“Ye shall soon have something to warm you.—Yuzka, soak a herring directly.”
“Give it me salt as it is; nothing takes the salt out like vodka—when there’s enough of it.”
“Ye’re always the same,” Yagustynka observed snappishly. “Should ye hear glasses jingle even at midnight, ye’d rise on the spot for a drink.”
“Right, my good woman. But your tongue is very dry, is it not? you too would like to wet it in vodka, eh?” He laughed and rubbed his hands.
“My ancient! I’ll drink glass for glass with you any day!”
Here Hanka interrupted them; their continual hints and innuendoes about vodka were teasing her.
“Very few people are going to church as yet,” she remarked, to change the subject.
“ ’Tis early. They will presently come with a rush to get rid of their sins.”
“Aye,” said Yagustynka, “to spend the time, hear something new, and prepare to sin again!”
Here Yuzka’s shrill voice piped: “The girls were already preparing confessions yesternight.”
“Because,” Yagustynka said, “they are ashamed to confess to their own priest.”
“Better, old crone, ye sat in the church-porch and said your beads and did penance, than backbite your neighbours so!”
“I will, Wooden Leg! when ye sit by my side there!”
“Oh, I am in no hurry. I intend first to toll for you and put you to bed with a shovel!”
The words enraged her. “Bait me not, or you’ll rue it!” she snarled.
“My stick will ward off your bites; and ’twere pity to lose your last teeth!”
She made no answer. Just then Hanka filled a glass, and drank to them both, and Yuzka brought a herring to Ambrose, who slapped it against his wooden leg, skinned it, broiled it over the coals, and ate it with relish.
“To work! We have been dawdling too long!” he cried, taking off his coat, tucking up his shirtsleeves, and giving his knife a last edge on his whetstone. Then, seizing a large club, used to mash potatoes, for the pig, he hastened out, everybody following him.
Pete aided him, and the beast, though resisting with all its might, was dragged out into the yard.
“Quick! the dish for the blood!”
All stood round, eyeing its plump creamy sides and trailing belly, which the drizzle from the mists that filled the orchard was wetting fast. A few women stood outside the yard, and several children, eager to look on, had climbed the palings.
Ambrose crossed himself, and came forward slantwise towards the pig, his club held back at an angle on one side. Then, coming to a standstill, he suddenly lifted his arm, and, twisting his body round with so forcible a writhe that his neck shirt-button flew off, brought his weapon down right between the ears. The animal’s forelegs gave way, and it went down squealing. He redoubled the blow, this time with both hands. The pig rolled on to one side, kicking convulsively: Ambrose then, astride on its belly, thrust the whole of his knife’s gleaming blade into its heart.
A dish was at hand: the blood, streaming like warm water, spurted out in rhythmical squirts, with a bubbling sound.
“Away, Lapa!—Look at that wicked dog!—Wants to lap some, and Lent not over yet!” he cried, breathless with exertion, as he drove the dog from the dish: for a centenarian, the effort had been considerable.
“Shall we do the scalding in the passage?”
“Rather take the trough into the room where the carcass is to hang till we quarter it.”
“Will there not be too little space in the room?”
“Not in the larger room—your father-in-law’s. He will suffer nothing. Only let’s hurry: the bristles come out more readily while the carcass is yet warm.”
As he gave his directions, he was busy pulling out the long bristles down the back.
In a short time the carcass was scalded, unhaired, thoroughly cleansed, hung up in Boryna’s room, and stretched out wide open with a lath tied to a rafter.
Yagna was out, having gone to church early in the morning, and never dreaming that such a liberty would be taken. Her husband lay as usual, staring with lacklustre eyes.
They worked noiselessly at first, often looking round at him; but soon they forgot his presence, interested as they were in the pig, whose thick layer of fat far exceeded their expectations.
“We have lulled him to sleep, we have brought him in here: ’tis time that some vodka should flow in his honour!” cried Ambrose, washing his hands over the trough.
“Come to breakfast, and you’ll have some drink.”
Indeed, before he sat down to the potatoes and barszcz which formed the meal, he had tossed off a copious draught of vodka. He ate little, though, being in a hurry to go on with the work, and urged the others to make haste, especially Yagustynka, who was by no means his inferior in the salting and seasoning line, and knew as much as ever he did.
Hanka, too, did her best to give aid, and so did Yuzka, eager to stay in the hut beside the newly killed porker, and not at all willing to go out.
But Hanka cried out to her: “Be off at once, and order them to cart the dung away, and lend them a hand yourself, while they are spreading it! The sluggards! I fear the work will not be over by this evening.”
So Yuzka, much against her will, ran out into the yard, where she was heard for a long while, venting all her ill humour on the two farm-lads, and scolding them violently.
The cabin became noisier, little by little, as gossip after gossip dropped in to chat in neighbourly wise, and clasp their hands, and admire the porker.
“So fine! so laden with fat! Far finer a one than either the miller’s or the organist’s!”
Hanka felt much pleased, and was puffed up with these praises of the fatted beast; and though indeed she grudged the vodka, she could not help inviting them, according to the custom among the peasants to offer drinks, and bread and salt, on such an occasion. And she became very talkative to all the folk
