Makar's Dream, and Other Stories

by Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko

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 some one, as if it were calling up some one 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! Any one 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 how could you say we didn’t, when we made it right here in this very place? Perhaps you don’t remember what the bet was, as I do. You said: Jews are usurers, Jews sell the people vodka, Jews have pity on their own people but on no one else; that’s why every one wishes them to the devil. Of course, perhaps you didn’t say that, and perhaps I didn’t say in answer: there stands a miller behind that very sycamore tree who, if he had any pity for Jews, would shout to you now and say: ‘Drop him, Mr. Devil; he has a wife, he has children!’ But he won’t do it. That was number one!”

“How could the wretch have guessed that?” thought the miller; but the devil said:

“Very well; number one!”

“And then I said—don’t you remember?—I said: as soon as I’ve gone the miller will open a tavern and will begin selling diluted vodka. He lends money already at a fine rate of interest. That was number two!”

“All right; number two!” the devil agreed, but the miller scratched his head and thought:

“How could the infernal brute have guessed all that?”

“And I went on to say that, as a matter of fact, Christians did wish us to the devil. But do you think, said I, that if one of us Jews were here now and saw what you want to do to me he wouldn’t raise a fine riot? But every one you ask will say of the miller in a year: the devil fly away with him! That was number three!”

“All right; number three. I don’t deny it.”

“And a fine business it would be if you did deny it! What sort of an honest Hebrew devil would you be after that? Tell me now what you agreed to do on your part.”

“I have done all I agreed. I have left you alive for a year; number one. I have brought you back here; number two——”

“And what about number three? What are you going to do about that?”

“What do you think I’m going to do? If you win the bet I’ll let you go scot free.”

“And my losses? Don’t you know that you owe me for my losses?”

“Losses? What losses can you have had when we allowed you to do business with us for a whole year without paying a license? You wouldn’t have made as much profit in three years on earth. Just think for yourself: I carried you off in your shirt without even a pair of shoes to your feet, and look what a big bundle you’ve brought back! Where did you get it from if you made nothing but losses?”

“Oi, vei! There you are scolding me about my bundle again! Whatever I made there by trading is my own business. Did you count my profits? I tell you I made nothing but losses out of my dealings with you, besides losing a year here on earth.”

“Oh, you swindler you!” shouted the devil.

“I a swindler? No, you’re a swindler yourself, you thief, you liar, you scab!”

And they began again to wrangle so violently that their words became quite unintelligible. They waved their arms, their skull-caps quivered, and they stood up on tip-toe like two cocks preparing to fight. The devil was the first to regain control of himself.

“But we don’t yet know who has won the bet! It is true that the miller didn’t take pity on you, but we haven’t decided the other points yet. We haven’t asked the people whether he opened a tavern or not.”

“I have opened two!” the miller thought, scratching his head again. “Oh, why didn’t I wait a year? Then Yankel would have been sent to the devil for good, but now something disagreeable may come of it.”

He looked round at his mill. Couldn’t he possibly slip away to the village by crawling behind it? But just as he was contemplating this move, the sound of muttering and of uncertain footsteps came to his ears from the wood. Yankel threw his bundle over his shoulder, and ran to the very sycamore tree where the miller was hiding. The miller hardly had time to slip behind a big willow tree before the devil and Yankel were both under the sycamore, and at that moment Gavrilo appeared at the far end of the dam. Gavrilo’s coat was in tatters and was hanging off one shoulder; his hat was on one side of his head, and his bare feet were continually quarrelling with one another. If one wanted to go to the right, the other, out of contrariness, tried to go to the left. One pulled one way and the other the other, until the poor man’s head and feet nearly flew off in opposite directions. So the poor lad staggered along, weaving patterns all across the dam from one side to the other, but not progressing forward very fast.

The devil saw that Gavrilo was full, so he came out and stood in the middle of the dam just as he was. Why the devil need any one stand on ceremony with a drunkard?

“Good evening, good fellow!” he called. “Where did you get so full?”

As he said this, the miller noticed for the first time how miserable and ragged Gavrilo had grown during the last year. And it was all because he drank up at his master’s tavern everything that he earned from his master. It was long since he had seen any money; he took it all out in vodka.

The workman walked right up to the devil, saying:

“Whoa there! What has come over these devilish feet of mine? When I want them to walk, they stop; when they see any one standing under my very nose, they rush on ahead. Who are you?”

“With your permission, I am the devil.”

“Wha-at? I believe you’re lying. Well, I never! But perhaps you are right after all! There are your horns and your tail, just as they ought to be. But why do you wear ringlets hanging down your cheeks?”

“To tell you the truth, I’m the Hebrew devil.”

“Aha! There’s a marvel for you! If I were to tell people I had seen your honour no one would believe me. Wasn’t it you who carried off our Yankel last year?”

“Yes, it was I.”

“And whom are you after now? Not me? If you are, I swear I’ll yell. Yes, I’ll yell like mad. You don’t know what a voice I have.”

“Come, don’t scream for nothing, good fellow. What good would you be to me?”

“Then perhaps it’s the miller you want? If you’d like me to call him, I will. But no, wait a bit. Who would be our inn-keeper if you took him away?”

“Does he keep an inn?”

“Does he? He keeps two: one in the village and one by the side of the road.”

“Ha! ha! ha! And is that why you would be sorry to lose the miller?”

“Oi, what a loud laugh you have! Ha! I’m not the fellow to be sorry on the miller’s account. No, I didn’t mean that at all. He’s not a man to be sorry for. He thinks poor Gavrilo’s a fool. And he’s right too. I’m not very clever—don’t think ill of me for it—but still, when I eat I don’t put my porridge in another man’s mouth, but into my own. And if I get married it will be for myself, and if I don’t get married it will be for myself too. Am I right or not?”

“You’re right, you’re right, but I don’t yet know what you’re driving at.”

“Hee, hee, perhaps you don’t know because you don’t need to. But I need to know, and I do know why he wants to get me married. Oi, I know it very well, even though I’m not very bright. When you carried Yankel away that time I was sorry to see him go, and I said to my master: Well, who is going to keep the inn for us now? And he answered: Bah, you fool, do you think some one won’t turn up? Perhaps I’ll keep it myself! That’s why I say now: take the miller if you want him; we’ll find some one else to be a Jew in his place. And now let me tell you, my good man—good gracious, your honour, don’t think ill of me for calling a foul fiend a man!—and now let me tell you something: I’m getting terribly sleepy. Do as you please, but catch him yourself; I’m going to bed, I am, because I’m not very well. That will be splendid. Ah!”

Gavrilo’s legs began weaving again, and he had hardly opened the door of the mill before he fell down and began to snore.

The devil laughed merrily, and, going to the edge of the dam, beckoned to Yankel where he stood under the sycamore tree.

“You seem to have won, Yankel,” he shouted. “It looks very much like it. But give me something to wear, all the same; I’ll pay you for it.”

Yankel took a pair of breeches to the light and looked them over to be sure he wasn’t giving the devil a new pair, and while he was busy with them, an ox-cart appeared on the road leading out of the wood. The oxen were sleepily nodding their heads, the wheels were quietly squeaking, and in the cart lay a peasant, Opanas the Slow, without a coat, without a hat, without boots, bawling a song at the top of his voice.

Opanas was a good peasant, but the poor fellow sorely loved vodka. Whenever he dressed up to go anywhere Kharko would be sure to call to him from his look-out at the inn-door:

“Won’t you drink a little mugful, Opanas? What’s your hurry?”

And Opanas would drink it.

Then, when he had crossed the dam and reached the village, the miller himself would call to him from the door of the other tavern:

“Won’t you come in and have a little mugful, Opanas? What’s the hurry?”

And Opanas would have another drink there. First thing you knew he would turn home without having been anywhere else at all.

Yes, he was a good peasant, but fate had ordained him always to fall between the two taverns. And yet he was a merry fellow and was always singing songs. That is man’s nature. When he has drunk up everything he possesses and knows that an angry wife is waiting for him at home, he will make up a song and think he has got rid of his troubles. And so it was with Opanas. He was lying in his wagon singing so loudly that even the frogs jumped into the water as he drove up, and this was his song:

“Oxen, oxen, how you crawl,

Walking down the road;

If I stood up, I should fall,

Oi, I’d surely fall.

I’ve drunk up my coat and hat,

The boots from off my feet;

In the inn, I’ll swear to that,

The miller’s vodka’s sweet.

“Oi, what is that devilish brute standing right in the middle of the dam for, keeping my oxen from crossing? If I wasn’t too tired to get out of the cart, I’d show him how to plant himself there in the middle of the road. Gee, gee, gee-up!”

“Stop a minute, my good man!” said the devil very sweetly. “I want to have a minute’s talk with you.”

“A minute’s talk? All right then, talk away, only I’m in a hurry. The tavern at Novokamensk will soon be closed so that no one can get in. But I don’t know what you want to talk about; I don’t know you. Well?”

“About whom were you singing that pretty song?”

“Thank you for praising it! I was singing about the miller that lives in this mill, but whether the song was pretty or not is my own affair, because I was singing it to myself. Perhaps some people would fly when they heard the song, perhaps some would cry. Gee, gee, gee-up! What! Are you still standing there?”

“I’m still standing here.”

“What for?”

“You said in your song that the miller’s vodka is good. Is that so?”

“Aha, now I see how sly you are! You begin quarrelling with a man’s song before he has sung it to the end. That’s the devil’s own trick! You don’t know the proverb, I see: don’t go to hell before your father; if you do, you’ll be sorry. If that’s how you feel, I’d better sing my song to the end, so here goes:

Yes, the vodka in the inn

Is good as any sold;

Two parts of it are liquor,

One is water cold.

“Get out of the way, then! What are you standing there for? What do you want now? Wait a minute till I get out of my wagon and find out whether you’re going to stand there much longer! What would you think if I gave you a taste of my stick, hey?”

“I’m going in a minute, my good man, only tell me one thing more. What would you think if the devil flew away with your miller here as he flew away with Yankel?”

“What would I think? I wouldn’t think anything at all. He’ll get him some day, that’s certain; he’ll surely get him. But you’re still standing there, I see. Take care, I’m climbing out of my wagon! Look, I’ve already raised one leg!”

“All right, all right, go along with you if you’re as cross as all that!”

“Are you out of the way?”

“Yes.”

“Gee, gee, gee-up!”

The oxen shook their horns, the yoke and axles creaked, the wagon trembled, and Opanas continued his song:

“Oxen, oxen, how you crawl,

Hurry up and trot.

The miller has my coat and wheels,

So now he has the lot.”

The wheels bumped down off the dam, and Opanas’ song died away behind the hill.

But before it had quite died away another song rang out from across the river. A ringing chorus of women’s voices came streaming through the night, first from afar, and then from in the wood. A party of women and girls, who had been gathering in the harvest on a distant farm, were now on their way home late at night, and were singing to give themselves courage in the wood.

The devil at once slipped to Yankel’s side under the willow tree.

“Come, give me something more to wear, quick!”

Yankel handed him a heap of rags. The devil hurled them to the ground, and seized the bundle.

“Here! What do you mean by giving me these rags as if I were a beggar? I’d be ashamed to be seen in them. Give me something respectable!”

The devil seized what he wanted, folded his wings, which were as soft as a bat’s, in a second, jumped like a flash into a pair of blue breeches as wide as the sea, threw on the rest of his clothes, drew his belt tight, and covered his horns with a high fur hat. Only his tail hung out over the top of one boot, and trailed along in the sand like a snake.

Then he smacked his lips, stamped his foot, stuck his arms akimbo, and went out to meet the lasses, looking for all the world like any young townsman, or perhaps some would-be gentleman steward.

He planted himself in the middle of the dam.

The song rang out nearer and nearer and clearer and clearer, floating away under the bright moon until it seemed as if it must wake the whole of the sleeping world. Then it suddenly broke off short.

The young women poured out of the wood as poppies might pour out of a girl’s apron, saw the long-tailed dandy standing before them, and instantly huddled together in a group at the farther end of the dam.

“Who is that standing there?” asked one of the girls.

“It’s the miller,” answered another.

“The miller! Why, it doesn’t look like him one bit!”

“Perhaps it’s his workman.”

“Who ever saw a workman dressed like that?”

“Tell us who you are if you’re not a bad spirit!” called the widow Buchilikha, evidently the boldest of the party.

The devil bowed to them from a distance, and then approached, cringing and scraping like any little upstart who tries to appear a gentleman.

“Don’t be afraid, my birdies,” said he. “I’m a young man, but I won’t do you any harm. Come on, and don’t be afraid.”

Each trying to push the other ahead, the women and girls stepped on to the dam, and soon surrounded the devil. Ah, there is nothing pleasanter than to be surrounded by a dozen or so frolicsome lasses bombarding you with swift glances, nudging one another with their elbows, and giggling. The devil’s heart was beginning to leap and sparkle a little, like birch bark in a fire; he hardly knew what to do or where to turn. And the girls kept laughing at him louder and louder.

“That’s right, that’s right, little birdies!” thought the miller, peering out from behind his gnarled willow-tree. “Remember, my duckies, how many songs Philipko has sung with you, how many dances he has led! See what trouble I’m in! Save me; I’m caught like a fly in a cobweb!”

He thought that if only they were to give the devil one little pinch the fiend would sink into the ground.

But old Buchilikha stopped the girls and exclaimed:

“Get along with you, little magpies, you’ve laughed at the poor lad till his nose hangs down and his arms are limp. Tell us, young fellow, for whom are you waiting here at the edge of the pond?”

“For the miller.”

“Then you’re a friend of his?”

“A plague upon any friend of mine that’s like him!” the miller tried to cry, but his words stuck in his throat, and the devil replied:

“He’s no very great friend of mine, but I can call him an old acquaintance.”

“Is it long since you’ve seen him?”

“Yes, a long time.”

“Then you wouldn’t recognise him now. He used to be a nice lad, but he holds his head so high now that you couldn’t touch his nose with a pitchfork.”

“Really?”

“Yes, indeed. It’s true, isn’t it, girls?”

“It’s true, true, true!” chattered the whole bevy.

“Tut, tut, not quite so loud!” cried the devil, putting his fingers in his ears. “Tell me: what has happened to him, and since when has he changed?”

“Since he grew rich.”

“And began to lend money.”

“And opened a tavern.”

“He and his horrid Kharko have fuddled my husband Opanas so that the poor man never goes anywhere now except to the tavern.”

“He has ruined our husbands and fathers with his drink.”

“Oi, oi, he’s a misery to us all, the horrid miller!” screamed one of the band, and in place of their songs, a chorus of wails and women’s lamentations rang out across the river.

Philip rather scratched his head to hear the way the young women were interceding for him. But the devil’s mind now seemed to be quite made up. He glanced at the girls out of one corner of his eye and rubbed his hands together.

“And that isn’t all!” shouted the widow Buchilikha louder than the loudest. “Have you heard what he wanted to do to the widow’s Galya?”

“Faugh!” spat the miller. “What a damned lot of magpies they are! What need to tell what they’re not asked about? And how in the world did they find it out? Though it only happened in the village to-night, they have heard the whole story in the hay-fields! Why on earth does God allow women to live in this world?”

“And what did my friend try to do to the widow’s daughter?” asked the devil, looking about him as if he weren’t particularly interested in the story.

So the magpies went on to tell him everything, talking all at once, and laid the whole affair before him from beginning to end.

The devil shook his head.

“Oi, oi, oi! That’s bad, very bad. I don’t suppose any one ever heard of your former inn-keeper Yankel doing anything like that?”

“Oh, what Jew ever thought of doing such a thing?”

“Oh, no, never!”

“I see, my daisies, my little peaches, that you don’t love my friend very much.”

“Let him get the love of all the devils; he needn’t expect any from us!”

“Oi, oi, oi, you don’t wish him much good, I see!”

“May the fever take him and shake him to pieces!”

“May he follow his uncle into the pond!”

“May the devil carry him off as he carried off Yankel!”

They all burst out laughing.

“You are right, Olena; he is worse than a Jew.”

“At least the Jew was a decent fellow; he let the girls alone and lived with his Sarah.”

The devil actually jumped in his tracks.

“Thank you, thank you, my birdies, for your friendly words. Isn’t it time for you to be going on?”

With that he threw back his head like a cock that intends to give an extra loud crow, and burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. He laughed so loud that all the evil spirits on the bed of the river woke up, and circles began spreading across the surface of the pond. But the girls shied away from him like a flock of sparrows into which some one has thrown a stone, and vanished as if the wind had suddenly blown them off the dam.

The goose-flesh ran up and down the miller’s back, and he stared down the road that led to the village.

“The best thing for me to do,” he thought, “is to make off after those girls as fast as my legs will carry me. I used to be able to run with the best.”

But at that moment he suddenly felt relieved, for he saw some one coming toward the mill-dam. And it wasn’t just any one, either, but his own servant Kharko.

“A miss is as good as a mile!” he thought. “There is my man!”