The Fair at Sorochintsi

V

Droop not, plane tree,
Still art thou green.
Fret not, little Cossack,
Still art thou young.

Little Russian song

The fellow in the white jacket sitting by his wagon gazed absent-mindedly at the crowd that moved noisily about him. The weary sun, after blazing through morning and noon, was tranquilly with-drawing from the earth, and the daylight was going out in a bright lovely glow. The tops of the white booths and tents stood out with dazzling brightness, suffused in a faint rosy tint of fiery light. The panes in the window frames piled up for sale glittered; the green goblets and bottles on the tables in the drinking booths flashed like fire; the heaps of melons and pumpkins looked as though they were cast in gold and dark copper. There was less talk, and the weary tongues of merchants, peasants, and gypsies moved more slowly and deliberately. Here and there lights began gleaming, and savory steam from cooking dumplings floated over the hushed streets. “What are you grieving over, Grytsko?” a tall swarthy gypsy cried, slapping our young friend on the shoulder. “Come, let me have your oxen for twenty rubles!”

“It’s nothing but oxen and oxen with you. All that you gypsies care for is profit; cheating and deceiving honest folk!”

“Tfoo, the devil! You do seem to be in trouble! You are angered at having tied yourself up with a girl, maybe?”

“No, that’s not my way: I keep my word; what I have once done stands forever. But it seems that old grumbler Cherevik has not a half pint of conscience: he gave his word, but he has taken it back…. Well, it is no good blaming him: he is a blockhead and that’s the fact. It’s all the doing of that old witch whom we jeered at on the bridge today! Ah, if I were the Czar or some great lord I would first hang all the fools who let themselves be saddled by women….”

“Well, will you let the oxen go for twenty, if we make Cherevik give you Paraska?”

Grytsko stared at him in surprise. There was a look spiteful, malicious, ignoble, and at the same time haughty in the gypsy’s swarthy face: any man looking at him would have recognized that there were great qualities in that strange soul, though their only reward on earth would be the gallows. The mouth, completely sunken between the nose and the pointed chin and forever curved in a mocking smile, the little eyes that gleamed like fire, and the lightning flashes of intrigue and enterprise forever flitting over his face—all this seemed in keeping with the strange costume he wore. The dark brown full coat which looked as though it would drop into dust at a touch; the long black hair that fell in tangled tresses on his shoulders; the shoes on his bare sunburnt feet, all seemed to be in character and part of him.

“I’ll let you have them for fifteen, not twenty, if only you don’t deceive me!” the young man answered, keeping his searching gaze fixed on the gypsy.

“Fifteen? Done! Mind you don’t forget; fifteen! Here is a blue note as a pledge!”

“But if you deceive me?”

“If I do, the pledge is yours!”

“Right! Well, let’s shake hands on the bargain!”

“Let’s!”