Short Fiction, Vladimir Korolenko [finding audrey TXT] 📗

the black object lying upon it was. But when the solitary cockcrow resounded from the village the dark mass stirred. Yankel raised his head in its skullcap, looked about him, got up, and began to steal softly away, stepping high like a stork with his thin legs, in his stocking-feet.

“Hi, there! Stop him; he’s making off!” the startled miller came near shouting, but next moment he saw the devil catch Yankel by his long coattails.

“Wait a bit!” Khapun cried. “There’s plenty of time yet. What a hurry you’re in! Here you are wanting to be off again before I’ve had time to rest! It’s all right for you, but what about me, who have to drag a big fellow like you along? I’m nearly dead!”

“Very well, then,” said the Jew, trying to free his coattails from the devil’s grasp. “Rest a little longer, and I’ll walk to my inn on foot.”

The devil jumped up in surprise.

“What’s that you’re saying?” he cried. “Do you think I have hired myself out to you as a cart to take you home from church, you hound? You must be joking!”

“Why should I be joking?” asked the wily Yankel, pretending to have no idea what the Devil wanted with him. “I am very grateful indeed to you for having brought me so far, and I can now go on quite well by myself. It is only a short way. I wouldn’t think of troubling you any more.”

The devil quivered with rage. He ran round and round on the same spot like a chicken with its head off, and knocked Yankel down with his wing. He was panting like a blacksmith’s bellows.

“Well, I never!” the miller thought. “I don’t care if it is sin to admire a devil, I do admire this one; he would never let his lawful property slip between his fingers, one can see that!”

Yankel sat up and began to yell with all his might. Even the devil could do nothing to stop him. Everyone knows that as long as a Jew has a breath in his body nothing will make him hold his tongue.

“What does it matter, though?” thought the miller, looking round at his empty mill. “My man is either amusing himself with the girls or else lying drunk under a hedge.”

A sleepy frog in the mud answered Yankel’s pitiful screams with a croak, and a bittern, that foul bird of the night, boomed twice as if from an empty barrel: boo-oo, boo-oo! The moon had finally sunk behind the wood, assured that the Jew was dead and done for; darkness hud fallen upon the mill, the dam, and the river, and a white mist had gathered over the pond.

The devil carelessly shook his wings, and lay down again, saying with a laugh:

“Scream as loud as you like! The mill is deserted.”

“How do you know it’s deserted?” snapped the Jew, and he began to scream for the miller.

“Mr. Miller! Oi, Mr. Miller! Golden, silver, diamond Mr. Miller! Please, please come here for one little tiny second and say three words, three little tiny words! I’ll make you a present of half the debt you owe me if you’ll only come!”

“You’ll make me a present of the whole debt!” said a voice in the miller’s heart.

The Jew stopped screaming, his head sank forward on his breast, and he burst into a fit of bitter weeping.

Again some time passed. The moon had now set, and its last rays had died out of the sky. Everything in heaven and on earth seemed wrapped in the deepest slumber; not a sound could be heard except the Jew’s low weeping and his exclamations of:

“Oh, my Sarah! Oh, my poor children! My poor little children!”

The devil felt a little rested, and sat up. Although it was dark, the miller could distinctly see a pair of horns like a young calf’s outlined against the white mist that hung over the pond.

“He looks just like ours!” thought the miller, feeling as if he had swallowed something exceedingly cold.

Then he saw the Jew nudge the devil with his elbow.

“What are you nudging me for?” asked Khapun.

“Sh, I want to tell you something.”

“What?”

“Won’t you please tell me why it is your custom always to carry off a poor Jew? Why don’t you catch a daintier morsel? For instance, there is an excellent miller living right here.”

The devil sighed deeply. Perhaps he was tired of sitting there on the edge of the pond by the empty mill; anyhow, he entered into conversation with the Jew. He raised his skullcap⁠—you must know that he wore a skullcap with long ringlets hanging from underneath it, just as the servant had described him⁠—and scratched his crown with a rasping noise like the most savage of cats clawing a board when a mouse has escaped it. Then he said:

“Alas, Yankel, you don’t know our business! I couldn’t possibly approach him.”

“And why, may I ask, would you have to take the time to approach him? I know for myself that you snatched me away before I could even yell.”

The devil laughed so merrily that he actually frightened a night-bird out of the reeds, and said:

“That’s a fact! You were easy to catch. And do you know why?”

“Why-y?”

“Because you’re a good lusty catcher yourself. I assure you there’s no other race on earth as sinful as you Jews.”

“Oi, vei, that is most surprising! And what are our sins?”

“Listen and I shall tell you.”

The devil turned to the Jew and began counting on his fingers.

“Number one. You are usurers.”

“One,” repeated Yankel, also counting on his fingers.

“Number two. You live by the blood and sweat of the people.”

“Two.”

“Number three. You sell the people vodka.”

“Three.”

“Number four. You dilute it with water.”

“Oh, let number four go! And what is the next?”

“Are four sins so few? Ah, Yankel, Yankel!”

“Oh, I don’t say four are few, I only say that you don’t know your own business. Do you think the miller isn’t a usurer, do you think the miller doesn’t live by the sweat and blood of