'Oh Jehovah, why art thou so unmerciful to one of Thy most faithful sons?...'
IN AUTUMN
WACŁAW SIEROSZEWSKI
The rain and bad weather, which had continued without interruption for several days, had kept the inhabitants of the hut, 'Talaki,'[14] prisoners indoors, and condemned them to idleness. They constantly went out of the room to gaze long and sadly at the weeping sky, for the hay was rotting in the fields;—but alas! a grey film of rain hung over all the surrounding country, and in vain their eyes sought longingly for the smallest chink of blue in the heavy, dark clouds.
To add to the misfortune, the rain, not content with the holes left in the roof from the year before, made a number of fresh ones. It thus poured into the room from all sides on to people's heads and shoulders, and formed quite a deep and ever-growing pool underfoot. Various forms of filth, remains of food, refuse of fish and game, the dung in the corner where the calves were kept, which had been trodden down and had dried in the course of the year, became moist, and filled the interior of the 'yurta'[15] with an unbearable smell. It was therefore stuffy, cold, and damp there. The fire, burning rather slowly, was choked by balls of grey smoke, which went across the room.
The hut was tiny; it occupied no more than twenty-four square yards of the solitude surrounding it. The slanting walls, made of barked larch trees placed perpendicularly, and narrowing towards the top, diminished its size still more. The flat roof was built of rafters of the same wood, and came down so close to the inhabitants' heads that one of them, Michawio, a big lad, while unwinding a bundle of nets at the little window, hit his curly shock head against it.
A plank partition, hewn out with a hatchet, ran through the centre of the room, and divided it into equal parts, the right being for the men, the left for the women. By a post at the end of the room, with his face turned towards the fire, his hands on his right knee, and smoking a pipe, sat my host, Kyrsa,[16] a Yakut. Still hale, though no longer young, he was the wealthy and independent master of field labourers, and the owner of the house, of many nets, animals, and implements, as well as of three women:—a wife, and two daughters. The youngest was sold already, but she was living with her father, as the sum agreed upon for her had not yet been paid in full by the buyer.
There was deep silence in the room,—a rather unusual thing in a place where several Yakut people are together. The fire roared and hissed in the chimney, and behind the partition the girls made a squeaking sound as they rubbed the skins together. I had a foreboding that this silence would end badly; indeed, the storm soon broke out. The lad nicknamed 'Shmata' brought it on by his incompetence. After wandering from corner to corner all day, he now upset a bucket and spilt the water. This was the last straw. All eyes flashed, and faces grew pale.