V

Just then Manuilikha spread a clean towel with embroidered ends on the table, and put a steaming pot on it.

“Supper’s on the table, Olesya,” she called to her granddaughter. To me she added after a momentary hesitation, “Wouldn’t you like to join us, sir? You’re welcome, but ours is poor food. It’s just a plain soup.”

She was none too insistent with her invitation, and I was about to decline when Olesya in her turn invited me with such charming simplicity and so friendly a smile that I could not but accept. She herself ladled me a plateful of the buckwheat soup with bacon, onions, potatoes, and chicken – exceedingly tasty and nutritious. Neither grandmother nor granddaughter crossed themselves as they sat down to their meal. At supper I kept watching the two women because I have always believed that when eating people show their characters more clearly than at any other time. Manuilikha was devouring the soup with hasty greed, champing loudly and pushing into her mouth huge pieces of bread that made her flabby cheeks bulge. Olesya, on the other hand, displayed an innate breeding even in the way she ate.

An hour after supper I took my leave of the occupants of the witch’s hut.

“Would you like me to walk a little way with you?” Olesya suggested.

“What’s this about going with him?” Manuilikha mumbled angrily. “Can’t you sit still for a while, you fidget?”

But Olesya had already put on her red cashmere shawl; suddenly she ran up to her grandmother, put her arms round her, and gave her a smacking kiss.

“Granny! Dearest Granny, it’ll only take me one minute – I’ll be back in no time.”

“All right, all right,” the old woman protested feebly. “Please excuse her, sir: she’s so silly.”

From a narrow path we came out on to a forest road black with mud, trampled by horses and furrowed by cart-wheels, the ruts full of water that reflected the blazing sunset. We walked along the roadside covered with the brown leaves of the previous year, still moist after the snow. Here and there large campanulas – the earliest flower in Polesye – stuck up their lilac heads through the dead yellow of the leaves.

“Listen, Olesya,” I began, “I’d like very much to ask you something, but I’m afraid you may be angry with me. Tell me, is it true that your grandmother – er – how shall I put it – ”

“ – is a witch?” Olesya prompted calmly.

“No, not a witch,” I faltered. “Well, yes, a witch if you like. People say such a lot of foolish things. Perhaps she simply knows certain herbs and remedies and charms. You needn’t answer me if you’d rather not.”

“Why not? I don’t mind,” she replied simply. “Yes, she is a witch. But now she’s old and can’t do what she used to.”

“And what could she do?” I asked with curiosity.

“All sorts of things. She could cure people, soothe toothache, stop blood, charm away a bite by a mad dog or a snake, discover treasures – there was nothing she couldn’t do.”

“You know, Olesya – I’m very sorry, but I don’t believe in that sort of thing. Be frank with me, won’t you – I shan’t tell anybody: all that is just so much pretence to humbug people, isn’t it?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“You may think whatever you please. Of course, it’s easy enough to humbug a countrywoman, but I wouldn’t dream of deceiving you.”

“So you firmly believe in witchcraft?”

“Of course I do! All our family has practised it. I can do quite a lot myself.”

“Olesya, my dear, if you only knew how much that interests me. Won’t you ever show me anything?”

“Why not?” she answered readily. “Do you want it now?”

“Yes, if I may.”

“You won’t be afraid?”

“What nonsense. I might be afraid if it were night, but it’s still light now.”

“All right. Give me your hand.”

I obeyed. She quickly rolled up the sleeve of my overcoat and unclasped the stud at my cuff; then she took from her pocket a small dagger about five inches long, and pulled it out of its leather sheath.

“What are you going to do?” I asked, a mean fear stirring inside me.

“Just a moment. You said you wouldn’t be afraid!”

Suddenly her hand made a hardly perceptible movement, and I felt on my wrist, slightly above where the pulse is counted, the irritating touch of the sharp blade. Blood oozed out at once along the cut, trickled down my wrist, and dripped fast on to the ground. I could hardly hold back a cry, and I think I went pale.

“Don’t be afraid – you aren’t going to die.” Olesya laughed.

She firmly grasped my arm above the wound, bent her head low over it, and began to whisper rapidly, her hot, fitful breath searing my skin. And when she straightened up and let go my arm I saw nothing but a red scratch where the wound had been.

“Well? Are you satisfied?” she asked with a sly smile, putting away her dagger. “Or do you want more?”

“Of course I do. Only I’d prefer something less horrifying – and no bloodshed, please.”

“What shall I show you?” she said musingly. “All right, go ahead of me along the road. Only see that you don’t look back.”

“It won’t be something horrible, will it?” I asked, trying to smile away a fearful anticipation of some disagreeable surprise.

“No, not a bit. Go on.”

I started to walk, greatly interested in the experiment and feeling Olesya’s tense gaze on by back. But having taken about twenty steps, I suddenly tripped at a completely smooth place and fell on my face.

“Go on, go on!” Olesya shouted. “Don’t look back! That’s nothing, you’ll be as good as new. Hold on to the earth when you fall.”

I walked on. After another ten steps I sprawled on the ground once more.

Olesya burst out laughing, and clapped her hands.

“Well? Have you had enough?” she cried, her white teeth flashing. “Do you believe now? Never mind – you went down, not up.”

“How did you do it?” I asked in astonishment, shaking off the sprigs and dry grass-blades that had stuck to my clothes. “It isn’t a secret, I hope?”

“No secret at all. I’ll tell you with pleasure. Only I’m afraid you won’t understand. I mayn’t be able to explain it properly.”

She was right – I did not quite understand her. But if I am not mistaken, the trick was that she walked behind me step by step, keeping pace with and looking fixedly at me, and tried to imitate my every movement, even the slightest, identifying herself with me, as it were. Having walked a few paces, she began to imagine, at some distance ahead of me, a rope strung some ten inches above the ground. The instant I must touch the imaginary rope with my foot she suddenly made a falling movement, and then the strongest man was bound to fall, she told me. A long time afterwards, when reading Dr. Charcot’s account of the experiments he had made with two Salpetriere patients, professional sorceresses suffering from hysteria, I recalled Olesya’s confused explanation. And I was greatly surprised to learn that French sorceresses used to resort to the very same stunt as had been performed by the pretty Polesye witch.

“I can do a lot more,” said Olesya with assurance. “For example, I could give you a scare.”

“What do you mean?”

“I could make you feel scared. You would be sitting, say, in your own room one evening, and all of a sudden you’d feel so terribly scared you’d shake in your boots and wouldn’t even dare to look behind you. Only to do that I must know where you live, and must first see your room.”

“Oh, well, that is quite simple,” I tried to scoff. “You’d walk up to my window and knock on it, or shout something.”

“No, no. I’d be here in the forest, right in my house. But I’d sit there and keep thinking that I was walking down the street, going into your house, opening your door, walking into your room. You’d be sitting somewhere – let’s say at the table – I’d steal up on you from behind – you wouldn’t hear me – and I’d clutch your shoulder with my hands and begin squeezing it – harder, harder, harder – staring at you all the time, like this – look.”

She suddenly knitted her fine eyebrows and fixed her eyes on my face, with a terrible and luring expression, her pupils dilating and taking on a deep-blue shade. I at once recalled Medusa’s head, a painting I had seen at the Tretyakov Art Gallery in Moscow – the artist’s name has slipped my memory. Under that fixed, uncanny gaze I was gripped with a chilling terror of the supernatural.

“Stop that Olesya, please,” I said with a forced laugh. “I like you much better when you smile – then you have such a lovely, childish face.”

We walked on. I thought of Olesya’s way of speaking – so expressive and, indeed, so refined for an uneducated girl – and I said, “Do you know what surprises me about you, Olesya? You’ve grown up in the woods, seeing nobody. And you can’t have read much, for all I can say.”

“I can’t read at all.”

“Well, there you are. Yet you speak like a real young lady. Why is that? Do you understand what I’m asking?”

“Yes, I do. It all comes from Granny. Don’t judge her by her looks. She’s so clever! Perhaps she’ll get to talking when you’re there, some day when she’s got more used to you. She knows everything, absolutely everything you can ask her about. Of course, she’s old now.”

“Then she must have seen a lot in her life? Where does she come from? Where did she live before?”

These questions did not seem to please Olesya. She did not answer at once.

“I don’t know,” she said, evasively and reluctantly. “She doesn’t like to talk about it. And if she ever says anything she asks me to forget it and never mention it again. It’s time I was going back, though,” she hastened to add, “or Granny’ll be cross with me. Goodbye. I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”

I introduced myself.

“Ivan Timofeyevich? Good. Well, goodbye, Ivan Timofeyevich! Please don’t shun our house – come once in a while.”

I held out my hand, and her small, strong hand responded with a firm, friendly grasp.