VI

From that day on I was a frequent visitor to the witch’s hut. Each time I came Olesya received me with her usual reserved dignity. But I always noticed, by the first spontaneous movement she made upon seeing me, that she was glad I had come. Manuilikha continued to mutter something to herself but did not otherwise show any unfriendliness towards me, probably thanks to her granddaughter’s invisible intercession. Besides, the presents I occasionally brought her, such as a warm shawl, a jar of jam, or a bottle of cherry liqueur, made her more favourably disposed towards me. As if by tacit agreement, it had become a habit with Olesya and myself that she always walked back with me as far as Irinovo Road. And because we always started a lively and interesting conversation we both tried unwittingly to prolong the walk along the quiet forest borders by slackening our pace as much as we could. After reaching the road I would walk back with her about half a mile, but still, before parting, we would talk on for a long time, standing under the fragrant shelter of pine boughs.

It was not Olesya’s beauty alone that fascinated me; I was also charmed by her integrity, her distinctive and free character, and by her mind, clear and yet wrapped in unshakeable hereditary superstition, a mind as innocent as a child’s, and yet not devoid of the arch coquetry of a beautiful woman. She was tireless in asking me detailed questions about all that caught and held her primitive, vivid imagination: countries and people, natural phenomena, the structure of the earth and the universe, men of learning, big cities, and what not. Many things seemed to her wonderful, fantastic, impossible. But because I had always been earnest, simple and sincere in my talks with her, she readily and unquestioningly believed whatever I told her. Sometimes, when I was at a loss to explain something which I thought was too complicated for her half-savage mind – or about which I was not quite clear myself – I would say in reply to her eager queries, “I’m afraid I can’t explain that to you. You wouldn’t understand.”

Then she would implore me, “Oh, please tell me. I’ll try to understand. Tell me somehow, even if you think it won’t be easy for me.”

She made me venture on monstrous parallels or cite most audacious examples, and if I floundered for the right phrase she would encourage me by a shower of impatient questions like those you put to a stammerer who has got stuck with some word. And indeed, in the end her keen and versatile mind and her fresh imagination would triumph over my lack of skill as an instructor. I had to admit that, for a person of her environment and education – or lack of education, to be exact – she had extraordinary capabilities.

Once in passing I mentioned Petersburg. She at once asked me, “What is Petersburg? A small town?”

“No, it isn’t a small town. It’s the biggest Russian city.”

“The biggest? You mean the very biggest? And there isn’t any bigger one?” she questioned me naively.

“No. All the bigwigs live there. The houses are all made of stone – there are no wooden ones.”

“It must be much bigger than our Stepan, I suppose?” she asked confidently.

“O yes, a little bigger – about five hundred times, I’d say. In some of the houses there live twice as many people as in the whole of Stepan.”

“Good heavens! What are those houses like, then?” she asked, almost terrified.

As usual I had to resort to a comparison.

“Terrific houses. Five, six, or even seven storeys. Do you see that pine-tree there?”

“You mean the tallest? Yes.”

“Well, those houses are as tall as that. And crammed with people from top to bottom. Those people live in small rooms like birds in cages, about a dozen in each, so that there isn’t even enough air for them all. And others live down below, under the earth, in damp and cold; some of them see no sunshine in their room all the year round.”

“I’d never swop my woods for that city of yours,” she said, shaking her head. “Even Stepan seems horrible to me when I go to the market there. Pushing and yelling and wrangling all around. I feel such a longing for the woods I could throw up everything and run away. I’d never consent to live in a city.”

“But suppose your husband came from a city?” I asked, with a fleeting smile.

She frowned, and her fine nostrils quivered.

“Pshaw!” she said disdainfully. “I don’t want any husband.”

“You’re only talking like that now, Olesya. Almost all girls say the same, but they get married all right. Wait till you fall in love with somebody, and then you’ll be willing to follow him to the world’s end, let alone to a city.”

“Oh, no, please, don’t let us talk about that,” she insisted, annoyed. “What’s the good of it? Please don’t.”

“How funny you are, Olesya. Do you really imagine you’ll never love a man? You’re so young and beautiful and strong. Once your blood is up you’ll forget any pledge you may have taken.”

“What if I do fall in love!” she answered, and her eyes flashed defiantly. “I won’t ask anybody’s permission.”

“So you’ll get married too,” I teased her.

“You mean in church?”

“Of course. The priest will lead you round the lectern and the deacon will sing Rejoice, Isaiah! and they’ll put a crown on your head.”

She dropped her eyelids and shook her head with a wan smile.

“No, my friend. You may not like what I’m going to tell you, but nobody in our family got married in church: both my mother and my grandmother managed without that. We mayn’t even enter a church.”

“All because of your witchcraft?”

“Yes, because of our witchcraft,” she replied calmly. “How could I dare to turn up in church when my soul’s been sold to him since I was born?”

“Believe me, you’re deceiving yourself, Olesya dear. What you’re saying is simply preposterous – it’s laughable.”

The odd expression of grim resignation to her mysterious destiny, which I had noticed before, came into her face again.

“No, no. You can’t understand that, but I feel it. I feel it here” – she pressed her hand to her breast – ”in my heart. There’s an everlasting curse on all our family. Judge for yourself: Who else is helping us if it isn’t he”? How can an ordinary person do what I can? All our power comes from him.”

And each time this unusual subject came up our conversation finished that way. In vain did I bring forward all the arguments within her grasp and talk to her in simple terms about hypnotism, suggestion, psychiatrists and Indian fakirs, in vain did I attempt a physiological explanation of some of her experiments, such as charming away haemorrhage, so easily achieved by skilfully pressing a vein; much as she trusted me in everything else, she obstinately rejected all my explanations.

“All right, I’ll grant what you say about charming away blood, but where does everything else come from?” she would argue, raising her voice. “Charming away blood isn’t all I can do, is it? Do you want me to rid your house of all its mice and roaches in one day? Do you want me to cure the worst fever with plain water in two days, even if all your doctors should give up the patient? Do you want me to make you completely forget some word? And why can I interpret dreams? Why is it that I know what’ll happen in the future?”

The dispute always ended in Olesya and myself changing the subject, not without pent-up resentment against each other. There was much in her black magic that my little knowledge could not explain away. I cannot tell whether she possessed even half the secrets she spoke about with so much unaffected conviction. But what I did see often enough, made me firmly believe that she had that instinctive, hazy, strange knowledge, acquired through chance experience, which forestalls science by centuries and lives on in the ignorant masses of the people, a knowledge mingled with ridiculous and monstrous superstitions and handed down from generation to generation as a great secret.

Despite our sharp differences over this one point, we were getting more and more attached to each other. So far we had not exchanged a word of love, but it had become a necessity for us to be together, and often, in those silent moments when our eyes chanced to meet, I saw Olesya’s eyes grow moist and the thin blue vein on her temple throb faster.

On the other hand, my relations with Yarmola were spoiled for good. My visits to the witch’s hut and my evening walks with Olesya were obviously an open secret to him: he always knew with astonishing accuracy what was going on in his forest. He had begun to avoid me. His black eyes watched me from afar with a look of reproach and displeasure whenever I made ready to start for the forest, although he did not speak a word of disapproval. Our comically serious studies had ceased. When I occasionally suggested a lesson in the evening he would dismiss the idea with a careless gesture.

“What’s the use? It’s a waste of time, master,” he would say with lazy contempt.

Nor did we go shooting any more. Whenever I brought up the matter Yarmola found some pretext to refuse: a gun out of repair, a sick dog, lack of time.

“I’ve no time, master, I’ve got to do some ploughing,” he would say more often than not in reply to my invitation; and I knew very well that he had no intention of ploughing but was going to hang about the tavern all day long, hoping against hope that someone might stand him a drink. His tacit, smouldering hostility was beginning to weary me, and I was thinking of seizing the first opportunity to dismiss him. What made me hesitate was commiseration for his large, poverty-stricken family, whom his wage of four rubles kept from starving to death.