Morning came. Even before dawn the whole church was filled with people. Elderly women in white head scarves and white flannel blouses piously crossed themselves just at the entrance to the church. Ladies in green and yellow vests, and some even in dark blue jackets with gold curlicues behind, stood in front of them. Young girls with a whole mercer's shop of ribbons wound round their heads, and with beads, crosses, and coin necklaces on their necks, tried to make their way still closer to the iconostasis. 14 But in front of them all stood the squires and simple muzhiks with mustaches, topknots, thick necks, and freshly shaven chins, almost all of them in hooded flannel cloaks, from under which peeked here a white and there a blue blouse. All the faces, wherever you looked, had a festive air. The headman licked his chops, imagining himself breaking his fast with sausage; the young girls' thoughts were of going ice skating with the lads; the old women whispered their prayers more zealously than ever. You could hear the Cossack Sverbyguz's bowing all over the church. Only Oksana stood as if not herself: she prayed, and did not pray. There were so many different feelings crowding in her heart, one more vexing than another, one more rueful than another, that her face expressed nothing but great confusion; tears quivered in her eyes. The girls couldn't understand the reason for it and didn't suspect that the blacksmith was to blame. However, Oksana was not the only one concerned about the blacksmith. The parishioners all noticed that it was as if the feast was not a feast, as if something was lacking. As luck would have it, the deacon, after his journey in the sack, had grown hoarse and croaked in a barely audible voice; true, the visiting singer hit the bass notes nicely, but it would have been much better if the blacksmith had been there, who, whenever the "Our Father" or the "Cherubic Hymn" was sung, always went up to the choir and sang out from there in the same way they sing in Poltava. Besides, he was the one who did the duties of the church warden. Matins were already over; after matins, the liturgy… Where, indeed, had the blacksmith disappeared to?
Still more swiftly in the remaining time of night did the devil race home with the blacksmith. Vakula instantly found himself by his cottage. Just then the cock crowed. "Hold on!" he cried, snatching the devil by the tail as he was about to run away. "Wait, friend, that's not all-I haven't thanked you yet." Here, seizing a switch, he measured him out three strokes, and the poor devil broke into a run, like a muzhik who has just been given a roasting by an assessor. And so, instead of deceiving, seducing, and duping others, the enemy of the human race was duped himself. After which, Vakula went into the front hall, burrowed under the hay, and slept until dinnertime. Waking up, he was frightened when he saw the sun already high. "I slept through matins and the liturgy!"-and the pious blacksmith sank into dejection, reasoning that God, as a punishment for his sinful intention of destroying his soul, must have sent him a sleep that kept him from going to church on such a solemn feast day. However, having calmed himself by deciding to confess it to the priest the next week and to start that same day making fifty bows a day for a whole year, he peeked into the cottage; but no one was home. Solokha must not have come back yet. He carefully took the shoes from his bosom and again marveled at the costly workmanship and the strange adventure of the past night; he washed, dressed the best he could, putting on the clothes he got from the Cossacks, took from his trunk a new hat of Reshetilovo astrakhan with a blue top, which he had not worn even once since he bought it while he was in Poltava; he also took out a new belt of all colors; he put it all into a handkerchief along with a whip and went straight to Choub.
Choub goggled his eyes when the blacksmith came in, and didn't know which to marvel at: that the blacksmith had resurrected, or that the blacksmith had dared to come to him, or that he had got himself up so foppishly as a Zaporozhye Cossack. But he was still more amazed when Vakula untied the handkerchief and placed before him a brand-new hat and a belt such as had never been seen in the village, and himself fell at his feet and said in a pleading voice:
"Have mercy, father! don't be angry! here's a whip for you: beat me as much as your soul desires, I give myself up; I repent of everything; beat me, only don't be angry! You were once bosom friends with my late father, you ate bread and salt together and drank each other's health."
Choub, not without secret pleasure, beheld the blacksmith- who did not care a hoot about anyone in the village, who bent copper coins and horseshoes in his bare hands like buckwheat pancakes-this same blacksmith, lying at his feet. So as not to demean himself, Choub took the whip and struck him three times on the back.
"Well, that's enough for you, get up! Always listen to your elders! Let's forget whatever was between us! So, tell me now, what do you want?"
"Give me Oksana for my wife, father!"
Choub thought a little, looked at the hat and belt; it was a wonderful hat and the belt was no worse; he remembered the perfidious Solokha and said resolutely:
"Right-o! Send the matchmakers!"
"Aie!" Oksana cried out, stepping across the threshold and seeing the blacksmith, and with amazement and joy she fastened her eyes on him.
"Look, what booties I've brought you!" said Vakula, "the very ones the tsaritsa wears!"
"No! no! I don't need any booties!" she said, waving her hands and not taking her eyes off him. "Even without the booties, I…" She blushed and did not say any more.
The blacksmith went up to her and took her hand; the beauty looked down. Never yet had she been so wondrously pretty. The delighted blacksmith gently kissed her, her face flushed still more, and she became even prettier.
A bishop of blessed memory was driving through Dikanka, praised the location of the village, and, driving down the street, stopped in front of a new cottage.
"And to whom does this painted cottage belong?" His Reverence asked of the beautiful woman with a baby in her arms who was standing by the door.
"To the blacksmith Vakula," said Oksana, bowing to him, for it was precisely she.
"Fine! fine work!" said His Reverence, studying the doors and windows. The windows were all outlined in red, and on the doors everywhere there were mounted Cossacks with pipes in their teeth.
But His Reverence praised Vakula still more when he learned that he had undergone a church penance and had painted the entire left-hand choir green with red flowers free of charge. That, however, was not alclass="underline" on the wall to the right as you entered the church, Vakula had painted a devil in hell, such a nasty one that everybody spat as they went by; and the women, if a child started crying in their arms, would carry it over to the picture and say, "See what a caca's painted there!" and the child, holding back its tears, would look askance at the picture and press against its mother's breast.
The Terrible Vengeance
Noise and thunder at the end of Kiev: Captain Gorobets is celebrating his son's wedding. Many people have gathered as the captain's guests. In the old days people liked to eat well, better still did they like to drink, and better still did they like to make merry. On his bay steed came the Zaporozhets Mikitka, 1 straight from a wild spree on the Pereshlai field, where he kept the Polish noblemen drunk on red wine for seven days and seven nights. There came also the captain's sworn brother, Danilo Burulbash, with his young wife, Katerina, and his one-year-old son, from the other shore of the Dnieper, where he had a farmstead between two hills. The guests marveled at Mistress Katerina's white face, her eyebrows black as German velvet, her fancy woolen dress and light blue silken shirt, her boots with silver-shod heels; but still more they marveled that her old father had not come with her. For one year only had he been living across the Dnieper, but for twenty-one he had vanished without a word and had returned to his daughter when she was already married and had borne a son. He surely could have told of many wonders. How could he not after having lived for so long in foreign lands! There everything is different: the people are not the same, and there are no churches of Christ… But he had not come.