The Fair at Sorochintsi

X

Fie upon you, away with you, image of the Devil!

From a Little Russian comedy

The freshness of morning breathed over the awakening folk of Sorochintsy. Clouds of smoke from all the chimneys floated to meet the rising sun. The fair began to hum with life. Sheep were bleating, horses neighing; the cackle of geese and peddler women sounded all over the encampment again—and terrible tales of the red jacket, which had roused such alarm in the mysterious hours of darkness, vanished with the return of morning.

Stretching and yawning, Cherevik lay drowsily under his friend Tsibulya’s thatched barn among oxen and sacks of flour and wheat. And apparently he had no desire to part with his dreams, when all at once he heard a voice, familiar as his own stove, the blessed refuge of his lazy hours, or as the tavern kept by his cousin not ten paces from his own door.

“Get up, get up!” his tender wife squeaked in his ear, tugging at his arm with all her might.

Cherevik, instead of answering, blew out his cheeks and began waving his hands, as though beating a drum.

“Idiot!” she shouted, retreating out of reach of his arms, which almost struck her in the face.

Cherevik sat up, rubbed his eyes, and looked about him.

“The devil take me, my dear, if I didn’t imagine that your face was a drum on which I was forced to beat an alarm, like a soldier, by those pig-faces that Tsibulya was telling us about….”

“Stop talking nonsense! Go, make haste and take the mare to market! We are a laughingstock, upon my word: we’ve come to the fair and not sold a handful of hemp….”

“Of course, wife,” Cherevik agreed, “they will laugh at us now, to be sure.”

“Go along, go along! They are laughing at you as it is!”

“You see, I haven’t washed yet,” Cherevik went on, yawning, scratching his back, and trying to gain time.

“What a moment to be fussy about cleanliness! When have you cared about that? Here’s the towel, wipe your ugly face.”

Here she snatched up something that lay crumpled up—and darted back in horror: it was the cuff of a red jacket!

“Go along and get to work,” she repeated, recovering herself, on seeing that her husband was motionless with terror and his teeth were chattering.

“A fine sale there will be now!” he muttered to himself as he untied the mare and led her to the market place. “It was not for nothing that, while I was getting ready for this cursed fair, my heart was as heavy as though someone had put a dead cow on my back, and twice the oxen turned homeward of their own accord. And now that I come to think of it, I do believe it was Monday when we started. And so everything has gone wrong!  And the damned devil can never be satisfied: he might have worn his jacket without one sleeve—but no, he can’t let honest folk rest in peace. Now if I were the devil—God forbid—do you suppose I’d go hanging around at night after a lot of damned rags?”

Here our Cherevik’s meditations were interrupted by a thick harsh voice. Before him stood a tall gypsy.

“What have you for sale, good man?”

Cherevik was silent for a moment; he looked at the gypsy from head to foot and said with unruffled composure, neither stopping nor letting go the bridle:

“You can see for yourself what I am selling.”

“Harness?” said the gypsy, looking at the bridle which the other had in his hand.

“Yes, harness, if a mare is the same thing as harness.”

“But damn it, neighbor, one would think you had fed her on straw!”

“Straw?”

Here Cherevik would have pulled at the bridle to lead his mare forward and convict the shameless slanderer of his lie; but his hand slipped and struck his own chin. He looked—in it was a severed bridle, and tied to the bridle—oh horror! his hair stood up on his head—a piece of a red sleeve!… Spitting, crossing himself, and brandishing his arms, he ran away from the unexpected gift and, running faster than a boy, vanished in the crowd.