“Stop it, you’ll really be the death of me. It’s all about killing. Let’s rest at least, before we go down on the ice. Here, I’ve still got three coppers on me. Take them and put them in your glove.”
“Do please give them to me—I’ve got room in my mitten, I can take three more coppers.”
And I was just going to take these three coppers from him, when somebody emerged from the darkness right next to us and said:
“So, my good fellows, who have you robbed?”
I thought: that’s it—a prigger, but I could tell by the voice that it was that butcher I told you about.
“Is that you, Efrosin Ivanych?” I say. “Come along with us, brother.”
But he hurries by, as if blending with the snow, and answers on his way:
“No, brothers, we’re no birds of a feather: divide up your own booty, but don’t touch Efrosin. Efrosin’s just been listening to voices, his heart’s swooning in his breast … One flick—and there’ll be no life left in you.”
“Impossible to stop him,” I say. “You see, he’s mistaken on our score: he takes us for thieves.”
My uncle replies:
“God keep him and his bird feathers. With him, too, you don’t know if you’ll be left alive. We’d better take what God grants and go with God’s help alone. If God doesn’t desert you, pigs won’t hurt you. Now that he’s gone, I feel brave.… Lord have mercy! Nicholas, protector of Mtsensk, Mitrophany of Voronezh, Tikhon and Josaf … Scat! What is it?”
“What?”
“Didn’t you see?”
“What can anybody see here?”
“Something like a cat under our feet.”
“You imagined it.”
“Just like a watermelon rolling.”
“Maybe somebody’s hat got torn off.”
“Aie!”
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s the hat.”
“What about it?”
“Why, you yourself said ‘torn off’ … They must be trouncing somebody up there on the hill.”
“No, it must be the wind tore it off.”
And with those words we both started going down towards the barges on the ice.
The barges, I repeat, were simply standing there then, without any order, one beside the other, just as they had put in. They were piled terribly close together, with only the narrowest little passageways between them, where you could barely get through and had to keep twisting and turning this way and that.
“Well, uncle,” I say, “I don’t want to conceal it from you: here lies the greatest danger.”
My uncle froze—he even stopped praying to the saints.
“Now, uncle,” I say, “you go on ahead.”
“Why ahead?” he whispers.
“It’s safer ahead.”
“Why safer?”
“Because, if a prigger attacks you, you can immediately fall back towards me, and then I’ll support you, and give him one. But behind I won’t see you: the prigger may cover your mouth with his hand or some slippery bast—and I won’t hear … I’ll keep walking.”
“No, don’t keep walking … And what sort of bast is it?”
“Slippery. Their women pick it up around the bathhouses and bring it to them for stopping people’s mouths so they can’t shout.”
I could see that my uncle kept talking like this because he was afraid to go ahead.
“I’m apprehensive about going ahead,” he says, “because he may hit me on the forehead with a weight, and then you won’t have time to defend me.”
“Well, but behind is still more frightening, because he may swat you on the head with a svaika.”
“What svaika?”
“Why do you ask? Don’t you know what a svaika is?”
“No, I do know: a svaika’s used in a game—made of iron, sharp.”
“Yes, sharp.”
“With a round head?”
“Yes, a three- or four-pound ball-shaped head.”
“Back home in Elets they carry bludgeons for that; but this is the first I hear about a svaika.”
“Here in Orel it’s the most favorite fashion—on the head with a svaika. The skull splits right open.”
“Better, though, if we walk arm in arm beside each other.”
“It’s too narrow for two between the barges.”
“Still … this svaika, really! … Better if we squeeze together somehow.”
XI
But as soon as we locked elbows and started squeezing through those passageways between the barges—we hear that one from behind us, again not hanging back, again pressing close on our heels.
“Tell me, please,” says my uncle, “maybe the other one wasn’t the butcher?”
I just shrugged my shoulders and listened.
A scraping could be heard as he squeezed through sideways, and he was just about to seize me from behind with his hand … And another one could be heard running down the hill … Well, it was obvious these were priggers—we had to get away. We tore ahead, but it was impossible to go quickly, because it was dark, and narrow, and ice stuck up everywhere, and this nearest prigger was already right on my back … breathing.
I say to my uncle:
“Anyhow there’s no avoiding it—let’s turn around.”
I thought, either let him go on past us, or better if I meet him in the face with my fist full of coppers than have him strike from behind. But as soon as we turned to face him, the good-for-nothing bent down and shot between us like a cat! …
My uncle and I both went sprawling.
My uncle shouts to me:
“Catch him, catch him, Mishutka! He snatched my beaver hat!”
And I can’t see a thing, but I remember about my watch and clutch myself where it should be. And just imagine, my watch is gone … The beast snatched it!
“Same for me,” I answer. “He took my watch!”
And, forgetting myself, I went hurtling after the prigger as fast as I could, and was lucky enough to catch him in the dark just behind a barge, hit him on the head as hard as I could with my coppers, knocked him down, and sat on him:
“Give me back the watch!”
He didn’t say a word in reply, the scoundrel, but he nipped my hand with his teeth.
“Ah, you dog!” I say. “See how he bites!” And I gave him a good belt in the jaw, then stopped his mouth with the cuff of my sleeve, and with the other hand went straight for his breast pocket, found the watch at once, and yanked it out.
Just then my uncle ran up:
“Hold him, hold him,” he says, “I’ll give him a drubbing …”
And we started drubbing him Elets-fashion and Orel-fashion. We pummeled him cruelly, so much so that when he tore away from us, he didn’t even cry out, but dashed off like a hare; and only when he had fled as far as the Plautin Well did he shout “Help”; and at once somebody on the other side, on the hill, also shouted “Help.”
“What brigands!” says my uncle. “They rob people, and then shout ‘Help’ themselves on both sides! … Did you take your watch back from him?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you take back my hat as well?”
“Your hat,” I reply, “went clean out of my head.”
“And I’m cold now. I’ve got a bald spot.”
“Put on my hat.”
“I don’t want yours. My hat cost fifty roubles at Faleev’s.”
“Never mind,” I say, “nobody can see it now.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll simply go bareheaded like this. We’re already close—we’ll turn that corner in a moment, and it’ll be our house.”
My hat, however, was too small for my uncle. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and tied it over his head.
And so we came running home.
XII
Mama and my aunt had not gone to bed yet: they were both knitting stockings and waiting for us. When they saw my uncle come in all covered with snow and his head tied with a handkerchief like a woman’s, they both gasped at once and began talking.
“Lord! What’s the matter! … Where’s the winter hat you were wearing?”
“Farewell, good old winter hat! … It’s no more,” my uncle replied.