III

About three days later it grew warmer. One morning Yarmola came into my room very early. “I’d better clean the guns, master,” he said casually.

“What’s up?” I asked, stretching myself under the sheets.

“The hare have run about last night – there’s a lot of tracks. Shall we have a go at them?”

Yarmola was plainly eager to go to the woods but he tried to hide his hunter’s longing by a show of indifference. In fact, his carbine was standing already in the hall, a carbine that had never missed a single snipe, although it was adorned with several tin patches round the lock where rust and powder gases had eaten through the metal.

We had scarcely walked into the forest when we came on a hare track: two footprints side by side, and another two behind, following each other. The hare had come out on to the road, run a few hundred yards along it, and then taken a tremendous leap into a clump of young pine-trees.

“We’ll now close in on it,” said Yarmola. “It’ll be lying doggo now. Master, you go – ” he paused to decide by signs he alone knew which way to send me. “You go on to the old pot-house, and I’ll come in from Zamlin. As soon as the dog starts it I’ll halloo to you.”

He disappeared at once, plunging into the dense shrubbery. I strained my ears, but not a sound betrayed his poacher’s movement, not a twig snapped under his feet.

I sauntered to the old pot-house, a deserted ramshackle hut, and halted on the fringe of the forest, under a tall tree with a straight bare trunk. It was still as it can be only in a forest on a windless winter day. The heavy lumps of snow weighing down the boughs gave them a wonderful, festive appearance. At times a twig broke off a tree-top, and I could very distinctly hear it strike the branches with a light crackle as it fell. The snow showed pink in the sun and blue in the shade. I was overwhelmed by the quiet magic of that solemn, cold silence, and I thought I could feel Time slipping noiselessly past me.

Suddenly Ryabchik’s bark rang-out far away in the thicket; it was the distinctive bark of a dog chasing game – a high-pitched, nervous sound close to yelping. Immediately afterwards I heard Yarmola’s voice shouting fiercely to the dog, “Oo-bee! Oo-bee!” The first syllable came in a sharp, long-drawn-out falsetto, and the second in a jerky boom. I did not learn until much later that this hunter’s call of Polesye was derived from oobeevat.

Judging by the direction of the barking, I thought the dog must be chasing the hare on my left, and so I ran across the glade to intercept it. But I had not run more than twenty yards when a big grey hare darted out from behind a stump; as if in no hurry to escape, its long ears flat against its head, it crossed the road with a couple of long bounds and disappeared in the undergrowth. Ryabchik shot out on the hare’s heels. As he saw me he wagged his tail slightly, snatched up a few mouthfuls of snow, and resumed the chase. All of a sudden Yarmola glided out of the thicket. “Why didn’t you cut it off, master?” he shouted, and clicked his tongue reproachfully.

“But I was so far from it, a couple of hundred feet or more.”

My obvious consternation softened him. “Never mind. It won’t get away. Go on to Irinovo Road – it’ll come out there in no time.”

I headed for the road, and about two minutes later I again heard the dog chasing the game not far from where I was. Gripped by a sportsman’s excitement, I ran with my gun at the ready, breaking through the dense brushwood, and heedless of the cruel blows the twigs dealt me. I ran like that for a while, and I was almost out of breath when the dog stopped barking. I slackened my pace. I imagined that if I kept going straight ahead I was sure to meet Yarmola by Irinovo Road. Soon, however,

I realized that while running and by-passing shrubs and stumps without a thought of direction I had lost my way. Then I hailed Yarmola. But he did not call back.

Mechanically I walked on. Little by little the forest thinned, and the ground grew marshy. My footprints on the snow darkened fast and filled with water. Several times I was bogged knee-deep. I had to jump from mound to mound; my feet sank in the brownish moss as in a soft rug.

Before long I came out of the brushwood. Ahead of me was a large, round snow-covered marsh with tussocks showing here and there. The white walls of a hut showed between the trees at the other end of the marsh. “It must be the Irinovo woodman’s house,” I thought. “I’d better walk over and ask my way.”

But it was not so easy to reach the hut. Every moment I was bogged down afresh. My high boots were full of water and squelched loudly at every step; it became more and more difficult to drag them along.

At last I was across the marsh and I climbed up on a small hummock that gave me a good view of the hut. It was rather like a fairy-tale witch’s hut. It stood high above the ground, being built on piles, probably because the Irinovo Woods were always flooded in spring. But, sagging with old age, it had a lame and mournful look. A few window-panes were missing; they had been replaced by dirty rags bellying outwards.

I pushed the knob and opened the door. It was very dark inside; violet circles were floating before my eyes because I had been looking at the snow for a long time, and I was slow in making out whether anyone was in.

“Is anybody in, good people?” I asked aloud.

Something stirred near the stove. I crossed to it and saw an old woman sitting on the floor. A huge pile of chicken feathers rose in front of her. She picked up the feathers one by one, stripped them of the barbs, and put them down in a basket, throwing the shafts on the floor.

“Why, this must be Manuilikha, the Irinovo witch.” The thought flashed upon me as soon as I had had a good look at the old woman. She was quite like a folklore Baba-Yaga: gaunt, hollow cheeks and a long, pointed chin which almost touched the great hooked nose; her sunken toothless mouth moved incessantly, as if chewing; her bulging eyes, once blue, were faded and cold, and with their short red eyelids looked like the eyes of a strange bird of ill omen.

“Good morning, Grandmother!” I said in as friendly a tone as I could muster. “Would you be Manuilikha by any chance?”

There was a rattling and wheezing in the old woman’s chest; from her toothless, mumbling mouth came queer sounds like the croaking of a panting old crow, sounds that at times broke into a husky falsetto.

“Perhaps good people did call me Manuilikha once. But now I’ve got neither name nor fame. Just what do you want?” Her manner was unfriendly, and she did not stop her monotonous work.

“I’ve lost my way, Granny. Could I have some milk?”

“No milk here,” she snapped. “Too many people like you passing here. Can’t feed the whole lot.”

“You aren’t very hospitable, Granny, I must say.”

“That’s true, sir, I’m not. No meals served here. You may sit down if you’re tired, I don’t mind. You know the saying: ‘Come and sit by our house and hear our church bells ringing, and as for dinner we’d rather come to you.’ That’s that.”

These figures of speech at once convinced me that the old woman did not hail from those parts, where no one liked or appreciated the slashing language, seasoned with rare words, which the eloquent Northerner is so fond of using. Meanwhile the old woman mechanically continued her work, still muttering to herself something that became less and less audible. I could only catch occasional disconnected sentences: “That’s Granny Manuilikha for you – But nobody knows who he is – I’m getting on in years now – Fidgeting and chirring and chattering like a regular magpie – ”

I listened to her for a while, and suddenly the idea that sitting in front of me was a mad woman both scared and disgusted me.

Still I had a look round. Most of the space was taken up by a huge chipped stove. There were no icons in the front corner. Instead of the usual pictures of green-moustached hunters with violet dogs and the portraits of generals whom no one knew, the walls were hung with tufts of dried herbs, bunches of wrinkled roots, and kitchen ware. I could spy no owl or black cat, but two grave speckled starlings were staring down at me from the stove with an astonished and suspicious air.

“Can I at least have a drink of water, Granny?” I asked, raising my voice.

“There it is, in the bucket,” she said.

The water tasted marshy. I thanked the old woman – she took not the slightest notice of it – and asked her how I could find my way to the road.

She raised her head, gazed fixedly at me with her cold bird’s eyes, and muttered hurriedly, “Go on. Go your way, young man. You have no business here. A guest is welcome when bidden. Go, sir.”

Indeed, I had no choice left but to go. But it occurred to me to make a last attempt to soften the stern old woman a little. I took a brand-new silver coin from my pocket and held it out to her. My guess proved right; at the sight of money her eyes opened wider, and she stretched out her crooked, knotty, trembling fingers to take the coin.

“Oh, no, Grandmother Manuilikha, you can’t have it for nothing,” I teased her, hiding the coin. “First tell me my fortune.”

The witch’s brown wrinkled face puckered into a scowl. She was apparently wavering while looking doubtfully at my fist closed upon the coin. But greed took the upper hand.

“All right, come along,” she mumbled, rising from the floor with an effort. “I don’t tell anybody’s fortune nowadays, sonny. I’ve forgotten how to. I’m too old now, can’t see anything. I’ll do it just to please you.”

Holding on to the wall, her bent form shaking at every step, she went up to the table, got out a pack of brown cards pulpy with long use, and shuffled them.

“Cut them with your left hand – the one close to your heart,” she said, pushing the pack across to me.

She spat on her fingers and began to lay out the cards. The cards dropped on the table with a thud, as if they were made of dough, and formed an octagonal star. When the last card lay on a king face downwards, Manuilikha held out her palm.

“Cross it with silver, good sir. You’ll be happy, you’ll be rich,” she whined in the cajoling manner of a begging Gypsy.

I slipped the coin into her palm. She hid it behind her cheek with apish alacrity.

“You’ll gain a great deal through a long journey,” she began in a habitual patter. “You’ll meet a queen of diamonds, and you’ll have a pleasant talk in an important house. Before long you’ll get unexpected news from the king of clubs. It falls out that you’ll have some trouble, then some little money. You’ll be in a large company, you’ll be drunk. Not that you’ll be very drunk, but still there’s a carouse in store for you. Yours will be a long life. If you don’t die at sixty-seven – ”

She paused, and raised her head, as if listening. I pricked up my ears. A woman’s voice, fresh, vibrant and strong, was singing a song as it drew near the hut. I recognized the lyric of a melodious Ukrainian song:

 

Is it just a bough in bloom

Bends the rose so red?

Is it drowsiness that weighs,

Weighs my weary head?

 

“Now please go, sonny,” Manuilikha said, fidgeting uneasily and pushing me away from the table. “You have no business hanging about strangers’ homes. Go where you were going.”

She even caught hold of my sleeve and started to pull me towards the door. There was a hunted look on her face.

Suddenly the song broke off close by the hut; the iron knob clicked, the door flew open, and a tall, laughing girl appeared in the doorway. With both her hands she was carefully holding up her striped apron, from which three tiny birds’ heads stuck up, with red necks and black beady eyes.

“Look at these finches, Granny, they’ve been hanging on to me again,” she cried, laughing heartily. “See how funny they are. They’re starved. And I had no bread with me.”

Then she saw me and stopped speaking at once, blushing deeply. Her black eyebrows gathered into a resentful frown, and she looked questioningly at Manuilikha.

“The gentleman here – he’s asking his way,” the old woman explained. “Well, sir,” she added, turning to me with determination, “you’ve been wasting your time more’n enough. You had your drink of water and your bit of talk, now don’t overstay your welcome. We’re no company for you.”

“Look here, my beauty,” I said to the girl. “Won’t you show me the way to Irinovo Road? I don’t think I can ever get out of your marsh by myself.”

She was apparently impressed by my gently pleading tone. Carefully she put down her finches beside the starlings, threw on the bench the coat she had taken off, and walked silently out.

I followed her.

“Are your birds tame?” I asked as I overtook her.

“Yes,” she replied curtly, without glancing at me. “Well, look,” she said, stopping by the wattle-fence. “See that path over there, between those pines?”

“Yes.”

“Take it and go straight ahead. When you get to an oak log, turn left. Keep going right on through the forest. That’ll bring you to Irinovo Road.”

While she was pointing out the way with her outstretched right arm, I could not help admiring her beauty. She was in no way like the local wenches, who wore their kerchiefs in an ugly manner, covering their foreheads from above and their chins and mouths from below, and whose faces looked so monotonously frightened. The girl beside me, a tall brunette between twenty and twenty-five, had an easy, graceful bearing. A wide white blouse covered her young, shapely bosom. Once you had seen the unusual beauty of her face, you could never forget it; but it was difficult to describe that beauty even when you had got used to it. Its charm lay in those large, shining dark eyes, to which the eyebrows, fine and broken in the middle, gave an elusive quality of archness, imperiousness and naiveté, in her olive skin touched with pink, in the wilful curve of her lips.

“Aren’t you afraid of living by yourselves in these wild parts?” I asked, halting by the fence.

She shrugged her shoulders indifferently.

“Why should we be? Wolves never come this way.”

“I didn’t mean only wolves. You might be snowed up, or a fire might break out. Lots of things might happen. You’re all alone here, and nobody’d have a chance to help you.”

“So much the better!” She made a scornful gesture. “If only they’d left Grandmother and me alone for good, but – ”

“But what?”

“Too much knowledge makes the head bald, you know,” she snapped. “And who would you be?” she asked uneasily.

I realized that both the old woman and the girl feared some sort of persecution from the authorities, and I hastened to reassure her.

“Please don’t worry. I’m not an uryadnik, clerk, or exciseman – in short I’ve nothing to do with the authorities.”

“You haven’t?”

“I give you my word of honour. Believe me, I’m a total stranger here. I’ve come to stay for a few months and then I’ll go back. I shan’t tell anybody I was here and saw you, if you don’t want me to. Do you trust me?”

Her face brightened a little.

“Well, if you aren’t lying, you must be speaking the truth. But tell me, had you heard anything about us before, or did you drop in by chance?”

“I really don’t know what to say. I did hear about you, I own, and I even meant to look in at your place some day, but today I got here by chance – lost my way. Now I’d like to know why you’re afraid of people. What harm are they doing you?”

She scrutinized me with distrust. But I had a clear conscience, and I withstood her gaze without quailing. Then she spoke with mounting emotion.

“We’re having a hard time because of them. Ordinary people are not so bad, but the officials – They always must have some gift – the uryadnik and the stanovoi and all the others. And that’s not enough: they call Grandmother a ‘witch,’ a ‘she-devil,’ a ‘jail-bird.’ Oh, well, what’s the use of talking about it!”

“Do they ever molest you?” The indiscreet question came before I knew it.

She tossed up her head with haughty assurance, and there was a flicker of malicious triumph in her narrowed eyes.

“No. Once a land surveyor had a try at me. He wanted to make love, see? Well, I’m sure he still remembers the love I gave him.”

These ironical but peculiarly proud words rang with so much crude independence that I could not but think, “Yes, you can see she’s grown up in a wild Polesye forest – it certainly isn’t safe to trifle with her.”

“We don’t molest anybody, do we?” she went on, with increasing confidence in me. “Why, we don’t even ask for company. I only go to town once a year to buy some soap and salt. And some tea for Granny – she loves it. I might as well see nobody at all, if it weren’t for that.”

“I see you and your Granny aren’t exactly hospitable. But may I drop in for a moment some day?”

She laughed, and how strangely, how unexpectedly her beautiful face changed! Not a trace of the previous sternness was left on it: of a sudden it had become bright and bashful as a child’s.

“But why should you? Granny and I are dull company. You may drop in, though, if you really are a good man. Only I’ll tell you what: if you ever come our way, better leave your gun behind.”

“Are you afraid?’

“What’s there to be afraid of? I’m not afraid of anything.” Again her voice rang with confidence in her own strength. “I just don’t like the whole business. Why kill birds or, say, hares? They do nobody any harm, and they want to live as much as you and I do I love them – they’re so small and silly. Well, I must say goodbye now,” she added hastily. “Sorry, I don’t know your name. I’m afraid Granny will scold me.”

With a light, swift movement she ran back to the hut, her head bent and her hands holding her hair, tousled by the wind.

“Wait a minute!” I shouted. “What’s your name? Let’s introduce ourselves properly.”

She stopped for a second and turned round.

“My name is Alyona. Here they call me Olesya.”

I shouldered my gun and set out in the direction she had indicated. I climbed a hillock from which a narrow, hardly visible forest path started, and looked back. Olesya’s red skirt, waving slightly in the wind, could still be seen on the steps, a bright spot set off by the even background of dazzling white snow.

Yarmola came home an hour after me. True to his habitual distaste for idle talk, he did not ask me a single question about how or where I had lost my way. He only said, as if casually, “I’ve got that hare, over in the kitchen. Shall I roast it, or are you going to send it to somebody?”

“I’m sure you don’t know where I’ve been today, Yarmola,” I said, anticipating surprise.

“Don’t I?” he growled. “Called on the witches, of course.”

“How did you find that out?”

“It was easy enough. You didn’t answer my call, so I walked to your track. You shouldn’t do things like that, master!” he added, with reproachful annoyance. “It’s a sin!”