A Place Bewitched
A TRUE STORY TOLD BY THE SACRISTAN
UPON MY WORD, I am sick of telling stories! Why, what would you expect? It really is tiresome; one goes on telling stories and there is no getting out of it! Oh, very well, I will tell you a story then; only, mind, it is for the last time. Well, we were talking about a man’s being able to get the better, as the saying is, of the Unclean Spirit. To be sure, if you come to that, all sorts of things do happen in this world … Better not say so, though: if the devil wants to bamboozle you he will, upon my soul he will … Here you see my father had the four of us; I was only a silly child then, I wasn’t more than eleven, no, not eleven. I remember as though it were today when I was running on all fours and set to barking like a dog, my dad shouted at me, shaking his head: ‘Ay, Foma, Foma, you are almost old enough to be married and you are as foolish as a young mule.’
My grandfather was still living then and fairly – may his hiccough be easier in the other world – strong on his legs. At times he would take a fancy … But how am I to tell a story like this? Here one of you has been for the last hour raking an ember for his pipe out of the stove and the other has run behind the cupboard for something. It’s too much…! It would be all very well if you didn’t want to hear me, but you kept worrying me for a story … If you want to listen, then listen!
Just at the beginning of spring Dad went with the waggons to the Crimea to sell tobacco; but I don’t remember whether he loaded two or three waggons; tobacco fetched a good price in those days. He took my three-year-old brother with him to train him betimes as a dealer. Grandfather, Mother and I and a brother and another brother were left at home. Grandfather had sown a patch of ground by the roadway and went to stay at the shanty there; he took us with him, too, to scare the sparrows and the magpies off the patch. I can’t say it came amiss to us: sometimes we’d eat so many cucumbers, melons, turnips, onions and peas that upon my word, you would have thought there were cocks crowing in our stomachs. Well, to be sure, it was profitable too: travellers jogged along the road, everyone wanted to treat himself to a melon, and, besides that, from the neighbouring farms they would often bring us fowls, turkeys, eggs, to exchange for our vegetables. We did very well.
But what pleased Grandfather more than anything was that some fifty dealers would pass with their waggonloads every day. They are people, you know, who have seen life: if one of them sets off on a tale, you would do well to prick up your ears. To Grandfather it was like dumplings to a hungry man. Sometimes there would be a meeting with old acquaintances – everyone knew Grandfather – and you know yourself how it is when old folks get together: it is this and that, and so then and so then, and so this happened and that happened … Well, they just run on. They remember things that happened, God knows when.
One evening – why, it seems as though it might have happened today – the sun had begun to set. Grandfather was walking about his patch taking off the leaves with which he covered the watermelons in the day to save their being scorched by the sun.
‘Look, Ostap,’ I said to my brother, ‘yonder come some waggoners!’
‘Where are the waggoners?’ said Grandfather, as he put a mark on the big melon that the lads mightn’t eat it by accident.
There were, as a fact, six waggons trailing along the road; a waggoner, whose moustache had gone grey, was walking ahead of them. He was still – what shall I say? – ten paces off, when he stopped.
‘Good day, Maxim, so it has pleased God we should meet here.’
Grandfather screwed up his eyes. ‘Ah, good day, good day! Where do you come from? And Bolyatchka here, too! Good day, good day, brother! What the devil! Why, they are all here: Krutotryshtchenko too! And Petcherytsya! And Kovelyok and Stetsko! Good day! Ha, ha, ho, ho…!’ And they fell to kissing each other.
They took the oxen out of the shafts and let them graze on the grass; they left the waggons on the road and all sat down in a circle in front of the shanty and lit their pipes. Though they had no thoughts for their pipes; what with telling stories and chattering, I don’t believe they smoked a pipe apiece.
After supper Grandfather began regaling his visitors with melons. So, taking a melon each, they trimmed it neatly with a knife (they were all old hands, had been about a good bit and knew how to eat in company – I dare say they would have been ready to sit down even at a gentleman’s table); after cleaning the melon well, everyone made a hole with his finger in it, drank the juice, began cutting it up into pieces and putting them into his mouth.
‘Why are you standing there gaping, lads?’ said my grandfather. ‘Dance, you sons of dogs! Where’s your pipe, Ostap? Now then, the Cossack dance! Foma, arms akimbo! Come, that’s it, hey, hop!’
I was a brisk lad in those days. Cursed old age! Now I can’t step out like that; instead of cutting capers, my legs can only trip and stumble. For a long time Grandad watched us as he sat with the dealers. I noticed that his legs wouldn’t keep still, it was as though something were tugging at them.
‘Look, Foma,’ said Ostap, ‘if the old bugger isn’t going to dance.’
What do you think, he had hardly uttered the words when the old man could resist it no longer! He longed, you know, to show off before the dealers.
‘I say, you devil’s spawn, is that the way to dance? This is the way to dance!’ he said, getting up on to his feet, stretching out his arms and tapping with his heels.
Well, there is no denying he did dance; he couldn’t have danced better if it had been with the Hetman’s wife. We stood aside and the old bugger went twirling his legs all over the flat place beside the cucumber beds. But as soon as he had got halfway across and wanted to do his best and cut some capers with his legs in a whirl – his feet wouldn’t rise from the ground, whatever he did! ‘What a plague!’ He moved backwards and forwards again, got to the middle of the dance – it wouldn’t go! Whatever he did – he couldn’t do it and he didn’t do it! His legs stood still as though made of wood. ‘Look you, the place is bedevilled, look you, it is a visitation of Satan! The Herod, the enemy of mankind has a hand in it!’ Well, he couldn’t disgrace himself before the dealers like that, could he? He made a fresh start and began cutting tiny trifling capers, a joy to see; up to the middle – then, no! It wouldn’t be danced, and that is all about it!
‘Ah, you rascally Satan! I hope you may choke with a rotten melon, that you may perish when you are little, son of a dog. See what shame he has brought me to in my old age…!’ And indeed someone did laugh behind his back.
He looked round; no melon patch, no dealers, nothing; behind, in front, on both sides was a flat field. ‘Ay! Sss!… Well, I never!’ He began screwing up his eyes – the place doesn’t seem quite unfamiliar: on one side a copse, behind the copse some sort of post sticking up which can be seen far away against the sky. Dash it all! But that’s the dovecote in the priest’s garden! On the other side, too, there is something greyish; he looked closer: it was the district clerk’s threshing barn. So this was where the Unclean Power had dragged him! Going round in a ring, he hit upon a little path. There was no moon: instead of it, a white blur glimmered through a dark cloud.
‘There will be a high wind tomorrow,’ thought Grandad. All at once there was the gleam of a light on a little grave to one side of the path. ‘Well, I never!’ Grandad stood still, put his arms akimbo and stared at it. The light went out; far away and a little further yet, another twinkled. ‘A treasure!’ cried Grandad. ‘I’ll bet anything if it’s not a treasure!’ And he was just about to spit on his hands and begin digging when he remembered that he had no spade nor shovel with him. ‘Oh what a pity! Well – who knows? – maybe I’ve only to lift the turf and there it lies, the precious dear! Well, there’s nothing for it, I’ll mark the place anyway so as not to forget it afterwards.’
So pulling along a good-sized branch that must have been broken off by a high wind, he laid it on the little grave where the light gleamed and went along the path. The young oak copse grew thinner; he caught a glimpse of a fence. ‘There, didn’t I say that it was the priest’s garden?’ thought Grandad. ‘Here’s his fence; now it is not three-quarters of a mile to the melon patch.’
It was pretty late, though, when he came home, and he wouldn’t have any dumplings. Waking my brother Ostap, he only asked him whether it was long since the dealers had gone, and then rolled himself up in his sheepskin. And when Ostap was beginning to ask him: ‘And what did the devils do with you today, Grandad?’ ‘Don’t ask,’ he said, wrapping himself up tighter than ever, ‘don’t ask, Ostap, or your hair will turn grey!’
And he began snoring so that the sparrows who had been flocking together to the melon patch rose up into the air in a fright. But how was it he could sleep? There’s no denying, he was a sly beast. God give him the kingdom of Heaven, he could always get out of any scrape; sometimes he would pitch such a yarn that you would have to bite your lips.
Selection and foreword copyright © 2018 by Natasha Randall
