There they came up with Dominikova, who was going with Yagna and Simon, and a cow tied by the horns to the cart, from which, hissing like so many adders, the white necks of some ganders protruded.
They greeted each other, and Boryna went so far, when the wagons were abreast, as to lean forwards, and say: “You will be late!”
“Oh, we’ve time in plenty!” Yagna laughed in reply.
When they had been passed, the organist’s son looked round at her several times, and asked at last:
“Is that Dominikova’s Yagna?”
“The same, yes,” Boryna returned, with his eyes upon her, a good way behind already.
“I was not sure: it is a good couple of years since I last saw her.”
“Ah, she was then tending kine. She’s very young still; but she has grown as stout as a clover-fed heifer.”
“Aye, aye; comely she is; so well-favoured that every week messengers are sent to her with vodka—and a proposal.”
“But she’ll none of them. The old woman thinks,” the organist’s wife whispered spitefully, “that a steward may come for her, and drive all the peasants away.”
“Well, she would do, even for the wife of a thirty-five acres’ farmer.”
“O Matthias, if you think so much of the lass, send proposers to her yourself,” she said with a laugh. Thenceforward Boryna spoke not one word.
“You town-bred riffraff, here become a big personage—who look under the tail of every peasant’s hen to see if there are eggs for you—who seek for money in every peasant’s fist—will you make a mock of me, a husbandman born! You leave Yagna alone!” So he thought, and looked straight in front of him, in a very ill humour indeed, at Dominikova’s cart, bright with the gleams of aprons thrown over kerchiefs, and now rapidly dropping astern; for Yanek was flogging the horses vigorously, and their hoofs made great holes in the mud.
The good woman went on talking, but to no purpose. Boryna only nodded, or mumbled indistinctly, and stubbornly refrained from any utterance whatever.
And no sooner had they reached the unspeakable pavement of the little town, than he got down, with thanks for the lift.
“We shall be returning about nightfall,” she said, and asked whether he would care to go back with them.
“Very much obliged to you,” he replied, “but I have horses of my own. People would jest—say I was applying for the post of organ-blower or assistant; and I can’t sing a note or learn how to use an extinguisher!”
They went down a by-street, and he walked with swift steps up a main one, till he got to the marketplace. It was a first-class fair, and the streets were already pretty well crowded. All the thoroughfares, squares, lanes and courtyards were full of people and vehicles and all sorts of country produce, like a flood into which human rivers were constantly flowing, with dense waves rolling through the narrow alleys and seeming about to bring the houses down, until it poured into the great square near the monastery. On the way townwards, there had been relatively little mud; but here, trodden and trampled by thousands of feet, it was ankle-deep, splashing in every direction from under the wheels of the carts.
Every instant, the din grew louder. Nothing could be heard distinctly save a cow bellowing now and then, a barrel-organ accompanying the merry-go-round, the obstreperous wailing of dziads, or the earsplitting whistles of basket-makers.
Truly, it was a very big fair, so crowded that one could scarce make one’s way forwards; and by the time that Boryna had reached the main square, he had to push and elbow a passage by main force amongst the stalls.
And the things that were there! They could not be told or even conceived. How, then, is it possible to describe them?
And, first, those lofty canvas booths, which stood in front of the convent in two rows, all of them devoted to articles for women’s use: pieces of linen cloth, and kerchiefs, suspended from poles, and all of them as scarlet as scarlet poppies, making the eyes ache; and then, close by, another booth hung with the same wares, but all of the purest yellow; and another, again, of the deep crimson of the beetroot. … But who could remember all these things?
Lasses and women stood there in such serried crowds that there was not room, as they say, to thrust a stick in amongst them—some bargaining and choosing; and some only looking on, gloating over those things of beauty!
Farther, there were stalls that positively blazed with beads, looking-glasses, tinsel ornaments, and ribbons and flowers—green and golden and many-coloured—and caps too … and the Lord knows what besides!
Elsewhere, the sellers of holy images had set them forth in glazed and gilded frames, so gloriously brilliant that (although they only stood ranged along the walls, or even lay along the ground) more than one peasant would take his hat off and make the sign of the Holy Cross.
Boryna bought Yuzka the kerchief he had promised her in spring, and withdrew, pushing his way onwards to the swine-market beyond the monastery. He made but slow progress, owing both to the terrible crush and to the many interesting objects which he saw.
The capmakers, for instance, had put up wide ladders in front of their shops, and embellished these with caps from top to bottom.
The bootmakers had formed a real lane with trestles and horses, from which endless rows of boots dangled, suspended by the lugs: some of the common sort—tawny and only requiring to be greased lest the water should get in; some, lustrous with blacking like varnish; some, women’s boots, high-heeled, red-laced, and beautifully polished.
Farther were the saddlers’ stalls, superb with horse-collars and harnesses hanging in festoon from many a peg.
Then came the booths of the rope-makers, of
