Viy — Страница 18

During supper, loquacity would come to the most taciturn tongues. Here
everything was usually talked about: someone who was having new trousers
made for himself. . . and what was inside the earth. . . and someone who had
seen a wolf. . . There were numerous bonmotists⁷ here, of whom
there is no lack among the people of Little Russia.
The philosopher sat down with the others in a wide circle under the
open sky in front of the kitchen porch. Soon a woman in a red cap stuck
herself out the door holding a hot pot of dumplings with both hands, and
placed it in the midst of those ready to eat. Each of them took a wooden
spoon from his pocket, or some, lacking a spoon, a splinter of wood. As soon
as the mouths began to move a bit more slowly and the wolfish appetite of
the whole gathering subsided a little, many began to talk. The talk
naturally had to turn to the dead girl.
"Is it true," said one young shepherd, who had stuck so many buttons
and brass badges on his leather pipe strap that he looked like a mercer's
shop, "is it true that the young miss, not to speak ill of her, kept company
with the unclean one?"
"Who? The young miss?" said Dorosh, already known to our philosopher.
"But she was a downright witch! I'll swear she was a witch!"
"Enough, enough, Dorosh!" said another, the one who had shown such
readiness to give comfort during the trip. "God help them, it's none of our
business. No point in talking about it."
But Dorosh was not at all disposed to be silent. He had only just gone
to the cellar with the steward on some necessary business and, after bending
a couple of times to two or three barrels, had come out extremely cheerful
and talking nonstop.
"What do you want? For me to keep quiet?" he said. "But she rode on me,
on me myself! By God, she did!"
"And what, uncle," said the young shepherd with the buttons, "are there
some tokens you can tell a witch by?"
"No," answered Dorosh. "There's no way to tell. Read through all the
psalters, you still won't be able to tell."
"You can, too, Dorosh. Don't say that," said the same comforter. "Not
for nothing did God give everybody a special trait. People who've got some
learning say witches have little tails."
"When a woman's old, she's a witch," the gray-haired Cossack said
coolly.
"Ah, you're a good lot, too!" picked up the woman, who was just then
pouring fresh dumplings into the emptied pot. "Real fat boars!"
The old Cossack, whose name was Yavtukh but who was nicknamed Kovtun,
showed a smile of pleasure on his lips, seeing that his words had struck the
old woman to the quick; and the cowherd let out such dense laughter as if
two bulls, facing each other, had bellowed at once.
The beginning conversation awakened an irrepressible desire and
curiosity in the philosopher to learn more in detail about the chief's
deceased daughter.