Short Fiction, Vladimir Korolenko [finding audrey TXT] 📗

was trembling and swaying, and that the wind, too, fluttered its mighty wings, and joined the chorus, “Christ is arisen!”

And the old heart forgot the past life, so full of cares and injustice⁠ ⁠… The old bell-ringer has forgotten that life has become contracted for him merely to the dimensions of that gloomy belfry-tower; that he is alone in the world, standing there as lonely as an old tree stump broken by lightning⁠ ⁠… He listens to these sounds, as they sing and cry, flying up to the sky, and falling back to the poor earth, and it seems to him that he is surrounded by his sons and grandsons, that it is their gladsome voices, the voices of the young and the old, that blend into this chorus and sing to him of happiness and joy, which he has not found in his life⁠ ⁠… And the old bell-ringer pulls the ropes, and tears run down his cheeks, and his heart beats joyfully with the illusion of happiness⁠ ⁠…

And below, men listened and said to each other that Mikheich had never rung as he did that night⁠ ⁠…

But suddenly, the great bell wavered and became silent⁠ ⁠… The startled smaller bells rang out the unfinished melody, and became silent, too, as if intently listening to the mournful prolonged note, that trembled and moaned and cried, slowly dying away in the air⁠ ⁠…

The old bell-ringer fell on the little bench, exhausted, and the last two tears were flowing down his cheeks.

Send someone now to replace him! The old bell-ringer has rung his last⁠ ⁠…

Makar’s Dream A Christmas Story

This dream was dreamed by poor Makar, who herded his calves in a stern and distant land, by that same Makar upon whose head all troubles are said to fall.

Makar’s birth place was the lonely village of Chalgan, lost in the far forests of Yakutsk. His parents and grandparents had wrested a strip of land from the forest, and their courage had not failed even when the dark thickets still stood about them like a hostile wall. Rail fences began to stretch across the clearing; small, smoky huts began to crowd thickly upon it; hay and straw stacks sprang up; and at last, from a knoll in the centre of the encampment, a church spire had shot toward heaven like a banner of victory.

Chalgan had become a village.

But while Makar’s forbears had been striving with the forest, burning it with fire and hewing it with steel, they themselves had slowly become savage in their turn. They married Yakut women, spoke the language of the Yakuts, adopted their customs, and gradually in them the characteristics of the Great Russian race had been obliterated and lost.

Nevertheless, my Makar firmly believed that he was a Russian peasant of Chalgan, and not a nomad Yakut. In Chalgan he had been born, there he had lived and there he meant to die. He was very proud of his birth and station, and when he wished to vilify his fellow-townsmen would call them “heathen Yakuts,” though if the truth must be told, he differed from them neither in habits nor manner of living. He seldom spoke Russian and, when he did, spoke it badly. He dressed in skins, wore “torbas” on his feet, ate dough-cakes and drank brick-tea, supplemented on holidays and special occasions with as much cooked butter as happened to be on the table before him. He could ride very skilfully on an ox, and when he fell ill he always summoned a wizard, who would go mad and spring at him, gnashing his teeth, hoping to frighten the malady out of his patient and so drive it away.

Makar worked desperately hard, lived in poverty, and suffered from hunger and cold. Had he a thought beyond his unceasing anxiety to obtain his dough-cakes and brick-tea? Yes, he had.

When he was drunk, he would weep and cry: “Oh, Lord my God, what a life!” sometimes adding that he would like to give it all up and go up on to the “mountain.” There he need neither sow nor reap, nor cut and haul wood, nor even grind grain on a hand millstone. He would “be saved,” that was all. He did not know exactly where the mountain was, nor what it was like, he only knew that there was such a place, and that it was somewhere far away, so far that there not even the District Policeman could find him. Of course there he would pay no taxes.

When sober he abandoned these thoughts, realising perchance the impossibility of finding that beautiful mountain, but when drunk he grew bolder. Admitting that he might not find that particular mountain, but some other, he would say: “In that case I should die.” But he was prepared to start, nevertheless. If he did not carry out his intention, it was because the Tartars in the village always sold him vile vodka with an infusion of mahorka55 for strength, and this quickly made him ill and laid him by the heels.

It was Christmas Eve, and Makar knew that tomorrow would be a great holiday. This being the case, he was overpowered with a longing for drink, but to drink there was nothing. His resources were at an end. His flour was all gone, he was already in debt to the village merchants and Tartars, yet tomorrow was a great holiday, he would not be able to work, what could he do if he did not get drunk? This reflection made him unhappy. What a life it was! He had not even one bottle of vodka to drink on the great winter holiday.

Then a happy thought came to him. He got up and put on his ragged fur coat. His wife, a sturdy, sinewy woman, remarkably strong and equally remarkably ugly, who saw through all his simple wiles, guessed his intentions as usual.

“Where are you going, you wretch? To drink vodka alone?”

“Be quiet. I’m going to buy one bottle. We’ll drink