‘Where to? Into the forest, of course ... where else? And they pulled her cottage down as well, so that there shouldn’t be a splinter of the cursed den left.... And they took her to the cross roads....’
‘Why did they treat her like that?’
‘She did a great deal of harm. She quarrelled with everybody, poured poison beneath the cottages, tied knots in the corn.... Once she asked a village woman for fifteen kopeks. “I haven’t got a sixpence,” says she. “Right,” she says, “I’ll teach you not to give me a sixpence.” And what do you think, sir? That very day the woman’s child began to be ill. It grew worse and worse and then died. Then it was that the boys drove her out—curse her for a witch.’
‘Well ... where’s the witch now?’ I was still curious.
‘The witch?’ Yarmola slowly repeated the question, as his habit was. ‘How should I know?’
‘Didn’t she leave any relatives in the village?’
‘No, not one. She didn’t come from our village; she came from the Big Russians, or the gipsies. I was still a tiny boy when she came to our village. She had a little girl with her, a daughter or grandchild.... They were both driven out.’
‘Doesn’t any one go to her now—to get their fortunes told or to get medicine?’
‘The womenfolk do,’ Yarmola said scornfully.
‘Ah, so it’s known where she lives?’