The lamp, quivering and flaring up as though in fear of something, lighted up our cottage; the spindle hummed; and all of us children, collected in a cluster, listened to grandfather, who had not crawled off the stove for more than five years, owing to his great age.But the wondrous tales of the incursions of the Zaporozhian Cossacks and the Poles, the bold deeds of Podkova, of Poltar-Kozhukh, and Sagaidatchnii, did not interest us so much as the stories about some deed of old which always sent a shiver 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 forward, Heaven knows how wonderful everything seemed to us.If one chanced to go out of the cottage after nightfall for anything, one fancied that a visitor from the other world had lain down to sleep in one's bed; and I have often taken my own smock, at a distance, as it lay at the head of the bed, for the Evil One rolled up into a ball! But the chief thing about grandfather's stories was, that he never lied in all his life; and whatever he said was so, was so.
I will now tell you one of his wonderful tales.I know that there are a great many wise people who copy in the courts, and can even read civil documents, but 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.These people laugh at everything you tell them.Along comes one of them--and doesn't believe in witches! Yes, glory to God 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 be to our brothers and equals to take snuff, and these folk would deny the existence of witches! But let them just dream about something, and they won't even tell what it was! There, it is no use talking about them!
No one could have recognised the village of ours a little over a hundred years ago; it was a hamlet, the poorest kind of a hamlet.Half a score of miserable farmhouses, unplastered and badly thatched, were scattered here and there about the fields.There was not a yard or a decent shed to shelter animals or waggons.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 God-created man lived there.You ask why they lived so? It was not entirely through poverty: almost every one led a raiding Cossack life, and gathered not a little plunder in foreign lands; it was rather because it was little use building up a good wooden house.Many folk were engaged in raids 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.
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, leaving no trace of his existence.Then, behold, he seemed to have dropped from the sky again, 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, and cash in plenty, 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: God knows, perhaps, what unclean hands they had passed through.My grandfather's aunt, who kept at that time a tavern, in which Basavriuk (as they called this devil-man) often caroused, said that no consideration on the earth would have induced her to accept a gift from him.But then, again, how avoid accepting?
Fear seized on every one when he knit his shaggy brows, and gave a sidelong glance which might send your feet God knows whither: whilst if you did accept, then the next night some fiend from the swamp, with horns on his head, came and began to squeeze your neck, if there was a string of beads upon it; or bite your finger, if there was a ring upon it; or drag you by the hair, if ribbons were braided in it.God have mercy, then, on those who held 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 at Easter, he determined to reprove him and impose penance upon him.
Well, he hardly escaped with his life."Hark ye, sir!" he thundered in reply, "learn to mind your own business instead of meddling in other people's, if you don't want that throat of yours stuck with boiling kutya[1]." 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 orthodox church, not a member of the human race.
[1] A dish of rice or wheat flour, with honey and raisins, which is brought to the church on the celebration of memorial masses.
