The guests were offered hot spiced vodka with raisins and plums and a round wedding loaf on a big platter. The musicians got to the bottom of it, where money had been baked in, and, quieting down for a while, laid aside their cymbals, violins, and tambourines. Meanwhile the young women and girls, wiping their lips with embroidered handkerchiefs, again stepped out from their rows; and the lads, arms akimbo, proudly looking about, were ready to rush to meet them-when the old captain brought out two icons to bless the young couple. These icons had come to him from an honorable monk, the elder Varfolomey. Their casings were not rich, they did not shine with silver or gold, but no unclean powers dared to touch anyone who had them in the house. Raising the icons aloft, the captain was about to say a short prayer… when the children who were playing on the ground suddenly cried out in fright; following them, the people backed away, and all pointed their fingers in fear at a Cossack who stood in their midst. Who he was, no one knew. But he had already done a fine Cossack dance and managed to make the crowd around him laugh. Yet when the captain raised the icons, his whole face suddenly changed: his nose grew and bent to one side, his eyes, green now instead of brown, leaped, his lips turned blue, his chin trembled and grew sharp as a spear, a fang shot from his mouth, a hump rose behind his head, and the Cossack was-an old man.
"It's him! It's him!" people in the crowd cried, pressing close to each other.
"The sorcerer has appeared again!" cried the mothers, snatching up their children.
Majestically and dignifiedly the captain stepped forward and said in a loud voice, setting the icons against him:
"Vanish, image of Satan, there is no place for you here!" And, hissing and snapping his teeth like a wolf, the strange old man vanished.
There arose, arose noisily, like the sea in bad weather, a murmuring and talking among the folk.
"What is this sorcerer?" asked the young and unseasoned people.
"There'll be trouble!" said the old ones, wagging their heads.
And everywhere, all over the captain's wide yard, they began gathering in clusters and listening to stories about the strange sorcerer. But they almost all said different things, and no one could tell anything for certain about him.
A barrel of mead was rolled out into the yard, and not a few buckets of Greek wine were brought. All became merry again. The musicians struck up; the girls, the young women, the dashing Cossacks in bright jackets broke into a dance. Ninety- and hundred-year-olds got tipsy and also started to dance, recalling the years that had not vanished in vain. They feasted till late into the night, and they feasted as no one feasts any longer. The guests began to disperse, but few went home: many stayed the night in the captain's wide yard; still more Cossacks fell asleep, uninvited, under the benches, on the floor, by their horses, near the barn; wherever a drunken Cossack head staggered to, there he lay and snored for all Kiev to hear.
II
It shone quietly over all the world: the moon rose from behind the hill. It covered the hilly bank of the Dnieper as with precious, snow-white damask muslin, and the shade sank still deeper into the pine thicket.
In the middle of the Dnieper floated a boat. Two lads sat in the bow, their black Cossack hats cocked, and the spray from under their oars flew in all directions like sparks from a tinderbox.
Why are the Cossacks not singing? They do not talk of ksiedzy 2 going all over the Ukraine rebaptising people as Catholics; nor of the two-day battle with the Horde at the Salt Lake. 3 How can they sing, how can they talk of daring deeds: their master Danilo has fallen into thought, and the sleeve of his red flannel jacket, hanging out of the boat, trails in the water; their mistress Katerina quietly rocks the baby without taking her eyes off him, and a gray dust of water sprays over the linen covering her fancy dress.
Fair is the sight from the midst of the Dnieper of the high hills, the broad meadows, and the green forest! Those hills are not hills: they have no foot; they are sharp-peaked at both bottom and top; under them and over them is the tall sky. Those woods standing on the slopes are not woods; they are hair growing on the shaggy head of the old man of the forest. Under it his beard washes in the water, and under his beard and over his hair-the tall sky. Those meadows are not meadows: they are a green belt tied in the middle of the round sky, and the moon strolls about in both the upper and the lower half.
Master Danilo looks to neither side, he looks at his young wife.
"What is it, my young wife, my golden Katerina, have you fallen into sadness?"
"I have not fallen into sadness, my master Danilo! I am frightened by the strange stories about the sorcerer. They say he was born so frightful… and from an early age no child wanted to play with him. Listen, Master Danilo, to what frightening things they say: as if he always imagined that everyone was laughing at him. He would meet some man on a dark evening, and at once it would seem to him that he had opened his mouth and bared his teeth. And the next day the man would be found dead. I felt strange, I felt frightened when I heard these stories," said Katerina, taking out a handkerchief and wiping the face of the baby asleep in her arms. She had embroidered the handkerchief with red silk leaves and berries.
Master Danilo said not a word and began looking to the dark side, where far beyond the forest an earthen rampart blackened and an old castle rose from behind the rampart. Three wrinkles all at once creased his brow; his left hand stroked his gallant mustache.
"It is not so frightening that he is a sorcerer," he said, "as that he is an evil guest. Why this whim of dragging himself here? I've heard that the Polacks want to build some sort of fortress to cut off our way to the Zaporozhye. Only let it be true… I'll scatter the devil's nest if I hear so much as a rumor that he has any sort of den there. I'll burn the old sorcerer so that the crows have nothing to peck at. Besides, I think he has no lack of gold and other goods. Here is where the devil lives. If he has gold… Now we're going to pass the crosses-it's the cemetery! here his unclean forebears rot. They say they were all ready to sell themselves to Satan, souls and tattered jackets, for money. If indeed he has gold, there's no point in delaying now: war can't always bring…"
"I know what you are plotting. No good does the encounter with him promise me. But you are breathing so hard, you look so stern, your eyes are so grim under their scowling brows!…"
"Silence, woman!" Danilo said angrily. "Whoever deals with you becomes a woman himself. Lad, give me a light for my pipe!" Here he turned to one of the oarsmen, who knocked hot ashes from his pipe and transferred them to his master's pipe. "Frightening me with a sorcerer!" Master Danilo went on. "A Cossack, thank God, fears neither devils nor ksiedzy. Much good there'd be if we started listening to our wives. Right, lads? Our wife is a pipe and a sharp saber!"
Katerina fell silent, looking down into the slumbering water; and the wind sent ripples over the water, and the whole Dnieper silvered like a wolf's fur in the night.
The boat swung and began to hug the wooded bank. On the bank a cemetery could be seen: decrepit crosses crowded together. Guelder rose does not grow among them, there is no green grass, only the moon warms them from its heavenly height.
"Do you hear cries, my lads? Someone's calling us for help!" said Master Danilo, turning to his oarsmen.
"We hear the cries, and they seem to come from that direction," the lads said together, pointing to the cemetery.
But all grew still. The boat swung and began to round the jutting bank. Suddenly the oarsmen lowered their oars and stared fixedly. Master Danilo also stopped: fear and chill cut into their Cossack fibers.