Beside ourselves, we crossed the hollow, tumbled down the wet, crumbling bank, and straightaway found ourselves up to the waist in the turbid water, our legs sunk knee-deep in mire.
It was impossible to run any further. The stream further on was too deep for our small size; we couldn’t hope to cross it, and, besides, zigzags of lightning were now flashing terribly on its water—they quivered and meandered like fiery serpents, as if hiding among last year’s reeds.
Finding ourselves in the water, we seized each other’s hands and stood frozen there, while from above us heavy drops of rain were already beginning to fall. But this frozenness saved us from great danger, which we could in no way have avoided if we had gone one step further into the water.
We might easily have slipped and fallen, but fortunately we were embraced by two dark, sinewy arms, and the same muzhik who had looked at us so frighteningly from the hazel said gently:
“Ah, you silly boys, look where you’ve gotten to!”
And with that he picked us up and carried us across the stream.
Coming out on the other bank, he lowered us to the ground, took off his short jacket, which was fastened at the collar by a round brass button, and wiped our wet feet with it.
We looked at him all the while in complete bewilderment and felt ourselves wholly in his power, but—wondrous thing—the features of his face were quickly changing before our eyes. Not only did we see nothing frightening in them now, but, on the contrary, his face seemed to us very kind and pleasant.
He was a sturdy, thickset muzhik with some gray in his hair and mustache—his beard was a clump and also graying, his eyes were lively, quick, and serious, but on his lips there was something close to a smile.
Having wiped as much as he could of the dirt and slime from our feet with the skirt of his jacket, he smiled outright and spoke again:
“You just … never mind … don’t be scared …”
With that he looked around and went on:
“Never mind. There’s a big rainstorm coming!” (By then it had already come.) “You boys won’t make it on foot.”
We only wept silently in reply.
“Never mind, never mind, don’t howl, I’ll carry you!” he said and wiped my brother’s tear-stained face with his palm, which immediately left dirty streaks on it.
“See what dirty hands the muzhik’s got,” our deliverer said and passed his palm over my brother’s face again in the other direction, which didn’t decrease the dirt, but only added shading in the other direction.
“You won’t make it … I’ll take you … No, you won’t make it … and you’ll lose your little boots in the mud. Do you know how to ride?” the muzhik went on again.
I got up enough courage to utter a word and said:
“Yes.”
“Well, all right then!” he said, and in a trice he hoisted me up on one shoulder and my brother on the other, told us to hold hands behind the back of his head, covered us with his jacket, held tight to our knees, and carried us with quick, long strides over the mud, which spread and squelched under his firmly treading feet, shod in big bast shoes.
We sat on his shoulders, covered with his jacket. That must have made for a giant figure, but we were comfortable: the jacket got soaked from the downpour and turned stiff, and we were dry and warm under it. We rocked on our bearer’s shoulders like on a camel, and soon sank into some sort of cataleptic state, but came to ourselves by a spring on our farmstead. For me personally this had been a real, deep sleep, from which I did not awaken all at once. I remember that same muzhik taking us out of the jacket. He was surrounded now by all our Annushkas, and they were all tearing us from his hands and at the same time cursing him mercilessly for something, him and his jacket, which had protected us so well and which they now flung on the ground with the greatest contempt. Besides that, they also threatened him with my father’s arrival, and with running to the village at once to call out the farm people with their flails and set the dogs on him.
I decidedly did not understand the reason for such cruel injustice, and that was not surprising, because at home, under the now ruling interim government, they had formed a conspiracy not to reveal anything to us about the man to whom we owed our salvation.
“You owe him nothing,” our protectresses said. “On the contrary, it was he who caused it all.”
From those words I guessed at once that we had been saved by none other than Selivan himself!
XI
And so it was. The next day, in view of our parents’ return, the fact was revealed to us, and we swore an oath that we would say nothing to our father and mother about the incident that had occurred with us.
In those days when there were still serfs, it sometimes happened that landowners’ children nursed the most tender feelings for household serfs and kept their secrets faithfully. That was so with us. We even concealed as well as we could the sins and transgressions of “our people” from our parents. Such relations are mentioned in many works describing the landowner’s life of that time. As for me, our childhood friendship with our former serfs still constitutes my warmest and most pleasant memory. Through them we knew all the needs and cares of the poor life of their relations and friends in the village, and we learned to pity the people. But, unfortunately, those good people were not always fair themselves and were sometimes capable of casting a dark shadow on their neighbor for no important reason, regardless of the harmful consequences it might have. That is how “the people” acted with Selivan, of whose true character and principles they had no wish to know anything substantial, but boldly, not afraid of sinning against justice, spread rumors about him, which in the eyes of all made him into a spook. And, surprisingly, everything that was said about him not only seemed probable, but even had some visible tokens which could make one think that Selivan was in fact a bad man and that horrible villainies took place near his solitary dwelling.
That was what happened now, when we were scolded by those whose duty it was to protect us: not only did they shift all the blame onto Selivan, who had saved us from the storm, but they even heaped a new accusation on him. Apollinary and all the Annushkas told us that, when Apollinary noticed a pretty hill in the forest, which he thought it would be good to declaim from, he ran to that hill across a little gully filled with last year’s fallen leaves, and stumbled there over something soft. This “something soft” turned under Apollinary’s feet and he fell, and as he got up he saw that it was the corpse of a young peasant woman. He noticed that the corpse was dressed in a clean white sarafan with red embroidery, and … its throat was cut, and blood was pouring from it …
Such a terrible unexpectedness could, of course, frighten a man and make him cry out—which was what he did; but the incomprehensible and surprising thing was that Apollinary, as I said, was far from all the others and the only one to stumble over the corpse of the murdered woman, yet all the Annushkas and Roskas swore to God that they had also seen the corpse …
“Otherwise,” they said, “why would we be so frightened?”
And I’m convinced to this day that they weren’t lying, that they were deeply convinced that they had seen a murdered woman in Selivan’s forest, in a clean peasant dress with red embroidery, with her throat cut and blood flowing from it … How could that be?
Since I’m not writing fiction, but what actually happened, I must pause here and add that this incident remained forever unexplained in our house. No one but Apollinary could have seen the murdered woman, who, according to his own words, was lying in a hollow under the leaves, because no one but Apollinary was there. And yet they all swore that they had all seen the dead woman appear in the twinkling of an eye wherever any of them looked. Besides, had Apollinary himself actually seen this woman? It was hardly possible, because it had happened during the thaw, when not all the snow had melted yet. The leaves had lain under the snow since autumn, yet Apollinary saw a body dressed in a clean, white, embroidered dress, and blood was still flowing from the wound … Nothing like that could actually be, and yet they all crossed themselves and swore that they had seen the woman just as she’s been described. And afterwards we were all afraid to sleep at night, and we were all horrified, as if we had committed a crime. Soon I, too, became persuaded that my brother and I had also seen the murdered woman. A general fear set in among us, which ended with the whole affair being revealed to my parents, and my father wrote a letter to the police chief—and he came to us wearing the longest saber and secretly questioned everybody in my father’s study. Apollinary was even called in twice, and the second time the police chief reprimanded him so severely that, when he came out, both his ears were fiery red and one was even bleeding.