And I somehow see the pond, the weary servants, who, up to their knees in the water, drag the heavy net; and again Feódor Filíppuitch, shouting to everybody, walking up and down on the bank, and only now and then venturing to the brink, taking with his hand the golden carp, and letting the dirty water run out from his watering-pot, so as to fill it up with fresh.
But here it is midday, in the month of July. Across the newly mown turf of the lawn, under the burning perpendicular rays of the sun, I seem to be going somewhere. I am still very young; I am free from yearnings, free from desires. I am going to the pond, to my own favorite spot between the rose-bushes and the birch-tree alley; and I shall lie down and nap. Keen is the sensation that I have, as I lie down, and look across the red thorny stems of the rose-bushes upon the dark ground with its dry grass and on the gleaming bright-blue mirror of the pond. It is a sensation of a peculiarly simple self-contentment and melancholy. All around me is so lovely, and this loveliness has such a powerful effect upon me, that it seems to me as if I myself were good; and the one thing that vexes me is, that no one is there to admire me.
It is hot. I try to go to sleep for comfort's sake; but the flies, the unendurable flies, even here, give me no rest. They begin to swarm around me, and obstinately, insolently as it were, heavy as cherry-stones, jump from my forehead to my hands. A bee buzzes near me in the sunbeam. Yellow-winged butterflies fly wearily from flower to flower.
I gaze up. It pains my eyes. The sun shines too bright through the light foliage of the bushy birch-tree, gracefully waving its branches high above my head, and it grows hotter still. I cover my face with my handkerchief. It becomes stifling; and the flies seem to stick to my hands, on which the perspiration stands. In the rose-bush the sparrows twitter under the thick leaves. One hops to the ground almost within my reach, makes two or three feints to peck energetically at the ground, and after making the little twigs crackle, and chirping gayly, flies away from the bushes; another also hops to the ground, wags his little tail, looks around, and, like an arrow, flies off twittering after the first. At the pond are heard the blows of the pounder on the wet clothes; and the noise re-echoes, and is carried far away, down along the shore. I hear laughter and talking, and the splashing of bathers. The breath of the wind sweeps the tops of the birches far above my head, and bends them down again. I hear it moving the grass, and now the leaves of the rose-bushes toss and rustle on their stems. And now, lifting the corner of my handkerchief, it tickles my sweaty face, and pours in upon me in a cooling current. Through the opening where the handkerchief is lifted a fly finds his way, and timidly buzzes around my moist mouth. A dry twig begins to make itself felt under my back. No: it becomes unendurable; I must get it out. But now, around the clump of bushes, I hear the sound of footsteps, and the frightened voice of a woman:—
"Mercy on me![12] what's to be done? And no man anywhere!"
"What's the matter?" I ask, running out into the sun, as a serving-woman, screaming, hurries past me. She merely glances at me, wrings her hands, and hurries along faster. And here comes also the seventy-year-old Matryóna, holding her handkerchief to her head, with her hair all in disorder, and hopping along with her lame leg in woollen stockings. Two girls come running, hand in hand; and a ten-year-old boy in his father's jacket runs behind, clinging to the linen petticoat of one of them.
"What has happened?" I ask of them.
"A muzhík drowned!"
"Where?"
"In the pond."