The garrulous cook of the land — lord, a sharp-nosed woman, thickly covered with freckles, was like a cuckoo. The landlord himself was like an old fat dove. In fact, they were all like some bird, animal, or wild beast.
Although the morning was so pleasant and bright, it made me feel sad, and I wanted to get away into the fields where no one came, for I had already learned that human creatures always spoil a bright day.
One day when I was lying on the roof grandmother called me, and said in a low voice, shaking her head as she lay on her bed:
“Kolia is dead.”
The little boy had slipped from the pillow, and lay livid, lanky on the felt cover. His night-shirt had worked itself up round his neck, leaving bare his swollen stomach and crooked legs. His hands were curiously folded behind his back, as if he had been trying to lift himself up.
His head was bent on one side.
“Thank God he has gone!” said grandmother as she did her hair.
“What would have become of the poor little wretch had he lived?”
Treading almost as if he were dancing, grandfather made his appearance, and cautiously touched the closed eyes of the child with his fingers. Grandmother asked him angrily:
“What do you mean by touching him with unwashen hands?”
He muttered:
“There you are! He gets born, lives, and eats, and all for nothing.”
“You are half asleep,” grandmother cut him short.
He looked at her vacantly, and went out in the yard, saying:
“I am not going to give him a funeral; you can do what you like about it.”
“Phoo! you miserable creature!”
I went out, and did not return until it was close upon evening.
They buried Kolia on the morning of the following day, and during the mass I sat by the reopened grave with my dog and Yaz’s father.
He had dug the grave cheaply, and kept praising himself for it before my face.
“I have only done this out of friendship; for any one else I should have charged so many rubles.”
Looking into the yellow pit, from which arose a heavy odor, I saw some moist black planks at one side.
At my slightest movement the heaps of sand around the grave fell to the bottom in a thin stream, leaving wrinkles in the sides.
I moved on purpose, so that the sand would hide those boards.
“No larks now!” said Yaz’s father, as he smoked.
Grandmother carried out the little coffin. The “trashy peasant” sprang into the hole, took the coffin from her, placed it beside the black boards, and, jumping out of the grave, began to hurl the earth into it with his feet and his spade.
Grandfather and grandmother also helped him in silence.
There were neither priests nor beggars there; only we four amid a dense crowd of crosses.
As she gave the sexton his money, grandmother said reproachfully:
“But you have disturbed Varina’s coffin.”
“What else could I do?
If I had not done that, I should have had to take some one else’s piece of ground.
But there’s nothing to worry about.”
Grandmother prostrated herself on the grave, sobbed and groaned, and went away, followed by grandfather, his eyes hidden by the peak of his cap, clutching at his worn coat.
“They have sown the seed in unplowed ground,” he said suddenly, running along in front, just like a crow on the plowed field.
“What does he mean?” I asked grandmother.
“God bless him!
He has his thoughts,” she answered.
It was hot. Grandmother went heavily; her feet sank in the warm sand. She halted frequently, mopping her perspiring face with her handkerchief.
“That black thing in the grave,” I asked her, “was it mother’s coffin?”
“Yes,” she said angrily.
“Ignorant dog!
It is not a year yet, and our Varia is already decayed!
It is the sand that has done it; it lets the water through.
If that had to happen, it would have been better to — ”
“Shall we all decay?”
“All.
Only the saints escape it.”
“You — you will not decay!”
She halted, set my cap straight, and said to me seriously:
“Don’t think about it; it is better not.