A flattened, pointed head adorned with a round yellow spot on an olive background.
In the roof of the head sat a pair of lidless icy narrow eyes, and these eyes glittered with indescribable malice.
The head moved as if spitting air and the whole post slid back into the burdock, leaving only the eyes which glared at Alexander Semyonovich without blinking.
Drenched with sweat, the latter uttered five incredible fear-crazed words.
So piercing were the eyes between the leaves.
"What the devil's going on..."
Then he remembered about fakirs... Yes, yes, in India, a wicker basket and a picture. Snake-charming.
The head reared up again, and the body began to uncoil.
Alexander Semyonovich raised his flute to his lips, gave a hoarse squeak and, gasping for breath, began to play the waltz from Eugene Onegin.
The eyes in the burdock lit up at once with implacable hatred for the opera.
"Are you crazy, playing in this heat?" came Manya's cheerful voice, and out of the corner of his eye Alexander Semyonovich glimpsed a patch of white.
Then a terrible scream shattered the farm, swelling, rising, and the waltz began to limp painfully.
The head shot out of the burdock, its eyes leaving Alexander Semyonovich's soul to repent of his sins.
A snake about thirty feet long and as thick as a man uncoiled like a spring and shot out of the weeds.
Clouds of dust sprayed up from the path, and the waltz ceased.
The snake raced past the state farm manager straight to the white blouse.
Feight saw everything clearly: Manya went a yellowish-white, and her long hair rose about a foot above her head like wire.
Before Feight's eyes the snake opened its mouth, something fork-like darting out, then sank its teeth into the shoulder of Manya, who was sinking into the dust, and jerked her up about two feet above the ground.
Manya gave another piercing death cry.
The snake coiled itself into a twelve-yard screw, its tail sweeping up a tornado, and began to crush Manya.
She did not make another sound. Feight could hear her bones crunching.
High above the ground rose Manya's head pressed lovingly against the snake's cheek.
Blood gushed out of her mouth, a broken arm dangled in the air and more blood spurted out from under the fingernails.
Then the snake opened its mouth, put its gaping jaws over Manya's head and slid onto the rest of her like a glove slipping onto a finger.
The snake's breath was so hot that Feight could feel it on his face, and the tail all but swept him off the path into the acrid dust.
It was then that Feight went grey.
First the left, then the right half of his jet-black head turned to silver.
Nauseated to death, he eventually managed to drag himself away from the path, then turned and ran, seeing nothing and nobody, with a wild shriek that echoed for miles around.
CHAPTER IX.
A Writhing Mass
Shukin, the GPU agent at Dugino Station, was a very brave man.
He said thoughtfully to his companion, the ginger-headed Polaitis:
"Well, let's go.
Eh?
Get the motorbike." Then he paused for a moment and added, turning to the man who was sitting on the bench: "Put the flute down."
But instead of putting down the flute, the trembling grey-haired man on the bench in the Dugino GPU office, began weeping and moaning.
Shukin and Polaitis realised they would have to pull the flute away.
His fingers seemed to be stuck to it.
Shukin, who possessed enormous, almost circus-like strength, prised the fingers away one by one.
Then they put the flute on the table.
It was early on the sunny morning of the day after Manya's death.
"You come too," Shukin said to Alexander Semyonovich, "and show us where everything is." But Feight shrank back from him in horror, putting up his hands as if to ward off some terrible vision.
"You must show us," Polaitis added sternly.
"Leave him alone.
You can see the state he's in."
"Send me to Moscow," begged Alexander Semyonovich, weeping.
"You really don't want to go back to the farm again?"
Instead of replying Feight shielded himself with his hands again, his eyes radiating horror.
"Alright then," decided Shukin. "You're really not in a fit state... I can see that.
There's an express train leaving shortly, you can go on it."