LITMIR.BIZ

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work; we shall have to answer for keeping them. If you carry the letters, carry them, you can’t go to sleep…. Hey! you!” Savély shouted into the outer room. “You, driver. What’s your name? Shall I show you the way? Get up; postmen mustn’t sleep!”

      And Savély, thoroughly roused, ran up to the postman and tugged him by the sleeve.

      “Hey, your honour, if you must go, go; and if you don’t, it’s not the thing…. Sleeping won’t do.”

      The postman jumped up, sat down, looked with blank eyes round the hut, and lay down again.

      “But when are you going?” Savély pattered away. “That’s what the post is for — to get there in good time, do you hear? I’ll take you.”

      The postman opened his eyes. Warmed and relaxed by his first sweet sleep, and not yet quite awake, he saw as through a mist the white neck and the immovable, alluring eyes of the sexton’s wife. He closed his eyes and smiled as though he had been dreaming it all.

      “Come, how can you go in such weather!” he heard a soft feminine voice; “you ought to have a sound sleep and it would do you good!”

      “And what about the post?” said Savély anxiously. “Who’s going to take the post? Are you going to take it, pray, you?

      The postman opened his eyes again, looked at the play of the dimples on Raïssa’s face, remembered where he was, and understood Savély. The thought that he had to go out into the cold darkness sent a chill shudder all down him, and he winced.

      “I might sleep another five minutes,” he said, yawning. “I shall be late, anyway… .”

      “We might be just in time,” came a voice from the outer room. “All days are not alike; the train may be late for a bit of luck.”

      The postman got up, and stretching lazily began putting on his coat.

      Savély positively neighed with delight when he saw his visitors were getting ready to go.

      “Give us a hand,” the driver shouted to him as he lifted up a mail-bag.

      The sexton ran out and helped him drag the post-bags into the yard. The postman began undoing the knot in his hood. The sexton’s wife gazed into his eyes, and seemed trying to look right into his soul.

      “You ought to have a cup of tea …” she said.

      “I wouldn’t say no… but, you see, they’re getting ready,” he assented. “We are late, anyway.”

      “Do stay,” she whispered, dropping her eyes and touching him by the sleeve.

      The postman got the knot undone at last and flung the hood over his elbow, hesitating. He felt it comfortable standing by Raïssa.

      “What a… neck you’ve got! …” And he touched her neck with two fingers. Seeing that she did not resist, he stroked her neck and shoulders.

      “I say, you are …”

      “You’d better stay… have some tea.”

      “Where are you putting it?” The driver’s voice could be heard outside. “Lay it crossways.”

      “You’d better stay…. Hark how the wind howls.”

      And the postman, not yet quite awake, not yet quite able to shake off the intoxicating sleep of youth and fatigue, was suddenly overwhelmed by a desire for the sake of which mail-bags, postal trains… and all things in the world, are forgotten. He glanced at the door in a frightened way, as though he wanted to escape or hide himself, seized Raïssa round the waist, and was just bending over the lamp to put out the light, when he heard the tramp of boots in the outer room, and the driver appeared in the doorway. Savély peeped in over his shoulder. The postman dropped his hands quickly and stood still as though irresolute.

      “It’s all ready,” said the driver. The postman stood still for a moment, resolutely threw up his head as though waking up completely, and followed the driver out. Raïssa was left alone.

      “Come, get in and show us the way!” she heard.

      One bell sounded languidly, then another, and the jingling notes in a long delicate chain floated away from the hut.

      When little by little they had died away, Raïssa got up and nervously paced to and fro. At first she was pale, then she flushed all over. Her face was contorted with hate, her breathing was tremulous, her eyes gleamed with wild, savage anger, and, pacing up and down as in a cage, she looked like a tigress menaced with red-hot iron. For a moment she stood still and looked at her abode. Almost half of the room was filled up by the bed, which stretched the length of the whole wall and consisted of a dirty feather-bed, coarse grey pillows, a quilt, and nameless rags of various sorts. The bed was a shapeless ugly mass which suggested the shock of hair that always stood up on Savély’s head whenever it occurred to him to oil it. From the bed to the door that led into the cold outer room stretched the dark stove surrounded by pots and hanging clouts. Everything, including the absent Savély himself, was dirty, greasy, and smutty to the last degree, so that it was strange to see a woman’s white neck and delicate skin in such surroundings.

      Raïssa ran up to the bed, stretched out her hands as though she wanted to fling it all about, stamp it underfoot, and tear it to shreds. But then, as though frightened by contact with the dirt, she leapt back and began pacing up and down again.

      When Savély returned two hours later, worn out and covered with snow, she was undressed and in bed. Her eyes were closed, but from the slight tremor that ran over her face he guessed that she was not asleep. On his way home he had vowed inwardly to wait till next day and not to touch her, but he could not resist a biting taunt at her.

      “Your witchery was all in vain: he’s gone off,” he said, grinning with malignant joy.

      His wife remained mute, but her chin quivered. Savély undressed slowly, clambered over his wife, and lay down next to the wall.

      “Tomorrow I’ll let Father Nikodim know what sort of wife you are!” he muttered, curling himself up.

      Raïssa turned her face to him and her eyes gleamed.

      “The job’s enough for you, and you can look for a wife in the forest, blast you!” she said. “I am no wife for you, a clumsy lout, a slug-a-bed, God forgive me!”

      “Come, come… go to sleep!”

      “How miserable I am!” sobbed his wife. “If it weren’t for you, I might have married a merchant or some gentleman! If it weren’t for you, I should love my husband now! And you haven’t been buried in the snow, you haven’t been frozen on the highroad, you Herod!”

      Raïssa cried for a long time. At last she drew a deep sigh and was still. The storm still raged without. Something wailed in the stove, in the chimney, outside the walls, and it seemed to Savély that the wailing was within him, in his ears. This evening had completely confirmed him in his suspicions about his wife. He no longer doubted that his wife, with the aid of the Evil One, controlled the winds and the post sledges. But to add to his grief, this mysteriousness, this supernatural, weird power gave the woman beside him a peculiar, incomprehensible charm of which he had not been conscious before. The fact that in his stupidity he unconsciously threw a poetic glamour over her made her seem, as it were, whiter, sleeker, more unapproachable.

      “Witch!” he muttered indignantly. “Tfoo, horrid creature!”

      Yet, waiting till she was quiet and began breathing evenly, he touched her head with his finger… held her thick plait in his hand for a minute. She did not feel it. Then he grew bolder and stroked her neck.

      “Leave off!” she shouted, and prodded him on the nose with her elbow with such violence that he saw stars before his eyes.

      The pain in his nose was soon over, but the torture in his heart remained.

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