Devil Stories Part 4

"'A fine house that, opposite,' said the old man to our host, who kept standing behind him in the third position. 'Who does it belong to?'

"'To the Counsellor of State, Hasentreffer, at your Excellency's service.'

"'Ah, indeed! that must be the same one that was a fellow-student with me,'

exclaimed he; 'he would never forgive me if I was not to inform him that I was here.' He opened the window,--'Ha-asentreffer--Hasentreffer!' cried he, in a hoa.r.s.e voice. But who can paint our terror, when opposite, in the empty house, which we knew was firmly locked and bolted, a window-shutter was slowly raised, a window opened, and out of it peered the Counsellor of State, Hasentreffer, in his chintz morning-gown and white nightcap, under which a few thin grey locks were visible; this, this exactly, was his usual morning costume. Down to the minutest wrinkle on the pallid visage, the figure across the street was precisely the same as the one that stood by our side. But a panic seized us, when the figure in the morning-gown called out across the street, in just the same hoa.r.s.e voice, 'What do you want?

who are you calling to, hey?'

"'Are you the Counsellor of State, Hasentreffer?' said the one on our side of the way, pale as death, in a trembling voice, and quaking as he leaned against the window for support.

"'I'm the man,' squeaked the other, and nodded his head in a friendly way; 'have you any commands for me?'

"'But I'm the man too,' said our friend mournfully, 'how can it be possible?'

"'You are mistaken, my dear friend,' answered he across the way, 'you are the thirteenth, be good enough just to step across the street to my house, and let me twist your neck for you! it is by no means painful.'

"'Waiter! my hat and stick,' said the Counsellor, pale as death, and his voice escaped in mournful tones from his hollow chest. 'The devil is in my house and seeks my soul; a pleasant evening to you, gentlemen,' added he, turning to us with a polite bow, and thereupon left the room.

"'What does this mean?' we asked each other; 'are we all beside ourselves?'

"The gentleman in the morning-gown kept looking quietly out of the window, while our good silly old friend crossed the street at his usual formal pace. At the front-door, he pulled a huge bunch of keys out of his pocket, unlocked the heavy creaking door--he of the morning-gown looking carelessly on, and walked in.

"The latter now withdrew from the window, and we saw him go forward to meet our acquaintance at the room-door.

"Our host and the ten waiters were all pale with fear, and trembled.

'Gentlemen,' said the former, 'G.o.d pity poor Hasentreffer, for one of those two must be the devil in human shape.' We laughed at our host, and tried to persuade ourselves that it was a joke of Barighi's; but our host a.s.sured us that no one could have obtained access to the house except he was in possession of the Counsellor's very artificially contrived keys; also, that Barighi was seated at table not ten minutes before the prodigy happened; how then could he have disguised himself so completely in so short a time, even supposing him to have known how to unlock a strange house? He added, that the two were so fearfully like one another, that he who had lived in the neighbourhood for twenty years could not distinguish the true one from the counterfeit. 'But, for G.o.d's sake, gentlemen, do you not hear the horrid shrieks opposite?'

"We rushed to the window--terrible and fearful voices rang across from the empty house; we fancied we saw the old Counsellor, pursued by his image in the morning-gown, hurry past the window repeatedly. On a sudden all was quiet.

"We gazed on each other; the boldest among us proposed to cross over to the house--we all agreed to it. We crossed the street--the huge bell at the old man's door was rung thrice, but nothing could be heard in answer; we sent to the police and to a blacksmith's--the door was broken open, the whole tide of anxious visitors poured up the wide silent staircase--all the doors were fastened; at length one was opened. In a splendid apartment, the Counsellor, his iron-grey frock-coat torn to pieces, his neatly dressed hair in horrible disorder, lay dead, strangled, on the sofa.

"Since that time no traces of Barighi have been found, neither in Stuttgart nor elsewhere."

ST. JOHN'S EVE[3]

BY NIKOLaI VASILeVICH GoGOL

[3] From _St. John's Eve and Other Stories_, translated by Isabel F. Hapgood from the Russian of N. V. Gogol.

(Copyright, 1886, by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. By permission of the Publishers.)

Thoma Grigorovich had a very strange sort of eccentricity: to the day of his death, he never liked to tell the same thing twice. There were times, when, if you asked him to relate a thing afresh, behold, he would interpolate new matter, or alter it so that it was impossible to recognize it. Once on a time, one of those gentlemen (it is hard for us simple people to put a name to them, to say whether they are scribblers, or not scribblers: but it is just the same thing as the usurers at our yearly fairs; they clutch and beg and steal every sort of frippery, and issue mean little volumes, no thicker than an A B C book, every month, or even every week),--one of these gentlemen wormed this same story out of Thoma Grigorovich, and he completely forgot about it. But that same young gentleman in the pea-green caftan, whom I have mentioned, and one of whose tales you have already read, I think, came from Poltava, bringing with him a little book, and, opening it in the middle, shows it to us. Thoma Grigorovich was on the point of setting his spectacles astride of his nose, but recollected that he had forgotten to wind thread about them, and stick them together with wax, so he pa.s.sed it over to me. As I understand something about reading and writing, and do not wear spectacles, I undertook to read it. I had not turned two leaves, when all at once he caught me by the hand, and stopped me.

"Stop! tell me first what you are reading."

I confess that I was a trifle stunned by such a question.

"What! what am I reading, Thoma Grigorovich? These were your very words."

"Who told you that they were my words?"

"Why, what more would you have? Here it is printed: _Related by such and such a sacristan_."

"Spit on the head of the man who printed that! he lies, the dog of a Moscow pedlar! Did I say that? _'Twas just the same as though one hadn't his wits about him!_ Listen, I'll tell it to you on the spot."

We moved up to the table, and he began.

My grandfather (the kingdom of heaven be his! may he eat only wheaten rolls and makovniki[4] with honey in the other world!) could tell a story wonderfully well. When he used to begin on a tale, you wouldn't stir from the spot all day, but keep on listening. He was no match for the story-teller of the present day, when he begins to lie, with a tongue as though he had had nothing to eat for three days, so that you s.n.a.t.c.h your cap, and flee from the house. As I now recall it, my old mother was alive then, in the long winter evenings when the frost was crackling out of doors, and had so sealed up hermetically the narrow panes of our cottage, she used to sit before the hackling-comb, drawing out a long thread in her hand, rocking the cradle with her foot, and humming a song, which I seem to hear even now.

[4] Poppy-seeds cooked in honey, and dried in square cakes.

The fat-lamp, quivering and flaring up as though in fear of something, lighted us within our cottage; the spindle hummed; and all of us children, collected in a cl.u.s.ter, listened to grandfather, who had not crawled off the oven for more than five years, owing to his great age.

But the wondrous tales of the incursions of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, the Poles, the bold deeds of Podkova, of Poltor-Kozhukh, and Sagaidatchnii, did not interest us so much as the stories about some deed of old which always sent a s.h.i.+ver through our frames, and made our hair rise upright on our heads. Sometimes such terror took possession of us in consequence of them, that, from that evening on, Heaven knows what a marvel everything seemed to us. If you chanced to go out of the cottage after nightfall for anything, you imagine that a visitor from the other world has lain down to sleep in your bed; and I should not be able to tell this a second time were it not that I had often taken my own smock, at a distance, as it lay at the head of the bed, for the Evil One rolled up in a ball! But the chief thing about grandfather's stories was, that he never had lied in his life; and whatever he said was so, was so.

I will now relate to you one of his marvellous tales. I know that there are a great many wise people who copy in the courts, and can even read civil doc.u.ments, who, if you were to put into their hand a simple prayer-book, could not make out the first letter in it, and would show all their teeth in derision--which is wisdom. These people laugh at everything you tell them. Such incredulity has spread abroad in the world! What then? (Why, may G.o.d and the Holy Virgin cease to love me if it is not possible that even you will not believe me!) Once he said something about witches; ... What then? Along comes one of these head-breakers,--and doesn't believe in witches! Yes, glory to G.o.d that I have lived so long in the world! I have seen heretics, to whom it would be easier to lie in confession than it would for our brothers and equals to take snuff, and those people would deny the existence of witches! But let them just dream about something, and they won't even tell what it was! There's no use in talking about them!

No one could have recognized this village of ours a little over a hundred years ago: a hamlet it was, the poorest kind of a hamlet. Half a score of miserable izbas, unplastered, badly thatched, were scattered here and there about the fields. There was not an enclosure or a decent shed to shelter animals or wagons. That was the way the wealthy lived: and if you had looked for our brothers, the poor,--why, a hole in the ground,--that was a cabin for you! Only by the smoke could you tell that a G.o.d-created man lived there. You ask, why they lived so? It was not entirely through poverty: almost every one led a wandering, Cossack life, and gathered not a little plunder in foreign lands; it was rather because there was no reason for setting up a well-ordered khata[5]. How many people were wandering all over the country,--Crimeans, Poles, Lithuanians! It was quite possible that their own countrymen might make a descent, and plunder everything.

Anything was possible.

[5] Wooden house.

In this hamlet a man, or rather a devil in human form, often made his appearance. Why he came, and whence, no one knew. He prowled about, got drunk, and suddenly disappeared as if into the air, and there was not a hint of his existence. Then, again, behold, and he seemed to have dropped from the sky, and went flying about the street of the village, of which no trace now remains, and which was not more than a hundred paces from Dikanka. He would collect together all the Cossacks he met; then there were songs, laughter, money in abundance, and vodka flowed like water.... He would address the pretty girls, and give them ribbons, earrings, strings of beads,--more than they knew what to do with. It is true that the pretty girls rather hesitated about accepting his presents: G.o.d knows, perhaps they had pa.s.sed through unclean hands. My grandfather's aunt, who kept a tavern at the time, in which Basavriuk (as they called that devil-man) often had his carouses, said that no consideration on the face of the earth would have induced her to accept a gift from him. And then, again, how avoid accepting? Fear seized on every one when he knit his bristly brows, and gave a sidelong glance which might send your feet, G.o.d knows whither: but if you accept, then the next night some fiend from the swamp, with horns on his head, comes to call, and begins to squeeze your neck, when there is a string of beads upon it; or bite your finger, if there is a ring upon it; or drag you by the hair, if ribbons are braided in it. G.o.d have mercy, then, on those who owned such gifts! But here was the difficulty: it was impossible to get rid of them; if you threw them into the water, the diabolical ring or necklace would skim along the surface, and into your hand.

There was a church in the village,--St. Pantelei, if I remember rightly. There lived there a priest, Father Athanasii of blessed memory. Observing that Basavriuk did not come to Church, even on Easter, he determined to reprove him, and impose penance upon him.

Well, he hardly escaped with his life. "Hark ye, pannotche!"[6] he thundered in reply, "learn to mind your own business instead of meddling in other people's, if you don't want that goat's throat of yours stuck together with boiling kutya."[7] What was to be done with this unrepentant man? Father Athanasii contented himself with announcing that any one who should make the acquaintance of Basavriuk would be counted a Catholic, an enemy of Christ's church, not a member of the human race.

[6] Sir.

[7] A dish of rice or wheat flour, with honey and raisins, which is brought to the church on the celebration of memorial ma.s.ses.

In this village there was a Cossack named Korzh, who had a labourer whom people called Peter the Orphan--perhaps because no one remembered either his father or mother. The church starost,[8] it is true, said that they had died of the pest in his second year; but my grandfather's aunt would not hear to that, and tried with all her might to furnish him with parents, although poor Peter needed them about as much as we need last year's snow. She said that his father had been in Zaporozhe, taken prisoner by the Turks, underwent G.o.d only knows what tortures, and having, by some miracle, disguised himself as a eunuch, had made his escape. Little cared the black-browed youths and maidens about his parents. They merely remarked, that if he only had a new coat, a red sash, a black lambskin cap, with dandified blue crown, on his head, a Turkish sabre hanging by his side, a whip in one hand and a pipe with handsome mountings in the other, he would surpa.s.s all the young men. But the pity was, that the only thing poor Peter had was a grey svitka with more holes in it than there are gold pieces in a Jew's pocket. And that was not the worst of it, but this: that Korzh had a daughter, such a beauty as I think you can hardly have chanced to see. My deceased grandfather's aunt used to say--and you know that it is easier for a woman to kiss the Evil One than to call anybody a beauty, without malice be it said--that this Cossack maiden's cheeks were as plump and fresh as the pinkest poppy when just bathed in G.o.d's dew, and, glowing, it unfolds its petals, and coquets with the rising sun; that her brows were like black cords, such as our maidens buy nowadays, for their crosses and ducats, of the Moscow pedlars who visit the villages with their baskets, and evenly arched as though peeping into her clear eyes; that her little mouth, at sight of which the youth smacked their lips, seemed made to emit the songs of nightingales; that her hair, black as the raven's wing, and soft as young flax (our maidens did not then plait their hair in clubs interwoven with pretty, bright-hued ribbons), fell in curls over her kuntush.[9] Eh! may I never intone another alleluia in the choir, if I would not have kissed her, in spite of the grey which is making its way all through the old wool which covers my pate, and my old woman beside me, like a thorn in my side! Well, you know what happens when young men and maids live side by side. In the twilight the heels of red boots were always visible in the place where Pidorka chatted with her Petrus. But Korzh would never have suspected anything out of the way, only one day--it is evident that none but the Evil One could have inspired him--Petrus took it into his head to kiss the Cossack maiden's rosy lips with all his heart in the pa.s.sage, without first looking well about him; and that same Evil One--may the son of a dog dream of the holy cross!--caused the old greybeard, like a fool, to open the cottage-door at that same moment. Korzh was petrified, dropped his jaw, and clutched at the door for support. Those unlucky kisses had completely stunned him. It surprised him more than the blow of a pestle on the wall, with which, in our days, the muzhik generally drives out his intoxication for lack of fusees and powder.

[8] Elder.

[9] Upper garment in Little Russia.

Recovering himself, he took his grandfather's hunting-whip from the wall, and was about to belabour Peter's back with it, when Pidorka's little six-year-old brother Ivas rushed up from somewhere or other, and, grasping his father's legs with his little hands, screamed out, "Daddy, daddy! don't beat Petrus!" What was to be done? A father's heart is not made of stone. Hanging the whip again upon the wall, he led him quietly from the house. "If you ever show yourself in my cottage again, or even under the windows, look out, Petro! by Heaven, your black moustache will disappear; and your black locks, though wound twice about your ears, will take leave of your pate, or my name is not Terentii Korzh." So saying, he gave him a little taste of his fist in the nape of his neck, so that all grew dark before Petrus, and he flew headlong. So there was an end of their kissing. Sorrow seized upon our doves; and a rumour was rife in the village, that a certain Pole, all embroidered with gold, with moustaches, sabre, spurs, and pockets jingling like the bells of the bag with which our sacristan Taras goes through the church every day, had begun to frequent Korzh's house. Now, it is well known why the father is visited when there is a black-browed daughter about. So, one day, Pidorka burst into tears, and clutched the hand of her Ivas. "Ivas, my dear! Ivas, my love! fly to Petrus, my child of gold, like an arrow from a bow. Tell him all: I would have loved his brown eyes, I would have kissed his white face, but my fate decrees not so. More than one towel have I wet with burning tears. I am sad, I am heavy at heart. And my own father is my enemy. I will not marry that Pole, whom I do not love. Tell him they are preparing a wedding, but there will be no music at our wedding: ecclesiastics will sing instead of pipes and kobzas.[10] I shall not dance with my bridegroom: they will carry me out. Dark, dark will be my dwelling,--of maple wood; and, instead of chimneys, a cross will stand upon the roof."

[10] Eight-stringed musical instrument.

Petro stood petrified, without moving from the spot, when the innocent child lisped out Pidorka's words to him. "And I, unhappy man, thought to go to the Crimea and Turkey, win gold and return to thee, my beauty! But it may not be. The evil eye has seen us. I will have a wedding, too, dear little fish, I, too; but no ecclesiastics will be at that wedding. The black crow will caw, instead of the pope, over me; the smooth field will be my dwelling; the dark blue clouds my roof-tree. The eagle will claw out my brown eyes: the rain will wash the Cossack's bones, and the whirlwinds will dry them. But what am I?

Of whom, to whom, am I complaining? 'Tis plain, G.o.d willed it so. If I am to be lost, then so be it!" and he went straight to the tavern.