As the wagon train moved on, the bells were ringing for the liturgy.
V
THE WAGON TRAIN settled down to the side of the village on the riverbank. The sun burned like the day before, the air was motionless and dismal. Several pussywillows stood on the bank, but their shade fell not on the land but on the water, where it was wasted, and in the shade under the wagons it was stifling and dull. The water, blue from the sky’s reflection in it, was passionately alluring.
The wagoner Styopka, to whom Egorushka only now paid attention, an eighteen-year-old Ukrainian boy in a long, belt-less shirt and wide, loose balloon trousers that fluttered like flags as he walked, quickly undressed, ran down the steep bank, and plopped into the water. He dove three times, then turned on his back and closed his eyes with pleasure. His face smiled and wrinkled, as if it felt tickly, painful, and funny to him.
On a hot day, when there is no getting away from the torrid and stifling heat, the splashing of water and the loud breathing of a bather affect the hearing like good music. Dymov and Kiriukha, looking at Styopka, quickly undressed and, with loud laughter and anticipating pleasure, plunged one after the other into the water. And the quiet, modest river resounded with snorting, splashing, and shouting. Kiriukha coughed, laughed, and shouted as if someone was trying to drown him, and Dymov chased after him, trying to grab him by the leg.
‘‘Hey, hey, hey!’’ he shouted. ‘‘Catch him, hold him!’’
Kiriukha guffawed and enjoyed himself, but the expression on his face was the same as on dry land: stupid, stunned, as if someone had crept up behind him unseen and whacked him on the head with the butt of an axe. Egorushka also undressed, but he did not go down the bank, but ran up and went flying off the ten-foot height. Describing an arc in the air, he fell into the water, went deep down, but did not reach the bottom; some force, cold and pleasant to the touch, picked him up and carried him back to the surface. He emerged, snorting and blowing bubbles, and opened his eyes; but the sun was reflected in the river just by his face. First blinding sparks, then rainbows and dark spots moved before his eyes; he hastened to dive again, opened his eyes underwater, and saw something muddy green, like the sky on a moonlit night. Again the same force, not letting him touch bottom and stay in the cool, carried him upwards. He emerged and breathed so deeply that he felt vast and refreshed not only in his chest but even in his stomach. Then, to take from the water all that could be taken, he allowed himself every luxury: he lay on his back, basked, splashed, turned somersaults, swam on his stomach, and on his side, and on his back, and upright—however he liked, until he got tired. The opposite bank was thickly overgrown with rushes, shining golden in the sun, and the rush flowers bent their beautiful tufts to the water. In one place the rushes trembled, bent their flowers down, and gave a crunch—this was Styopka and Kiriukha ‘‘snatching’’ crayfish.
‘‘A crayfish! Look, brothers, a crayfish!’’ Kiriukha shouted triumphantly and indeed held up a crayfish.
Egorushka swam towards the rushes, dove down, and began feeling around near the roots. Digging into the liquid, slimy silt, he felt something sharp and disgusting, maybe really a crayfish, but just then somebody seized him by the leg and pulled him to the surface. Spluttering and coughing, Egorushka opened his eyes and saw before him the wet, laughing face of the prankster Dymov. The prankster was breathing heavily and, judging by his eyes, wanted to go on with his mischief. He held Egorushka tightly by the leg, and was already raising his other hand to seize him by the neck, but Egorushka, with repugnance and fear, as if scornful and afraid that the stalwart fellow would drown him, tore himself free and said:
‘‘Fool! I’ll give it to you in the mug!’’
Feeling that this was not enough to express his hatred, he thought a moment and added:
‘‘Scoundrel! Son of a bitch!’’
But Dymov, as if nothing had happened, no longer paid any attention to Egorushka, but went swimming towards Kiriukha, shouting:
‘‘Hey, hey, hey! Let’s do some fishing! Boys, let’s go fishing!’’
‘‘Why not?’’ agreed Kiriukha. ‘‘There must be lots of fish here . . .’’
‘‘Styopka, run to the village, ask the muzhiks for a net.’’
‘‘They won’t give us one!’’
‘‘They will! You just ask! Tell them it’s like it’s for Christ’s sake, because we’re the same as wanderers.’’
‘‘That’s for sure!’’
Styopka got out of the water, dressed quickly, and, hatless, his wide balloon trousers flapping, ran to the village. After the clash with Dymov, the water lost all its charm for Egorushka. He got out and began to dress. Pantelei and Vasya were sitting on the steep bank, their legs hanging down, and watching the bathers. Emelyan, naked, stood up to his knees in the water just by the bank, holding on to the grass with one hand, so as not to fall, and stroking his body with the other. With his bony shoulder blades, with the bump under his eye, bent over and obviously afraid of the water, he presented a ridiculous figure. His face was serious, stern; he looked at the water crossly, as if about to reprimand it for getting him chilled once in the Donets and taking his voice away.
‘‘And why don’t you go for a swim?’’ Egorushka asked Vasya.
‘‘Just so . . . I don’t like it ...’’ Vasya replied.
‘‘Why’s your chin swollen?’’
‘‘It hurts ... I used to work at a match factory, young master ... The doctor told me that’s why my jore got swollen. The air there’s unhealthy. And besides me, another three boys got bulging jores, and one had it completely rotted away.’’
Styopka soon came back with a net. Dymov and Kiriukha turned purple and hoarse from staying so long in the water, but they eagerly started fishing. First they walked into a deep place by the rushes; the water there came up to Dymov’s neck and over the short Kiriukha’s head; the latter spluttered and blew bubbles, while Dymov, stumbling over the prickly roots, kept falling and getting tangled in the net; they both floundered and made noise, and their fishing was nothing but mischief.
‘‘It’s too deep,’’ Kiriukha said hoarsely. ‘‘You can’t catch anything!’’
‘‘Don’t pull, you devil!’’ shouted Dymov, trying to set the net in the proper position. ‘‘Hold it with your hands!’’
‘‘You won’t catch anything there!’’ Pantelei shouted to them from the bank. ‘‘You’re just frightening the fish, you fools! Head further to the left! It’s shallower there!’’
Once a bigger fish flashed over the net; everybody gasped, and Dymov brought his fist down on the place where it had disappeared, and his face showed vexation.
‘‘Eh!’’ Pantelei grunted and stamped his feet. ‘‘Missed a perch! Got away!’’
Heading to the left, Dymov and Kiriukha gradually came out to the shallows, and here the fishing became real. They wandered some three hundred paces from the wagons; they could be seen barely and silently moving their legs, trying to get to deeper places, closer to the rushes, dragging the net, beating their fists on the water, and rustling the rushes to frighten the fish and drive them into the net. From the rushes they waded to the other bank, dragged the net there, then, with a disappointed air, lifting their knees high, waded back to the rushes. They were talking about something, but what it was, nobody could hear. And the sun burned their backs, flies bit them, and their bodies went from purple to crimson. Styopka waded after them with a bucket in his hand, his shirt tucked up right under his armpits and the hem of it clamped in his teeth. After each successful catch, he held up the fish and, letting it shine in the sun, shouted: