Short Fiction, Nikolai Gogol [buy e reader TXT] 📗

The wooden church, black with age and overgrown with green lichen, stood quite at the end of the village in gloomy solitude; it was adorned with three round cupolas. One saw at the first glance that it had not been used for divine worship for a long time.

Lighted candles were standing before almost every icon. The coffin was set down before the altar. The old colonel kissed his dead daughter once more, and then left the church, together with the bearers of the bier, after he had ordered his servants to look after the philosopher and to take him back to the church after supper.

The coffin-bearers, when they returned to the house, all laid their hands on the stove. This custom is always observed in Little Russia by those who have seen a corpse.

The hunger which the philosopher now began to feel caused him for a while to forget the dead girl altogether. Gradually all the domestics of the house assembled in the kitchen; it was really a kind of club, where they were accustomed to gather. Even the dogs came to the door, wagging their tails in order to have bones and offal thrown to them.

If a servant was sent on an errand, he always found his way into the kitchen to rest there for a while, and to smoke a pipe. All the Cossacks of the establishment lay here during the whole day on and under the benches⁠—in fact, wherever a place could be found to lie down in. Moreover, everyone was always leaving something behind in the kitchen⁠—his cap, or his whip, or something of the sort. But the numbers of the club were not complete till the evening, when the groom came in after tying up his horses in the stable, the cowherd had shut up his cows in their stalls, and others collected there who were not usually seen in the daytime. During suppertime even the tongues of the laziest were set in motion. They talked of all and everything⁠—of the new pair of breeches which someone had ordered for himself, of what might be in the centre of the earth, and of the wolf which someone had seen. There were a number of wits in the company⁠—a class which is always represented in Little Russia.

The philosopher took his place with the rest in the great circle which sat round the kitchen door in the open-air. Soon an old woman with a red cap issued from it, bearing with both hands a large vessel full of hot galuchkis, which she distributed among them. Each drew out of his pocket a wooden spoon, or a one-pronged wooden fork. As soon as their jaws began to move a little more slowly, and their wolfish hunger was somewhat appeased, they began to talk. The conversation, as might be expected, turned on the dead girl.

“Is it true,” said a young shepherd, “is it true⁠—though I cannot understand it⁠—that our young mistress had traffic with evil spirits?”

“Who, the young lady?” answered Dorosch, whose acquaintance the philosopher had already made in the kibitka. “Yes, she was a regular witch! I can swear that she was a witch!”

“Hold your tongue, Dorosch!” exclaimed another⁠—the one who, during the journey, had played the part of a consoler. “We have nothing to do with that. May God be merciful to her! One ought not to talk of such things.”

But Dorosch was not at all inclined to be silent; he had just visited the wine-cellar with the steward on important business, and having stooped two or three times over one or two casks, he had returned in a very cheerful and loquacious mood.

“Why do you ask me to be silent?” he answered. “She has ridden on my own shoulders, I swear she has.”

“Say, uncle,” asked the young shepherd, “are there signs by which to recognise a sorceress?”

“No, there are not,” answered Dorosch; “even if you knew the Psalter by heart, you could not recognise one.”

“Yes, Dorosch, it is possible; don’t talk such nonsense,” retorted the former consoler. “It is not for nothing that God has given each some special peculiarity; the learned maintain that every witch has a little tail.”

“Every old woman is a witch,” said a grey-headed Cossack quite seriously.

“Yes, you are a fine lot,” retorted the old woman who entered at that moment with a vessel full of fresh galuchkis. “You are great fat pigs!”

A self-satisfied smile played round the lips of the old Cossack whose name was Javtuch, when he found that his remark had touched the old woman on a tender point. The shepherd burst into such a deep and loud explosion of laughter as if two oxen were lowing together.

This conversation excited in the philosopher a great curiosity, and a wish to obtain more exact information regarding the colonel’s daughter. In order to lead the talk back to the subject, he turned to his next neighbour and said, “I should like to know why all the people here think that the young lady was a witch. Has she done harm to anyone, or killed them by witchcraft?”

“Yes, there are reports of that kind,” answered a man, whose face was as flat as a shovel. “Who does not remember the huntsman Mikita, or the⁠—”

“What has the huntsman Mikita got to do with it?” asked the philosopher.

“Stop; I will tell you the story of Mikita,” interrupted Dorosch.

“No, I will tell it,” said the groom, “for he was my godfather.”

“I will tell the story of Mikita,” said Spirid.

“Yes, yes, Spirid shall tell it,” exclaimed the whole company; and Spirid began.

“You, Mr. Philosopher Thomas, did not know Mikita. Ah! he was an extraordinary man. He knew every dog as though he were his own father. The present huntsman, Mikola, who sits three places away from me, is not fit to hold a candle to him, though good enough in his way; but compared to Mikita, he is a mere milksop.”

“You tell the tale splendidly,” exclaimed Dorosch,