Short Fiction, Vladimir Korolenko [finding audrey TXT] 📗

moonlight, and I begin to wonder why they should be covered with frost on a summer’s night. And when I remember that my uncle was drowned in that pond, and how glad I was that it happened, I seem to lose heart entirely. I don’t know whether to go down to the mill or to stay where I am.”

“Gavrilo! Hey, Gavrilo!” he shouted at last. “There now! The mill is empty, and that scamp has made off to the village again after the girls.”

Philip stepped out into a bright spot of moonlight on the dam, and stood listening to the water trickling through the sluices. It seemed to him to be stealing out of the pond and creeping toward the mill-wheels.

“I had better go to bed,” he thought. “But I’ll see that everything is all right first.”

The moon had long since climbed to the zenith, and was looking down into the water. The miller wondered that the little river should be deep enough to hold the moon, and the dark blue sky with all its stars, and the little black cloudlet that was flying along all alone like a bit of down from the direction of the city.

But as his eyes were already half blind with sleep he did not wonder long. Having opened the outer door of the mill and bolted it again from the inside so that he should hear his reprobate workman when he came home, he lay down to sleep.

“Hallo, get up, Philip!” he suddenly thought to himself, and he jumped out of bed in the darkness as if someone had hit him with an axe. “I forgot that that little cloud was the same one the Jew’s servant and I saw flying toward the city, and wondered as we watched it how it could move without wind. There isn’t much wind now, and what there is isn’t coming from that quarter. Wait a minute, Philip, there’s something queer about this!”

The miller was very sleepy, but, nevertheless, he went out barefoot on to the dam, and stood in the middle of it scratching his chest and back (the mill was not free from fleas). A light breeze was blowing from the millpond behind him, and yet there was that little cloud flying directly in his face. Only it now no longer looked feathery-light, neither did it fly as swiftly and freely as before. It seemed to be swaying a little and falling to earth like a wounded bird. As it flew across the moon the miller at last saw very clearly what it was, for against that bright orb were silhouetted a pair of dark, flapping wings, and below them was hanging a human form with a long, quivering beard.

“Aha, here’s a pretty to do!” thought the miller. “He’s carrying one of them away. What shall I do? If I shout to him: drop it, it is mine! the poor Jew may break his neck or fall into the pond. He’s pretty high up.”

But he soon saw that the situation was changing. The devil was circling over the mill with his burden, and beginning to sink to the ground.

“He was greedy and chose a morsel too big for him,” the miller said to himself. “Now I can rescue the Jew; he’s a living soul, after all, and isn’t to be compared to a devil. Come then, God bless me, let me shout my loudest!”

But instead of shouting he strangely enough ran away from the dam as fast as his legs could carry him, and hid under the sycamores that stood like nixies at the edge of the millpond, bathing their green branches in its dark water. The darkness was as deep under them as in a barrel, and the miller felt sure that no one could see him. To tell the honest truth, his teeth were chattering madly and his hands and feet were trembling as the shafts trembled when his mill was running. Nevertheless, he couldn’t resist the temptation of peeping out to see what would happen next.

First the devil fell almost to earth with his prey, and then rose again above the treetops, but it was plain to see that his load was too heavy for him. Twice he actually touched the water, so that the ripples spread in circles from the Jew’s feet, but each time he flapped his wings, and rose again with his prey as a seagull rises from the water with a heavy fish. At last, after circling about two or three times, the devil fell heavily on to the dam, and lay as if dead, with the fainting Jew inanimate at his side.

And I must tell you⁠—I had nearly forgotten it⁠—that our friend the miller had long ago seen whom the Jewish Khapun had brought from the city. And when he recognised him⁠—need I conceal it when he has confessed it himself?⁠—he grew merry at heart and thought:

“Thank God, it is no other than our innkeeper from Novokamensk! What happens next is none of my business, because I don’t think I ought to interfere in other people’s affairs. When two dogs are fighting there’s no reason a third should jump in. Again I say, let sleeping dogs lie. What if I hadn’t have happened to be here? I’m not the Jew’s guardian.”

And he also thought:

“Aha, Philipko, now your time has come in Novokamensk!”

IV

Both the unfortunate Jew and the devil lay motionless on the dam for a long time. The moon had begun to redden, and was hanging above the treetops as if only waiting to see what the end would be before setting. A hoarse cock crowed in the village, and a dog yelped twice. But no other cocks or dogs answered these two; it evidently still lacked some hours to dawn.

The miller was exhausted, and was already beginning to think it had all been a dream, especially as the dam now lay wrapped in profoundest darkness, so that it was impossible to distinguish what