The frightened Shmata tried to lay the blame on Michawio, who had been stooping down near him to look for a strap. Michawio in revenge reminded Shmata of what had happened about the rake the year before. The quarrel had begun in earnest. Their tongues, moving with the speed of a windmill, and throwing out invectives and sneers, formed an accompaniment to the host's threatening shouts, which rang out like the trump of the Archangel. Nor did our hostess fail to leave her seclusion to take part in the skirmish with the excitement peculiar to women all the world over. The yurta suddenly became like a disturbed beehive. The host affirmed, the hostess denied, the labourers hurled abuses at one another, the girls uttered war cries, the baby woke up and screamed in its cradle, and the calves lowed in answer to the loud mooing of the cows, whom evening had driven near the house door. This last occurence had a perceptible influence in diminishing the noise, for it caused the female element to withdraw from the fight; in fact, the disturbance might have been conjured away completely, if the happy thought of adding something at the very moment when everyone else was quieting down, had not entered our host's head.
This remark burst out unexpectedly, like a belated bomb after a battle, and produced such a din that the cows and calves were silent, the wind abated in fright, the clouds fled, and I became aware of a golden sunbeam penetrating the holes in the bladder at the window, and falling suddenly into the interior of our dark, dirty, noisy hovel. Merrily and brightly it rested in a shining circle on the closely cropped grey head of my host, before whose nose his wife's large closed fist was hovering at that moment. 'That's for you! Take that! Go on!' Kuimis cried, still beautiful in her anger. The fist came closer and closer to the unfortunate man's mouth.
What happened further? Did Kyrsa avenge himself like a man for that greatest of all insults possible to a Yakut from a woman? Or did he show himself to be the 'wife of his wife,' an old woman and a simpleton, as the neighbours called him, and refrain from knocking out the teeth or breaking the ribs of the active woman by whose work he lived and had grown rich? I do not know, because, foreseeing the overthrow of my friend, in whom love for his wife was always struggling against a sense of duty, and not wishing to be a witness of his defeat, I shouldered my gun and went out of the cottage.
The wind had dropped, the covering of clouds was torn open, and bits of pale blue sky were unveiled here and there. The sun peeped out suddenly through one of these little gaps, and the landscape, which had been dreary and joyless a moment before, brightened into a golden splendour. A light shadow, half cheerful, half sombre, fell across its faded autumn foliage, and in this half smile it resembled a forsaken woman, to whom the caprice of a lover, who has already grown cold, offers a moment of tenderness and happiness again. Drops of rain glistened like brilliants on the dark branches of the trees and bushes; the sky was coloured in shades of carmine, and the pearly tears of the passing storm trembled on the willows, still swaying from it.
Before me, between two high promontories overgrown by woods which ran in opposite directions, sparkled the surface of the lake. In proportion as it stretched into the distance, its bank became more winding, lower, and mistier, until it disappeared at the outlet of a gorge. Owing to the distance, the tall, thin larches, the thick willows, bushes, and grass growing there looked quite small, but the rays of the sunset, falling on them from behind, produced a wonderful lace-work of dark branches and leaves against a pale-rose sky. Grey clouds hung above them, heavily embroidered with gold and purple. The waves sported and chased one another below on the foam-splashed banks of the lake, which was painted with colours from the sky.
I walked towards the gorge, by the footpath leading through a meadow which was now turning yellow.
That 'demons' forest'[17] looked dark and horrible close at hand. The flat hills, uniformly covered with soft moss of a dirty green, and with cranberry leaves, undulated gently westwards towards the sinking sun. The wood covering these hills was sparse and stunted, and disfigured them rather than otherwise, for single trees stood out here and there like the remaining hair on a bald man's head. Silence, and the gloom of oncoming night already filled the interior of the forest. Only here and there a forgotten ray of sunshine was burning itself out above in the bare, wind-twisted summits of the larches.
I stood for a moment, looking at that wild spot, which no native would have dared to approach. A deep stillness lay upon it; the waves beat more and more gently and noiselessly; the sunset was fading away, and only where the network of bushes was less close a transient gleam lighted the surface of some lakes, which had hitherto been unknown to me. I walked on towards them, impelled by curiosity and a feeling of longing.
The way proved more difficult than I had expected. At every moment I was obliged to jump or climb over bushes and avoid the deep, narrow wells, boarded round with tree-trunks felled a hundred years before and perfidiously concealed by the mosses and plants overgrowing them. As these wells were full of water, with bottoms as slippery as ice, an unwary pedestrian could easily break his neck or fracture a leg by falling into them. In many places swampy streams trickled along undefined channels, and though their banks were shallow, they were boggy and difficult to cross on account of the trunks and branches lying in them. The wood was full of trees with projecting, mud-covered roots, which now, when everything was assuming an indefinite shape in the twilight, looked twisted and monstrous. The white patches of lichen shining in the darkness at the foot of the trees like the immense shreds of a pall, emphasized and doubled their weird appearance. It is, therefore, no wonder that in the purple light of dawn, or in the moonlight, the natives should here see the tall wood-demon's pale face,—the Slav hunter who came from the South and now roams near the Yakut cottages, injuring cattle.
Woe to the district where his shadow passes! Often from fifty to two hundred beasts fall dead at one shot from those terrible Southern arms.