He had not meant to say that, he had meant to ask: 'How did you, the headman, get into this sack?' but, without knowing why himself, he had said something completely different.
'Tar's better!' said the headman. 'Well, good-bye, Choub!' And, pulling down his earflaps, he walked out of the house.
'Why did I ask so stupidly what he greases his boots with!' Choub said, looking at the door through which the headman had gone. 'That's Solokha! putting such a man into a sack!… A devil of a woman! Fool that I am… but where s that cursed sack?'
'I threw it in the corner, there's nothing else in it,' said Oksana.
'I know these tricks-nothing else in it! Give it to me; there's another one sitting in it! Shake it out well… What, nothing?… Cursed woman! And to look at her-just like a saint, as if she never put anything non-lenten near her lips.'
But let us leave Choub to pour out his vexation at leisure and go back to the blacksmith, because it must already be past eight o'clock outside.
At first Vakula found it frightening when he rose to such a height that he could see nothing below and flew like a fly right under the moon, so that if he hadn't ducked slightly he would have brushed it with his hat. However, in a short while he took heart and began making fun of the devil. He was extremely amused by the way the devil sneezed and coughed whenever he took his cypress-wood cross from his neck and put it near him. He would purposely raise his hand to scratch his head, and the devil, thinking he was about to cross him, would speed up his flight. Everything was bright aloft. The air was transparent, all in a light silvery mist. Everything was visible; and he could even observe how a sorcerer, sitting in a pot, raced past them like the wind; how the stars gathered together to play blindman's buff; how a whole swarm of phantoms billowed in a cloud off to one side; how a devil dancing around the moon took his hat off on seeing the mounted blacksmith; how a broom came flying back, having just served some witch… they met a lot more trash. Seeing the blacksmith, all stopped for a moment to look at him and then rushed on their way again. The blacksmith flew on, and suddenly Petersburg, all ablaze, glittered before him. (It was lit up for some occasion.) The devil, flying over the toll gate, turned into a horse, and the blacksmith saw himself on a swift racer in the middle of the street.
My God! the clatter, the thunder, the glitter; four-story walls loomed on both sides; the clatter of horses' hooves and the rumble of wheels sounded like thunder and echoed on four sides; houses grew as if rising from the ground at every step; bridges trembled; carriages flew by; cabbies and postilions shouted; snow swished under a thousand sleds flying on all sides; passers-by pressed against and huddled under houses studded with lamps, and their huge shadows flitted over the walls, their heads reaching the chimneys and roofs. The blacksmith looked about him in amazement. It seemed to him that the houses all turned their countless fiery eyes on him and stared. He saw so many gentlemen in fur-lined coats that he didn't know before whom to doff his hat. 'My God, so much nobility here!' thought the blacksmith. 'I think each one going down the street in a fur coat is another assessor, another assessor! And the ones driving around in those wonderful britzkas with windows, if they're not police chiefs, then they're surely commissars, or maybe even higher up.' His words were interrupted by a question from the devil: 'Shall we go straight to the tsaritsa?' 'No, it's scary,' thought the blacksmith. 'The Za-porozhtsy who passed through Dikanka in the fall are staying here somewhere. They were coming from the Setch 7 with papers for the tsaritsa. I'd better talk it over with them.'
'Hey, little Satan, get in my pocket and lead me to the Za-porozhtsy.'
The devil instantly shrank and became so small that he easily got into Vakula's pocket. And before Vakula had time to look around, he found himself in front of a big house, went up the stairs, himself not knowing how, opened a door, and drew back slightly from the splendor on seeing the furnished room; then he took heart somewhat, recognizing the same Cossacks who had passed through Dikanka sitting cross-legged on silk divans in their tarred boots and smoking the strongest tobacco, the kind known as root-stock.
'Good day, gentlemen! God be with you! So this is where we meet again!' said the blacksmith, going closer and bowing to the ground.
'Who's that man there?' the one sitting right in front of the blacksmith asked another sitting further away.
'You don't recognize me?' said the blacksmith. 'It's me, Vakula, the blacksmith! When you passed through Dikanka in the fall, you stayed-God grant you all health and long life-for nearly two days. And I put a new tire on the front wheel of your kibitka then!'
'Ah,' said the first Cossack, 'this is that same blacksmith who paints so well. Greetings, landsman, what brings you here?'
'Oh, I just came for a look around. They say…'
'Well, landsman,' the Cossack said, assuming a dignified air and wishing to show that he, too, could speak Russian, 'it's a beeg city, eh?'
The blacksmith did not want to disgrace himself and look like a greenhorn; what's more, as we had occasion to see earlier, he, too, was acquainted with literate language.
'A grand province!' he replied with equanimity. 'No disputing it: the houses are plenty big, there's good paintings hanging everywhere. A lot of houses have an extremity of letters in gold leaf written on them. Wonderful proportions, there's no disputing it!'
The Zaporozhtsy, hearing the blacksmith express himself so fluently, drew very favorable conclusions about him.
'We'll talk more with you later, landsman; right now we're on our way to the tsaritsa.'
'To the tsaritsa? Be so kind, masters, as to take me with you!'
'You?' the Cossack said, with the air of a tutor talking to his four-year-old charge who is begging to be put on a real, big horse. 'What will you do there? No, impossible.' With that, his face assumed an imposing mien. 'We, brother, are going to discuss our own affairs with the tsaritsa.'
'Take me!' the blacksmith persisted. 'Beg them!' he whispered softly to the devil, hitting the pocket with his fist.
Before he got the words out, another Cossack spoke up:
'Let's take him, brothers!'
'All right, let's take him!' said the others.
