The Village by Ivan Bunin

Author:Ivan Bunin
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Alma Books
Published: 2017-10-06T16:20:26+00:00

3

In that distant time when Ilya Mironov had lived for a couple of years in Durnovka, Kuzma had been no more than a child, and there remained in his memory only the dark-green, fragrant hemp fields in which Durnovka was awash, as well as one dark summer’s night: there had been not a single light in the village, but past Ilya’s hut, with their blouses white in the darkness, had gone “nine maidens, nine wives and a tenth a widow”, all barefooted, bare-headed, with brooms, clubs and pitchforks, and there had been a deafening ringing and banging on stove doors and frying pans, which had itself been drowned out by a wild choral song: the widow had been dragging a plough along, next to her had walked a maiden with a large icon, and the others had been ringing and banging, and, when the widow had led off in a low voice:

Don’t you, cow’s death,

Come into our village!

the choir had sung the second part in the long-drawn-out tones of a dirge:

We are ploughing around

and mournfully, in sharp, throaty voices, had carried on:

With incense and a cross…

Now the look of the Durnovka fields was humdrum. On his way from Vorgol, Kuzma was cheerful and slightly tipsy – Tikhon Ilyich had treated him to fruit liqueur at dinner and been very kind that day – and looked with pleasure at the flat expanses of dry, brown ploughed fields spread out around him. The almost summery sun, the transparent air, the clear, pale-blue sky – everything gladdened him and promised long-term rest. There was so much grey-headed, gnarled wormwood, turned over and uprooted by ploughs, that it was being carried away by the cartload. In a ploughed field right by the estate stood a wretched horse with burrs on its withers and a cart loaded high with wormwood, while next to it lay Yakov, barefooted, in short, dust-coated trousers and a long hempen shirt, keeping down a large, grey-haired dog with his side and holding it by the ears. The dog was growling and looking askance.

“Does it bite?” shouted Kuzma.

“It’s vicious – and I’ve had enough of it!” Yakov responded hurriedly, lifting his crooked beard. “It jumps up at the horses’ faces…”

And Kuzma laughed with pleasure. This really was a proper peasant, this was the proper steppe!

But the road was going gently down the hillside and the horizon was narrowing. Ahead was the new green roof of the threshing barn, which seemed to have drowned in the wild, stunted orchard. Beyond the orchard, on the opposite hillside, stood a long row of huts made of mud bricks under straw roofs. To the right, beyond ploughed fields, stretched a large gully, which ran into the one that separated the estate from the village. And on the ridge where the gullies met, there protruded the sails of two open windmills, surrounded by several peasant smallholders’ huts – the Ridgemen’s, as Oska called them – and showing up white on the common was the whitewashed school.

“So, do the kids have lessons?” asked Kuzma.

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