Gykin listened to this music and frowned. The thing was that he knew, or at least guessed, what all this racket outside the window was about and whose handiwork it was.
“I kno-o-ow!” he murmured, shaking his finger under the covers at somebody. “I know everything!”
On a stool by the window sat his wife, Raissa Nilovna. A tin lamp, standing on another stool, timorously, as if not believing in its own power, cast a thin, flickering light over her broad shoulders, the beautiful, appetizing reliefs of her body, the thick braid that reached to the ground. She was sewing burlap sacks. Her hands moved swiftly, but her whole body, the expression of her eyes, eyebrows, plump lips, white neck, were still, immersed in the monotonous mechanical work, and seemed to be asleep. Only occasionally she raised her head, to give her tired neck a rest, glanced for a moment at the window, outside which a blizzard raged, and then bent again over the burlap. Neither desire, nor sorrow, nor joy—nothing expressed itself on her beautiful face with its upturned nose and dimpled cheeks. Just so a beautiful fountain expresses nothing when it is not spouting.
But here she finished one sack, flung it aside, and, stretching sweetly, rested her dull, fixed gaze on the window…Teardrops flowed down the windowpanes and short-lived snowflakes dotted them with white. A snowflake would land on the pane, glance at the woman, and melt…
“Go to bed,” the sexton muttered. His wife said nothing. But suddenly her eyelashes stirred and attention flickered in her eyes. Savely, who had been watching the expression of her face all the while from under the blanket, stuck his head out and asked:
“What is it?”
“Nothing…Seems like somebody’s driving…,” his wife replied softly.
The sexton threw off the blanket with his hands and feet, knelt on the bed, and looked dully at his wife. The lamp’s timid light shone on his hairy, pockmarked face and flitted over his coarse, matted head.
“Do you hear it?” asked his wife. Through the monotonous howling of the blizzard he heard a barely audible, high-pitched, ringing moan, like the buzzing of a mosquito when it wants to land on your cheek and is angry at being prevented.
“It’s the postman…,” Savely muttered, sitting back on his heels.
The post road lay two miles from the church. In windy weather, when it blew from the road towards the church, the inhabitants of the house could hear a jingling.
“Lord, who wants to drive in such weather!” the sexton’s wife sighed.
“It’s a government job. Like it or not, you have to go…” The moan lingered in the air and died away.
“It passed by!” said Savely, lying down.
But he had not managed to cover himself with the blanket before the distinct sound of a bell reached his ears. The sexton glanced anxiously at his wife, jumped off the bed, and started waddling back and forth beside the stove. The sound of the bell went on for a little while and died away again, as if broken off.
“I can’t hear it…,” the sexton muttered, stopping and squinting at his wife. But just then the wind rapped on the window, bearing the high-pitched, ringing moan…Savely turned pale, grunted, and again his bare feet slapped against the floor.
“The postman’s going in circles!” he croaked, casting a spiteful sidelong glance at his wife. “Do you hear? The postman’s going in circles!…I…I know! As if I…don’t understand!” he muttered. “I know everything, curse you!”
“What do you know?” his wife asked softly, not taking her eyes from the window.
“I know this, that it’s all your doing, you she-devil! It’s your doing, curse you! This blizzard, and the postman going in circles…You caused it all! You!”
“You’re raving, you silly man,” his wife observed calmly.
“I noticed it about you long ago! When we were just married, in the first days, I saw you had a bitch’s blood in you!”
“Pah!” Raissa was surprised, shrugged, and crossed herself. “Cross yourself, too, dimwit!”
“A witch, you’re a witch!” Savely went on in a hollow, tearful voice, hastily blowing his nose on the hem of his shirt. “Though you’re my wife, though you’re also of the clerical estate, I’ll even tell at confession what you are…What else? Lord, save us and have mercy on us! Last year on the day of the prophet Daniel and the three holy youths,1 there was a blizzard and—what then? A foreman stopped by to get warm. Then on the day of St. Alexei the man of God,2 the ice on the river broke up, and the constable dropped by…He spent the whole night here jabbering with you, curse him, and when he appeared in the morning, and I looked at him, he had black rings around his eyes and his cheeks were all sunken! Eh? During the Dormition fast3 there were thunderstorms twice, and both times the huntsman came to spend the night. I saw it all, curse him! All! Oh, you’ve turned red as a crayfish! Hah!”
“You didn’t see anything…”
“Oh, no! And this winter, before Christmas, on the day of the Ten Martyrs of Crete,4 when a blizzard went on all day and night…Remember?—when the marshal’s clerk lost his way and wound up here, the dog…And what were you tempted by! Phoo, a clerk! It wasn’t worth riling up God’s weather on his account! A puny devil, a runt, a mere speck, his mug all in blackheads, his neck bent…Maybe if he was handsome, but him—pah—a satan!”
The sexton caught his breath, wiped his lips, and listened. There was no bell to be heard, but the wind tore over the roof, and in the darkness outside the window something clanged again.
“And now, too!” Savely went on. “It’s not for nothing this postman is circling! Spit in my eye if the postman isn’t looking for you! Oh, the devil knows his business, he’s a good helper! He’ll make him circle and circle and lead him here. I kno-o-ow! I see-e-e! You can’t hide it, you devil’s chatterbox, you fiend’s lust! As soon as the blizzard started, I immediately understood your thoughts.”
“What a dimwit!” his wife smirked. “So, to your foolish mind, I can cause bad weather?”
“Hm…Go on, smirk! You or not you, only I notice as soon as your blood begins to act up, there’s bad weather, and once there’s bad weather, whatever madman is around comes racing here. It happens each time. So it’s you!”
For greater persuasiveness, the sexton put a finger to his brow, closed his left eye, and said in a sing-song voice:
“O, madness! O, Judas’s fiendishness! If you are indeed a human being and not a witch, you should have thought in your head: What if those were not a foreman, a huntsman, or a clerk, but the devil in their guise! Eh? You’d have thought that.”
“How stupid you are, Savely!” his wife sighed, looking at him with pity. “When my papa was alive and lived here, all sorts of people used to come to him to be treated for ague: from the village, from the settlements, from the Armenian farmsteads. It seems they came every day, and nobody called them devils. And with us, if somebody comes once to warm up in bad weather, you, you stupid man, start wondering and getting all sorts of ideas.”