来自：A Sportsman's Sketches
On just such a day I was once hunting black grouse in Chernsky district, Tula province. I had found and shot quite a lot of game; my filled gamebag was cutting mercilessly into my shoulder; but the evening glow had already faded, and in the air, still light though no longer illuminated by the rays of the set sun, cold shadows were beginning to thicken and spread, when I finally decided to return home. With quick steps I passed through a long "clearing" of bushes, climbed a hill and, instead of the expected familiar plain with an oak grove to the right and a low white church in the distance, saw completely different, unknown places. At my feet stretched a narrow valley; straight ahead, opposite me, a dense aspen grove rose like a steep wall. I stopped in bewilderment, looked around... "Aha!" I thought, "I've gone completely the wrong way: I've veered too far to the right," and, myself amazed at my error, quickly descended the hill. Immediately an unpleasant, motionless dampness enveloped me, as if I had entered a cellar; the thick high grass at the bottom of the valley, all wet, showed white like a smooth tablecloth; walking on it was somehow eerie. I quickly scrambled up the other side and walked on, bearing left, along the aspen grove. Bats were already swooping over its sleeping treetops, mysteriously circling and trembling against the dimly-clear sky; a belated hawk flew briskly and straight overhead, hurrying to its nest. "As soon as I reach that corner," I thought to myself, "the road will be right there, though I've made a detour of about a verst!"
I finally reached the corner of the forest, but there was no road there: some unmown, low bushes spread widely before me, and beyond them, far, far away, a deserted field was visible. I stopped again. "What is this?.. Where am I?" I began to recall how and where I had walked during the day... "Ah! These are the Parakhin bushes!" I finally exclaimed, "exactly! That must be Sindeyev grove... But how did I end up here? So far?.. Strange!" Now I needed to turn right again.
I went right, through the bushes. Meanwhile night was approaching and growing like a storm cloud; it seemed that darkness was rising from everywhere with the evening vapors and even pouring down from above. I came upon some unmarked, overgrown path; I set off along it, looking ahead attentively. Everything around quickly darkened and grew quiet—only the quails cried out occasionally. A small night bird, rushing silently and low on its soft wings, almost collided with me and dove timidly aside. I came out at the edge of the bushes and wandered along a field boundary. Already I could barely make out distant objects; the field showed white indistinctly around me; beyond it, advancing with each moment, gloomy darkness swelled in enormous billows. My footsteps echoed dully in the stiffening air. The paling sky began to turn blue again—but this was already the blue of night. Little stars began to flicker and stir upon it.
What I had taken for a grove turned out to be a dark and round hillock. "But where am I?" I repeated aloud, stopped for the third time and looked questioningly at my English yellow-piebald dog Diana, decidedly the smartest of all four-legged creatures. But the smartest of four-legged creatures only wagged her tail, blinked her tired eyes sadly, and offered me no sensible advice. I felt ashamed before her, and desperately rushed forward, as if I had suddenly guessed which way to go, circled the hillock and found myself in a shallow, plowed-all-around hollow. A strange feeling immediately took hold of me. This hollow had the look of an almost regular cauldron with sloping sides; at its bottom several large white stones stood upright—it seemed they had crawled there for a secret council—and it was so mute and dead there, the sky hung so flatly, so dismally over it, that my heart contracted. Some little animal squeaked weakly and pitifully among the stones. I hastened to get back up onto the hillock. Until now I had still not lost hope of finding the way home; but here I finally became convinced that I was completely lost, and, no longer trying at all to recognize the surrounding places, almost completely drowned in gloom, I walked straight ahead, by the stars—at random... For about half an hour I walked thus, barely moving my legs. It seemed I had never been in such empty places: nowhere did a little light glimmer, no sound was heard. One gentle slope succeeded another, fields stretched endlessly beyond fields, bushes seemed to rise suddenly from the earth right before my nose. I kept walking and was about to lie down somewhere until morning, when I suddenly found myself above a terrible abyss.
I quickly jerked back my raised foot and, through the barely transparent twilight of night, saw far below me an enormous plain. A wide river encircled it in a semicircle receding from me; steely reflections of water, occasionally and dimly glimmering, marked its course. The hill on which I stood descended suddenly in an almost sheer precipice; its huge outlines stood out, blackening, against the bluish aerial void, and directly below me, in the corner formed by that precipice and the plain, beside the river, which stood in that place like a motionless, dark mirror, beneath the very cliff of the hill, two fires burned and smoked side by side with red flame. People were bustling around them, shadows swayed, sometimes the front half of a small curly head was brightly illuminated...
I finally recognized where I had ended up. This meadow is famous in our parts under the name of Bezhin Meadow... But there was no possibility of returning home, especially at night; my legs were giving way beneath me from fatigue. I decided to approach the fires and in the company of those people, whom I had taken for drovers, to wait for dawn. I successfully descended, but had not yet released from my hands the last branch I had grasped, when suddenly two large, white, shaggy dogs threw themselves at me with vicious barking. Children's ringing voices rang out around the fires; two or three boys quickly rose from the ground. I responded to their questioning shouts. They ran up to me, immediately called off the dogs, who were especially struck by the appearance of my Diana, and I approached them.
I had been mistaken in taking the people sitting around those fires for drovers. These were simply peasant children from neighboring villages, watching over a herd. In the hot summer season horses are driven out to feed in the fields at night with us: during the day flies and horseflies would give them no peace. Driving out the herd before evening and bringing it back at the morning dawn is a great holiday for peasant boys. Sitting without caps and in old sheepskin coats on the liveliest nags, they rush with merry whooping and shouting, waving their arms and legs, bouncing high, laughing sonorously. Light dust rises and rushes along the road in a yellow column; the friendly tramping carries far; the horses run with pricked ears; in front of them all, tail raised and constantly changing legs, gallops some red shaggy horse with burdock in its tangled mane.
I told the boys that I was lost and sat down beside them. They asked me where I was from, fell silent, made room. We talked a little. I lay down under a gnawed-at bush and began to look around. The picture was wonderful: around the fires trembled and seemed to fade, pressing against the darkness, a round reddish reflection; the flame, flaring up, occasionally cast beyond the boundary of that circle quick gleams; a thin tongue of light would lick the bare branches of the willow and immediately disappear; sharp, long shadows, bursting in for an instant, in their turn ran right up to the fires: darkness struggled with light. Sometimes, when the flame burned more weakly and the circle of light narrowed, from the advancing darkness a horse's head would suddenly emerge, bay with a wavy blaze, or completely white, looking at us attentively and stupidly, rapidly chewing long grass, and, lowering again, would immediately hide. Only one could hear how it continued to chew and snort. From an illuminated place it was difficult to make out what was happening in the darkness, and therefore nearby everything seemed draped with an almost black curtain; but farther toward the horizon long patches dimly showed hills and forests. The dark pure sky stood solemnly and immeasurably high above us with all its mysterious magnificence. One's chest contracted sweetly, breathing in that special, languorous and fresh smell—the smell of a Russian summer night. Almost no sound was heard around... Only occasionally in the nearby river a large fish would splash with sudden resonance and the riverside reeds would rustle weakly, barely disturbed by the running wave... The fires alone crackled quietly.
The boys sat around them; the two dogs who had so wanted to eat me also sat there. They could not reconcile themselves to my presence for a long time and, sleepily squinting and glancing sideways at the fire, occasionally growled with an extraordinary sense of their own dignity; first they growled, and then whined slightly, as if regretting the impossibility of fulfilling their desire. There were five boys in all: Fedya, Pavlusha, Ilyusha, Kostya and Vanya. (From their conversations I learned their names and intend now to introduce them to the reader.)
The first, the eldest of all, Fedya, you would have given fourteen years. He was a slender boy, with handsome and fine, slightly small features, curly blond hair, bright eyes and a constant half-cheerful, half-distracted smile. He belonged, by all signs, to a wealthy family and had ridden out to the field not from necessity, but just for amusement. He wore a colorful calico shirt with a yellow border; a small new peasant coat, thrown on loosely, barely held on his narrow little shoulders; a comb hung on his light blue belt. His boots with low tops were certainly his boots—not his father's. The second boy, Pavlusha, had tousled black hair, gray eyes, broad cheekbones, a pale, pockmarked face, a large but regular mouth, his whole head enormous, as they say, like a beer pot, his body squat, awkward. The lad was plain—what can you say!—but still I liked him: he looked very intelligent and direct, and there was strength in his voice. He could not boast of his clothing: it all consisted of a simple homespun shirt and patched trousers. The face of the third, Ilyusha, was rather insignificant: hook-nosed, elongated, weak-sighted, it expressed a kind of dull, sickly anxiety; his compressed lips did not move, his drawn brows did not part—he seemed to squint constantly at the fire. His yellow, almost white hair stuck up in sharp tufts from under a low felt cap, which he kept pushing onto his ears with both hands. He wore new bast shoes and leg wrappings; a thick rope, wound three times around his waist, carefully tightened his neat black jacket. Both he and Pavlusha appeared to be no more than twelve years old. The fourth, Kostya, a boy of about ten, aroused my curiosity with his thoughtful and sad gaze. His whole face was small, thin, freckled, pointed toward the bottom like a squirrel's; his lips could barely be distinguished; but his large, black eyes, shining with a liquid gleam, produced a strange impression: they seemed to want to express something for which there were no words in language—in his language at least. He was of small stature, puny build and dressed rather poorly. The last, Vanya, I did not notice at first: he lay on the ground, quietly nestled under an angular mat, and only occasionally stuck out his light brown curly head from under it. This boy was only about seven years old.
So I lay under the bush to one side and glanced at the boys. A small pot hung over one of the fires; potatoes were cooking in it. Pavlusha was watching it and, kneeling, poked a stick into the boiling water. Fedya lay propped on his elbow with the skirts of his coat spread out. Ilyusha sat beside Kostya and still squinted tensely. Kostya bowed his head slightly and looked somewhere into the distance. Vanya did not stir under his mat. I pretended to be sleeping. Gradually the boys began to talk again.
At first they chatted about this and that, about tomorrow's work, about the horses; but suddenly Fedya turned to Ilyusha and, as if resuming an interrupted conversation, asked him:
"Well, so did you actually see the house spirit?"
"No, I didn't see him, and you can't see him," answered Ilyusha in a hoarse and weak voice, the sound of which corresponded perfectly to the expression of his face, "but I heard him... And I wasn't the only one."
"And where does he live at your place?" asked Pavlusha.
"In the old rolling room." ("Rolling room" or "scooping room" at paper factories is what they call the building where they scoop up paper in vats. It is located right at the dam, under the wheel. [Note by I.S. Turgenev.])
"Do you work at the factory?"
"Of course we do. My brother and I, Avdyushka, we're polishers." ("Polishers" smooth and scrape paper. [Note by I.S. Turgenev.])
"Well now—factory workers!.."
"So how did you hear him?" asked Fedya.
"Well, here's how. My brother Avdyushka and I had to spend the night in the rolling room, along with Fyodor Mikheyevsky, and Ivashka the Cross-eyed, and another Ivashka from Red Hills, and also Ivashka Sukhorukov, and there were other boys there too; there were about ten of us boys in all—the whole shift; but we had to spend the night in the rolling room, that is, not exactly that we had to, but Nazarov, the overseer, forbade it; he says: 'Why should you boys trudge home; there's a lot of work tomorrow, so you boys don't go home.' So we stayed and lay all together, and Avdyushka started saying, like, 'Well boys, what if the house spirit comes?...' And he, Avdey, hadn't finished speaking when suddenly someone started walking above our heads; but we were lying below, and he was walking upstairs, by the wheel. We hear: he's walking, and the boards under him are bending and creaking; then he passed over our heads; the water suddenly started rushing, rushing over the wheel; the wheel started knocking, knocking, turning; but the sluice gates at the millrace" ("Millrace" is what we call the place where the water runs onto the wheel. [Note by I.S. Turgenev.]) "are lowered. We're amazed: who raised them so the water started flowing; however, the wheel turned, turned, and stopped. Then he went to the door upstairs and started coming down the stairs, and you could hear, like he wasn't hurrying; the steps under him were even groaning... Well, he came to our door, waited, waited—the door suddenly swung wide open. We were frightened, we look—nothing... Suddenly, look, at one of the vats the mold" (The screen with which they scoop paper. [Note by I.S. Turgenev.]) "started moving, lifted up, dipped, walked, walked through the air like someone was rinsing with it, and back in its place. Then at another vat a hook came off its nail and back on the nail; then it's like someone went to the door and suddenly started coughing, choking, like some sheep, and so loudly... We all just piled in a heap, crawled under each other... How frightened we were at that time!"
"Well I never!" said Pavel. "Why did he cough?"
"I don't know; maybe from the dampness."
Everyone fell silent.
"Well," asked Fedya, "are the potatoes cooked?"
Pavlusha felt them.
"No, still raw... Listen, it splashed," he added, turning his face toward the river, "must be a pike... And there's a little star falling."
"No, but I'll tell you something, brothers," Kostya began in a thin voice, "listen, the other day my father told me this while I was there."
"Well, we're listening," said Fedya with a patronizing air.
"You know Gavrila, the carpenter from the settlement?"
"Well yes; we know him."
"And do you know why he's always so cheerless, always silent, do you know? Here's why he's so cheerless. He went once, my father said—he went, my brothers, to the forest for nuts. So he went to the forest for nuts and got lost; he wandered—God knows where he wandered. He walked and walked, brothers—no! he can't find the road; and night has already fallen. So he sat down under a tree; let me, he says, wait for morning—he sat down and dozed off. So he dozed off and suddenly hears someone calling him. He looks—nobody. He dozed off again—they call again. He looks, looks again: and before him on a branch a water nymph is sitting, swinging and calling him to her, and she herself is dying of laughter, laughing... And the moon is shining strongly, so strongly, the moon is shining clearly—everything is visible, brothers. So she's calling him, and she herself is all so bright, so white sitting on the branch, like some dace or minnow—or there's also carp that are such whitish, silvery... Gavrila the carpenter just froze, brothers, but she just keeps laughing and beckoning him to her with her hand. Gavrila was about to get up, was about to obey the water nymph, brothers, but, you know, the Lord put it in his mind: he made the sign of the cross over himself... And how hard it was for him to make the sign of the cross, brothers; he says his hand was just like stone, wouldn't move... Ah, what a thing!.. So as soon as he made the sign of the cross, brothers, the water nymph stopped laughing and suddenly started crying... She's crying, brothers, wiping her eyes with her hair, and her hair is green, like real hemp. So Gavrila looked and looked at her and started asking her: 'What are you crying for, forest demon?' And the water nymph says to him: 'If you hadn't crossed yourself, you man, you would have lived with me in merriment to the end of your days; and I'm crying, I'm grieving because you crossed yourself; but it's not only I who will grieve: grieve yourself to the end of your days.' Then she, brothers, disappeared, and Gavrila immediately understood how to get out of the forest, that is... But since then he's always gone about cheerless."
"Well!" said Fedya after a brief silence, "but how can such forest evil spoil a Christian soul—after all, he didn't obey her?"
"Yes, there you are!" said Kostya. "And Gavrila said that her little voice was so thin, plaintive, like a toad's."
"Did your father tell this himself?" continued Fedya.
"Himself. I was lying on the shelf, heard everything."
"Strange business! Why should he be cheerless?.. Well, apparently he pleased her, since she called him."
"Yes, pleased!" Ilyusha picked up. "As if! She wanted to tickle him to death, that's what she wanted. That's their business, these water nymphs."
"And here too there must be water nymphs," remarked Fedya.
"No," answered Kostya, "this is a clean place, open. Only—the river is near."
Everyone fell silent. Suddenly, somewhere in the distance, a prolonged, ringing, almost moaning sound rang out, one of those incomprehensible night sounds that sometimes arise in the midst of deep silence, rise, hang in the air and slowly spread at last, as if dying away. You listen—and it's as if there's nothing, but it rings. It seemed someone had cried out for a long, long time under the very horizon, someone else seemed to respond to him in the forest with thin, sharp laughter, and a weak, hissing whistle rushed along the river. The boys exchanged glances, shuddered...
"The holy cross be with us!" whispered Ilya.
"Eh, you crows!" shouted Pavel. "What are you frightened of? Look, the potatoes are cooked." (Everyone moved closer to the pot and began eating the steaming potatoes; only Vanya didn't stir.) "What about you?" said Pavel.
But he didn't come out from under his mat. The pot was soon completely emptied.
"But have you heard, boys," Ilyusha began, "what happened the other day at our Varnavitsy?"
"At the dam?" asked Fedya.
"Yes, yes, at the dam, the broken one. That's an unclean place, so unclean, and so desolate. All around are such ravines, gullies, and in the gullies snakes live." (In Oryol dialect: snakes. [Note by I.S. Turgenev.])
"Well, what happened? Tell us..."
"Well, here's what happened. You, Fedya, maybe don't know, but there's a drowned man buried there; and he drowned long, long ago, when the pond was still deep; but his grave is still visible, though barely visible: just—a little mound... So the other day the steward calls the dog-keeper Ermil; he says: 'Go, he says, Ermil, to get the mail.' Ermil always goes for the mail with us; he's killed all his dogs—they don't live with him for some reason, never have lived, but he's a good dog-keeper, he's got everything. So Ermil went for the mail and lingered in town, but on the way back he's already tipsy. And it's night, and a bright night: the moon is shining... So Ermil is riding across the dam: that's the way his road went. He's riding along like this, the dog-keeper Ermil, and he sees: on the drowned man's grave a lamb, a white one, curly, pretty, is walking about. So Ermil thinks: 'I'll take him—why should he go to waste,' and he got down and took him in his arms... But the lamb—didn't mind. So Ermil goes to his horse, but the horse shies away from him, snorts, shakes its head; however, he calmed her down, got on her with the lamb and rode on again: holding the lamb in front of him. He looks at it, and the lamb looks him right in the eyes. Ermil the dog-keeper felt eerie: I don't remember, he says, sheep looking people in the eyes like that; however, nothing; he started stroking its wool like this—says: 'Baa, baa!' And the ram suddenly bares its teeth and says to him too: 'Baa, baa!...'
The narrator had barely uttered this last word when suddenly both dogs rose at once, rushed away from the fire with convulsive barking and disappeared into the darkness. All the boys were frightened. Vanya jumped out from under his mat. Pavlusha rushed after the dogs with a shout. Their barking quickly receded... The anxious running of the alarmed herd was heard. Pavlusha shouted loudly: "Gray! Zhuchka!.." In a few moments the barking ceased; Pavel's voice came already from afar... A little more time passed; the boys exchanged bewildered glances, as if waiting for what would happen... Suddenly the tramping of a galloping horse rang out; it stopped sharply right at the fire, and, clutching the mane, Pavlusha nimbly jumped off it. Both dogs also jumped into the circle of light and immediately sat down, sticking out their red tongues.
"What is it? What?" asked the boys.
"Nothing," answered Pavel, waving his hand at the horse, "the dogs just scented something. I thought it was a wolf," he added in an indifferent voice, breathing rapidly with his whole chest.
I involuntarily admired Pavlusha. He was very fine at that moment. His plain face, animated by the quick ride, glowed with bold daring and firm resolution. Without a stick in his hand, at night, he had galloped alone at a wolf without the slightest hesitation... "What a splendid boy!" I thought, looking at him.
"Did you see them, the wolves?" asked the coward Kostya.
"There are always many of them here," answered Pavel, "but they're only troublesome in winter."
He settled down again before the fire. Sitting on the ground, he dropped his hand on the shaggy nape of one of the dogs, and for a long time the delighted animal didn't turn its head, looking sideways at Pavlusha with grateful pride.
Vanya burrowed under the mat again.
"What scary things you were telling us, Ilyushka," Fedya began, who, as the son of a wealthy peasant, had to be the leader (though he himself spoke little, as if afraid of lowering his dignity). "And then the evil one made the dogs start barking... But it's true, I've heard that this place is unclean at your end."
"Varnavitsy?.. Of course! what an unclean place! They say the old master has been seen there many times—the late master. He walks, they say, in a long-skirted caftan and keeps groaning like this, searching for something on the ground. Once grandfather Trofimych met him: 'What, he says, my dear sir, Ivan Ivanovich, are you pleased to be searching for on the ground?'"
"He asked him?" interrupted the astonished Fedya.
"Yes, he asked him."
"Well, Trofimych is quite something after that... Well, and what did he say?"
"'I'm searching,' he says, 'for break-wort.' And he speaks so hollowly, hollowly: 'Break-wort.' 'And what do you need break-wort for, my dear sir Ivan Ivanovich?' 'The grave,' he says, 'is pressing, Trofimych: I want out, out...'"
"Well now!" remarked Fedya, "he must not have lived long enough."
"What a wonder!" said Kostya. "I thought you could only see the dead on the Saturday before Trinity Sunday."
"You can see the dead at any hour," Ilyusha picked up with confidence, who, as far as I could notice, knew all the village superstitions best... "But on the Saturday before Trinity you can see even the living, those whose turn it is to die that year. You just have to sit at night on the church porch and keep looking at the road. Those who are to die that year will walk past you on the road. Last year our Ulyana went to the porch."
"Well, and did she see anyone?" asked Kostya with curiosity.
"Of course. First she sat for a long, long time, saw nobody and heard nobody... only it was always like a little dog barking, barking somewhere... Suddenly she looks: a boy is walking along the path in just a shirt. She looked closely—Ivashka Fedoseyev is walking..."
"The one who died in spring?" interrupted Fedya.
"The very same. He's walking and doesn't raise his little head... And Ulyana recognized him... But then she looks: a woman is walking. She peers and peers—oh Lord!—it's herself walking on the road, Ulyana herself."
"Really herself?" asked Fedya.
"By God, herself."
"Well what of it, after all she hasn't died yet?"
"But the year hasn't passed yet. And you look at her: her soul's barely hanging on."
Everyone fell silent again. Pavel threw a handful of dry twigs on the fire. They turned sharply black against the suddenly flaring flame, crackled, smoked and began to curl, lifting their charred ends. The reflection of the light struck out, trembling convulsively, in all directions, especially upward. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a white dove flew in—right into this reflection, fearfully whirled in one place, bathed all over in the hot gleam, and disappeared, the ringing of its wings.
"Must have strayed from home," remarked Pavel. "Now it will fly until it bumps into something, and where it bumps, there it will spend the night till dawn."
"Well, Pavlusha," said Kostya, "wasn't that a righteous soul flying to heaven, eh?"
Pavel threw another handful of twigs on the fire.
"Maybe," he said at last.
"But tell me, please, Pavlusha," Fedya began, "what, did you also see the heavenly portent at Shalamovo?" (This is what our peasants call a solar eclipse. [Note by I.S. Turgenev.])
"When the sun disappeared? Of course."
"I suppose you were frightened too?"
"Yes, and not just us. Our master, even though he explained to us beforehand that there would be, he says, a portent for you, but when it darkened, he himself, they say, got so frightened, imagine. And in the servants' cottage the cook woman, so she, as soon as it darkened, you hear, she took and broke all the pots in the oven with the poker: 'Who,' she says, 'will eat now, the end of the world has come.' So the cabbage soup just poured out. And in our village such rumors were going around, brother, that white wolves would run over the earth, would eat people, that a bird of prey would fly, or even that they would see Trishka himself." (The belief about "Trishka" probably echoes the legend of the Antichrist. [Note by I.S. Turgenev.])
"What's this Trishka?" asked Kostya.
"Don't you know?" Ilyusha picked up with heat. "Well, brother, where are you from that you don't know about Trishka? They must be real stay-at-homes in your village, real stay-at-homes! Trishka—that will be such a remarkable man who will come; and he will come when the last times arrive. And he will be such a remarkable man that you won't be able to catch him, and you won't be able to do anything to him: he'll be such a remarkable man. The peasants will want, for example, to catch him; they'll come out against him with clubs, surround him, but he'll pull the wool over their eyes—pull the wool over their eyes so that they'll beat each other up. They'll put him in jail, for example—he'll ask for a drink of water in a dipper: they'll bring him a dipper, and he'll dive into it and vanish without a trace. They'll put chains on him, but he'll just clap his hands—and they'll fall right off him. Well, and this Trishka will walk through villages and towns; and this Trishka, the sly man, will tempt the Christian people... but you won't be able to do anything to him... He'll be such a remarkable, sly man."
"Well yes," Pavel continued in his unhurried voice, "that's him. So they were waiting for him at our place. The old people said that as soon as, they said, the heavenly portent begins, Trishka will come. So the portent began. All the people poured out into the street, into the field, waiting for what would happen. And our place, you know, is open, spacious. They look—suddenly from the settlement, from the hill, some kind of man is coming, such a strange one, with such a remarkable head... Everyone shouted: 'Oh, Trishka is coming! Oh, Trishka is coming!'—and scattered in all directions! Our elder crawled into a ditch; the elder's wife got stuck in the gateway, screaming at the top of her lungs, she frightened her own yard dog so much that it broke loose from its chain, over the fence, and into the forest; and Kuzka's father, Dorofeich, jumped into the oats, crouched down, and started crying like a quail: 'Perhaps,' he says, 'the enemy, the destroyer, will at least spare a bird.' That's how frightened everyone was!.. But the man who was coming was our cooper, Vavila: he'd bought himself a new tub and put the empty tub on his head."
All the boys laughed and fell silent again for a moment, as often happens with people conversing in the open air. I looked around: night stood solemn and majestic; the damp freshness of late evening had been replaced by midnight's dry warmth, and it would lie for a long time yet as a soft coverlet on the sleeping fields; much time remained before the first babbling, before the first rustlings and whispers of morning, before the first dewdrops of dawn. There was no moon in the sky: it rose late at that time. Countless golden stars seemed to flow quietly, all in competition twinkling, in the direction of the Milky Way, and truly, looking at them, you seemed to feel dimly yourself the impetuous, ceaseless running of the earth...
A strange, harsh, painful cry rang out suddenly twice in succession over the river and, after a few moments, was repeated farther off...
Kostya shuddered. "What's that?"
"It's a heron crying," Pavel calmly replied.
"A heron," Kostya repeated... "But what was it, Pavlusha, that I heard yesterday evening," he added after a brief pause, "maybe you know..."
"What did you hear?"
"Well, here's what I heard. I was walking from Stone Ridge to Shashkino; and I walked first all through our hazel grove, and then went through a meadow—you know, where it comes out at the steep bend" (A steep turn in a ravine. [Note by I.S. Turgenev.]) "—there's a deep hole there" (A deep pit with spring water remaining after the flood, which doesn't dry up even in summer. [Note by I.S. Turgenev.]) "you know, it's still all overgrown with reeds; so I walked past this deep hole, brothers, and suddenly from that very hole someone started moaning, and so pitifully, pitifully: ooo... ooo... ooo! Such fear took hold of me, brothers: it was late, and the voice was so sickly. I felt like I could have cried myself... What could that have been? Eh?"
"In that hole the year before last thieves drowned Akim the forester," Pavel remarked, "so maybe it's his soul complaining."
"Well, perhaps so, brothers," Kostya replied, widening his already huge eyes... "I didn't know that Akim had been drowned in that hole: I would have been even more frightened."
"But then, they say, there are such tiny frogs," Pavel continued, "that cry so pitifully."
"Frogs? Well, no, that wasn't frogs... what kind of... (The heron cried out again over the river.) There she goes!" Kostya said involuntarily, "just like a wood demon crying."
"A wood demon doesn't cry, he's mute," Ilyusha picked up, "he only claps his hands..."