beating.
The icon lamp flickers. The green spot and the shadows begin to move, getting into Varka’s fixed, half-open eyes and forming dim reveries in her half-sleeping brain. She sees dark clouds chasing each other across the sky and crying like babies. But now the wind has blown, the clouds have vanished, and Varka sees a broad highway covered with liquid mud. Down the highway stretches a string of carts, people trudge along with bundles on their backs, and some sort of shadows flit back and forth. Forest can be seen on both sides through the cold, harsh fog. Suddenly the shadows and the people with bundles drop down in the liquid mud. “Why is that?” asks Varka. “To sleep, to sleep,” comes the answer. And they fall fast asleep, sleep sweetly, and crows and magpies sit on the telegraph wires, crying like babies, trying to wake them up.
“Hush-a-bye, baby, I’ll sing you a song …” murmurs Varka, and now she sees herself in a dark, stuffy cottage.
Her late father, Yefim Stepanov, is thrashing on the floor. She does not see him, but she hears him moaning and rolling on the floor in pain. His rupture, as he puts it, “is acting up.” The pain is so intense that he cannot utter a single word and only sucks in air, his teeth chattering like a drum roll:
“Rat-a-tat-tat-tat …”
Her mother Pelageya has run to the manor to tell the masters that Yefim is dying. She has been gone for a long time and ought to be back. Varka lies on the stove, awake, and listens to her father’s “rat-a-tat-tat.” But now she hears someone drive up to the cottage. The masters have sent the young doctor, who came from town for a visit. The doctor enters the cottage. He cannot be seen in the darkness, but she hears him cough and clack the door.
“Light a lamp,” he says.
“Rat-a-tat-tat …” answers Yefim.
Pelageya rushes to the stove and starts looking for the crock of matches. A minute passes in silence. The doctor feels in his pockets and lights his own match.
“One moment, good man, one moment,” says Pelageya, rushing out of the cottage and coming back shortly with a candle end.
Yefim’s cheeks are pink, his eyes shine, and his gaze is somehow sharp, as if Yefim can see through both the cottage and the doctor.
“Well, so? What’s this you’re up to?” the doctor says, bending over him. “Aha! Have you had it long?”
“What, sir? It’s time to die, Your Honor … I’m done living …”
“Enough of that nonsense … We’ll cure you!”
“As you like, Your Honor, my humble thanks, only we do understand … Since death has come, there’s no use.”
The doctor fusses over Yefim for a quarter of an hour. Then he gets up and says:
“I can do nothing … You must go to the hospital, they’ll do surgery on you. Go right now … Go without fail! It’s a bit late, everybody’s asleep there, but never mind, I’ll give you a note. Do you hear me?”
“How is he going to get there, good man?” says Pelageya. “We have no horse.”
“Never mind, I’ll ask the masters, they’ll give you a horse.”
The doctor leaves, the candle goes out, and again she hears “rat-a-tat-tat” … Half an hour later somebody drives up to the cottage. The masters have sent a gig to go to the hospital. Yefim gets ready and goes …
Now comes a fine, clear morning. Pelageya is not home: she has gone to the hospital to find out what is happening with Yefim. Somewhere a baby is crying, and Varka hears someone singing with her own voice:
“Hush-a-bye, baby, I’ll sing you a song …”
Pelageya comes back. She crosses herself and whispers:
“They set it during the night, but by morning he gave up his soul to God … The kingdom of heaven, eternal rest … They say they caught it too late … He should have come earlier …”
Varka goes to the woods and weeps there, but suddenly somebody hits her on the back of the head so hard that she bumps her forehead against a birch. She lifts her eyes and sees before her the shoemaker, her master.
“What’s this, you mangy girl?” he says. “The little one’s crying, and you sleep?”
He twists her ear painfully, and she shakes her head, rocks the cradle, and murmurs her song. The green spot and the shadows of the trousers and swaddling clothes ripple, wink at her, and soon invade her brain again. Again she sees the highway covered with liquid mud. Shadows and people with bundles on their backs sprawl about, fast asleep. Looking at them, Varka passionately longs to sleep; it would be such a pleasure to lie down, but her mother Pelageya walks beside her and hurries her. They are hastening to town to find work.
“Give alms, for Christ’s sake!” her mother asks passersby “Show God’s mercy, merciful people.”
“Give me the baby!” somebody’s familiar voice answers her. “Give me the baby!” the same voice repeats, angrily and sharply now. “Sleeping, you slut?”
Varka jumps up and, looking around her, understands what is the matter: there is no road, no Pelageya, no passersby, but only her mistress standing in the middle of the room, come to nurse her baby. While the fat, broad- shouldered mistress nurses and quiets the baby, Varka stands and looks at her, waiting till she is finished. Outside the windows the air is turning blue, the shadows and the green spot on the ceiling are becoming noticeably paler. It will soon be morning.
“Take him!” says the mistress, buttoning her nightshirt over her breasts. “He’s crying. Must be the evil eye.”
Varka takes the baby, lays him in the cradle, and again begins to rock. The green spot and the shadows gradually disappear, and there is nothing left to get into her head and cloud her brain. And she is as sleepy as before, so terribly sleepy! Varka lays her head on the edge of the cradle and rocks with her whole body, so as to
