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

It did not seem possible that Galya could have heard the miller’s cry from such a great distance, but she shuddered nevertheless, and raised her dark, weeping eyes to heaven.

“Farewell, farewell, my beautiful black eyes,” the miller sighed, and at that instant he saw the girl’s hands clutch her breast and heard her rend the air with a piercing scream:

“Drop it, foul fiend! Drop it, it is mine!”

The sound tore at the devil’s ears like the mighty swing of a brandished chain. His wings fluttered feebly, his claws relaxed their hold, and Philip floated down like a feather, turning from side to side.

The devil dropped after him like a stone. But as soon as he reached him and grabbed him afresh, Galya shouted again:

“Drop it, accursed one, it is mine!”

The devil dropped the miller, and once more the poor man floated downward. So it happened three times, while the marsh lying between the mill and the village spread ever wider and wider beneath them.

Splash! The miller fell into the soft mud with such a bump that the bog bounced as if it had been on springs, and threw the miller ten feet into the air. He fell down again, jumped up, and took to his heels helter-skelter as fast as his legs could carry him. As he ran he screamed at the top of his lungs, feeling every second that the devil was going to grab him.

He reached the first hut on the outskirts of the village, flew the hedge at a bound, and found himself in the middle of the widow’s cottage. Here he came to his senses for the first time.

“Well, I am in your cottage, thank God!” he said.

Just think of it, good people, what a prank he had played! There he was early in the morning, before sunrise, before even the cows had been driven out to pasture, bareheaded, barefooted, in rags, plunging into the hut of two unmarried women, a widow and a young girl! Yes, and the fact that he was hat-less was a small matter; it was lucky indeed he hadn’t lost something else on the way; if he had, he would have disgraced the poor women forever! And on top of it all what did he say? “Thank God, I am in your cottage!”

The old woman could only wave her arms, but Galya jumped up in her nightgown from a bench, threw on a dress, and cried to the miller:

“What are you doing here, you wicked man? Are you so drunk that you can’t find your own hut, and so come rushing into ours, hey?”

But the miller stood in front of her looking at her with gentle if slightly staring eyes, and said:

“Come on, hit me as hard as you can!”

And she hit him once: bang!

“Hit me again!”

So she hit him again.

“That’s right. Do you want to hit me any more?”

So she hit him a third time. Then, when she saw that not only did he not mind, but stood there looking at her with gentle eyes, she threw up her hands and burst into tears.

“Oi, misery me, poor orphan that I am, who will come to my help? Oi, what a man this is! Isn’t it enough for him that he has deceived a young girl like me, and that he wants to turn Turk, and has made everyone gossip about me, and disgraced me before the whole village? Look at him, look at him, good people! I have hit him three times and he won’t even turn away. Oi, what can I do with a man like him, tell me, somebody, do!”

But the miller asked:

“Are you going to hit me again or not? Tell me truly. If you aren’t, I’m going to sit down on that bench, because I’m tired.”

Galya’s hands were approaching the miller again, but the old woman guessed there was something out of the ordinary about the business, and said to her daughter:

“Wait a bit, child! Why do you go on slapping the man’s neck without even stopping to ask him a question? Can’t you see that the lad’s a little bit off his head? Tell me, neighbour, where did you come from so suddenly, and what do you mean by saying: Thank God I am in your cottage, when you know you oughtn’t to be here at all?”

The miller rubbed his eyes and said:

“Tell me the honest truth, Auntie, am I asleep? Am I still alive? Has one night or one year passed since yesterday evening? And did I come here from the mill or did I drop from the sky?”

“Tut, tut, man! Cross yourself with your left hand! What nonsense you’re talking. You must have been dreaming!”

“I don’t know, good mother, I don’t know. I can’t make head or tail of it myself.”

He was about to sit down on a bench, when he caught sight through the window of Yankel the innkeeper, crawling along with a huge bundle on his back. The miller jumped up, pointed toward the window, and asked the two women:

“Who is that walking along there?”

“Why, that’s our Yankel!”

“And what is he carrying?”

“A bundle from the city.”

“Then why do you say I’ve been dreaming? Don’t you see that the Jew has come back? I saw him at the mill a moment ago, carrying that very same bundle.”

“And why shouldn’t he have come back?”

“Because the devil carried him off last year. Khapun, you know.”

Well, in a word, there was a great deal of amazement when the miller told of all that had happened to him. And in the meanwhile a crowd was beginning to collect in the road in front of the cottage; the people looked in at the window, and began making slanderous comments.

“Look at that!” they said. “There’s a nice state of affairs! The miller comes tearing across the fields without a hat, without boots, all ragged and torn, and runs straight into the widow’s cottage, and there he sits with them now!”

“Hey! Tell us, good man, whom have you come