Taras Bulba and Other Tales

N >> Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol >> Taras Bulba and Other Tales

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Broad is the river Dniester, and in it are many deep pools, dense
reed-beds, clear shallows and little bays; its watery mirror gleams,
filled with the melodious plaint of the swan, the proud wild goose
glides swiftly over it; and snipe, red-throated ruffs, and other birds
are to be found among the reeds and along the banks. The Cossacks
rowed swiftly on in the narrow double-ruddered boats--rowed stoutly,
carefully shunning the sand bars, and cleaving the ranks of the birds,
which took wing--rowed, and talked of their hetman.

ST. JOHN'S EVE

A STORY TOLD BY THE SACRISTAN OF THE DIKANKA CHURCH

Thoma Grigroovitch had one very strange eccentricity: to the day of
his death he never liked to tell the same thing twice. There were
times when, if you asked him to relate a thing afresh, he would
interpolate new matter, or alter it so that it was impossible to
recognise it. Once upon a time, one of those gentlemen who, like the
usurers at our yearly fairs, clutch and beg and steal every sort of
frippery, and issue mean little volumes, no thicker than an A B C
book, every month, or even every week, wormed this same story out of
Thoma Grigorovitch, and the latter completely forgot about it. But
that same young gentleman, in the pea-green caftan, came from Poltava,
bringing with him a little book, and, opening it in the middle, showed
it to us. Thoma Grigorovitch was on the point of setting his
spectacles astride of his nose, but recollected that he had forgotten
to wind thread about them and stick them together with wax, so he
passed it over to me. As I understand nothing about reading and
writing, and do not wear spectacles, I undertook to read it. I had not
turned two leaves when all at once he caught me by the hand and
stopped me.

"Stop! tell me first what you are reading."

I confess that I was a trifle stunned by such a question.

"What! what am I reading, Thoma Grigorovitch? Why, your own words."

"Who told you that they were my words?"

"Why, what more would you have? Here it is printed: 'Related by such
and such a sacristan.'"

"Spit on the head of the man who printed that! he lies, the dog of a
Moscow pedlar! Did I say that? ''Twas just the same as though one
hadn't his wits about him!' Listen. I'll tell the tale to you on the
spot."

We moved up to the table, and he began.

*

My grandfather (the kingdom of heaven be his! may he eat only wheaten
rolls and poppy-seed cakes with honey in the other world!) could tell
a story wonderfully well. When he used to begin a tale you could not
stir from the spot all day, but kept on listening. He was not like the
story-teller of the present day, when he begins to lie, with a tongue
as though he had had nothing to eat for three days, so that you snatch
your cap and flee from the house. I remember my old mother was alive
then, and in the long winter evenings when the frost was crackling out
of doors, and had sealed up hermetically the narrow panes of our
cottage, she used to sit at her wheel, drawing out a long thread in
her hand, rocking the cradle with her foot, and humming a song, which
I seem to hear even now.

The lamp, quivering and flaring up as though in fear of something,
lighted up our cottage; the spindle hummed; and all of us children,
collected in a cluster, listened to grandfather, who had not crawled
off the stove for more than five years, owing to his great age. But
the wondrous tales of the incursions of the Zaporozhian Cossacks and
the Poles, the bold deeds of Podkova, of Poltar-Kozhukh, and
Sagaidatchnii, did not interest us so much as the stories about some
deed of old which always sent a shiver through our frames and made our
hair rise upright on our heads. Sometimes such terror took possession
of us in consequence of them, that, from that evening forward, Heaven
knows how wonderful everything seemed to us. If one chanced to go out
of the cottage after nightfall for anything, one fancied that a
visitor from the other world had lain down to sleep in one's bed; and
I have often taken my own smock, at a distance, as it lay at the head
of the bed, for the Evil One rolled up into a ball! But the chief
thing about grandfather's stories was, that he never lied in all his
life; and whatever he said was so, was so.

I will now tell you one of his wonderful tales. I know that there are
a great many wise people who copy in the courts, and can even read
civil documents, but who, if you were to put into their hand a simple
prayer-book, could not make out the first letter in it, and would show
all their teeth in derision. These people laugh at everything you tell
them. Along comes one of them--and doesn't believe in witches! Yes,
glory to God that I have lived so long in the world! I have seen
heretics to whom it would be easier to lie in confession than it would
be to our brothers and equals to take snuff, and these folk would deny
the existence of witches! But let them just dream about something, and
they won't even tell what it was! There, it is no use talking about
them!

No one could have recognised the village of ours a little over a
hundred years ago; it was a hamlet, the poorest kind of a hamlet. Half
a score of miserable farmhouses, unplastered and badly thatched, were
scattered here and there about the fields. There was not a yard or a
decent shed to shelter animals or waggons. That was the way the
wealthy lived: and if you had looked for our brothers, the poor--why,
a hole in the ground--that was a cabin for you! Only by the smoke
could you tell that a God-created man lived there. You ask why they
lived so? It was not entirely through poverty: almost every one led a
raiding Cossack life, and gathered not a little plunder in foreign
lands; it was rather because it was little use building up a good
wooden house. Many folk were engaged in raids all over the
country--Crimeans, Poles, Lithuanians! It was quite possible that
their own countrymen might make a descent and plunder everything.
Anything was possible.

In this hamlet a man, or rather a devil in human form, often made his
appearance. Why he came, and whence, no one knew. He prowled about,
got drunk, and suddenly disappeared as if into the air, leaving no
trace of his existence. Then, behold, he seemed to have dropped from
the sky again, and went flying about the street of the village, of
which no trace now remains, and which was not more than a hundred
paces from Dikanka. He would collect together all the Cossacks he met;
then there were songs, laughter, and cash in plenty, and vodka flowed
like water. . . . He would address the pretty girls, and give them
ribbons, earrings, strings of beads--more than they knew what to do
with. It is true that the pretty girls rather hesitated about
accepting his presents: God knows, perhaps, what unclean hands they
had passed through. My grandfather's aunt, who kept at that time a
tavern, in which Basavriuk (as they called this devil-man) often
caroused, said that no consideration on the earth would have induced
her to accept a gift from him. But then, again, how avoid accepting?
Fear seized on every one when he knit his shaggy brows, and gave a
sidelong glance which might send your feet God knows whither: whilst
if you did accept, then the next night some fiend from the swamp, with
horns on his head, came and began to squeeze your neck, if there was a
string of beads upon it; or bite your finger, if there was a ring upon
it; or drag you by the hair, if ribbons were braided in it. God have
mercy, then, on those who held such gifts! But here was the
difficulty: it was impossible to get rid of them; if you threw them
into the water, the diabolical ring or necklace would skim along the
surface and into your hand.

There was a church in the village--St. Pantelei, if I remember
rightly. There lived there a priest, Father Athanasii of blessed
memory. Observing that Basavriuk did not come to church, even at
Easter, he determined to reprove him and impose penance upon him.
Well, he hardly escaped with his life. "Hark ye, sir!" he thundered in
reply, "learn to mind your own business instead of meddling in other
people's, if you don't want that throat of yours stuck with boiling
kutya[1]." What was to be done with this unrepentant man? Father
Athanasii contented himself with announcing that any one who should
make the acquaintance of Basavriuk would be counted a Catholic, an
enemy of Christ's orthodox church, not a member of the human race.

[1] A dish of rice or wheat flour, with honey and raisins, which is
brought to the church on the celebration of memorial masses.

In this village there was a Cossack named Korzh, who had a labourer
whom people called Peter the Orphan--perhaps because no one remembered
either his father or mother. The church elder, it is true, said that
they had died of the pest in his second year; but my grandfather's
aunt would not hear of that, and tried with all her might to furnish
him with parents, although poor Peter needed them about as much as we
need last year's snow. She said that his father had been in Zaporozhe,
and had been taken prisoner by the Turks, amongst whom he underwent
God only knows what tortures, until having, by some miracle, disguised
himself as a eunuch, he made his escape. Little cared the black-browed
youths and maidens about Peter's parents. They merely remarked, that
if he only had a new coat, a red sash, a black lambskin cap with a
smart blue crown on his head, a Turkish sabre by his side, a whip in
one hand and a pipe with handsome mountings in the other, he would
surpass all the young men. But the pity was, that the only thing poor
Peter had was a grey gaberdine with more holes in it than there are
gold pieces in a Jew's pocket. But that was not the worst of it. Korzh
had a daughter, such a beauty as I think you can hardly have chanced
to see. My grandfather's aunt used to say--and you know that it is
easier for a woman to kiss the Evil One than to call any one else a
beauty--that this Cossack maiden's cheeks were as plump and fresh as
the pinkest poppy when, bathed in God's dew, it unfolds its petals,
and coquets with the rising sun; that her brows were evenly arched
over her bright eyes like black cords, such as our maidens buy
nowadays, for their crosses and ducats, off the Moscow pedlars who
visit the villages with their baskets; that her little mouth, at sight
of which the youths smacked their lips, seemed made to warble the
songs of nightingales; that her hair, black as the raven's wing, and
soft as young flax, fell in curls over her shoulders, for our maidens
did not then plait their hair in pigtails interwoven with pretty,
bright-hued ribbons. Eh! may I never intone another alleluia in the
choir, if I would not have kissed her, in spite of the grey which is
making its way through the old wool which covers my pate, and of the
old woman beside me, like a thorn in my side! Well, you know what
happens when young men and maidens live side by side. In the twilight
the heels of red boots were always visible in the place where Pidorka
chatted with her Peter. But Korzh would never have suspected anything
out of the way, only one day--it is evident that none but the Evil One
could have inspired him--Peter took into his head to kiss the maiden's
rosy lips with all his heart, without first looking well about him;
and that same Evil One--may the son of a dog dream of the holy
cross!--caused the old grey-beard, like a fool, to open the cottage
door at that same moment. Korzh was petrified, dropped his jaw, and
clutched at the door for support. Those unlucky kisses completely
stunned him.

Recovering himself, he took his grandfather's hunting whip from the
wall, and was about to belabour Peter's back with it, when Pidorka's
little six-year-old brother Ivas rushed up from somewhere or other,
and, grasping his father's legs with his little hands, screamed out,
"Daddy, daddy! don't beat Peter!" What was to be done? A father's
heart is not made of stone. Hanging the whip again on the wall, he led
Peter quietly from the house. "If you ever show yourself in my cottage
again, or even under the windows, look out, Peter, for, by heaven,
your black moustache will disappear; and your black locks, though
wound twice about your ears, will take leave of your pate, or my name
is not Terentiy Korzh." So saying, he gave him such a taste of his
fist in the nape of his neck, that all grew dark before Peter, and he
flew headlong out of the place.

So there was an end of their kissing. Sorrow fell upon our turtle
doves; and a rumour grew rife in the village that a certain Pole, all
embroidered with gold, with moustaches, sabre, spurs, and pockets
jingling like the bells of the bag with which our sacristan Taras goes
through the church every day, had begun to frequent Korzh's house.
Now, it is well known why a father has visitors when there is a
black-browed daughter about. So, one day, Pidorka burst into tears,
and caught the hand of her brother Ivas. "Ivas, my dear! Ivas, my
love! fly to Peter, my child of gold, like an arrow from a bow. Tell
him all: I would have loved his brown eyes, I would have kissed his
fair face, but my fate decrees otherwise. More than one handkerchief
have I wet with burning tears. I am sad and heavy at heart. And my own
father is my enemy. I will not marry the Pole, whom I do not love.
Tell him they are making ready for a wedding, but there will be no
music at our wedding: priests will sing instead of pipes and viols. I
shall not dance with my bridegroom: they will carry me out. Dark, dark
will be my dwelling of maple wood; and, instead of chimneys, a cross
will stand upon the roof."

Peter stood petrified, without moving from the spot, when the innocent
child lisped out Pidorka's words to him. "And I, wretched man, had
thought to go to the Crimea and Turkey, to win gold and return to
thee, my beauty! But it may not be. We have been overlooked by the
evil eye. I too shall have a wedding, dear one; but no ecclesiastics
will be present at that wedding. The black crow instead of the pope
will caw over me; the bare plain will be my dwelling; the dark blue
cloud my roof-tree. The eagle will claw out my brown eyes: the rain
will wash my Cossack bones, and the whirlwinds dry them. But what am
I? Of what should I complain? 'Tis clear God willed it so. If I am to
be lost, then so be it!" and he went straight to the tavern.

My late grandfather's aunt was somewhat surprised at seeing Peter at
the tavern, at an hour when good men go to morning mass; and stared at
him as though in a dream when he called for a jug of brandy, about
half a pailful. But the poor fellow tried in vain to drown his woe.
The vodka stung his tongue like nettles, and tasted more bitter than
wormwood. He flung the jug from him upon the ground.

"You have sorrowed enough, Cossack," growled a bass voice behind him.
He looked round--it was Basavriuk! Ugh, what a face! His hair was like
a brush, his eyes like those of a bull. "I know what you lack: here it
is." As he spoke he jingled a leather purse which hung from his girdle
and smiled diabolically. Peter shuddered. "Ha, ha, ha! how it shines!"
he roared, shaking out ducats into his hands: "ha, ha, ha! how it
jingles! And I only ask one thing for a whole pile of such shiners."

"It is the Evil One!" exclaimed Peter. "Give me them! I'm ready for
anything!"

They struck hands upon it, and Basavriuk said, "You are just in time,
Peter: to-morrow is St. John the Baptist's day. Only on this one night
in the year does the fern blossom. I will await you at midnight in the
Bear's ravine."

I do not believe that chickens await the hour when the housewife
brings their corn with as much anxiety as Peter awaited the evening.
He kept looking to see whether the shadows of the trees were not
lengthening, whether the sun was not turning red towards setting; and,
the longer he watched, the more impatient he grew. How long it was!
Evidently, God's day had lost its end somewhere. But now the sun has
set. The sky is red only on one side, and it is already growing dark.
It grows colder in the fields. It gets gloomier and gloomier, and at
last quite dark. At last! With heart almost bursting from his bosom,
he set out and cautiously made his way down through the thick woods
into the deep hollow called the Bear's ravine. Basavriuk was already
waiting there. It was so dark that you could not see a yard before
you. Hand in hand they entered the ravine, pushing through the
luxuriant thorn-bushes and stumbling at almost every step. At last
they reached an open spot. Peter looked about him: he had never
chanced to come there before. Here Basavriuk halted.

"Do you see before you three hillocks? There are a great many kinds of
flowers upon them. May some power keep you from plucking even one of
them. But as soon as the fern blossoms, seize it, and look not round,
no matter what may seem to be going on behind thee."

Peter wanted to ask some questions, but behold Basavriuk was no longer
there. He approached the three hillocks--where were the flowers? He
saw none. The wild steppe-grass grew all around, and hid everything in
its luxuriance. But the lightning flashed; and before him was a whole
bed of flowers, all wonderful, all strange: whilst amongst them there
were also the simple fronds of fern. Peter doubted his senses, and
stood thoughtfully before them, arms akimbo.

"What manner of prodigy is this? why, one can see these weeds ten
times a day. What is there marvellous about them? Devil's face must be
mocking me!"

But behold! the tiny flower-bud of the fern reddened and moved as
though alive. It was a marvel in truth. It grew larger and larger, and
glowed like a burning coal. The tiny stars of light flashed up,
something burst softly, and the flower opened before his eyes like a
flame, lighting the others about it.

"Now is the time," thought Peter, and extended his hand. He saw
hundreds of hairy hands reach also for the flower from behind him, and
there was a sound of scampering in his rear. He half closed his eyes,
and plucked sharply at the stalk, and the flower remained in his hand.

All became still.

Upon a stump sat Basavriuk, quite blue like a corpse. He did not move
so much as a finger. Hi eyes were immovably fixed on something visible
to him alone; his mouth was half open and speechless. Nothing stirred
around. Ugh! it was horrible! But then a whistle was heard which made
Peter's heart grow cold within him; and it seemed to him that the
grass whispered, and the flowers began to talk among themselves in
delicate voices, like little silver bells, while the trees rustled in
murmuring contention;--Basavriuk's face suddenly became full of life,
and his eyes sparkled. "The witch has just returned," he muttered
between his teeth. "Hearken, Peter: a charmer will stand before you in
a moment; do whatever she commands; if not--you are lost forever."

Then he parted the thorn-bushes with a knotty stick and before him
stood a tiny farmhouse. Basavriuk smote it with his fist, and the wall
trembled. A large black dog ran out to meet them, and with a whine
transformed itself into a cat and flew straight at his eyes.

"Don't be angry, don't be angry, you old Satan!" said Basavriuk,
employing such words as would have made a good man stop his ears.
Behold, instead of a cat, an old woman all bent into a bow, with a
face wrinkled like a baked apple, and a nose and chin like a pair of
nutcrackers.

"A fine charmer!" thought Peter; and cold chills ran down his back.
The witch tore the flower from his hand, stooped and muttered over it
for a long time, sprinkling it with some kind of water. Sparks flew
from her mouth, and foam appeared on her lips.

"Throw it away," she said, giving it back to Peter.

Peter threw it, but what wonder was this? The flower did not fall
straight to the earth, but for a long while twinkled like a fiery ball
through the darkness, and swam through the air like a boat. At last it
began to sink lower and lower, and fell so far away that the little
star, hardly larger than a poppy-seed, was barely visible. "There!"
croaked the old woman, in a dull voice: and Basavriuk, giving him a
spade, said, "Dig here, Peter: you will find more gold than you or
Korzh ever dreamed of."

Peter spat on his hands, seized the spade, pressed his foot on it, and
turned up the earth, a second, a third, a fourth time. The spade
clinked against something hard, and would go no further. Then his eyes
began to distinguish a small, iron-bound coffer. He tried to seize it;
but the chest began to sink into the earth, deeper, farther, and
deeper still: whilst behind him he heard a laugh like a serpent's
hiss.

"No, you shall not have the gold until you shed human blood," said the
witch, and she led up to him a child of six, covered with a white
sheet, and indicated by a sign that he was to cut off his head.

Peter was stunned. A trifle, indeed, to cut off a man's, or even an
innocent child's, head for no reason whatever! In wrath he tore off
the sheet enveloping the victim's head, and behold! before him stood
Ivas. The poor child crossed his little hands, and hung his head.
Peter flew at the witch with the knife like a madman, and was on the
point of laying hands on her.

"What did you promise for the girl?" thundered Basavriuk; and like a
shot he was on his back. The witch stamped her foot: a blue flame
flashed from the earth and illumined all within it. The earth became
transparent as if moulded of crystal; and all that was within it
became visible, as if in the palm of the hand. Ducats, precious stones
in chests and pots, were piled in heaps beneath the very spot they
stood on. Peter's eyes flashed, his mind grew troubled. . . . He
grasped the knife like a madman, and the innocent blood spurted into
his eyes. Diabolical laughter resounded on all sides. Misshapen
monsters flew past him in flocks. The witch, fastening her hands in
the headless trunk, like a wolf, drank its blood. His head whirled.
Collecting all his strength, he set out to run. Everything grew red
before him. The trees seemed steeped in blood, and burned and groaned.
The sky glowed and threatened. Burning points, like lightning,
flickered before his eyes. Utterly exhausted, he rushed into his
miserable hovel and fell to the ground like a log. A death-like sleep
overpowered him.

Two days and two nights did Peter sleep, without once awakening. When
he came to himself, on the third day, he looked long at all the
corners of his hut, but in vain did he endeavour to recollect what had
taken place; his memory was like a miser's pocket, from which you
cannot entice a quarter of a kopek. Stretching himself, he heard
something clash at his feet. He looked, there were two bags of gold.
Then only, as if in a dream, he recollected that he had been seeking
for treasure, and that something had frightened him in the woods.

Korzh saw the sacks--and was mollified. "A fine fellow, Peter, quite
unequalled! yes, and did I not love him? Was he not to me as my own
son?" And the old fellow repeated this fiction until he wept over it
himself. Pidorka began to tell Peter how some passing gipsies had
stolen Ivas; but he could not even recall him--to such a degree had
the Devil's influence darkened his mind! There was no reason for
delay. The Pole was dismissed, and the wedding-feast prepared; rolls
were baked, towels and handkerchiefs embroidered; the young people
were seated at table; the wedding-loaf was cut; guitars, cymbals,
pipes, viols sounded, and pleasure was rife.

A wedding in the olden times was not like one of the present day. My
grandfather's aunt used to tell how the maidens--in festive
head-dresses of yellow, blue, and pink ribbons, above which they bound
gold braid; in thin chemisettes embroidered on all the seams with red
silk, and strewn with tiny silver flowers; in morocco shoes, with high
iron heels--danced the gorlitza as swimmingly as peacocks, and as
wildly as the whirlwind; how the youths--with their ship-shaped caps
upon their heads, the crowns of gold brocade, and two horns
projecting, one in front and another behind, of the very finest black
lambskin; in tunics of the finest blue silk with red borders--stepped
forward one by one, their arms akimbo in stately form, and executed
the gopak; how the lads--in tall Cossack caps, and light cloth
gaberdines, girt with silver embroidered belts, their short pipes in
their teeth--skipped before them and talked nonsense. Even Korzh as he
gazed at the young people could not help getting gay in his old age.
Guitar in hand, alternately puffing at his pipe and singing, a
brandy-glass upon his head, the greybeard began the national dance
amid loud shouts from the merry-makers.

What will not people devise in merry mood? They even began to disguise
their faces till they did not look like human beings. On such
occasions one would dress himself as a Jew, another as the Devil: they
would begin by kissing each other, and end by seizing each other by
the hair. God be with them! you laughed till you held your sides. They
dressed themselves in Turkish and Tatar garments. All upon them glowed
like a conflagration, and then they began to joke and play
pranks. . . .

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