The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol (10 page)

“Wait,” said Oksana, “let’s run and fetch a sled, we can take them on a sled.”

And the crowd ran to fetch a sled.

The prisoners were very weary of sitting in the sacks, though the deacon had made himself a big hole with his finger.
If it hadn’t been for the people, he might have found a way to get out; but to get out of a sack in front of everybody, to make himself a laughingstock … this held him back, and he decided to wait, only groaning slightly under Choub’s uncouth boots.
Choub himself had no less of a wish for freedom, feeling something under him that was terribly awkward to sit on.
But once he heard his daughter’s decision, he calmed down and no longer wanted to get out, considering that to reach his house one would have to walk at least a hundred paces, maybe two.
If he got out, he would have to straighten his clothes, button his coat, fasten his belt—so much
work!
And the hat with earflaps had stayed at Solokha’s.
Better let the girls take him on a sled.
But it happened not at all as Choub expected.
Just as the girls went off to fetch the sled, the skinny chum was coming out of the tavern, upset and in low spirits.
The woman who kept the tavern was in no way prepared to give him credit; he had waited in hopes some pious squire might come and treat him; but, as if on purpose, all the squires stayed home like honest Christians and ate kutya in the bosom of their families.
Reflecting on the corruption of morals and the wooden heart of the Jewess who sold the drink, the chum wandered into the sacks and stopped in amazement.

“Look what sacks somebody’s left in the road!” he said, glancing around.
“There must be pork in them.
Somebody’s had real luck to get so much stuff for his caroling!
What frightful sacks!
Suppose they’re stuffed with buckwheat loaves and lard biscuits—that’s good enough.
If it’s nothing but flatbread, that’s already something: the Jewess gives a dram of vodka for each flatbread.
I’ll take it quick, before anybody sees me.” Here he hauled the sack with Choub and the deacon onto his shoulders, but felt it was too heavy.
“No, it’s too heavy to carry alone,” he said, “but here, as if on purpose, comes the weaver Shapuvalenko.
Good evening, Ostap!”

“Good evening,” said the weaver, stopping.

“Where are you going?”

“Dunno, wherever my legs take me.”

“Help me, good man, to carry these sacks!
Somebody went caroling and then dropped them in the middle of the road.
We’ll divide the goods fifty-fifty.”

“Sacks?
And what’s in the sacks, wheat loaves or flatbread?”

“I suppose there’s everything in them.”

Here they hastily pulled sticks from a wattle fence, put a sack on them, and carried it on their shoulders.

“Where are we taking it?
to the tavern?” the weaver asked as they went.

“That’s what I was thinking—to the tavern.
But the cursed Jewess won’t believe us, she’ll think we stole it; besides, I just came from the tavern.
We’ll take it to my place.
No one will be in our way: my wife isn’t home.”

“You’re sure she’s not home?” the prudent weaver asked.

“Thank God, we’ve still got some wits left,” said the chum, “the devil if I’d go where she is.
I suppose she’ll be dragging about with the women till dawn.”

“Who’s there?” cried the chum’s wife, hearing the noise in the front hall produced by the two friends coming in with the sack, and she opened the door.

The chum was dumbfounded.

“There you go!” said the weaver, dropping his arms.

The chum’s wife was a treasure of a sort not uncommon in the wide world.
Like her husband, she hardly ever stayed home but spent almost all her days fawning on some cronies and wealthy old women, praised and ate with great appetite, and fought with her husband only in the mornings, which was the one time she occasionally saw him.
Their cottage was twice as old as the local scrivener’s balloon trousers, the roof lacked straw in some places.
Only remnants of the wattle fence were to be seen, because no one ever took a stick along against dogs when leaving the house, intending to pass by the chum’s kitchen garden instead and pull one out of his fence.
Three days would go by without the stove being lit.
Whatever the tender spouse wheedled out of good people she hid the best she could from her husband, and she often arbitrarily took his booty if he hadn’t managed to drink it up in the tavern.
The chum, despite his perennial sangfroid, did not like yielding to her, and therefore almost always left the house with two black eyes, and his dear better half trudged off to tell the old women about her husband’s outrages and the beatings she suffered from him.

Now, you can picture to yourself how thrown off the weaver and the chum were by her unexpected appearance.
Setting the sack down, they stepped in front of it, covering it with their coat skirts; but it was too late: the chum’s wife, though she saw poorly with her old eyes, nevertheless noticed the sack.

“Well, that’s good!” she said, with the look of an exultant hawk.
“It’s good you got so much for your caroling!
That’s what good people always do; only, no, I suspect you picked it up somewhere.
Show me this minute!
Do you hear?
Show me your sack right this minute!”

“The hairy devil can show it to you, not us,” said the chum, assuming a dignified air.

“What business is it of yours?” said the weaver.
“We got it for caroling, not you.”

“No, you’re going to show it to me, you worthless drunkard!” the wife exclaimed, hitting the tall chum on the chin with her fist and going for the sack.

But the weaver and the chum valiantly defended the sack and forced her to retreat.
Before they had time to recover, the spouse came running back to the front hall, this time with a poker in her hands.
She nimbly whacked her husband on the hands and the weaver on the back with the poker, and was now standing beside the sack.

“What, we let her get to it?” said the weaver, coming to his senses.

“Eh, what do you mean we let her—why did you let her?” the chum said with sangfroid.

“Your poker must be made of iron!” the weaver said after a short silence, rubbing his back.
“My wife bought a poker at the fair last year, paid twenty-five kopecks—it’s nothing … doesn’t even hurt …”

Meanwhile the triumphant spouse, setting a tallow lamp on the floor, untied the sack and peeked into it.
But her old eyes, which had made out the sack so well, must have deceived her this time.

“Eh, there’s a whole boar in there!” she cried out, clapping her hands for joy.

“A boar!
do you hear, a whole boar!” the weaver nudged the chum.
“It’s all your fault!”

“No help for it!” the chum said, shrugging.

“No help?
Don’t stand there, let’s take the sack from her!
Come on!
Away with you!
away!
it’s our boar!” the weaver shouted, bearing down on her.

“Get out, get out, cursed woman!
It’s not your goods!” the chum said, coming closer.

The spouse again took hold of the poker, but just then Choub climbed out of the sack and stood in the middle of the hall, stretching, like a man who has just awakened from a long sleep.

The chum’s wife gave a cry, slapping her skirts, and they all involuntarily opened their mouths.

“Why did she say a boar, the fool!
That’s not a boar!” said the chum, goggling his eyes.

“See what a man got thrown into the sack!” said the weaver, backing away in fear.
“Say what you like, you can even burst, but it’s the doing of the unclean powers.
He wouldn’t even fit through the window!”

“It’s my chum!” cried the chum, looking closer.

“And who did you think it was?” said Choub, smiling.
“A nice trick I pulled on you, eh?
And you probably wanted to eat me as pork?
Wait, I’ve got good news for you: there’s something else in the sack—if not a boar, then surely a piglet or some other live thing.
Something’s been moving under me all the time.”

The weaver and the chum rushed to the sack, the mistress of the house seized it from the other side, and the fight would have started again if the deacon, seeing there was nowhere to hide, hadn’t climbed out of the sack.

“Here’s another one!” the weaver exclaimed in fright.
“Devil knows how this world … it makes your head spin … not sausages or biscuits, they throw people into sacks!”

“It’s the deacon!” said Choub, more astonished than anyone else.
“Well, now!
that’s Solokha for you!
putting us into sacks … That’s why she’s got a house full of sacks … Now I see it all: she had two men sitting in each sack.
And I thought I was the only one she … That’s Solokha for you!”

T
HE GIRLS WERE
a bit surprised to find one sack missing.
“No help for it, this one will be enough for us,” Oksana prattled.
They all took hold of the sack and heaved it onto the sled.

The headman decided to keep quiet, reasoning that if he shouted for them to untie the sack and let him out, the foolish girls would run away, thinking the devil was sitting in it, and he would be left out in the street maybe till the next day.

The girls, meanwhile, all took each other’s hands and flew like the wind, pulling the sled over the creaking snow.
Many of them sat on the sled for fun; some got on the headman himself.
The headman resolved to endure everything.
They finally arrived, opened the doors to the house and the front hall wide, and with loud laughter dragged the sack inside.

“Let’s see what’s in it,” they all shouted and hastened to untie the sack.

Here the hiccups that had never ceased to torment the headman all the while he was sitting in the sack became so bad that he started hicking and coughing very loudly.

“Ah, somebody’s in there!” they all cried and rushed out of the house in fear.

“What the devil!
Why are you running around like crazy?” said Choub, coming in the door.

“Ah, Papa!” said Oksana, “there’s somebody in the sack!”

“In the sack?
Where did you get this sack?”

“The blacksmith left them in the middle of the road,” they all said at once.

“Well,” Choub thought to himself, “didn’t I say so?…”

“What are you so afraid of?” he said.
“Let’s see.
Now, then, my man, never mind if we don’t call you by your full name—get out of the sack!”

The headman got out.

“Ah!” cried the girls.

“The headman was in it, too,” Choub said to himself in perplexity, looking him up and down, “fancy that!… Eh!…” He could say nothing more.

The headman was no less confused himself and did not know how to begin.

“Must be cold out?” he said, addressing Choub.

“A bit nippy,” Choub replied.
“And, if I may ask, what do you grease your boots with, mutton fat or tar?”

He had not meant to say that, he had meant to ask: “How did you, the headman, get into this sack?” but, without knowing why himself, he had said something completely different.

“Tar’s better!” said the headman.
“Well, good-bye, Choub!” And, pulling down his earflaps, he walked out of the house.

“Why did I ask so stupidly what he greases his boots with!” Choub said, looking at the door through which the headman had
gone.
“That’s Solokha!
putting such a man into a sack!… A devil of a woman!
Fool that I am … but where’s that cursed sack?”

“I threw it in the corner, there’s nothing else in it,” said Oksana.

“I know these tricks—nothing else in it!
Give it to me; there’s another one sitting in it!
Shake it out well … What, nothing?… Cursed woman!
And to look at her—just like a saint, as if she never put anything non-lenten near her lips.”

But let us leave Choub to pour out his vexation at leisure and go back to the blacksmith, because it must already be past eight o’clock outside.

A
T FIRST
V
AKULA
found it frightening when he rose to such a height that he could see nothing below and flew like a fly right under the moon, so that if he hadn’t ducked slightly he would have brushed it with his hat.
However, in a short while he took heart and began making fun of the devil.
He was extremely amused by the way the devil sneezed and coughed whenever he took his cypress-wood cross from his neck and put it near him.
He would purposely raise his hand to scratch his head, and the devil, thinking he was about to cross him, would speed up his flight.
Everything was bright aloft.
The air was transparent, all in a light silvery mist.
Everything was visible; and he could even observe how a sorcerer, sitting in a pot, raced past them like the wind; how the stars gathered together to play blindman’s buff; how a whole swarm of phantoms billowed in a cloud off to one side; how a devil dancing around the moon took his hat off on seeing the mounted blacksmith; how a broom came flying back, having just served some witch … they met a lot more trash.
Seeing the blacksmith, all stopped for a moment to look at him and then rushed on their way again.
The blacksmith flew on, and suddenly Petersburg, all ablaze, glittered before him.
(It was lit up for some occasion.) The devil, flying over the toll gate, turned into a horse, and the blacksmith saw himself on a swift racer in the middle of the street.

My God!
the clatter, the thunder, the glitter; four-story walls loomed on both sides; the clatter of horses’ hooves and the rumble of wheels sounded like thunder and echoed on four sides; houses grew as if rising from the ground at every step; bridges trembled;
carriages flew by; cabbies and postilions shouted; snow swished under a thousand sleds flying on all sides; passers-by pressed against and huddled under houses studded with lamps, and their huge shadows flitted over the walls, their heads reaching the chimneys and roofs.
The blacksmith looked about him in amazement.
It seemed to him that the houses all turned their countless fiery eyes on him and stared.
He saw so many gentlemen in fur-lined coats that he didn’t know before whom to doff his hat.
“My God, so much nobility here!” thought the blacksmith.
“I think each one going down the street in a fur coat is another assessor, another assessor!
And the ones driving around in those wonderful britzkas with windows, if they’re not police chiefs, then they’re surely commissars, or maybe even higher up.” His words were interrupted by a question from the devil: “Shall we go straight to the tsaritsa?” “No, it’s scary,” thought the blacksmith.
“The Zaporozhtsy who passed through Dikanka in the fall are staying here somewhere.
They were coming from the Setch
⁷
with papers for the tsaritsa.
I’d better talk it over with them.”