The Witch | Page 3

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[Etext by James Rusk, jrusk@cyberramp. Italics are indicated by
underscores.]

THE WITCH AND OTHER STORIES
ANTON CHEKHOV

THE WITCH PEASANT WIVES THE POST THE NEW VILLA
DREAMS THE PIPE AGAFYA AT CHRISTMAS TIME GUSEV
THE STUDENT IN THE RAVINE THE HUNTSMAN HAPPINESS
A MALEFACTOR PEASANTS

THE WITCH
IT was approaching nightfall. The sexton, Savely Gykin, was lying in
his huge bed in the hut adjoining the church. He was not asleep, though
it was his habit to go to sleep at the same time as the hens. His coarse
red hair peeped from under one end of the greasy patchwork quilt,
made up of coloured rags, while his big unwashed feet stuck out from
the other. He was listening. His hut adjoined the wall that encircled the
church and the solitary window in it looked out upon the open country.
And out there a regular battle was going on. It was hard to say who was
being wiped off the face of the earth, and for the sake of whose
destruction nature was being churned up into such a ferment; but,
judging from the unceasing malignant roar, someone was getting it
very hot. A victorious force was in full chase over the fields, storming
in the forest and on the church roof, battering spitefully with its fists
upon the windows, raging and tearing, while something vanquished
was howling and wailing. . . . A plaintive lament sobbed at the window,
on the roof, or in the stove. It sounded not like a call for help, but like a
cry of misery, a consciousness that it was too late, that there was no
salvation. The snowdrifts were covered with a thin coating of ice; tears
quivered on them and on the trees; a dark slush of mud and melting
snow flowed along the roads and paths. In short, it was thawing, but
through the dark night the heavens failed to see it, and flung flakes of
fresh snow upon the melting earth at a terrific rate. And the wind
staggered like a drunkard. It would not let the snow settle on the ground,
and whirled it round in the darkness at random.
Savely listened to all this din and frowned. The fact was that he knew,

or at any rate suspected, what all this racket outside the window was
tending to and whose handiwork it was.
"I know!" he muttered, shaking his finger menacingly under the
bedclothes; "I know all about it."
On a stool by the window sat the sexton's wife, Raissa Nilovna. A tin
lamp standing on another stool, as though timid and distrustful of its
powers, shed a dim and flickering light on her broad shoulders, on the
handsome, tempting-looking contours of her person, and on her thick
plait, which reached to the floor. She was making sacks out of coarse
hempen stuff. Her hands moved nimbly, while her whole body,