with open eyes; not a breeze fluttered anywhere; there was a damp warmth in the freshness of the night; the shadows of the trees and bushes fell on the sloping plain in pointed wedge shapes like comets. Such was the night when Homa Brut, the philosopher, set off galloping with a mysterious rider on his back. He was aware of an exhausting, unpleasant, and at the same time, voluptuous sensation assailing his heart. He bent his head and saw that the grass which had been almost under his feet seemed growing at a depth far away, and that above it there lay water, transparent as a mountain stream, and the grass seemed to be at the bottom of a clear sea, limpid to its very depths; anyway, he saw clearly in it his own reflection with the old woman sitting on his back. He saw shining there a sun instead of the moon; he heard the bluebells ringing as they bent their little heads; he saw a water-nymph float out from behind the reeds, there was the gleam of her leg and back, rounded and supple, all brightness and shimmering. She turned towards him and now her face came nearer, with eyes clear, sparkling, keen, with singing that pierced to the heart; now it was on the surface, and shaking with sparkling laughter it moved away; and now she turned on her back, and her cloud-like breasts, dead-white like unglazed china, gleamed in the sun at the edges of their white, soft and supple roundness. Little bubbles of water like beads bedewed them. She was all quivering and laughing in the water …

Did he see this or did he not? Was he awake or dreaming? But what was that? The wind or music? It is ringing and ringing and eddying and coming closer and piercing to his heart with an insufferable thrill …

‘What does it mean?’ the philosopher wondered, looking down as he flew along, full speed. The sweat was streaming from him. He was aware of a fiendishly voluptuous feeling, he felt a stabbing, exhaustingly terrible delight. It often seemed to him as though his heart had melted away, and with terror he clutched at it. Worn out, desperate, he began trying to recall all the prayers he knew. He went through all the exorcisms against evil spirits, and all at once felt somewhat refreshed; he felt that his step was growing slower, the witch’s hold upon his back seemed feebler, thick grass touched him, and now he saw nothing extraordinary in it. The clear, crescent moon was shining in the sky.

‘Good!’ the philosopher Homa thought to himself, and he began repeating the exorcisms almost aloud. At last, quick as lightning, he sprang from under the old woman and in his turn leapt on her back. The old woman, with a tiny tripping step, ran so fast that her rider could scarcely breathe. The earth flashed by under him; everything was clear in the moonlight, though the moon was not full; the ground was smooth, but everything flashed by so rapidly that it was confused and indistinct. He snatched up a piece of wood that lay on the road and began whacking the old woman with all his might. She uttered wild howls; at first they were angry and menacing, then they grew fainter, sweeter, clearer, then rang out gently like delicate silver bells that stabbed him to the heart; and the thought flashed through his mind: was it really an old woman?

‘Oh, I can do no more!’ she murmured, and sank exhausted on the ground.

He stood up and looked into her face (there was the glow of sunrise, and the golden domes of the Kiev churches were gleaming in the distance): before him lay a lovely creature with luxuriant tresses all in disorder and eyelashes as long as arrows. Senseless she tossed her bare white arms and moaned, looking upwards with eyes full of tears.

Homa trembled like a leaf on a tree; he was overcome by pity and a strange emotion and timidity, feelings he could not himself explain. He set off running, full speed. His heart throbbed uneasily as he went, and he could not account for the strange new feeling that had taken possession of it. He did not want to go back to the farm; he hastened to Kiev, pondering all the way on this incomprehensible adventure.

There was scarcely a student left in the town. All had dispersed about the countryside, either to situations, or simply without them; because in the villages of Little Russia they could get dumplings, cheese, sour cream, and puddings as big as a hat without paying a kopeck for them. The big rambling house in which the students were lodged was absolutely empty, and although the philosopher rummaged in every corner, and even felt in all the holes and cracks in the roof, he could not find a bit of bacon or even a stale roll such as were commonly hidden there by the students.

The philosopher, however, soon found means to improve his lot: he walked whistling three times through the market, finally winked at a young widow in a yellow bonnet who was selling ribbons, shot and wheels – and was that very day regaled with wheat dumplings, a chicken … in short, there is no telling what was on the table laid for him in a little mud house in the middle of a cherry orchard.

That same evening the philosopher was seen in a tavern: he was lying on the bench, smoking a pipe as his habit was, and in the sight of all he flung the Jew who kept the house a gold coin. A mug stood before him. He looked at all that came in and went out with eyes full of cool satisfaction, and thought no more of his extraordinary adventure.

Meanwhile rumours were circulating everywhere that the daughter of one of the richest Cossack sotniks,^fn1 who lived nearly forty miles from Kiev, had returned one day from a walk, terribly injured, hardly able to crawl home to her father’s house, was lying at the point of death, and had expressed a wish that one of the Kiev seminarists, Homa Brut, should read the prayers over her and the psalms for three days after her death. The philosopher heard of this from the rector himself, who summoned him to his room and informed him that he was to set off on the journey without any delay, that the noble sotnik had sent servants and a carriage to fetch him.

The philosopher shuddered from an unaccountable feeling which he could not have explained to himself. A dark presentiment told him that something evil was awaiting him. Without knowing why, he bluntly declared that he would not go.

‘Listen, Domine Homa!’ said the rector. (On some occasions he expressed himself very courteously with those under his authority.) ‘Who the devil is asking you whether you want to go or not? All I have to tell you is that if you go on jibbing and making difficulties, I’ll order you such a whacking with a young birch tree, on your back and the rest of you, that there will be no need for you to go to the bath after.’

The philosopher, scratching behind his ear, went out without uttering a word, proposing at the first suitable opportunity to put his trust in his heels. Plunged in thought he went down the steep staircase that led into a yard shut in by poplars, and stood still for a minute, hearing quite distinctly the voice of the rector giving orders to his butler and some one else – probably one of the servants sent to fetch him by the sotnik.

‘Thank his honour for the grain and the eggs,’ the rector was saying: ‘and tell him that as soon as the books about which he writes are ready I will send them at once, I have already given them to a scribe to be copied, and don’t forget, my good man, to mention to his honour that I know there are excellent fish at his place, especially sturgeon, and he might on occasion send some; here in the market it’s bad and dear. And you, Yavtuh, give, the young fellows a cup of vodka each, and bind the philosopher or he’ll be off directly.’

‘There, the devil’s son!’ the philosopher thought to himself. ‘He scented it out, the wily long-legs!’ He went down and saw a covered chaise, which he almost took at first for a baker’s oven on wheels. It was, indeed, as deep as the oven in which bricks are baked. It was only the ordinary Cracow carriage in which Jews travel fifty together with their wares to all the towns where they smell out a fair. Six healthy and stalwart Cossacks, no longer young, were waiting for him. Their tunics of fine cloth, with tassels, showed that they belonged to a rather important and wealthy master; some small scars proved that they had at some time been in battle, not ingloriously.

‘What’s to be done? What is to be must be!’ the philosopher thought to himself and, turning to the Cossacks, he said aloud: ‘Good day to you, comrades!’

‘Good health to you, master philosopher,’ some of the Cossacks replied.

‘So I am to get in with you? It’s a goodly chaise!’ he went on, as he clambered in, ‘we need only hire some musicians and we might dance here.’

‘Yes, it’s a carriage of ample proportions,’ said one of the Cossacks, seating himself on the box beside the coachman, who had tied a rag over his head to replace the cap which he had managed to leave behind at a pot-house. The other five and the philosopher crawled into the recesses of the chaise and settled themselves on sacks filled with various purchases they had made in the town. ‘It would be interesting to know,’ said the philosopher, ‘if this chaise were loaded up with goods of some sort, salt for instance, or iron wedges, how many horses would be needed then?’

‘Yes,’ the Cossack, sitting on the box, said after a pause, ‘it would need a sufficient number of horses.’

After this satisfactory reply the Cossack thought himself entitled to hold his tongue for the remainder of the journey.

The philosopher was extremely desirous of learning more in detail, who this sotnik was, what he was like, what had been heard about his daughter who in such a strange way returned home and was found on the point of death, and whose story was now connected with his own, what was being done in the house, and how things were there. He addressed the Cossacks with inquiries, but no doubt they too were philosophers, for by way of a reply they remained silent, smoking their pipes and lying on their backs. Only one of them turned to the driver on the box with a brief order. ‘Mind, Overko, you old booby, when you are near the tavern on the Tchuhraylovo road, don’t forget to stop and wake me and the other chaps, if any should chance to drop asleep.’

After this he fell asleep rather audibly. These instructions were, however, quite unnecessary for, as soon as the gigantic chaise drew near the pot-house, all the Cossacks with one voice shouted: ‘Stop!’ Moreover, Overko’s horses were already trained to stop of themselves at every pot-house.

In spite of the hot July day, they all got out of the chaise and went into the low-pitched dirty room, where the Jew who kept the house hastened to receive his old friends with every sign of delight. The Jew brought from under the skirt of his coat some ham sausages, and, putting them on the table, turned his back at once on this food forbidden by the Talmud. All the Cossacks sat down round the table; earthenware mugs were set for each of the guests. Homa had to take part in the general festivity, and, as Little Russians infallibly begin kissing each other or weeping when they are drunk, soon the whole room resounded with smacks. ‘I say, Spirid, a kiss.’ ‘Come here, Dorosh, I want to embrace you!’

One Cossack with grey moustaches, a little older than the rest, propped his cheek on his hand and began sobbing bitterly at the thought that he had no father nor mother and was all alone in the world. Another one, much given to moralising, persisted in consoling him, saying: ‘Don’t cry; upon my soul, don’t cry! What is there in it …? The Lord knows best, you know.’

The one whose name was Dorosh became extremely inquisitive, and, turning to the philosopher Homa, kept asking him: ‘I should like to know what they teach you in the college. Is it the same as what the deacon reads in church, or something different?’

‘Don’t ask!’ the sermonising Cossack said emphatically: ‘let it be as it is, God knows what is wanted, God knows everything.’

‘No, I want to know,’ said Dorosh, ‘what is written there in those books? Maybe it is quite different from what the deacon reads.’

‘Oh, my goodness, my goodness!’ said the sermonising worthy, ‘and why say such a thing; it’s as the Lord wills. There is no changing what the Lord has willed!’

‘I want to know all that’s written. I’ll go to college, upon my word, I will. Do you suppose I can’t learn? I’ll learn it all, all!’

‘Oh my goodness …!’ said the sermonising Cossack, and he dropped his head on the table, because he was utterly incapable of supporting it any longer on his shoulders. The other Cossacks were discussing their masters and the question why the moon shone in the sky. The philosopher, seeing the state of their minds, resolved to seize his opportunity and make his escape. To begin with he turned to the grey-headed Cossack who was grieving for his father and mother.

‘Why are you blubbering, uncle?’ he said, ‘I am an orphan myself! Let me go in freedom, lads! What do you want with me?’

‘Let him go!’ several responded, ‘why, he is an orphan, let him go where he likes.’

‘Oh, my goodness, my goodness!’ the moralising Cossack articulated, lifting his head. ‘Let him go!’

‘Let him go where he likes!’

And the Cossacks meant to lead him out into the open air themselves, but the one who had displayed his curiosity stopped them, saying: ‘Don’t touch him. I want to talk to him about college: I am going to college myself …’

It is doubtful, however, whether the escape could have taken place, for when the philosopher tried to get up from the table his legs seemed to have become wooden, and he began to perceive such a number of doors in the room that he could hardly discover the real one.

It was evening before the Cossacks bethought themselves that they had further to go. Clambering into the chaise, they trailed along the road, urging on the horses and singing a song of which nobody could have made out the words or the sense. After trundling on for the greater part of the night, continually straying off the road, though they knew every inch of the way, they drove at last down a steep hill into a valley, and the philosopher noticed a paling or hurdle that ran alongside, low trees and roofs peeping out behind it. This was a big village belonging to the sotnik. By now it was long past midnight; the sky was dark, but there were little stars twinkling here and there. No light was to be seen in a single cottage. To the accompaniment of the barking of dogs, they drove into the courtyard. Thatched barns and little houses came into sight on both sides; one of the latter, which stood exactly in the middle opposite the gates, was larger than the others, and was apparently the sotnik’s residence. The chaise drew up before a little shed that did duty for a barn, and our travellers went off to bed. The philosopher, however, wanted to inspect the outside of the sotnik’s house; but, though he stared his hardest, nothing could be seen distinctly; the house looked to him like a bear; the chimney turned into the rector. The philosopher gave it up and went to sleep.

When he woke up, the whole house was in commotion: the sotnik’s daughter had died in the night. Servants were running hurriedly to and fro; some old women were crying; an inquisitive crowd was looking through the fence at the house, as though something might be seen there. The philosopher began examining at his leisure the objects he could not make out in the night. The sotnik’s house was a little, low-pitched building, such as was usual in Little Russia in old days; its roof was of thatch; a small, high, pointed gable with a little window that looked like an eye turned upwards, was painted in blue and yellow flowers and red crescents; it was supported on oak posts, rounded above and hexagonal below, with carving at the top. Under the gable was a little porch with seats on each side. There were verandahs round the house resting on similar posts, some of them carved in spirals. A tall pyramidal pear tree, with trembling leaves, made a patch of green in front of the house. Two rows of barns for storing grain stood in the middle of the yard, forming a sort of wide street leading to the house. Beyond the barns, close to the gate, stood facing each other two three-cornered storehouses, also thatched. Each triangular wall was painted in various designs and had a little door in it. On one of them was depicted a Cossack sitting on a barrel, holding a mug above his head with the inscription: ‘I’ll drink it all!’ On the other, there was a bottle, flagons, and at the sides, by way of ornament, a horse upside down, a pipe, a tambourine, and the inscription: ‘Wine is the Cossack’s comfort!’ A drum and brass trumpets could be seen through the huge window in the loft of one of the barns. At the gates stood two cannons. Everything showed that the master of the house was fond of merrymaking, and that the yard often resounded with the shouts of revellers. There were two windmills outside the gate. Behind the house stretched gardens, and through the treetops the dark caps of chimneys were all that could be seen of cottages smothered in green bushes. The whole village lay on the broad sloping side of a hill. The steep side, at the very foot of which lay the courtyard, made a screen from the north. Looked at from below, it seemed even steeper, and here and there on its tall top uneven stalks of rough grass stood up black against the clear sky; its bare aspect was somehow depressing; its clay soil was hollowed out by the fall and trickle of rain. Two cottages stood at some distance from each other on its steep slope; one of them was overshadowed by the branches of a spreading apple tree, banked up with soil and supported by short stakes near the root. The apples, knocked down by the wind, were falling right into the master’s courtyard. The road, coiling about the hill from the very top, ran down beside the courtyard to the village. When the philosopher scanned its terrific steepness and recalled their journey down it the previous night, he came to the conclusion that either the sotnik had very clever horses or that the Cossacks had very strong heads to have managed, even when drunk, to escape flying head over heels with the immense chaise and baggage. The philosopher was standing on the very highest point in the yard. When he turned and looked in the opposite direction he saw quite a different view. The village sloped away into a plain. Meadows stretched as far as the eye could see; their brilliant verdure was deeper in the distance, and whole rows of villages looked like dark patches in it, though they must have been more than fifteen miles away. On the right of the meadowlands was a line of hills, and a hardly perceptible streak of flashing light and darkness showed where the Dnieper ran.

‘Ah, a splendid spot!’ said the philosopher, ‘this would be the place to live, fishing in the Dnieper and the ponds, bird-catching with nets, or shooting king-snipe and little bustard. Though I do believe there would be a few great bustards too in those meadows! One could dry lots of fruit, too, and sell it in the town, or, better still, make vodka of it, for there’s no drink to compare with fruit-vodka. But it would be just as well to consider how to slip away from here.’

He noticed outside the fence a little path completely overgrown with weeds; he was mechanically setting his foot on it with the idea of simply going first out for a walk, and then stealthily passing between the cottages and dashing out into the open country, when he suddenly felt a rather strong hand on his shoulder.

Behind him stood the old Cossack who had on the previous evening so bitterly bewailed the death of his father and mother and his own solitary state.

‘It’s no good your thinking of making off, Mr Philosopher!’ he said: ‘this isn’t the sort of establishment you can run away from; and the roads are bad, too, for anyone on foot; you had better come to the master: he’s been expecting you this long time in the parlour.’

‘Let us go! To be sure … I’m delighted,’ said the philosopher, and he followed the Cossack.

The sotnik, an elderly man with grey moustaches and an expression of gloomy sadness, was sitting at a table in the parlour, his head propped on his hands. He was about fifty; but the deep despondency on his face and its wan pallor showed that his soul had been crushed and shattered at one blow, and all his old gaiety and noisy merrymaking had gone for ever. When Homa went in with the old Cossack, he removed one hand from his face and gave a slight nod in response to their low bows.

Homa and the Cossack stood respectfully at the door.

‘Who are you, where do you come from, and what is your calling, good man?’ said the sotnik, in a voice neither friendly nor ill-humoured.

‘A bursar, student in philosophy, Homa Brut …’

‘Who was your father?’

‘I don’t know, honoured sir.’

‘Your mother?’

‘I don’t know my mother either. It is reasonable to suppose, of course, that I had a mother; but who she was and where she came from, and when she lived – upon my soul, good sir, I don’t know.’

The old man paused and seemed to sink into a reverie for a minute.

‘How did you come to know my daughter?’

‘I didn’t know her, honoured sir, upon my word, I didn’t. I have never had anything to do with young ladies, never in my life. Bless them, saving your presence!’

‘Why did she fix on you and no other to read the psalms over her?’

The philosopher shrugged his shoulders. ‘God knows how to make that out. It’s a well-known thing, the gentry are for ever taking fancies that the most learned man couldn’t explain, and the proverb says: “The devil himself must dance at the master’s bidding.”’

‘Are you telling the truth, philosopher?’

‘May I be struck down by thunder on the spot if I’m not.’

‘If she had but lived one brief moment longer,’ the sotnik said to himself mournfully, ‘I should have learned all about it. “Let no one else read over me, but send, father, at once to the Kiev Seminary and fetch the bursar, Homa Brut; let him pray three nights for my sinful soul. He knows …!” But what he knows, I did not hear: she, poor darling, could say no more before she died. You, good man, are no doubt well known for your holy life and pious works, and she, maybe, heard tell of you.’

‘Who? I?’ said the philosopher, stepping back in amazement. ‘I – holy life!’ he articulated, looking straight in the sotnik’s face. ‘God be with you, sir! What are you talking about! Why – though it’s not a seemly thing to speak of – I paid the baker’s wife a visit on Maundy Thursday.’

‘Well … I suppose there must be some reason for fixing on you. You must begin your duties this very day.’

‘As to that, I would tell your honour … Of course, any man versed in holy scripture may, as far as in him lies … but a deacon or a sacristan would be better fitted for it. They are men of understanding, and know how it is all done; while I … Besides I haven’t the right voice for it, and I myself am good for nothing. I’m not the figure for it.’

‘Well, say what you like, I shall carry out all my darling’s wishes, I will spare nothing. And if for three nights from today you duly recite the prayers over her, I will reward you, if not … I don’t advise the devil himself to anger me.’

The last words were uttered by the sotnik so vigorously that the philosopher fully grasped their significance.

‘Follow me!’ said the sotnik.

They went out into the hall. The sotnik opened the door into another room, opposite the first. The philosopher paused a minute in the hall to blow his nose and crossed the threshold with unaccountable apprehension.

The whole floor was covered with red cotton stuff. On a high table in the corner under the holy images lay the body of the dead girl on a coverlet of dark blue velvet adorned with gold fringe and tassels. Tall wax candles, entwined with sprigs of guelder rose, stood at her feet and head, shedding a dim light that was lost in the brightness of daylight. The dead girl’s face was hidden from him by the inconsolable father, who sat down facing her with his back to the door. The philosopher was impressed by the words he heard:

‘I am grieving, my dearly beloved daughter, not that in the flower of your age you have left the earth, to my sorrow and mourning, without living your allotted span; I grieve, my darling, that I know not him, my bitter foe, who was the cause of your death. And if I knew the man who could but dream of hurting you, or even saying anything unkind of you, I swear to God he should not see his children again, if he be old as I, nor his father and mother, if he be of that time of life, and his body should be cast out to be devoured by the birds and beasts of the steppe! But my grief it is, my wild marigold, my birdie, light of my eyes, that I must live out my days without comfort, wiping with the skirt of my coat the trickling tears that flow from my old eyes, while my enemy will be making merry and secretly mocking at the feeble old man …’

He came to a standstill, due to an outburst of sorrow, which found vent in a flood of tears.

The philosopher was touched by such inconsolable sadness; he coughed, uttering a hollow sound in the effort to clear his throat. The sotnik turned round and pointed him to a place at the dead girl’s head, before a small lectern with books on it.

‘I shall get through three nights somehow,’ thought the philosopher: ‘and the old man will stuff both my pockets with gold pieces for it.’

He drew near, and clearing his throat once more, began reading, paying no attention to anything else and not venturing to glance at the face of the dead girl. A profound stillness reigned in the apartment. He noticed that the sotnik had withdrawn. Slowly, he turned his head to look at the dead, and …

A shudder ran through his veins: before him lay a beauty whose like had surely never been on earth before. Never, it seemed, could features have been formed in such striking yet harmonious beauty. She lay as though living: the lovely forehead, fair as snow, as silver, looked deep in thought; the even brows – dark as night in the midst of sunshine – rose proudly above the closed eyes; the eyelashes, that fell like arrows on the cheeks, glowed with the warmth of secret desires; the lips were rubies, ready to break into the laugh of bliss, the flood of joy … But in them, in those very features, he saw something terrible and poignant. He felt a sickening ache stirring in his heart, as though, in the midst of a whirl of gaiety and dancing crowds, someone had begun singing a funeral dirge. The rubies of her lips looked like blood surging up from her heart. All at once he was aware of something dreadfully familiar in her face. ‘The witch!’ he cried in a voice not his own, as, turning pale, he looked away and fell to repeating his prayers. It was the witch that he had killed!

When the sun was setting, they carried the corpse to the church. The philosopher supported the coffin swathed in black on his shoulder, and felt something cold as ice on it. The sotnik walked in front, with his hand on the right side of the dead girl’s narrow resting home. The wooden church, blackened by age and overgrown with green lichen, stood disconsolately, with its three cone-shaped domes, at the very end of the village. It was evident that no service had been performed in it for a long time. Candles had been lighted before almost every image. The coffin was set down in the centre opposite the altar. The old sotnik kissed the dead girl once more, bowed down to the ground, and went out together with the coffin bearers, giving orders that the philosopher should have a good supper and then be taken to the church. On reaching the kitchen all the men who had carried the coffin began putting their hands on the stove, as the custom is with Little Russians, after seeing a dead body.

The hunger, of which the philosopher began at that moment to be conscious, made him for some minutes entirely oblivious of the dead girl. Soon all the servants began gradually assembling in the kitchen, which in the sotnik’s house was something like a club, where all the inhabitants of the yard gathered together, including even the dogs, who wagging their tails, came to the door for bones and slops. Wherever anybody might be sent, and with whatever duty he might be charged, he always went first to the kitchen to rest for at least a minute on the bench and smoke a pipe. All the unmarried men in their smart Cossack tunics lay there almost all day long, on the bench, under the bench, or on the stove – anywhere, in fact, where a comfortable place could be found to lie on. Then everybody invariably left behind in the kitchen either his cap or a whip to keep stray dogs off or some such thing. But the biggest crowd always gathered at supper-time, when the drover who had taken the horses to the paddock, and the herdsman who had brought the cows in to be milked, and all the others who were not to be seen during the day, came in. At supper, even the most taciturn tongues were moved to loquacity. It was then that all the news was talked over: who had got himself new breeches, and what was hidden in the bowels of the earth, and who had seen a wolf. There were witty talkers among them; indeed, there is no lack of them anywhere among the Little Russians.

The philosopher sat down with the rest in a big circle in the open air before the kitchen door. Soon a peasant woman in a red bonnet popped out, holding in both hands a steaming bowl of dumplings, which she set down in their midst. Each pulled out a wooden spoon from his pocket, or, for lack of a spoon, a wooden stick. As soon as their jaws began moving more slowly, and the wolfish hunger of the whole party was somewhat assuaged, many of them began talking. The conversation naturally turned on the dead maiden.

‘Is it true,’ said a young shepherd who had put so many buttons and copper discs on the leather strap on which his pipe hung that he looked like a small haberdasher’s shop, ‘is it true that the young lady, saving your presence, was on friendly terms with the Evil One?’

‘Who? The young mistress?’ said Dorosh, a man our philosopher already knew, ‘why, she was a regular witch! I’ll take my oath she was a witch!’

‘Hush, hush, Dorosh,’ said another man, who had shown a great disposition to soothe the others on the journey, ‘that’s no business of ours, God bless it! It’s no good talking about it.’

But Dorosh was not at all inclined to hold his tongue; he had just been to the cellar on some job with the butler, and, having applied his lips to two or three barrels, he had come out extremely merry and talked away without ceasing.

‘What do you want? Me to be quiet?’ he said, ‘why, I’ve been ridden by her myself! Upon my soul, I have!’

‘Tell us, uncle,’ said the young shepherd with the buttons, ‘are there signs by which you can tell a witch?’

‘No, you can’t,’ answered Dorosh, ‘there’s no way of telling: you might read through all the psalm-books and you couldn’t tell.’

‘Yes, you can, Dorosh, you can; don’t say that,’ the former comforter objected; ‘it’s with good purpose God has given every creature its peculiar habit; folks that have studied say that a witch has a little tail.’

‘When a woman’s old, she’s a witch,’ the grey-headed Cossack said coolly.

‘Oh! you’re a nice set!’ retorted the peasant woman, who was at that instant pouring a fresh lot of dumplings into the empty pot; ‘regular fat hogs!’

The old Cossack, whose name was Yavtuh and nickname Kovtun, gave a smile of satisfaction seeing that his words had cut the old woman to the quick; while the herdsman gave vent to a guffaw, like the bellowing of two bulls as they stand facing each other.

The beginning of the conversation had aroused the philosopher’s curiosity and made him intensely anxious to learn more details about the sotnik’s daughter, and so, wishing to bring the talk back to that subject, he turned to his neighbour with the words: ‘I should like to ask why all the folk sitting at supper here look upon the young mistress as a witch? Did she do a mischief to anybody or bring anybody to harm?’

‘There were all sorts of doings,’ answered one of the company, a man with a flat face strikingly resembling a spade. ‘Everybody remembers the dog-boy Mikita and the …’

‘What about the dog-boy Mikita?’ said the philosopher.

‘Stop! I’ll tell about the dog-boy Mikita,’ said Dorosh.

‘I’ll tell about him,’ said the drover, ‘for he was a great crony of mine.’

‘I’ll tell about Mikita,’ said Spirid.

‘Let him, let Spirid tell it!’ shouted the company.

Spirid began: ‘You didn’t know Mikita, Mr Philosopher Homa. Ah, he was a man! He knew every dog as well as he knew his own father. The dog-boy we’ve got now, Mikola, who’s sitting next but one from me, isn’t worth the sole of his shoe. Though he knows his job, too, but beside the other he’s trash, slops.’

‘You tell the story well, very well!’ said Dorosh, nodding his head approvingly.

Spirid went on: ‘He’d see a hare quicker than you’d wipe the snuff from your nose. He’d whistle: “Here, Breaker! here Swift-foot!” and he in full gallop on his horse; and there was no saying which would outrace the other, he the dog, or the dog him. He’d toss off a mug of vodka without winking. He was a fine dog-boy! Only a little time back he began to be always staring at the young mistress. Whether he had fallen in love with her, or whether she had simply bewitched him, anyway the man was done for, he went fairly silly; the devil only knows what he turned into … pfoo! No decent word for it …’

‘That’s good,’ said Dorosh.

‘As soon as the young mistress looks at him, he drops the bridle out of his hand, calls Breaker Bushy-brow, is all of a fluster and doesn’t know what he’s doing. One day the young mistress comes into the stable where he is rubbing down a horse.

‘“I say, Mikita,” says she, “let me put my foot on you.” And he, silly fellow, is pleased at that. “Not your foot only,” says he, “you may sit on me altogether.” The young mistress lifted her foot, and, as soon as he saw her bare, plump, white leg, he went fairly crazy, so he said. He bent his back, silly fellow, and, clasping her bare legs in his hands, ran galloping like a horse all over the countryside. And he couldn’t say where he was driven, but he came back more dead than alive, and from that time he withered up like a chip of wood; and one day when they went into the stable, instead of him they found a heap of ashes lying there and an empty pail; he had burnt up entirely, burnt up of himself. And he was a dog-boy such as you couldn’t find another all the world over.’

When Spirid had finished his story, reflections upon the rare qualities of the deceased dog-boy followed from all sides.

‘And haven’t you heard tell of Sheptun’s wife?’ said Dorosh, addressing Homa.

‘No.’

‘Well, well! You are not taught with too much sense, it seems, in the seminary. Listen, then. There’s a Cossack called Sheptun in our village – a good Cossack! He is given to stealing at times, and telling lies when there’s no occasion, but … he’s a good Cossack. His cottage is not so far from here. Just about the very hour that we sat down this evening to table, Sheptun and his wife finished their supper and lay down to sleep, and, as it was fine weather, his wife lay down in the yard, and Sheptun in the cottage on the bench; or no … it was the wife lay indoors on the bench and Sheptun in the yard …’

‘Not on the bench, she was lying on the floor,’ put in a peasant woman who stood in the doorway with her cheek propped in her hand.

Dorosh looked at her, then looked down, then looked at her again, and after a brief pause, said: ‘When I strip off your petticoat before everybody, you won’t be pleased.’

This warning had its effect; the old woman held her tongue and did not interrupt the story again.

Dorosh went on: ‘And in the cradle hanging in the middle of the cottage lay a baby a year old – whether of the male or female sex I can’t say. Sheptun’s wife was lying there when she heard a dog scratching at the door and howling fit to make you run out of the cottage. She was scared, for women are such foolish creatures that, if towards evening you put your tongue out at one from behind a door, her heart’s in her mouth. However, she thought: “Well, I’ll go and give that damned dog a whack on its nose, and maybe it will stop howling,” and taking the oven-fork she went to open the door. She had hardly opened it when a dog dashed in between her legs and straight to the baby’s cradle. She saw that it was no longer a dog, but the young mistress, and, if it had been the young lady in her own shape as she knew her, it would not have been so bad. But the peculiar thing is that she was all blue and her eyes glowing like coals. She snatched up the child, bit its throat, and began sucking its blood. Sheptun’s wife could only scream: “Oh, horror!” and rushed towards the door. But she sees the door’s locked in the passage; she flies up to the loft and there she sits all of a shake, silly woman; and then she sees the young mistress coming up to her in the loft; she pounced on her, and began biting the silly woman. When Sheptun pulled his wife down from the loft in the morning she was bitten all over and had turned black and blue; and next day the silly woman died. So you see what uncanny and wicked doings happen in the world! Though it is of the gentry’s breed, a witch is a witch.’

After telling the story, Dorosh looked about him complacently and thrust his finger into his pipe, preparing to fill it with tobacco. The subject of the witch seemed inexhaustible. Each in turn hastened to tell some tale of her. One had seen the witch in the form of a haystack come right up to the door of his cottage; another had had his cap or his pipe stolen by her; many of the girls in the village had had their hair cut off by her; others had lost several quarts of blood sucked by her.

At last the company pulled themselves together and saw that they had been chattering too long, for it was quite dark in the yard. They all began wandering off to their several sleeping places, which were either in the kitchen, or the barns, or the middle of the courtyard.

‘Well, Mr Homa! now it’s time for us to go to the deceased lady,’ said the grey-headed Cossack, addressing the philosopher; and together with Spirid and Dorosh they set off to the church, lashing with their whips at the dogs, of which there were a great number in the road, and which gnawed their sticks angrily.

Though the philosopher had managed to fortify himself with a good mugful of vodka, he felt a fearfulness creeping stealthily over him as they approached the lighted church. The stories and strange tales he had heard helped to work upon his imagination. The darkness under the fence and trees grew less thick as they came into the more open place. At last they went into the church enclosure and found a little yard, beyond which there was not a tree to be seen, nothing but open country and meadows swallowed up in the darkness of night. The three Cossacks and Homa mounted the steep steps to the porch and went into the church. Here they left the philosopher with the best wishes that he might carry out his duties satisfactorily, and locked the door after them, as their master had bidden them.

The philosopher was left alone. First he yawned, then he stretched, then he blew into both hands, and at last he looked about him. In the middle of the church stood the black coffin; candles were gleaming under the dark images; the light from them only lit up the ikon-stand and shed a faint glimmer in the middle of the church; the distant corners were wrapped in darkness. The tall, old-fashioned ikon stand showed traces of great antiquity; its carved fretwork, once gilt, only glistened here and there with splashes of gold; the gilt had peeled off in one place, and was completely tarnished in another; the faces of the saints, blackened by age, had a gloomy look. The philosopher looked round him again. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘what is there to be afraid of here? No living man can come in here, and to guard me from the dead and ghosts from the other world I have prayers that I have but to read aloud to keep them from laying a finger on me. It’s all right!’ he repeated with a wave of his hand, ‘let’s read.’ Going up to the lectern he saw some bundles of candles. ‘That’s good,’ thought the philosopher; ‘I must light up the whole church so that it may be as bright as by daylight. Oh, it is a pity that one must not smoke a pipe in the temple of God!’

And he proceeded to stick up wax candles at all the cornices, lecterns and images, not stinting them at all, and soon the whole church was flooded with light. Only overhead the darkness seemed somehow more profound, and the gloomy ikons looked even more sullenly out of their antique carved frames, which glistened here and there with specks of gilt. He went up to the coffin, looked timidly at the face of the dead – and could not help closing his eyelids with a faint shudder: such terrible, brilliant beauty!

He turned and tried to move away; but with the strange curiosity, the self-contradictory feeling, which dogs a man especially in times of terror, he could not, as he withdrew, resist taking another look. And then, after the same shudder, he looked again. The striking beauty of the dead maiden certainly seemed terrible. Possibly, indeed, she would not have overwhelmed him with such panic fear if she had been a little less lovely. But there was in her features nothing faded, tarnished, dead; her face was living, and it seemed to the philosopher that she was looking at him with closed eyes. He even fancied that a tear was oozing from under her right eyelid, and, when it rested on her cheek, he saw distinctly that it was a drop of blood.

He walked hastily away to the lectern, opened the book, and to give himself more confidence began reading in a very loud voice. His voice smote upon the wooden church walls, which had so long been deaf and silent; it rang out, forlorn, unechoed, in a deep bass in the absolutely dead stillness, and seemed somehow uncanny even to the reader himself. ‘What is there to be afraid of?’ he was saying meanwhile to himself. ‘She won’t rise up out of her coffin, for she will fear the word of God. Let her lie there! And a fine Cossack I am, if I should be scared. Well, I’ve drunk a drop too much – that’s why it seems dreadful. I’ll have a pinch of snuff. Ah, the good snuff! Fine snuff, good snuff!’ However, as he turned over the pages, he kept taking sidelong glances at the coffin, and an involuntary feeling seemed whispering to him: ‘Look, look, she is going to get up! See, she’ll sit up, she’ll look out from the coffin!’

But the silence was deathlike; the coffin stood motionless; the candles shed a perfect flood of light. A church lighted up at night with a dead body in it and no living soul near is full of terror!

Raising his voice, he began singing in various keys, trying to drown the fears that still lurked in him, but every minute he turned his eyes to the coffin, as though asking, in spite of himself: ‘What if she does sit up, if she gets up?’

But the coffin did not stir. If there had but been some sound! some living creature! There was not so much as a cricket churring in the corner! There was nothing but the faint splutter of a far-away candle, the light tap of a drop of wax falling on the floor.

‘What if she were to get up …?’

She was raising her head …

He looked at her wildly and rubbed his eyes. She was, indeed, not lying down now, but sitting up in the coffin. He looked away, and again turned his eyes with horror on the coffin. She stood up … she was walking about the church with her eyes shut, moving her arms to and fro as though trying to catch someone.

She was coming straight towards him. In terror he drew a circle round him; with an effort he began reading the prayers and pronouncing the exorcisms which had been taught him by a monk who had all his life seen witches and evil spirits.

She stood almost on the very line; but it was clear that she had not the power to cross it, and she turned livid all over like one who has been dead for several days. Homa had not the courage to look at her; she was terrifying. She ground her teeth and opened her dead eyes; but, seeing nothing, turned with fury – that was apparent in her quivering face – in another direction, and, flinging her arms, clutched in them each column and corner, trying to catch Homa. At last she stood still, holding up a menacing finger, and lay down again in her coffin.

The philosopher could not recover his self-possession, but kept gazing at the narrow dwelling place of the witch. At last the coffin suddenly sprang up from its place and with a hissing sound began flying all over the church, zigzagging through the air in all directions.

The philosopher saw it almost over his head, but at the same time he saw that it could not cross the circle he had drawn, and he redoubled his exorcisms. The coffin dropped down in the middle of the church and stayed there without moving. The corpse got up out of it, livid and greenish. But at that instant the crow of the cock was heard in the distance; the corpse sank back in the coffin and closed the lid.

The philosopher’s heart was throbbing and the sweat was streaming down him; but, emboldened by the cock’s crowing, he read on more rapidly the pages he ought to have read through before. At the first streak of dawn the sacristan came to relieve him, together with old Yavtuh, who was at that time performing the duties of a beadle.

On reaching his distant sleeping-place, the philosopher could not for a long time get to sleep; but weariness gained the upper hand at last and he slept on till dinner-time. When he woke up, all the events of the night seemed to him to have happened in a dream. To keep up his strength he was given at dinner a mug of vodka.

Over dinner he soon grew lively, made a remark or two, and devoured a rather large sucking pig almost unaided; but some feeling he could not have explained made him unable to bring himself to speak of his adventures in the church, and to the inquiries of the inquisitive he replied: ‘Yes, all sorts of strange things happened.’ The philosopher was one of those people who, if they are well fed, are moved to extraordinary benevolence. Lying down with his pipe in his teeth he watched them all with a honied look in his eyes and kept spitting to one side.

After dinner the philosopher was in excellent spirits. He went round the whole village and made friends with almost everybody; he was kicked out of two cottages, indeed; one good-looking young woman caught him a good smack on the back with a spade when he took it into his head to try her shift and skirt, and inquire what stuff they were made of. But as evening approached the philosopher grew more pensive. An hour before supper almost all the servants gathered together to play kragli – a sort of skittles in which long sticks are used instead of balls, and the winner has the right to ride on the loser’s back. This game became very entertaining for the spectators; often the drover, a man as broad as a pancake, was mounted on the swineherd, a feeble little man, who was nothing but wrinkles. Another time it was the drover who had to bow his back, and Dorosh, leaping on it, always said: ‘What a fine bull!’ The more dignified of the company sat in the kitchen doorway. They looked on very gravely, smoking their pipes, even when the young people roared with laughter at some witty remark from the drover or Spirid. Homa tried in vain to give himself up to this game; some gloomy thought stuck in his head like a nail. At supper, in spite of his efforts to be merry, terror grew within him as the darkness spread over the sky.

‘Come, it’s time to set off, Mr Seminarist!’ said his friend, the grey-headed Cossack, getting up from the table, together with Dorosh; ‘let us go to our task.’

Homa was taken to the church again in the same way; again he was left there alone and the door was locked upon him. As soon as he was alone, fear began to take possession of him again. Again he saw the dark ikons, the gleaming frames, and the familiar black coffin standing in menacing stillness and immobility in the middle of the church.

‘Well,’ he said to himself, ‘now there’s nothing marvellous to me in this marvel. It was only alarming the first time. Yes, it was only rather alarming the first time, and even then it wasn’t so alarming; now it’s not alarming at all.’

He made haste to take his stand at the lectern, drew a circle around him, pronounced some exorcisms, and began reading aloud, resolving not to raise his eyes from the book and not to pay attention to anything. He had been reading for about an hour and was beginning to cough and feel rather tired; he took his horn out of his pocket and, before putting the snuff to his nose, stole a timid look at the coffin. His heart turned cold; the corpse was already standing before him on the very edge of the circle, and her dead, greenish eyes were fixed upon him. The philosopher shuddered, and a cold chill ran through his veins. Dropping his eyes to the book, he began reading the prayers and exorcisms more loudly, and heard the corpse again grinding her teeth and waving her arms trying to catch him. But, with a sidelong glance out of one eye, he saw that the corpse was feeling for him where he was not standing, and that she evidently could not see him. He heard a hollow mutter, and she began pronouncing terrible words with her dead lips; they gurgled hoarsely like the bubbling of boiling pitch. He could not have said what they meant; but there was something fearful in them. The philosopher understood with horror that she was making an incantation.

A wind blew through the church at her words, and there was a sound as of multitudes of flying wings. He heard the beating of wings on the panes of the church windows and on the iron window-frames, the dull scratching of claws upon the iron, and an immense troop thundering on the doors and trying to break in. His heart was throbbing violently all this time; closing his eyes, he kept reading prayers and exorcisms. At last there was a sudden shrill sound in the distance; it was a distant cock crowing. The philosopher, utterly spent, stopped and took breath.

When they came in to fetch him, they found him more dead than alive; he was leaning with his back against the wall while, with his eyes almost starting out of his head, he stared at the Cossacks as they came in. They could scarcely get him along and had to support him all the way back. On reaching the courtyard, he pulled himself together and bade them give him a mug of vodka. When he had drunk it, he stroked down the hair on his head and said: ‘There are lots of foul things of all sorts in the world! And the panics they give one, there …’ With that the philosopher waved his hand in despair.

The company sitting round him bowed their heads, hearing such sayings. Even a small boy, whom everybody in the servants’ quarters felt himself entitled to depute in his place when it was a question of cleaning the stables or fetching water, even this poor youngster stared open-mouthed at the philosopher.

At that moment the old cook’s assistant, a peasant woman, not yet past middle age, a terrible coquette, who always found something to pin to her cap – a bit of ribbon, a pink, or even a scrap of coloured paper, if she had nothing better – passed by, in a tightly girt apron, which displayed her round, sturdy figure.

‘Good day, Homa!’ she said, seeing the philosopher. ‘Aie, aie, aie! what’s the matter with you?’ she shrieked, clasping her hands.

‘Why, what is it, silly woman?’

‘Oh, my goodness! Why, you’ve gone quite grey!’

‘Aha! why, she’s right!’ Spirid pronounced, looking attentively at the philosopher. ‘Why, you have really gone as grey as our old Yavtuh.’

The philosopher, hearing this, ran headlong to the kitchen, where he had noticed on the wall a fly-blown triangular bit of looking-glass before which were stuck forget-me-nots, periwinkles and even wreaths of marigolds, testifying to its importance for the toilet of the finery-loving coquette. With horror he saw the truth of their words: half of his hair had in fact turned white.

Homa Brut hung his head and abandoned himself to reflection. ‘I will go to the master,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll tell him all about it and explain that I cannot go on reading. Let him send me back to Kiev straight away.’

With these thoughts in his mind he bent his steps towards the porch of the house.

The sotnik was sitting almost motionless in his parlour. The same hopeless grief which the philosopher had seen in his face before was still apparent. Only his cheeks were more sunken. It was evident that he had taken very little food, or perhaps had not eaten at all. The extraordinary pallor of his face gave it a look of stony immobility.

‘Good day!’ he pronounced on seeing Homa, who stood, cap in hand, at the door. ‘Well, how goes it with you? All satisfactory?’

‘It’s satisfactory, all right; such devilish doings, that one can but pick up one’s cap and take to one’s heels.’

‘How’s that?’

‘Why, your daughter, your honour … Looking at it reasonably, she is, to be sure, of noble birth, nobody is going to gainsay it; only, saving your presence, God rest her soul …’

‘What of my daughter?’

‘She had dealings with Satan. She gives one such horrors that there’s no reading scripture at all.’

‘Read away! read away! She did well to send for you; she took much care, poor darling, about her soul and tried to drive away all evil thoughts with prayers.’

‘That’s as you like to say, your honour; upon my soul, I cannot go on with it!’

‘Read away!’ the sotnik persisted in the same persuasive voice, ‘you have only one night left; you will do a Christian deed and I will reward you.’

‘But whatever rewards … Do as you please, your honour, but I will not read!’ Homa declared resolutely.

‘Listen, philosopher!’ said the sotnik, and his voice grew firm and menacing. ‘I don’t like these pranks. You can behave like that in your seminary; but with me it is different. When I flog, it’s not the same as your rector’s flogging. Do you know what good leather whips are like?’

‘I should think I do!’ said the philosopher, dropping his voice; ‘everybody knows what leather whips are like: in a large dose, it’s quite unendurable.’

‘Yes, but you don’t know yet how my lads can lay them on!’ said the sotnik, menacingly, rising to his feet, and his face assumed an imperious and ferocious expression that betrayed the unbridled violence of his character, only subdued for the time by sorrow.

‘Here they first give a sound flogging, then sprinkle with vodka, and begin over again. Go along, go along, finish your task! If you don’t – you’ll never get up again. If you do – a thousand gold pieces!’

‘Oho, ho! he’s a stiff one!’ thought the philosopher as he went out: ‘he’s not to be trifled with. Wait a bit, friend; I’ll cut and run, so that you and your hounds will never catch me.’

And Homa made up his mind to run away. He only waited for the hour after dinner when all the servants were accustomed to lie about in the hay in the barns and to give vent to such snores and wheezing that the backyard sounded like a factory.

The time came at last. Even Yavtuh closed his eyes as he lay stretched out in the sun. With fear and trembling, the philosopher stealthily made his way into the pleasure garden, from which he fancied he could more easily escape into the open country without being observed. As is usual with such gardens, it was dreadfully neglected and overgrown, and so made an extremely suitable setting for any secret enterprise. Except for one little path, trodden by the servants on their tasks, it was entirely hidden in a dense thicket of cherry-trees, elders and burdock, which thrust up their tall stems covered with clinging pinkish burs. A network of wild hop was flung over this medley of trees and bushes of varied hues, forming a roof over them, clinging to the fence and falling, mingled with wild bell-flowers, from it in coiling snakes. Beyond the fence, which formed the boundary of the garden, there came a perfect forest of rank grass and weeds, which looked as though no one cared to peep enviously into it, and as though any scythe would be broken to bits trying to mow down the stout stubbly stalks.

When the philosopher tried to get over the fence, his teeth chattered and his heart beat so violently that he was frightened at it. The skirts of his long coat seemed to stick to the ground as though someone had nailed them down. As he climbed over, he fancied he heard a voice shout in his ears with a deafening hiss: ‘Where are you off to?’ The philosopher dived into the long grass and fell to running, frequently stumbling over old roots and trampling upon moles. He saw that when he came out of the rank weeds he would have to cross a field, and that beyond it lay a dark thicket of blackthorn, in which he thought he would be safe. He expected after making his way through it to find the road leading straight to Kiev. He ran across the field at once and found himself in the thicket.

He crawled through the prickly bushes, paying a toll of rags from his coat on every thorn, and came out into a little hollow. A willow with spreading branches bent down almost to the earth. A little brook sparkled pure as silver. The first thing the philosopher did was to lie down and drink, for he was insufferably thirsty. ‘Good water!’ he said, wiping his lips; ‘I might rest here!’

‘No, we had better go straight ahead; they’ll be coming to look for you!’

These words rang out above his ears. He looked round – before him was standing Yavtuh. ‘Curse Yavtuh!’ the philosopher thought in his wrath; ‘I could take you and fling you … And I could batter in your ugly face and all of you with an oak post.’

‘You needn’t have gone such a long way round,’ Yavtuh went on, ‘you’d have done better to keep to the road I have come by, straight by the stable. And it’s a pity about your coat. It’s good cloth. What did you pay a yard for it? But we’ve walked far enough; it’s time to go home.’