Viy — Страница 14

It was all furrowed
with gullies and grooves left by rain. In two places, cottages were stuck to
its steep slope; over one of them an apple tree, propped by small stakes and
a mound of dirt at its roots, spread its branches broadly. Windfallen apples
rolled right down into the master's yard. From the top a road wound down all
over the mountain and in its descent went past the yard into the settlement.
When the philosopher measured its terrible steepness and remembered the
previous day's journey, he decided that either the master's horses were very
smart or the Cossacks' heads were very strong to have managed, even in
drunken fumes, not to tumble down head first along with the boundless wagon
and the baggage. The philosopher stood on the highest point of the yard, and
when he turned and looked in the opposite direction, he was presented with a
totally different sight. The settlement, together with the slope, rolled
down onto a plain. Vast meadows opened out beyond the reach of sight; their
bright greenery became darker in the distance, and whole rows of villages
blued far off, though they were more than a dozen miles away. To the right
of these meadows, mountains stretched and the distant, barely noticeable
strip of the Dnieper burned and darkled.
"Ah, a fine spot!" said the philosopher. "To live here, to fish in the
Dnieper and the ponds, to take a net or a gun and go hunting for snipe and
curlew! Though I suppose there's also no lack of bustards in these meadows.
Quantities of fruit can be dried and sold in town or, even better, distilled
into vodka--because no liquor can touch vodka made from fruit. And it also
wouldn't hurt to consider how to slip away from here."
He noticed a small path beyond the wattle fence, completely overgrown
with weeds. He mechanically stepped onto it, thinking at first only of
taking a stroll, and then of quietly blowing out between the cottages into
the meadows, when he felt a rather strong hand on his shoulder.
Behind him stood the same old Cossack who had grieved so bitterly
yesterday over the death of his mother and father and his own loneliness.
"You oughtn't to be thinking, master philosopher, about skipping from
the farmstead!" he said. "It's not set up here so as you can run away; and
the roads are bad for walking. Better go to the master: he's been waiting
for you a long time in his room."
"Let's go! Why not? . . . It's my pleasure," said the philosopher, and
he followed after the Cossack.
The chief, an elderly man with a gray mustache and an expression of
gloomy sorrow, was sitting at a table in his room, his head propped in both
hands. He was about fifty years old; but the deep despondency on his face
and a sort of wasted pallor showed that his soul had been crushed and
destroyed all of a sudden, in a single moment, and all the old gaiety and
noisy life had disappeared forever.