Short Fiction, Ivan Bunin [reading women .TXT] 📗

expect from those dunderheads!⁠—but one bullet did get a baby in a woman’s arms. The woman was left alive, but he, of course, didn’t even let out a squeak⁠—just gave one jerk with his little legs. So, good Lord!” said Pashka, tossing his head from laughter and seating himself more comfortably, “what only didn’t the muzhiks do! They broke everything to smash and smithereens; chased this same owner into a corner, trampling him down, while this muzhik, the father of this here child, ran up to that very spot with this same baby; he was all gasping and crazed from grief, and he starts in to beat the owner over his head with this dead baby! Grabbed him by the little legs and starts in lambasting the owner. And then the others fall upon him, and, of course, all for one and one for all, they finished him. We were rushed up, but he was already beginning to rot when we got there.”

“Well, what are you laughing about, you fool!” the schoolboy wanted to cry out, suddenly feeling a ferocious hatred for Pashka’s laughter, for Pashka’s voice. But here Kiriushka suddenly stirred, and, raising his head, said with childish naiveness:

“But that which took place when Kochergin the landowner was bein’ wrecked⁠—that was something awful! I was then living with him as one of his shepherds.⁠ ⁠… So all their mirrors was thrown into the pond.⁠ ⁠… Afterwards, people from the village would come over for a swim, and would always be pulling them out of the slime.⁠ ⁠… You’d dive, stand up⁠—and then your foot would just slide over a mirror.⁠ ⁠… And this, now⁠ ⁠… how do you call it⁠ ⁠… fortopianner was dragged into the rye.⁠ ⁠… We used to come.⁠ ⁠…” Kiriushka raised himself up, and, laughing, leant back on his elbows; “we would come and there it would be standing.⁠ ⁠… You’d take a club, and start banging upon it⁠—upon its keys, that is.⁠ ⁠… From one end to the other.⁠ ⁠… Why, it would play better nor any accordion!”

Everybody laughed once more. Theodot had adjusted his footgear, had again crisscrossed his foot-cloths accurately with the cords, and, having set himself to rights, had resumed his former position. And, having waited for a moment of silence, he began to finish his story in measured tones:

“Yes, he gave me one on the ear, and yet put in a suit as well.⁠ ⁠… For all these, now, losses and damages, for the forage, that is. He was called Andrei Bogdanov⁠—Andrei Ivannov Bogdanov. A tall muzhik, he was⁠—red-faced, thin, always evil-tempered, always drunk. Well, now, so he started a suit. It was he that had warmed my ear, and he it was that was suing me to boot. Here the busiest time of the year came along, with nary a breathing space; but I’ve got to be hiking off fifteen miles away.⁠ ⁠… I guess that’s just what the Lord must have punished him for.⁠ ⁠…”

As he gazed at the straw, stifling his cough and wiping his flat lips with the palm of his hand, Theodot’s speech was becoming more and more sombre, more and more expressive. Having said “The Lord must have punished him,” he was silent for a while, and then went on:

“The suit, of course, came to nothing. A peace was patched up between us. We was both at fault, that is. But only he wasn’t content with that. He made up with me, but right after he walked away, drank till he was blind-drunk, started threatening to kill me. He yells before everybody: ‘Wait,’ says he, ‘wait, I ain’t drunk yet, now; but when I’ve drunk enough I’ll settle your hash.’ I wanted to get away from the mixup⁠—it made me feel sick in the stomach.⁠ ⁠… Then he took to coming to our village: he’d come under my windows, drunk as drunk could be, and would start in to curse me out, saying things about my mother. And I have a grownup daughter.⁠ ⁠…”

“That weren’t right,” sympathetically grunted out the old man, and yawned.

“Oh, it was a grand story!” said Theodot. “Well, now, so he comes on an evening before the Kiriki. I hear him making a hubbub in the street. I got up, without saying a word, went out into the yard, sat down on a harrow, and started sharpening a scythe. But I was taken with such a rage that I saw red before my eyes. Then I hear him walking up to the hut, raising a rumpus. Must be wanting to break the panes, thinks I to myself. But no; he just made a lot of noise and was already going somewhere else. That would have been the end of it perhaps⁠—if only Ollka, my daughter, hadn’t jumped out⁠ ⁠… And then she starts in yelling, with a voice not her own: ‘Help, father, Andrushka is beating me!’ I dashed out with the scythe whetstone in my hand⁠—and, all in a passion, hit him once right over his head! He just hit the ground. Folks ran up, started dousing him with water⁠ ⁠… but he lies there, and by now he’s only hiccuping.⁠ ⁠… Maybe something might have been done then.⁠ ⁠… Like putting a cold pack on him, or something like that.⁠ ⁠… He ought to have been carried off to a hospital as fast as possible, and a tenner should have been handed to the doctor.⁠ ⁠… But where was a tenner to be gotten? Well, so he hiccuped and he hiccuped, and he passed away toward night. He threshed about and threshed about; then turned over on his back, stretched himself out, and there he was, all ready. And the folks were standing around, looking, all silent. And the lights was already lit by that time.”

All atremble with a quick shivering, his face flaming, the high school student got up, and, sinking in the straw up to his waist, started climbing down the stack. A borzoi bitch, frightened by him, suddenly jumped up and gave a jerky bark. The student drew back sharply, falling into the straw, and stood stock