He looked dully at the blazing wooden church-spire where it stood enveloped in flames as though wrapped in an inflated glittering cloak. Dully he let his eyes wander over the hedges and fences; everything seemed unreal, as things seen across a distant wave or a downpour of rain, out of reach and strange.
He was standing where the field-path joined the high road. The soldiers sat down on a heap of stones and lighted their cigarettes.
Yakób, trembling all over, looked at his own black shadow; fugitives arrived from the burning village and swarmed past him; the rifle fire now sounded from the direction of the mountains.
Suddenly Gregor's cottage burst into flames. A blood-red glow inflated the clouds of smoke, trembled on the snow and ran over the pine-trees like gold.
Soldiers were arriving from that direction, streaming with blood, supported by their comrades.
Yakób stood motionless, looking at his shadow; fear was burning within him. He looked at the sky above the awful chaos on the earth, and became calmer. He tried to remember how it had all happened.
They had come, had given him food. His wife and children were probably safe in the manor-house. Blinking his swollen eyelids, he tried to deceive himself, crouched down near the guard who was smoking, and asked him for fire. His fear miraculously disappeared.
He began to talk rapidly to the soldier: 'I was sitting…the wind was moaning…' he told him circumstantially how he was sitting, what he had been thinking, how the shots had struck his cottage.
The soldier put his rifle between his knees, crossed his hands over his sleeves, spat out and sighed.
'But you have had underhand dealings with the Russians.'