Short Fiction, Vladimir Korolenko [finding audrey TXT] 📗

wings, and keeping well out of sight of Christian eyes. The accursed one is glad when the night is cloudy and dark. But when it is clear and still like tonight, with the moon shining as bright as day, the devil’s work may very well come to naught.

“And why?” asked the miller, trembling lest the talkative Kharko should begin poking insults at him again. But this time the servant answered quietly enough:

“Well, you see, any Christian, no matter if he’s stupid, like you, can call to the devil: ‘Drop it! It is mine!’ and Khapun will drop the Jew at once. The devil will flutter his wings, and fly away with a shrill cry like a wounded hawk, to be left without prey for a year. The Jew will fall to the ground. It will be lucky for him if he wasn’t too high up and if he falls into a bog or some other soft spot. If he doesn’t, no one will profit by his fall, neither he nor the devil.”

“So that’s how it is!” said the miller, staring nervously at the sky, in which the moon was shining with all its might. The heavens were clear; only one little cloudlet like a bit of black down was flying swiftly along between the moon and the wood that shrouded the river bank. It was a cloud, of course, but one thing about it seemed strange to the miller. Not a breath of wind was stirring, the leaves on the bushes were motionless as if in a trance, and yet the cloud was flying like a bird straight toward the city.

“Come here; let me show you something!” the miller called to the servant.

Kharko came out of the inn, and leaning against the door post, said calmly:

“Well, what is it? A fine thing you have found to show me! That’s a cloud, that is; let it alone!”

“Take another look at it! Is there any wind blowing?”

“Well, well, well! That is funny!” said the servant, perplexed. “It’s making straight for the city, too.”

And both men scratched their heads and craned their necks.

The same humming sounds came to their ears through the window as before; the miller caught a glimpse of lugubrious yellow faces, closed eyes, and motionless lips. The little Jews were crying and wriggling, and once more the miller seemed to see an alien presence in them weeping and praying for something unknown, long lost, and already half forgotten.

“Well, I must be going home,” said the miller, collecting his wits. “And yet I wanted to pay Yankel a few copecks.”

“That’s all right. I can take them for him,” said the servant, without looking at the miller.

But the miller pretended not to have heard this last remark. The sum was not so small that he cared to entrust it to a servant, much less to a vagabond soldier. With a sum like that the fellow might easily kick up his heels, as the saying is, and run away, not only out of the village, but even out of the District. If he did that, look for the wind in the fields, you would find it sooner than Kharko!

“Good night!” said the miller at last.

“Good night! And I’ll take the money if you’ll give it to me!”

“Don’t bother; I can give it to him myself.”

“Do as you like. But if I took it you wouldn’t be bothered about it any more. Well, well, it’s time to close the inn. You’re the last dog that’ll be round tonight, I’ll be bound.”

The servant scratched his back on the door post, whistled not very agreeably after the miller, and bolted the door on which were depicted in white paint a quart measure, a wineglass, and a tin mug. Meanwhile the miller descended the hill, and walked down the road in his long white overcoat, with his coal-black shadow running beside him as before.

But the miller was not thinking of his shadow now. His thoughts were of something far different.

II

The miller had not gone more than a hundred yards when he heard a rustling and fluttering that sounded like two large birds taking flight from behind the hedge. But it was not a pair of birds; it was only a lad and a lass, startled by the miller’s sudden appearance out of the darkness. The lad, it seemed, was not to be frightened. Creeping into the shadows so that the two white figures were barely visible under the cherry trees, he put his arm firmly around the girl, and continued his low-toned discourse. A few yards farther on the miller heard something that halted him with annoyance.

“Hey, you there! I don’t know what your name is⁠—” he cried. “But you might wait until I had gone by to do your kissing. Your smacks can be heard all over the village.”

And he walked right up to the hedge.

“You cur you, what do you mean by poking your nose into other people’s affairs?” a lad answered out of the darkness. “Wait a minute, I’ll kiss you on the nose with my fist! I’ll teach you to interfere with people!”

“Come, come, never mind!” said the miller, stepping back. “One would think you were doing something important! You’re a bad lad, you are, to smack a girl like that; you make a man envious. Oh, what are people coming to!”

He stood still for a moment, thought a bit, scratched his head, and finally turned aside, threw his leg over the hedge, and crossed a field to a widow’s cottage that stood a little way back from the road in the shade of a tall poplar tree.

The khata was a tiny, lopsided affair, crumbling and falling to pieces. Its one little window was so minute that it would have been almost invisible had the night been at all dark. But now the whole cottage was glowing in the moonlight; its straw roof was shining like gold, its walls seemed to be made of silver, and the