We leaped into the next room, grabbed our coats, and gladly came barreling out into the open air; only the darkness around us was so thick you couldn’t see an inch, and a wet snow was slapping big flakes in our faces, so that our eyes were blinded.
“Lead me,” says my uncle. “I’ve somehow suddenly forgotten all about where we are, and I can’t make anything out.”
“Just run for it,” I say.
“It’s not nice that we left Pavel Mironych.”
“But what could we do with him?”
“That’s so … but he’s our foremost parishioner.”
“He’s a strong man; they won’t hurt him.”
The snow blinded us, and once we leaped out of that stuffiness, we fancied God knows what, as if somebody were coming at us from all sides.
IX
Naturally, I knew the way very well, because our town isn’t big and I was born and grew up in it, but it was as if this darkness and wet snow right after the heat and light of the room dimmed my memory.
“Wait, uncle,” I said, “let me figure out where we are.”
“You mean you don’t know the landmarks of your own town?”
“No, I know them. The first landmarks for us are the two cathedrals, the one new and big, the other old and small, and we have to go between them and turn right, but in this snow I don’t see either the big one or the small one.”
“How about that! They may really take our fur coats or even strip us naked, and we won’t know where to run. We could catch our death of cold.”
“Maybe, God willing, they won’t strip us naked.”
“Do you know those merchants who came out from under the beds?”
“Yes.”
“Both of them?”
“Both of them. One is named Efrosin Ivanovich, and the other Agafon Petrovich.”
“And what—are they real true merchants?”
“They are.”
“I didn’t like the mug on one of them at all.”
“What about it?”
“Some sort of Jesovitic expression.”
“That’s Efrosin: he frightened me once, too.”
“How?”
“In my imagination. Once I was walking past their shops in the evening after the vigil, and I stopped across from St. Nicholas to pray that God would let me pass, because they have vicious dogs in the market; and this merchant Efrosin Ivanych had a nightingale whistling in his shop, and the light of an icon lamp was coming through a crack in the fence … I put my eye to the crack and saw him standing knife in hand over a bullock. The bullock at his feet has its throat cut and is kicking its bound feet and tossing its head; the head is dangling from the cut throat and blood is gushing out; and there’s another calf in the dark corner awaiting the knife, maybe mooing, maybe trembling, and over the fresh blood the nightingale in its cage is whistling furiously, and far across the Oka a thunderstorm is rumbling. Fear came over me. I was frightened and cried out: ‘Efrosin Ivanych!’ I wanted to ask him to accompany me to the pontoon bridge, but he suddenly gave such a start … I ran away. And I’ve only just remembered it.”
“Why are you telling me such a frightening thing now?”
“And what of it? Are you afraid?”
“No, I’m not, but better not talk about frightening things.”
“But it ended well. The next day I told him: thus and so—I got scared of you. And he says: ‘And you scared me, because I was standing there listening to the nightingale, and you suddenly cried out.’ I say: ‘How is it you listen so feelingly?’ ‘I can’t help it,’ he says, ‘my heart often swoons in me.’ ”
“Are you strong, or not?” my uncle suddenly interrupted.
“I wouldn’t boast of any special strength,” I said, “but if I put three or four old coppers in my fist, I can send any prigger you like to an early grave.”
“That’s fine,” he says, “if he’s alone.”
“Who?”
“The prigger, that’s who! But if there’s two of them, or a whole company? …”
“Never mind: if there’s two, we’ll manage—you can help. And priggers don’t go around in big companies.”
“Well, don’t rely much on me: I’ve grown old, my lad. Formerly, it’s true, I gave such beatings for the glory of God that they were known all over Elets and Livny …”
Before he finished saying it, we suddenly thought we heard somebody coming behind us and even hastening his steps.
“Excuse me,” I said, “but it seems to me somebody’s coming.”
“Ah, yes! I also hear somebody coming,” my uncle replied.
X
I kept silent. My uncle whispered to me:
“Let’s stop and let him go past us.”
And this was just on the slope of the hill where you go down to the Balashevsky Bridge in summer, and across the ice between the barges in winter.
It was a godforsaken place from old times. There were few houses on the hill, and those were closed up, and below, to the right, on the Orlik, there were seedy bathhouses and an empty mill, and up from there a sheer cliff like a wall, and to the right a garden where thieves always hid. The police chief Tsyganok had built a sentry box there, and folk started saying that the sentry helped the thieves … I thought to myself, whoever’s coming—prigger or not—in fact it’s better to let him go past.
My uncle and I stopped … And what do you think: the man who was walking behind us must also have stopped—his footsteps were no longer heard.
“Maybe we were mistaken,” said my uncle. “Maybe there wasn’t anybody.”
“No,” I replied, “I clearly heard footsteps, and very close.”
We stood there a little longer—nothing to be heard; but as soon as we went on—we heard him hurrying after us again … We could even hear him hustling and breathing hard.
We slackened our pace and went more quietly—and he also went more quietly; we speeded up again—and he again came on more quickly and was nearly stepping in our tracks.
There was nothing more to talk about: we clearly understood that this was a prigger following us, and he’d been following us like that all the way from the inn; which meant that he was lying in wait for us, and when I lost my way in the snow between the big cathedral and the small—he caught sight of us. Which meant that now there was no avoiding some run-in. He couldn’t be alone.
And the snow, as if on purpose, poured down still more heavily; you walk as if you’re stirring a pot of curds: it’s white, and wet, and sticks to you all over.
And now the Oka is ahead of us, we have to go down on the ice; but on the ice there are empty barges, and in order to reach home on the other side, we have to make our way through the narrow passages between these barges. And the prigger who is following us surely has some fellow thieves hidden there somewhere. It would be handiest for them to rob us on the ice between the barges—and kill us and shove us underwater. Their den was there, and in the daytime you could always see them around it. They fixed up their lairs with mats of hemp stalks and straw, on which they lay smoking and waiting. And special pot-house wives hung out with them there. Rascally wenches. They’d show themselves, lure a man and lead him away, and he’d get robbed, and they’d be there on the lookout again.
Most of all they attacked those returning from the vigil in the men’s monastery, because people liked the singing, and back then there was the astounding bass, Strukov, of terrifying appearance: all swarthy, three tufts of hair on his head, and a lower lip that opened like the folding front flap of a phaeton. While he bellowed, it stayed open, and then it slammed shut. Anybody who wanted to return home safely from the vigil invited the clerks Ryabykin or Korsunsky to go with him. They were both very strong, and the priggers were afraid of them. Especially of Ryabykin, who was wall-eyed and was put on trial when the clerk Solomka was killed in the Shchekatikhino grove during the May fête …
I’m telling all this to my uncle so that he won’t think about himself, but he interrupts: