IV

That year spring came early and, as always happens in Polesye, with unexpected abruptness. Turbulent, glittering brown rivulets ran down the village streets, frothing angrily round the stones in their way and whirling chips and goose-down; enormous pools mirrored the blue sky with round white clouds that seemed to revolve as they sailed across it; tinkling drops of water fell in a rush from the roofs. The sparrows clustering on the roadside willows twittered so excitedly that they drowned all other sounds. Everywhere you could feel the joyous, hurried stir of rousing life.

The snow melted away, except in hollows and shaded copses, where it lingered in dirty, sponge-like patches. The thaw laid bare the warm, damp earth that had had a good winter’s rest and was full of fresh sap, of a renewed craving for motherhood. A light vapour wreathed above the black fields, filling the air with the smell of thawed earth, that fresh, subtle, heady smell of spring which you distinguish among hundreds of other smells even in town. I felt as if a spring-time sadness, sweet and delicate, full of wistful expectations and vague hopes, flowed into my soul along with that fragrance – a poetical melancholy that makes every woman seem pretty and is always seasoned with uncertain regrets of past springs. The nights had become warmer, and Nature’s invisible creative labour could be sensed going on hastily in the intense, humid darkness.

Olesya’s image never left my mind in those spring days. When alone, I liked to lie down, shut my eyes for better concentration, and continuously call up in my imagination her face, now stern or arch, then beaming with a tender smile, her young body, which had grown up in the freedom of the old forest to be as slender and strong as a young fir-tree, her fresh voice with its unexpectedly low, velvety notes. “There is,” I thought, “something noble – in the best meaning of that rather commonplace word – a sort of inborn, elegant moderation about every movement she makes, every word she speaks.” What drew me to Olesya was also the halo of mystery that surrounded her, the superstitious fame of a witch living in the forest thicket, in the midst of a marsh, and particularly that proud confidence in her own strength which sounded in the few words she had spoken to me.

No wonder that as soon as the forest paths dried a little I set out for the witch’s hut. In case I had to appease the querulous old woman, I took with me a half pound of tea and a few handfuls of lump sugar.

I found both women in. Manuilikha was fussing about the blazing stove, and Olesya was spinning flax, sitting on a very high bench. As I entered with a slight noise she turned round, the thread broke in her hands, and the spindle rolled over the floor.

The old woman eyed me for a while with angry attention, shielding her puckered face with her palm from the heat of the stove.

“Good day, Granny!” I said in a loud, cheerful voice. “I suppose you don’t recognize me? Remember I looked in last month to ask my way? And you told my fortune, remember?”

“I don’t remember anything, sir,” she mumbled, shaking her head with displeasure, “I’m sure I don’t. And I can’t understand what you may want here. We’re no company for you, are we? We’re plain, ignorant people. You have no business with us. The woods are large enough – you can take your walks elsewhere, and that’s that.”

Flabbergasted by her ungracious welcome, I was at a loss, feeling silly and not knowing whether to take her rudeness as a joke, or flare up, or turn and go without saying a word. I turned helplessly to Olesya. She smiled slightly, with a touch of good-humoured mockery, rose from her spinning-wheel, and walked over to the old woman.

“Don’t be afraid, Granny,” she said in a conciliatory tone. “He’s all right, he won’t do us any harm. Please sit down,” she added, pointing to the bench in the front corner and no longer heeding the old woman’s grumbling.

Encouraged by her attention, I thought of using the most effective means.

“How unfriendly you are, Granny! You start scolding a visitor the moment he walks in. And I thought I’d bring you a present.” I took the parcels out of my bag.

Manuilikha glanced at the parcels and at once turned away to the stove.

“I don’t want your presents,” she grumbled, fiercely raking the coals with the poker. “I know the worth of the likes of you. First they win your favour by a lot of blarney, then – What have you got in that little bag?” she asked suddenly, turning round to me.

I handed her the tea and sugar. This had a softening effect upon her, and although she went on grumbling the tone was not so uncompromising as before. Olesya went back to her spinning, and I placed myself beside her on a low, short, and very rickety bench. With her left hand she would rapidly twist the white, silky fibre, while her right hand with a light whirr spun the spindle, letting it go almost to the floor, and then catching it up deftly and setting it twirling again with a short movement of her fingers. She did it – a work so simple at first sight but actually requiring the immense skill and dexterity acquired by man through age-long practice – with great ease. I could not help noticing those hands; work had coarsened and blackened them, but they were small and so beautiful that many genteel young ladies would have envied her.

“You didn’t say last time that Granny told you your fortune,” said Olesya. And seeing me look back with apprehension, she added, “Never mind her, she’s a bit deaf, so she won’t hear. It’s only my voice that she makes out well.”

“Yes, she told my fortune. Why?”

“Oh, I was just wondering. Do you believe in it?” She gave me a swift, stealthy glance.

“Believe in what? Do you mean in what your grandmother told me, or fortune-telling in general?”

“I mean in general.”

“Well, it’s hard to say. I rather think I don’t, but still – who knows? They say sometimes it comes true. Even learned people deal with that in books. But I don’t at all believe in what your grandmother told me. Any countrywoman could tell fortunes like that.”

Olesya smiled.

“Yes, it’s true that she can’t do it well any longer. She’s old now, and she’s afraid, too. But what did the cards tell you?”

“Nothing interesting. I don’t even remember now. The things you usually hear: a long journey, a gain through the clubs – I’ve forgotten, really.”

“Yes, she isn’t much good at fortune-telling now. She’s forgotten a lot of words because she’s so old. How could she do it well? Besides, she’s afraid. She only does it once in a while, if she’s offered money.”

“But what is she afraid of?”

“The authorities, of course. The uryadnik always bullies her when he comes. ‘I could shut you up any day,’ he says. ‘Do you know,’ he says, ‘what witches like you get for practising magic? Hard labour on Sakhalin Island, for life.’ Do you think it’s true?”

“Well, there is some truth in what he says. This sort of thing is punishable, but it isn’t as bad as all that. And you, Olesya, can you tell fortunes?”

She seemed to falter, but only for a second.

“Yes. But not for money,” she hastened to add.

“Would you mind laying out the cards for me?”

“Yes, I would,” she said, softly but firmly.

“But why? If you don’t care to do it now, do it some other time. Somehow I feel that you’ll tell me the truth.”

“No. I won’t do it. Not for the world.”

“Now that’s unfair of you, Olesya. For the sake of our acquaintance you shouldn’t refuse me. Why don’t you want to?”

“Because I have already laid out the cards for you, and I mustn’t do it any more.”

“You mustn’t? But why not? I don’t understand.”

“No, no, I really mustn’t,” she whispered with a superstitious fear. “You mustn’t search your fortune twice. That wouldn’t do. It might find out, might overhear you. Fortune doesn’t like to be questioned. That’s why all fortune-tellers are unhappy.”

I was about to answer Olesya with some joke but could not: there was so much sincere conviction in her words, that when, after mentioning fortune, she looked back at the door with a strange dread, I involuntarily did the same.

.”Well, since you won’t lay out the cards, at least tell me what you found out last time,” I begged her.

She suddenly threw down her spindle and touched my hand with hers.

“No, I’d rather not,” she said, and a childishly imploring expression came into her eyes. “Please don’t ask. It was bad for you. You’d better not ask.”

But I insisted. I could not make out whether her refusal and her obscure hints at fate were affectations of a fortune-teller, or whether she actually believed in what she said, but somehow J felt an uneasiness that was close to dread.

“All right, I’ll tell you,” Olesya agreed at last. “But remember, a bargain’s a bargain, and you mustn’t be cross if I tell you something you may not like. Here’s what fell out: You’re a kind man all right, only you’re weak. Your kindness isn’t good, it doesn’t come from your heart. You don’t stick to your word. You like to have the upper hand over people, but you knuckle under to them even though you don’t want to. You like wine, and also – Oh, well, I’ll tell you everything while I’m at it. You’re very fond of us women, and that’ll get you into a lot of trouble. You don’t value money and don’t know how to lay it by – you’ll never be rich. Shall I go on?”

“Yes! Tell me all you know.”

“It fell out that your life wasn’t going to be a happy one. You’ll love nobody with your heart because your heart is cold and lazy, and you’ll cause much sorrow to those who will love you. You’ll never get married and will die single. You won’t have any great happiness in life, but a lot of dreariness and hardship. A day will come when you’ll feel like killing yourself. Something will happen to make you feel that way. Only you won’t dare to, you’ll just put up with it. You’ll be much in need, but towards the end of your life your fortune will change through the death of someone who’s dear to you, and that quite unexpectedly. But all that won’t come for many years, and as for this year – I don’t know just when, but the cards tell me it’ll be soon. Perhaps even this month – ”

“But what’ll happen this year?” I asked her when she paused again.

“I’m afraid to go on, really. A great love falls out for you from a queen of clubs. I can’t guess if she’s married or single, but I know that she has dark hair.”

I glanced at her head.

“Why are you looking at me?” She blushed suddenly, understanding the meaning of my glance with that intuition which some women possess. “Well, yes, about the same as mine,” she went on, mechanically smoothing her hair and blushing still more.

“A great love from the queen of clubs, eh?” I said jokingly.

“Don’t laugh at me, you mustn’t laugh,” she admonished me earnestly, almost sternly. “I’m only telling you the truth.”

“Very well, I won’t. What else was there?”

“What else? It’ll fall out very badly for that queen of clubs, worse than death. She’ll suffer great shame because of you, a shame she won’t forget all her life, a long sorrow. But nothing bad will fall to you through her.”

“Look here, Olesya, mayn’t the cards have misled you? Why should I be so very unpleasant to the queen of clubs? I’m a quiet, modest man, and yet you’ve said so many awful things about me.”

“That’s what I don’t know. Besides, it won’t be you who’ll do it, but the whole misfortune will come through you. You’ll remember my words when they come true.”

“And it was the cards that told you all that, Olesya?”

She did not answer me at once.

“The cards too,” she said evasively, with seeming reluctance. “But I can tell a lot even without them – by a man’s face, for instance. If a man’s going to die a dreadful death soon, I can read that in his face at once; I don’t even have to talk to him.”

“But what can you see in his face?”

“I don’t know myself. I suddenly feel scared, as if he were standing dead in front of me. Ask Granny – she’ll tell you I’m speaking the truth. Last year Trofim the miller hanged himself in his mill. I saw him two days before and I said to Granny right away, ‘Mark my words, Granny, Trofim’s going to die a horrible death one of these days.’ And so he did. Last Christmas Yashka – he was a horse-thief – dropped in and asked Granny to tell his fortune. Granny spread out her cards and started. And he asked in joke, ‘Tell me, Granny, what kind of death I’m going to die.’ He laughed, but I looked at him and froze to my seat: I saw him sitting there, and his face was dead and green. His eyes were shut and his lips were black. Then, a week later, we heard that the peasants had caught Yashka just as he was trying to steal some horses. They beat him all night. People here are pitiless and cruel. They drove nails into his heels, and broke his ribs with stakes, and by the morning he was gone.”

“But why didn’t you tell him he was going to get into trouble?”

“Why should I?” she replied. “How can you get away from your fate? He’d just have worried uselessly in his last days. I feel nasty myself because I can see things like that, and I hate myself for it. Only what can I do? It’s my fate. My grandmother could foretell death when she was younger, and my mother too, and my grandmother’s mother – it’s not our fault, it’s just in our blood.”

She had stopped spinning and sat with bowed head, her hands lying quietly in her lap. Her staring eyes with the dilated pupils reflected some dark terror, an involuntary submission to the mysterious powers and supernatural knowledge that had descended on her soul.