A Night in the Cemetery

FIRE IN THE STEPPE: AN EVIL NIGHT

You can hear the dogs barking and howling in an alarming way, as dogs usually do when they sense an enemy but cannot understand who it is or where it is coming from. There are unclear, muffled sounds flying though the dark autumn air, disturbing the silence of the night: muttering of human voices from far off, the busy rush of footsteps, front gates squeaking, the clomping of horseshoes, and noises made by their riders.

Three dark figures stand motionless in the Dadkins’ estate garden, right in the middle of its main allée, in an empty flower bed. The first recognizable as the night guard on watch, Sam. A distinct figure in his bell-shaped sheepskin coat, tied with a rope instead of a belt, with pieces of fur hanging from it. A tall, thin-legged man in a jacket, with enormous ears, stands next to him. This is Gabriel the butler. The third is dressed in a vest over a loosely hanging shirt, a strongly built, but rather clumsy man, whose angular form brings to mind a wooden doll. He is also known as Gabriel the groom.

All three men grip the top of a short picket fence tightly and look off in the distance.

“Holy mother, save and protect us from this evil!” mumbles Sam in an excited voice. “Just look at that! God is furious at us. Oh, Holy Mother!”

“This is not far from us,” says Gabriel the butler in a bass voice. “Six miles, not more. I believe it is happening at the German farms.”

“No, the German farms are further to the left,” Gabriel the groom interrupts him. “The German farms should be behind this birch tree. No, it must be the Kreshensky village.”

“Yes, it is,” agrees Sam.

They hear someone with bare feet running across the terrace, stomping his feet on the floor and closing the door with a crash. The big house is immersed in sleep. The windows are as black as tar and look eerily gloomy, with only one window barely lit from the inside by a pink night lamp. The young landlady, Maria Sergeevna, sleeps in that room. Her husband, Nikolai Alexeevich, went out to play cards, and has not yet returned.

“Anastasia!” they hear someone crying.

“The landlady is awake,” says Gabriel the butler.

“Wait, brothers, I want to ask her to give me a few horses, and all the farmhands available on the estate, and we will head to the fire as fast as we can. People in that village are stupid, and they will need someone to tell them what to do.”

“Really? Just look at you! You’re going to tell them what to do. Look at yourself—your teeth are chattering from fear! There are enough people there without you. Policemen, chiefs, other landlords—they should all be there already.”

A glass door leading to the terrace opens with a clinking sound, and the landlady herself comes out.

“What is this? What is the meaning of all this noise?” she asks, as she comes closer to the three figures. “Sam, is it you?”

Before Sam has a chance to answer her, she jumps back, horrified, and clasps her hands. “Oh my God, what a terrible misfortune,” she cries. “How long it has been going on? And where is it? Why didn’t you wake me up?”

The southern part of the sky is densely filled with a red glow. The sky looks inflamed, irritated, with the evil red color flickering and trembling across it, almost pulsing in its appearance. They can see the hills and the bare trees against this huge crimson background. They hear a convulsive, hurrying noise of the church bells ringing with the fire warning.

“This is terrible, terrible,” says the landlady.

“Where is the fire?”

“Not far, in the Kreshensky village.”

“Oh my God! Nikolai is not at home, and I don’t know what to do. Does the manager know?”

“He already left, with three barrels.”

“Those poor people!”

“And most important, madam, they don’t have a river. There is only one pond nearby, but it isn’t in the village itself.”

“Is it possible to put out a fire like this with water?” asks Gabriel the butler. “The most important thing is not to let the fire grow bigger. The people who know how to fight fires should go and take command. Madam, please let me go there.”

“You should not go,” answers Maria Sergeevna. “You will only interfere.”

Gabriel coughs disappointingly, and takes a step back. Sam and Gabriel the groom both don’t like the too-clever remarks of the arrogant-speaking butler in the jacket, and are satisfied hearing the landlady’s remark.

“We could not do much anyway,” says Sam.

Then both of them, trying to look smart in the madam’s eyes, start talking about the fire, using many religious words, appealing for God’s help, “Look, this is how God is punishing us people for our sins. That’s it! A man sins and does not know what he is doing, but God, you know, he knows everything …”

The sight of this glow has the same effect on all of them. The landlady and the servants alike feel inner cold—the kind of cold where the hands, the head, and the voice start to tremble. The fear is great, but their impatience is even greater. They want to get to a higher elevation to see the fire, its smoke, and the people better. Their desire to experience this emotional situation and its stress becomes stronger than their compassion for the misfortunes of others.

When the glow becomes pale, seemingly smaller, Gabriel happily proclaims: “It looks like they have put the fire out. God helps them!”

However, a note of disappointment can be heard in his voice. When the glow in the sky grows, becoming larger, he sighs and desperately waves his hand in the air. From the loud breaths he is making while trying to stand up on his tiptoes, it is obvious that he is expressing some sort of pleasure.

They all know that they are observing a terrible disaster, but they are not satisfied with their vantage point, wanting to get a better view. This dubious feeling is a natural one, and it should not be reproached.

No matter how frightening it is, it was a beautiful sight, people have to admit.

They hear the sound of thunder, someone making heavy steps on the iron roof of the house.

“Ivan, is it you?” asks Sam.

“Yes, I am here with Anastasia.”

“You can fall down from the roof, boy! Can you see better from over there?”

“Yes, I can. It is in the Kreshensky village, brothers!”

“We can probably see it better through the top window in the attic, right under the roof,” says Maria Sergeevna. “Maybe we can go there and have a look?”

The sight of the disaster brings people closer together. Sam and both Gabriels go into the house. With pale faces, they tremble all over, waiting to get a better glimpse of this sight. They maneuver though the rooms and climb the stairs to the top, headed for the attic. It is dark there. The candle held by Gabriel the butler does not light this darkness, but only allows dim spots to be seen around them. The landlady sees the attic for the first time. Its beams, the dark corners, the chimney pipes, the smell of the spiders’ webs and dust, and the floor covered with a layer of soil—all this looks like a stage designed for a fairy tale.

“Is it the place where the house sprite lives?” she thinks.

They can see the fire better. A long and bright golden line stretches along the horizon. It moves and flows like a liquid.

“Look, it seems that more than one house is on fire.”

“Yes, brother, at least half of the village is burning,” says Gabriel the groom.

“Listen! The church bells have stopped! It means that the church must be on fire!”

“Their church is made of wood,” says the landlady, suffocating from the heavy smell coming from the Sam’s sheepskin coat. “What a misfortune!”

They all look for as long as they can, and then head down. Soon, the landlord, Nikolai Alexeevich, has returned home. He has had quite a few drinks while visiting his friends, and now drunk, he snores loudly, his body slumped in the carriage. As they wake him up, he looks at the glow with a blank expression on his face, and says,

“Give me a saddled horse! Faster! F-a-a-aster!”

“Please, don’t go there!” his wife says vehemently. “Tell me, how can you go anywhere in your state? Go back to sleep!”

“A horse,” he orders, ignoring her as he turns around. He is brought a horse. He climbs into the saddle, shakes his head, and then disappears into the darkness.

The dogs continue to howl and bark incessantly, as if they sense a wolf or danger. Women and young boys begin to gather around Sam and both Gabriels. The people keep making loud exclamations and sighs, making the sign of the cross regularly.

A horse rider rushes into the yard.

“Six people burned alive,” he mumbles, out of breath. “Half of the village is burned. Carpenter Sam’s mother has burned.”

The landlady’s impatience has reached its limits. The constant movements of people around her and loud conversations have excited her. She orders a carriage and goes off to see the fire in person. The night is cold and dark. The soil is slightly hardened by the early-morning frost, and the horseshoes make a knocking sound against it, like hitting a carpet. Gabriel the butler sits next to the groom, impatiently moving in his seat. He constantly turns his head, looking back and mumbling something, as if the fate of the Kreshensky village depends solely on him.

“The most important thing is not to let the fire grow bigger,” he mutters. “They should know this, but how could those peasants know anything?”

After they go for five or six miles, the landlady sees something so awful—something which not everyone should see more than once in their lifetime, if at all. The whole village is alit, as if it’s a huge bonfire. The constantly moving massive flame blinds her. Everything is completely immersed in this fire, as if in fog: the houses, the trees, and the church. The bright light, as bright as noon, is mixed with clouds of smoke and transparent vapor. These golden tongues slide along the black carcasses, licking them, and flickering joyfully. The clouds of red and golden dust fly up into the sky and, as if made on purpose, give the stronger impression of a flock of alarmed doves diving into these clouds of smoke and fire. A strange mixture of sound is filling the air—the terrible noise of cracking wood; the flickering of the flame in the wind, which reminds of thousands of bird wings—mixed with human voices, animal sounds, and the squeaking of wheels.

The church is a terrible sight. Flames and clouds of dense, dark smoke fly from its windows. The church tower hangs above the massive flame, as if it’s a dark giant; it is completely burned, but the bells still hang. No one knows why they have not yet fallen.

Swarms of people are pushing each other, reminiscent of a village fair, or the first ferry after the river floods in spring. People, horses, carriages, piles of belongings, barrels—all this moves, stumbles, and makes noises. The landlady looks at this chaos and hears the piercing cry of her husband:

“Send him to the hospital! Pour some water on him!”

Gabriel the butler stands on the cart, waving with his hands. He is well lit, and with his long shadow appears much taller than in real life.

“It is obvious that someone set this on fire,” he cries, moving about. “Hey, you! You should have stopped the fire, and not let it grow! You should not let it grow!”

All around her, the landlady could see pale, stupid, motionless faces, as if carved from wood. The dogs are howling, the hens shrieking in fright.

“Let me pass! Let me pass!” cry the neighbors, who have just arrived.

What an unusual picture! Maria Sergeevna does not believe her eyes, and if not for the great heat, she would have believed that this was all a dream.