A Bewitched Place

A TRUE STORY TOLD BY THE SEXTON

I swear, I am sick of telling stories! Why, what would you expect? It really is tiresome; one goes on telling stories and there is no getting out of it! Oh, very well, I will tell you a story, then; only remember, it is for the last time. Well, we were talking about a man’s being able to get the better, as the saying is, of the devil. To be sure, if it comes to that, all sorts of things do happen in this world…. Better not say so, though: if the devil wants to bamboozle you he will, I swear he will…. Now, you see, my father had the four of us; I was only a moron then, I wasn’t more than eleven, no, not yet eleven. I remember as though it were today when I was running on all fours and began barking like a dog, my dad shouted at me, shaking his head: “Aie, Foma, Foma, you are almost old enough to be married and you are as foolish as a young mule.”

My grandfather was still living then and fairly—may his hiccup ease up in the other world—strong on his legs. At times he would imagine things… But how am I to tell a story like this? Here one of you has been raking an ember for his pipe out of the stove for the last hour and the other has run behind the cupboard for something. It’s too much…! It wouldn’t bother me if you didn’t want to hear what I had to say, but you kept annoying me for a story… If you want to listen, then listen!

Just at the beginning of spring Father went with the wagons to the Crimea to sell tobacco; but I don’t remember whether he loaded two or three wagons; tobacco brought a good price in those days. He took my three-year-old brother with him to train him early as a dealer. Grandad, Mother, and I and a brother and another brother were left at home. Grandad had sown melons on a bit of ground by the roadway and went to stay at the shanty there; he took us with him, too, to scare the sparrows and the magpies away from the garden. I can’t say we didn’t enjoy it: sometimes we’d eat so many cucumbers, melons, turnips, onions, and peas that I swear, you would have thought there were cocks crowing in our stomachs. Well, to be sure, it was profitable too: travelers jog along the road, everyone wants to treat himself to a melon, and, besides that, from the neighboring farms they would often bring us fowls, turkeys, eggs, to exchange for our vegetables. We did very well.

But what pleased Grandad more than anything was that some fifty dealers would pass with their wagonloads every day. They are people, you know, who have seen life: if one of them wants to tell you anything, you would do well to perk up your ears, and to Grandad it was like dumplings to a hungry man. Sometimes there would be a meeting with old acquaintances—everyone knew Grandad—and you know yourself how it is when old folks get together: it is this and that, and so then and so then, and so this happened and that happened… Well, they just go on. They remember things that happened, God knows when.

One evening—why, it seems as though it might have happened today—the sun had begun to set. Grandad was walking about the garden removing the leaves with which he covered the watermelons in the day to save them from being scorched by the sun.

“Look, Ostap,” I said to my brother, “here come some wagoners!”

“Where are the wagoners?” said Grandad, as he put a mark on the big melon so that the boys wouldn’t eat it by accident.

There were, as a fact, six wagons trailing along the road; a wagoner, whose mustache had gone gray, was walking ahead of them. He was still—what shall I say?—ten paces off, when he stopped.

“Good day, Maxim, so it has pleased God we should meet here.”

Grandad screwed up his eyes. “Ah, good day, good day! Where do you come from? And Bolyachka here, too! Good day, good day, brother! What the devil! why, they are all here: Krutotryshchenko too! and Pecherytsya! and Koveliok and Stetsko! Good day! Ha, ha, ho, ho…!” And they began kissing each other.

They took the oxen out of the shafts and let them graze on the grass; they left the wagons on the road and they all sat down in a circle in front of the shanty and lit their pipes. Though they had no thought for their pipes; well, between telling stories and chattering, I don’t believe they smoked a pipe apiece.

After supper Grandad began regaling his visitors with melons. So, taking a melon each, they trimmed it neatly with a knife (they were all old hands, had been about a good deal, and knew how to eat in company—I daresay they would have been ready to sit down even at a gentleman’s table); after cleaning the melon well, everyone made a hole with his finger in it, drank the juice, and began cutting it up into pieces and putting them into his mouth.

“Why are you standing there gaping, boys?” said my grandfather. “Dance, you sons of bitches! Where’s your pipe, Ostap? Now then, the Cossack dance! Foma, arms akimbo! Come, that’s it, hey, hop!”

I was an energetic boy in those days. Cursed old age! Now I can’t move like that; instead of cutting capers, my legs can only trip and stumble. For a long time Grandad watched us as he sat with the dealers. I noticed that his legs wouldn’t keep still; it was as though something was tugging at them.

“Look, Foma,” said Ostap, “if the old fellow isn’t going to dance.”

What do you think, he had hardly uttered the words when the old man could resist it no longer! He wanted, you know, to show off in front of the dealers.

“Now, you little bastards, is that the way to dance? This is the way to dance!” he said, getting up on his feet, stretching out his arms, and tapping with his heels.

Well, there is no denying that he did dance; he couldn’t have danced better if it had been with the Hetman’s wife. We stood aside and the old man went whirling all over the flat area beside the cucumber beds. But as soon as he had got halfway through the dance and wanted to do his best and cut some more capers, his feet wouldn’t lift from the ground, no matter what he did! “What a plague!” He moved backwards and forwards again, got to the middle of the dance again, but he couldn’t go on with it! Whatever he did—he couldn’t do it, and he didn’t do it! His legs were stiff as though made of wood. “Look, the place is bewitched, look, it is a spell of Satan! The enemy of mankind has a hand in it!” Well, he couldn’t disgrace himself before the dealers like that, could he? He made a fresh start and began cutting tiny trifling capers, a joy to see; up to the middle—then no! it wouldn’t be danced, and that is all!

“Ah, you damned Satan! I hope you choke on a rotten melon, that you perish before you grow up, you son of a bitch. See what shame he has brought me to in my old age…!” And indeed someone did laugh behind his back.

He looked around: no melon garden, no dealers, nothing; behind, in front, on both sides was a flat field. “Ay! Sss!… Well, I never!” he began screwing up his eyes—the place doesn’t seem quite unfamiliar: on one side a copse, behind the copse some sort of post sticking up which can be seen far away against the sky. Damn it all! but that’s the dovehouse in the priest’s garden! On the other side, too, there is something grayish; he looked closer: it was the district clerk’s threshing barn. So this was where the devil had dragged him! Going around in a circle, he found a little path. There was no moon; instead of it a white blur glimmered through a dark cloud.

“There will be a high wind tomorrow,” thought Grandad. All at once there was the gleam of a light on a little grave to one side of the path. “Well, I never!” Grandad stood still, put his arms akimbo, and stared at it. The light went out; far away and a little further yet, another twinkled. “A treasure!” cried Grandad. “I’ll bet anything it’s a treasure!” And he was just about to spit on his hands to begin digging when he remembered that he had no spade or shovel with him. “Oh, what a pity! Well—who knows?— maybe I’ve only to lift the turf and there it lies, the precious dear! Well, there’s nothing I can do; I’ll mark the place anyway so as not to forget it afterwards.”

So pulling along a large branch that must have been broken off by a high wind, he laid it on the little grave where the light gleamed and then he continued along the path. The young oak copse grew thinner; he caught a glimpse of a fence. “There, didn’t I say that it was the priest’s garden?” thought Grandad. “Here’s his fence; now it is not three-quarters of a mile to the melon patch.”

It was pretty late, though, when he came home, and he wouldn’t have any dumplings. Waking my brother Ostap, he only asked him whether it was long since the dealers had gone, and then rolled himself up in his sheepskin. And when Ostap started to ask him: “And what did the devils do with you today, Grandad?”

“Don’t ask,” he said, wrapping himself up tighter than ever, “don’t ask, Ostap, or your hair will turn gray!”

And he began snoring so that the startled sparrows which had been flocking together to the melon patch rose up in the air and flew away. But how was it that he could sleep? There’s no denying, he was a sly beast. God give him the kingdom of heaven, he could always get out of any scrape; sometimes he would pitch such a yarn that you would have to bite your lips.

Next day as soon as it began to get light Grandad put on his coat, fastened his belt, took a spade and shovel under his arm, put on his cap, drank a mug of kvass, wiped his lips with the skirt of his coat, and went straight to the priest’s vegetable garden. He passed both the hedges and the low oak copse, and there was a path winding out between the trees and coming out into the open country; it seemed the same. He came out of the copse and the place seemed exactly the same as yesterday. He saw the dovehouse sticking out, but he could not see the threshing barn. “No, this isn’t the place, it must be a little farther; it seems I must turn a little toward the threshing barn!” He turned back a little and began going along another path—then he could see the barn but not the dovehouse. Again he turned, and a little nearer to the dovehouse the barn was hidden. As though to spite him it began to drizzle. He ran again toward the barn—the dovehouse vanished; toward the dovehouse—the barn vanished.

“You damned Satan, may you never live to see your children!” he cried. And the rain came down in buckets.

Taking off his new boots and wrapping them in a handkerchief, so that they might not be warped by the rain, he ran off at a trot like some gentleman’s saddle horse. He crept into the shanty, drenched through, covered himself with his sheepskin, and began grumbling between his teeth and cursing the devil with words such as I had never heard in my life. I must admit I would really have blushed if it had happened in broad daylight.

Next day I woke up and looked; Grandad was walking about the melon patch as though nothing had happened, covering the melons with burdock leaves. At dinner the old man began talking again and scaring my young brother, saying he would trade him for a fowl instead of a melon; and after dinner he made a pipe out of a bit of wood and began playing on it; and to amuse us gave us a melon which was twisted in three coils like a snake; he called it a Turkish one. I don’t see such melons anywhere nowadays; it is true he got the seed from somewhere far away. In the evening, after supper, Grandad went with the spade to dig a new bed for late pumpkins. He began passing that bewitched place and he couldn’t resist saying, “Cursed place!” He went into the middle of it, to the spot where he could not finish the dance the day before, and in his anger struck it with his spade. In a flash—that same field was all around him again: on one side he saw the dovehouse and on the other the threshing barn. “Well, it’s a good thing I brought my spade. And there’s the path, and there is the little grave! And there’s the branch lying on it, and there, see there, is the light! If only I have made no mistake!”

He ran up stealthily, holding the spade in the air as though he were going to hit a hog that had poked its nose into a melon patch, and stopped before the grave. The light went out. On the grave lay a stone overgrown with weeds. “I must lift up that stone,” thought Grandad, and tried to dig around it on all sides. The damned stone was huge! But planting his feet on the ground he shoved it off the grave. “Goo!” it rolled down the slope. “That’s the right road for you to take! Now we’ll get things done quickly!”

At this point Grandad stopped, took out his horn, sprinkled a little snuff in his hand, and was about to raise it to his nose when all at once—”Tchee-hee!” something sneezed above his head so that the trees shook and Grandad’s face was spattered all over. “You might at least turn aside when you want to sneeze,” said Grandad, wiping his eyes. He looked around—there was no one there. “No, it seems the devil doesn’t like the snuff,” he went on, putting back the horn in his bosom and picking up his spade. “He’s a fool! Neither his grandfather nor his father ever had a pinch of snuff like that!” He began digging; the ground was soft, the spade had no trouble biting into it. Then something clanked. Pushing aside the earth he saw a cauldron.

“Ah, you darling, here you are!” cried Grandad, thrusting the spade under it.

“Ah, you darling, here you are!” piped a bird’s beak, pecking the cauldron.

Grandad looked around and dropped the spade.

“Ah, you darling, here you are!” bleated a sheep’s head from the top of the trees.

“Ah, you darling, here you are!” roared a bear, poking its snout out from behind a tree. A shudder ran down Grandad’s back.

“Why, one is afraid to say a word here!” he muttered to himself.

“One is afraid to say a word here!” piped the bird’s beak.

“Afraid to say a word here!” bleated the sheep’s head.

“To say a word here!” roared the bear.

“Hm!” said Grandad, and he felt terrified.

“Hm!” piped the beak.

“Hm!” bleated the sheep.

“Hm!” roared the bear.

Grandad turned around in astonishment. Heaven help us, what a night! No stars nor moon; pits all around him, a bottomless precipice at his feet and a crag hanging over his head and looking every minute as though it would break off and come down on him. And Grandad imagined that a horrible face peeped out from behind it. “Oo! Oo!” a nose like a blacksmith’s bellows. You could pour a bucket of water into each nostril! Lips like two logs! Red eyes seemed to be popping out, and a tongue was thrust out too, and jeering. “The devil take you!” said Grandad, flinging down the cauldron. “Damn you and your treasure! What an ugly snout!” And he was just going to cut and run, but he looked around and stopped, seeing that everything was as before. “It’s only the damned devil trying to frighten me!”

He set to work at the cauldron again. No, it was too heavy! What was he to do? He couldn’t leave it now! So exerting himself to his utmost, he clutched at it. “Come, heave ho! again, again!” and he dragged it out. “Ough, now for a pinch of snuff!”

He took out his horn. Before shaking any out, though, he took a good look around to be sure there was no one there. He thought there was no one; but then it seemed to him that the trunk of the tree was gasping and blowing, ears made their appearance, there were red eyes, puffing nostrils, a wrinkled nose and it seemed on the point of sneezing. “No, I won’t have a pinch of snuff!” thought Grandad, putting away the horn. “Satan will be spitting in my eyes again!” He made haste to snatch up the cauldron and began running as fast as his legs could carry him; only he felt something behind him scratching on his legs with twigs…. “Aie, aie, aie!” was all that Grandad could cry as he ran as fast as he could; and it was not till he reached the priest’s vegetable garden that he paused for breath.

“Where can Grandad be gone?” we wondered, waiting three hours for him. Mother had come from the farm long ago and brought a pot of hot dumplings. Still no sign of Grandad! Again we had supper without him. After supper Mother washed the pot and was looking for a spot to throw the dishwater because there were melon beds all around, when she saw a barrel rolling straight toward her! It was quite dark. She felt sure one of the boys was hiding behind it in mischief and shoving it toward her. “That’s right, I’ll throw the water at him,” she said, and flung the hot dishwater at the barrel.

“Aie!” shouted a bass voice. Imagine that: Grandad! Well, who would have known him! I swear we thought it was a barrel coming up! I must admit, though it was a sin, we really thought it funny when Grandad’s gray head was all drenched in the dishwater and decked with melon peelings.

“Oh, you devil of a woman!” said Grandad, wiping his head with the skirt of his coat. “What a hot bath she has given me, as though I were a pig before Christmas! Well, boys, now you will have something for pretzels! You’ll go about dressed in gold jackets, you puppies! Look what I have brought you!” said Grandad, and opened the cauldron.

What do you suppose there was in it? Come, think, make a guess! Eh? Gold? Well now, it wasn’t gold—it was filth, slop, I am ashamed to say what it was. Grandad spat, dropped the cauldron, and washed his hands.

And from that time forward Grandad made us two swear never to trust the devil. “Don’t you believe it!” he would often say to us. “Whatever the foe of our Lord Christ says, he is always lying, the son of a bitch! There isn’t a kopek’s worth of truth in him!” And if ever the old man heard that things were not right in some place: “Come, boys, let’s cross ourselves! That’s it! That’s it! Properly!” and he would begin making the sign of the cross. And that accursed place where he couldn’t finish the dance he fenced in, and he asked that we fling all the garbage there, all the weeds and litter which he raked off the melon patch.

So you see how the devil fools a man. I know that bit of ground well; later on some neighboring Cossacks hired it from Dad for a melon patch. It’s marvelous ground and there is always a wonderful crop on it; but there has never been anything good on that bewitched place. They may sow it properly, but there’s no saying what it is that comes up: not a melon—not a pumpkin—not a cucumber, the devil only knows what to make of it.

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