I
One evening, in the middle of July, two men were lying in the rushes on the shore of the small Polyesse river Zulnia. One of them was a beggar from the village of Kazimirovka, named Onisim Kozel, while the other one was his grandson, Vasil, a boy of thirteen. The old man was half asleep, his face covered by his torn, sheep-fur cap for protection against the flies, while Vasil lay with his chin resting on the palms of his hands and his screwed-up eyes gazing vacantly at the river, at the warm, cloudless, sky, and at the faraway pine-trees that stood black against the fiery light of the sunset.
The wide river, as still as a swamp, was hidden almost entirely by the firm leaves of pond-lilies, with their beautiful, gentle, white flowers standing out languidly. Only on the other side, near the opposite shore, there was a clear, smooth band of water uncovered by the leaves, and the boy saw reflected in it, with remarkable distinctness, the rushes, the black, broken line of the forest, and the light behind it. On this shore of the river, very close to the water, stood old, hollow, white willows, placed at almost equal distances from one another. Their short, straight branches were rising upward, and the trees themselves, short, large, and crooked, looked like so many old men raising their thin arms toward the sky.
The river birds were whistling sadly. At times a large fish would splash in the water. The thrips flew above the water in a transparent, thin, trembling column. Suddenly Kozel raised his head from the ground and looked at Vasil with a vacant, meaningless glance.
“What did you say?” asked he in a scarcely audible voice.
The boy did not answer. He did not even turn around to look at the old man, only slowly, and with a stubborn, tired expression, lowered and raised again his long eyelashes.
“I guess they will come soon,” continued the old man, as though addressing himself. “Guess I’ll take a smoke.”
Drowsily rolling from side to side, he finally landed in a squatting position. The fingers of both his hands were cut off, with the exception of the thumb of the left hand. And with the use of this finger, he quickly filled his pipe, holding it against his knee with the stump of his right hand, took a box of matches from his cap, and lit the pipe. A sweetish smoke of cheap tobacco, with a faint odor of mignonettes, floated in the air in bluish curls.
“Did you see Buzyga yourself?” asked Vasil, apparently with reluctance, without taking his eyes away from the opposite bank of the river.
Kozel took the pipe out of his mouth, and, bending over to one side, spat on the ground.
“Sure, I did. My, but he is a desperate man. Just the way I was, when I was younger. He gets drunk as the night and then goes out into the village … and hires a band of Jewish musicians to walk in front of him and play. Carries a handkerchief in his right hand and has new rubbers on his boots, and wears a nice silver chain. And then he comes to Gripa Kovaleva and demands some whiskey. He throws a silver rouble into the glass, drinks the whiskey, and then gives the money to his musicians. The boys all run after him. Of course, everybody looks at him as though they were dogs and he was a wolf, but they can’t do anything. Just snap their teeth.”
“Oh!” exclaimed the boy with adoration, though almost incredulously.
“Why, sure. … What does he care? He just spits on them all. Just tells them to let him alone, because he never stole their horses. Of course, if he had stolen their horses and they had caught him, then they would have the upper hand, then they’d have the right to beat him. … But that way, it won’t go. …”
The boy gazed at the river in silence. The resounding cries of the frogs were now heard from the nearby bank, at first coming slowly and infrequently. The evening fog was like smoke in the rushes and hung over the water like light steam. The sky grew darker and greenish, and on it was now distinctly visible the hitherto concealed disk of the young moon.
“Kozel, and is it true that Buzyga has double ribs?” asked Vasil meditatively. “Is it true that you can’t kill him?”
“Of course, it’s true. What do you expect? All his ribs are grown together. You can beat a man like Buzyga as much as you want, but you will never hurt his liver. Oh, no! Because his liver is attached to his ribs. And the liver is the first thing in a man’s body. A man can’t live, once you hurt his liver. He’ll get weak, start spitting blood, won’t be able to eat or drink, and then it’s all over. …”
The boy touched his narrow chest, his sides, and heaved a long sigh.
“And then they say that people have double backs like horses,” said he sadly. “Is it true, too, Kozel?”
“Yes, that’s true. Happens sometimes.”
“And Buzyga, too?”
“What about Buzyga?”
“Is it true that he’s got a double back?”
“Well, I don’t know about that, can’t say.”
“I think that it must be double.”
“Everything is possible,” and the old man shook his head. “Everything is possible. … But the main thing is that Buzyga’s got a clever head. He’s a wonderful man! Once he got caught in Shepelevka. … Well, even that time he was not really caught; he was betrayed by another man. It was about some woman or something like that. At any rate, they got him in the open field, and the horses were with him. It was toward evening. So, of course, they brought him to a house, lit the light, and started beating him. And they were at it the whole night long. When the peasants start beating somebody, they have a rule that everybody must take part in it. They even bring their children and wives and make them beat the man, so that everybody would be responsible. So they beat him and beat him, and when they’d get tired, they’d drink a little whiskey, and then start at it again. And Mitro Gundosy saw that Buzyga was already half-dead, and so he says: ‘Wait awhile, boys, the rascal might die here in our house. Wait awhile, I’ll give him a little water.’ But Buzyga is so clever, he knows that if a man is given a little water after being beaten like that, that’s a sure end. So he gets all his strength together and says to them: ‘Won’t you please give me just a little whiskey, and then start beating me again if you like? I feel that my end is coming and I wish I could taste whiskey again before I die.’ Well they all laughed at that and gave him a bottle. After that they did not touch him any more. They thought he was near death anyway. They took him over to Basov Kut and threw him in there, as though he were already dead. They thought that was the end of him, but Levonty got over it. Two months after that Mitro Gundosy missed two fine horses. First-class horses they were. …”
“That must have been Buzyga, all right,” exclaimed the boy joyfully.
“Whoever it was, it’s none of our business,” retorted Kozel angrily and significantly. “After that Gundosy went to Buzyga several times and got down on his knees before him and kissed his feet. ‘Take all the money you want, only tell me where the horses are. You know!’ And he would answer him: ‘Why don’t you go and get a drink of water, Mitro?’ That’s the kind of a fellow Buzyga is!”
The old beggar became silent and puffed fiercely at his pipe. But the pipe gave no more smoke. Then Kozel sighed, emptied the pipe over his bare foot, and thrust it into his shirt.
The frogs were now croaking on all sides. It seemed that the whole air trembled with their passionate, ringing cries, accompanied by the dull, prolonged, slow groans of large toads. The sky had changed from green into dark blue and the moon was shining like the curved blade of a silver halberd. It was already dark all around. Only near the very bank of the other side of the river were burning two long, bloody bands.
“Kozel, when I grow up, I’ll be a horse-thief too!” said the boy suddenly, in a low, passionate whisper. “I don’t want to be a beggar, I’ll be like Buzyga.”
“Sh. … Wait a minute …” said the old man suddenly. He raised upward his terrible thumb, bent his head to one side and listened attentively. “They are coming!”
Vasil jumped to his feet. From the thick rushes that stood near the very waterline came scarcely audible splashes of somebody’s footsteps. Dull, monotonous voices were heard.
“Shout to them, Vasil,” ordered the old man. “Only not very loud.”
“Hop-hop!” shouted the boy, but his voice was not very strong because of excitement.
“Hop!” came a restrained, calm bass from a distance.