The Count was a jolly man, indeed he was, eh, hey! Something bad happened to him afterwards though; God forbid that anything like that should ever happen to any Christian! I wouldn’t wish it for any one. It wouldn’t be right to wish it even for a Jew. That’s what I think about it.
Well, they got Raman married. He brought his young wife to this cottage, and at first he did nothing but scold her and blame her for his thrashing.
“You’re not worth a thrashing to any man!” he used to say.
As soon as he came home out of the forest he would chase her out of the house shouting:
“Away with you! I don’t want a woman in my house! Don’t let me see you here again! I don’t like to have a woman sleeping here. I don’t like the smell.”
Eh, hey!
But later he got used to her. Aksana swept out the hut and painted it to look nice and clean, and put the china neatly away, and at last everything shone so brightly that one’s heart grew merry at the sight of it. Raman saw what a good woman she was, and little by little he got used to her. Yes, he not only got used to her, lad, he began to love her. Yes indeed, I am telling you the truth. That’s what happened to Raman. When he found out what the woman was like he said:
“Thanks to the Count I have learnt what a good thing is. What a fool I was! How many stripes I took, and now I see that it isn’t so bad after all! It is even good. That’s the truth!”
And so some time passed, I don’t know exactly how much. Then one day Aksana lay down on a bench and began to groan. That evening she was ill, and when I woke up in the morning I heard a shrill little voice squeaking. Eh, hey, I thought to myself, I know what has happened, a baby has been born! And so it had.
The baby did not stay long in this world. Only from that morning until night. It stopped squeaking in the evening. Aksana cried, but Raman said: