The Collected tales of Nikolai Gogol

THE

RICHARD PEVEAR

LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY

PREFACE

TRANSLATORS' NOTE

Chancellor

II

III

VI

VII

IX

XI

XIII

I

II

III

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

PETERSBURG TALES

II

III

PART II

NOTES

3. See note 7 to "Old World Landowners."

PETERSBURG TALES

1. See note 7 to "Nevsky Prospect."

3. See note 7 to "Nevsky Prospect."

1. See note 20 to "The Portrait."

THE

COLLECTED

TALES OF

NIKOLAI GOGOL

Translated and Annotated by

RICHARD PEVEAR

and

LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY

St. John's Eve 3

The Night Before Christmas 19

The Terrible Vengeance 64

Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt 106

Old World Landowners 132

Viy 155

The Story of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich 194

Nevsky Prospect 245

The Diary of a Madman 279

The Nose 300

The Carriage 327

The Portrait 340

The Overcoat 394

PREFACE

Art has the provinces in its blood. Art is provincial in principle, preserving for itself a naive, external, astonished and envious outlook,

– Andrei Sinyavsky, In Gogol's Shadow

Nikolai Vassilyevich Gogol was born on April 1, 1809, in the village of Sorochintsy, Mirgorod district, Poltava province, in the Ukraine, also known as Little Russia. His childhood was spent on Vassilyevka, a modest estate belonging to his mother. Nearby was the town of Dikanka, once the property of Kochubey, the most famous hetman of the independent Ukraine. In the church of Dikanka there was an icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, for whom Gogol was named.

In 1821 Gogol was sent to boarding school in Nezhin, near Kiev. He graduated seven years later, and in December 1828, at the age of nineteen, left his native province to try his fortunes in the Russian capital. There he fled from posts as a clerk in two government ministries, failed a tryout for the imperial theater (he had not been a brilliant student at school, but had shown unusual talent as a mimic and actor, and his late father had been an amateur play- wright), printed at his own expense a long and very bad romantic poem, then bought back all the copies and burned them, and in 1830 published his first tale, "St. John's Eve," in the March issue of the magazine Fatherland Notes. There followed, in September 1831 and March 1832, the two volumes of Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, each containing four tales on Ukrainian themes with a prologue by their supposed collector, the beekeeper Rusty Panko. They were an immediate success and made the young provincial a famous writer.

Baron Delvig, friend and former schoolmate of the poet Alexander Pushkin and editor of the almanac Northern Flowers, had introduced Gogol to Pushkin's circle even before that, and in 1831 he had made the acquaintance of the poet himself. Writing to Pushkin on August 21 of that year, Gogol told him how his publisher had gone to the shop where the first volume of Evenings was being printed and found the typesetters all laughing merrily as they set the book. Shortly afterwards, Pushkin mentioned the incident in one of the first published notices of Gogol's work, a letter to the editor of a literary supplement, which began: "I have just read Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka. It amazed me. Here is real gaiety-honest, unconstrained, without mincing, without primness. And in places what poetry! What sensitivity! All this is so unusual in our present-day literature that I still haven't recovered." At twenty-two Gogol was well launched both in literature and in society.

In 1835 came Mirgorod, another two-volume collection of Ukrainian tales, and Arabesques, a group of articles and tales reflecting the life of Petersburg, including "Nevsky Prospect," "The Diary of a Madman," and the first version of "The Portrait." By then Gogol had also begun work on the novel-poem Dead Souls. When Pushkin began to publish his magazine The Contemporary in 1836, he included tales by Gogol in the early issues-"The Carriage" in the first and "The Nose" in the third. April of that same year saw the triumph of his comedy The Inspector General.

In June 1836, at the height of his fame, Gogol left Russia for Switzerland, Paris, and Rome. Of the remaining sixteen years of his life, he would spend nearly twelve abroad. He returned in the fall of 1841 to see to the publication of the first volume of Dead Souls. When the book finally appeared in May 1842, its author again left the country, this time for a stretch of six years. Later in 1842, a four-volume edition of Gogol's collected writings (minus Dead Souls) was brought out in Petersburg. Among the previously unpublished works in the third volume was his last and most famous tale, "The Overcoat." By then, though he was to live another decade, his creative life was virtually over. It had lasted some twelve years. And in terms of his tales alone, it had been even briefer, condensed almost entirely into the period between his arrival in Petersburg and his first trip abroad in 1836.

The road that brought Gogol from the depths of Little Russia intersected with Nevsky Prospect, "all-powerful Nevsky Prospect," in the heart of the capital. His art was born at that crossroads. It had the provinces in its blood, as Andrei Sinyavsky puts it, in two senses: because Little Russia supplied the setting and material for more than half of his tales, and, more profoundly, because even in Petersburg, Gogol preserved a provincials "naive, external, astonished and envious outlook." He did not write from within Ukrainian popular tradition, he wrote looking back at it. Yet he also never entered into the life of the capital, the life he saw flashing by on Nevsky Prospect, where "the devil himself lights the lamps only so as to show everything not as it really looks"-this enforced, official reality of ministries and ranks remained impenetrable to him. Being on the outside of both worlds, Gogol seems to have been destined to become a "pure writer" in a peculiarly modern sense.

And indeed Gogol's art, despite its romantic ghosts and folkloric trappings, is strikingly modern in two ways: first, his works are free verbal creations, based on their own premises rather than on the conventions of ninteenth-century fiction; and, second, they are highly theatrical in presentation, concentrated on figures and gestures, constructed in a way that, while admitting any amount of digression, precludes the social and psychological analysis of classical realism. His images remain ambiguous and uninterpreted, which is what makes them loom so large before us. These expressive quali- ties of Gogol's art influenced Dostoevsky decisively, turning him from a social romantic into a "fantastic realist," and they made Gogol the father of Russian modernism. His leap from the province to the capital also carried him forward in time, so that, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the symbolist Andrei Bely could say: "We still do not know what Gogol is."

A vogue for Little Russia already existed when Gogol arrived in the capital. The novelist Vassily Narezhny (1780-1825) had recently published two comic novels portraying Ukrainian life and customs- The Seminarian (1824) and The Two Ivans, or The Passion for Lawsuits (1825). In 1826 a leading romantic of Ukrainian origin, Orest Somov (1793-1833), had begun to publish a series of tales based on the folklore of the region. And Anton Pogorelsky (1787- 1836), superintendent of the Kharkov school district, had used a Ukrainian setting for a volume of fantastic tales entitled The Double, or My Evenings in Little Russia (1829). The province offered an ideal combination of the native and the exotic, the real and the fantastic, peasant earthiness and pastoral grace. The landscape of Little Russia is open steppe, not the forests of the north; the climate is sunny, warm, southern, conducive to laziness and merrymaking; the earth is abundant; the cottages, built not of logs but of cob or whitewashed brick, are sunk in flourishing orchards; the men wear drooping mustaches, grow long topknots on their shaved heads, and go around in bright-colored balloon trousers. Here was a whole culture, with its heroic past of successful struggle against the Turks on one side and the Poles on the other, that could be taken as an embodiment of the Russian national spirit. And so it was taken in the Petersburg of the 1820s.

Gogol, however, seems to have paid little attention to the details of Ukrainian life while he lived there. He was bent on putting the place behind him, on winning glory in the capital, on performing some lofty deed for the good of all Russia, on becoming a great poet in the German romantic style (the title of his burnt poem was Hans Kuchelgarten). It was only in Petersburg that he discovered the new fashion for the Ukraine and sensed, in Sinyavsky's words, "a 'social commission' from that side, a certain breath of air in the literary lull of the capital, already sated with the

Caucasus and mountaineers and expecting something brisk, fresh, popular from semi-literate Cossackland." Four months after his arrival, on April 30, 1829, he wrote to his mother:

You know the customs and ways of our Little Russians very well, and so I'm sure you will not refuse to communicate them to me in our correspondence. That is very, very necessary for me. I expect from you in your next letter a complete description of the costume of a village deacon, from his underclothes to his boots, with the names used by the most rooted, ancient, undeveloped Little Russians; also the names, down to the last ribbon, for the various pieces of clothing worn by our village maidens, as well as by married women, and by muzhiks… the exact names for clothing worn in the time of the hetmans… a minute description of a wedding, not omitting the smallest detail… a few words about carol singing, about St. John's Eve, about water sprites. There are lots of superstitions, horror stories, traditions, various anecdotes, and so on, current among the people: all of that will be of great interest to me…

So it was with the help of his mother's memory, plus a few books of local history and old Ukrainian epic songs, that Gogol set about creating the Little Russia of Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka and Mirgorod.

It is a world of proud, boastful Cossacks, of black-browed beauties, of witches, devils, magic spells and enchantments, of drowsy farms and muddy little towns-that is, a stage-set Ukraine, more operatic than real. Holidays and feasting are always close by-in "St. John's Eve" and "The Night Before Christmas" obviously, but also in the wedding that begins "The Terrible Vengeance," in the banqueting that runs through the Mirgorod tales and appears again in "The Carriage," a perfect little anecdote that belongs to this same world. Festive occasions grant special privileges; on festive nights fates are revealed or decided, lovers are separated, enemies are brought together; the natural and the supernatural mingle for good or ill, for comic or horrific effect. The expanded possibilities of festive reality justified the freedom with which Gogol constructed his narratives. But of the real peasant, of conditions under serfdom, of Ukrainian society and its conflicts at the time, there is no more trace in Gogol's tales, even those of the most realistic cast, than there was in his father's comedies. His characters, as Michel Aucouturier notes in the preface to his French translation of Evenings, "are not typical representatives of the Little Russian peasantry, but the young lovers and old greybeards of the theater, Ukrainian descendants of the Cleantes and Elises, the Orgons and Gerontes of Moliere."

The more surprising is the reputation Gogol acquired early, among both conservatives and liberals, as a painter of reality, the founder of the "natural school." Gogol's appearance in Russian literature was so enigmatic that it seems his first critics (Pushkin excepted), while they liked what they read, could not account for their liking of it and invented reasons that were simply beside the point. The real reason was no doubt the unusual texture of Gogol's writing. His prose is a self-conscious artistic medium that mimics the popular manner but in fact represents something other, something quite alien to the old art of storytelling.

In his essay "The Storyteller" (1936), Walter Benjamin wrote: "Experience passed on from mouth to mouth is the source from which all storytellers have drawn." And he noted further that "every real story… contains, openly or covertly, something useful. The usefulness may, in one case, consist in a moral; in another, in some practical advice; in a third, in a proverb or maxim. In every case the storyteller is a man who has counsel for his readers… Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom." If we turn to Gogol's tales with such words as "experience," "practical advice," "counsel," and "wisdom" in mind, we will see that they are total strangers to the "real story" as Benjamin defines it. Memory is the medium of storytelling, both in the experience that is passed on from mouth to mouth and in the storyteller's act of telling, which is always a retelling. Though he may vary the tale each time he tells it, he will insist that he is faithfully repeating what he heard from earlier storytellers; otherwise it would be something made up, a fiction, a he. Memory is the storyteller's authority, the Muse-derived element of his art. He has the whole tale, the plot, the sequence of events, even the embellishments, in mind before he tells it. Gogol, we might say, has nothing in mind. Memory plays no part in his work. He does not know where the act of writing will lead him. In other words, he belongs not to the order of tradition but to the order of invention. And his best inventions come to him in the writing; he happens upon them- Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka's dream, for instance, which is so unexpected and so transcends the rest of the story that he simply breaks off after it. Hence his way of proceeding by digressions, which often turn out to be the main point of the tale; hence his scorn for the accepted rules of art-unity of action, logical development, formal coherence-and his avoidance of "meaning" and motivation. The discovery of the unaccountable, of the absence of an experience to be passed on, left him permanently surprised. His work was the invention of forms to express it.

If we take what might seem the most traditional of Gogol's tales-"The Terrible Vengeance," for example, or "Viy" (which Gogol calls a "folk legend" and claims to retell almost as simply as he heard it)-we will see that their procedure is precisely antitra-ditional. "The Terrible Vengeance," far from being a naive epic tale of Cossack life, is a studied imitation of the epic manner, a conscious experiment in rhythmic prose, with inevitable elements of parody and a quite unconvincing pathos. No folktale or epic song would end with what amounts to its own prologue, explaining the action after the fact. The structure is highly artificial and peculiarly Gogolian (it occurs again in "The Portrait" and in the first part of Dead Souls), showing his concern with the act of composition and his unconcern with meaning. So, too, in folktales about Ivan the Fool, the hero traditionally undergoes three tests and wins the beautiful daughter in the end. Gogol's "Viy" belongs to the same general type, but the daughter is hardly a prize, and the hero, Khoma Brut, comes to a sorry and quite untraditional end. What makes these stories are countless unpredictable incidents, details, and turns of phrase scattered along the way, and such bravura passages as the famous description of the Dnieper River in "The Terrible Vengeance," the erotic rendering of Khoma Brut's flight with the witch, and the tremendous finale of the tale with the appearance out of nowhere of the monster Viy (who, incidentally, has no source in folklore; he is Gogol's creature and appears literally out of nowhere).

Of this untraditional procedure Sinyavsky writes:

… the accent shifts from the object of speech to speech as a process of objectless intent, interesting in itself and exhausted by itself. Information that is a priori contendess shifts our attention from the material to the means of its verbal organization. Speech about useless objects enters consciousness as a thing, as a ponderable mass, as a fact of language valuable in itself. That is why we perceive Gogol's prose so distinctly as prose, and not as a habitual manner and generally accepted form of putting thoughts into words, nor as an appendix to the content and subject of the story. It has its content and even, if you wish, its subject in itself-this prose which steps forth in the free image of speech about facts not worth mentioning, speech in a pure sense about nothing.

If there is still a mimicry of traditional storytelling in a number of the earlier Ukrainian tales, in others we see much more clearly this shift to "a process of objectless intent," to "speech… about nothing" -particularly in "Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt," the last written of the Evenings, and in "Old World Landowners" and "The Story of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich" from Mirgorod. The element of the supernatural that triggers events in the other Ukrainian tales is almost entirely absent from "Shponka" and "Landowners." Almost, but not quite: Shponka's dream of the multiplying wife, and the she-cat that precipitates the end of the otherwise endless banality of the landowners' existence, are decisive incursions of the supernatural, or the other-natural, into the idyllic placidity of Little Russian farm life. In the story of the two Ivans, however, nothing of the sort happens, and the quarrel of the two friends proves unresolvable. The narrator ends with a dispirited exclamation: "It's dull in this world, gentlemen!" Beneath the unbroken surface of this banal local anecdote (there was in fact such an inseparable, litigious pair living in the town of Mirgorod) some extraordinary transformation should be about to happen, some new reality should be about to appear. For Gogol, the non-occurrence of this transformation became the most "supernatural" subject of all. He developed it in Dead Souls.

In the Petersburg tales the unaccountable sits squarely in the midst of things, like Major Kovalev's nose in the barber's loaf of bread. "Petersburg has no character," Gogol wrote to his mother in 1829, "the foreigners fattening themselves here no longer resemble foreigners, and the Russians in turn have become some sort of foreigners here and are no longer either the one or the other." Where identity is so fluid, memory finds nothing to grasp, no experience is durable enough to be passed on. The phantasmal Petersburg of later Russian literature-of Dostoevsky, Alexander Blok, Andrei Bely-made its first appearance in "Nevsky Prospect," the idea for which came to Gogol as early as 1831, when he wrote down some sketches of the Petersburg landscape. It is a landscape of mists, pale colors, dim light, the opposite of his native province, and peopled mainly by government officials of various ranks, among whom Gogol singled out a certain type of petty clerk, the "eternal titular councillor"-Mr. Poprishchin of "The Diary of a Madman," Akaky Akakievich of "The Overcoat"-a type that became as perennial in Russian literature as the phantasmal city that somehow exudes him but will not house him.

Nothing stands still on Nevsky Prospect. People of various ranks appear, disappear, reappear in other guises, changing constantly with the light. "The deceptive nature of reality," as Sinyav-sky notes, "is nowhere so openly and declaredly expressed by Gogol as in 'Nevsky Prospect.' It is not by chance that 'Nevsky Prospect' sets the tone for the other Petersburg tales." The unusual structure of the tale underscores the theme, framing two opposite cases of deception with a more general evocation of the city's atmosphere. Interestingly, in a note published in The Contemporary, Pushkin (who did not live to read "The Overcoat") called "Nevsky Prospect" the fullest, the most complete of Gogol's tales.

The order of ranks is also revealed in these tales as a deception, a pure fiction. Major Kovalev, hero of "The Nose," is a "collegiate assessor made in the Caucasus," meaning made rather quickly. He was "made" rather recently, as well, and is still quite proud of his advancement. One day his nose disappears and then turns up "by himself" in the street wearing the uniform of a state councillor, a civil-service rank roughly equivalent to the military rank of general. Major Kovalev is not even sure of the proper way to address him. The fiction of ranks is also at the center of "The Diary of a Madman." Here, for instance, the awarding of a decoration is described from the family dog's point of view. The dog notices that her usually taciturn master has begun talking to himself, saying, "Will I get it or won't I?" over and over again. A week later he comes home very happy:

All morning gentlemen in uniforms kept coming to him, congratulating him for something. At the table he was merrier than I'd ever seen him before, told jokes, and after dinner he held me up to his neck and said: "Look, Medji, what's this?" I saw some little ribbon. I sniffed it but found decidedly no aroma; finally I licked it on the sly: it was a bit salty.

The keeper of the "Diary," Mr. Poprishchin, also broods on the question of rank, because he is unhappily in love with his chief's daughter, who is in love with a handsome kammerjunker:

Several times already I've tried to figure out where all these differences come from. What makes me a titular councillor and why on earth am I a titular councillor? Maybe I'm some sort of count or general and only seem to be a titular councillor? Maybe I myself don't know who I am… can't I be promoted this minute to governor general, or intendant, or something else like that? I'd like to know, what makes me a titular councillor? Why precisely a titular councillor?

In the end he decides he is the king of Spain, an act of perfect fic-tionizing for which he is taken off to the madhouse.

"The Diary of a Madman" is Gogol's only first-person story, and Mr. Poprishchin is perhaps the most human of his characters. For brief moments a piercing note comes into his voice, as when he asks, "Why precisely a titular councillor?" or when he calls out his last words to his mother: "Dear mother, save your poor son! shed a tear on his sick head! see how they torment him! press the poor orphan to your breast! there's no place for him in the world!" We hear the same note, more briefly still, in the voice of that other titular councillor, Akaky Akakievich, when his fellow clerks torment him unbearably and he finally says: "Let me be. Why do you offend me?" There is something so strange, so pitiable in his voice that one young clerk never forgets it:

And long afterwards, in moments of the greatest merriment, there would rise before him the figure of the little clerk with the balding brow, uttering his penetrating words: "Let me be. Why do you offend me?"-and in these penetrating words rang other words: "I am your brother." And the poor young man would bury his face in his hands…

These moments of pathos led certain radical critics of Gogol's time, the influential Vissarion Belinsky first among them, to see Gogol as a champion of the little man and an enemy of the existing social order. The same view later became obligatory for Soviet critics. But whatever semblance of social criticism or satire there may be in the Petersburg tales is secondary and incidental. The pathos is momentary, and Gogol packs his clerks off to the madhouse or out of this world with a remarkably cool hand.

The young Dostoevsky, in his first novel, Poor Folk, challenged Gogol's unfeeling treatment of his petty clerk. Dostoevsky's hero, Makar Devushkin, is also a titular councillor and clearly modeled on Akaky Akakievich. He lives by the same endless copying work and suffers the same humiliating treatment from his fellow clerks. But instead of being an automaton whose highest ideals are embodied in a new overcoat, Makar Devushkin is endowed with inner life, personal dignity, and the ability to love. He is also a writer of sorts, concerned with developing his own style. And he is a literary critic. Makar Devushkin reads Gogol's "The Overcoat" and is offended: "And why write such things? And why is it necessary?… Well, it's a nasty little book… It's simply unheard of, because it's not even possible that there could be such a civil servant. No, I will make a complaint… I will make a formal complaint." Makar Devushkin shows the influence of sentimental French social novels on Russian literature of the 1840s. Nothing could be further from the spirit of such writing than Gogol's strange humor. The "laughter through tears of sorrow" that Pushkin noted elsewhere in his work is precisely laughter. The images it produces are too deeply ambiguous to bear any social message. He saw the fiction of ranks not as an evil to be exposed but as an instance of the groundlessness of reality itself and of the incanta-tory power of words.

Gogol labored more over "The Portrait" than over any of his other tales. The expanded second version was published seven years after the first, in the Collected Works of 1842. Belinsky considered it a total failure and thought he knew how it should have been written. He would have purified Gogol's "realism" of what he considered its alien admixture of the fantastic, "a childish fantas-magoria that could fascinate or frighten people only in the ignorant Middle Ages, but for us is neither amusing nor frightening, but simply ridiculous and boring." He goes on to explain:

No, such a realization of the story would do no particular credit to the most insignificant talent. But the thought of the story would be excellent if the poet had understood it in a contemporary spirit: in Chartkov he wanted to portray a gifted artist who ruined his talent, and consequently himself, through greed for money and the fascination of petty fame. And the realization of this thought should have been simple, without fantastic whimsies, grounded in everyday reality: then Gogol, given his talent, would have created something great.

Belinsky's suggestion amounts to the negation of the artist Gogol and his replacement by a "critical realist" of the dullest sort, a useful chicken instead of a bird of paradise. The contemporary spirit that Belinsky called for was of no interest at all to the author of "The Portrait." (A century later, in his little book on Gogol, Vladimir Nabokov, though no disciple of Belinsky, offered a similarly rationalizing reduction of Gogol's work, rejecting all the fantastic tales as juvenilia and allowing as the real Gogol only "The Overcoat," The Inspector General, and the first part of Dead Souls. His criterion was not social utility, however, but artistic idiosyncrasy, an appeal to "that secret depth of the human soul where the shadows of other worlds pass like the shadows of nameless and soundless ships.") Gogol had a different understanding of the artist's task and of his temptation. The fantastic and the diabolical were always essential dimensions of his world, never more so than in "The Portrait."

He toiled over "The Portrait" because it involved a judgment of his own work and its central question tormented him personally. It was not a question of the harmful influence of money or fame, but something more primitive and essential: the ambiguous power of the artistic image itself. And the more lifelike the image, the more perplexing the question. The ambition to achieve a perfect likeness might go beyond the artist's control and bring into the world something he never intended. Thus the portrait in Gogol's tale looks back at its viewers, looks back with the eyes of the Antichrist whose life it has magically prolonged. The corrupting power of the gold it bestows on its new purchaser, the painter Chartkov, is only a secondary effect, an extension of the evil present in the painted image itself. The question the tale explores is whether art is sacramental or sacrilegious, godlike or diabolical, and at what point it may change from one to the other. Some years later, in 1847, Gogol wrote a letter to his father confessor in which he declared himself "guilty and cursed" not only for having portrayed the devil, which he had done with the intention of mocking him, and not only for having painted nothing but grotesque images, being unable to describe a positive character properly, but first of all for having attemped to re-create each thing "as alive as a painter from life." In "The Portrait," the terms of this self-condemnation were already embodied dramatically.

Nature is always doubled by the supernatural in Gogol's tales, and the ordinary is always open to the assaults of the extraordinary. The reality of the capital is a closed fiction, an unrelieved banality, but filled with gigantic, unexpected forces, like the huge fist "the size of a clerk s head" that suddenly comes at Akaky Akakievich out of the darkness. If Akaky Akakievich transgressed the order of things by desiring a new overcoat (by desiring anything at all), and is punished most terribly for it in the phantasmal world of Petersburg, he also returns as a phantom himself and has his revenge. He momentarily becomes one of those unexpected forces, robs the important person of his overcoat, frightens a policeman away with "such a fist… as is not to be found even among the living," and, having grown much taller, vanishes completely into the darkness of night.

Gogol was made uneasy by his works. They detached themselves from him and lived on their own, producing effects he had not foreseen and that sometimes dismayed him. He would write commentaries after the fact, trying to reduce them to more commonplace and acceptable dimensions. But their initial freedom stayed with them. It was inherent in his method of composition, and in his astonishing artistic gift-astonishing first of all to himself.

Richard Pevear

TRANSLATORS' NOTE

Th is translation has been made from the Russian text of the six-volume Khudozhestvennaya Literatura edition (Moscow,

1952-53).

We have arranged the tales in the order of their composition. They include four of the eight tales from Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka (1831-32): "St. John's Eve" from the first volume, and "The Night Before Christmas," "The Terrible Vengeance," and "Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt" from the second. We have eliminated the forewords of the beekeeper Rusty Panko, but kept his footnotes, as well as the author's, for individual stories. We include three of the four tales from the two volumes of Mirgorod (1835), omitting only "Taras Bulba." Of the Petersburg tales (1835- 42; the collective title is not Gogol's but has become traditional), we include all except "Rome." "The Carriage" is a slight anomaly in this group but belongs to the same period. We give the expanded 1842 version of "The Portrait."

The question of rank is of central importance to the Petersburg tales. The following is the table of the civil service ranks as established by the emperor Peter the Great in 1722, with their military equivalents:

Chancellor

Commander in Chief

Actual Privy Councillor

General

Privy Councillor

Lieutenant General

Actual State Councillor

Major General

State Councillor

Collegiate Councillor

Colonel

Court Councillor

Lieutenant Colonel

Collegiate Assessor

Major (or Captain)

Titular Councillor

Staff Captain

Collegiate Secretary

Lieutenant

Secretary of Naval Constructions

Government Secretary

Second Lieutenant

Provincial Secretary

Collegiate Registrar

The rank of titular councillor conferred personal nobility; the rank of actual state councillor made it hereditary.

UKRAINIAN TALES

St. John's Eve

A True Story Told by the Beadle of the - Church

Foma Grigorievich WAS known to have this special sort of quirk: he mortally disliked telling the same thing over again. It sometimes happened, if you talked him into telling something a second time, that you'd look and he'd throw in some new thing or change it so it was unrecognizable. Once one of those gentlemen-it's hard for us simple folk to fit a name to them: writers, no, not writers, but the same as the dealers at our fairs: they snatch, they cajole, they steal all sorts of stuff, and then bring out booklets no thicker than a primer every month or week-one of those gentlemen coaxed this same story out of Foma Grigorievich, who then forgot all about it. Only there comes this same young sir from Poltava in a pea-green caftan, whom I've already mentioned and one of whose stories I think you've already read, toting a little book with him, and opening it in the middle, he shows it to us. Foma Grigorievich was just about to saddle his nose with his spectacles, but remembering that he'd forgotten to bind them with thread and stick it down with wax, he handed the book to me. Having a smattering of letters and not needing spectacles, I began to read. Before I had time to turn two pages, he suddenly grabbed my arm and stopped me.

"Wait! first tell me, what's that you're reading?"

I confess, I was a bit taken aback by such a question. "What's this I'm reading, Foma Grigorievich? Why, your true story, your very own words."

"Who told you those are my words?"

"What better proof, it's printed here: told by the beadle So-and- so."

"Spit on the head of the one who printed it! He's lying, the dad-blasted Muscovite! Did I say that? The devil it's the same! He's got a screw loose! Listen, I'll tell it to you now."

We moved closer to the table and he began.

My grandfather (God rest his soul! and may he eat nothing in that world but white rolls and poppyseed cakes with honey!) was a wonderful storyteller. Once he began to talk, you wouldn't budge from your place the whole day for listening. No comparison with some present-day babbler, who starts spouting off, and in such language as if he hadn't had anything to eat for three days- you just grab your hat and run. I remember like now-the old woman, my late mother, was still alive-how on a long winter's evening, when there was a biting frost outside that walled us up solidly behind the narrow window of our cottage, she used to sit by the comb, pulling the long thread out with her hand, rocking the cradle with her foot, and humming a song that I can hear as if it was now. An oil lamp, trembling and flickering as if frightened of something, lighted our cottage. The spindle whirred; and all of us children, clustered together, listened to our grandfather, who was so old he hadn't left the stove 1 in five years. But his wondrous talk about olden times, about Cossack raids, about the Polacks, about the mighty deeds of Podkova, Poltora Kozhukha, and Sagai-dachny, 2 never interested us as much as his stories about some strange marvel of old, which sent shivers all through us and made our hair stand on end. Now and then fear would take such hold of you that everything in the evening appeared like God knows what monster. If you happened to step out of the cottage at night for something, you'd think a visitor from the other world had gone to lie down in your bed. And may I never tell this story another time if I didn't often mistake my own blouse, from a distance, for a curled-up devil at the head of the bed. But the main thing in my grandfather's stories was that he never in his life told a lie, and whatever he used to say, that was precisely what had happened. I'll tell one of his wonderful stories for you now. I know there are lots of those smart alecks who do some scribbling in the courts and even read civic writings, and who, if they were handed a simple prayer book, wouldn't be able to make out a jot of it-but display their teeth shamefully, that they can do. For them, whatever you say is funny. Such disbelief has spread through the world! What's more-may God and the most pure Virgin not love me!-maybe even you won't believe me: once I made mention of witches, and what do you think? some daredevil turned up who didn't believe in witches! Yes, thank God, I've lived so long in the world, I've seen such infidels as find giving a priest a ride in a sieve 3 easier than taking snuff is for the likes of us; and they, too, go in fear of witches. But if they were to dream… only I don't want to say what, there's no point talking about them.

Way, way back, more than a hundred years ago-my late grandfather used to say-no one would even have recognized our village: a farmstead, the poorest of farmsteads! Some dozen huts, cobless, roofless, stuck up here and there in the middle of a field. Not a fence, not a decent barn to put cattle or a cart in. It was the rich ones that lived like that; and if you looked at our sort, the poor ones-a hole in the ground, there's your house! Only by the smoke could you tell that a creature of God lived there. You may ask, why did they live like that? It wasn't really poverty, because almost everybody then went Cossacking and got no small amount of goods in other lands; but more because there was no need to have a decent cottage. What folk weren't hanging about then: Crimeans, Polacks, Litvaks! 4 It also happened that bunches of our own would come and rob their own. Everything happened.

In this farmstead a man often appeared, or, better, a devil in human form. Where he came from and why he came, nobody knew. He'd carouse, drink, then suddenly vanish into thin air, without a trace. Then, lo and behold, again he'd as if fall from the sky, prowl the streets of the hamlet, of which there's no trace left now and which was maybe no more than a hundred paces from

Dikanka. He'd pick up passing Cossacks: laughter, songs, money flowed, vodka poured like water… He used to accost pretty girls: gave them ribbons, earrings, necklaces-more than they knew what to do with! True, the pretty girls would hesitate a bit as they took the presents: God knows, maybe they really had passed through unclean hands. My grandfather's own aunt, who kept a tavern at the time on what is now Oposhnyanskaya Road, where Basavriuk-so this demonic man was known-used to carouse, she it was who said she wouldn't agree to take presents from him, not for all the blessings in the world. But, again, how not take: anybody would have been filled with fear when he knitted his bristling eyebrows and sent such a scowling look at you that you'd gladly let your legs carry you God knows where; and once you did take it-the very next night some friendly visitor from the swamp, with horns on his head, drags himself to you and starts strangling you, if you've got a necklace on your neck, or biting your finger, if you're wearing a ring, or pulling your braid, if you've braided a ribbon into it. God be with them, these presents! But the trouble is that you can't get rid of them: throw the devilish ring or necklace into the water, and it comes floating right back to your hands.

There was a church in the hamlet, of St. Panteleimon if I remember rightly. A priest lived by it then, Father Afanasy, of blessed memory. Noticing that Basavriuk did not come to church even on Easter Sunday, he decided to reprimand him and put him under a church penance. Penance, hah! He barely escaped. "Listen, my good sir!" the man thundered in reply, "you'd better mind your own business and not go meddling in other people s, unless you'd like to have that goat's gullet of yours plugged with hot kutya!" 5 What could be done with the cursed fellow? Father Afanasy merely announced that anyone who kept company with Basavriuk would be regarded as a Catholic, 6 an enemy of Christ's Church and of the whole human race.

In that hamlet one Cossack called Korzh had a man working for him who was known as Pyotr Kinless-maybe because nobody remembered either his father or his mother. The church warden, it's true, said they'd died of the plague the next year; but my grandfather's aunt wouldn't hear of it and tried the best she could to endow him with kin, though poor Pyotr needed that as much as we need last year's snow. She said his father was still in the Zaporozhye, 7 had been in captivity to the Turks, had suffered God knows what tortures, and by some miracle, after disguising himself as a eunuch, had given them the slip. The dark-browed girls and young women cared little about his kin. They merely said that if he was dressed in a new coat tied with a red belt, had a black astrakhan hat with a smart blue top put on his head, had a Turkish saber hung at his side, was given a horsewhip for one hand and a finely chased pipe for the other, not a lad in the world could hold a candle to him. But the trouble was that poor Petrus had only one gray blouse, with more holes in it than there are gold coins in a Jew's pocket. And that still wasn't so great a trouble, the real trouble was that old Korzh had a daughter, a beauty such as I think you've hardly chanced to see. My late grandfather's aunt used to say-and you know it's easier for a woman to kiss the devil, meaning no offense, than to call another woman a beauty-that the Cossack girl's plump cheeks were as fresh and bright as the first pink poppy when, having washed itself in God's dew, it glows, spreads its petals, and preens itself before the just-risen sun; that her eyebrows were like the black cords our girls now buy to hang crosses and ducats on from the Muscovites who go peddling with their boxes in our villages, arched evenly as if looking into her bright eyes; that her little mouth, at the sight of which the young men back then licked their lips, seemed to have been created for chanting nightingale songs; that her hair, black as the raven's wing and soft as young flax (at that time our girls did not yet wear braids with bright-colored ribbons twined in them), fell in curly locks on her gold-embroidered jacket. Ah, may God never grant me to sing "Alleluia" in the choir again if I wouldn't be kissing her here and now, even though the gray is creeping into the old forest that covers my head, and my old woman's by my side like a wart on a nose. Well, if a lad and a girl live near each other… you know yourself what comes of it. It used to be that at the break of dawn, the traces of iron-shod red boots could be seen at the spot where Pidorka had stood gabbling with her Petrus. But even so, nothing bad would ever have entered Korzh's mind, if Petrus hadn't decided one time-well, it's obvious none but the evil one prompted him-without taking a good look around the front hall, to plant a hearty kiss, as they say, on the Cossack girl's rosy lips, and the same evil one-may the son-of-a-bitch dream of the Holy Cross!- foolishly put the old coot up to opening the door. Korzh turned to wood, gaping and clinging to the doorpost. The cursed kiss seemed to stun him completely. It sounded louder to him than the blow of a pestle against the wall, something our peasants usually do to drive the clootie away, for lack of a gun and powder.

Having recovered, he took his grandfather's horsewhip from the wall and was about to sprinkle poor Pyotr's back with it, when Pidorka's brother, the six-year-old Ivas, came running from nowhere, grabbed his legs with his little arms in fear, and shouted, "Daddy, daddy! don't beat Petrus!" What could he do? A father's heart isn't made of stone: he put the horsewhip back on the wall and led him quietly out of the cottage: "If you ever show up in my cottage again, or even just under the windows, then listen, Pyotr: by God, that'll be the end of your black moustache, and your topknot 8 as well; here it is going twice around your ear, but it'll bid farewell to your head or I'm not Terenty Korzh!" Having said that, he gave him a slight cuff, so that Petrus, not seeing the ground under him, went flying headlong. There's kisses for you! Our two doves were grief-stricken; and then a rumor spread through the village that some Polack had taken to calling on Korzh, all trimmed in gold, with a moustache, with a saber, with spurs, with pockets that jingled like the little bell on the bag our sacristan Taras goes around the church with every day. Well, we know why someone comes calling on a father who has a dark-browed daughter. So one day Pidorka, streaming with tears, picked up her Ivas in her arms: "Ivas my dear, Ivas my love! run to Petrus, my golden child, quick as an arrow shot from a bow; tell him everything: I would love his brown eyes, I would kiss his white face, but my lot forbids me. More than one napkin is wet with my bitter tears. It's hard on me. I'm sick at heart. And my own father is my enemy: he's forcing me to marry the unloved Polack. Tell him the wedding is being prepared, only there won't be any music at our wedding: deacons will sing instead of pipes and mandolins. I won't step out to dance with my bridegroom: they will bear me away. Dark, dark will be my house: of maple wood it will be, and instead of a chimney there will be a cross on its roof!"

As if turned to stone, not moving from the spot, Petro listened while the innocent child babbled Pidorka's words to him. "And I thought, luckless me, that I'd go to the Crimea and Turkey to war myself up some gold, and then come to you with wealth, my beauty. That's not to be. An evil eye has looked on us. There'll be a wedding for me, too, my dear little fish: only there won't be any deacons at that wedding; a black raven will crow over me instead of a priest; a smooth field will be my home and a gray cloud my roof; an eagle will peck my brown eyes out; the rains will wash the Cossack's bones, and the wind will dry them. But what am I doing? of whom, to whom shall I complain? God must will it so- if I perish, I perish!" and he plodded straight to the tavern.

My late grandfather's aunt was slightly surprised to see Petrus in the tavern, and that at an hour when good people go to church, and she goggled her eyes at him, as if just waking up, when he ordered a jug of vodka as big as half a bucket. Only it was in vain that the poor fellow thought to drown his grief. The vodka pricked his tongue like nettles and tasted bitterer to him than wormwood. He pushed the jug off onto the ground. "Enough of this grieving, Cossack!" something rumbled in a bass voice behind him. He turned around: Basavriuk! Ohh, what an ugly mug! Bristly hair, eyes like an ox! "I know what you lack: it's this!" Here, grinning devilishly, he clanked the leather purse that hung from his belt. Petro gave a start. "How it glows! heh, heh, heh!" he bellowed, pouring gold coins into his hand. "How it rings! heh, heh, heh! And I'll ask just one thing for a whole heap of such baubles." "The devil!" shouted Petro. "Let's have it! I'm ready for anything." And they shook hands. "Watch out, Petro, you came just in time: tomorrow is John the Baptist. 9 It's only on this one night in the year that the fern flowers. Don't miss it. I'll be waiting for you at midnight in Bear's Gully."

I don't suppose chickens wait so impatiently for the housewife who brings them grain as Petrus waited for that evening. He kept looking to see if the tree's shadow was getting longer, if the setting sun was getting redder-and the more impatiently as it went on. So drawn out! God's day must have lost its end somewhere. Now there's no more sun. The sky is red only on one side. That, too, is fading. It's getting colder in the fields. Dusk thickens, thickens, and-it's dark! At last! His heart nearly jumping out of his breast, he set off on his way and descended cautiously through the dense forest into the deep ravine known as Bear's Gully. Basavriuk was already waiting there. It was blind dark. Hand in hand they made their way over the boggy marsh, getting caught in thickly growing thorns at almost every step. Here was a level place. Petro looked around: he had never chanced to come there. Basavriuk also stopped.

"Do you see the three knolls standing before you? There will be many different flowers on them; but may the otherworldly powers keep you from picking so much as one. Only as soon as the fern begins to flower, grab it and don't turn around, whatever you fancy is behind you."

Petro was about to ask… behold-he was no longer there. He approached the three knolls: Where are the flowers? Nothing could be seen. Wild weeds stood blackly around, stifling everything with their thickness. But now lightning flashed in the sky and a whole bank of flowers appeared before him, all wondrous, all never seen before; there were also simple ferns. Doubt came over Petro, and he stood before them pondering, arms akimbo.

"What's so extraordinary about it? Ten times a day you may happen to see such stuff; where's the marvel? Is that devilish mug making fun of me?"

But, lo-a small flower bud showed red, moving as if it were alive. A wonder indeed! Moving and growing bigger and bigger, and reddening like a hot coal. A little star lit up, something crackled softly, and the flower unfolded before his eyes, shining like a flame on others around it.

"Now's the time!" thought Petro, and he reached out. He saw hundreds of hairy hands stretching toward the same flower from behind him, and something behind him was running to and fro. Closing his eyes, he pulled at the stem, and the flower stayed in his hand. All became hushed. Basavriuk appeared, sitting on a stump, all blue like a dead man. Not moving a finger. Eyes fixed motion-lessly on something visible only to himself; mouth half open and unresponding. Around him nothing stirs. Ugh, horrible!… But now a whistling was heard, at which everything went cold inside Pyotr, and he fancied that the grass rustled, the flowers began talking to each other in voices thin as little silver bells; the trees rumbled, pouring out abuse… Basavriuk's face suddenly came to life; his eyes flashed. "At last you've come back, yaga!" 10 he growled through his teeth. "Look, Petro, presently a beauty will stand before you: do whatever she tells you, or you'll be destroyed forever!" Here he parted the blackthorn bush with his stick, and before them appeared a hut, as they say, on chicken's legs. Basavriuk pounded on it with his fist and the wall shook. A big black dog came running to them and, with a squeal, turned into a cat and hurled itself at their eyes. "Don't rage, don't rage, old witch!" Basavriuk said, spicing it with such a word as would make a good man stop his ears. Behold, where the cat had been there stood an old hag, all bent double, with a face as shriveled as a baked apple; her nose and chin were like the jaws of a nutcracker. "A fine beauty!" thought Petro, and gooseflesh crept over him. The witch snatched the flower from his hand, bent down, and whispered something over it for a long time, sprinkling it with some water. Sparks poured from her mouth; foam came to her lips. "Throw it!" she said, handing the flower back to him. Petro threw it up and- oh, wonder!-the flower did not fall straight back but for a long time looked like a fiery little ball amidst the darkness, floating like a boat in the air; at last it slowly began to descend and fell so far away that the little star was barely visible, no bigger than a poppy-seed. "There!" the old hag croaked hollowly; and Basavriuk, handing him a spade, said: "Dig there, Petro. You'll see more gold there than either you or Korzh ever dreamed of." Petro, spitting on his hands, grabbed the spade, drove it in with his foot, turned up the earth, again, a third time, yet again… something hard!… The spade clangs and won't go any further. Here his eyes begin to make out clearly a small ironbound chest. He was about to take hold of it, but the chest started sinking into the ground, deeper, deeper; and behind him came a laugh that more closely resembled the hiss of a snake. "No, you won't see any gold until you get some human blood!" said the witch, and she brought him a child of about six, covered with a white sheet, making a sign that he should cut its head off. Petro was dumbfounded. A small thing, to cut off a person's head for no reason at all, and an innocent child's at that! Angrily he pulled off the sheet that covered its head, and what then? Before him stood Ivas. The poor child folded his little arms crosswise and hung his head… Like a madman, Petro jumped at the witch with his knife, and was already raising his hand…

"And what did you promise for the girl?…" thundered Basavriuk, and it was as if he put a bullet through his back. The witch stamped her foot: blue flame burst from the ground; its whole inside lit up and looked as if it were molded from crystal; and everything under the ground became visible as in the palm of your hand. Gold coins, precious stones, in chests, in cauldrons, were heaped up right under the place where they stood. His eyes glowed… his mind darkened… As if insane, he seized the knife and innocent blood spurted into his eyes… A devilish guffawing thundered on all sides. Hideous monsters leaped before him in throngs. The witch, clutching the beheaded corpse, drank its blood like a wolf… Everything whirled in his head! Summoning all his strength, he broke into a run. Everything before him was covered with red. The trees, bathed in blood, seemed to burn and groan. The sky, red hot, was trembling… Fiery spots, like lightning, came to his eyes. Exhausted, he ran inside his hut and collapsed as if he had been mowed down. A dead sleep came over him.

For two days and nights Petro slept without waking. On the third day, having come to, he looked around at all the corners of his house for a long time; but his efforts to recollect were all in vain: his memory was like an old miser's pocket, not even a penny could be coaxed out of it. He stretched a little and heard a clank at his feet. He looked: two sacks of gold. Only then, as if through sleep, did he remember looking for some treasure, being afraid in the forest alone… But what the price had been, how he had obtained it-that he simply could not understand.

Korzh saw the sacks and-went all soft: "Petrus is this and that and the other! And haven't I always loved him? hasn't he been like my own son to me?" And the old coot went off into such fancies that the fellow was moved to tears. Pidorka began telling him how Ivas had been stolen by some passing Gypsies. But Petro couldn't even remember his face: so addled he was by that cursed devilry! There was no point in delaying. The Pole got a fig under his nose, and the wedding was cooked up: they baked a lot of cakes, sewed a lot of napkins and kerchiefs, rolled out a barrel of vodka; the young couple was seated on the table; the round loaf was cut; they struck up the bandore, cymbals, pipes and mandolins-and the fun began…

Weddings in the old days were no comparison with ours. My grandfather's aunt used to tell us-oh, ho, ho! How girls in festive headdresses of yellow, blue, and pink stripes trimmed with gold braid, in fine shirts stitched with red silk and embroidered with little silver flowers, in Morocco boots with high, iron-shod heels, capered about the room as smoothly as peahens and swishing like the wind; how young women in tall headdresses, the upper part made all of gold brocade, with a small cutout behind and a golden kerchief peeking from it, with two little peaks of the finest black astrakhan, one pointing backward and the other forward, in blue jackets of the best silk with red flaps, stepped out imposingly one by one, arms akimbo, and rhythmically stamped away at the gopak. 11 How young lads in tall Cossack hats and fine flannel blouses with silver-embroidered belts, pipes in their teeth, bobbed and pranced before them, cutting all sorts of capers. Korzh himself couldn't hold back, looking at the young ones and remembering bygone times. With a bandore in his hands, puffing on his pipe and humming at the same time, the old fellow put a glass on his head and, to the loud shouts of the revelers, broke into a squatting dance. What people won't think up when they're tipsy! They used to dress in disguises-my God, they no longer looked like human beings! No comparison with the costumes at our weddings nowadays. How is it now? They just copy the Gypsies or the Muscovites. No, it used to be one would dress up as a Jew and another as a devil, and first they'd kiss each other and then grab each other's topknots… God help us! you had to hold your sides from laughter. They'd get dressed up in Turkish or Tartar costumes: everything on them blazes like fire… And when they start fooling and pulling tricks… well, saints alive! A funny thing happened with my grandfather's aunt, who was at this wedding: she was dressed then in a loose Tartar dress and went around offering glasses to the guests. The devil put one of them up to splashing some vodka on her from behind. Another-no flies on him either-struck a fire straight away… the flame blazed up, the poor aunt got frightened and started pulling her dress off in front of everybody… Noise, laughter, turmoil arose, like at a street fair. In short, the old people remember no merrier wedding ever.

Pidorka and Petrus started living like lord and lady. Everything in abundance, everything shining… However, good people shook their heads slightly, looking at their life. "No good can come from the devil," everybody murmured with one voice. "Where did he get his wealth, if not from the seducer of Orthodox people? Where could such a heap of gold come from? Why, suddenly, on the very day he got rich, did Basavriuk vanish into thin air?" Now, just tell me people were making it up! Because, in fact, before a month was out, nobody could recognize Petrus. What happened to him and why, God knows. He sits in one place and won't say a word to anyone. He keeps thinking and thinking, as if he wants to remember something. When Pidorka manages to make him talk about something, he seems to forget it all and starts to speak, and even almost cheers up; then he glances inadvertently at the sacks and cries out: "Wait, wait, I forgot!" and falls to thinking again, and again strains to remember something. Once in a while, after sitting in the same place for a long time, he fancies it's all just about to come back to him… and then it all goes again. He fancies he's sitting in the tavern; they bring him vodka; the vodka burns him; the vodkas disgusting to him. Somebody comes up, slaps him on the shoulder… but then it's as if everything gets misty before him. Sweat streams down his face, and he sits back down, exhausted.

What didn't Pidorka do: she consulted wizards, she poured out a flurry and boiled a bellyache*-nothing helped. So the summer went by. Many Cossacks had reaped their hay and harvested their crops; many Cossacks, the more riotous sort, had set out on campaign. Flocks of ducks still crowded our marshes, but the bitterns were long gone. The steppes were turning red. Shocks of wheat stood here and there like bright Cossack hats strewn over the fields. On the road you would meet carts piled with kindling and firewood. The ground turned harder and in places was gripped by frost. Snow had already begun to spatter from the sky, and the branches of the trees were decked with hoarfrost as if with hare's fur. On a clear, frosty day, the red-breasted bullfinch, like a foppish Polish gentleman, was already strolling over the snowdrifts pecking at seeds, and children with enormous sticks were sending wooden whirligigs over the ice, while their fathers calmly stayed stretched on the stove, stepping out every once in a while, a lighted pipe in their teeth, to say a word or two about the good Orthodox frost, or to get some fresh air and thresh some grain that had long been sitting in the front hall. At last the snow began to melt, and the pike broke the ice with its tail, and Petro was still the same, and the further it went, the grimmer he became. As though chained down, he sat in the middle of the room with the sacks of gold at his feet. He grew wild, shaggy, frightening; his mind was fixed on one thing, he kept straining to remember something; and he was angry and vexed that he could not remember it. Often he would get up wildly from where he sat, move his arms, fix his eyes on something as if wishing to catch it; his lips move as if they want to utter some long-forgotten word-and stop motionless… Fury comes over him; like a demented man, he gnaws and bites his hands and tears out tufts of his hair in vexation, until he grows calm, drops down as if oblivious, and then again tries to remember, and again fury, *A flurry is poured out in cases when we want to find out the cause of a fear; melted tin or wax is dropped into water, and whatever shape it takes is what has frightened the sick person; after that the fear goes away. We boil a bellyache for nausea and stomachache. A piece of hemp is set alight and thrown into a mug, which is then turned upside down in a bowl of water and placed on the sick person's stomach; then, after some whispered spell, he's given a spoonful of the same water to drink. (Author's note.) and again torment… What a plague from God! Life was no longer life for Pidorka. At first she dreaded staying alone in the house with him, but later the poor thing grew accustomed to her misfortune. But the former Pidorka was no longer recognizable. No color, no smile: worn, wasted, she cried her bright eyes out. Once someone evidently took pity on her and advised her to go to the sorceress who lived in Bear's Gully, who, as rumor had it, could heal any illness in the world. She decided to try this last remedy; one word led to another, and she talked the old hag into coming home with her. This was in the evening, just on the Baptist's eve. Petro lay oblivious on the bench and did not notice the new visitor at all. And then gradually he began to raise himself and stare. Suddenly he trembled all over, as if on the scaffold; his hair rose in a shock… and he laughed such a laugh that fear cut into Pidorka's heart. "I remember, I remember!" he cried with horrible merriment and, swinging an ax, flung it with all his might at the hag. The ax sank three inches into the oak door. The hag vanished and a child of about seven, in a white shirt, with covered head, stood in the middle of the room… The sheet flew off. "Ivas!" Pidorka cried and rushed to him; but the phantom became all bloody from head to foot and lit up the whole room with a red glow… Frightened, she ran out to the front hall; then, recovering a little, she wanted to go back and help him-in vain! The door slammed shut so tightly behind her that it was impossible to open it. People came running; they began to knock; they forced the door: not a soul. The whole room was filled with smoke, and in the middle only, where Petrus had been standing, was a heap of ashes from which smoke was still rising in places. They rushed to the sacks: instead of gold coins there was nothing but broken shards. Eyes popping, mouths gaping, not daring even to move their mustaches, the Cossacks stood as if rooted to the spot. Such fright came over them on account of this marvel.

What happened after that, I don't remember. Pidorka made a vow to go on a pilgrimage; she collected the property left by her father and a few days later was indeed no longer in the village. Where she went, no one could say. Obliging old women had already sent her to the same place Petro had taken himself to; but a

Cossack come from Kiev told that he had seen a nun in the convent, all dried up like a skeleton and ceaselessly praying, in whom the villagers by all tokens recognized Pidorka; that supposedly no one had yet heard even one word from her; that she had come on foot and brought the casing for an icon of the Mother of God studded with such bright stones that everyone shut their eyes when they looked at it.

Sorry, but that was not the end yet. The same day that the evil one laid hands on Petrus, Basavriuk appeared again; only everybody ran away from him. They knew now what kind of bird he was; none other than Satan, who had taken human form in order to dig up treasures-and since treasures can't be taken with unclean hands, he lured young fellows away. That same year everybody abandoned their dugout homes and moved to the village; but there was no peace from the accursed Basavriuk there either. My late grandfather's aunt used to say that he was vexed with her the most, precisely for having abandoned the former tavern on Oposhnyanskaya Road, and he tried with all his might to vent his anger on her. Once the village elders gathered in the tavern and were having, as they say, a proper conversation at table, in the middle of which stood a roast lamb of a size it would be sinful to call small. They chatted about this and that, about all sorts of marvels and wonders. And they fancied-it would be nothing if one of them did, but it was precisely all of them-that the lamb raised its head, its mischievous black eyes came to life and lit up, and that instant a black, bristling mustache appeared, twitching meaningfully at those present. Everybody recognized the lamb's head at once as Basavriuk's mug; my grandfather's aunt even thought he was about to ask for some vodka… The honorable elders grabbed their hats and hastily went their ways. Another time the church warden himself, who liked now and then to have a private little chat with an old-time glass, before he even reached the bottom, saw the glass bow to the ground before him. Devil take it! he began crossing himself!… And then another wonder with his better half: she had just started mixing dough in a huge tub when the tub suddenly jumped away. "Stop, stop!"-but nothing doing: arms akimbo, with an imposing air, it broke into a squatting dance all around the room… Go on and laugh; but our grandfathers were in no mood for laughter. And even though Father Afanasy walked around the whole village with holy water and chased the devil down all the streets with the sprinkler, all the same, my late grandfather's aunt complained that as soon as evening came, somebody started knocking on the roof and scratching at the wall.

Not only that! Now, for instance, on this same spot where our village stands, everything seems quiet; but not so long ago, my late father and I still remembered that a good man couldn't pass by the ruins of the tavern, which the unclean tribe 12 kept fixing up at their own expense for a long time afterwards. Smoke poured from the sooty chimney in a column and, rising so high that your hat would fall off if you looked at it, poured hot coals all over the steppes, and the devil-no need to mention that son-of-a-dog- sobbed so pitifully in his hovel that the frightened jackdaws rose in flocks from the nearby oak grove and with wild cries dashed about the sky.

The Night Before Christmas

The last day before Christmas had passed. A wintry, clear night came. The stars peeped out. The crescent moon rose majestically in the sky to give light to good people and all the world, so that everyone could merrily go caroling and glorify Christ.* The frost had increased since morning; but it was so still that the frosty creaking under your boots could be heard for half a mile. Not one group of young lads had shown up under the windows of the houses yet; only the moon peeked stealthily into them, as if inviting the girls sprucing themselves up to hurry and run out to the creaking snow. Here smoke curled from the chimney of one cottage and went in a cloud across the sky, and along with the smoke rose a witch riding on a broom.

If the Sorochintsy assessor had been passing by just then, driving * Among us, to go caroling [koliadovat] means to sing songs called koliadki under the windows on Christmas Eve. The master or mistress of the house, or anyone staying at home, always drops into the carolers' sack some sausage or bread or a copper coin, whatever bounty they have. They say there used to be an idol named Koliada who was thought to be a god, and that is where the koliadki came from. Who knows? It's not for us simple people to discuss it. Last year Father Osip forbade going caroling around the farmsteads, saying folk were pleasing Satan by it. However, to tell the truth, there's not a word in the koliadki about Koliada. They often sing of the nativity of Christ; and in the end they wish health to the master, the mistress, the children, and the whole household. (The Beekeepers note.) a troika of hired horses, in a hat with a lamb's wool band after the uhlan fashion, in a dark blue coat lined with astrakhan, with the devilishly woven whip he used to urge his coachman on, he would surely have noticed her, for no witch in the world could elude the Sorochintsy assessor. He could count off how many piglets each woman's sow had farrowed, and how much linen lay in every chest, and precisely which of his clothes and chattels a good man had pawned in the tavern of a Sunday. But the Sorochintsy assessor was not passing by, and what business did he have with other people, since he had his own territory. And the witch, meanwhile, rose so high that she was only a black spot flitting overhead. But wherever the spot appeared, the stars disappeared from the sky one after another. Soon the witch had a sleeve full of them. Three or four still shone. Suddenly, from the opposite direction, another little spot appeared, grew bigger, began to spread, and was no longer a little spot. A nearsighted man, even if he put the wheels of the commissar's britzka on his nose for spectacles, still wouldn't have been able to make out what it was. From the front, a perfect German:* the narrow little muzzle, constantly twitching and sniffing at whatever came along, ended in a round snout, as with our pigs; the legs were so thin that if the headman of Yareskov had had such legs, he'd have broken them in the first Cossack dance. To make up for that, from behind he was a real provincial attorney in uniform, because he had a tail hanging there, sharp and long as uniform coattails nowadays; and only by the goat's beard under his muzzle, the little horns sticking up on his head, and the fact that he was no whiter than a chimney sweep, could you tell that he was not a German or a provincial attorney, but simply a devil who had one last night to wander about the wide world and teach good people to sin. Tomorrow, as the first bells rang for matins, he would run for his den, tail between his legs, without looking back.

Meanwhile the devil was quietly sneaking toward the moon and had already reached out his hand to snatch it, but suddenly pulled *Among us, anyone from a foreign land is called a German, whether he's a Frenchman, a Swiss, or a Swede-they're all Germans. (The Beekeeper's note.) it back as if burnt, sucked his fingers, shook his leg, and ran around to the other side, but again jumped away and pulled his hand back. However, despite all his failures, the sly devil did not give up his pranks. Running up to it, he suddenly seized the moon with both hands, wincing and blowing, tossing it from one hand to the other, like a muzhik who takes a coal for his pipe in his bare hands; at last he hastily hid it in his pocket and ran on as if nothing had happened.

In Dikanka nobody realized that the devil had stolen the moon. True, the local scrivener, leaving the tavern on all fours, saw the moon dancing about in the sky for no reason and swore to it by God before the whole village; but people shook their heads and even made fun of him. But what led the devil to decide on such a lawless business? Here's what: he knew that the wealthy Cossack Choub had been invited for kutya 1 by the deacon, and that there would also be the headman, a relative of the deacon's in a blue frock coat who sang in the bishop's choir and could hit the lowest bass notes, the Cossack Sverbyguz, and others; that besides kutya there would be spiced vodka, saffron vodka, and lots of other things to eat. And meanwhile his daughter, the beauty of the village, would stay at home, and this daughter would certainly be visited by the blacksmith, a stalwart and fine fellow, whom the devil found more disgusting than Father Kondrat's sermons. The blacksmith devoted his leisure time to painting and was reputed to be the best artist in the whole neighborhood. The then still-living chief L ko himself had summoned him specially to Poltava to paint the wooden fence around his house. All the bowls from which the Dikanka Cossacks supped their borscht had been decorated by the blacksmith. The blacksmith was a God-fearing man and often painted icons of the saints: even now you can find his evangelist Luke in the T church. But the triumph of his art was one picture painted on the church wall in the right-hand vestibule, in which he portrayed Saint Peter on the day of the Last Judgment, with the keys in his hand, driving the evil spirit out of hell; the frightened devil is rushing in all directions, sensing his doom, and the formerly confined sinners are beating him and driving him about with whips, sticks, and whatever else they can find. All the while the artist was working on this picture, painting it on a big wooden board, the devil tried as hard as he could to hinder him: shoved his arm invisibly, raised up ashes from the forge in the smithy and poured them over the picture; but the work got done despite all, the board was brought to church and set into the wall in the vestibule, and ever since then the devil had sworn vengeance on the blacksmith.

One night only was left him to wander about the wide world, but on this night, too, he sought some way to vent his anger on the blacksmith. And for that he decided to steal the moon, in hopes that old Choub was lazy and not easy to budge, and the deacon's place was not all that close to his: the road went beyond the village, past the mills, past the cemetery, and around the gully. If it had been a moonlit night, the spiced vodka and saffron vodka might have tempted Choub, but in such darkness you would hardly succeed in dragging him down from the stove 2 and getting him out of the cottage. And the blacksmith, who had long been on bad terms with him, would never dare visit his daughter with him there, for all his strength.

So it was that, as soon as the devil hid the moon in his pocket, it suddenly became so dark all over the world that no one could find the way to the tavern, to say nothing of the deacon's. The witch, seeing herself suddenly in the dark, cried out. Here the devil, sidling up to her, took her under the arm and started whispering in her ear what is usually whispered to the whole of womankind. Wondrous is the working of the world! All who live in it try to mimic and mock one another. Before, it used to be that in Mir-gorod only the judge and the mayor went about during the winter in cloth-covered sheepskin coats, and all of petty clerkdom wore plain uncovered ones; but now both the assessor and the surveyor have got themselves up in new coats of Reshetilovo astrakhan covered with broadcloth. Two years ago the clerk and the local scrivener bought themselves some blue Chinese cotton for sixty kopecks a yard. The sacristan had baggy summer trousers of nankeen and a waistcoat of striped worsted made for himself. In short, everything tries to get ahead! When will these people cease their vanity! I'll bet many would be surprised to see the devil getting up to it as well. What's most vexing is that he must fancy he's a handsome fellow, whereas-it's shameful to look him in the face. A mug, as Foma Grigorievich says, that's the vilest of the vile, and yet he, too, goes philandering! But it got so dark in the sky, and under the sky, that it was no longer possible to see what went on further between them.

"So, chum, you haven't been to the deacon's new house yet?" the Cossack Choub was saying as he came out the door of his cottage to a tall, lean muzhik in a short sheepskin jacket with a stubbly chin that showed it hadn't been touched in over two weeks by the broken piece of scythe a muzhik usually shaves with for lack of a razor. "There'll be good drinking there tonight!" Choub continued, with a grin on his face. "We'd better not be late."

With that, Choub straightened the belt that tightly girded his coat, pulled his hat down hard, clutched his knout-a terror and threat to bothersome dogs-but, looking up, he stopped…

"What the devil! Look, look, Panas!…"

"What?" said his chum, and also threw his head back.

"How, what? There's no moon!"

"What the deuce! It's a fact, there's no moon."

"None at all," said Choub, somewhat vexed at the chum's unfailing indifference. "Not that you care, I suppose."

"But what can I do?"

"It had to happen," Choub went on, wiping his mustache on his sleeve, "some devil-may the dog have no glass of vodka in the morning-had to interfere!… Really, as if for a joke… I looked out the window on purpose as I sat inside: a wonder of a night! Clear, snow shining in the moonlight. Everything bright as day. The moment I step out the door-it's pitch-dark!"

Choub spent a long time grumbling and swearing, all the while pondering what to decide. He was dying to chatter about all sorts of nonsense at the deacon's, where, without any doubt, the headman was already sitting, and the visiting bass, and the tar dealer Mikita, who went off to the Poltava market every two weeks and cracked such jokes that good people held their sides from laughter.

Choub could already picture mentally the spiced vodka standing on the table. All this was tempting, it's true; but the darkness of the night reminded him of the laziness so dear to all Cossacks. How good it would be to lie on the stove now, with his knees bent, calmly smoking his pipe and listening, through an entrancing drowsiness, to the carols and songs of the merry lads and girls coming in crowds to the windows. He would, without any doubt, have decided on the latter if he had been alone, but now for the two of them it would not be so boring or scary to walk through the dark night, and he did not really want to appear lazy or cowardly before the others. Having finished swearing, he again turned to the chum:

"So there's no moon, chum?"

"No."

"It's odd, really! Give me a pinch. Fine snuff you've got there, chum! Where do you get it?"

"The devil it's fine," replied the chum, closing the birchbark pouch all covered with pinpricked designs. "It wouldn't make an old hen sneeze!"

"I remember," Choub went on in the same way, "the late tavern keeper Zozulia once brought me some snuff from Nezhin. Ah, what snuff that was! such good snuff! So, then, chum, what are we going to do? It's dark out."

"Let's stay home, then, if you like," said the chum, grasping the door handle.

If the chum hadn't said it, Choub would certainly have decided to stay home, but now something seemed to tug at him to do the contrary.

"No, chum, let's go! It's impossible, we have to go!"

Having said that, he was already annoyed with himself for it. He very much disliked dragging himself anywhere on such a night; but it was a comfort to him that he himself had purposely wanted it and was not doing as he had been advised.

The chum, showing not the least vexation on his face, like a man to whom it was decidedly all the same whether he stayed home or dragged himself out, looked around, scratched his shoul- ders with the butt of his whip, and the two chums set out on their way.

Now let's have a look at what the beautiful daughter was doing, left alone. Oksana had not yet turned seventeen, but already in almost all the world, on this side of Dikanka and on the other, the talk was of nothing but her. The young lads, one and all, declared that there had never been, nor ever would be, a better girl in the village. Oksana knew and heard all that was said about her, and was capricious, as beauties will be. If she had gone about not in a checkered wraparound and a woolen apron, but in some sort of capote, she would have sent all her maids scurrying. The lads chased after her in droves, but, losing patience, gradually dropped out and turned to others less spoiled. The blacksmith alone persisted and would not leave off his wooing, though he was treated no better than the rest.

After her father left, she spent a long time dressing up and putting on airs before a small tin-framed mirror, and couldn't have enough of admiring herself. "Why is it that people decided to praise my prettiness?" she said as if distractedly, so as to chat with herself about something. "People lie, I'm not pretty at all." But in the mirror flashed her fresh face, alive in its child's youngness, with shining dark eyes and an inexpressibly lovely smile which burned the soul through, and all at once proved the opposite. "Are my dark eyebrows and eyes," the beauty went on, not letting go of the mirror, "so pretty that they have no equal in the world? What's so pretty about this upturned nose? and these cheeks? and lips? As if my dark braids are pretty! Ugh! they could be frightening in the evening: they twist and twine around my head like long snakes. I see now that I'm not pretty at all!" and then, holding the mirror further away from her face, she exclaimed: "No, I am pretty! Ah, how pretty! A wonder! What joy I'll bring to the one whose wife I become! How my husband will admire me! He won't know who he is. He'll kiss me to death."

"A wonderful girl!" the blacksmith, who had quietly come in, whispered, "and so little boasting! She's been standing for an hour looking in the mirror and hasn't had enough, and she even praises herself aloud!"

"Yes, lads, am I a match for you? Just look at me," the pretty little coquette went on, "how smooth my step is; my shirt is embroidered with red silk. And what ribbons in my hair! You won't see richer galloons ever! All this my father bought so that the finest fellow in the world would marry me!" And, smiling, she turned around and saw the blacksmith…

She gave a cry and stopped sternly in front of him.

The blacksmith dropped his arms.

It's hard to say what the wonderful girl's dusky face expressed: sternness could be seen in it, and through the sternness a certain mockery of the abashed blacksmith; and a barely noticeable tinge of vexation also spread thinly over her face; all this was so mingled and so indescribably pretty that to kiss her a million times would have been the best thing to do at that moment.

"Why have you come here?" So Oksana began speaking. "Do you want to be driven out the door with a shovel? You're all masters at sidling up to us. You instantly get wind of it when our fathers aren't home. Oh, I know you! What, is my chest ready?"

"It will be ready, my dear heart, it will be ready after the holiday. If you knew how I've worked on it: for two nights I didn't leave the smithy. Not a single priest's daughter will have such a chest. I trimmed it with such iron as I didn't even put on the chief's gig when I went to work in Poltava. And how it will be painted! Go all around the neighborhood with your little white feet and you won't find the like of it! There will be red and blue flowers all over. It will glow like fire. Don't be angry with me! Allow me at least to talk, at least to look at you!"

"Who's forbidding you-talk and look at me!"

Here she sat down on the bench and again looked in the mirror and began straightening the braids on her head. She looked at her neck, at her new silk-embroidered shirt, and a subtle feeling of self-content showed on her lips and her fresh cheeks, and was mirrored in her eyes.

"Allow me to sit down beside you!" said the blacksmith.

"Sit," said Oksana, keeping the same feeling on her lips and in her pleased eyes.

"Wonderful, darling Oksana, allow me to kiss you!" the encouraged blacksmith said and pressed her to him with the intention of snatching a kiss; but Oksana withdrew her cheeks, which were a very short distance from the blacksmith's lips, and pushed him away.

"What more do you want? He's got honey and asks for a spoon! Go away, your hands are harder than iron. And you smell of smoke. I suppose you've made me all sooty."

Here she took the mirror and again began to preen herself.

"She doesn't love me," the blacksmith thought to himself, hanging his head. "It's all a game for her. And I stand before her like a fool, not taking my eyes off her. And I could just go on standing before her and never take my eyes off her! A wonderful girl! I'd give anything to find out what's in her heart, whom she loves! But, no, she doesn't care about anybody. She admires her own self; she torments poor me; and I'm blind to the world from sorrow; I love her as no one in the world has ever loved or ever will love."

"Is it true your mothers a witch?" said Oksana, and she laughed; and the blacksmith felt everything inside him laugh. It was as if this laughter echoed all at once in his heart and in his quietly aroused nerves, and at the same time vexation came over his soul that it was not in his power to cover this so nicely laughing face with kisses.

"What do I care about my mother? You are my mother, and my father, and all that's dear in the world. If the tsar summoned me and said: 'Blacksmith Vakula, ask me for whatever is best in my kingdom, and I will give it all to you. I'll order a golden smithy made for you, and you'll forge with silver hammers.' I'd say to the tsar: 'I don't want precious stones, or a golden smithy, or all your kingdom: better give me my Oksana!'"

"See how you are! Only my father is nobody's fool. You'll see if he doesn't marry your mother," Oksana said with a sly smile. "Anyhow, the girls are not here… what could that mean? It's long since time for caroling. I'm beginning to get bored."

"Forget them, my beauty."

"Ah, no! they'll certainly come with the lads. We'll have a grand party. I can imagine what funny stories they'll have to tell!"

"So you have fun with them?"

"More fun than with you. Ah! somebody's knocking; it must be the lads and girls."

"Why should I wait anymore?" the blacksmith said to himself. "She taunts me. I'm as dear to her as a rusty horseshoe. But if so, at least no other man is going to have the laugh on me. Just let me see for certain that she likes somebody else more than me-I'll teach him…"

The knocking at the door and the cry of "Open!" sounding sharply in the frost interrupted his reflections.

"Wait, I'll open it myself," said the blacksmith, and he stepped into the front hall, intending in his vexation to give a drubbing to the first comer.

It was freezing, and up aloft it got so cold that the devil kept shifting from one hoof to the other and blowing into his palms, trying to warm his cold hands at least a little. It's no wonder, however, that somebody would get cold who had knocked about all day in hell, where, as we know, it is not so cold as it is here in winter, and where, a chef's hat on his head and standing before the hearth like a real cook, he had been roasting sinners with as much pleasure as any woman roasts sausages at Christmas.

The witch herself felt the cold, though she was warmly dressed; and so, arms up and leg to one side, in the posture of someone racing along on skates, without moving a joint, she descended through the air, as if down an icy slope, and straight into the chimney.

The devil followed after her in the same fashion. But since this beast is nimbler than any fop in stockings, it was no wonder that at the very mouth of the chimney he came riding down on his lover's neck, and the two ended up inside the big oven among the pots.

The traveler quietly slid the damper aside to see whether her son, Vakula, had invited guests into the house, but seeing no one there except for some sacks lying in the middle of the room, she got out of the oven, threw off her warm sheepskin coat, straight- ened her clothes, and no one would have been able to tell that a minute before she had been riding on a broom.

The mother of the blacksmith Vakula was no more than forty years old. She was neither pretty nor ugly. It's hard to be pretty at such an age. Nevertheless, she knew so well how to charm the gravest of Cossacks over to herself (it won't hurt to observe in passing that they couldn't care less about beauty) that she was visited by the headman, and the deacon Osip Nikiforovich (when his wife wasn't home, of course), and the Cossack Korniy Choub, and the Cossack Kasian Sverbyguz. And, to do her credit, she knew how to handle them very skillfully. It never occurred to any one of them that he had a rival. If on Sunday a pious muzhik or squire, as the Cossacks call themselves, wearing a cloak with a hood, went to church-or, in case of bad weather, to the tavern-how could he not stop by at Solokha's, to eat fatty dumplings with sour cream and chat in a warm cottage with a talkative and gregarious hostess? And for that purpose the squire would make a big detour before reaching the tavern, and called it "stopping on the way." And when Solokha would go to church on a feast day, putting on a bright gingham shift with a gold-embroidered blue skirt and a nankeen apron over it, and if she were to stand just by the right-hand choir, the deacon was sure to cough and inadvertently squint in that direction; the headman would stroke his mustache, twirl his topknot around his ear, and say to the man standing next to him, "A fine woman! A devil of a woman!"

Solokha nodded to everyone, and everyone thought she was nodding to him alone. But anyone who liked meddling into other people's affairs would have noticed at once that Solokha was most amiable with the Cossack Choub. Choub was a widower. Eight stacks of wheat always stood in front of his house. Two yoke of sturdy oxen always stuck their heads from the wattle shed outside and mooed whenever they saw a chummy cow or their fat bull uncle coming. A bearded goat climbed on the roof and from there bleated in a sharp voice, like a mayor, teasing the turkey hens who strutted about the yard and turning his back whenever he caught sight of his enemies, the boys who made fun of his beard. In Choub's chests there were quantities of linen, fur coats, old- style jackets with gold braid-his late wife had liked dressing up. In his kitchen garden, besides poppies, cabbages, and sunflowers, two plots of tobacco were planted every year. All this Solokha thought it not superfluous to join to her own property, reflecting beforehand on the order that would be introduced into it once it passed into her hands, and she redoubled her benevolence toward old Choub. And to keep Vakula from getting round his daughter and laying hands on it all for himself, thus certainly preventing any mixing in on her part, she resorted to the usual way of all forty-year-old hens: making Choub and the blacksmith quarrel as often as possible. Maybe this keenness and cunning were responsible for the rumors started here and there by the old women, especially when they'd had a drop too much at some merry gathering, that Solokha was in fact a witch; that the Kizyakolupenko lad had seen she had a tail behind no longer than a spindle; that just two weeks ago Thursday she had crossed the road as a black cat; that the priest's wife once had a sow run in, crow like a rooster, put Father Kondrat's hat on her head, and run back out.

It so happened that as the old women were discussing it, some cowherd by the name of Tymish Korostyavy came along. He didn't fail to tell how in the summer, just before the Peter and Paul fast, 3 as he lay down to sleep in the shed, putting some straw under his head, he saw with his own eyes a witch with her hair down, in nothing but a shirt, start milking the cows, and he was so spellbound he couldn't move; after milking the cows, she came up to him and smeared something so vile on his lips that he spent the whole next day spitting. But all this was pretty doubtful, because no one but the Sorochintsy assessor could see a witch. And so all the notable Cossacks waved their hands on hearing this talk. "The bitches are lying!" was their usual response.

Having climbed out of the oven and straightened her clothes, Solokha, like a good housekeeper, began tidying up and putting things in order, but she didn't touch the sacks: "Vakula brought them in, let him take them out!" Meanwhile the devil, as he was flying into the chimney, had looked around somehow inadver-tendy and seen Choub arm in arm with his chum, already far from his cottage. He instantly flew out of the oven, crossed their path, and began scooping up drifts of frozen snow on all sides. A blizzard arose. The air turned white. A snowy net swirled back and forth, threatening to stop up the walkers' eyes, mouths, and ears. Then the devil flew back down the chimney, firmly convinced that Choub and his chum would turn back, find the blacksmith, and give him such a hiding that it would be long before he was able to take his brush and paint any offensive caricatures.

In fact, as soon as the blizzard arose and the wind began cutting right into their eyes, Choub showed repentance and, pulling his ear-flapped hat further down on his head, treated himself, the devil, and the chum to abuse. However, this vexation was a pretense. Choub was very glad of the blizzard. The distance to the deacon's was eight times longer than they had already gone. The travelers turned back. The wind was blowing from behind them; but they could see nothing through the sweeping snow.

"Wait, chum! I don't think this is the right way," Choub said after a short while. "I don't see any houses. Ah, what a blizzard! Go to that side a little, chum, maybe you'll find the road, and meanwhile I'll search over here. It was the evil one prompted us to drag around in such a storm! Don't forget to holler if you find the road. Eh, what a heap of snow the devil's thrown in my face!"

The road, however, could not be seen. The chum went to one side and, wandering back and forth in his high boots, finally wandered right into the tavern. This find made him so happy that he forgot everything and, shaking off the snow, went into the front hall, not the least concerned about his chum who was left outside. Choub, meanwhile, thought he had found the road; he stopped and began shouting at the top of his lungs, but seeing that his chum didn't appear, he decided to go on by himself. He walked a little and saw his own house. Drifts of snow lay around it and on the roof. Clapping his hands, frozen in the cold, he began knocking at the door and shouting commandingly for his daughter to open.

"What do you want here?" the blacksmith cried sternly, coming out.

Choub, recognizing the blacksmith's voice, stepped back a little. "Ah, no, it's not my house," he said to himself, "the blacksmith wouldn't come to my house. Again, on closer inspection, it's not the blacksmith's either. Whose house could it be? There now! I didn't recognize it! It's lame Levchenko's, who recently married a young wife. He's the only one who has a house like mine. That's why it seemed a bit odd to me that I got home so soon. However, Levchenko is now sitting at the deacon's, that I know. Why, then, the blacksmith?… Oh-ho-ho! he comes calling on the young wife. That's it! Very well!… now I understand everything."

"Who are you and why are you hanging around the door?" the blacksmith, coming closer, said more sternly than before.

"No, I won't tell him who I am," thought Choub. "He may give me a thrashing for all I know, the cursed bastard!" and, altering his voice, he replied:

"It's me, good man! I've come to your windows to sing some carols for your amusement."

"Go to the devil with your carols!" Vakula cried angrily. "Why are you standing there? Clear out right now, do you hear?"

Choub himself was already of that sensible intention; but he found it vexing to have to obey the blacksmith's orders. It seemed some evil spirit nudged his arm, forcing him to say something contrary.

"Really, why are you shouting so?" he said in the same voice. "I want to sing carols, that's all!"

"Oh-ho! there's no stopping you with words!…" Following these words, Choub felt a most painful blow to his shoulder.

"So, I see you're already starting to fight!" he said, retreating a little.

"Away, away!" the blacksmith cried, awarding Choub another shove.

"What's with you!" said Choub, in a voice that expressed pain, vexation, and timorousness. "I see you fight seriously, and painfully, too!"

"Away, away with you!" the blacksmith shouted and slammed the door.

"What a brave one!" Choub said, left alone outside. "Try going near him! Just look at the big jackanapes! You think I can't get justice against you? No, my dear, I'll go, and go straight to the com- missar. You'll learn about me! I don't care that you're a blacksmith and a painter. If I could see my back and shoulders, I suppose they'd be black and blue. He must have beaten me badly, the devil's son! A pity it's cold and I don't want to take my coat off! You wait, fiendish blacksmith, may the devil smash up you and your smithy, I'll set you dancing! So there, you cursed gallowsbird! He's not at home now, though. I suppose Solokha is sitting there alone. Hm… it's not so far from here-why not go! No one else would come in such weather. Maybe it'll be possible… Ohh, what a painful beating that cursed blacksmith gave me!"

Here Choub rubbed his back and set out in the other direction. The pleasantness waiting ahead in the meeting with Solokha lessened the pain somewhat and made him insensible to the frost itself, which crackled in all the streets, not muffled by the blizzard's whistling. At times his face, on which the snowstorm soaped the heard and mustache more deftly than any barber tyrannically seizing his victim by the nose, acquired a half sweet look. And yet, had it not been for the snow that criss-crossed everything before the eyes, you could long have seen Choub stopping, rubbing his back, saying, "A painful beating that cursed blacksmith gave me!" and moving on again.

While the nimble fop with the tail and the goat's beard was flying cut of the chimney and back into it, the little pouch that hung on a strap at his side, in which he had put the stolen moon, somehow accidentally caught on something in the oven and came open, and the moon seized the opportunity and, flying out of the chimney of Solokha's house, rose smoothly into the sky. Every-thing lit up. It was as if there had been no blizzard. The snow gleamed in wide, silvery fields and was all sprinkled with crystal stars. The frost seemed to grow warmer. Crowds of lads and girls appeared with sacks. Songs rang out, and it was a rare house that had no carolers crowding before it.

Wondrously the moon shines! It's hard to describe how good it is to jostle about on such a night with a bunch of laughing and singing girls and lads ready for every joke and prank that a merrily laughing night can inspire. It's warm under your thick sheepskin; your cheeks burn still brighter with the frost; and the evil one himself pushes you into mischief from behind.

A crowd of girls with sacks barged into Choub's house and surrounded Oksana. Shouts, laughter, stories deafened the blacksmith. Interrupting each other, they all hastened to tell the beauty some new thing, unloaded their sacks and boasted about the loaves, sausages, and dumplings, of which they had already collected plenty for their caroling. Oksana seemed perfecdy pleased and happy; she chatted, now with this girl, now with that, and laughed all the while. With some vexation and envy the blacksmith looked on at their merriment, and this time he cursed caroling, though he used to lose his mind over it.

"Ah, Odarka!" the merry beauty said, turning to one of the girls, "you have new booties! Oh, what pretty ones! and with gold! You're lucky, Odarka, you have a man who buys everything for you; and I don't have anyone to get me such nice booties."

"Don't grieve, my darling Oksana!" the blacksmith picked up. "It's a rare young lady who wears such booties as I'll get for you."

"You?" Oksana said, giving him a quick and haughty glance. "I'd like to see where you're going to get booties such as I could wear on my feet. Unless you bring me the ones the tsaritsa wears."

"See what she wants!" the crowd of girls shouted, laughing.

"Yes," the beauty proudly continued, "you'll all be witnesses: if the blacksmith Vakula brings me the very booties the tsaritsa wears, I give my word that I'll marry him at once."

The girls took the capricious beauty with them.

"Laugh, laugh!" said the blacksmith, following them out. "I'm laughing at my own self! I think, and can't decide what's become of my reason. She doesn't love me-so, God be with her! As if Oksana's the only one in the world. Thank God, there are lots of nice girls in the village besides her. And what is this Oksana? She'd never make a good housewife; she's only good at dressing herself up. No, enough, it's time to stop playing the fool."

But just as the blacksmith was preparing to be resolute, some evil spirit carried before him the laughing image of Oksana, saying mockingly: "Get the tsaritsa's booties for me, blacksmith, and I'll marry you!" Everything in him was stirred, and he could think of nothing but Oksana.

Crowds of carolers, the lads separately and the girls separately, hastened from one street to another. But the blacksmith walked along without seeing anything or taking part in the merriment that he used to love more than anyone else.

The devil meanwhile was indulging himself in earnest at Solokha's: kissed her hand, mugging like an assessor at a priest's daughter, pressed his hand to his heart, sighed, and said straight out that if she did not agree to satisfy his passions and reward him in the customary way, he was ready for anything: he'd throw himself in the water and send his soul straight to hellfire. Solokha was not so cruel, and besides, the devil, as is known, acted in cahoots with her. She did like seeing a crowd dangling after her, and she was rarely without company; however, she had thought she would spend that evening alone, because all the notable inhabitants of the village had been invited for kutya at the deacon's. But everything turned out otherwise: the devil had just presented his demand when suddenly the voice of the stalwart headman was heard. Solokha ran to open the door, and the nimble devil got into one of the sacks lying there.

The headman, after shaking the snow off the earflaps of his hat and drinking the glass of vodka that Solokha handed him, said that he had not gone to the deacon's on account of the blizzard, and seeing a light in her house, had stopped by, intending to spend the evening with her.

Before the headman finished speaking, there came a knocking at the door and the voice of the deacon.

"Hide me somewhere," the headman whispered. "I don't want to meet the deacon right now."

Solokha thought for a long time where to hide such a stout guest; she finally chose the biggest sack of coal; she dumped the coal into a barrel, and the stalwart headman got into it, mustache, head, earflaps, and all.

The deacon came in, grunting and rubbing his hands, and said that none of his guests had come, and that he was heartily glad of this opportunity to sport a little at her place and the blizzard did not frighten him. Here he came closer to her, coughed, smiled, touched her bare, plump arm with his long fingers, and uttered with an air that showed both slyness and self-satisfaction:

"And what have you got here, magnificent Solokha?" And having said it, he jumped back slightly.

"How-what? An arm, Osip Nikiforovich!" replied Solokha.

"Hm! an arm! heh, heh, heh!" said the deacon, heartily pleased with his beginning, and he made a tour of the room.

"And what have you got here, dearest Solokha?" he uttered with the same air, having accosted her again and taken her lightly by the neck, and jumping back in the same way.

"As if you can't see, Osip Nikiforovich!" replied Solokha. "A neck, and on that neck a necklace."

"Hm! a necklace on the neck! heh, heh, heh!" And the deacon made another tour of the room, rubbing his hands.

"And what have you got here, incomparable Solokha?…" Who knows what the deacon would have touched this time with his long fingers, but suddenly there came a knocking at the door and the voice of the Cossack Choub.

"Ah, my God, an extraneous person!" the frightened deacon cried. "What now, if someone of my station is found here?… It'll get back to Father Kondrat!…"

But the deacon's real apprehensions were of another sort: he feared still more that his better half might find out, who even without that had turned his thick braid into a very thin one with her terrible hand.

"For God's sake, virtuous Solokha," he said, trembling all over. "Your kindness, as it says in the Gospel of Luke, chapter thir-th- Knocking! By God, there's knocking! Oh, hide me somewhere!"

Solokha poured the coal from another sack into the barrel, and the none-too-voluminous deacon got in and sat down at the bottom, so that another half sack of coal could have been poured on top of him.

"Good evening, Solokha!" said Choub, coming in. "Maybe you weren't expecting me, eh? it's true you weren't? maybe I'm interfering with you?…" Choub went on, putting a cheerful and significant look on his face, which let it be known beforehand that his clumsy head was toiling in preparation for cracking some sharp and ingenious joke. "Maybe you've been having fun here with somebody?… Maybe you've already hidden somebody away, eh?" And, delighted with this last remark, Choub laughed, inwardly triumphant that he alone enjoyed Solokha's favors. "Well, Solokha, now give me some vodka. I think my throat got frozen in this cursed cold. What a night before Christmas God has sent us! When it struck, Solokha, do you hear, when it struck-eh, my hands are quite numb, I can't unbutton my coat!-when the blizzard struck…"

"Open up!" a voice came from outside, accompanied by a shove at the door.

"Somebody's knocking," Choub said, breaking off.

"Open up!" the cry came, louder than before.

"It's the blacksmith!" said Choub, clutching his earflaps. "Listen, Solokha, put me wherever you like; not for anything in the world do I want to show myself to that cursed bastard, may the devil's son get himself blisters as big as haystacks under each eye!"

Solokha, frightened, rushed about in panic and, forgetting herself, gestured for Choub to get into the same sack where the deacon was already sitting. The poor deacon didn't even dare to show his pain by coughing or grunting when the heavy fellow sat almost on his head and stuck his frozen boots on both sides of his temples.

The blacksmith came in without saying a word or taking off his hat and all but collapsed on the bench. He was noticeably in very low spirits.

Just as Solokha was closing the door after him, someone knocked again. This was the Cossack Sverbyguz. This one could not be hidden in a sack, because it would have been impossible to find such a sack. He was more corpulent than the headman and taller than Choub's chum. And so Solokha led him out to the kitchen garden to hear all that he had to tell her.

The blacksmith looked distractedly around the corners of the room, catching from time to time the far-resounding songs of the carolers. He finally rested his eyes on the sacks: "Why are these sacks lying here? They should have been taken out long ago. I've grown all befuddled on account of this stupid love. Tomorrow's a feast day, and there's all this trash lying around the house. I must take them to the smithy."

Here the blacksmith crouched down by the huge sacks, tied them tightly, and was about to haul them onto his shoulders. But it was obvious that his thoughts were wandering God knows where, otherwise he would have heard Choub hiss when his hair got caught by the rope that tied the sack and the stalwart headman begin to hiccup quite audibly.

"Can it be that this worthless Oksana will never get out of my head?" the blacksmith said. "I don't want to think about her, yet I do, and, as if on purpose, about nothing but her. What makes the thought come into my head against my will? Why the devil do these sacks seem heavier than before! There must be something in them besides coal. Fool that I am! I forgot that everything seems heavier to me now. Before, I used to be able to bend and unbend a copper coin or a horseshoe with one hand, and now I can't lift a sack of coal. Soon the wind will knock me down. No," he cried, cheering up after a pause, "what a woman I am! I won't let anybody laugh at me! Let it even be ten sacks, I'll lift them all." And he briskly hauled sacks onto his shoulders that two strong men would have been unable to carry. "This one, too," he went on, picking up the small one, at the bottom of which the devil lay curled up. "I think I put my tools in it." Having said which, he left the house whistling the song:

No bothering with a wife for me.

Noisier and noisier sounded the songs and shouts in the streets. The crowds of jostling folk were increased by those coming from neighboring villages. The lads frolicked and horsed around freely. Often amidst the carols one could hear some merry song made up on the spot by some young Cossack. Then suddenly one of the crowd, instead of a carol, would roar a New Year's song at the top of his lungs:

Humpling, mumpling! Give me a dumpling, A big ring of sausage, A bowl full of porridge!

Loud laughter would reward the funny man. A little window would be raised, and the lean arm of an old woman-they were the only ones to stay inside now with the grave fathers-would reach out with a sausage or a piece of pie. Lads and girls held up their sacks, trying to be the first to catch the booty. In one spot the lads came from all sides and surrounded a group of girls: noise, shouts, one threw a snowball, another grabbed a sack with all sorts of things in it. Elsewhere the girls caught a lad, tripped him and sent him flying headlong to the ground together with his sack. It seemed they were ready to make merry all night long. And the night, as if on purpose, glowed so luxuriantly! And the glistening snow made the moonlight seem whiter still.

The blacksmith stopped with his sacks. He imagined he heard Oksana's voice and thin laughter in the crowd of girls. Every fiber of him twitched: flinging the sacks to the ground so that the deacon on the bottom groaned with pain and the headman hiccuped with his whole gullet, he trudged on, the small sack on his shoulder, with the crowd of lads that was following the crowd of girls in which he thought he had heard Oksana's voice.

"Yes, it's she! standing like a tsaritsa, her black eyes shining! A handsome lad is telling her something; it must be funny, because she's laughing. But she's always laughing." As if inadvertently, himself not knowing how, the blacksmith pushed through the crowd and stood next to her.

"Ah, Vakula, you're here! Good evening!" said the beauty with the very smile that all but drove Vakula out of his mind. "Well, did vou get a lot for your caroling? Eh, such a little sack! And the booties that the tsaritsa wears, did you get them? Get me the booties and I'll marry you!" She laughed and ran off with the crowd.

The blacksmith stood as if rooted to the spot. "No, I can't; it's more than I can bear…" he said at last. "But, my God, why is she so devilishly pretty? Her eyes, and her speech, and everything-it just burns me, burns me… No, I can't stand it anymore! It's time to put an end to it all: perish my soul, I'll go and drown myself in a hole in the ice and pass out of the picture!"

Here, with a resolute step, he went on, caught up with the crowd, came abreast of Oksana, and said in a firm voice:

"Farewell, Oksana! Seek whatever suitor you like, fool whomever you like; but you won't see any more of me in this world."

The beauty looked surprised, wanted to say something, but the blacksmith waved his hand and ran away.

"Where to, Vakula?" called the lads, seeing the blacksmith running.

"Farewell, brothers!" the blacksmith called out in reply. "God willing, we'll see each other in the next world; but we're not to carouse together anymore in this one. Farewell, don't remember any evil of me! Tell Father Kondrat to serve a panikhida 4 for my sinful soul. I didn't paint the candles for the icons of Saint Nicholas and the Mother of God, it's my fault, I got busy with worldly things. Whatever goods you find in my chest, they all go to the church! Farewell!"

After saying which, the blacksmith went off at a run with the sack on his back.

"He's cracked in the head!" said the lads.

"A lost soul!" an old woman passing by mumbled piously. "I'll go and tell them the blacksmith has hanged himself!"

Meanwhile Vakula, having run through several streets, stopped to catch his breath. "Where am I running, in fact?" he thought, "as if all is lost. I'll try one more way: I'll go to Paunchy Patsiuk, the Zaporozhets. 5 They say he knows all the devils and can do whatever he likes. I'll go, my soul will perish anyway!"

At that the devil, who had lain for a long time without moving, leaped for joy inside the sack; but the blacksmith, supposing he'd caused this movement by somehow catching the sack with his arm, punched it with his hefty fist, gave it a toss on his shoulder, and went off to Paunchy Patsiuk.

This Paunchy Patsiuk had indeed been a Zaporozhets once; but whether he had been driven out of the Zaporozhye or had run away on his own, no one knew. He had been living in Dikanka for a long time-ten years, maybe fifteen. At first he had lived like a real Zaporozhets: didn't work, slept three-quarters of the day, ate like six mowers, and drank nearly a whole bucket at one gulp; there was room enough for it all, however, because Patsiuk, though short, was of quite stout girth. Besides, the balloon trousers he wore were so wide that, however long a stride he took, his legs were completely invisible, and it looked as though a wine barrel was moving down the street. Maybe that was why they nicknamed him "Paunchy." A few days after his arrival in the village, everybody already knew he was a wizard. If anyone was sick with something, he at once called in Patsiuk; and Patsiuk had only to whisper a few words and it was as if the illness was taken away. If it happened that a hungry squire got a fish bone caught in his throat, Patsiuk could hit him in the back with his fist so skillfully that the bone would go where it belonged without causing any harm to the squire's throat. Of late he had rarely been seen anywhere. The reason for that was laziness, perhaps, or else the fact that it was becoming more difficult each year for him to get through the door. So people had to go to him themselves if they had need of him.

The blacksmith opened the door, not without timidity, and saw Patsiuk sitting on the floor Turkish fashion before a small barrel with a bowl of noodles standing on it. This bowl was placed, as if on purpose, at the level of his mouth. Without lifting a finger, he bent his head slightly to the bowl and sipped up the liquid, occasionally catching noodles in his teeth.

"No," Vakula thought to himself, "this one's lazier than Choub: he at least eats with a spoon, but this one won't even lift his arm!"

Patsiuk must have been greatly occupied with his noodles, because he seemed not to notice at all the coming of the blacksmith, who, as he stepped across the threshold, gave him a very low bow.

"I've come for your kindness, Patsiuk," Vakula said, bowing again.

Fat Patsiuk raised his head and again began slurping up noodles.

"They say, meaning no offense…" the blacksmith said, pluck- ing up his courage, "I mention it not so as to insult you in any way-that you have some kinship with the devil."

Having uttered these words, Vakula became frightened, thinking he had expressed himself too directly and hadn't softened his strong words enough, and, expecting Patsiuk to seize the barrel with the bowl and send it straight at his head, he stepped aside a little and shielded himself with his sleeve, so that the hot liquid from the noodles wouldn't splash in his face.

But Patsiuk shot him a glance and again began slurping up noodles. The heartened blacksmith ventured to continue.

"I've come to you, Patsiuk, may God grant you all good things in abundance, and bread proportionately!" The blacksmith knew how to put in a fashionable word now and then; he had acquired the knack in Poltava, while he was painting the chief's wooden fence. "My sinful self is bound to perish! nothing in the world helps! Come what may, I must ask for help from the devil himself. Well, Patsiuk?" said the blacksmith, seeing his invariable silence, "what am I to do?"

"If it's the devil you need, then go to the devil!" replied Patsiuk, without raising his eyes and continuing to pack away the noodles.

"That's why I came to you," replied the blacksmith, giving him a low bow. "Apart from you, I don't think anybody in the world knows the way to him."

Not a word from Patsiuk, who was finishing the last of the noodles.

"Do me a kindness, good man, don't refuse!" the blacksmith insisted. "Some pork, or sausage, or buckwheat flour-well, or linen, millet, whatever there may be, if needed… as is customary among good people… we won't be stingy. Tell me at least, let's say, how to find the way to him?"

"He needn't go far who has the devil on his back," Patsiuk pronounced indifferently, without changing his position.

Vakula fixed his eyes on him as if he had the explanation of these words written on his forehead. "What is he saying?" his face inquired wordlessly; and his half-open mouth was ready to swallow the first word like a noodle. But Patsiuk kept silent.

Here Vakula noticed there were no longer either noodles or barrel before the man; instead, two wooden bowls stood on the floor, one filled with dumplings, the other with sour cream. His thoughts and eyes involuntarily turned to these dishes. "Let's see how Patsiuk is going to eat those dumplings," he said to himself. "He surely won't want to lean over and slurp them up like noodles, and it's not the right way-a dumpling has to be dipped in sour cream first."

No sooner had he thought it than Patsiuk opened his mouth wide, looked at the dumplings, and opened his mouth still wider. Just then a dumpling flipped out of the bowl, plopped into the sour cream, turned over on the other side, jumped up, and went straight into Patsiuk's mouth. Patsiuk ate it and again opened his mouth, and in went another dumpling in the same way. He was left only with the work of chewing and swallowing.

"See what a marvel!" thought the blacksmith, opening his mouth in surprise, and noticing straightaway that a dumpling was going into his mouth as well and had already smeared his lips with sour cream. Pushing the dumpling away and wiping his lips, the blacksmith began to reflect on what wonders happen in the world and what clever things a man could attain to by means of the unclean powers, observing at the same time that Patsiuk alone could help him. "I'll bow to him again, and let him explain it to me… Though, what the devil! today is a hungry kutya, 6 and he eats dumplings, non-lenten dumplings! What a fool I am, really, standing here and heaping up sins! Retreat!…" And the pious blacksmith rushed headlong from the cottage.

However, the devil, who had been sitting in the sack and rejoicing in anticipation, couldn't stand to see such a fine prize slip through his fingers. As soon as the blacksmith put the sack down, he jumped out and sat astride his neck.

A chill crept over the blacksmith; frightened and pale, he did not know what to do; he was just about to cross himself… But the devil, leaning his doggy muzzle to his right ear, said:

"It's me, your friend-I'll do anything for a friend and comrade! I'll give you as much money as you like," he squealed into his left ear. "Oksana will be ours today," he whispered, poking his muzzle toward his right ear again.

The blacksmith stood pondering.

"Very well," he said finally, "for that price I'm ready to be yours!"

The devil clasped his hands and began bouncing for joy on the blacksmith's neck. "Now I've got you, blacksmith!" he thought to himself. "Now I'll take revenge on you, my sweet fellow, for all your paintings and tall tales against devils! What will my comrades say now, when they find out that the most pious man in the whole village is in my hands?" Here the devil laughed with joy, thinking how he was going to mock all the tailed race in hell, and how furious, the lame devil would be, reputed the foremost contriver among them.

"Well, Vakula!" the devil squealed, still sitting on his neck, as if fearing he might run away, "you know, nothing is done without a contract."

"I'm ready!" said the blacksmith. "With you, I've heard, one has to sign in blood; wait, I'll get a nail from my pocket!" Here he put his arm behind him and seized the devil by the tail.

"See what a joker!" the devil cried out, laughing. "Well, enough now, enough of these pranks!"

"Wait, my sweet fellow!" cried the blacksmith, "and how will you like this?" With these words he made the sign of the cross and the devil became as meek as a lamb. "Just wait," he said, dragging him down by the tail, "I'll teach you to set good people and honest Christians to sinning!" Here the blacksmith, without letting go of the tail, jumped astride him and raised his hand to make the sign of the cross.

"Have mercy, Vakula!" the devil moaned pitifully. "I'll do anything you want, anything, only leave my soul in peace-don't put the terrible cross on me!"

"Ah, so that's the tune you sing now, you cursed German! Now I know what to do. Take me on your back this minute, do you hear? Carry me like a bird!"

"Where to?" said the rueful devil.

"To Petersburg, straight to the tsaritsa!"

And the blacksmith went numb with fear, feeling himself rising into the air.

For a long time Oksana stood pondering the blacksmith's strange words. Something inside her was already telling her she had treated him too cruelly. What if he had indeed decided on some-thing terrible? "Who knows, maybe in his sorrow he'll make up his mind to fall in love with another girl and out of vexation call her the first beauty of the village? But, no, he loves me. I'm so pretty! He wouldn't trade me for anyone; he's joking, pretending. Before ten minutes go by, he'll surely come to look at me. I really am too stern. I must let him kiss me, as if reluctantly. It will make him so happy!" And the frivolous beauty was already joking with her girlfriends.

"Wait," said one of them, "the blacksmith forgot his sacks. Look, what frightful sacks! He doesn't go caroling as we do: I think he's got whole quarters of lamb thrown in there; and sausages and loaves of bread probably beyond count. Magnificent! We can eat as much as we want all through the feast days."

"Are those the blacksmith's sacks?" Oksana picked up. "Let's quickly take them to my house and have a better look at what he's stuffed into them."

Everyone laughingly accepted this suggestion.

"But we can't lift them!" the whole crowd suddenly cried, straining to move the sacks.

"Wait," said Oksana, "let's run and fetch a sled, we can take them on a sled."

And the crowd ran to fetch a sled.

The prisoners were very weary of sitting in the sacks, though the deacon had made himself a big hole with his finger. If it hadn't been for the people, he might have found a way to get out; but to get out of a sack in front of everybody, to make himself a laughingstock… this held him back, and he decided to wait, only groaning slightly under Choub's uncouth boots. Choub himself had no less of a wish for freedom, feeling something under him that was terribly awkward to sit on. But once he heard his daughter's decision, he calmed down and no longer wanted to get out, considering that to reach his house one would have to walk at least a hundred paces, maybe two. If he got out, he would have to straighten his clothes, button his coat, fasten his belt-so much work! And the hat with earflaps had stayed at Solokha's. Better let the girls take him on a sled. But it happened not at all as Choub expected. Just as the girls went off to fetch the sled, the skinny chum was coming out of the tavern, upset and in low spirits. The woman who kept the tavern was in no way prepared to give him credit; he had waited in hopes some pious squire might come and treat him; but, as if on purpose, all the squires stayed home like honest Christians and ate kutya in the bosom of their families. Reflecting on the corruption of morals and the wooden heart of the Jewess who sold the drink, the chum wandered into the sacks and stopped in amazement.

"Look what sacks somebody's left in the road!" he said, glancing around. "There must be pork in them. Somebody's had real luck to get so much stuff for his caroling! What frightful sacks! Suppose they're stuffed with buckwheat loaves and lard biscuits-that's good enough. If it's nothing but flatbread, that's already something: the Jewess gives a dram of vodka for each flatbread. I'll take it quick, before anybody sees me." Here he hauled the sack with Choub and the deacon onto his shoulders, but felt it was too heavy. "No, it's too heavy to carry alone," he said, "but here, as if on purpose, comes the weaver Shapuvalenko. Good evening, Ostap!"

"Good evening," said the weaver, stopping.

"Where are you going?"

"Dunno, wherever my legs take me."

"Help me, good man, to carry these sacks! Somebody went caroling and then dropped them in the middle of the road. We'll divide the goods fifty-fifty."

"Sacks? And what's in the sacks, wheat loaves or flatbread?"

"I suppose there's everything in them."

Here they hastily pulled sticks from a wattle fence, put a sack on them, and carried it on their shoulders.

"Where are we taking it? to the tavern?" the weaver asked as they went.

"That's what I was thinking-to the tavern. But the cursed Jewess won't believe us, she'll think we stole it; besides, I just came from the tavern. We'll take it to my place. No one will be in our way: my wife isn't home."

"You're sure she's not home?" the prudent weaver asked.

"Thank God, we've still got some wits left," said the chum, "the devil if I'd go where she is. I suppose she'll be dragging about with the women till dawn."

"Who's there?" cried the chum's wife, hearing the noise in the front hall produced by the two friends coming in with the sack, and she opened the door.

The chum was dumbfounded.

"There you go!" said the weaver, dropping his arms.

The chum's wife was a treasure of a sort not uncommon in the wide world. Like her husband, she hardly ever stayed home but spent almost all her days fawning on some cronies and wealthy old women, praised and ate with great appetite, and fought with her husband only in the mornings, which was the one time she occasionally saw him. Their cottage was twice as old as the local scrivener's balloon trousers, the roof lacked straw in some places. Only remnants of the watde fence were to be seen, because no one ever took a stick along against dogs when leaving the house, intending to pass by the chum's kitchen garden instead and pull one out of his fence. Three days would go by without the stove being lit. Whatever the tender spouse wheedled out of good people she hid the best she could from her husband, and she often arbitrarily took his booty if he hadn't managed to drink it up in the tavern. The chum, despite his perennial sangfroid, did not like yielding to her, and therefore almost always left the house with two black eyes, and his dear better half trudged off to tell the old women about her husband's outrages and the beatings she suffered from him.

Now, you can picture to yourself how thrown off the weaver and the chum were by her unexpected appearance. Setting the sack down, they stepped in front of it, covering it with their coat skirts; but it was too late: the chum's wife, though she saw poorly with her old eyes, nevertheless noticed the sack.

"Well, that's good!" she said, with the look of an exultant hawk. "It's good you got so much for your caroling! That's what good people always do; only, no, I suspect you picked it up somewhere. Show me this minute! Do you hear? Show me your sack right this minute!"

"The hairy devil can show it to you, not us," said the chum, assuming a dignified air.

"What business is it of yours?" said the weaver. "We got it for caroling, not you."

"No, you're going to show it to me, you worthless drunkard!" the wife exclaimed, hitting the tall chum on the chin with her fist and going for the sack.

But the weaver and the chum valiantly defended the sack and forced her to retreat. Before they had time to recover, the spouse came running back to the front hall, this time with a poker in her hands. She nimbly whacked her husband on the hands and the weaver on the back with the poker, and was now standing beside the sack.

"What, we let her get to it?" said the weaver, coming to his senses.

"Eh, what do you mean we let her-why did you let her?" the chum said with sangfroid.

"Your poker must be made of iron!" the weaver said after a short silence, rubbing his back. "My wife bought a poker at the fair last year, paid twenty-five kopecks-it's nothing… doesn't even hurt…"

Meanwhile the triumphant spouse, setting a tallow lamp on the floor, untied the sack and peeked into it. But her old eyes, which had made out the sack so well, must have deceived her this time.

"Eh, there's a whole boar in there!" she cried out, clapping her hands for joy.

"A boar! do you hear, a whole boar!" the weaver nudged the chum. "It's all your fault!"

"No help for it!" the chum said, shrugging.

"No help? Don't stand there, let's take the sack from her! Come on! Away with you! away! it's our boar!" the weaver shouted, bearing down on her.

"Get out, get out, cursed woman! It's not your goods!" the chum said, coming closer.

The spouse again took hold of the poker, but just then Choub climbed out of the sack and stood in the middle of the hall, stretching, like a man who has just awakened from a long sleep.

The chum's wife gave a cry, slapping her skirts, and they all involuntarily opened their mouths.

"Why did she say a boar, the fool! That's not a boar!" said the chum, goggling his eyes.

"See what a man got thrown into the sack!" said the weaver, backing away in fear. "Say what you like, you can even burst, but it's the doing of the unclean powers. He wouldn't even fit through the window!"

"It's my chum!" cried the chum, looking closer.

"And who did you think it was?" said Choub, smiling. "A nice trick I pulled on you, eh? And you probably wanted to eat me as pork? Wait, I've got good news for you: there's something else in the sack-if not a boar, then surely a piglet or some other live thing. Something's been moving under me all the time."

The weaver and the chum rushed to the sack, the mistress of the house seized it from the other side, and the fight would have started again if the deacon, seeing there was nowhere to hide, hadn't climbed out of the sack.

"Here's another one!" the weaver exclaimed in fright. "Devil knows how this world… it makes your head spin… not sausages or biscuits, they throw people into sacks!"

"It's the deacon!" said Choub, more astonished than anyone else. "Well, now! that's Solokha for you! putting us into sacks… That's why she's got a house full of sacks… Now I see it all: she had two men sitting in each sack. And I thought I was the only one she… That's Solokha for you!"

The girls were a bit surprised to find one sack missing. "No help for it, this one will be enough for us," Oksana prattled. They all took hold of the sack and heaved it onto the sled.

The headman decided to keep quiet, reasoning that if he shouted for them to untie the sack and let him out, the foolish girls would run away, thinking the devil was sitting in it, and he would be left out in the street maybe till the next day.

The girls, meanwhile, all took each other's hands and flew like the wind, pulling the sled over the creaking snow. Many of them sat on the sled for fun; some got on the headman himself.

The headman resolved to endure everything. They finally arrived, opened the doors to the house and the front hall wide, and with loud laughter dragged the sack inside.

"Let's see what's in it," they all shouted and hastened to untie the sack.

Here the hiccups that had never ceased to torment the headman all the while he was sitting in the sack became so bad that he started hicking and coughing very loudly.

"Ah, somebody's in there!" they all cried and rushed out of the house in fear.

"What the devil! Why are you running around like crazy?" said Choub, coming in the door.

"Ah, Papa!" said Oksana, "there's somebody in the sack!"

"In the sack? Where did you get this sack?"

"The blacksmith left them in the middle of the road," they all said at once.

"Well," Choub thought to himself, "didn't I say so?…"

"What are you so afraid of?" he said. "Let's see. Now, then, my man, never mind if we don't call you by your full name-get out of the sack!"

The headman got out.

"Ah!" cried the girls.

"The headman was in it, too," Choub said to himself in perplexity, looking him up and down, "fancy that!… Eh!…" He could say nothing more.

The headman was no less confused himself and did not know how to begin.

"Must be cold out?" he said, addressing Choub.

"A bit nippy," Choub replied. "And, if I may ask, what do you grease your boots with, mutton fat or tar?"

He had not meant to say that, he had meant to ask: "How did you, the headman, get into this sack?" but, without knowing why himself, he had said something completely different.

"Tar's better!" said the headman. "Well, good-bye, Choub!" And, pulling down his earflaps, he walked out of the house.

"Why did I ask so stupidly what he greases his boots with!' Choub said, looking at the door through which the headman had gone. "That's Solokha! putting such a man into a sack!… A devil of a woman! Fool that I am… but where s that cursed sack?"

"I threw it in the corner, there's nothing else in it," said Oksana.

"I know these tricks-nothing else in it! Give it to me; there's another one sitting in it! Shake it out well… What, nothing?… Cursed woman! And to look at her-just like a saint, as if she never put anything non-lenten near her lips."

But let us leave Choub to pour out his vexation at leisure and go back to the blacksmith, because it must already be past eight o'clock outside.

At first Vakula found it frightening when he rose to such a height that he could see nothing below and flew like a fly right under the moon, so that if he hadn't ducked slightly he would have brushed it with his hat. However, in a short while he took heart and began making fun of the devil. He was extremely amused by the way the devil sneezed and coughed whenever he took his cypress-wood cross from his neck and put it near him. He would purposely raise his hand to scratch his head, and the devil, thinking he was about to cross him, would speed up his flight. Everything was bright aloft. The air was transparent, all in a light silvery mist. Everything was visible; and he could even observe how a sorcerer, sitting in a pot, raced past them like the wind; how the stars gathered together to play blindman's buff; how a whole swarm of phantoms billowed in a cloud off to one side; how a devil dancing around the moon took his hat off on seeing the mounted blacksmith; how a broom came flying back, having just served some witch… they met a lot more trash. Seeing the blacksmith, all stopped for a moment to look at him and then rushed on their way again. The blacksmith flew on, and suddenly Petersburg, all ablaze, glittered before him. (It was lit up for some occasion.) The devil, flying over the toll gate, turned into a horse, and the blacksmith saw himself on a swift racer in the middle of the street.

My God! the clatter, the thunder, the glitter; four-story walls loomed on both sides; the clatter of horses' hooves and the rumble of wheels sounded like thunder and echoed on four sides; houses grew as if rising from the ground at every step; bridges trembled; carriages flew by; cabbies and postilions shouted; snow swished under a thousand sleds flying on all sides; passers-by pressed against and huddled under houses studded with lamps, and their huge shadows flitted over the walls, their heads reaching the chimneys and roofs. The blacksmith looked about him in amazement. It seemed to him that the houses all turned their countless fiery eyes on him and stared. He saw so many gentlemen in fur-lined coats that he didn't know before whom to doff his hat. "My God, so much nobility here!" thought the blacksmith. "I think each one going down the street in a fur coat is another assessor, another assessor! And the ones driving around in those wonderful britzkas with windows, if they're not police chiefs, then they're surely commissars, or maybe even higher up." His words were interrupted by a question from the devil: "Shall we go straight to the tsaritsa?" "No, it's scary," thought the blacksmith. "The Za-porozhtsy who passed through Dikanka in the fall are staying here somewhere. They were coming from the Setch 7 with papers for the tsaritsa. I'd better talk it over with them."

"Hey, little Satan, get in my pocket and lead me to the Za-porozhtsy."

The devil instantly shrank and became so small that he easily got into Vakula's pocket. And before Vakula had time to look around, he found himself in front of a big house, went up the stairs, himself not knowing how, opened a door, and drew back slightly from the splendor on seeing the furnished room; then he took heart somewhat, recognizing the same Cossacks who had passed through Dikanka sitting cross-legged on silk divans in their tarred boots and smoking the strongest tobacco, the kind known as root-stock.

"Good day, gentlemen! God be with you! So this is where we meet again!" said the blacksmith, going closer and bowing to the ground.

"Who's that man there?" the one sitting right in front of the blacksmith asked another sitting further away.

"You don't recognize me?" said the blacksmith. "It's me, Vakula, the blacksmith! When you passed through Dikanka in the fall, you stayed-God grant you all health and long life-for nearly two days. And I put a new tire on the front wheel of your kibitka then!"

"Ah," said the first Cossack, "this is that same blacksmith who paints so well. Greetings, landsman, what brings you here?"

"Oh, I just came for a look around. They say…"

"Well, landsman," the Cossack said, assuming a dignified air and wishing to show that he, too, could speak Russian, "it's a beeg city, eh?"

The blacksmith did not want to disgrace himself and look like a greenhorn; what's more, as we had occasion to see earlier, he, too, was acquainted with literate language.

"A grand province!" he replied with equanimity. "No disputing it: the houses are plenty big, there's good paintings hanging everywhere. A lot of houses have an extremity of letters in gold leaf written on them. Wonderful proportions, there's no disputing it!"

The Zaporozhtsy, hearing the blacksmith express himself so fluently, drew very favorable conclusions about him.

"We'll talk more with you later, landsman; right now we're on our way to the tsaritsa."

"To the tsaritsa? Be so kind, masters, as to take me with you!"

"You?" the Cossack said, with the air of a tutor talking to his four-year-old charge who is begging to be put on a real, big horse. "What will you do there? No, impossible." With that, his face assumed an imposing mien. "We, brother, are going to discuss our own affairs with the tsaritsa."

"Take me!" the blacksmith persisted. "Beg them!" he whispered softly to the devil, hitting the pocket with his fist.

Before he got the words out, another Cossack spoke up:

"Let's take him, brothers!"

"All right, let's take him!" said the others.

"Get dressed the same as we are."

The blacksmith was just pulling on a green jacket when the door suddenly opened, and a man with gold braid came in and said it was time to go.

Again it seemed a marvel to the blacksmith, as he raced along in the huge carriage rocking on its springs, when four-storied houses raced backward past him on both sides, and the street, rumbling, seemed to roll under the horses' hooves.

"My God, what light!" the blacksmith thought to himself. "Back home it's not so bright at noontime."

The carriages stopped in front of the palace. The Cossacks got out, went into the magnificent front hall, and started up the brilliantly lit stairway.

"What a stairway!" the blacksmith whispered to himself. "It's a pity to trample it underfoot. Such ornaments! See, and they say it's all tall tales! the devil it's tall tales! my God, what a banister! such workmanship! it's fifty roubles' worth of iron alone."

After climbing the stairs, the Cossacks passed through the first hall. The blacksmith followed them timidly, afraid of slipping on the parquet floor at every step. They passed through three halls, and the blacksmith still couldn't stop being amazed. On entering the fourth, he inadvertently went up to a painting that hung on the wall. It was of the most pure Virgin with the Child in her arms. "What a painting! what wonderful art!" he thought. "It seems to be speaking! it seems alive! And the holy Child! He clasps his little hands and smiles, poor thing! And the colors! oh, my God, what colors! I bet there's not a kopeck's worth of ochre; it's all verdigris and crimson, and the blue is so bright! Great workmanship! and the ground must have been done in white lead. But, astonishing as the painting is, this brass handle," he went on, going up to the door and feeling the latch, "is worthy of still greater astonishment. What perfect finish! I bet German blacksmiths made it all, and for a very dear price…"

The blacksmith would probably have gone on reasoning for a long time, if a lackey with galloons hadn't nudged his arm, reminding him not to lag behind. The Cossacks passed through two more halls and stopped. Here they were told to wait. In the hall there was a group of generals in gold-embroidered uniforms. The Cossacks bowed on all sides and stood in a cluster.

A minute later a rather stout man of majestic height, wearing a hetman's 8 uniform and yellow boots, came in, accompanied by a whole retinue. His hair was disheveled, one eye was slightly askew, his face showed a certain haughty grandeur, all his movements betrayed a habit of command. The generals who had all been pacing up and down quite arrogantly in their golden uniforms began bustling about and bowing low and seemed to hang on his every word and even his slightest gesture, so as to rush at once and fulfill it. But the hetman did not pay any attention, barely nodded his head, and went up to the Cossacks.

The Cossacks all gave a low bow.

"Are you all here?" he asked with a drawl, pronouncing the words slightly through his nose.

"All here, father!" the Cossacks replied, bowing again.

"You won't forget to speak the way I taught you?"

"No, father, we won't forget."

"Is that the tsar?" the blacksmith asked one of the Cossacks.

"Tsar, nothing! it's Potemkin 9 himself," the man replied.

Voices came from the other room, and the blacksmith did not know where to look from the multitude of ladies entering in satin dresses with long trains and the courtiers in gold-embroidered caftans and with queues behind. He saw only splendor and nothing more. Suddenly the Cossacks all fell to the ground and cried out in one voice:

"Have mercy, mother, have mercy!"

The blacksmith, seeing nothing, also zealously prostrated himself on the floor.

"Get up!" a voice imperious and at the same time pleasant sounded above them. Some of the courtiers bustled about and nudged the Cossacks.

"We won't get up, mother! we won't! we'd rather die than get up!" the Cossacks cried.

Potemkin was biting his lips. Finally he went over himself and whispered commandingly to one of the Cossacks. They got up.

Here the blacksmith also ventured to raise his head and saw standing before him a woman of small stature, even somewhat portly, powdered, with blue eyes, and with that majestically smiling air which knew so well how to make all obey and could belong only to a woman who reigns.

"His Highness promised to acquaint me today with one of my peoples whom I have not yet seen," the lady with the blue eyes said as she studied the Cossacks with curiosity. "Are you being kept well here?" she continued, coming nearer.

"Thank you, mother! The victuals are good, though the lamb hereabouts is not at all like in our Zaporozhye-but why not take what comes?…"

Potemkin winced, seeing that the Cossacks were saying something completely different from what he had taught them…

One of the Cossacks, assuming an air of dignity, stepped forward:

"Have mercy, mother! Why would you ruin loyal people? How have we angered you? Have we joined hands with the foul Tartar? Have we made any agreements with the Turk? Have we betrayed you in deed or in thought? Why, then, the disgrace? First we heard that you had ordered fortresses built everywhere for protection against us; then we heard that you wanted to turn us into carabinieri 10; now we hear of new calamities. In what is the Zaporozhye army at fault? that it brought your troops across the Perekop and helped your generals to cut down the Crimeans?…" 11

Potemkin kept silent and with a small brush casually cleaned the diamonds that studded his hands.

"What, then, do you want?" Catherine asked solicitously.

The Cossacks looked meaningly at one another.

"Now's the time! The tsaritsa is asking what we want!" the blacksmith said to himself and suddenly fell to the ground.

"Your Imperial Majesty, punish me not, but grant me mercy! Meaning no offense to Your Imperial Grace, but what are the booties you're wearing made of? I bet not one cobbler in any country of the world can make them like that. My God, if only my wife could wear such booties!"

The empress laughed. The courtiers also laughed. Potemkin frowned and smiled at the same time. The Cossacks began nudging the blacksmith's arm, thinking he had lost his mind.

"Get up!" the empress said benignly. "If you want so much to have such shoes, it's not hard to do. Bring him my most expensive shoes at once, the ones with gold! Truly, this simple-heartedness pleases me very much! Here," the empress went on, directing her eyes at a middle-aged man with a plump but somewhat pale face, who was standing further off than the others and whose modest caftan with big mother-of-pearl buttons showed that he did not belong to the number of the courtiers, "you have a subject worthy of your witty pen!" 12

"You are too gracious, Your Imperial Majesty. Here at least a La Fontaine 13 is called for," the man with the mother-of-pearl buttons replied, bowing.

"I tell you in all honesty, I still love your Brigadier to distraction. You read remarkably well! However," the empress went on, turning to the Cossacks, "I've heard that in the Setch you never marry."

"How so, mother! You know yourself a man can't live without a wife," replied the same Cossack who had spoken with the blacksmith, and the blacksmith was surprised to hear this Cossack, who had such a good knowledge of literate language, talk with the tsar-itsa as if on purpose in the coarsest way, usually called muzhik speech. "Clever folk!" he thought to himself. "He's surely doing it for a reason."

"We're not monks," the Cossack went on, "but sinful people. We fall for non-lenten things, as all honest Christendom does. Not a few among us have wives, though they don't live with them in the Setch. There are some who have wives in Poland; there are some who have wives in the Ukraine; there are even some who have wives in Turkey."

Just then the shoes were brought to the blacksmith.

"My God, what an adornment!" he cried joyfully, seizing the shoes. "Your Imperial Majesty! If the shoes on your feet are like this, and Your Honor probably even wears them to go ice skating, then how must the feet themselves be! I bet of pure sugar, at least!"

The empress, who did in fact have very shapely and lovely feet, could not help smiling at hearing such a compliment from the lips of a simple-hearted blacksmith, who, in his Zaporozhye outfit, could be considered a handsome fellow despite his swarthy complexion.

Gladdened by such favorable attention, the blacksmith was just going to question the tsaritsa properly about everything-was it true that tsars eat only honey and lard, and so on-but feeling the Cossacks nudging him in the ribs, he decided to keep quiet. And when the empress, turning to the elders, began asking how they lived in the Setch and what their customs were, he stepped back, bent to his pocket, and said softly, "Get me out of here, quick!" and suddenly found himself beyond the toll gate.

"He drowned! by God, he drowned! May I never leave this spot if he didn't drown!" the weaver's fat wife babbled, standing in the middle of the street amidst a crowd of Dikanka women.

"What, am I some kind of liar? did I steal anybody's cow? did I put a spell on anybody, that you don't believe me?" shouted a woman in a Cossack blouse, with a violet nose, waving her arms. "May I never want to drink water again if old Pereperchikha didn't see the blacksmith hang himself with her own eyes!"

"The blacksmith hanged himself? just look at that!" said the headman, coming out of Choub's house, and he stopped and pushed closer to the talking women.

"Why not tell us you'll never drink vodka again, you old drunkard!" replied the weaver's wife. "A man would have to be as crazy as you are to hang himself! He drowned! drowned in a hole in the ice! I know it as well as I know you just left the tavern."

"The hussy! see what she reproaches me with!" the woman with the violet nose retorted angrily. "You'd better shut up, you jade! Don't I know that the deacon comes calling on you every evening?"

The weaver's wife flared up.

"The deacon what? Calls on whom? How you lie!"

"The deacon?" sang out the deacon's wife, in a rabbitskin coat covered with blue nankeen, pushing her way toward the quarreling women. "I'll show you a deacon! who said deacon?"

"It's her the deacon comes calling on!" said the woman with the violet nose, pointing at the weaver's wife.

"So it's you, you bitch!" said the deacon's wife, accosting the weaver's wife. "So it's you, you hellcat, who blow fog in his eyes and give him unclean potions to drink so as to make him come to you?

"Leave me alone, you she-devil!" the weaver's wife said, backing away.

"You cursed hellcat, may you never live to see your children! Pfui!…" and the deacon's wife spat straight into the weaver's wife's eyes.

The weaver's wife wanted to respond in kind, but instead spat into the unshaven chin of the headman, who, in order to hear better, had edged right up to the quarreling women.

"Agh, nasty woman!" cried the headman, wiping his face with the skirt of his coat and raising his whip. That gesture caused everyone to disband, cursing, in all directions. "What vileness!" he repeated, still wiping himself. "So the blacksmith is drowned! My God, and what a good painter he was! What strong knives, sickles, and plows he could forge! Such strength he had! Yes," he went on, pondering, "there are few such people in our village. That's why I noticed while I was still sitting in that cursed sack that the poor fellow was really in bad spirits. That's it for your blacksmith-he was, and now he's not! And I was just going to have my piebald mare shod!…"

And, filled with such Christian thoughts, the headman slowly trudged home.

Oksana was confused when the news reached her. She trusted little in Pereperchikha's eyes, or in women's talk; she knew that the blacksmith was too pious to dare destroy his soul. But what if he had left with the intention of never coming back to the village? There was hardly such a fine fellow as the blacksmith anywhere else! And he loved her so! He had put up with her caprices longest! All night under her blanket the beauty tossed from right to left, from left to right-and couldn't fall asleep. Now, sprawled in an enchanting nakedness which the dark of night concealed even from herself, she scolded herself almost aloud; then, calming down, she resolved not to think about anything-and went on thinking. And she was burning all over; and by morning she was head over heels in love with the blacksmith.

Choub expressed neither joy nor grief at Vakula's lot. His thoughts were occupied with one thing: he was simply unable to forget Solokha's perfidy and, even in his sleep, never stopped abusing her.

Morning came. Even before dawn the whole church was filled with people. Elderly women in white head scarves and white flannel blouses piously crossed themselves just at the entrance to the church. Ladies in green and yellow vests, and some even in dark blue jackets with gold curlicues behind, stood in front of them. Young girls with a whole mercer's shop of ribbons wound round their heads, and with beads, crosses, and coin necklaces on their necks, tried to make their way still closer to the iconostasis. 14 But in front of them all stood the squires and simple muzhiks with mustaches, topknots, thick necks, and freshly shaven chins, almost all of them in hooded flannel cloaks, from under which peeked here a white and there a blue blouse. All the faces, wherever you looked, had a festive air. The headman licked his chops, imagining himself breaking his fast with sausage; the young girls' thoughts were of going ice skating with the lads; the old women whispered their prayers more zealously than ever. You could hear the Cossack Sverbyguz's bowing all over the church. Only Oksana stood as if not herself: she prayed, and did not pray. There were so many different feelings crowding in her heart, one more vexing than another, one more rueful than another, that her face expressed nothing but great confusion; tears quivered in her eyes. The girls couldn't understand the reason for it and didn't suspect that the blacksmith was to blame. However, Oksana was not the only one concerned about the blacksmith. The parishioners all noticed that it was as if the feast was not a feast, as if something was lacking. As luck would have it, the deacon, after his journey in the sack, had grown hoarse and croaked in a barely audible voice; true, the visiting singer hit the bass notes nicely, but it would have been much better if the blacksmith had been there, who, whenever the "Our Father" or the "Cherubic Hymn" was sung, always went up to the choir and sang out from there in the same way they sing in Poltava. Besides, he was the one who did the duties of the church warden. Matins were already over; after matins, the liturgy… Where, indeed, had the blacksmith disappeared to?

Still more swiftly in the remaining time of night did the devil race home with the blacksmith. Vakula instantly found himself by his cottage. Just then the cock crowed. "Hold on!" he cried, snatching the devil by the tail as he was about to run away. "Wait, friend, that's not all-I haven't thanked you yet." Here, seizing a switch, he measured him out three strokes, and the poor devil broke into a run, like a muzhik who has just been given a roasting by an assessor. And so, instead of deceiving, seducing, and duping others, the enemy of the human race was duped himself. After which, Vakula went into the front hall, burrowed under the hay, and slept until dinnertime. Waking up, he was frightened when he saw the sun already high. "I slept through matins and the liturgy!"-and the pious blacksmith sank into dejection, reasoning that God, as a punishment for his sinful intention of destroying his soul, must have sent him a sleep that kept him from going to church on such a solemn feast day. However, having calmed himself by deciding to confess it to the priest the next week and to start that same day making fifty bows a day for a whole year, he peeked into the cottage; but no one was home. Solokha must not have come back yet. He carefully took the shoes from his bosom and again marveled at the costly workmanship and the strange adventure of the past night; he washed, dressed the best he could, putting on the clothes he got from the Cossacks, took from his trunk a new hat of Reshetilovo astrakhan with a blue top, which he had not worn even once since he bought it while he was in Poltava; he also took out a new belt of all colors; he put it all into a handkerchief along with a whip and went straight to Choub.

Choub goggled his eyes when the blacksmith came in, and didn't know which to marvel at: that the blacksmith had resurrected, or that the blacksmith had dared to come to him, or that he had got himself up so foppishly as a Zaporozhye Cossack. But he was still more amazed when Vakula untied the handkerchief and placed before him a brand-new hat and a belt such as had never been seen in the village, and himself fell at his feet and said in a pleading voice:

"Have mercy, father! don't be angry! here's a whip for you: beat me as much as your soul desires, I give myself up; I repent of everything; beat me, only don't be angry! You were once bosom friends with my late father, you ate bread and salt together and drank each other's health."

Choub, not without secret pleasure, beheld the blacksmith- who did not care a hoot about anyone in the village, who bent copper coins and horseshoes in his bare hands like buckwheat pancakes-this same blacksmith, lying at his feet. So as not to demean himself, Choub took the whip and struck him three times on the back.

"Well, that's enough for you, get up! Always listen to your elders! Let's forget whatever was between us! So, tell me now, what do you want?"

"Give me Oksana for my wife, father!"

Choub thought a little, looked at the hat and belt; it was a wonderful hat and the belt was no worse; he remembered the perfidious Solokha and said resolutely:

"Right-o! Send the matchmakers!"

"Aie!" Oksana cried out, stepping across the threshold and seeing the blacksmith, and with amazement and joy she fastened her eyes on him.

"Look, what booties I've brought you!" said Vakula, "the very ones the tsaritsa wears!"

"No! no! I don't need any booties!" she said, waving her hands and not taking her eyes off him. "Even without the booties, I…" She blushed and did not say any more.

The blacksmith went up to her and took her hand; the beauty looked down. Never yet had she been so wondrously pretty. The delighted blacksmith gently kissed her, her face flushed still more, and she became even prettier.

A bishop of blessed memory was driving through Dikanka, praised the location of the village, and, driving down the street, stopped in front of a new cottage.

"And to whom does this painted cottage belong?" His Reverence asked of the beautiful woman with a baby in her arms who was standing by the door.

"To the blacksmith Vakula," said Oksana, bowing to him, for it was precisely she.

"Fine! fine work!" said His Reverence, studying the doors and windows. The windows were all outlined in red, and on the doors everywhere there were mounted Cossacks with pipes in their teeth.

But His Reverence praised Vakula still more when he learned that he had undergone a church penance and had painted the entire left-hand choir green with red flowers free of charge. That, however, was not all: on the wall to the right as you entered the church, Vakula had painted a devil in hell, such a nasty one that everybody spat as they went by; and the women, if a child started crying in their arms, would carry it over to the picture and say, "See what a caca's painted there!" and the child, holding back its tears, would look askance at the picture and press against its mother's breast.

The Terrible Vengeance

Noise and thunder at the end of Kiev: Captain Gorobets is celebrating his son's wedding. Many people have gathered as the captain's guests. In the old days people liked to eat well, better still did they like to drink, and better still did they like to make merry. On his bay steed came the Zaporozhets Mikitka, 1 straight from a wild spree on the Pereshlai field, where he kept the Polish noblemen drunk on red wine for seven days and seven nights. There came also the captain's sworn brother, Danilo Burulbash, with his young wife, Katerina, and his one-year-old son, from the other shore of the Dnieper, where he had a farmstead between two hills. The guests marveled at Mistress Katerina's white face, her eyebrows black as German velvet, her fancy woolen dress and light blue silken shirt, her boots with silver-shod heels; but still more they marveled that her old father had not come with her. For one year only had he been living across the Dnieper, but for twenty-one he had vanished without a word and had returned to his daughter when she was already married and had borne a son. He surely could have told of many wonders. How could he not after having lived for so long in foreign lands! There everything is different: the people are not the same, and there are no churches of Christ… But he had not come.

The guests were offered hot spiced vodka with raisins and plums and a round wedding loaf on a big platter. The musicians got to the bottom of it, where money had been baked in, and, quieting down for a while, laid aside their cymbals, violins, and tambourines. Meanwhile the young women and girls, wiping their lips with embroidered handkerchiefs, again stepped out from their rows; and the lads, arms akimbo, proudly looking about, were ready to rush to meet them-when the old captain brought out two icons to bless the young couple. These icons had come to him from an honorable monk, the elder Varfolomey. Their casings were not rich, they did not shine with silver or gold, but no unclean powers dared to touch anyone who had them in the house. Raising the icons aloft, the captain was about to say a short prayer… when the children who were playing on the ground suddenly cried out in fright; following them, the people backed away, and all pointed their fingers in fear at a Cossack who stood in their midst. Who he was, no one knew. But he had already done a fine Cossack dance and managed to make the crowd around him laugh. Yet when the captain raised the icons, his whole face suddenly changed: his nose grew and bent to one side, his eyes, green now instead of brown, leaped, his lips turned blue, his chin trembled and grew sharp as a spear, a fang shot from his mouth, a hump rose behind his head, and the Cossack was-an old man.

"It's him! It's him!" people in the crowd cried, pressing close to each other.

"The sorcerer has appeared again!" cried the mothers, snatching up their children.

Majestically and dignifiedly the captain stepped forward and said in a loud voice, setting the icons against him:

"Vanish, image of Satan, there is no place for you here!" And, hissing and snapping his teeth like a wolf, the strange old man vanished.

There arose, arose noisily, like the sea in bad weather, a murmuring and talking among the folk.

"What is this sorcerer?" asked the young and unseasoned people.

"There'll be trouble!" said the old ones, wagging their heads.

And everywhere, all over the captain's wide yard, they began gathering in clusters and listening to stories about the strange sorcerer. But they almost all said different things, and no one could tell anything for certain about him.

A barrel of mead was rolled out into the yard, and not a few buckets of Greek wine were brought. All became merry again. The musicians struck up; the girls, the young women, the dashing Cossacks in bright jackets broke into a dance. Ninety- and hundred-year-olds got tipsy and also started to dance, recalling the years that had not vanished in vain. They feasted till late into the night, and they feasted as no one feasts any longer. The guests began to disperse, but few went home: many stayed the night in the captain's wide yard; still more Cossacks fell asleep, uninvited, under the benches, on the floor, by their horses, near the barn; wherever a drunken Cossack head staggered to, there he lay and snored for all Kiev to hear.

II

It shone quietly over all the world: the moon rose from behind the hill. It covered the hilly bank of the Dnieper as with precious, snow-white damask muslin, and the shade sank still deeper into the pine thicket.

In the middle of the Dnieper floated a boat. Two lads sat in the bow, their black Cossack hats cocked, and the spray from under their oars flew in all directions like sparks from a tinderbox.

Why are the Cossacks not singing? They do not talk of ksiedzy 2 going all over the Ukraine rebaptising people as Catholics; nor of the two-day battle with the Horde at the Salt Lake. 3 How can they sing, how can they talk of daring deeds: their master Danilo has fallen into thought, and the sleeve of his red flannel jacket, hanging out of the boat, trails in the water; their mistress Katerina quietly rocks the baby without taking her eyes off him, and a gray dust of water sprays over the linen covering her fancy dress.

Fair is the sight from the midst of the Dnieper of the high hills, the broad meadows, and the green forest! Those hills are not hills: they have no foot; they are sharp-peaked at both bottom and top; under them and over them is the tall sky. Those woods standing on the slopes are not woods; they are hair growing on the shaggy head of the old man of the forest. Under it his beard washes in the water, and under his beard and over his hair-the tall sky. Those meadows are not meadows: they are a green belt tied in the middle of the round sky, and the moon strolls about in both the upper and the lower half.

Master Danilo looks to neither side, he looks at his young wife.

"What is it, my young wife, my golden Katerina, have you fallen into sadness?"

"I have not fallen into sadness, my master Danilo! I am frightened by the strange stories about the sorcerer. They say he was born so frightful… and from an early age no child wanted to play with him. Listen, Master Danilo, to what frightening things they say: as if he always imagined that everyone was laughing at him. He would meet some man on a dark evening, and at once it would seem to him that he had opened his mouth and bared his teeth. And the next day the man would be found dead. I felt strange, I felt frightened when I heard these stories," said Katerina, taking out a handkerchief and wiping the face of the baby asleep in her arms. She had embroidered the handkerchief with red silk leaves and berries.

Master Danilo said not a word and began looking to the dark side, where far beyond the forest an earthen rampart blackened and an old castle rose from behind the rampart. Three wrinkles all at once creased his brow; his left hand stroked his gallant mustache.

"It is not so frightening that he is a sorcerer," he said, "as that he is an evil guest. Why this whim of dragging himself here? I've heard that the Polacks want to build some sort of fortress to cut off our way to the Zaporozhye. Only let it be true… I'll scatter the devil's nest if I hear so much as a rumor that he has any sort of den there. I'll burn the old sorcerer so that the crows have nothing to peck at. Besides, I think he has no lack of gold and other goods. Here is where the devil lives. If he has gold… Now we're going to pass the crosses-it's the cemetery! here his unclean forebears rot. They say they were all ready to sell themselves to Satan, souls and tattered jackets, for money. If indeed he has gold, there's no point in delaying now: war can't always bring…"

"I know what you are plotting. No good does the encounter with him promise me. But you are breathing so hard, you look so stern, your eyes are so grim under their scowling brows!…"

"Silence, woman!" Danilo said angrily. "Whoever deals with you becomes a woman himself. Lad, give me a light for my pipe!" Here he turned to one of the oarsmen, who knocked hot ashes from his pipe and transferred them to his master's pipe. "Frightening me with a sorcerer!" Master Danilo went on. "A Cossack, thank God, fears neither devils nor ksiedzy. Much good there'd be if we started listening to our wives. Right, lads? Our wife is a pipe and a sharp saber!"

Katerina fell silent, looking down into the slumbering water; and the wind sent ripples over the water, and the whole Dnieper silvered like a wolf's fur in the night.

The boat swung and began to hug the wooded bank. On the bank a cemetery could be seen: decrepit crosses crowded together. Guelder rose does not grow among them, there is no green grass, only the moon warms them from its heavenly height.

"Do you hear cries, my lads? Someone's calling us for help!" said Master Danilo, turning to his oarsmen.

"We hear the cries, and they seem to come from that direction," the lads said together, pointing to the cemetery.

But all grew still. The boat swung and began to round the jutting bank. Suddenly the oarsmen lowered their oars and stared fixedly. Master Danilo also stopped: fear and chill cut into their Cossack fibers.

The cross on one tomb swayed and out of it quietly rose a withered dead man. Beard down to his waist; claws on his fingers, long, longer than the fingers themselves. Quietly he raised his arms. His whole face twisted and trembled. He obviously suffered terrible torment. "I can't breathe! I can't breathe!" he moaned in a wild, inhuman voice. Like a knife blade his voice scraped at the heart, and the dead man suddenly sank under the ground. Another cross swayed, and again a dead man came out, still taller, still more terrible than the first; all overgrown, beard down to his knees, and still longer, bony nails. Still more wildly he cried: "I can't breathe!" and sank under the ground. A third cross swayed, a third dead man rose. It seemed as if nothing but bones rose high over the ground. Beard down to his very heels; fingers with long claws stuck into the ground. Terribly he stretched his arms upwards, as if trying to reach the moon, and cried out as if someone were sawing at his yellow bones…

The baby asleep in Katerina's arms gave a cry and woke up. The mistress herself gave a cry. The oarsmen dropped their hats into the Dnieper. The master himself shook.

Suddenly it all disappeared as if it had never been; nevertheless, the lads did not take up their oars for a long time.

Anxiously did Burulbash look at his young wife, who fearfully rocked the crying baby in her arms; he pressed her to his heart and kissed her on the brow.

"Don't be afraid, Katerina! Look, there's nothing!" he said, pointing all around. "It's the sorcerer trying to frighten people, so that no one gets into his unclean nest. He'll only frighten women with that! Give my son here!" With these words, Master Danilo raised his son to his lips. "What, Ivan, you're not afraid of sorcerers? No, papa, he says, I'm a Cossack. Enough, then, stop crying! We'll go home! we'll go home-mother will feed you porridge, put you to bed in your cradle, and sing:

Lullay, lullay, lullay,

Lullay, little son, lullay,

Grow up, grow up wise,

Win glory in the Cossacks' eyes

And punish their enemies.

Listen, Katerina, it seems to me your father doesn't want to live in accord with us. He arrived sullen, stern, as if he's angry… Well, if you're displeased, then why come? He didn't want to drink to Cossack freedom, he didn't rock the baby in his arms! First I wanted to confide everything in my heart to him, but it didn't come out, and my speech stumbled. No, his is not a Cossack's heart! Cossack hearts, when they meet, never fail to go out to each other! What, my sweet lads, it's soon the shore? Well, I'll give you new hats. To you, Stetsko, I'll give a velvet one with gold. I took it from a Tartar, along with his head. I got all his gear; only his soul I let go free. Well, tie up! Here, Ivan, we've come home and you keep on crying! Take him, Katerina!"

They all got out. A thatched roof showed from behind the hill: the ancestral mansion of Master Danilo. Beyond it another hill, then a field, and then you could walk for a hundred miles and not find even one Cossack.

III

Master Danilo's farmstead lies between two hills, in a narrow valley that runs down to the Dnieper. His mansion is not tall: a cottage by the looks, like those of simple Cossacks, and only one room in it; but there is enough space inside for him, and his wife, and the old serving woman, and ten choice youths. There are oak shelves up on the walls all around. They are laden with bowls and pots for eating. There are silver goblets among them and glasses trimmed with gold-gifts or the plunder of war. Below them hang costly muskets, sabers, harquebuses, lances. Willingly or unwillingly they were passed on from Tartars, Turks, and Polacks; and so they are not a little nicked. Looking at them, Master Danilo recalled his battles as if by banners. Along the wall, smoothly hewn oak benches. Next to them, before the stove seat, 4 a cradle hangs on ropes put through a ring screwed into the ceiling. The floor of the room is beaten smooth and covered with clay. On the benches Master Danilo sleeps with his wife. On the stove seat sleeps the old serving woman. In the cradle the little baby sports and is lulled to sleep. On the floor the youths lie side by side. But it is better for a Cossack to sleep on the level ground under the open sky; he needs no down or feather beds; he puts fresh hay under his head and sprawls freely on the grass. It delights him to wake up in the middle of the night, to gaze at the tall, star-strewn sky and shiver from the cool of the night that refreshes his Cossack bones. Stretching and murmuring in his sleep, he lights his pipe and wraps himself tighter in his warm sheepskin.

It was not early that Burulbash woke up after the previous day's merrymaking, and when he did wake up, he sat in the corner on the bench and began to sharpen a new Turkish saber he had taken in trade; and Mistress Katerina started to embroider a silken towel with gold. Suddenly Katerina's father came in, angry, scowling, with an outlandish pipe in his teeth, approached his daughter, and began to question her sternly: What was the reason for her coming home so late?

"About such things, father-in-law, you should ask me, not her! The husband is answerable, not the wife. That's how it is with us, meaning no offense to you!" said Danilo, without quitting his occupation. "Maybe there, in infidel lands, it's different-I wouldn't know."

Color came to the father-in-law's stern face, and his eyes glinted savagely.

"Who, if not a father, is to look after his daughter!" he muttered to himself. "I ask you, then: Where were you dragging about till late in the night?"

"Now you're talking, dear father-in-law! To that I will tell you that I'm long past the age of being swaddled by women. I can seat a horse. I can wield a sharp saber with my hand. I can do a thing or two besides… I can answer to no one for what I do."

"I see, Danilo, I know, you want a quarrel! Whoever hides himself must have evil things on his mind."

"Think what you like," said Danilo, "and I'll think, too. Thank God, I've never yet been part of any dishonorable thing; I've always stood for the Orthodox faith and the fatherland-not like some vagabonds who drag about God knows where while Orthodox people are fighting to the death, and then come down to reap where they haven't sown. They're not even like the Uniates 5: they never peek inside a church of God. It's they who should be questioned properly about where they drag about."

"Eh, Cossack! you know… I'm a bad shot: from a mere two hundred yards my bullet pierces the heart. I'm an unenviable swordsman: what I leave of a man is smaller than the grains they cook for porridge."

"I'm ready," said Master Danilo, briskly passing his saber through the air, as though he knew what he had been sharpening it for.

"Danilo!" Katerina cried loudly, seizing his arm and clinging to it. "Bethink yourself, madman! Look who you are raising your hand against! Father, your hair is white as snow, yet you flare up like a senseless boy!"

"Wife!" Master Danilo cried menacingly, "you know I don't like that. Mind your woman's business!"

The sabers clanged terribly; iron cut against iron, and sparks poured down like dust over the Cossacks. Weeping, Katerina went to her own room, threw herself down on the bed, and stopped her ears so as not to hear the saber blows. But the Cossacks did not fight so poorly that she could stifle the blows. Her heart was about to burst asunder. She felt the sound go through her whole body: clang, clang. "No, I can't bear it, I can't bear it… Maybe the red blood already spurts from his white body. Maybe my dear one is weakening now-and I lie here!" All pale, scarcely breathing, she went out to the room.

Steadily and terribly the Cossacks fought. Neither one could overpower the other. Now Katerina s father attacks-Master Danilo retreats. Master Danilo attacks-the stern father retreats, and again they are even. The pitch of battle. They swing… ough! the sabers clang… and the blades fly clattering aside.

"God be thanked!" said Katerina, but she cried out again when she saw the Cossacks take hold of muskets. They checked the flints, cocked the hammers.

Master Danilo shot-and missed. The father aimed… He is old, his sight is not so keen as the young man's, yet his hand does not tremble. A shot rang out… Master Danilo staggered. Red blood stained the left sleeve of his Cossack jacket.

"No!" he cried, "I won't sell myself so cheaply. Not the left arm but the right is the chief. I have a Turkish pistol hanging on the wall; never once in my life has it betrayed me. Come down from the wall, old friend! do me service!" Danilo reached out.

"Danilo!" Katerina cried in despair, seizing his hands and throwing herself at his feet. "I do not plead for myself. There is only one end for me: unworthy is the wife who lives on after her husband. The Dnieper, the cold Dnieper will be my grave… But look at your son, Danilo, look at your son! Who will shelter the poor child? Who will care for him? Who will teach him to fly on a black steed, to fight for freedom and the faith, to drink and carouse like a Cossack? Perish, my son, perish! Your father does not want to know you! Look how he turns his face away. Oh! I know you now! you're a beast, not a man! you have the heart of a wolf and the soul of a sly vermin. I thought you had a drop of pity in you, that human feeling burned in your stony body. Madly was I mistaken. It will bring you joy. Your bones will dance for joy in your coffin when they hear the impious Polack beasts throw your son into the flames, when your son screams under knives and scalding water. Oh, I know you! You will be glad to rise from your coffin and fan the fire raging under him with your hat!"

"Enough, Katerina! Come, my beloved Ivan, I will kiss you! No, my child, no one will touch even one hair on your head. You will grow up to be the glory of your fatherland; like the wind you will fly in the forefront of the Cossacks, a velvet hat on your head, a sharp saber in your hand. Father, give me your hand! Let us forget what has happened between us. Whatever wrong I did you, the fault was mine. Why won't you give me your hand?" Danilo said to Katerina's father, who stood in one spot, his face expressing neither anger nor reconciliation.

"Father!" Katerina cried out, embracing and kissing him. "Do not be implacable. Forgive Danilo: he will not upset you anymore!"

"For your sake only do I forgive him, my daughter!" he said, kissing her, with a strange glint in his eyes. Katerina gave a slight start: the kiss seemed odd to her, as did the strange glint in his eyes. She leaned her elbow on the table, at which Master Danilo sat bandaging his wounded arm and thinking now that it was wrong and not like a Cossack to ask forgiveness when one was not guilty of anything.

IV There was a glimmer of daylight but no sun: the sky was louring and a fine rain sprinkled the fields, the forests, the wide Dnieper. Mistress Katerina woke up, but not joyfully: tears in her eyes, and all of her confused and troubled.

"My beloved husband, dear husband, I had a strange dream!"

"What dream, my sweet mistress Katerina?"

"I dreamed-it was truly strange, and so alive, as if I was awake-I dreamed that my father is that same monster we saw at the captain's. But I beg you, don't believe in dreams. One can see all sorts of foolishness! It was as if I was standing before him, trembling all over, frightened, and every word he said made all my fibers groan. If only you had heard what he said…"

"What was it he said, my golden Katerina?"

"He said, 'Look at me, Katerina, I am handsome! People should not say I am ugly. I will make you a fine husband. See what a look is in my eyes!' Here he aimed his fiery eyes at me, I gave a cry and woke up."

"Yes, dreams tell much truth. However, do you know that things are not so quiet behind the hill? It seems the Polacks have begun to show up again. Gorobets has sent to tell me not to be caught napping. He needn't worry, though; I'm not napping as it is. My lads cut down twelve big trees for barricades last night. The Pospolitstvo 6 will be treated to lead plums, and the gentlemen will dance under our knouts."

"Does my father know about it?"

"Your father is a weight on my neck! I still can't figure him out. He must have committed many sins in foreign lands. What, indeed, can be the reason? He's lived here for nearly a month and has never once made merry like a good Cossack! He refused to drink mead! do you hear, Katerina, he refused to drink the mead I shook out of the Jews in Brest. Hey, lad!" cried Master Danilo. "Run to the cellar, my boy, and fetch me some Jewish mead!… He doesn't even drink vodka! Confound it! I don't think, Mistress Katerina, that he believes in Christ the Lord either! Eh? What do you think?"

"God knows what you're saying, Master Danilo!"

"It's strange, Mistress!" he went on, taking the clay mug from the Cossack. "Even the foul Catholics fall for vodka; only the Turks don't drink. Well, Stetsko, did you have a good sup of mead in the cellar?"

"Just a taste, Master!"

"Lies, you son of a bitch! look at the flies going for your mustache! I can see by your eyes that you downed half a bucket! Eh,

Cossacks! such wicked folk! ready for anything for a comrade, but he'll take care of the liquor all by himself. I haven't been drunk for a long time-eh, Mistress Katerina?"

"Long, you say! And the last time…"

"Don't worry, don't worry, I won't drink more than a mug! And here comes a Turkish abbot squeezing in the door!" he said through his teeth, seeing his father-in-law stooping to enter.

"What is this, my daughter!" the father said, taking off his hat and straightening his belt, from which hung a saber studded with wondrous stones. "The sun is already high, and you have no dinner ready."

"Dinner is ready, my father, we will serve it now! Get out the pot with the dumplings!" said Mistress Katerina to the old serving woman who was wiping the wooden bowls. "Wait, I'd better take it out myself," Katerina went on, "and you call the lads."

Everyone sat on the floor in a circle: the father facing the icon corner, Master Danilo to the left, Mistress Katerina to the right, and the ten trusty youths in blue and yellow jackets.

"I don't like these dumplings!" said the father, having eaten a little and putting down the spoon. "They have no taste!"

"I know," Master Danilo thought to himself, "you prefer Jewish noodles."

"Why, my father-in-law," he went on aloud, "do you say the dumplings have no taste? Are they poorly prepared? My Katerina makes such dumplings as even a hetman 7 rarely gets to eat. There's no need to be squeamish about them. It's Christian food! All God's saints and holy people ate dumplings."

Not a word from the father. Master Danilo also fell silent.

A roast boar with cabbage and plums was served.

"I don't like pork," said Katerina's father, raking up the cabbage with his spoon.

"Why would you not like pork?" said Danilo. "Only Turks and Jews don't like pork."

The father frowned even more sternly.

Milk gruel was all the old father ate, and instead of vodka he sipped some black water from a flask he kept in his bosom.

After dinner, Danilo fell into a mighty hero's sleep and woke up only toward evening. He sat down and began writing letters to the Cossack army; and Mistress Katerina, sitting on the stove seat, rocked the cradle with her foot. Master Danilo sits and looks with his left eye at his writing and with his right eye out the window. And from the window the gleam of the distant hills and the Dnieper can be seen. Beyond the Dnieper, mountains show blue. Up above sparkles the now clear night sky. But it is not the distant sky or the blue forest that Master Danilo admires: he gazes at the jutting spit of land on which the old castle blackens. He fancied that light flashed in a narrow window of the castle. But all is quiet. He must have imagined it. Only the muted rush of the Dnieper can be heard below, and on three sides, one after the other, the echo of momentarily awakened waves. The river is not mutinous. He grumbles and murmurs like an old man: nothing pleases him; everything has changed around him; he is quietly at war with the hills, forests, and meadows on his banks, and carries his complaint against them to the Black Sea.

Now a boat blackened on the wide Dnieper, and again something as if flashed in the castle. Danilo whistled softly, and at his whistle the trusty lad came running.

"Quick, Stetsko, take your sharp saber and your musket and follow me."

"You're going out?" asked Mistress Katerina.

"I'm going out, wife. I must look around everywhere to see if all is well."

"But I'm afraid to stay by myself. I'm so sleepy. What if I have the same dream? I'm not even sure it was a dream-it was so lifelike."

"The old woman will stay with you; and in the front hall and outside Cossacks are sleeping!"

"The old woman is already asleep, and I somehow do not trust the Cossacks. Listen, Master Danilo, lock me in my room and take the key with you. I won't be so afraid then. And let the Cossacks lie outside my door."

"So be it!" said Danilo, wiping the dust from his musket and pouring powder into the pan.

The trusty Stetsko already stood dressed in full Cossack gear.

Danilo put on his astrakhan hat, closed the window, latched the door, locked it, and quietly went out through the yard, between his sleeping Cossacks, into the hills.

The sky was almost completely clear. A fresh wind barely wafted from the Dnieper. If it had not been for the moaning of a gull from far off, all would have been mute. But then there seemed to come a rustling… Burulbash and his trusty servant quietly hid behind the thorn bush that covered a felled tree. Someone in a red jacket, with two pistols and a sword at his side, was going down the hill.

"It's my father-in-law!" said Master Danilo, peering at him from behind the bush. "Where is he going at this hour, and why? Stet-sko! don't gape, watch with all your eyes for which path master father will take." The man in the red jacket went right down to the bank and turned toward the jutting spit of land. "Ah! it's there!" said Master Danilo. "So, Stetsko, he's dragging himself straight to the sorcerer's hole."

"Yes, surely nowhere else, Master Danilo! otherwise we'd see him on the other side. But he disappeared near the castle."

"Wait, let's get out and then follow in his tracks. There must be something to it. No, Katerina, I told you your father was a bad man; he does nothing in the Orthodox way."

Master Danilo and his trusty lad flitted out on the jutting bank. Now they were no longer visible. The forest fastness around the castle hid them. The upper window lit up with a soft light. The Cossacks stand below thinking how to climb inside. No gates or doors are to be seen. There must be a way from the courtyard; but how to get in there! From far off the clank of chains and the running of dogs can be heard.

"Why think for so long!" said Master Danilo, seeing a tall oak tree by the window. "Stay here, lad! I'll climb the oak; from it one can look right in the window."

Here he took off his belt, laid his sword down so that it would not clank, and, seizing the branches, climbed up the tree. The window was still lit. Sitting on a branch just by the window, holding on to the tree with his arm, he looks: there is no candle in the room, yet it is light. Odd signs on the walls. Weapons hung up, all strange, such as are not worn by Turks, or Crimeans, or Polacks, or

Christians, or the gallant Swedish people. Under the ceiling, bats flit back and forth, and their shadows flit over the doors, the walls, the floor. Now the door opens without a creak. Someone comes in wearing a red jacket and goes straight to a table covered with a white cloth. "It's he, it's my father-in-law!" Master Danilo climbed down a little lower and pressed himself closer against the tree.

But the man had no time to see whether anyone was looking in the window or not. He came in gloomy, in low spirits, pulled the cloth from the table-and suddenly a transparent blue light poured softly through the room. Only the unmingled waves of the former pale golden light played and plunged as if in a blue sea, and stretched out like streaks in marble. Here he put a pot on the table and began throwing some herbs into it.

Master Danilo looked and no longer saw him in a red jacket; instead, wide balloon trousers appeared on him, such as Turks wear; pistols in the belt; on his head some wondrous hat all covered with writing neither Russian nor Polish. He looked at his face-the face, too, began to change: the nose grew long and hung over the lips; the mouth instantly stretched to the ears; a tooth stuck out of the mouth, bent to one side, and there stood before him the same sorcerer who had appeared at the captain's wedding. "True was your dream, Katerina!" thought Burulbash.

The sorcerer began walking around the table, the signs on the wall began to change more quickly, and the bats plunged down lower, then up, back and forth. The blue light grew thinner and thinner, and seemed to go out completely. And now the room shone with a faint rosy light. The wondrous light seemed to flow into all corners with a soft tinkling, then suddenly vanished, and it was dark. Only a noise was heard, as if wind were playing at a quiet hour of the evening, whirling over the watery mirror, bending the silver willows still lower to the water. And it seems to Master Danilo that the moon is shining in the room, the stars roam, the dark blue sky flashes dimly, and the cool night air even breathes in his face. And it seems to Master Danilo (here he began feeling his mustache to see if he was asleep) that it is no longer the sky but his own bedroom that he sees: his Tartar and Turkish sabers hang on the walls; around the walls are shelves, and on the shelves dishes and household utensils; on the table, bread and salt; a cradle hanging… but instead of icons, terrible faces look out; on the stove seat… but a thickening mist covered everything and it became dark again. And again with an odd tinkling the whole room lit up with a rosy light, and again the sorcerer stood motionless in his strange turban. The sounds grew stronger and denser, the thin rosy light grew brighter, and something white, like a cloud, hovered in the room; and it seems to Master Danilo that the cloud is not a cloud but a woman standing there; only what is she made of? Is she woven of air? Why is she standing without touching the ground or leaning on anything, and the rosy light shines through her and the signs flash on the wall? Now she moves her transparent head slightly: her pale blue eyes shine faintly; her hair falls in waves over her shoulders like a light gray mist; her lips show pale red, like the barely visible red light of dawn pouring through the transparent white morning sky; her eyebrows are faintly dark… Ah! it's Katerina! Here Danilo felt as if his limbs were bound; he tried to speak, but his lips moved soundlessly.

The sorcerer stood motionless in his place.

"Where have you been?" he asked, and she who stood before him fluttered.

"Oh, why did you summon me?" she moaned softly. "It was so joyful for me. I was in the place where I was born and lived for fifteen years. Oh, how good it is there! How green and fragrant that meadow where I played as a child: the wildflowers are the same, and our cottage, and the kitchen garden! Oh, how my kind mother embraced me! What love was in her eyes! She caressed me, kissed me on my lips and cheeks, combed out my blond braid with a fine-toothed comb… Father!" here she fixed the sorcerer with her pale eyes, "why did you kill my mother?"

The sorcerer shook his finger at her menacingly.

"Did I ask you to speak of that?" And the airy beauty trembled. "Where is your mistress now?"

"My mistress Katerina is asleep now, and I was glad of that, I took off and flew away. I've long wished to see Mother. I was suddenly fifteen. I became all light as a bird. Why have you summoned me?

"Do you remember everything I told you yesterday?" the sorcerer asked, so softly that it was barely audible.

"I remember, I remember; but there's nothing I wouldn't give to forget it! Poor Katerina! There's much she doesn't know of what her soul knows."

"It's Katerina's soul," thought Master Danilo; but he still dared not move.

"Repent, father! Isn't it terrible that after each of your murders the dead rise from their graves?"

"You're at your same old thing again!" the sorcerer interrupted menacingly. "I'll have my way, I'll make you do what I want. Katerina will love me!…"

"Oh, you're a monster and not my father!" she moaned. "No, you will not have your way! It's true you've acquired the power, by your unclean magic, of summoning a soul and tormenting it; but only God alone can make it do what is pleasing to Him. No, never while I am in her body will Katerina venture upon an ungodly deed. Father, the Last Judgment is near! Even if you were not my father, still you would never make me betray my beloved, faithful husband. Even if my husband were not faithful and dear to me, I still would not betray him, because God does not like perjured and faithless souls."