Short Fiction by Vladimir Korolenko (ready player one ebook TXT) 📕

“No, I haven’t seen it myself, I won’t tell you a lie. And you, Mr. Miller, have you ever seen the city of Kiev?”

“No, I haven’t: I won’t tell you a lie, either.”

“But Kiev is there just the same!”

When he heard it put as clearly as that, the miller’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.

“Whatever is true, is true,” he assented. “Yes, Kiev is there, though I haven’t seen it. One certainly ought to believe what honest folks say. You see, I should like to⁠—I want to ask you who told you the story?”

“Who told it to me? Bah! Who told you about Kiev?”

“Tut, tut, what a tongue you have! It’s sharper than a razor; may it shrivel in your head!”

“There’s no reason why my tongue should shrivel in my head. You’d better believe what people say when everyone says it. If everyone says it, it must be true. If it weren’t true, everyone wouldn’t say it; only magpies like you would say it, so there!”

“Tut, tut, tut! For Heaven’s sake stop a minute! You rattle out your words like a pestle in a mortar. I see I was on the wrong track, but I only wanted to know how the story began.”

“It began because it happens every year. Whatever happens people will talk about; what doesn’t happen isn’t worth talking about.”

“What a fellow you are! Wait a minute, let me catch your prattle by the tail; you whirl like a wild mare in a bog. Only just tell me what really takes place, that’s all!”

“Eh hey, so you don’t know, I see, what takes place on the Day of Atonement?”

“I used to know, and that’s why I didn’t ask. I used to hear people chattering like you about Khapun, Khapun, but what the sense of it was I never could make out.”

“Then you ought to have said so at once, and I should have told you long ago. I don’t like proud people who, when they want a drink of gorelka, say they’d drink water if it didn’t taste so bad. If you want to know what happens I’ll tell you, because I’ve been about the world and am not a stay-at-home like you. I have lived in the city for more than a year, and this is the first time I have ever worked for a Jew.”

“And isn’t it a sin to work for a Jew?” asked the miller.

“It would be for anyone else; a soldier can do anything. We get a paper given to us that says so.”

“Can a piece of paper really⁠—”

Then the soldier began telling the miller very affably all about Khapun and how he carries off one Jew a year on this day.

And if you don’t know it, I might as well tell you that Khapun is a regular Hebrew devil. He is just like ours in every way, black, with horns just like him, and he has wings like a huge bat; the only difference is that he wears ringlets and a skull cap, and only has power over Jews. If a Christian meets him at midnight in the desert, or even on the shore of a pond, he runs away like a scary dog. But he can do what he likes with the Jews, so he catches one every year and carries him away.

And Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the day fixed for him to make his choice. Long before that day comes the Jews weep and tear their clothes, and even put ashes out of their stoves on their heads for some reason or other. On the evening of the day they bathe in the rivers and ponds, and as soon as the sun goes down the poor wretches all go to their churches, and you never heard in your life such screams as come from there then! They all bawl at the top of their lungs, keeping their eyes shut tight with terror all the time. Then, as soon as the sky grows dark and the evening star comes out, Khapun comes flying from where he lives, and hovers over the church. He beats on the windows with his wings, and looks in to choose his prey. But when midnight comes, that’s when the Jews begin to get really frightened. They light all the candles to give themselves courage, fall down on the floor, and begin to scream as if someone were cutting their throats. And while they are lying there squirming Khapun flies into the room in the shape of a great crow, and they all feel the cold wind of his wings blowing across their hearts. The Jew whom Khapun has already spotted through the window feels the devil’s claws sinking into his back. Ugh! It makes one’s flesh creep even to tell of it, so just think what the poor Jew must feel! Of course he yells as loud as ever he can. But who can hear him when all the rest of them are yelling like lunatics, too? And maybe one of his neighbours does hear him, and is only glad it isn’t himself who is in such a sorry plight.

Kharko himself had heard more than once the pitiful, clear, long-drawn notes of a trumpet floating out over the city. It was a novice in the synagogue trumpeting out a farewell call to his unfortunate brother, while the rest of the Jews were putting on their shoes in the entry⁠—Jews always go into church in their stocking feet⁠—or standing in little groups in the moonlight, whispering together on tiptoe, staring up at the sky. And when the last man has gone, one lonely pair of shoes is left lying in the entry, waiting for its owner. Ah, those shoes will have to wait a long time, for at that very moment Khapun is flying with their owner high over woods and fields, over valleys and hills and plains, flapping his