The day after this meeting was Whitsuntide, which that year fell on the
day of the great martyr Timothy, when, according to the folk legends,
the omens of a bad harvest befall. Ecclesiastically the village of
Perebrod was considered auxiliary; that is to say, that though there
was a church there it had no priest of its own. On rare occasions, in
fast time and on the great festivals, it was served by the priest of
the village of Volchye.
That day my official duties took me to the neighbouring town, and I
set off thither on horseback about eight o’clock, in the chill of the
morning. A good time before I had bought a small cob for doing my
rounds, a beast six or seven years old, which came from the rough local
breed, but had been carefully looked after and made a pet of by the
former owner, the district surveyor. The horse’s name was Taranchik.
I became greatly attached to the dear beast, with its strong, thin,
chiselled legs, with its shaggy mane, from beneath which peeped fiery
eyes, with firm, close-pressed lips. Its colour was rare and curious, a
grey mouse-colour all over the body save for a piebald rump.
I had to pass right through the village. The big green that ran from
the church to the inn was completely covered by long rows of carts
in which the peasants of the neighbouring villages had come with
their wives and children for the holiday--from Volocha, Zoulnya, and
Pechalovka. People were roaming about among the carts. Notwithstanding
the early hour and the strict regulations one could already see
drunken people among them. (On holidays and at night Shroul, the
former innkeeper, sold vodka on the quiet.) The morning was windless
and close. The air was sultry and the day promised to be insufferably
hot. There was not a single cloud to be seen in the glowing sky, which
looked exactly as though it were covered with a silver dust.
When I had done all my business in the little town I had a light hasty
meal of pike, stuffed and cooked in the Jewish fashion, washed down
with some very inferior muddy beer, and set out for home. As I passed
by the smithy I recollected that Taranchik’s off fore-shoe had been
loose for some time, and I stopped to have him shod. That took me
another hour and a half, so that by the time I was nearing Perebrod it
was already between four and five o’clock in the afternoon.
The whole square was packed with drunken, shouting people. The yard and
porch of the inn were literally choked by jostling, pushing customers;
the Perebrod men were mixed up with strangers, sitting on the grass
and in the shade of the carts. Everywhere were heads thrown back and
lifted bottles. There was not a single man sober; and the general
intoxication had reached the point at which the peasant begins noisily
boasting and exaggerating his own drunkenness, and all his movements
acquire a feeble, ponderous freedom, when, for instance, in order to
nod ‘yes’ he bows his whole body down, bends his knees, and, suddenly
losing his balance completely, draws back helplessly. The children were
pushing and screaming in the same place beneath the horses’ legs, while
the horses munched their hay unconcerned. Elsewhere, a woman who could
hardly stand on her feet herself dragged her reluctant husband, foully
drunk, home by the sleeve.... In the shade of a fence about twenty men
and women peasants were pressed close round a blind harpist, whose
tremulous, snuffling tenor, accompanied by the monotonous, jingling
drone of his instrument, rose sharp above the dull murmur of the crowd.
At a distance I could hear the familiar words of the Little Russian
song:
‘Oh, there rose the star, the evening star,
And stood over Pochah monastery.
Oh, there came out the Turkish troops
Like unto a black cloud.’
This song goes on to tell how the Turks, failing in their attack upon
the Pochayev monastery, resolved to take it by cunning. With this end
they sent, as it were a gift to the monastery, a huge candle filled
with gunpowder. The candle was dragged by twelve yoke of oxen, and the
delighted monks were eager to light it before the icon of the Virgin;
but God did not allow the wicked design to be accomplished.
‘And the elder dreamt a dream
That he should not take the candle,
But bear it away to the open field,
And hew it down with an axe.’
And the monks:
‘Took it into the open field,
And began to chop it,
Oh, then bullets and balls began
To scatter on every side.’
It seemed that the insufferably hot air was wholly saturated with a
disgusting smell, compounded of vodka dregs, onions, sheep-skins,
strong shag, and the vapours of dirty human bodies. As I made my way
through the people, hardly holding in Taranchik who tossed his head
continually, I could not help noticing that unceremonious, curious,
and hostile looks were bent on me from every side. Not a single man
doffed his cap, which was quite unusual, but the noise grew still
at my approach. Suddenly from the very middle of the crowd came a
hoarse, drunken shout which I could not clearly distinguish; but it was
answered by a restrained giggle. A frightened woman’s voice began to
rebuke the brawler.
‘Hush, you fool.... What are you shouting for? He’ll hear you----’
‘What if he does hear?’ the peasant replied tauntingly. ‘What the
hell’s he got to do with me? Is he an official? He’s only in the
forest with his----’
A long, filthy, horrible phrase hung in the air, with a burst of
frantic, roaring laughter. I quickly turned my horse round, and seized
the handle of my whip convulsively, overwhelmed by the mad fury which
sees nothing, thinks of nothing, and is afraid of nothing. In a flash,
a strange, anxious, painful thought went through my mind: ‘All this has
happened once before in my life, many years ago.... The sun blazed just
as it does now.... The whole of the big square was overflowing with a
noisy, excited crowd just as it is now.... I turned back in a paroxysm
of wild anger just in the same way.... But where was it? When? When?’ I
lowered my whip and madly galloped home.
Yarmola came out of the kitchen at his leisure, and said rudely, as
he took my horse: ‘The bailiff of the Marenov farm is sitting in your
room.’
I had the fancy that he wanted to add something more that was important
to me and painful too; I even imagined that a fleeting expression of
evil derision sped over his face. Intentionally I stopped dead in the
doorway and gave Yarmola a look of challenge, but without looking at me
he was already dragging the horse away by the rein. The horse’s head
was stretched forward, and it stepped delicately.
In my room I found the agent of the neighbouring estate, Nikita
Nazarich Mishtchenko. He was dressed in a grey jacket with large
ginger checks, in narrow cornflower blue trousers, and a fiery red
necktie. There was a deep parting down the middle of his hair, which
shone with pomade, and from the whole of him exuded the scent of
Persian lilac. When he saw me he jumped up from his chair and began to
curtsy, not bowing, but somehow breaking at the waist, and at the same
time unsheathing the pale gums of both his jaws.
‘Extremely delighted to have the honour,’ Nikita Nazarich jabbered
courteously. ‘Very glad indeed to see you. I’ve been waiting for you
here ever since the service. I hadn’t seen you for so long that I was
bored, and missed you very much. Why is it you never look us up? The
girls in Stiepany laugh at you nowadays.’
Suddenly he was seized by an instantaneous recollection, and broke out
into an irresistible giggle.
‘What fun it was to-day!’ he cried out, choking and chuckling. ‘Ha, ha,
ha, ha.... I fairly split my sides with laughing.’
‘What do you mean? What fun?’ I asked without troubling to conceal my
annoyance.
‘There was a row after service,’ Nikita Nazarich continued, punctuating
his words with volleys of laughter. ‘The Perebrod girls.... No, by
God, I really can’t.... The Perebrod girls caught a witch in the
market-place here. Of course, it’s only their peasant ignorance that
makes them think she’s a witch.... But they did give her a thrashing!
They were going to tar her all over, but somehow she slipped from them
and got away----’
A ghastly surmise entered my head. I rushed towards the bailiff, and
forgetting myself completely in my agitation, gripped him violently by
the shoulders.
‘What’s that you say?’ I cried in a furious voice. ‘Stop your giggling,
damn you? Who’s this witch you’re talking about?’
Instantly his laughing ceased, and he stared with his round, frightened
eyes....
‘I ... I ... really don’t know,’ he began to stammer in confusion.
‘I believe it was some one called Samoilikha ... Manuilikha, was
it?... Yes, that’s it, the daughter of some one called Manuilikha....
The peasants were shouting something or other, but honestly I don’t
remember what it was.’
I made him tell me everything he had seen and heard in order. He told
his tale absurdly, incoherently, confusing details, and every moment I
interrupted him with impatient questions and exclamations, almost with
abuse. I could understand very little from his story, and it was only
two months later that I could piece together the real order of the vile
happening from the words of an eyewitness, the wife of the forester of
the Crown Lands, who was also present at Mass that day.
I had not been deceived by my foreboding. Olyessia had broken down her
fears and come to church. Though she did not reach the church until
the service was half done, and stopped in the entry, her arrival was
instantly noticed by every peasant in church. All through the service
the women were whispering to each other and glancing behind them.
However Olyessia had strength enough in herself to stand out the Mass
right to the end. Perhaps she did not understand the real meaning of
those hostile looks; perhaps she despised them out of pride. But when
she came out of the church she could get no farther than the church
fence before she was surrounded by a crowd of women, which grew larger
and larger every minute, and pressed closer and closer upon Olyessia.
At first they only examined the helpless girl in silence and without
ceremony, while she looked everywhere about her in fright. Then there
came a shower of rude insults, hard words, abuse, accompanied by roars
of laughter; then all separate words disappeared into one general
piercing women’s shriek, wherein everything was confused and the nerves
of the agitated crowd became more and more tightly strung. Several
times Olyessia attempted to pass through this horrible living ring,
but every time she was pushed back into the middle again. Suddenly the
squeaking voice of some old hag shrieked from somewhere at the back of
the crowd: ‘Smear the slut with tar--tar the slut!’ (Everybody knows
that in Little Russia to smear with tar even the gates of the house
where a girl lives is considered as a mark of the greatest, the most
indelible, disgrace to her.) Almost the same second a pot of tar and a
brush appeared over the heads of the raging furies, passed from hand
to hand.
Then Olyessia, seized by a paroxysm of anger, horror and despair,
rushed on the nearest of her tormentors with such impetuous force that
she was thrown to the ground. Immediately a fight burst forth, and
innumerable bodies were confused in one general shouting mass. But by
some miracle Olyessia succeeded in slipping out from among the tangle,
and rushed headlong down the road, without her shawl, her clothes torn
to ribbons, through which in many places her naked body could be seen.
Stones, vile abuse, laughter and shouts sped after her.... When she had
run fifty paces Olyessia stopped, turned her pale, scratched, bleeding
face to the crowd, and said so loud that each word could be heard all
through the square: ‘Very well.... You will remember this. You will
weep your fill for this, all of you!’
The eyewitness of the happening told me afterwards that this threat was
pronounced with such passionate hatred, in such a determined tone of
prophecy, that for a moment the whole crowd was as it were benumbed;
but only for a moment, because a fresh explosion of curses was heard
immediately.
I say again that it was not till long after that I came to know many
details of this story. I had neither strength nor patience to hear
Mishtchenko’s tale to the end. I suddenly remember that Yarmola had
probably not had time yet to unsaddle my horse, and without a word to
the astounded bailiff, I rushed out into the yard. Yarmola was still
leading Taranchik along by the fence. I quickly slipped the bridle on,
tightened the girths, and raced away into the forest by circuitous
paths in order to avoid having to pass through the drunken crowd again.