Short Fiction, Leo Tolstoy [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

the top of the brick oven, and the younger one in a little room outside. Elijah’s wife alone was awake, and sat on the bench, bareheaded, in a dirty, everyday smock, wailing. She did not go out to meet her uncle, but, when he entered, sobbed louder, lamenting her fate. According to the old woman, she “lamented” very fluently and well, taking into consideration the fact that at her age she could not have had much practice.

The old woman rose and got her husband’s supper ready. Doútlof turned Elijah’s wife away from the table, saying: “That’s enough⁠—that’s enough!”

Aksínya went away, and, lying down on a bench, continued to lament. The old woman put the supper on the table, and afterwards silently cleared it away again. The old man did not speak either. When he had said grace, he hiccuped, washed his hands, took the counting-frame from a nail in the wall, and went into the little room outside. There he and his old woman spoke in whispers for a little while; and then, after she had gone away, he began counting on the frame, making the beads click. At last he banged the lid of the chest standing there, and went down into the cellar under the room. For a long time he went on bustling about between the room and the cellar.

When he re-entered, it was dark in the hut. The wooden splint that served for a candle had gone out. His old woman, quiet and silent in the daytime, had rolled herself up on the sleeping-bunk, and filled the hut with her snoring. Elijah’s noisy wife was also asleep, breathing quietly. She lay on the bench, dressed just as she had been, and with nothing under her head to serve as a pillow. Doútlof began to pray, then looked at Elijah’s wife, shook his head, put out the light, hiccuped again, and climbed up onto the oven, where he lay down beside his little grandson. He threw his plaited bark shoes down from the oven in the dark and lay on his back, looking up at the rafter⁠—hardly discernible above the oven-top just over his head⁠—and listening to the sounds of the cockroaches crawling along the walls, of sighs, snoring, rubbing of foot against foot, and the noise made by the cattle outside. It was a long time before he could sleep. The moon rose. It grew lighter in the hut. He could see Aksínya in her corner, and something he could not make out: was it a coat his son had forgotten, or a tub the women had put there, or someone standing?

Perhaps he was drowsing, perhaps not; anyhow, he began to peer into the darkness. Evidently that evil spirit which had led Polikéy to commit his awful deed, and whose nearness was felt that night by all the domestic serfs, had stretched out his wing and reached across the village to the house in which lay the money that he had used to ruin Polikéy. At least, Doútlof felt his presence, and was ill at ease. He could neither sleep nor get up. After noticing the something he could not make out, he remembered Elijah, with his hands bound, and Akshaya’s face and her rhythmical lamentations; and he recalled Polikéy, with his swinging hands.

Suddenly it seemed to the old man that someone passed by the window. “Who was that? Could it be the village Elder coming so early to call a Meeting?” thought he. “How did he open the door?” thought the old man, hearing a step in the passage. “Had the old woman forgotten to draw the bolt when she went out into the passage?” The dog began to howl in the yard, and he came stepping along the passage⁠—so the old man related afterwards⁠—as if he were trying to find the door, then passed on, and began groping along the wall, stumbled over a tub and made it clatter, and again began groping, as if feeling for the latch. Now he pulled the handle and entered, in the shape of a man. Doútlof knew it was he. He wished to cross himself, but could not. He approached the table, which was covered with a cloth, and, pulling off the cloth, threw it on the floor, and began climbing onto the oven. The old man knew that he had taken the shape of Polikéy. He was showing his teeth, and his hands were swinging about. He climbed up, tumbled onto the old man’s chest, and began to strangle him.

“The money’s mine!” muttered Polikéy.

“Let go! Never again!” Semyón tried to say, but could not.

Polikéy was pressing down on him with the weight of a mountain. Doútlof knew that if he said a prayer he would leave him alone, and knew which prayer he ought to say, but could not get it out.

His grandson, sleeping beside him, uttered a shrill scream, and began to cry. His grandfather had pressed him against the wall. The child’s cry loosened the old man’s lips.

“May the Lord arise!⁠ ⁠…” he said.

He pressed less hard.

“… and burst asunder⁠ ⁠…” spluttered Doútlof. He got off the oven. Doútlof heard him strike the floor with both feet. Doútlof went on repeating in turn all the prayers he knew. He went towards the door, passed the table, and banged the door so that the whole hut shook. However, everybody but the grandfather and grandson continued to sleep. The grandfather, trembling all over, muttered prayers, while the grandson was crying himself to sleep and clinging to his grandfather. All became quiet once more. The old man lay still. A cock crowed behind the wall close to Doútlof’s ear. He heard the hens stirring, and a cockerel unsuccessfully trying to crow in answer to the old cock. Something moved over the old man’s legs. It was the cat; she jumped from the oven onto the floor with her soft paws, and stood mewing by the door. The old man rose and opened the window. It was dark and muddy in