The farm-hand Koshel, on the other hand, was a man not devoid of interest. There was nothing one could talk about with him, and he was not loquacious by nature. Like the majority of the Durnovka people, he merely repeated antiquated, insignificant apophthegms, reasserted that which had been known for many a long year. If the weather turned bad he cast an eye at the sky: “The weather’s spoiling. Rain is what the growing green things most need at the present moment.” The fields were ploughed a second time, and he remarked: “If you won’t give a second ploughing you’ll be left without bread. That’s what the old people have always said.”
He had been a soldier in his day—had been in the Caucasus—but the military life had left no traces on him. He was unable to pronounce the word “post-office” properly: he called it “spost-office.” He could tell absolutely nothing whatsoever about the Caucasus, with the exception of the facts that mountain followed mountain there, and that terribly hot and strange waters spurted out of the ground. If you placed a piece of mutton in them, it was boiled in one minute, and if you didn’t take it out at the proper time, it got raw again. And he was not in the least proud of the fact that he had seen the world; he even bore himself with scorn toward people who knew the world. It is well understood that people only “rove about” because they are forced to do so, or through poverty. He never believed a single rumour—“all lies!”—but he did believe, and swore to it as a fact, that not long ago a witch had rolled in the form of a wheel through the twilight shades near Basovka, and that one peasant, who was no fool, had taken and caught hold of that wheel and thrust his belt through the hub and tied it fast.
“Well, and what happened next?” asked Kuzma.
“What?” replied Koshel. “That witch waked up early in the morning, and, lo and behold, that belt was sticking out her mouth and behind, and was tied fast over her stomach.”
“But why didn’t she untie it?”
“Evidently, the knot had had the sign of the cross made over it.”
“And aren’t you ashamed to believe such nonsense?”
“What is there for me to be ashamed of? People lie, and I let them talk.”
So Kuzma only liked to hear the man’s songs. As he sat in the darkness at the open window, without a light anywhere, with the village barely discernible like a black spot on the other side of the ravine, it was so quiet round about that the apples could be heard falling from the wild apple trees beyond the corner of the house. And Koshel walked slowly about the farmyard with his mallet, and with a serene melancholy hummed to himself in his falsetto voice: “Cease your song, canary, little bird.” He kept watch over the manor until morning and slept by day. He had hardly anything to do: Tikhon Ilitch had made haste to settle up Durnovka affairs betimes that year, and out of all the cattle only one horse and a cow remained. So things were quiet, even rather boresome, at the manor-house. The clear days were followed by colder days, bluish-grey, soundless. The goldfinches and tomtits began to whistle in the bare park, the cross-bills to pipe in the fir trees, the cedar-birds made their appearance, bullfinches, and some sort of leisurely tiny birds which hopped in flocks from place to place on the threshing-floor, whose supports were already sprouting with bright green new growths; sometimes a very silent, light little bird of that sort perched all alone on a spear of grass in the field. In the vegetable gardens behind Durnovka, the last potatoes were being dug among the sheaves. And at times, as evening drew on, some one of the peasants would stand there for a long space, absorbed in thought and gazing at the fields, as he bore on his back a plaited basket filled with ears of grain. Darkness began to fall early, and at the manor-house they said: “How late the train passes by nowadays!” although there had been no change in the schedule of the trains. Kuzma sat near the window and read newspapers all day long; he had written down his spring trip to Kazakovo and his conversations with Akim; he had jotted down remarks in an old account book—all he had seen and heard in the village. What occupied his attention most of all was Syery, the Grey Man.