The Witch | Page 4

her
eyes, her eyebrows, her full lips, her white neck were as still as though
they were asleep, absorbed in the monotonous, mechanical toil. Only
from time to time she raised her head to rest her weary neck, glanced
for a moment towards the window, beyond which the snowstorm was
raging, and bent again over her sacking. No desire, no joy, no grief,
nothing was expressed by her handsome face with its turned-up nose
and its dimples. So a beautiful fountain expresses nothing when it is not
playing.
But at last she had finished a sack. She flung it aside, and, stretching
luxuriously, rested her motionless, lack-lustre eyes on the window. The
panes were swimming with drops like tears, and white with short-lived
snowflakes which fell on the window, glanced at Raissa, and
melted. . . .
"Come to bed!" growled the sexton. Raissa remained mute. But
suddenly her eyelashes flickered and there was a gleam of attention in
her eye. Savely, all the time watching her expression from under the
quilt, put out his head and asked:
"What is it?"
"Nothing. . . . I fancy someone's coming," she answered quietly.
The sexton flung the quilt off with his arms and legs, knelt up in bed,
and looked blankly at his wife. The timid light of the lamp illuminated
his hirsute, pock-marked countenance and glided over his rough matted
hair.
"Do you hear?" asked his wife.
Through the monotonous roar of the storm he caught a scarcely audible
thin and jingling monotone like the shrill note of a gnat when it wants
to settle on one's cheek and is angry at being prevented.

"It's the post," muttered Savely, squatting on his heels.
Two miles from the church ran the posting road. In windy weather,
when the wind was blowing from the road to the church, the inmates of
the hut caught the sound of bells.
"Lord! fancy people wanting to drive about in such weather," sighed
Raissa.
"It's government work. You've to go whether you like or not."
The murmur hung in the air and died away.
"It has driven by," said Savely, getting into bed.
But before he had time to cover himself up with the bedclothes he
heard a distinct sound of the bell. The sexton looked anxiously at his
wife, leapt out of bed and walked, waddling, to and fro by the stove.
The bell went on ringing for a little, then died away again as though it
had ceased.
"I don't hear it," said the sexton, stopping and looking at his wife with
his eyes screwed up.
But at that moment the wind rapped on the window and with it floated
a shrill jingling note. Savely turned pale, cleared his throat, and flopped
about the floor with his bare feet again.
"The postman is lost in the storm," he wheezed out glancing
malignantly at his wife. "Do you hear? The postman has lost his way! . .
I . . . I know! Do you suppose I . . don't understand? " he muttered. "I
know all about it, curse you!"
"What do you know?" Raissa asked quietly, keeping her eyes fixed on
the window.
"I know that it's all your doing, you she-devil! Your doing, damn you!
This snowstorm and the post going wrong, you've done it all -- you!"
"You're mad, you silly," his wife answered calmly.
"I've been watching you for a long time past and I've seen it. From the
first day I married you I noticed that you'd bitch's blood in you!"
"Tfoo!" said Raissa, surprised, shrugging her shoulders and crossing
herself. "Cross yourself, you fool!"
"A witch is a witch," Savely pronounced in a hollow, tearful voice,
hurriedly blowing his nose on the hem of his shirt; "though you are my
wife, though you are of a clerical family, I'd say what you are even at
confession. . . . Why, God have mercy upon us! Last year on the Eve of
the Prophet Daniel and the Three Young Men there was a snowstorm,

and what happened then? The mechanic came in to warm himself. Then
on St. Alexey's Day the ice broke on the river and the district
policeman turned up, and he was chatting with you all night . . . the
damned brute! And when he came out in the morning and I looked at
him, he had rings under his eyes and his cheeks were hollow! Eh?
During the August fast there were two storms and each time the
huntsman turned up. I saw it all, damn him! Oh, she is redder than a
crab now, aha!"
"You didn't see anything."
"Didn't I! And this winter before Christmas on the Day of the Ten
Martyrs of Crete, when the storm lasted for a whole day and night