The Fair at Sorochintsi

I

I am weary of the hut,
Aie, take me from my home,
To where there’s noise and bustle,
To where the girls are dancing gaily,
Where the boys are making merry!

From an old ballad

How intoxicating, how magnificent is a summer day in Little Russia!  How luxuriously warm the hours when midday glitters in stillness and sultry heat and the blue fathomless ocean covering the plain like a dome seems to be slumbering, bathed in languor, clasping the fair earth and holding it close in its ethereal embrace! Upon it, not a cloud; in the plain, not a sound. Everything might be dead; only above in the heavenly depths a lark is trilling, and from the airy heights the silvery notes drop down upon adoring earth, and from time to time the cry of a gull or the ringing note of a quail sounds in the steppe. The towering oaks stand, idle and apathetic, like aimless wayfarers, and the dazzling gleams of sunshine light up picturesque masses of leaves, casting onto others a shadow black as night, only flecked with gold when the wind blows. The insects of the air flit like sparks of emerald, topaz, and ruby about the gay vegetable gardens, topped by stately sunflowers. Gray haystacks and golden sheaves of wheat, like tents, stray over the plain. The broad branches of cherries, of plums, apples, and pears bent under their load of fruit, the sky with its pure mirror, the river in its green, proudly erect frame—how full of delight is the Little Russian summer!

Such was the splendor of a day in the hot August of eighteen hundred… eighteen hundred… yes, it will be about thirty years ago, when the road eight miles beyond the village of Sorochintsy bustled with people hurrying to the fair from all the farms, far and near. From early morning, wagons full of fish and salt had trailed in an endless chain along the road. Mountains of pots wrapped in hay moved along slowly, as though weary of being shut up in the dark; only here and there a brightly painted tureen or crock boastfully peeped out from behind the hurdle that held the high pile on the wagon, and attracted wishful glances from the devotees of such luxury. Many of the passers-by looked enviously at the tall potter, the owner of these treasures, who walked slowly behind his goods, carefully wrapping his proud crocks in the alien hay that would engulf them.

On one side of the road, apart from all the rest, a team of weary oxen dragged a wagon piled up with sacks, hemp, linen, and various household goods and followed by their owner, in a clean linen shirt and dirty linen trousers. With a lazy hand he wiped from his swarthy face the streaming perspiration that even trickled from his long mustaches, powdered by the relentless barber who, uninvited, visits fair and foul alike and has for countless years forcibly sprinkled all mankind with dust. Beside him, tied to the wagon, walked a mare, whose meek air betrayed her advancing years.

Many of the passers-by, especially the young men, took off their caps as they met our peasant. But it was not his gray mustaches or his dignified step that led them to do so; one had but to raise one’s eyes a little discover the reason for this deference: on the wagon was sitting his pretty daughter, with a round face, black eyebrows arching evenly above her clear brown eyes, carelessly smiling rosy lips, and with red and blue ribbons twisted in the long braids which, with a bunch of wild flowers, crowned her charming head. Everything seemed to interest her; everything was new and wonderful… and her pretty eyes were racing all the time from one object to another. She might well be diverted! It was her first visit to a fair! A girl of eighteen for the first time at a fair!… But none of the passers-by knew what it had cost her to persuade her father to bring her, though he would have been ready enough but for her spiteful stepmother, who had learned to manage him as cleverly as he drove his old mare, now as a reward for long years of service being taken to be sold. The irrepressible woman… But we are forgetting that she, too, was sitting on the top of the load dressed in a smart green woolen pelisse, adorned with little tails to imitate ermine, though they were red in color, in a gorgeous plakhta checked like a chessboard, and a flowered chintz cap that gave a particularly majestic air to her fat red face, the expression of which betrayed something so unpleasant and savage that everyone hastened in alarm to turn from her to the bright face of her daughter.

The river Psiol gradually came into our travelers’ view; already in the distance they felt its cool freshness, the more welcome after the exhausting, wearisome heat. Through the dark and light green foliage of the birches and poplars, carelessly scattered over the plain, there were glimpses of the cold glitter of the water, and the lovely river unveiled her shining silvery bosom, over which the green tresses of the trees drooped luxuriantly. Willful as a beauty in those enchanting hours when her faithful mirror so jealously frames her brow full of pride and dazzling splendor, her lily shoulders, and her marble neck, shrouded by the dark waves of her hair, when with disdain she flings aside one ornament to replace it by another and there is no end to her whims—the river almost every year changes her course, picks out a new channel, and surrounds herself with new and varied scenes. Rows of watermills tossed up great waves with their heavy wheels and flung them violently down again, churning them into foam, scattering froth and making a great clatter. At that moment the wagon with the persons we have described reached the bridge, and the river lay before them in all her beauty and grandeur like a sheet of glass. Sky, green and dark blue forest, men, wagons of pots, watermills—all were standing or walking upside down, and not sinking into the lovely blue depths.

Our fair maiden mused, gazing at the glorious view, and even forgot to crack the sunflower seeds with which she had been busily engaged all the way, when all at once the words, “What a girl!” caught her ear. Looking around, she saw a group of young villagers standing on the bridge, of whom one, dressed rather more smartly than the others in a white jacket and gray astrakhan cap, was jauntily looking at the passers-by with his arms akimbo. The girl could not but notice his sunburnt but pleasant face and fiery eyes, which seemed to look right through her, and she lowered her eyes at the thought that he might have uttered those words.

“A fine girl!” the young man in the white jacket went on, keeping his eyes fixed on her. “I’d give all I have to kiss her. And there’s a devil sitting in front!”

There were peals of laughter all around; but the slow-moving peasant’s gaily dressed wife was not pleased at such a greeting: her red cheeks blazed and a torrent of choice language fell like rain on the head of the unruly youth.

“I wish you’d choke, you worthless bum! May your father crack his head on a pot! May he slip down on the ice, the damned antichrist! May the devil singe his beard in the next world!”

“Isn’t she swearing!” said the young man, staring at her as though puzzled at such a sharp volley of unexpected greetings. “And she can bring her tongue to utter words like that, the witch! She’s a hundred if she’s a day!”

“A hundred!” the elderly charmer interrupted. “You infidel! go and wash your face! You worthless rake! I’ve never seen your mother, but I know she’s trash. And your father is trash, and your aunt is trash! A hundred, indeed! Why, the milk is scarcely dry on his…”

At that moment the wagon began to descend from the bridge and the last words could not be heard; but, without stopping to think, he picked up a handful of mud and threw it at her. The throw achieved more than he could have hoped: the new chintz cap was spattered all over, and the laughter of the rowdy pranksters was louder than ever. The buxom charmer was boiling with rage; but by this time the wagon was far away, and she wreaked her vengeance on her innocent stepdaughter and her torpid husband, who, long since accustomed to such onslaughts, preserved a determined silence and received the stormy language of his angry spouse with indifference. In spite of all that, her tireless tongue went on clacking until they reached the house of their old friend and crony, the Cossack Tsibulya, on the outskirts of the village. The meeting of the old friends, who had not seen each other for a long time, put this unpleasant incident out of their minds for a while, as our travelers talked of the fair and rested after their long journey.