'That's all very well, only I'll do everything my little dove told me to do, I won't leave anything out. And once you've prayed over her properly for three nights, starting today, I'll reward you. Otherwise-I wouldn't advise even the devil himself to make me angry.'
The chief uttered these last words with such force that the philosopher fully understood their meaning.
'Follow me!' said the chief.
They stepped out to the front hall. The chief opened the door to another room opposite the first. The philosopher stopped in the hall for a moment to blow his nose and then with some unaccountable fear crossed the threshold. The whole floor was covered with red cotton cloth. In the corner, under the icons, on a high table, lay the body of the dead girl, on a cover of blue velvet adorned with gold fringe and tassels. Tall wax candles twined with guelder rose stood at her head and feet, shedding their dim light, lost in the brightness of day. The face of the dead girl was screened from him by the disconsolate father, who sat before her, his back to the door. The philosopher was struck by the words he heard:
'I'm not sorry, my darling daughter, that you, to my sorrow and grief, have left the earth in the flower of your youth, without living out your allotted term. I'm sorry, my little dove, that I do not know who it was, what wicked enemy of mine, that caused your death. And if I knew of anyone who might only think of insulting you or just of saying something unpleasant about you, I swear to
God he would never see his children again, if he happened to be as old as I am, or his father and mother, if he was still a young man; and his body would be thrown to the birds and beasts of the steppe. But woe is me, my wild marigold, my little quail, my bright star, that I must live out the rest of my life with no delight, wiping the tears with my coattails as they flow from my aged eyes, while my enemy rejoices and laughs secretly at the feeble old man…'
He stopped, and the reason for it was the rending grief that resolved itself in a whole flood of tears.
The philosopher was moved by such inconsolable sorrow. He coughed and gave a muffled grunt, wishing thereby to clear his voice a little.
The chief turned and pointed to the place at the dead girl's head, before a small lectern on which some books lay.
'I can do the three nights' work somehow,' thought the philosopher, 'and the master will fill both my pockets with gold coins for it.'
He approached and, clearing his throat once more, began to read, paying no attention to anything around him and not daring to look into the dead girl's face. A deep silence settled in. He noticed that the chief had left. Slowly he turned his head to look at the dead girl, and…
A shudder ran through his veins: before him lay a beauty such as there had never been on earth. It seemed that facial features had never before been assembled into such sharp yet harmonious beauty. She lay as if alive. Her brow, beautiful, tender, like snow, like silver, seemed thoughtful; her eyebrows-night amid a sunny day, thin, regular-rose proudly over her closed eyes, and her eyelashes, falling pointy on her cheeks, burned with the heat of hidden desires; her mouth-rubies about to smile… Yet in them, in these same features, he saw something terribly piercing. He felt his soul begin to ache somehow painfully, as if, in the whirl of merriment and giddiness of a crowd, someone suddenly struck up a song about oppressed people. The rubies of her mouth seemed to make the blood scald his heart. Suddenly something terribly familiar showed in her face.
'The witch!' he cried out in a voice not his own, looked away, turned pale, and began reading his prayers.
It was the very witch he had killed.
When the sun began to set, the dead girl was taken to the church. The philosopher supported the black-draped coffin with one shoulder, and on that shoulder he felt something cold as ice. The chief himself walked in front, bearing the right side of the dead girl's cramped house. The blackened wooden church, adorned with green moss and topped by three conical cupolas, stood desolate almost at the edge of the village. One could see it was long since any service had been celebrated in it. Candles burned before almost every icon. The coffin was placed in the middle, right in front of the altar. The old chief kissed the dead girl once more, made a prostration, and walked out together with the bearers, ordering the philosopher to be given a good meal and taken to the church after supper. Going into the kitchen, all those who had carried the coffin started touching the stove, something people in Little Russia have the custom of doing after they see a dead body.
The hunger that the philosopher began to feel just then made him-forget all about the deceased for a few moments. Soon all the household servants began gradually to gather in the kitchen. The kitchen of the chief's house was something like a club, to which everything that inhabited the yard flowed, including the dogs, who came right up to the door wagging their tails for bones and scraps. Wherever anyone might be sent, on whatever errand, he would always stop at the kitchen first, to rest on a bench for a moment and smoke a pipe. The bachelors who lived in the house and paraded around in Cossack blouses all lay about here for almost the whole day, on the benches, under the benches, on the stove-in short, wherever they could find a comfortable place to lie. Besides, everybody was forever forgetting something in the kitchen-a hat, a knout for stray dogs, or the like. But the most numerous gathering was at suppertime, when the horseherd came after rounding up all his horses, and the cowherd after bringing the cows home for milking, and all the rest who were not to be seen in the course of the day. During supper, loquacity would come to the most taciturn tongues. Here everything was usually talked about: someone who was having new trousers made for himself… and what was inside the earth… and someone who had seen a wolf… There were numerous bonmotists 7 here, of whom there is no lack among the people of Little Russia.
The philosopher sat down with the others in a wide circle under the open sky in front of the kitchen porch. Soon a woman in a red cap stuck herself out the door holding a hot pot of dumplings with both hands, and placed it in the midst of those ready to eat. Each of them took a wooden spoon from his pocket, or some, lacking a spoon, a splinter of wood. As soon as the mouths began to move a bit more slowly and the wolfish appetite of the whole gathering subsided a little, many began to talk. The talk naturally had to turn to the dead girl.
'Is it true,' said one young shepherd, who had stuck so many buttons and brass badges on his leather pipe strap that he looked like a mercer's shop, 'is it true that the young miss, not to speak ill of her, kept company with the unclean one?'
'Who? The young miss?' said Dorosh, already known to our philosopher. 'But she was a downright witch! I'll swear she was a witch!'
'Enough, enough, Dorosh!' said another, the one who had shown such readiness to give comfort during the trip. 'God help them, it's none of our business. No point in talking about it.'
But Dorosh was not at all disposed to be silent. He had only just gone to the cellar with the steward on some necessary business and, after bending a couple of times to two or three barrels, had come out extremely cheerful and talking nonstop.
