来自：A Sportsman's Sketches
What I had taken for a grove turned out to be a dark, round mound. "But where am I?" I repeated aloud, stopping for the third time and looking questioningly at my English yellow-spotted dog Dianka, decidedly the smartest of all four-legged creatures. But the smartest of four-legged creatures only wagged her tail, blinked her tired eyes mournfully, and offered me no sensible advice. I felt ashamed before her and rushed forward desperately, as if I had suddenly guessed where I should go, went around the mound and found myself in a shallow, plowed hollow. A strange feeling immediately took hold of me. This hollow had the appearance of an almost perfect cauldron with sloping sides; at the bottom of it several large white stones stood upright—it seemed they had crawled there for a secret council—and it was so silent and muffled, so flat, so drearily did the sky hang over it, that my heart contracted. Some small animal squeaked weakly and pitifully between the stones. I hastened to climb back out onto the mound. Until now I had not yet 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 the gloom, I walked straight ahead, by the stars—at random... I walked like this for about half an hour, barely moving my legs. It seemed I had never been in such empty places: nowhere did a light glimmer, no sound was heard. One gentle hill replaced another, fields stretched endlessly beyond fields, bushes seemed to rise suddenly from the ground right before my nose. I kept walking and was just about to lie down somewhere until morning, when I suddenly found myself above a terrible abyss.
I quickly drew back my outstretched foot and, through the barely transparent twilight of night, saw far below me a huge plain. A wide river curved around it in a semicircle receding from me; the steely reflections of water, occasionally and dimly glimmering, marked its course. The hill on which I stood descended suddenly in an almost sheer cliff; its enormous outlines stood out, blackening, against the bluish aerial void, and directly below me, in the corner formed by that cliff and the plain, beside the river, which stood in this place as a motionless dark mirror, under the very precipice of the hill, two fires burned and smoked side by side with red flame. People bustled around them, shadows swayed, sometimes the front half of a small curly head was brightly illuminated...
I finally recognized where I had wandered. 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 took to be drovers, to wait for dawn. I descended successfully, but had not yet released from my hands the last branch I had grasped, when suddenly two large white shaggy dogs rushed 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 cries. They ran up to me, immediately called off the dogs, which were especially struck by the appearance of my Dianka, and I approached them.
I was mistaken in taking the people sitting around those fires for drovers. They were simply peasant boys from neighboring villages, watching over a herd. In the hot summer season, horses are driven out at night to graze in the fields: during the day, flies and gadflies would give them no peace. To drive the herd out before evening and bring it back at dawn is a great holiday for peasant boys. Sitting without caps and in old sheepskin coats on the liveliest nags, they race with merry whooping and shouting, waving their arms and legs, bouncing high, laughing loudly. Light dust rises in a yellow column and rushes along the road; the friendly tramping carries far, the horses run with pricked ears; ahead of them all, with raised tail and constantly changing legs, gallops some red shaggy horse with burdock in its tangled mane.
I told the boys I was lost and sat down with them. They asked me where I was from, fell silent, made room. We talked a little. I lay down under a gnawed bush and began to look around. The picture was wonderful: around the fires trembled and seemed to fade, resting against the darkness, a round reddish reflection; the flame, flaring up, occasionally threw beyond the circle of that reflection quick gleams; a thin tongue of light would lick the bare branches of willow and instantly disappear; sharp, long shadows, bursting in for a moment, in turn ran all the way to the little fires: darkness struggled with light. Sometimes, when the flame burned weaker and the circle of light narrowed, from the encroaching darkness a horse's head would suddenly emerge, bay with a winding blaze, or all white, looking at us attentively and dully, quickly chewing long grass, and, lowering again, would immediately hide. Only the sound of its continued chewing and snorting could be heard. From the 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, hills and forests could be seen dimly in long patches. The dark clear sky stood solemnly and immeasurably high above us with all its mysterious splendor. The chest felt sweetly constricted, 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 coastal reeds would rustle weakly, barely stirred by the running wave... Only the little fires crackled quietly.
The boys sat around them; the two dogs that 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 looking sideways at the fire, occasionally growled with extraordinary self-importance; 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 now intend to acquaint the reader with them.)
The eldest of them all, Fedya, you would have given fourteen years. He was a slender boy with beautiful and fine, somewhat small features, curly fair hair, bright eyes, and a constant half-merry, half-distracted smile. He belonged, by all signs, to a wealthy family and had ridden out to the field not out of necessity, but for amusement. He wore a colorful calico shirt with a yellow border; a small new coat, thrown on carelessly, barely held on his narrow shoulders; on his light blue belt hung a comb. His boots with low tops were definitely his boots—not his father's. The second boy, Pavlusha, had tousled black hair, gray eyes, wide cheekbones, a pale, pockmarked face, a large but regular mouth, a huge head, as they say, like a beer pot, a stocky, awkward body. The lad was plain—what's to say!—but I liked him all the same: he looked very intelligent and direct, and strength rang 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, shortsighted, 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 from the fire. His yellow, almost white hair stuck out 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 at 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 small in height, of puny build, and dressed rather poorly. The last one, Vanya, I did not notice at first: he lay on the ground, quietly curled up under an angular mat, and only occasionally thrust out his fair 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; in it "potatoes" were cooking. 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 next to Kostya and still squinted intently. Kostya hung his head a little and looked somewhere into the distance. Vanya did not stir under his mat. I pretended to be sleeping. Gradually the boys began talking again.
At first they chatted about this and that, about tomorrow's work, about horses; but suddenly Fedya turned to Ilyusha and, as if resuming an interrupted conversation, asked him:
"Well, and so you saw 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 not just me alone."
"And where does he live at your place?" asked Pavlusha.
"In the old rolling room." (On paper factories, the "rolling room" or "scooping room" is the name for the building where paper is scooped out in vats. It is located right at the dam, under the wheel.)
"Do you work at the factory?"
"Of course we do. My brother and I, Avdyushka, we're glazers." (Glazers smooth and scrape paper.)
"Look at that—factory workers!..."
"Well, so how did you hear him?" asked Fedya.
"Here's how. My brother Avdyushka and I had to spend the night in the rolling room, along with Fyodor Mikheevsky, and Ivashka Kosoy, and another Ivashka from Red Hills, and 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 had to, but Nazarov, the overseer, forbade us; he says: 'Why should you boys drag yourselves home; there's lots of work tomorrow, so you boys don't go home.' So we stayed and lay down all together, and Avdyushka started saying, 'Well, what if the house spirit comes?'... And no sooner had he, Avdey, said this, than suddenly someone above our heads started walking; but we were lying below, and he was walking above, by the wheel. We hear: he's walking, the boards under him bending and creaking; then he passed over our heads; the water suddenly began to roar, roar over the wheel; the wheel started knocking, knocking, turning; but the gates at the sluice were lowered. We wonder: who raised them so the water came through; but the wheel turned, turned, and stopped. Then that one went again to the door above and started coming down the stairs, and you could hear he wasn't hurrying; the steps under him were actually groaning... Well, that one came to our door, waited, waited—the door suddenly flung wide open. We were terrified, we look—nothing... Suddenly, look, the form at one vat started moving, rose, dipped, moved, moved through the air, as if someone was rinsing it, and returned to its place. Then at another vat a hook came off the nail and went back on the nail; then it seemed someone went to the door and suddenly started coughing, choking, like some sheep, and so loudly... We all tumbled into a heap, crawling under each other... How frightened we were at that time!"
"Look at that!" said Pavel. "Why did he start coughing?"
"Don't know; maybe from the dampness."
Everyone fell silent.
"Well," asked Fedya, "are the potatoes cooked?"
Pavlusha felt them.
"No, still raw... Look, it splashed," he added, turning his face toward the river, "must be a pike... And there's a star falling."
"No, I'll tell you something, brothers," Kostya began in a thin voice, "listen, the other day what my father told me when I was there."
"Well, we're listening," said Fedya with a patronizing air.
"You know Gavrila, the village carpenter?"
"Well yes; we know him."
"And do you know why he's always so sad, always silent, you know? Here's why he's so sad. He went once, my father said—he went, my brothers, into the forest for nuts. So he went into the forest for nuts and got lost; he wandered—God knows where he wandered. He walked and walked, my brothers—no! can't find the road; and it's already night. So he sat down under a tree; let me, he says, wait till morning—he sat down and dozed off. So he dozed off and suddenly hears someone calling him. He looks—nobody. He dozed off again—again they're calling. He looks again: and before him on a branch sits a water nymph, swaying and calling him to her, and she's dying of laughter, laughing... And the moon is shining brightly, so brightly, clearly the moon is shining—everything, my brothers, is visible. So she's calling him, and she's all so bright, so white sitting on the branch, like some roach or minnow—or else there's carp that are so whitish, silvery... Gavrila the carpenter was petrified, my brothers, but she just keeps laughing and calling him to her with her hand. Gavrila was about to stand up, was about to obey the water nymph, my brothers, but, it seems, the Lord prompted him: he managed to make the sign of the cross... And how hard it was for him to make that sign of the cross, my brothers; he says his hand was just like stone, wouldn't move... Ah, what a thing!.. So when he made the sign of the cross, my brothers, the water nymph stopped laughing, and suddenly started crying... She's crying, my brothers, wiping her eyes with her hair, and her hair is green, like hemp. So Gavrila looked and looked at her and started asking her: 'Why are you crying, forest creature?' And the water nymph speaks to him: 'If you hadn't crossed yourself, man, you would have lived with me in joy till the end of your days; but I'm crying, grieving because you crossed yourself; but I won't be the only one grieving: grieve yourself till the end of your days.' Then she, my brothers, disappeared, and Gavrila immediately understood how to get out of the forest... But since then he always walks around sad."
"Well!" said Fedya after a brief silence, "but how can such forest uncleanness spoil a Christian soul—he didn't obey her?"
"There you go!" said Kostya. "And Gavrila said that her voice, he says, was so thin, pitiful, like a toad's."
"Did your father tell this himself?" continued Fedya.
"Himself. I was lying on the sleeping platform, heard everything."
"Strange thing! Why should he be sad?... Well, she must have liked him, since she called him."
"Yes, liked him!" Ilyusha picked up. "Sure! She wanted to tickle him to death, that's what she wanted. That's their business, these water nymphs."
"And there must be water nymphs here too," remarked Fedya.
"No," answered Kostya, "this is a clean place, free. Except—the river's close."
Everyone fell silent. Suddenly, somewhere in the distance, a long, 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 cried out for a long, long time under the very horizon, someone else seemed to answer him in the forest with thin, sharp laughter, and a weak, hissing whistle rushed along the river. The boys looked at each other, shuddered...
"The cross be with us!" whispered Ilya.
"Eh, you crows!" shouted Pavel. "Why did you get scared? 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.
"And have you heard, boys," Ilyusha began, "what happened the other day at our Varnavitsy?"
"At the dam?" asked Fedya.
"Yes, yes, at the dam, at the broken one. Now that's an unclean place, so unclean, and so desolate. All around are ravines, gullies, and in the gullies all sorts of snakes live."
"Well, what happened? Tell us..."
"Here's what happened. Maybe you don't know, Fedya, 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; says: 'Go, he says, Ermil, to get the mail.' Ermil always goes for our mail; he's killed all his dogs—they don't live with him for some reason, just never lived, but he's a good dog keeper, got everything. So Ermil went for the mail and lingered in town, but when he's riding back he's already drunk. And it's night, and a bright night: the moon is shining... So Ermil is riding across the dam: that's how his road went. He's riding along like this, dog keeper Ermil, and sees: on the drowned man's grave a little lamb, white, curly, nice, is walking. So Ermil thinks: 'I'll take him—why should he go to waste,' and got down and took him in his arms... But the lamb—nothing. So Ermil goes to his horse, and the horse shies away from him, snorts, shakes its head; but he calmed it down, got on it with the lamb, and rode off again: holding the lamb in front of him. He looks at it, and the lamb looks him straight in the eyes. Ermil the dog keeper felt uneasy: 'I don't remember, he says, sheep looking people in the eyes like that'; but never mind; he started stroking it like this on the wool—says: 'Baa, baa!' And the ram suddenly bares its teeth and also says to him: 'Baa, baa!..'"
No sooner had the storyteller uttered this last word than suddenly both dogs rose at once, with convulsive barking rushed away from the fire and disappeared into the darkness. All the boys were frightened. Vanya jumped out from under his mat. Pavlusha rushed after the dogs with a cry. 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 from far away... A little more time passed; the boys looked at each other in bewilderment, as if waiting for what would happen... Suddenly the tramping of a galloping horse was heard; it stopped abruptly 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 was it? What?" asked the boys.
"Nothing," answered Pavel, waving his hand at the horse, "just something the dogs scented. I thought it was a wolf," he added in an indifferent voice, breathing quickly 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 resolve. Without even a twig in his hand, at night, he galloped alone at a wolf without the slightest hesitation... "What a splendid boy!" I thought, looking at him.
"And did you see them, the wolves?" asked the coward Kostya.
"There are always many of them here," answered Pavel, "but they're troublesome only in winter."
He settled down again by the fire. Sitting on the ground, he dropped his hand on the shaggy neck 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 buried himself under the mat again.
"What terrible stories you've been 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 the devil made the dogs bark... But it's true, I've heard that this place of yours is unclean."
"Varnavitsy?... Of course it is! Very unclean! They say they've seen the old master many times there—the deceased master. He walks, they say, in a long-skirted coat and keeps groaning like this, looking for something on the ground. Once grandfather Trofimych met him: 'What, he says, master, Ivan Ivanovich, are you pleased to be looking for on the ground?'"
"He asked him?" interrupted the astonished Fedya.
"Yes, asked him."
"Well, Trofimych is brave after that... Well, and what did he say?"
"'I'm looking for tear-grass,' he says. And he spoke so hollowly, hollowly: 'Tear-grass.' 'And what do you need tear-grass for, master Ivan Ivanovich?' 'The grave,' he says, 'is crushing me, Trofimych: I want to get out, get out...'"
"Look at that!" remarked Fedya, "didn't live long enough, it seems."
"What a wonder!" said Kostya. "I thought you could only see the dead on Parents' Saturday."
"You can see the dead at any time," Ilyusha picked up with confidence, who, as far as I could notice, knew all the village superstitions better than the others... "But on Parents' Saturday you can also see the living person 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 woman 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, didn't see or hear anyone... just kept seeming like a dog was barking somewhere... Suddenly she looks: a boy is walking along the path in just a shirt. She looked closely—Ivashka Fedoseev is walking..."
"The one who died in spring?" interrupted Fedya.
"The very same. Walking and not raising his little head... And Ulyana recognized him... But then she looks: a woman is walking. She looks closer, closer—oh Lord!—she herself is walking on the road, Ulyana herself."
"Really herself?" asked Fedya.
"By God, herself."
"Well what of it, she hasn't died yet?"
"But the year hasn't passed yet. But look at her: barely alive."
Everyone fell silent again. Pavel threw a handful of dry branches on the fire. They immediately turned black against the suddenly flaring flame, crackled, began smoking and curling, lifting their burnt ends. The reflection of light struck in all directions, trembling abruptly, especially upward. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a white dove flew in—straight into this reflection, turned fearfully in one place, all bathed in hot glow, and disappeared, wings ringing.
"Must have strayed from home," remarked Pavel. "Now it'll fly until it bumps into something, and wherever it bumps, there it'll spend the night till dawn."
"Well, Pavlusha," said Kostya, "wasn't that a righteous soul flying to heaven, eh?"
Pavel threw another handful of branches on the fire.
"Maybe," he said at last.
"And tell me, please, Pavlusha," Fedya began, "did you also see the heavenly portent in your Shalamovo?" (This is what our peasants call a solar eclipse.)
"When the sun disappeared? Yes, we did."
"I suppose you were frightened too?"
"It wasn't just us. Our master, even though he explained to us beforehand that there would be a portent for us, when it darkened, they say he got so scared himself, just watch out. And in the servants' house the cook woman, as soon as it darkened, listen, she took the oven fork and smashed all the pots in the stove: 'Who's going to eat now, she says, the end of the world has come.' So the cabbage soup poured out. And in our village such rumors were going around, brother, that white wolves would run over the earth, would eat people, a predatory bird would fly, or they'd even see Trishka himself."
"What Trishka is that?" asked Kostya.
"Don't you know?" Ilyusha picked up with fervor. "Well, brother, where are you from that you don't know Trishka? You've got such homebodies in your village, real homebodies! Trishka—this will be such a remarkable man who will come; and he'll come when the last times arrive. And he'll be such a remarkable man that they won't be able to catch him, and they won't be able to do anything to him: such a remarkable man he'll be. The peasants will want to catch him, for example; they'll go out against him with clubs, surround him, but he'll deceive their eyes—deceive their eyes so that they'll beat each other instead. They'll put him in prison, 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 clap his hands—and they'll just fall off him. Well, and this Trishka will walk through villages and towns; and this Trishka, a crafty man, will tempt the Christian folk... but they won't be able to do anything to him... Such a remarkable, crafty man he'll be."
"Well yes," Pavel continued in his unhurried voice, "that's the one. So they were waiting for him at our place. The old people said that as soon as 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 wide open, you can see far. They look—suddenly from the settlement on the hill some man is walking, such a strange one, his head so remarkable... Everyone screamed: 'Oh, Trishka's coming! Oh, Trishka's coming!'—and everyone scattered! Our village elder crawled into a ditch; the elder's wife got stuck in the gateway, screaming at the top of her lungs, frightened her own yard dog so much that it broke its chain and over the fence into the forest; and Kuzka's father, Dorofeich, jumped into the oats, crouched down, and started calling like a quail: 'Maybe, he says, the enemy, the destroyer, will at least spare a bird'... That's how frightened everyone was!.. But the man walking 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 solemnly and majestically; the damp freshness of late evening had been replaced by the dry warmth of midnight, and it would lie for a long time yet as a soft canopy over the sleeping fields; much time still remained before the first babble, before the first rustles and whispers of morning, before the first dewdrops of dawn. There was no moon in the sky: at that time it rose late. Countless golden stars seemed to flow quietly, all vying in their twinkling, in the direction of the Milky Way, and truly, looking at them, you seemed to feel dimly yourself the impetuous, ceaseless course 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 away...
Kostya shuddered. "What's that?"
"That's a heron crying," Pavel answered calmly.
"A heron," repeated Kostya... "But what was it, Pavlusha, that I heard yesterday evening," he added after a brief pause, "maybe you know..."
"What did you hear?"
"Here's what I heard. I was walking from Stone Ridge to Shashkino; and I walked first all through our hazel grove, then I went through a meadow—you know, where it comes out at the steep turn—there's a deep hole there; you know, it's all overgrown with reeds; so I walked past this deep hole, my brothers, and suddenly from that hole someone groaned, and so pitifully, pitifully: ooh... ooh... ooh! Such fear took hold of me, my brothers: it was late, and the voice was so sickly. I felt like I could cry myself... What could that have been? Eh?"
"In that hole last year thieves drowned Akim the forester," remarked Pavlusha, "so maybe it's his soul complaining."
"Well, that could be it, my brothers," answered Kostya, widening his already huge eyes... "I didn't know that Akim was drowned in that hole: I would have been even more frightened."
"And then, they say, there are such tiny frogs," Pavel continued, "that cry so pitifully."
"Frogs? Well, no, that wasn't frogs... what frogs..." (The heron cried out again over the river.) "Damn it!" Kostya said involuntarily, "crying like a wood spirit."
"A wood spirit doesn't cry, he's mute," Ilyusha picked up, "he only claps his hands and rattles..."
"And have you seen him, the wood spirit?" Fedya interrupted mockingly.
"No, haven't seen him, and God save me from seeing him; but others have seen him. The other day at our place he led a peasant astray: led him, led him through the forest, all around one clearing... He barely made it home by dawn."
"Well, and did he see him?"
"Saw him. Says he stood big, big, dark, wrapped up, like hiding behind a tree, you couldn't make him out well, as if hiding from the moon, and he looks, looks with those huge eyes, blinks them, blinks..."
"Oh!" exclaimed Fedya, shuddering slightly and shaking his shoulders, "ugh!.."
"And why does this filth breed in the world?" remarked Pavel. "I really don't understand!"
"Don't curse, watch out, he'll hear," remarked Ilya.
Silence fell again.
"Look, look, boys," Vanya's childish voice suddenly rang out, "look at God's little stars—swarming like bees!"
He thrust his fresh little face out from under the mat, leaned on his fist, and slowly raised his big quiet eyes upward. The eyes of all the boys rose to the sky and didn't lower for some time.
"Well, Vanya," Fedya began tenderly, "how is your sister Anyutka, is she well?"
"She's well," answered Vanya with a slight lisp.
"Tell her—why doesn't she come to see us?..."
"Don't know."
"Tell her to come."
"I'll tell her."
"Tell her I'll give her a treat."
"And will you give me one?"
"I'll give you one too."
Vanya sighed.
"Well, no, I don't need one. Better give it to her: she's so kind, our girl."
And Vanya laid his head on the ground again. Pavel stood up and took the empty pot in his hand.
"Where are you going?" Fedya asked him.
"To the river, to get some water: I want a drink."
The dogs got up and followed him.
"Watch out you don't fall in the river!" Ilyusha called after him.
"Why would he fall?" said Fedya, "he'll be careful."
"Yes, he'll be careful. But anything can happen: he'll bend down, start scooping water, and the water spirit will grab him by the hand and drag him to himself. Then they'll say: the boy fell, they say, into the water... What kind of fell is that?.. There, he's climbed into the reeds," he added, listening.
The reeds indeed were "rustling," as they say in our parts, parting.
"And is it true," asked Kostya, "that fool Akulina went mad after she'd been in the water?"
"Since then... Look at her now! But they say she was a beauty before. The water spirit spoiled her. Must not have expected they'd pull her out so soon. So he spoiled her there at the bottom."
(I myself have met this Akulina more than once. Covered in rags, terribly thin, with a face black as coal, clouded gaze, and eternally bared teeth, she stamps for hours in one place, somewhere on the road, pressing her bony hands tightly to her chest and slowly shifting from foot to foot, like a wild beast in a cage. She understands nothing, no matter what