‘Deniska! What are you up to? Come and eat!’ Kuzmichov said with a deep sigh to show he had eaten his fill.
Deniska meekly went over to the felt mat and selected five large yellow gherkins known as ‘yellties’ (he did not dare take any of the smaller, fresher ones), picked out two hard-boiled eggs that were black and cracked, after which he timidly, as if afraid of being struck on his outstretched arm, touched a small pie with his finger.
‘Help yourself! Go on!’ urged Kuzmichov.
Deniska took the pie with determination, walked some distance away and sat down on the ground with his back to the carriage, whereupon such a loud chewing was heard that even the horses turned round and eyed Deniska suspiciously.
When he had eaten, Kuzmichov took a sack containing something out of the carriage.
‘I’m going to sleep now,’ he told Yegorushka. ‘Now, mind no one takes this sack from under my head.’
Father Khristofor removed his cassock, belt and caftan. Yegorushka took one look and was absolutely amazed. Not for one moment had he supposed that priests wore trousers, but Father Khristofor was wearing real canvas trousers tucked into his high boots and a short, coarse cotton jacket. Seeing him in a costume that was totally unbecoming to someone in holy orders and with that long hair and beard, Yegorushka thought he bore a striking resemblance to Robinson Crusoe. When he had unrobed, Father Khristofor lay down face to face with Kuzmichov in the shade under the carriage and they closed their eyes. After he had finished chewing Deniska stretched himself out belly upwards in the full glare of the sun and closed his eyes too.
‘Mind no one steals the horses!’ he told Yegorushka and immediately fell asleep.
Silence fell. All that could be heard was the snorting and champing of the horses and the snores of the sleepers. Some way off a solitary lapwing wailed and there was an occasional squeak from the three snipe that had flown up to see if the uninvited guests had left. The stream softly lisped and gurgled, but none of these sounds broke the silence or stirred the lifeless air – on the contrary, they made nature still drowsier.
Gasping from the heat which he found particularly oppressive after his meal, Yegorushka ran to the sedge and from there he surveyed the locality. He saw exactly what he had seen that morning: the plain, hills, sky, the lilac distance. Only, the hills were nearer and there was no sign of the windmill which had been left far behind by now. From behind the rocky hill where the stream was flowing rose another, smoother and wider, with a tiny hamlet of five or six farmsteads clinging to it. Around the huts there were no people, trees or shade to be seen and it was as if the hamlet had choked in the burning air and withered away. For want of something to do Yegorushka caught a fiddler-cricket in the grass, raised it to his ear in his fist and for a long time he listened to it playing its fiddle. Tiring of this music, he chased a swarm of yellow butterflies that had flown to the sedge to drink and he did not notice that he had come back to the carriage again. Uncle and Father Khristofor were fast asleep; now they would be sleeping for another two or three hours until the horses had rested. How could he pass the long hours and where could he escape the heat? No easy task… Without thinking, Yegorushka put his lips under the stream that was flowing from the pipe. His mouth became cold and there was a smell of hemlock. At first he drank eagerly, then he forced himself until the sharp coldness had spread from his mouth all over his body and the water had streamed over his shirt. Then he went to the carriage and watched the sleeping men. Uncle’s face still expressed that same cool detachment. A fanatical businessman – even in his sleep or at church prayers when they sang ‘And the Cherubim’4 – Kuzmichov was constantly thinking about deals and he could not put them out of his mind for one minute. And now he was probably dreaming of bales of wool, wagons, prices, Varlamov… But Father Khristofor, a gentle, easy-going, easily-amused man, had never in his whole life been involved in a single deal that might have coiled itself around his soul like a boa constrictor. In all the numerous business deals he had undertaken in his time he was attracted less by the business itself than by the bustle and social contact – part and parcel of every undertaking. Therefore, in the present expedition, he was not so much interested in the wool, Varlamov, prices, as in the long journey, the wayside conversations, sleeping under a carriage and eating at odd hours… And now, judging from his expression, he was most probably dreaming of Bishop Khristofor, Latin disputations, his wife, cream doughnuts and everything that Kuzmichov could not have been dreaming of.
While Yegorushka was watching those sleepy faces, suddenly there came the unexpected sound of quiet singing. A woman was singing, some way off, but where the song was coming from and from which direction was difficult to determine. That soft, lingering, dirge-like song could be heard first to the right, then to the left, then up above, then from under the ground, as if some invisible spirit were hovering over the steppe and singing. As he looked around, Yegorushka could not make out where that strange singing was coming from. But then, when he had grown used to it, he fancied that the grass might be singing. Through its song, the half-dead, already doomed grass, plaintively and earnestly – and without any words – was trying to convince someone that it was guilty of no crime, that the sun had scorched it without reason. It insisted that it passionately wanted to live, that it was still young and would have been beautiful but for the burning heat and drought. Although guilty of no crime, it still begged someone for forgiveness and swore that it was suffering intolerable pain, melancholy, self-pity…
Yegorushka listened for a while and now it seemed that the doleful, lingering song had made the air even more sultry, hot and motionless. To drown the sound he ran to the sedge, humming and trying to stamp his feet. From there he looked in every direction – and then he saw the singer. Near the last hut in the hamlet stood a peasant woman in a short petticoat, as long-legged as a heron; she was sowing. White dust lazily floated down the hill from her sieve. Now it was obvious that she was the singer. A few yards from her a small boy, wearing only a smock and with no cap on his head, was standing quite still. As though bewitched by her song he did not move and kept looking downwards at something – most likely Yegorushka’s red shirt.
The singing stopped. Yegorushka wearily made his way to the carriage and to while away the time played with the stream of water again.
Again he heard that droning song. That same long-legged woman was still singing in the hamlet, beyond the hill. But then he suddenly grew bored again. He left the pipe and looked up. What he saw was so unexpected that it rather scared him. On one of the large, cumbersome boulders above his head stood a small chubby boy wearing only a smock, with a large protruding stomach and thin little legs – the same boy who had been standing near the peasant woman. In blank amazement, open-mouthed, unblinking and not without some apprehension, as though he was seeing an apparition, he was inspecting Yegorushka’s red shirt and the carriage. The colour of the shirt attracted and delighted him, whilst the carriage and the sleepers underneath made him curious. Perhaps he himself did not realize that the pleasant red colour and his curiosity had lured him down from the hamlet and now he was probably surprised at his own daring. For a long time Yegorushka looked him up and down – and he in turn Yegorushka. Neither said a word and both felt rather awkward. After a long silence Yegorushka asked, ‘What’s your name?’