Viy — Страница 9

He got to his feet and looked into her eyes: dawn was breaking and the
golden domes of the Kievan churches shone in the distance. Before him lay a
beauty with a disheveled, luxurious braid and long, pointy eyelashes.
Insensibly, she spread her bare white arms and moaned, looking up with
tear-fdled eyes.
Khoma trembled like a leaf on a tree: pity and some strange excitement
and timidity, incomprehensible to himself, came over him; he broke into a
headlong run. His heart beat uneasily on the way, and he was quite unable to
explain to himself this strange new feeling that had come over him. He no
longer wanted to go around to the farmsteads and hastened back to Kiev,
pondering this incomprehensible incident as he went.
There were almost no students in the city: they had all gone to the
farmsteads, either on conditions, or simply without any conditions, because
on Little Russian farmsteads one can eat dumplings, cheese, sour cream,
fritters as big as a hat, without paying a penny. The big, sprawling house
where the boarders lodged was decidedly empty, and thoroughly as the
philosopher searched in all the corners, even feeling in all the holes and
crannies under the roof, nowhere did he find a piece of bacon or at least an
old knish-- things usually stashed away by the boarders.
However, the philosopher soon found a solution to his troubles: he
strolled, whistling, through the marketplace three times or so, exchanged
winks at the very end with some young widow in a yellow cap who sold
ribbons, lead shot, and wheels--and that same day was fed wheat dumplings,
chicken ... in a word, there was no counting what lay before him on the
table, set in a small clay house amid cherry trees. That same evening the
philosopher was seen in the tavern: he was lying on a bench smoking his
pipe, as was his custom, and in front of everybody tossed a gold piece to
the Jew tavern keeper. Before him stood a mug. He looked at people coming
and going with coolly contented eyes and no longer gave any thought to his
extraordinary incident.
meanwhile, the rumor spread everywhere that the daughter of one of the
richest Cossack chiefs, whose farmstead was some thirty-five miles from
Kiev, had come home from a walk one day all beaten up, had barely managed to
reach her father's house, was now lying near death, and before her dying
hour had expressed the wish that the prayers at her deathbed and for three
days after her death be read by one of the Kievan seminarians: Khoma Brut.
The philosopher learned it from the rector himself, who summoned him
specially to his room and announced that he must hasten on his way without
delay, that the eminent chief had specially sent people and a cart for him.
The philosopher gave a start from some unaccountable feeling which he
could not explain to himself.