Taras Bulba | Page 8

father and son, in lieu of a pleasant greeting after long separation,
began to deal each other heavy blows on ribs, back, and chest, now
retreating and looking at each other, now attacking afresh.
"Look, good people! the old man has gone man! he has lost his senses
completely!" screamed their pale, ugly, kindly mother, who was
standing on the threshold, and had not yet succeeded in embracing her
darling children. "The children have come home, we have not seen
them for over a year; and now he has taken some strange freak--he's
pommelling them."
"Yes, he fights well," said Bulba, pausing; "well, by heavens!" he
continued, rather as if excusing himself, "although he has never tried
his hand at it before, he will make a good Cossack! Now, welcome, son!
embrace me," and father and son began to kiss each other. "Good lad!
see that you hit every one as you pommelled me; don't let any one
escape. Nevertheless your clothes are ridiculous all the same. What
rope is this hanging there?--And you, you lout, why are you standing
there with your hands hanging beside you?" he added, turning to the
youngest. "Why don't you fight me? you son of a dog!"
"What an idea!" said the mother, who had managed in the meantime to
embrace her youngest. "Who ever heard of children fighting their own
father? That's enough for the present; the child is young, he has had a
long journey, he is tired." The child was over twenty, and about six feet
high. "He ought to rest, and eat something; and you set him to
fighting!"
"You are a gabbler!" said Bulba. "Don't listen to your mother, my lad;
she is a woman, and knows nothing. What sort of petting do you need?
A clear field and a good horse, that's the kind of petting for you! And
do you see this sword? that's your mother! All the rest people stuff your
heads with is rubbish; the academy, books, primers, philosophy, and all
that, I spit upon it all!" Here Bulba added a word which is not used in
print. "But I'll tell you what is best: I'll take you to Zaporozhe[1] this
very week. That's where there's science for you! There's your school;
there alone will you gain sense."

[1] The Cossack country beyond (za) the falls (porozhe) of the Dnieper.
"And are they only to remain home a week?" said the worn old mother
sadly and with tears in her eyes. "The poor boys will have no chance of
looking around, no chance of getting acquainted with the home where
they were born; there will be no chance for me to get a look at them."
"Enough, you've howled quite enough, old woman! A Cossack is not
born to run around after women. You would like to hide them both
under your petticoat, and sit upon them as a hen sits on eggs. Go, go,
and let us have everything there is on the table in a trice. We don't want
any dumplings, honey-cakes, poppy-cakes, or any other such messes:
give us a whole sheep, a goat, mead forty years old, and as much
corn-brandy as possible, not with raisins and all sorts of stuff, but plain
scorching corn-brandy, which foams and hisses like mad."
Bulba led his sons into the principal room of the hut; and two pretty
servant girls wearing coin necklaces, who were arranging the apartment,
ran out quickly. They were either frightened at the arrival of the young
men, who did not care to be familiar with anyone; or else they merely
wanted to keep up their feminine custom of screaming and rushing
away headlong at the sight of a man, and then screening their blushes
for some time with their sleeves. The hut was furnished according to
the fashion of that period--a fashion concerning which hints linger only
in the songs and lyrics, no longer sung, alas! in the Ukraine as of yore
by blind old men, to the soft tinkling of the native guitar, to the people
thronging round them--according to the taste of that warlike and
troublous time, of leagues and battles prevailing in the Ukraine after the
union. Everything was cleanly smeared with coloured clay. On the
walls hung sabres, hunting-whips, nets for birds, fishing-nets, guns,
elaborately carved powder-horns, gilded bits for horses, and
tether-ropes with silver plates. The small window had round dull panes,
through which it was impossible to see except by opening the one
moveable one. Around the windows and doors red bands were painted.
On shelves in one corner stood jugs, bottles, and flasks of green and
blue glass, carved silver cups, and gilded drinking vessels of various
makes--Venetian, Turkish, Tscherkessian, which had reached Bulba's

cabin by various roads, at third and fourth hand, a