The Little Devil and Other Stories by Alexei Remizov

Author:Alexei Remizov
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LCO014000, Literary Collections/Russian & Former Soviet Union, FIC019000, Fiction/Literary
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2020-12-26T00:00:00+00:00

“Here’s a five kopeck coin for your work, just don’t throw it away.”

“Grandfather! I wasted all the money I saved from last year. I saw a hippopotamus!” Atya laughs.

When Atya laughs his eyes light up like fireflies and make everyone merry.

The days flow by like a river.

They celebrate the Ninth Saturday after Easter with a procession of the cross. So many people—a long line!

Atya carries the cross in the procession around the village.

People follow the icons, after the people came the animals—nanny goats, ewes, sheep, cows, horses—they’re allowed, too!

The rabbit goes as well.

Well, it doesn’t follow the procession like a horse or a cow, godmother carries the rabbit, which mewls the whole way; otherwise it would quickly sneak off into the woods!

They’re expecting Uncle Arkady from St. Petersburg.

That’s all anyone talked about in Kluchi, Uncle Arkady. His godmother saw him in a dream; Uncle Arkady came out of the storeroom all in white and in one step reached the pots and pans.

Believing her dream, she bakes pryazheniki for tea.

The pryazheniki are tasty and so buttery that they melt in your mouth—and Atya eats them all in Uncle Arkady’s stead!

Saint Peter’s day is coming: get the minnows! We’ll be fishing soon!

Atya is no coward: he could ride any horse, he would go out on the river in any weather, but Atya does have an awful fear of corpses.

When they are laid out under the belfry before a funeral, he is afraid to look out the window at the church and would not sleep alone: he keeps imagining things, he is afraid.

So Panya, or his godmother, or the old handless Votyak Kuzmich would go up to the attic with him, and he would quietly fall asleep to their stories and fairytales.

But when they bring corpses to the church or carry the coffin to the cemetery, Atya always runs to look and to listen to the funereal bells.

Watchman Kostya digs the graves, Kostya rings the bells.

Kostya strikes ten blows—ten slow and drawn-out peals: he starts with thin ones, then deeper—sad, pathetic, terribly sorrowful, and the last one he hits full force, as something will break and you’ll fall with the bells!—and fly off:

Holy God,

Holy Mighty One,

Holy Immortal One,

Have mercy on us.

Not a single service goes by without Atya.

Atya stands in the choir and sings, only it doesn’t work: he can’t get in tune with the deacons—each deacon is older than the next, and all they manage is “Grant us, Oh, Lord!”

“My young sexton,” his grandfather says, praising him, “tomorrow we go to Polom for a service.”

And Atya and his grandfather travel around the villages and settlements, holding services, eating beef and buckwheat.

Atya’s beginning to think that he’s a real young sexton and when he grows up he’ll be a priest, like his grandfather, and then Uncle Arkady won’t cut off his hair: it will be long, to his waist, and he won’t have two braids, like Grandfather, but twenty-two.

Uncle Arkady! Well, at long last!

Uncle Arkady arrives, bringing with him nets and rods and so many hooks they barely fit the biggest basket.

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