"Ah, a fine spot!" said the philosopher. "To live here, to fish in the Dnieper and the ponds, to take a net or a gun and go hunting for snipe and curlew! Though I suppose there's also no lack of bustards in these meadows. Quantities of fruit can be dried and sold in town or, even better, distilled into vodka-because no liquor can touch vodka made from fruit. And it also wouldn't hurt to consider how to slip away from here."
He noticed a small path beyond the wattle fence, completely overgrown with weeds. He mechanically stepped onto it, thinking at first only of taking a stroll, and then of quietly blowing out between the cottages into the meadows, when he felt a rather strong hand on his shoulder.
Behind him stood the same old Cossack who had grieved so bitterly yesterday over the death of his mother and father and his own loneliness.
"You oughtn't to be thinking, master philosopher, about skipping from the farmstead!" he said. "It's not set up here so as you can run away; and the roads are bad for walking. Better go to the master: he's been waiting for you a long time in his room."
"Let's go! Why not?… It's my pleasure," said the philosopher, and he followed after the Cossack.
The chief, an elderly man with a gray mustache and an expression of gloomy sorrow, was sitting at a table in his room, his head propped in both hands. He was about fifty years old; but the deep despondency on his face and a sort of wasted pallor showed that his soul had been crushed and destroyed all of a sudden, in a single moment, and all the old gaiety and noisy life had disappeared forever. When Khoma came in together with the old Cossack, he took away one of his hands and nodded slightly to their low bow.
Khoma and the Cossack stopped respectfully by the door.
"Who are you, and where from, and of what estate, good man?" the chief said, neither kindly nor sternly.
"I'm the philosopher Khoma Brut, a student."
"And who was your father?" "I don't know, noble sir." "And your mother?"
"I don't know my mother, either. Reasonably considering, of course, there was a mother; but who she was, and where from, and when she lived-by God, your honor, I don't know."
The chief paused and seemed to sit pondering for a moment.
"And how did you become acquainted with my daughter?"
"I didn't become acquainted, noble sir, by God, I didn't. I've never had any dealings with young ladies in all my born days. Deuce take them, not to say something improper."
"Then why was it none other than you, precisely, that she appointed to read?"
The philosopher shrugged his shoulders:
"God knows how to explain that. It's a known fact that masters sometimes want something that even the most literate man can't figure out. And as the saying goes: 'Hop faster, mind the master!'"
"And you wouldn't happen to be lying, mister philosopher?"
"May lightning strike me right here if I'm lying."
"If you'd lived only one little minute longer," the chief said sadly, "I'd surely have learned everything. 'Don't let anybody read over me, daddy, but send to the Kiev seminary at once and bring the student Khoma Brut. Let him pray three nights for my sinful soul. He knows…' But what he knows, I didn't hear. She, dear soul, could only say that, and then she died. Surely, good man, you must be known for your holy life and God-pleasing deeds, and maybe she heard about you."
"Who, me?" the student said, stepping back in amazement. "Me, a holy life?" he said, looking the chief straight in the eye. "God help you, sir! Indecent though it is to say, I went calling on the baker's wife on Holy Thursday itself."
"Well… surely you were appointed for some reason. You'll have to start the business this same day."
"To that, your honor, I'd reply… of course, anybody versed in Holy Scripture could commensurably… only here it would call for a deacon, or at least a subdeacon. They're smart folk and know how it's done, while I… And I haven't got the voice for it, and myself I'm-devil knows what. Nothing to look at."
"That's all very well, only I'll do everything my little dove told me to do, I won't leave anything out. And once you've prayed over her properly for three nights, starting today, I'll reward you. Otherwise-I wouldn't advise even the devil himself to make me angry."
The chief uttered these last words with such force that the philosopher fully understood their meaning.
"Follow me!" said the chief.
They stepped out to the front hall. The chief opened the door to another room opposite the first. The philosopher stopped in the hall for a moment to blow his nose and then with some unaccountable fear crossed the threshold. The whole floor was covered with red cotton cloth. In the corner, under the icons, on a high table, lay the body of the dead girl, on a cover of blue velvet adorned with gold fringe and tassels. Tall wax candles twined with guelder rose stood at her head and feet, shedding their dim light, lost in the brightness of day. The face of the dead girl was screened from him by the disconsolate father, who sat before her, his back to the door. The philosopher was struck by the words he heard:
"I'm not sorry, my darling daughter, that you, to my sorrow and grief, have left the earth in the flower of your youth, without living out your allotted term. I'm sorry, my little dove, that I do not know who it was, what wicked enemy of mine, that caused your death. And if I knew of anyone who might only think of insulting you or just of saying something unpleasant about you, I swear to
God he would never see his children again, if he happened to be as old as I am, or his father and mother, if he was still a young man; and his body would be thrown to the birds and beasts of the steppe. But woe is me, my wild marigold, my little quail, my bright star, that I must live out the rest of my life with no delight, wiping the tears with my coattails as they flow from my aged eyes, while my enemy rejoices and laughs secretly at the feeble old man…"
He stopped, and the reason for it was the rending grief that resolved itself in a whole flood of tears.
The philosopher was moved by such inconsolable sorrow. He coughed and gave a muffled grunt, wishing thereby to clear his voice a little.
The chief turned and pointed to the place at the dead girl's head, before a small lectern on which some books lay.
"I can do the three nights' work somehow," thought the philosopher, "and the master will fill both my pockets with gold coins for it."
He approached and, clearing his throat once more, began to read, paying no attention to anything around him and not daring to look into the dead girl's face. A deep silence settled in. He noticed that the chief had left. Slowly he turned his head to look at the dead girl, and…
A shudder ran through his veins: before him lay a beauty such as there had never been on earth. It seemed that facial features had never before been assembled into such sharp yet harmonious beauty. She lay as if alive. Her brow, beautiful, tender, like snow, like silver, seemed thoughtful; her eyebrows-night amid a sunny day, thin, regular-rose proudly over her closed eyes, and her eyelashes, falling pointy on her cheeks, burned with the heat of hidden desires; her mouth-rubies about to smile… Yet in them, in these same features, he saw something terribly piercing. He felt his soul begin to ache somehow painfully, as if, in the whirl of merriment and giddiness of a crowd, someone suddenly struck up a song about oppressed people. The rubies of her mouth seemed to make the blood scald his heart. Suddenly something terribly familiar showed in her face.
"The witch!" he cried out in a voice not his own, looked away, turned pale, and began reading his prayers.