There was something repugnantly dog-like in this silent conversation with the eyes alone, and from the slow, rapt movement of the women as they passed it seemed as if the chosen one, at an imperious flicker of the man’s eyelid, would humbly sink to the dirty ground as if she were killed.
“Tipsy brute! Brazen face!” grumbled Ludmilla’s mother.
She was a tall, thin woman, with a long face and a bad complexion, and hair which had been cut short after typhus. She was like a worn-out broom.
Ludmilla sat beside her, unsuccessfully trying to turn her attention from the street by asking questions about one thing and another.
“Stop it, you monster!” muttered the mother, blinking restlessly. Her narrow Mongol eyes were strangely bright and immovable, always fixed on something and always stationary.
“Don’t be angry, Mamochka; it doesn’t matter,” Ludmilla would say.
“Just look how the mat-maker’s widow is dressed up!”
“I should be able to dress better if it were not for you three. You have eaten me up, devoured me,” said the mother, pitilessly through her tears, fixing her eyes on the large, broad figure of the mat-maker’s widow.
She was like a small house. Her chest stuck out like the roof, and her red face, half hidden by the green handkerchief which was tied round it, was like a dormer-window when the sun is reflected on it.
Evsy — enko, drawing his harmonica to his chest, began to play.
The harmonica played many tunes; the sounds traveled a long way, and the children came from all the street around, and fell in the sand at the feet of the performer, trembling with ecstasy.
“You wait; I’ll give you something!” the woman promised her husband.
He looked at her askance, without speaking.
And the mat-maker’s widow sat not far off on the Xlistov’s bench, listening intently.
In the field behind the cemetery the sunset was red. In the street, as on a river, floated brightly clothed, great pieces of flesh. The children rushed along like a whirlwind; the warm air was caressing and intoxicating.
A pungent odor rose from the sand, which had been made hot by the sun during the day, and peculiarly noticeable was a fat, sweet smell from the slaughter-house — the smell of blood. From the yard where the fur-dresser lived came the salt and bitter odor of tanning.
The women’s chatter, the drunken roar of the men, the bell-like voices of the children, the bass melody of the harmonica — all mingled together in one deep rumble. The earth, which is ever creating, gave a mighty sigh.
All was coarse and naked, but it instilled a great, deep faith in that gloomy life, so shamelessly animal.
At times above the noise certain painful, never-to-be-forgotten words went straight to one’s heart:
“It is not right for you all together to set upon one. You must take turns.”
“Who pities us when we do not pity ourselves?”
“Did God bring women into the world in order to deride them?”
The night drew near, the air became fresher, the sounds became more subdued. The wooden houses seemed to swell and grow taller, clothing themselves with shadows.
The children were dragged away from the yard to bed. Some of them were already asleep by the fence or at the feet or on the knees of their mothers.
Most of the children grew quieter and more docile with the night.
Evsyenko disappeared unnoticed; he seemed to have melted away. The mat — maker’s widow was also missing. The bass notes of the harmonica could be heard somewhere in the distance, beyond the cemetery.
Ludmilla’s mother sat on a bench doubled up, with her back stuck out like a cat.
My grandmother had gone out to take tea with a neighbor, a midwife, a great fat woman with a nose like a duck’s, and a gold medal “for saving lives” on her flat, masculine-looking chest.
The whole street feared her, regarding her as a witch, and it was related of her that she had carried out of the flames, when a fire broke out, the three children and sick wife of a certain colonel.
There was a friendship between grandmother and her. When they met in the street they used to smile at each other from a long way off, as if they had seen something specially pleasant.
Kostrom, Ludmilla, and I sat on the bench at the gate. Tchurka had called upon Ludmilla’s brother to wrestle with him. Locked in each other’s arms they trampled down the sand and became angry.
“Leave off!” cried Ludmilla, timorously.
Looking at her sidewise out of his black eyes, Kostrom told a story about the hunter Kalinin, a gray-haired old man with cunning eyes, a man of evil fame, known to all the village.
He had not long been dead, but they had not buried him in the earth in the grave-yard, but had placed his coffin above ground, away from the other graves.
The coffin was black, on tall trestles; on the lid were drawn in white paint a cross, a spear, a reed, and two bones.
Every night, as soon as it grew dark, the old man rose from his coffin and walked about the cemetery, looking for something, till the first cock crowed.
“Don’t talk about such dreadful things!” begged Ludmilla.
“Nonsense!” cried Tchurka, breaking away from her brother. “What are you telling lies for?
I saw them bury the coffin myself, and the one above ground is simply a monument.
As to a dead man walking about, the drunken blacksmith set the idea afloat.”
Kostrom, without looking at him, suggested:
“Go and sleep in the cemetery; then you will see.”
They began to quarrel, and Ludmilla, shaking her head sadly, asked:
“Mamochka, do dead people walk about at night?”
“They do,” answered her mother, as if the question had called her back from a distance.
The son of the shopkeeper Valek, a tall, stout, red-faced youth of twenty, came to us, and, hearing what we were disputing about, said:
“I will give three greven and ten cigarettes to whichever of you three will sleep till daylight on the coffin, and I will pull the ears of the one who is afraid — as long as he likes. Well?”
We were all silent, confused, and Ludmilla’s mother said:
“What nonsense!
What do you mean by putting the children up to such nonsense?”