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

“So, that’s your idea!”

The miller now noticed for the first time that Gavrilo was very uncertain on his legs and that the lads had given him another black eye. To tell the truth, the fellow looked so ugly and pale that you wanted to spit at the sight of him. He was a great hand with the girls, and the lads had more than once fallen upon him. Whenever they caught him they were sure to beat him almost to death. Of course it was no wonder they beat him; the wonder was there was ever anything for which to do it!

“There is no face in the world so ugly but some girl will fall in love with it,” thought the miller. “But they love him by threes and fours and dozens. Ugh! You scarecrow!”

“Come, Gavrilo, boy,” he nevertheless said in a coaxing voice, “come and sleep with me. When a man has seen what I have he feels a bit nervous.”

“All right, it’s all the same to me.”

A minute later a certain workman was whistling through his nose. And let me tell you, I spent the night at the mill once myself, and I have never heard anyone whistle through his nose as Gavrilo did. If a man didn’t like it he had better not spend the night in the same house with him or he wouldn’t sleep a wink.

“Gavrilo!” said the miller. “Hey, Gavrilo!”

“Well, then, what is it? If I couldn’t sleep myself at least I wouldn’t keep others awake!”

“Did they beat you again?”

“What if they did?”

“Where have you been?”

“You want to know everything, don’t you? In Konda.”

“In Konda? Why did you go there?”

“Because! What else do you want to know? Hee, hee, hee!”

“Aren’t there girls enough for you in Novokamensk?”

“Bah! It makes me sick to look at them. There isn’t one there that suits me.”

“What about Galya, the widow’s daughter?”

“Galya? What do I care about Galya?”

“What, have you been courting her?”

“Of course I have; what do you think?”

The miller flounced over in bed.

“You’re lying, you hound; a plague seize your mother!”

“I’m not lying and I never lie. I leave that to cleverer men than I am.”

Gavrilo yawned and said in a sleepy voice:

“Do you remember, master, how my right eye was so swelled up for a week that you couldn’t even see it?”

“Well?”

“That devil’s child entertained me by doing that. Confound her, say I! Galya, indeed!”

“So that’s how things are, is it?” thought the miller. “Gavrilo! Hey, Gavrilo! Oh, the hound, he’s snoring again⁠—Gavrilo!”

“What do you want? Have you gone crazy?”

“Do you want to get married?”

“I haven’t made my boots yet. When I’ve made my boots I’ll think about it.”

“But I’d give you boots, and tar for them, and a hat and a belt.”

“Would you? And I’ll tell you something better still.”

“What?”

“That the cocks are already crowing in the village. Can’t you hear them going it?”

It was true. In the village, perhaps at Galya’s cottage, a shrill-voiced cock was splitting his throat shouting “cock-a-doodle-doo!”

“Cock-a-doodle-doo!” answered other voices from far and near like water boiling in a kettle, and all the cracks in the wall of the little room began to gleam white, even down to the tiniest chink.

The miller yawned blissfully.

“Ah, now they are far away!” he thought. “How funny it was! He flew all the way from the city to my mill while the clock was striking twelve. Ha, ha, and so Yankel has gone! What a joke! Why, if I should tell it to anyone, they’d call me a liar. But why should I lie? They’ll find it out for themselves tomorrow. Perhaps I’d better not mention it at all. They would say I ought to have⁠—but what’s the use of arguing about it? If I had killed the Jew myself, or anything like that, I should have been responsible for what happened, but as it is, it doesn’t concern me at all. What need had I to interfere? Let sleeping dogs lie, say I. A shut mouth plays safe. They won’t hear anything from me.”

So Philip the miller reasoned with himself, and tried to ease his conscience a little. It was only as he was on the verge of falling asleep that a thought crept out of some recess of his brain like a toad out of a hole, and that thought was:

“Now, Philip, now’s your time!”

This thought chased all the others out of his mind and took possession of it.

With it he went to sleep.

Early next morning, while the dew is still glittering on the grass, behold the miller dressed and on his way to the village. He found the people there buzzing like bees in a hive.

“Hey! Have you heard the news?” they cried. “Only a pair of shoes came back from the city last night instead of the innkeeper.”

It was the talk of the village that morning, and the amount of gossip was sinful!

When Yankel’s widow had a pair of shoes returned to her instead of her husband, she lost her head entirely and didn’t know what in the world to do. To make matters worse, Yankel had wisely taken all his bonds to town with him, never dreaming that Khapun would get him that night. How could the poor Jew guess that out of the whole Hebrew congregation the devil would happen to choose him?

“That’s the way people always are, they never know, they never feel when trouble like, for instance, Khapun is hanging over their heads.”

So spoke the village folk, shaking their heads as they left the inn where the young Jewess and her children were tearing their clothes and beating their foreheads on the floor. And at the same time each man thought to himself:

“Well, anyhow, the bond I gave him has gone to the devil!”

To tell you the truth, there were very few in the village whose consciences whispered to them:

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea to return the principal to the Jewess even if we kept the interest.”

And