"Well, Vakula!" the devil squealed, still sitting on his neck, as if fearing he might run away, "you know, nothing is done without a contract."
"I'm ready!" said the blacksmith. "With you, I've heard, one has to sign in blood; wait, I'll get a nail from my pocket!" Here he put his arm behind him and seized the devil by the tail.
"See what a joker!" the devil cried out, laughing. "Well, enough now, enough of these pranks!"
"Wait, my sweet fellow!" cried the blacksmith, "and how will you like this?" With these words he made the sign of the cross and the devil became as meek as a lamb. "Just wait," he said, dragging him down by the tail, "I'll teach you to set good people and honest Christians to sinning!" Here the blacksmith, without letting go of the tail, jumped astride him and raised his hand to make the sign of the cross.
"Have mercy, Vakula!" the devil moaned pitifully. "I'll do anything you want, anything, only leave my soul in peace-don't put the terrible cross on me!"
"Ah, so that's the tune you sing now, you cursed German! Now I know what to do. Take me on your back this minute, do you hear? Carry me like a bird!"
"Where to?" said the rueful devil.
"To Petersburg, straight to the tsaritsa!"
And the blacksmith went numb with fear, feeling himself rising into the air.
For a long time Oksana stood pondering the blacksmith's strange words. Something inside her was already telling her she had treated him too cruelly. What if he had indeed decided on some-thing terrible? "Who knows, maybe in his sorrow he'll make up his mind to fall in love with another girl and out of vexation call her the first beauty of the village? But, no, he loves me. I'm so pretty! He wouldn't trade me for anyone; he's joking, pretending. Before ten minutes go by, he'll surely come to look at me. I really am too stern. I must let him kiss me, as if reluctantly. It will make him so happy!" And the frivolous beauty was already joking with her girlfriends.
"Wait," said one of them, "the blacksmith forgot his sacks. Look, what frightful sacks! He doesn't go caroling as we do: I think he's got whole quarters of lamb thrown in there; and sausages and loaves of bread probably beyond count. Magnificent! We can eat as much as we want all through the feast days."
"Are those the blacksmith's sacks?" Oksana picked up. "Let's quickly take them to my house and have a better look at what he's stuffed into them."
Everyone laughingly accepted this suggestion.
"But we can't lift them!" the whole crowd suddenly cried, straining to move the sacks.
"Wait," said Oksana, "let's run and fetch a sled, we can take them on a sled."
And the crowd ran to fetch a sled.
The prisoners were very weary of sitting in the sacks, though the deacon had made himself a big hole with his finger. If it hadn't been for the people, he might have found a way to get out; but to get out of a sack in front of everybody, to make himself a laughingstock… this held him back, and he decided to wait, only groaning slightly under Choub's uncouth boots. Choub himself had no less of a wish for freedom, feeling something under him that was terribly awkward to sit on. But once he heard his daughter's decision, he calmed down and no longer wanted to get out, considering that to reach his house one would have to walk at least a hundred paces, maybe two. If he got out, he would have to straighten his clothes, button his coat, fasten his belt-so much work! And the hat with earflaps had stayed at Solokha's. Better let the girls take him on a sled. But it happened not at all as Choub expected. Just as the girls went off to fetch the sled, the skinny chum was coming out of the tavern, upset and in low spirits. The woman who kept the tavern was in no way prepared to give him credit; he had waited in hopes some pious squire might come and treat him; but, as if on purpose, all the squires stayed home like honest Christians and ate kutya in the bosom of their families. Reflecting on the corruption of morals and the wooden heart of the Jewess who sold the drink, the chum wandered into the sacks and stopped in amazement.
"Look what sacks somebody's left in the road!" he said, glancing around. "There must be pork in them. Somebody's had real luck to get so much stuff for his caroling! What frightful sacks! Suppose they're stuffed with buckwheat loaves and lard biscuits-that's good enough. If it's nothing but flatbread, that's already something: the Jewess gives a dram of vodka for each flatbread. I'll take it quick, before anybody sees me." Here he hauled the sack with Choub and the deacon onto his shoulders, but felt it was too heavy. "No, it's too heavy to carry alone," he said, "but here, as if on purpose, comes the weaver Shapuvalenko. Good evening, Ostap!"
"Good evening," said the weaver, stopping.
"Where are you going?"
"Dunno, wherever my legs take me."
"Help me, good man, to carry these sacks! Somebody went caroling and then dropped them in the middle of the road. We'll divide the goods fifty-fifty."
"Sacks? And what's in the sacks, wheat loaves or flatbread?"
"I suppose there's everything in them."
Here they hastily pulled sticks from a wattle fence, put a sack on them, and carried it on their shoulders.
"Where are we taking it? to the tavern?" the weaver asked as they went.
"That's what I was thinking-to the tavern. But the cursed Jewess won't believe us, she'll think we stole it; besides, I just came from the tavern. We'll take it to my place. No one will be in our way: my wife isn't home."
"You're sure she's not home?" the prudent weaver asked.
"Thank God, we've still got some wits left," said the chum, "the devil if I'd go where she is. I suppose she'll be dragging about with the women till dawn."
"Who's there?" cried the chum's wife, hearing the noise in the front hall produced by the two friends coming in with the sack, and she opened the door.
The chum was dumbfounded.
"There you go!" said the weaver, dropping his arms.
The chum's wife was a treasure of a sort not uncommon in the wide world. Like her husband, she hardly ever stayed home but spent almost all her days fawning on some cronies and wealthy old women, praised and ate with great appetite, and fought with her husband only in the mornings, which was the one time she occasionally saw him. Their cottage was twice as old as the local scrivener's balloon trousers, the roof lacked straw in some places. Only remnants of the watde fence were to be seen, because no one ever took a stick along against dogs when leaving the house, intending to pass by the chum's kitchen garden instead and pull one out of his fence. Three days would go by without the stove being lit. Whatever the tender spouse wheedled out of good people she hid the best she could from her husband, and she often arbitrarily took his booty if he hadn't managed to drink it up in the tavern. The chum, despite his perennial sangfroid, did not like yielding to her, and therefore almost always left the house with two black eyes, and his dear better half trudged off to tell the old women about her husband's outrages and the beatings she suffered from him.
Now, you can picture to yourself how thrown off the weaver and the chum were by her unexpected appearance. Setting the sack down, they stepped in front of it, covering it with their coat skirts; but it was too late: the chum's wife, though she saw poorly with her old eyes, nevertheless noticed the sack.
"Well, that's good!" she said, with the look of an exultant hawk. "It's good you got so much for your caroling! That's what good people always do; only, no, I suspect you picked it up somewhere. Show me this minute! Do you hear? Show me your sack right this minute!"
"The hairy devil can show it to you, not us," said the chum, assuming a dignified air.
"What business is it of yours?" said the weaver. "We got it for caroling, not you."
"No, you're going to show it to me, you worthless drunkard!" the wife exclaimed, hitting the tall chum on the chin with her fist and going for the sack.