"Ma-arya!" shouted Kiryak.
"Let her be— It's a sin— She's not a bad woman."
Both stood there for a minute and then went on.
"I lo-ove the flowers of the fi-ield," the old man burst forth in a high, piercing tenor. "I lo-ove to pick them in the meadows!"
Then he spat, swore filthily, and went into the cabin.
IV
Granny stationed Sasha near her kitchen garden and ordered her to see to it that the geese did not get in. It was a hot August day. The tavernkeeper's geese could get into the kitchen garden by the back way, but at the moment they were seriously engaged: they were picking up oats near the tavern, peacefully chatting together, and only the gander craned his neck as though to see if the old woman were not coming with a stick. Other geese from down below might have trespassed, but they were now feeding far away on the other side of the river, stretching across the meadow in a long white gar- land. Sasha stood about a while, grew bored, and, see- ing that the geese were not coming, went up to the brink of the slope.
There she saw Marya's eldest daughter Motka, who was standing motionless on a huge boulder, staring at the church. Marya had been brought to bed thirteen times, but she liad only six living children, all girls, not one boy, and the eldest was eight. Motka, barefoot and wearing a long shift, was standing in the full sunshine; the sun was blazing down right on her head, but she did not notice it, and seemed as though turned to stone. Sasha stood beside her and said, looking at the church:
"God lives in the church. People have lamps and candles, but God has little green and red and blue icon- lamps like weeny eyes. At night God walks about the church, and with Him the Holy Mother of God and Saint Nicholas—clump, clump, clump they go! And the watchman is scared, so scared! Now, now, dearie," she added, imitating her mother. "And when the end of the world comes, all the churches will fly up to heaven."
"With the be-elfri-ies?" Motka asked in a deep voice, drawling ^^ syllables.
"With the belfries. And when the end of the world comes, the good people will go to Paradise, but the wicked will b^ro in fire eternal and unquenchable, dearie. To my mama and to Marya, too, God will say: 'You never harmed anyone, and so you go to the right, to Paradise'; but to Kiryak and Granny He will say: 'You go to the left, into the fire.' And the ones who ate for- bidden food on fast days will be sent into the fire, too."
She looked up at the sky, opening her eyes wide, and said:
"Look at the sky and don't blink and you wiU se angels."
Motka began looking at the sky, too, and a minute passed in silence.
"Do you see them?" asked Sasha.
"I don't," said Motka in her deep voice.
"But I do. Little angels are flying about the sky and go flap, flap with their little wings like midges."
Motka thought for a while, with her eyes on the ground, and asked:
"Will Granny burn?"
"She will, dearie.''
From the boulder down to the very bottom there was a smooth, gentle slope, covered with soft green grass, which one longed to touch with one's hands or to lie upon.
Sasha lay down and rolled to the bottom. Motka, with a grave, stern face, and breathing heavily, followed suit, and as she did so, her shift rolled up to her shoulders.
"What fun!" said Sasha, delighted.
They walked up to the top to roll down again, but just then they heard the familiar, shrill voice. Oh, how a^fol it was! Granny, toothless, bony, hunched, her short gray hair flying in the wind, was driving the geese out of the kitchen garden with a long stick, screaming.
"They have trampled all the cabbages, the cursed creatures! May you croak, you thrice accursed plagues! Why don't the devil take you!"
She saw the little girls, threw do^ the stick, picked up a switch, and, seizing Sasha by the neck with her fingers, dry and hard as spikes, began whipping her. Sasha cried with pain and fear, while the gander, wad- dling and craning his neck, went up to the old woman and hissed something, and when he went back to his flock all the geese greeted him approvingly with a "Ga- ga-gal" Then Granny proceeded to whip Motka, and so Motka's shift was rolled up again. In despair and cry- ing loudly, Sasha went to the cabin to complain. Motka followed her; she, too, was crying, but on a deeper note, without wiping her tears, and her face as wet as though it had been dipped in water.
"Holy Fathers!" cried Olga, dismayed, as the two came into the cabin. "Queen of Heaven!"
Sasha began telling her story, when Granny walked in with shrill cries and abuse; then Fyokla got an^y, and there was a hubbub in the house.
"Never mind, never mind!" Olga, pale and distressed, tried to comfort the children, stroking Sasha's head. "She's your grandmother; it's a sin to be cross with her. Never mind, child."
Nikolay, who was already worn out by the continual clamor, the hunger, the sickening fumes, the stench, who already hated and despised the poverty, who was ashamed of his father and mother before his wife and daughter, s^ng his legs off the stove and said to his mother in an irritable, tearful voice:
"You shouldn't beat her! You have no right to beat her!"
"You're ready to croak there on the stove, you loafer!" Fyokla snapped at him spitefuUy. "The devil has brought you here, you spongers!"
Sasha and Motka and all the little girls in the house- hold huddled into a corner on top of the stove behind Nikolay's back, and from there listened to all this in silence and terror, and one could hear the beating of their little hearts. When there is someone in a family who has long been ill, and hopelessly il, there come terrible moments when aU those close to him timidly, secretly, at the bottom of their hearts wish f.or his death, and only the children fear the death of someone close to them, and always feel horrified at the thought of it. And now the little girls, with bated breath and a mournful look on their faces, stared at Nikolay and thought that he would soon die; and they wanted to cry and to say something friendly and compassionate to him.
He was pressing close to Olga, as though seeking her protection, and saying to her softly in a shaking voice:
"Olya dear, I can't bear it here any longer. I haven't the strength. For Christ's sake, for the sake of God in heaven, write to your sister, Klavdia Abramovna. Let her seU and pawn everything she has; let her send us the money, and we'll go away from here. Oh, Lord," he went on with anguish, "to have one peep at Moscow! To see mother Moscow, if only in my dreams!"
And when evening came, and it was dark in the cabin, it got so dismal that it was hard to bring out a word. Granny, cross as ever, soaked some crusts of rye bread in a cup, and was a whole hour sucking at them. Marya, having milked the cow, brought in a pail of milk and set it on a bench; then Granny poured it from the pail into jugs slowly and deliberately, evidently pleased that it was now the Fast of Assumption, so that no one would drink milk and all of it would be left untouched. And she only poured out just a little into a saucer for Fyokla's baby. When she and Marya carried the jugs down to the ceUar, Motka suddenly came to life, slipped downwn from the stove, and going to the bench where the wooden cup full of crusts was standing, splashed some milk from the saucer into it.
Granny, coming back into the cabin, attacked her soaked crusts again, while Sasha and Motka sat on the stove, staring at her, and were glad that she had taken forbidden food and now was sure to go to hell. They were comforted and lay down to sleep, and as she dozed off, Sasha pictured the Last Judgment to herself: a fire was burning in a stove something like a potter's kiln, and the Evil One, with horns like a cow's and black all over, was driving Granny into the fire with a long stick, just as Granny herself had driven the geese.
v
On the Feast of Assumption, after ten o'clock at night, the girls and boys who were making merry down in the meadow suddenly began to scream and shout, and ran in the direction of the village; and those who were sitting on the brink of the slope at first could not make out what was the matter.