Fifty-Two Stories

“What a…neck…you have…” And he touched her neck with two fingers. Seeing that there was no resistance, he stroked her neck, her shoulder with his hand…“Oh-h, what a…”

“You could stay…have some tea.”

“Where are you putting it? You soggy pancake!” The coachman’s voice came from outside. “Put it crosswise.”

“You could stay…Look how the weather’s howling!”

And not yet quite awake, still under the spell of youthful, languorous sleep, the postman was suddenly overcome by a desire for the sake of which one forgets mail pouches, trains…everything in the world. Fearfully, as if wishing to flee or hide, he glanced at the door, seized the sexton’s wife by the waist, and was already bending down to put out the lamp, when boots stomped in the entryway and the coachman appeared in the doorway…Savely peeked over his shoulder. The postman quickly lowered his arms and stood as if in thought.

“Everything’s ready!” said the coachman.

The postman stood there for a while, briskly shook his head as if completely awake at last, and followed the coachman. The sexton’s wife remained alone.

“So, get in, show us the road!” she heard.

There was a lazy sound of one bell, then of another, and the jingling raced on in a quick, long chain away from the watchman’s hut. When it gradually died down, the sexton’s wife tore from her place and started pacing nervously from corner to corner. First she was pale, then she turned all red. Her face was distorted by hatred, she gasped for breath, her eyes gleamed with a savage, ferocious anger, and, pacing as in a cage, she resembled a she-tiger frightened by a red-hot iron.

For a moment she stopped and glanced around her room. Almost half of it was taken up by the bed, which went along the whole wall and consisted of a dirty feather mattress, hard gray pillows, a blanket, and various nameless rags. This bed looked like a shapeless, ugly lump, almost the same as the one sticking up on Savely’s head whenever he took a fancy to oil his hair. From the bed to the door leading to the cold entryway stretched the dark stove, with pots and hanging rags. Everything, not excluding the just-stepped-out Savely, was utterly dirty, greasy, sooty, so that it was strange to see, in the midst of such surroundings, the white neck and fine, tender skin of a woman. The sexton’s wife ran to the bed, stretched out her arms, as if wishing to scatter it all, trample on it, and reduce it to dust; but then, as if afraid to touch the dirt, she jumped back and started pacing again…

When Savely returned a couple of hours later, all covered with snow and worn out, she was already lying undressed in bed. Her eyes were closed, but by the small tremors that passed over her face, he guessed that she was not asleep.

On his way home he promised himself to keep silent until the next day and not to touch her, but now he could not help prodding her.

“Your sorcery was wasted: he’s gone!” he said with a gleeful grin. His wife was silent; only her chin twitched.

Savely slowly undressed, climbed over his wife, and lay by the wall.

“And tomorrow I’ll explain to Father Nikodim what sort of wife you are!” he muttered, curling up. His wife quickly turned to face him and flashed her eyes at him.

“It’s enough that you’ve got a job,” she said. “As for a wife, go and look for one in the forest! What kind of wife am I to you, blast you! What a clodpate, what a slug-a-bed they’ve hung on my neck, God forgive me!”

“All right, all right…Sleep!”

“Miserable me!” his wife sobbed. “If it weren’t for you, I might have married a merchant, or some nobleman! If it weren’t for you, I might love my husband now! And you weren’t buried in the snow, you didn’t freeze there on the high road, you Herod!”

The sexton’s wife wept for a long time. At last she sighed deeply and quieted down. Outside the window, the blizzard went on raging. In the stove, in the chimney, behind all the walls something wept, and to Savely it seemed that it was inside him and in his ears that it wept. Tonight he was finally confirmed in his suppositions about his wife. He no longer doubted that his wife, with the help of unclean powers, controlled the winds and the post roads. But to his greater grief, this mysteriousness, this savage supernatural power endowed the woman who lay beside him with a special, incomprehensible charm that he had never noticed before. Because, in his stupidity, he poeticized her, not noticing it himself, she became as if whiter, smoother, more unapproachable…

“Witch!” he said indignantly. “Tphoo, disgusting!”

And yet, having waited until she quieted down and began to breathe evenly, he touched her nape with his finger…held her thick braid in his hand. She did not feel it…Then he grew bolder and stroked her neck.

“Leave me alone!” she cried and hit the bridge of his nose so hard that sparks flew out of his eyes. The pain in his nose soon went away, but his torment continued.

1886

A LITTLE JOKE