their sex and, bellowing, climbed onto one another like bulls, straining to drag up the heavy weight of their udders. The heifers they covered up, raising their tails, tore away from underneath them and, breaking down bushes and branches, ran towards the thicket, where old shepherds and herdsboys rushed shouting after them.
And, as if locked into the tight circle outlined by the treetops in the winter sky, the snowy black and white clouds over the forest clearing crowded just as stormily and chaotically, rearing and piling up on each other.
The curious, standing in a bunch further off, annoyed the wisewoman. She looked them up and down with an unkindly glance. But it was beneath her dignity to admit that they were hampering her. Her artistic vanity stopped her. And she made it look as if she did not notice them. The doctor observed her from the back rows, hidden from her.
It was the first time he had taken a good look at her. She was wearing her inevitable British forage cap and gray-green interventionist greatcoat with the lapels casually turned back. However, with the haughty features of suppressed passion, which gave a youthful blackness to the eyes and eyebrows of this no-longer-young woman, the extent of her indifference to what she was or was not wearing was clearly written on her face.
But the appearance of Pamphil’s wife astonished Yuri Andreevich. He barely recognized her. She had aged terribly in a few days. Her bulging eyes were ready to pop from their sockets. On her neck, stretched like a shaft, a swollen vein throbbed. That was what her secret fears had done to her.
“She gives no milk, my dear,” said Agafya. “I thought she was in between, but no, it’s long since time for milk, but she’s still milkless.”
“In between, hah! Look, there’s an anthrax sore on her teat. I’ll give you some herbal ointment to rub in. And, needless to say, I’ll whisper in her ear.”
“I’ve got another trouble—my husband.”
“I can put a charm on him to stop him playing around. It can be done. He’ll stick to you, there’ll be no tearing him off. Tell me your third trouble.”
“He doesn’t play around. It’d be good if he did. The trouble’s just the opposite, that he clings to me and the children with all his might, his soul pines for us. I know what he thinks. He thinks they’ll separate the camps, and we’ll be sent the other way. Basalygo’s men will lay hands on us, and he won’t be there to protect us. They’ll torture us and laugh at our torments. I know his thoughts. He may do something to himself.”
“I’ll think on it. We’ll quench your grief. Tell me your third trouble.”
“There is no third. It’s just the cow and my husband.”
“You’re poor in troubles, mother! See how merciful God is to you. Couldn’t find your like with a candle in daylight. Two sorrows on your poor little head, and one of them’s a pitying husband. What’ll you give for the cow? And I’ll start reciting.”
“What do you want?”
“A loaf of bread and your husband.”
People burst out laughing around them.
“Are you making fun of me?”
“Well, if that’s too much, I’ll knock off the bread. We’ll settle on the husband alone.”
The laughter around them increased tenfold.
“What’s the name? Not the husband’s, the cow’s.”
“Beauty.”
“Half the herd here is called Beauty. Well, all right. God bless us.”
And she began to recite a spell on the cow. At first her sorcery really had to do with cattle. Then she got carried away and gave Agafya a whole lesson in magic and its use. Yuri Andreevich listened spellbound to this delirious tissue, as he had once listened to the flowery babble of the driver Vakkh, when they came from European Russia to Siberia.
The army wife was saying:
“Auntie Morgesya, come be our guest. Not tomorrow but today, take the sickness away. Frumpkin, mumpkin, away with the lumpkin. Beauty, don’t flinch, you’ll tip over the bench. Forget your bad dream and give us a stream. Witchery, twitchery, stir your kettles, scrape off the scab and throw it in the nettles. Sharp as a sword is the wisewoman’s word.
“You’ve got to know everything, Agafyushka, biddings, forbiddings, spells for avoiding, spells for defending. You look now and think it’s the forest. But it’s the unclean powers coming to meet the angelic host, just like ours with Basalygo’s.
“Or, for instance, look where I’m pointing. Not there, my dear. Look with your eyes, not with the back of your head, look where I point my finger. There, there. What do you think it is? You think it’s the wind twisty-twining one birch branch around another? You think it’s a bird decided to build a nest? As if it was. That’s a real devilish thing. It’s a water nymph making a wreath for her daughter. She heard people going by and left off. Got scared. At night she’ll finish plaiting it, you’ll see.
“Or, again, take your red banner. What do you think? You think it’s a flag? And yet, see, it’s not a flag at all, it’s the plaguie-girl’s fetching raspberry kerchief—fetching, I say, and why is it fetching? To wave and wink at the young lads, to fetch young lads for the slaughter, for death, to inflict the plague on them. And you believed it was a flag— come to me, prolety and poorlety of all lands.
“Now you’ve got to know everything, Mother Agafya, everything, everything, and I mean everything. What bird, what stone, what herb. A bird, now, for instance—that bird there would be a fairy-starling. That animal there would be a badger.
“Now, for instance, if you’ve a mind to make love to somebody, just say so. I’ll cast a pining spell on anybody you like. Your chief here, the Forester, if you like, or Kolchak, or Ivan Tsarevich.4 You think I’m boasting, lying? But I’m not lying. Well, look, listen. Winter will come, the blizzard will send whirlwinds thronging over the fields, it will spin up pillars. And into that snowy pillar, into that snow-whirl I’ll stick a knife for you, plunge it into the snow up to the hilt, and pull it out of the snow all red with blood. Have you ever seen such a thing? Eh?
