‘Sh.... Sh! Olyessia’s lying there unconscious; that’s what’s the matter with Olyessia! If you hadn’t poked your nose in where you had no business, and talked a pack of nonsense to the girl, nothing wrong would have happened. And I just looked on and indulged it, blind fool that I am.... But my heart scented misfortune.... It scented misfortune from the very first day when you broke into our house, almost by force. Do you mean to say that it wasn’t you who persuaded her to go trailing off to church?’ Suddenly the old woman looked at me with her face distorted with hatred. ‘Wasn’t it you, you cursed gentleman! Don’t lie—don’t put me off with your cunning tricks, you shameless hound! What did you go enticing her to church for?’
‘I didn’t entice her, granny.... I give you my word. She wanted to, herself.’
‘Ah, my grief, my misfortune!’ Manuilikha clasped her hands. ‘She came running back from there—with no face left at all, and all her skirt in rags ... without a shawl to her head.... She tells me how it happened ... then she laughs, or cries.... Just possessed simply.... She lay on the bed ... weeping all the while, and then I saw that she’d fallen into a sleep, I thought.... And I was happy like an old fool. “She’ll sleep it all away now, for good,” I thought. I saw her hand hanging down, and I thought I’d better put it right, or it would swell.... I felt for the darling’s hand and it was burning, blazing.... That meant the fever had begun.... For an hour she never stopped speaking, fast, and so pitifully.... She only stopped this very minute, a moment ago.... What have you done? What have you done to her?’
Suddenly her brown face writhed into a monstrous, disgusting grimace of weeping. Her lips tightened and drooped at the corners: all the muscles of her face stiffened and trembled, her eyelids lifted and wrinkled her forehead into deep folds, and from her eyes came a quick rain of big tears, big as peas. She held her head in her hands, and with her elbows on the table began to rock her whole body to and fro and to whine in a low, drawn-out voice.
‘My little daught-er! My darling grand-daught-er! Oh, it is so hard for me, so bit-te-r!’
‘Don’t roar, you old fool!’ I coarsely broke in on Manuilikha. ‘You’ll wake her!’
The old woman kept silence, but with the same terrible contortion of her face she went on swinging to and fro, while the big tears splashed on to the table.... About ten minutes passed in this way. I sat by Manuilikha’s side and anxiously listened to a fly knocking against the window-pane with a broken yet monotonous buzzing....
‘Granny!’ suddenly a faint, barely audible voice came from Olyessia: ‘Granny, who’s here?’
Manuilikha hastily hobbled to the bed, and straightway began to whine once more.
‘Oh, my granddaughter, my own! Oh, it is so hard for me, so bit-t-e-r!’