Viy — Страница 21

Each in turn hastened to tell something. The
witch drove right up to the door of one man's house in the form of a
haystack; she stole another's hat or pipe; cut off" the braids of many
village girls; drank several buckets of blood from others.
At last the whole company came to their senses and saw that they had
been talking too much, because it was already quite dark outside. They all
began trudging off to sleep, putting themselves either in the kitchen, or in
the sheds, or in the middle of the yard.
"Well, now, Mr. Khoma, it's time we went to the deceased," said the
gray-haired Cossack, turning to the philosopher, and the four of them,
Spirid and Dorosh included, went to the church, swinging their knouts at the
dogs, of which there were a great many and which angrily bit at their
sticks.
The philosopher, though he had fortified himself with a good mug of
vodka, secretly felt timorousness creeping over him as they drew near the
lighted church. The talcs and strange stories he had heard helped to affect
his imagination still more. The darkness under the paling and trees began to
thin; the place was becoming more bare. They finally stepped past the
decrepit church fence into the small yard, beyond which there were no trees
and nothing opened out but empty fields and meadows swallowed by the
darkness of night. Together with Khoma, the three Cossacks climbed the steep
steps of the porch and went into the church. Here they left the philosopher,
having wished him a successful performance of his duty, and locked the door
on him as the master had ordered.
The philosopher remained alone. First he yawned, then stretched
himself, then blew on both hands, and finally looked around. In the middle
stood the black coffin. Candles flickered before dark icons. Their light
illumined only the iconostasis^a and, faintly, the middle of the
church. The far corners of the vestibule were shrouded in darkness. The
tall, ancient iconostasis showed a profound decrepitude; its openwork,
covered in gold, now gleamed only in sparks. The gilding had fallen off in
some places, and was
quite blackened in others; the faces of the saints, completely
darkened, looked somehow gloomy. The philosopher glanced around once more.
"Why," he said, "what's frightening about it? No man can get in here,
and against the dead and visitors from the other world I've got such prayers
that, once I've read them, they'll never lay a finger on me. Nothing to it,"
he said with a wave of the hand, "let's read!"
Going up to the choir, he saw several bundles of candles.
"That's good," thought the philosopher, "I must light up the whole
church so that it's bright as day. Ah, too bad I can't smoke my pipe in
God's church!"
And he began sticking wax candles to all the ledges, lecterns, and
icons, not stinting in the least, and soon the whole church was filled with
light.