Short Fiction - Vladimir Korolenko (easy books to read in english txt) 📗

the miller, and the miller fell back. He escaped to the stile, put one foot upon it, and said:

“Oho! So that’s your game, little viper! Very well then, quit this hut with your mother! Tomorrow I’ll take it for your debts. Away with you!”

But she shouted back:

“Get out of my garden, you Turk, as long as it’s mine! If you don’t I’ll scratch you with my nails so that even your Motria won’t know where your eyes and nose and mouth have been. Not only will you not have two sweethearts, not one will look at an eyeless creature like you.”

What use to talk to her? The miller spat, jumped quickly over the hedge, and left the village in a rage. When he reached the crest of the hill from where there came to him the murmuring of the stream in the millrace, he looked back and shook his fist.

And at that moment he heard the sound of a bell: ding, dong; ding, dong! Again Kadilo was ringing the hour of midnight from the village belfry.

IX

The miller reached his mill. It was all drenched with dew; the moon was shining, the wood was shimmering, and a bittern, that foul bird, was awake and booming in the reeds, sleepless, as if it were waiting for someone, as if it were calling up someone out of the pond.

Dread fell upon Philip the miller.

“Hey! Gavrilo!” he shouted.

“Oo-oo, oo-oo!” answered the bittern from the marsh, but not a squeak came from the mill.

“Oh, the confounded scapegrace! He’s run off after the girls again.” So thought the miller, and somehow did not feel like going alone into the empty mill. Although he was used to it, he sometimes remembered that not only fish but adders were to be found swimming about among the piles in the dark water under the floor.

He looked in the direction of the city. The night was warm and bright; a light mist was circling over the river that flowed through the woods, lost in the shimmering murk. There was not a cloud in the sky.

The miller looked behind him, and wondered afresh at the depth of his pond that found room in its bosom for the moon and the stars and the whole of the dark blue sky.

As he gazed at the pond he saw in the water something resembling a gnat flying across the stars. He looked more closely, and saw the gnat grow to the size of a fly, and the fly to a sparrow, and the sparrow to a crow, and the crow to a hawk.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” cried the miller, and, raising his eyes, he saw something flying not through the water but through the air, and making straight for the mill.

“The Lord preserve us! There’s Khapun again hurrying to the city after his prey. Look at him, the unholy brute, how late he is this time! It’s past midnight already, and he’s just starting out.”

While the miller was standing there staring up at the sky, the cloud, which was now as large as an eagle, circled over the mill and began to descend. Out of it came a humming sound like out of a huge swarm of bees that has left its hive and is hovering over a garden.

“What! Is he going to rest on my dam again?” thought the miller. “What a habit he makes of it now! Wait a bit, mister! I’ll put up a cross there next year, and then you won’t come stopping at my dam on your journey like a gentleman at an inn. But what is he making that noise for, like those rattling kites children fly? I must hide under the sycamores again, and see what he’s going to do next.”

But before he had had time to reach the trees, the miller looked up and nearly shrieked aloud with terror. He saw his guest hovering right over the mill holding⁠—what? You will never guess what the devil held in his clutches.

It was Yankel the Jew! Yes, he had brought back the selfsame Yankel whom he had carried away the year before. He was holding him tight by the back, and in Yankel’s hands was a huge bundle tied up in a sheet. The devil and Yankel were abusing one another in the air, and making as much fuss as ten Jews in a bazaar squabbling over one peasant.

The devil dropped on to the dam like a stone. If it hadn’t been for his soft bundle every bone in Yankel’s body would certainly have been broken to pieces. As soon as they touched the ground both jumped to their feet and went at it again, hammer and tongs.

“Oi, oi! What a dirty, foul trick!” screamed Yankel. “Couldn’t you have let me down more gently? I suppose you knew you had a living man in your claws?”

“I wish you and your bundle had gone right through the earth!”

“Pooh! What harm does my little bundle do you? You don’t have to carry it.”

“Your little bundle indeed! A whole mountain of trash! I have only just managed to drag you back. Oo-ff! There was nothing about this in our contract.”

“But when has it ever been known that a man went on a journey without any baggage? If you carry a man you must carry his things too; that’s understood without any contract. I see! You’ve been trying to cheat poor Yankel the Jew from the very start, and that’s why you’re quarrelling now!”

“Huh! Anyone who tried to cheat you, you old fox, wouldn’t live three days! I’m precious sorry I ever agreed to anything!”

“And do you think I am perfectly delighted to have made your acquaintance? Oi, vei! You’d better tell me yourself what our contract was. But you may have forgotten it, so I’ll remind you. We made a bet. Perhaps you will say we didn’t make a bet? That would be a nice trick!”

“Who said we didn’t make a bet? Did I say we didn’t?”

“And