“Executions? That’s all right. Haven’t you heard what happened near Eletz? At the farm of the Bykoff brothers? Probably you remember—those fellows who can’t pronounce their letters right? Well, those Bykoffs were sitting, just as you and I are sitting together now, playing checkers one evening. Suddenly—what was it? There was a stamping on the porch and a shout of ‘Open the door!’ Well, brother, and before those Bykoffs had time to blink an eye, in rolls their labourer, a peasant after the pattern of Syery, and behind him two scalawags of some breed or other—hooligan adventurers, in a word. And all of them armed with crowbars. They brandished their crowbars and began to yell: ‘Put up your hands, curse your mother’s memory!’ Of course, the Bykoffs were thoroughly scared—scared to death—and they leaped to their feet and shouted: ‘What’s the meaning of this?’ And their nice little peasant yells, ‘Put ’em oop, put ’em oop!’” Here Tikhon Ilitch smiled, became thoughtful, and stopped talking.
“Well, tell the rest of it,” said Kuzma.
“There’s nothing more to tell. They stuck up their hands, as a matter of course, and asked: ‘What do you want?’ ‘Give us some ham! Where are your keys?’ ‘Damn you! As if you didn’t know! There they are yonder, on the door lintel, hanging on the nail.’”
“And they said that with their hands raised?” interrupted Kuzma.
“Of course they had their hands raised. And those men are going to pay heavily for those upraised hands! They’ll be hanged, naturally. They are already in jail, the dear creatures—”
“Are they going to hang them on account of the ham?”
“No! for the fun of it, Lord forgive me for my sin,” retorted Tikhon Ilitch, half angrily, half in jest. “For the love of God, do stop talking balderdash and trying to pretend you’re a Balashkin! ’Tis time to drop that.”
Kuzma pulled at his grey beard. His haggard, emaciated face, his mournful eyes, his left brow, which slanted upward, all were reflected in the mirror, and as he looked at himself he silently assented.
“Talking balderdash? Truly it is time—I ought to have dropped that long ago....”
Then Tikhon Ilitch turned the conversation to business. Evidently he had been thinking things over a little while previously, during the story, merely because something far more important than executions had occurred to him—a bit of business.