'Liszt's Hungarian . . .? Come now . . . you're pulling my leg.'
'Ah, you don't believe me ?' laughed Sikofantoff. 'Then I'll prove it to you straight away. Let's get an instrument!'
Bibuloff's prospective son-in-law and the Count made for the orchestra. They went over to the double-bass, quickly undid the straps and . . . oh, calamity!
But atthis point, while the reader gives free rein tohis imagination in picturing the outcome of this musical debate, let us return to Pitsikatoff . . . The unfortunate musician, not having caught up with the thieves, went back to the spot where he had left his case but could see no sign of his precious burden. Lost in bewilderment, he walked up and down several times in vain, and decided he must be on the wrong road .. .
'How awful!' he thought, tearing his hair and feeling his blood run cold. 'She'll suffocate in that case. I've murdered her!'
Pitsikatoff tramped the roads till midnight in search of the case and then, exhausted, retired under the bridge.
Tll look for it in the morning,' he decided.
Bur his dawn search proved equally fruitless, and he decided to stay under the bridge again until nightfall . ..
'Ishall find her!' he muttered, takingoffhis top-hat and tearing his hair. 'Even if it takes me a whole year - I'll find her!'
And to this day the peasants who live in those parts will tell you that at night near the little bridge you can sometimes see a naked man all covered in hair and wearing a top-hat . . . and occasionally from beneath the bridge you can hear the melancholy groaning of a double-bass.
The Witch
It was nearing midnight. Subdeacon Savely Gykin lay on the huge bed in his watchman's lodge adjoining the church. He was wide awake, although it was his habit to drop off at the same time as the hens. From one end ofa greasypatchwork quilt his coarse gingerhair peeped out; his big unwashed feet stuck up at the other. He was listening. His lodge was built into the church wall, and its one and only window looked out on open country. Out there a veritable battle was raging. Who was hounding whom, and forwhose destruc- tion all this pother had been stirred up in nature, it was hard to say, but judging by the sinister unending roar, someone was getting very short shrift. A vanquishing force was chasing someone across the countryside, kicking up a row in the forest and on the church roof, banging its fists viciously on the window, ranting and raving, while its victim howled and whimpered . .. Thepitiful criescould be heard outside the window, then above the roof, then in the stove. They sounded not like cries for help but of despair; all hope was gone, it was too late. The snow-drifts were covered with a thin crust of ice; tear-drops trembled on them and upon the trees, while the roads and pathways were swimming in a dark sludge of mud and melted snow. In a word, the earth was thawing, but because of the dark night the sky had not noticed this, and was still pouring down fresh snow- flakes on the melting earth for all it was worth. And the wind was rampaging like a drunk . . . It would not let this snow settle on the ground but whirled it about in the darkness at its whim.
Gykin listened hard to this music and scowled. The fact was that he knew, or at least had a strong suspicion, what all the racket outside the window was leading up to and who was responsible for it.
'Oh yes, I know!' he mumbled, ticking someone off with his finger beneath the quilt. 'I know all right!'
On a stool by the windowsat Raisa Nilovna, the subdeacon's wife. A tin larnp standing on another stool cast a flickering watery light, as if shy and uncertain of itself, over her broad shoulders, the beautiful, inviting curves of her body, and her thick plait that reached to the ground. She w.as sewing some sacks out of coarse hessian. Her hands moved quickly, but the rest ofher body, her eyes, brows, full lips and white neck, engrossed in the mechanical, monotonous work, were absolutely still and might have been asleep. Only from time to time did she raise her head to ease her weary neck, glance quickly over to the window where the blizzard was raging, and then bend over the hessian again. Her beautiful face with its dimpled cheeks and turned-up nose expressed nothing at all, no desires, no joy, no sadness; just as a beautiful fountain expresses nothing when it is not playing.
But now she came to the end of a sack, cast it aside, stretched luxuriously and turned her dull motionless gaze to the window . .. The snowflakes made briefwhite blobs on the window-panes, which were swimming with tears. Each flake would fall on the glass, take a look at the subdeacon's wife and melt . . .
'Come and lie down!' grunted the subdeacon.
His wife did not reply. Suddenly, though, her eyelashes flicked and her eyes sprang to life. Savely, who had been studying her expression closely all the time from beneath his quilt, stuck his head out and asked:
'What's up?'
'Oh nothing . . . sounds like someone's coming,' she replied in a soft voice.
The subdeacon flung the quilt off with his arms and legs, knelt on the bed, and stared blankly at his wife. The lamp cast its timid glow over his hairy, pock-marked face and flickered upon his coarse, tousled hair.
'Can you hear it?' his wife asked.
Through the monotonous wail of the snow-storm he caught a barely perceptible sound, a thin tinkling whine, like the drone of a mosquito when it is trying to land on yourcheek and is angry at being prevented.
'It's the post,' grunted Savely, sitting back on his heels.
The post-road was three versts away from the church. When a strong wind was blowing from that direction, the inhabitants of the lodge could hear the bell of the mail-coach ringing.
'Goodness, fancy anyone wanting to be out in this weather!' sighed the subdeacon's wife.
'Their work's official. They do what they're told . ..'
The whining note hung briefly in the air, then stopped.
'They've passed!' said Savely, lying down.
But before he had time to cover himself with the quilt, his ears detected the unmistakable sound of the bell. The subdeacon glanced anxiously at his wife, sprang out of bed and began waddling up and down in from of the stove. The bell sounded for a while, then stopped oiice more, as if it had fallen off.
'Gone again .. .' muttered the subdeacon, halting and peering intently at his wife.
But just at that moment the wind beat on the window and carried the thin tinkling whine with it ... Savely turned pale, croaked and again began flopping about the floor in his bare feet.
'They're being led astray!' he rasped, with a fierce look at his wife. 'You hear me? Led astray! I know what's going on all right! D'you think - do you think I don't see it?' he spluttered. 'I see it all, damn you!'
'See what?' his wife asked in a soft voice, nottakinghereyes off the window.
'That it's all your doing, you devil! Your doing, damn you! You causcd this storm, you made the postlose its way -you did it all, all!'
'You're off your head, silly,' his wife remarked calmly.
'I've been noticing things for a long time! First day we were married, I knew there was bitch's blood in you!'
'Ugh!' Raisa exclaimed with a start, hunching her shoulders and crossing herself. 'Cross yourself too, idiot!'
'Once a witch, always a witch,'Savelywent on in a hollow, tearful voice, hastily blowing his nose on the hem ofhis nightshirt. 'You may be my wife, you may count as clergy, but I'd say what you really are even at confession . . . Why, it stands to reason, so help me! Last year we had a blizzard on the Eve of Prophet Daniel and the Three Young Men - and what happened? That craftsman dropped in to warm himself. Then on the day of Alexis the Man of God the ice broke up on the riverand in came the constable . . . Spent the whole night here nattering with you, damn him, and when he left in the morning and I took a good look at him, he had rings under his eyes and his cheeks were all hollow! Eh? During the Summer Fast there was two thunder-storms and each time the gamekeeper came in to spend the night. I saw it all, curse him! All of it! Yes, that's made her blush! Redder than a beetroot!'