I Noises, thunders the end of Kiev: Yesaul Gorobets celebrates the wedding of his son. Many people came to visit the Yesaul. In the old days they liked to eat well, they liked to drink even better, and even better they liked to have fun. The Cossack Mikitka also arrived on his bay horse, straight from a riotous drinking binge from Crossing the Field, where he gave red wine to the royal gentry for seven days and seven nights. The named brother of the Yesaul, Danilo Burulbash, also came from the other side of the Dnieper, where, between two mountains, was his farm, with his young wife Katerina and with a one-year-old son. The guests marveled at the white face of Pani Katerina, her eyebrows black as German velvet, her elegant cloth and underwear made of a blue half-tape, her boots with silver horseshoes; but they marveled even more that her old father had not come with her. For only a year he lived in the Zadneprovie, and for twenty-one he went missing and returned to his daughter when she had already married and given birth to a son. He would certainly tell a lot of marvelous things. Yes, how not to tell, having been in a foreign land for so long! Everything is wrong there: the people are not the same, and there are no churches of Christ ... But he did not come. The guests were served varenukha with raisins and plums, and a korovai on a large platter. The musicians set to work on his undershirt, sintered together with the money, and, having quieted down for a while, laid cymbals, violins and tambourines near them. Meanwhile, young women and maidens, having wiped themselves with embroidered scarves, stepped out again from their ranks; and the lads, clutching their sides, proudly looking around, were ready to rush towards them, as the old captain brought out two icons to bless the young. Those icons he got from an honest schemnik, Elder Bartholomew. Utensils are not rich in them, neither silver nor gold burns, but no evil spirit dares to touch the one who has them in the house. Raising the icons up, the captain was preparing to say a short prayer ... when suddenly the children playing on the ground screamed, frightened; and after them the people backed away, and they all pointed with fearful fingers at the Cossack standing in the middle of them. Who he was, no one knew. But he had already danced to the glory of a Cossack and had already managed to make the crowd around him laugh. When the captain raised the icons, suddenly his whole face changed: his nose grew and leaned to the side, instead of brown, green eyes jumped, his lips turned blue, his chin trembled and sharpened like a spear, a fang ran out of his mouth, a hump rose from behind his head, and became a Cossack - an old man. -- It is he! It is he! - shouted in the crowd, closely clinging to each other. "The sorcerer has reappeared!" cried the mothers, grabbing their children in their arms. Majestically and dignifiedly, the captain stepped forward and said in a loud voice, setting up icons against him: - Get lost, the image of Satan, there is no place for you here! And, hissing and clicking like a wolf with his teeth, the wonderful old man disappeared. Let's go, let's go and rustled, like the sea in bad weather, gossip and speeches between the people. - What is this sorcerer? asked young and unprecedented people. - There will be trouble! said the old ones, shaking their heads. And everywhere, throughout the wide courtyard of the Yesaul, they began to gather in groups and listen to stories about a wonderful sorcerer. But almost everyone spoke differently, and probably no one could tell about him. A barrel of honey was rolled out into the yard and buckets of walnut wine were put in quite a few. Everything is fun again. The musicians thundered; girls, young women, dashing Cossacks in bright zhupans rushed. The ninety-year-old and hundred-year-old junk, having played up, began to dance for themselves, remembering the years that had not been lost for nothing. They feasted until late at night, and snorted in the way they no longer feast. The guests began to disperse, but little wandered home: many remained to spend the night with the captain in a wide courtyard; and even more Cossacks fell asleep on their own, uninvited, under the benches, on the floor, near the horse, near the barn; where the Cossack head staggered from drunkenness, there it lies and snores for the whole of Kiev. II Quietly shines all over the world: then the moon appeared from behind the mountain. As if with a Damascus road and white as snow, he covered the mountainous bank of the Dnieper with muslin, and the shadow went even further into the thicket of pines. In the middle of the Dnieper an oak floated. fire, spray is flying in all directions. Why don’t the Cossacks sing? They don’t talk about how priests are already walking around the Ukraine and converting the Cossack people into Catholics; or about how the horde fought for two days at the Salt Lake. talk about dashing deeds: their lord Danilo became thoughtful, and the sleeve of the crimson zhupan fell from the oak and draws water; their lord Katerina quietly sways the child and does not take her eyes off him, and water falls on the elegant cloth not covered with linen with gray dust. on high mountains, on wide meadows, on green forests! Those mountains are not mountains: they have no soles, below them, as above, a sharp peak, and under them and above them a high sky. Those forests that stand on the hills, not forests: it is hair overgrown on the shaggy head of a forest grandfather. Under it, a beard is washed in the water, and under the beard and above the hair is the high sky. Those meadows are not meadows: that is a green belt that girded the round sky in the middle, and the moon walks in the upper half and in the lower half. Pan Danilo does not look around, he looks at his young wife. - What, my young wife, my golden Katerina, went into sadness? - I did not go into sadness, my pan Danilo! I was terrified by wonderful stories about a sorcerer. They say that he was born so scary ... and none of the children from childhood wanted to play with him. Listen, Pan Danilo, how terribly they say: that it seemed to him that everything seemed to him, that everyone was laughing at him. If in the dark evening he would meet with some person, and it would immediately appear to him that he was opening his mouth and showing his teeth. And the next day they found that man dead. I was wonderful, I was scared when I listened to these stories, ”said Katerina, taking out a handkerchief and wiping the face of the child sleeping in her arms with it. Leaves and berries were embroidered with red silk on the scarf. Pan Danilo did not say a word and began to glance at the dark side, where far from behind the forest a black earthen rampart loomed, from behind the rampart rose an old castle. Three wrinkles cut out at once over the eyebrows; his left hand stroked his valiant mustache. “It’s not so scary that he’s a sorcerer,” he said, “as it’s scary that he’s an unkind guest. What a whim came to him to drag himself here? I heard that the Poles want to build some kind of fortress in order to cut off our road to the Cossacks. Let it be true... I'll smash the devil's nest if word gets out that he's got some kind of hangout. I will burn the old sorcerer so that the ravens will have nothing to peck. However, I think he is not without gold and all good things. That's where the devil lives! If he has gold ... We will now sail past the crosses - this is a cemetery! here his unclean grandfathers rot. They say that they were all ready to sell themselves to Satan for money with a soul and skinned zhupans. If he definitely has gold, then there is nothing to linger now: it is not always possible to get it in a war ... - I know what you are up to. Nothing bodes well for me meeting him. But you are breathing so hard, you look so sternly, your eyes are so sullenly raised eyebrows! .. - Be quiet, woman! Danilo said heartily. - Whoever contacts you will become a woman himself. Lad, give me fire in the cradle! - Here he turned to one of the rowers, who, knocking hot ashes out of his cradle, began to shift it into the cradle of his master. - Scares me with a sorcerer! continued Pan Danilo. “Kozak, thank God, is not afraid of devils or priests. It would be of great use if we began to obey wives. Isn't that right, lads? our wife is a cradle and a sharp saber! Katerina fell silent, dropping her eyes into the sleepy water; and the wind pulled the water in ripples, and the whole Dnieper turned silver, like wolf hair in the middle of the night. The oak turned and began to keep to the wooded bank. A cemetery was visible on the shore: dilapidated crosses crowded into a heap. Neither the viburnum grows between them, nor the grass turns green, only the moon warms them from the heavenly heights. Do you guys hear the screams? Someone is calling us for help! said Pan Danilo, turning to his rowers. “We hear screams, and it seems from the other side,” the lads said at once, pointing to the cemetery. But everything was quiet. The boat turned and began to go around the protruding shore. Suddenly the rowers lowered their oars and fixed their eyes motionless. Pan Danilo also stopped: fear and cold cut through the Cossack veins. The cross on the grave staggered, and a desiccated corpse quietly rose from it. Beard to the waist; on the fingers, the claws are long, even longer than the fingers themselves. Quietly he raised his hands. His face trembled and twisted. Apparently, he endured a terrible torment. "I'm stuffy! stuffy!" he moaned in a wild, inhuman voice. His voice, like a knife, scratched the heart, and the dead man suddenly went underground. Another cross shook, and again a dead man came out, even more terrible, even higher than before; all thickets, a beard to the knees and even longer bone claws. He shouted even wilder: "It's stuffy for me!" and went underground. The third cross staggered, the third dead man rose. It seemed that only the bones rose high above the ground. Beard to the very heels; fingers with long claws dug into the ground. Terribly, he stretched his hands up, as if he wanted to get the moon, and screamed as if someone had begun to saw his yellow bones ... The child, sleeping in Katerina's arms, screamed and woke up. The lady herself screamed. The rowers dropped their hats into the Dnieper. Pan himself shuddered. Everything suddenly disappeared, as if it had never happened; however, for a long time the lads did not take up the oars. Burulbash looked thoughtfully at the young wife, who, in fright, rocked the crying child in her arms, pressed her to his heart and kissed her on the forehead. Don't be afraid, Katherine! Look, there's nothing! he said, pointing around. “This sorcerer wants to frighten people so that no one gets to his unclean nest. Bab only one he will scare with this! give me a son in my arms! - At this word, Pan Danilo raised his son up and brought it to his lips. - What, Ivan, are you not afraid of sorcerers? "No, tell me, aunt, I'm a Cossack." Come on, stop crying! we'll come home! When we get home, your mother will feed you porridge, put you to sleep in a cradle, and sing: Lyuli, lyuli, lyuli! Lyuli, son, Lyuli! Yes, grow up, grow up in fun! To the glory of the Cossacks, to the Vorozhenkas in reprisal! Listen, Katerina, it seems to me that your father does not want to live in harmony with us. He arrived gloomy, stern, as if angry ... Well, dissatisfied, why come. I did not want to drink for the Cossack will! did not shake the child in his arms! At first I wanted to believe him everything that lies on the heart, but does not take something, and the speech stammered. No, he does not have a Cossack heart! Cossack hearts, when they meet where, how will they not beat out of the chest towards each other! What, my any lads, will the coast soon? Well, I'll give you new hats. To you, Stetsko, I will give it lined with velvet and gold. I took it off together with the head of the Tatar. I got all his shell; only his soul I set free. Well, get on it! Here, Ivan, we arrived, and you are still crying! Take it, Katherine! Everyone left. A thatched roof appeared from behind the mountain: these are the grandfather's mansions of Pan Danil. Behind them there is still a mountain, and there is already a field, and there even a hundred versts pass, you will not find a single Cossack. III Pan Danil's farm between two mountains, in a narrow valley running down to the Dnieper. His mansions are low: the hut looks like that of ordinary Cossacks, and there is only one room in it; but there is room for him, and his wife, and an old maid, and ten fine fellows to fit in there. There are oak shelves around the walls at the top. Densely on them are bowls, pots for a meal. Among them there are silver cups, and cups set in gold, donated and obtained in the war. Below hang expensive muskets, sabers, squeaks, spears. Willingly and unwillingly, they passed from the Tatars, Turks and Poles; but a lot of them are memorized. Looking at them, Pan Danilo seemed to recall his contractions by the badges. Under the wall, below, smooth hewn oak benches. Near them, in front of the couch, hangs on ropes threaded into a ring screwed to the ceiling, a cradle. Throughout the room, the floor is smoothly killed and smeared with clay. Pan Danilo sleeps on benches with his wife. On the bench is an old maid. A small child amuses and lulls in the cradle. Good fellows spend the night on the floor. But it is better for a Cossack to sleep on smooth ground with a free sky; he doesn’t need a down jacket or a feather bed; he puts fresh hay under his head and stretches freely on the grass. It is fun for him, waking up in the middle of the night, to look at the high, star-sown sky and shudder from the night cold, which brought freshness to the Cossack bones. Stretching and mumbling through his sleep, he lights up the cradle and wraps himself tighter in the warm jacket. Burulbash woke up not early after yesterday's fun and, waking up, sat down on a bench in the corner and began to sharpen the new Turkish saber he had exchanged; and Pani Katerina began to embroider a silk towel with gold. Suddenly, Katerina's father came in, angry, frowning, with an overseas cradle in his teeth, approached his daughter and began to ask her sternly: what was the reason for her returning home so late. - About these things, father-in-law, not her, but ask me! Not the wife, but the husband answers. We already do this, don't get angry! - said Danilo, not leaving his work. “Perhaps it doesn’t happen in other unfaithful lands—I don’t know. The color came out on the stern face of the father-in-law and his eyes flashed wildly. “Who, if not a father, should look after his daughter!” he muttered to himself. - Well, I ask you: where did you drag yourself until late at night? “But this is the case, dear father-in-law!” To this I will tell you that I have long gone out of those who are swaddled by women. I know how to sit on a horse. I know how to hold a sharp sword in my hands. I know something else... I know how not to give an answer to anyone in what I do. - I see, Danilo, I know you want a quarrel! Whoever hides, surely, has a bad deed on his mind. “Think what you want,” Danilo said, “I think to myself too. Thank God, I have not been in any other dishonorable business; always stood for the Orthodox faith and the homeland, - not like some vagabonds roam God knows where, when the Orthodox fight to the death, and then come rushing to clean up the grain not sown by them. They don’t even look like Uniates: they won’t look into God’s church. Such would need to be interrogated in order, where they are dragged around. - Hey, Cossack! do you know ... I shoot badly: in just a hundred fathoms my bullet pierces the heart. I cut myself unenviably: from a person there are pieces smaller than cereals, from which porridge is cooked. “I am ready,” said Pan Danilo, briskly crossing the air with his saber, as if he knew what he had turned it into. - Danilo! cried Katerina loudly, seizing his arm and hanging on to it. “Remember, madman, look at whom you are raising your hand!” Father, your hair is white as snow, and you flared up like an unreasonable lad! - Wife! shouted Pan Danilo menacingly, “you know I don’t like this. Do your motherfucking business! Sabers made a terrible sound; iron chopped iron, and the Cossacks sprinkled themselves with sparks, as if dust. Weeping, Katerina went into a special room, threw herself into bed and covered her ears so as not to hear saber blows. But the Cossacks did not fight so badly that it was possible to muffle their blows. Her heart wanted to break into pieces. All over her body she heard sounds passing: knock, knock. "No, I can't stand it, I won't stand it... Maybe the scarlet blood is already welling up from the white body. Maybe now my dear is exhausted; and I'm lying here!" And all pale, barely taking a breath, she entered the hut. The Cossacks fought evenly and terribly. Neither one nor the other prevails. Here comes Katherine's father - pan Danilo is served. Pan Danilo comes - a stern father comes forward, and again on a par. Boil. They swung ... wow! sabers clang... and, rattling, the blades flew aside. -- Thank you, God! said Katerina, and she cried out again when she saw that the Cossacks had taken up their muskets. The flints were adjusted, the hammers cocked. Shot pan Danilo - did not hit. The father has set his sights... He is old; he does not see as sharply as a young man, but his hand does not tremble. The shot rang out... Pan Danilo staggered. Scarlet blood dyed the left sleeve of the Cossack zhupan. -- Not! he cried, “I will not sell myself so cheaply. Not the left hand, but the right ataman. I have a Turkish pistol hanging on my wall; he has never cheated on me in all his life. Get off the wall, old comrade! show a friend a favor! Danilo held out his hand. - Danilo! cried Katerina in despair, seizing him by the arms and throwing herself at his feet. - I'm not praying for myself. There is only one end for me: that unworthy wife who lives after her husband; The Dnieper, the cold Dnieper will be my grave... But look at your son, Danilo, look at your son! Who will warm the poor child? Who will snuggle him? Who will teach him to fly on a black horse, to fight for his will and faith, to drink and walk like a Cossack? Get lost, my son, get lost! Your father doesn't want to know you! See how he turns his face away. ABOUT! I now know you! You are a beast, not a man! you have a wolf's heart, and the soul of a crafty reptile. I thought that you have a drop of pity, that a human feeling burns in your stone body. Madly, I was deceived. It will bring you joy. Your bones will dance in the coffin with joy when they hear how the wicked animals of the Poles will throw your son into the flames, when your son will scream under knives and sprinkles. Oh I know you! You would be glad to get up from the coffin and fan the fire with your hat that swirled under it! - Wait, Katherine! go, my beloved Ivan, I will kiss you! No, my child, no one will touch your hair. You will grow up for the glory of the motherland; like a whirlwind you will fly before the Cossacks, with a velvet cap on your head, with a sharp saber in your hand. Give me your hand, father! Let's forget what happened between us. What I did wrong before you - I'm sorry. Why don't you give a hand? - Danilo said to Katerina's father, who stood in one place, not expressing either anger or reconciliation on his face. -- Father! cried Katerina, embracing and kissing him. - Do not be implacable, forgive Danila: he will not upset you more! - For you only, my daughter, I forgive! he answered, kissing her and flashing a strange look in his eyes. Katerina shuddered a little: both the kiss and the strange glint of her eyes seemed strange to her. She leaned on the table on which Pan Danilo was bandaging his wounded hand, rethinking what he had done badly and not in a Cossack way, asking for forgiveness, not being guilty of anything. IV The day flashed, but not sunny: the sky was gloomy and a thin rain was sown on the fields, on the forests, on the wide Dnieper. Pani Katerina woke up, but not joyfully: her eyes were tearful, and she was all vague and restless. - My dear husband, dear husband, I had a wonderful dream! - What a dream, my any pani Katerina? - I dreamed, it was wonderful, really, and so vividly, as if in reality, - I dreamed that my father is the same freak that we saw at the Yesaul. But I beg you, do not believe the dream. You won't see such nonsense! It was as if I was standing in front of him, trembling all over, afraid, and my veins groaned from every word of his. If you heard what he said... - What did he say, my golden Katerina? - He said: "Look at me, Katerina, I'm good! People say in vain that I'm bad. I'll be a glorious husband for you. Look at how I look with my eyes!" Then he turned his fiery eyes on me, I screamed and woke up. “Yes, dreams tell a lot of truth. However, do you know that beyond the mountain it is not so calm? Almost the Poles began to peek out again. Gorobets sent me to tell me not to sleep. In vain only he cares; I don't sleep anyway. My lads cut down twelve notches that night. We will treat the Commonwealth with lead plums, and the gentry will also dance from batogs. “Does your father know about this?” “Your father is sitting on my neck!” I still can't figure it out. It is true that he committed many sins in a foreign land. Well, in fact, for a reason: he lives for about a month and at least once cheered up like a good Cossack! Didn't want to drink honey! Do you hear, Katerina, he didn’t want to drink the mead that I got from the Krestovsky Jews. Hey, lad! - Pan Danilo shouted. "Run, little one, to the cellar and bring some Jewish honey!" Burners do not even drink! what an abyss! It seems to me, Pani Katerina, that he does not believe in the Lord Christ either. BUT? what do you think? “God knows what you are saying, Pan Danilo!” - Wonderful, sir! Danilo went on, accepting an earthenware mug from the Cossack, “filthy Catholics are even greedy for vodka; Only Turks don't drink. What, Stetsko, drank a lot of honey in the cellar? - Just tried it, sir! “You lie, son of a dog!” see how the flies attacked the mustache! I can see in my eyes that I took half a bucket. Hey, Cossacks! what a dashing people! everything is ready for a comrade, and the intoxicated will dry itself. I, Mrs. Katerina, have been drunk for some time. BUT? -- It's been a long time! and in the past ... - Do not be afraid, do not be afraid, I will not drink more mugs! And here is the Turkish abbot intermeddle in the door! he said through his teeth, seeing his father-in-law bending down to enter the door. “But what is it, my daughter!” - said the father, taking off his hat from his head and adjusting his belt, on which hung a saber with wonderful stones, - the sun is already high, and your dinner is not ready. - Dinner is ready, sir father, let's put it on now! Take out the pot of dumplings! said Pani Katerina to the old maid, who was wiping the wooden dishes. “Wait, I’d better take it out myself,” Katerina continued, “and you call the lads. They all sat down on the floor in a circle: against the pokut was sir father, on the left hand was sir Danilo, on the right hand was pani Katerina and ten most faithful fellows in blue and yellow zhupans. "I don't like those dumplings!" - said pan father, having eaten a little and put down the spoon, - there is no taste! “I know that Jewish noodles are better for you,” Danilo thought to himself. “Why, father-in-law,” he continued aloud, “do you say that there is no taste in dumplings?” Well made, right? My Katerina makes dumplings in such a way that even the hetman rarely gets to eat them. And there is nothing to disdain them. This is Christian food! All the holy people and saints of God ate dumplings. Not a word father; Pan Danilo was also silent. Roasted boar was served with cabbage and plums. "I don't like pork!" said Katherine's father, scooping out the cabbage with a spoon. Why not love pork? Danilo said. - Only Turks and Jews do not eat pork. The father frowned even more sternly. Only one lemyshka with milk was eaten by the old father, and instead of vodka he drank some black water from the flask that was in his bosom. Having had lunch, Danilo fell asleep with a good sleep and woke up only around evening. He sat down and began to write sheets for the Cossack army; and Pani Katerina began to rock the cradle with her foot, sitting on the couch. Pan Danilo is sitting, looking with his left eye at the writing, and with his right eye at the window. And from the window the mountains and the Dnieper shine far away. Beyond the Dnieper the forests turn blue. The clearing night sky flashes from above. But Pan Danilo admires not the distant sky and not the blue forest: he looks at the protruding cape, on which the old castle blackened. It seemed to him that a narrow window in the castle flashed with fire. But everything is quiet. It certainly seemed to him. One can only hear how dull the Dnieper rustles below and from three sides, one after another, the blows of instantly awakened waves are heard. He doesn't rebel. He, like an old man, grumbles and grumbles; everything is not nice to him; everything changed around him; he is quietly at enmity with the coastal mountains, forests, meadows and brings a complaint against them to the Black Sea. Here, along the wide Dnieper, a boat blackened, and something seemed to flash in the castle again. Danilo whistled slowly, and a faithful lad ran out to the whistle. - Take, Stetsko, with you rather a sharp saber and a rifle and follow me! -- You are walking? asked Pani Katerina. I'm coming, wife. We need to look at all the places, is everything in order. “But I am afraid to be alone. Sleep drives me that way. What if I dream the same thing? I'm not even sure if it really was a dream - it happened so vividly. - The old woman stays with you; and the Cossacks are sleeping in the passage and in the yard! “The old woman is already asleep, but the Cossacks cannot believe it. Listen, Pan Danilo, lock me in the room and take the key with you. Then I won't be so scared; and let the Cossacks lie down in front of the door. -- So be it! said Danilo, dusting his rifle and pouring gunpowder onto the shelf. The faithful Stetsko was already standing dressed in all his Cossack harness. Danilo put on his fur cap, closed the window, bolted the door, locked it, and slowly walked out of the yard, between his sleeping Cossacks, into the mountains. The sky was almost completely clear. A fresh wind blew a little from the Dnieper. If the moaning of a seagull had not been heard from a distance, then everything would have seemed numb. But then a rustle seemed to be ... Burulbash with a faithful servant quietly hid behind a thorn bush that covered the felled fence. Someone in a red zhupan, with two pistols, with a saber at his side, was descending from the mountain. - It's a father-in-law! said Pan Danilo, looking at him from behind a bush. - Why and where should he go at this time? Stetsko! do not yawn, look into both eyes, where pan father will take the road. - The man in the red zhupan went down to the very shore and turned towards the prominent cape. -- BUT! that's where! said Pan Danilo. - What, Stetsko, he just dragged himself to the sorcerer in the hollow. - Yes, that's right, not in another place, pan Danilo! otherwise we would have seen it on the other side. But he disappeared near the castle. “Wait, we’ll get out, and then we’ll follow the tracks.” There is something hidden here. No, Katerina, I told you that your father is not a kind person; not so he did everything, as an Orthodox. Pan Danilo and his faithful lad have already flashed on the prominent shore. Now they are no longer visible. The deep forest that surrounded the castle hid them. The upper window lit up softly. Cossacks are standing below and thinking how to get in. There are no gates or doors to be seen. From the yard, right, there is a way; but how to enter there? From a distance you can hear chains rattling and dogs running. - What do I think for a long time! said Pan Danilo, seeing a tall oak in front of the window. "Stay right there, little one!" I will climb the oak; From it you can directly look out the window. Then he took off his belt, threw his saber down so that it would not ring, and, grabbing the branches, rose up. The window was still lit. Sitting down on a bough, near the window, he grabbed a tree with his hand and looked: there was not even a candle in the room, but it was shining. There are strange signs on the walls. There are weapons hanging, but everything is strange: neither the Turks, nor the Crimeans, nor the Poles, nor the Christians, nor the glorious people of Sweden carry such things. Under the ceiling, bats flash back and forth, and the shadow from them flashes along the walls, along the doors, along the platform. Here the door opened without a creak. Someone in a red coat enters and goes straight to the table covered with a white tablecloth. "It's him, it's the father-in-law!" Pan Danilo sank a little lower and pressed himself closer to the tree. But he has no time to look whether someone is looking out the window or not. He came overcast, out of sorts, pulled the tablecloth off the table, and suddenly a transparent blue light quietly spread throughout the room. Only the unmixed waves of the former pale gold shimmered, dived, as if in a blue sea, and stretched in layers, as if on marble. Then he put down the pot and began to throw some herbs into it. Pan Danilo began to peer and did not notice the red zhupan on him; instead, wide trousers, such as the Turks wear, appeared on him; pistols behind the belt; on his head there is some kind of wonderful hat, written all over with non-Russian and non-Polish letters. He looked into the face - and the face began to change: the nose stretched out and hung over the lips; mouth in a minute resounded to the ears; a tooth peeped out of his mouth, bent to one side, and the same sorcerer who had appeared at the captain's wedding stood before him. "Your dream is true, Katerina!" thought Burulbash. The sorcerer began to walk around the table, the signs began to change faster on the wall, and the bats flew faster up and down, back and forth. The blue light became less and less frequent and seemed to be completely extinguished. And the room was already lit up with a thin pink light. It seemed that with a quiet ringing, a wonderful light was pouring into all corners, and suddenly it disappeared, and darkness became. There was only a noise, as if the wind was playing in the quiet hour of the evening, circling over the water mirror, bending the silver willows even lower into the water. And it seems to Pan Danila that the moon is shining in the room, the stars are walking, the dark blue sky is vaguely flashing, and the cold of the night air smelled even in his face. And it seems to Pan Danila (here he began to feel his mustache to see if he was sleeping) that it was no longer the sky in the room, but his own bedchamber: his Tatar and Turkish sabers hang on the wall; near the walls there are shelves, on the shelves there are household dishes and utensils; bread and salt on the table; a cradle hangs ... but instead of images, terrible faces look out; on the couch ... but the thickening fog covered everything, and it became dark again. And again, with a wonderful ringing, the whole room was lit up with a pink light, and again the sorcerer stands motionless in his wonderful turban. The sounds became stronger and thicker, the thin pink light became brighter, and something white, like a cloud, blew in the middle of the hut; and it seems to Pan Danila that the cloud is not a cloud, that a woman is standing there; only what is it made of: is it woven out of thin air? Why is she standing and not touching the ground, and not leaning on anything, and a pink light shines through her, and signs flash on the wall? Here she somehow moved her transparent head: her pale blue eyes shone softly; her hair curls and falls over her shoulders like a light gray mist; the lips are pale red, as if through the white-transparent morning sky the barely perceptible scarlet light of dawn is pouring; eyebrows darken slightly ... Ah! it's Katerina! Here Danilo felt that his members were chained; he struggled to speak, but his lips moved without a sound. The sorcerer stood motionless in his place. -- Where have you been? he asked, and the one in front of him trembled. -- ABOUT! why did you call me? she moaned softly. - I was so happy. I was in the same place where I was born and lived for fifteen years. Oh how good it is! How green and fragrant is that meadow where I played as a child: the same wildflowers, and our hut, and the garden! Oh, how my good mother embraced me! What love she has in her eyes! She blushed me, kissed me on the lips and cheeks, combed my blond braid with a frequent comb ... Father! - here she fixed her pale eyes on the sorcerer, - why did you kill my mother? The sorcerer shook his finger menacingly. Did I ask you to talk about it? And the airy beauty trembled. - Where is your lady now? - My lady, Katerina, now fell asleep, and I was glad about it, fluttered and flew away. I have long wanted to see my mother. I suddenly became fifteen years old. I became as light as a bird. Why did you call me? Do you remember everything I told you yesterday? asked the sorcerer, so quietly that he could hardly hear. - I remember, I remember; but what wouldn't I give just to forget it! Poor Katherine! She does not know much of what her soul knows. "This is Catherine's soul," thought Pan Danilo; but still did not dare to move. - Repent, father! Isn't it scary that after each murder of yours, the dead rise from their graves? "You're up to the old again!" the sorcerer interrupted sternly. “I will bet on my own, I will make you do what I want. Katerina will love me! .. - Oh, you are a monster, not my father! she moaned. - No, it won't be your way! True, you took with your impure charms the power to call out the soul and torment it; but God alone can force her to do what he pleases. No, Katerina will never, as long as I stay in her body, decide on a ungodly deed. Father, the Last Judgment is near! If you were not my father, and then you would not have forced me to cheat on my any, faithful husband. If my husband had not been faithful and sweet to me, then I would not have betrayed him, because God does not love perjured and unfaithful souls. Here she fixed her pale eyes on the window, under which Pan Danilo was sitting, and stopped motionless ... - Where are you looking? Who do you see there? shouted the sorcerer. Air Katherine trembled. But Pan Danilo had already been on earth for a long time and was making his way with his faithful Stetsk to his mountains. "Scary, scary!" - he said to himself, feeling some timidity in the Cossack heart, and soon he passed his yard, where the Cossacks slept just as soundly, except for one who sat on the side and smoked a cradle. The sky was all seeded with stars. V - "How well you did that you woke me up!" said Katerina, rubbing her eyes with the embroidered sleeve of her shirt and looking from head to foot at her husband standing in front of her. "What a terrible dream I had! How heavy my chest was breathing! Wow!... It seemed to me that I was dying... - What kind of dream, isn't it this one? - And Burulbash began to tell his wife everything he had seen. - How did you know this, my husband? - asked Katerina, amazed. "But no, I don't know a lot of what you're telling me. No, I didn't dream that my father killed my mother; I didn't see any dead people, I didn't see anything. No, Danilo, you don't talk like that. Oh, how terrible my father is." "And no wonder you haven't seen much. You don't know even a tenth of what the soul knows. Do you know that your father is the Antichrist? Last year, when I was going together with the Poles to attack the Crimeans (at that time I still held the hand of this unfaithful people), I was told by the abbot of the Brethren Monastery - he, the wife, is a holy man - that the Antichrist has the power to call out the soul of every person; and the soul walks of its own accord when he falls asleep, and flies together with the archangels around the divine room. I didn't see your father's face the first time. If I had known that you had such a father, I would not have married you; I would have thrown you and would not have accepted sin on my soul, having become related to the antichrist tribe. - Danilo! - said Katerina, covering her face with her hands and sobbing, - am I guilty of what before you? Have I cheated on you, my any husband? What caused your anger? Didn't she serve you right? did you say a nasty word when you tossed and turned drunk from a valiant revel? Have you not given birth to a black-browed son? .. - Don't cry, Katerina, I know you now and I won't leave you for anything. All sins lie on your father. "No, don't call him my father!" He is not my father. God knows, I renounce him, renounce my father! He is the antichrist, the apostate! If he perishes, he drowns - I will not give a hand to save him. Dry him from the secret grass - I will not give him water to drink. You are my father! VI In a deep cellar near Pan Danilo, behind three locks, sits a sorcerer chained in iron chains; and far off, over the Dnieper, his demonic castle burns, and the waves, scarlet as blood, slurp and crowd around the ancient walls. Not for witchcraft and not for ungodly deeds, the sorcerer sits in a deep basement: God judges them; he sits for secret betrayal, for conspiracies with the enemies of the Orthodox Russian land - to sell the Ukrainian people to Catholics and burn down Christian churches. Gloomy sorcerer; thought black as night in his head. Only one day remains to live for him, and tomorrow it's time to say goodbye to the world. Tomorrow he will be executed. Not quite an easy execution awaits him; it is still mercy when they boil him alive in a cauldron or tear off his sinful skin. The sorcerer is gloomy, bowed his head. Maybe he already repents before his death, but not such sins that God would forgive him. At the top in front of him is a narrow window, intertwined with iron sticks. Raking his chains, he went to the window to see if his daughter would pass. She is meek, not remorseful, like a dove, if she will not have mercy on her father ... But there is no one. The road runs below; no one will walk on it. Below it walks the Dnieper; he does not care about anyone: he is raging, and it is sad for the prisoner to hear his monotonous noise. Here someone appeared on the road - it's a Cossack! And the prisoner sighed heavily. Everything is empty again. Here someone is descending in the distance ... A green kuntush is fluttering ... a golden boat is burning on her head ... It's her! He leaned closer to the window. It's already coming close... - Katerina! daughter! have mercy, give alms!.. She is mute, she does not want to listen, she will not even look at the prison, and has already passed, already disappeared. Empty all over the world. The Dnieper hums sadly. Sadness is in the heart. But does the sorcerer know this sadness? The day is fading into evening. The sun has already set. Already there is none. Already evening: fresh; somewhere an ox mooed; Sounds are wafting in from somewhere—surely, somewhere people are coming home from work and having fun; a boat flickers along the Dnieper ... who needs a well! A silver sickle flashed in the sky. Here is someone coming from the opposite side of the road. Difficult to see in the dark. It's Katherine coming back. "Daughter, for Christ's sake!" and ferocious wolf cubs will not tear their mother, daughter, although look at your criminal father! She doesn't listen and goes. "Daughter, for the sake of the unfortunate mother!..." She stopped. "Come and take my last word!" “Why are you calling me, apostate? Don't call me daughter! There is no relationship between us. What do you want from me for my poor mother? -- Katerina! The end is near for me: I know your husband wants to tie me to a mare's tail and let me through the field, and maybe he will invent the most terrible execution ... - Is there a punishment in the world equal to your sins? Wait for her; no one will ask for you. -- Katerina! I am not afraid of execution, but of torment in the next world ... You are innocent, Katerina, your soul will fly in paradise near God; and the soul of your apostate father will burn in eternal fire, and that fire will never go out: it will flare up stronger and stronger: no one will drop a drop of dew, no wind will smell ... - I have no power to belittle this execution, - said Katherine, turning away. -- Katerina! hang on one word: you can save my soul. You don't know yet how good and merciful God is. Have you heard about the Apostle Paul, what a sinful person he was, but then he repented and became a saint. What can I do to save your soul? - said Katerina, - should I, a weak woman, think about it! - If I could get out of here, I would throw everything. I will repent: I will go to the caves, I will put on a stiff sackcloth on my body, I will pray to God day and night. Not only fast food, I won’t take fish in my mouth! I won't put down my clothes when I go to sleep! and I will all pray, all pray! And when the mercy of God does not remove even a hundredth of my sins from me, I will dig up to my neck in the ground or wall myself up in a stone wall; I will take neither food nor drink, and I will die; and I will give all my goodness to the blacks, so that for forty days and forty nights they will serve a memorial service for me. Catherine thought. “Although I will unlock it, I cannot unchain your chains. “I am not afraid of chains,” he said. “Are you saying they chained my hands and feet?” No, I put fog in their eyes and held out a dry tree instead of a hand. Here I am, look, there is not a single chain on me now! he said, stepping out into the middle. “I wouldn’t be afraid of these walls and would pass through them, but your husband doesn’t even know what kind of walls they are. They were built by the holy schemnik, and no evil spirit can bring the convict out of here without unlocking it with the very key with which the saint locked his cell. Such a cell I will dig for myself, an unheard-of sinner, when I go free. - Listen, I'll let you out; but what if you deceive me,' said Katerina, stopping before the door, 'and instead of repenting, you become the devil's brother again? “No, Katerina, I don’t have long to live. My end is near and without execution. Do you really think that I will betray myself to eternal torment? Castles thundered. -- Goodbye! God bless you, my child! said the sorcerer, kissing her. "Don't touch me, you unheard-of sinner, leave quickly!" said Katerina. But he was gone. "I let him out," she said, frightened and looking wildly at the walls. What am I going to say to my husband now? - I'm lost. Now I'm alive to bury myself in the grave! - and, sobbing, she almost fell on the stump on which the convict was sitting. "But I saved my soul," she said softly. “I have done a godly deed. But my husband... I deceived him the first time. Oh, how terrible, how difficult it will be for me to tell a lie in front of him. Someone is coming! It is he! Husband! she cried out desperately, and fell unconscious to the ground. >>

Esaul Gorobets once celebrated his son's wedding in Kiev. A lot of people gathered, and among others, the named brother of the Yesaul Danilo Burulbash with his young wife Katerina and a one-year-old son. Katerina's father, who returned after a twenty-year absence, did not come with them. Everything danced when the captain brought out two icons to bless the young. Then a sorcerer opened up in the crowd and disappeared, frightened by the images. Danilo returns at night along the Dnieper with his family to the farm. Katerina is frightened, but her husband is not afraid of the sorcerer, but the Poles, who are going to cut off the path to the Cossacks, he thinks about this, passing by the old sorcerer's castle and the cemetery with the bones of his grandfathers. However, crosses are tottering in the cemetery and, one more terrible than the other, the dead appear, pulling their bones to the very month. Consoling his awakened son, Pan Danilo gets to the hut. His hut is small, not roomy for his family and for ten selected fellows. The next morning, a quarrel arose between Danila and the gloomy, absurd father-in-law. It came to sabers, and then to muskets. Danilo was wounded, but if not for the pleas and reproaches of Katerina, who by the way remembered her little son, he would have fought further. The Cossacks reconcile. Katerina tells her husband her vague dream, as if her father is a terrible sorcerer, and Danilo scolds the Busurman habits of his father-in-law, suspecting a non-Christ in him, but he is more worried about the Poles, about which Gorobets again warned him. During dinner, the father-in-law disdains dumplings, and pork, and vodka. By evening, Danilo leaves to explore around the old castle. Climbing up an oak tree to look out the window, he sees a witch's room with wonderful weapons on the walls and flickering bats. The father-in-law who enters begins to tell fortunes, and his appearance changes: he is a sorcerer in filthy Turkish attire. He summons Katerina's soul, threatens her and demands that Katerina love him. The soul does not yield, and, shocked by what has opened, Danilo returns home, wakes up Katerina and tells her everything. Katerina renounces her father. In Danila's basement, a sorcerer sits in iron chains, his demonic castle is on fire; not for witchcraft, but for collusion with the Poles, his execution awaits the next day. But, promising to start a righteous life, to retire to the caves, to propitiate God with fasting and prayer, the sorcerer Katerina asks to let him go and thereby save his soul. Fearing her act, Katerina releases it, but hides the truth from her husband. Feeling his death, the saddened Danilo asks his wife to take care of her son. As expected, Poles run in innumerable clouds, set fire to huts and steal cattle. Danilo fights bravely, but the bullet of the sorcerer who appears on the mountain overtakes him. Disappointing Katherine. Gorobet jumps to the rescue. The Poles are defeated, the wonderful Dnieper is raging. Fearlessly ruling the canoe, the sorcerer sails to his ruins. In the dugout, he casts spells, but not Katerina's soul appears to him, but someone uninvited; although he is not terrible, but terrifying. Katerina, living with Gorobets, sees her former dreams and trembles for her son. Waking up in a hut surrounded by vigilant guards, she finds him dead and goes crazy. Meanwhile, from the West, a gigantic rider with a baby, on a black horse, is galloping. His eyes are closed. He entered the Carpathians and stopped here. Mad Katerina is looking everywhere for her father in order to kill him. A certain guest arrives, asking Danila, mourns him, wants to see Katerina, talks to her for a long time about her husband and, it seems, introduces her to her mind. But when he talks about the fact that Danilo, in case of death, asked him to take Katerina for himself, she recognizes her father and rushes to him with a knife. The sorcerer kills his daughter. Behind Kiev, “an unheard-of miracle appeared”: “suddenly it became visible far to all corners of the world” - and the Crimea, and the swampy Sivash, and the land of Galich, and the Carpathian Mountains with a gigantic rider on the peaks. The sorcerer, who was among the people, flees in fear, for he recognized in the rider an uninvited face that appeared to him during divination. Night terrors pursue the sorcerer, and he turns towards Kiev, towards

Yesaul Gorobets once celebrated the wedding of his son in Kiev, which was attended by many people, and among others, the named brother of the Yesaul Danilo Burulbash with his young wife, the beautiful Katerina, and a one-year-old son. Only old Katherine's father, who had recently returned after a twenty-year absence, did not come with them. Everything was dancing when the captain brought out two wonderful icons to bless the young. Then a sorcerer opened up in the crowd and disappeared, frightened by the images.

Danilo returns at night along the Dnieper with his family to the farm. Katerina is frightened, but her husband is not afraid of the sorcerer, but the Poles, who are going to cut off the path to the Cossacks, he thinks about this, sailing past the old sorcerer's castle and the cemetery with the bones of his grandfathers. However, crosses are tottering in the cemetery and, one more terrible than the other, the dead appear, pulling their bones to the very month. Consoling his awakened son, Pan Danilo gets to the hut. His hut is small, not roomy for his family and for ten selected fellows. The next morning a quarrel broke out between Danilo and his gloomy, absurd father-in-law. It came to sabers, and then to muskets. Danilo was wounded, but if not for the pleas and reproaches of Katerina, who by the way remembered her little son, he would have fought further. The Cossacks reconciled. Katerina soon tells her husband her vague dream, as if her father is a terrible sorcerer, and Danilo scolds the Busurman habits of his father-in-law, suspecting a non-Christ in him, but he is more worried about the Poles, about which Gorobets again warned him. After dinner, during which the father-in-law disdains dumplings, and pork, and a burner, in the evening Danilo leaves to scout around the old sorcerer's castle. Climbing up an oak tree to look out the window, he sees a witch's room, lit by God knows what, with wonderful weapons on the walls and flickering bats. The father-in-law who enters begins to tell fortunes, and his whole appearance changes: he is already a sorcerer in filthy Turkish attire. He summons Katerina's soul, threatens her and demands that Katerina love him. The soul does not yield, and, shocked by what has opened, Danilo returns home, wakes up Katerina and tells her everything. Katerina renounces her apostate father. In Danila's basement, a sorcerer sits in iron chains, his demonic castle is on fire; not for witchcraft, but for collusion with the Poles, his execution awaits tomorrow. But, promising to start a righteous life, to retire to the caves, to propitiate God with fasting and prayer, the sorcerer Katerina asks to let him go and thereby save his soul. Fearing her act, Katerina releases it, but hides the truth from her husband. Feeling his death, the saddened Danilo asks his wife to take care of her son.

As expected, Poles run in innumerable clouds, set fire to huts and steal cattle. Pan Danilo fights bravely, but the bullet of the sorcerer who appears on the mountain overtakes him. And although Gorobets jumps to the rescue, Katerina is inconsolable. The Poles are defeated, the wonderful Dnieper is raging, and, fearlessly righting the canoe, the sorcerer sails to his ruins. In the dugout, he casts spells, but not Katerina's soul appears to him, but someone uninvited; although he is not terrible, but terrifying. Katerina, living with Gorobets, sees her former dreams and trembles for her son. Waking up in a hut surrounded by vigilant guards, she finds him dead and goes crazy. Meanwhile, from the West, a gigantic rider with a baby, on a black horse, is galloping. His eyes are closed. He entered the Carpathians and stopped here.

Mad Katerina is looking everywhere for her father in order to kill him. A certain guest arrives, asking Danila, mourns him, wants to see Katerina, talks to her for a long time about her husband and, it seems, introduces her to her mind. But when he talks about the fact that Danilo, in case of death, asked him to take Katerina for himself, she recognizes her father and rushes to him with a knife. The sorcerer himself kills his daughter.

Behind Kiev, “an unheard-of miracle appeared”: “suddenly it became visible far to all corners of the world” - and the Crimea, and the swampy Sivash, and the land of Galich, and the Carpathian Mountains with a gigantic rider on the peaks. The sorcerer, who was among the people, flees in fear, for he recognized in the rider an uninvited face that appeared to him during divination. Night terrors pursue the sorcerer, and he turns to Kiev, to the holy places. There he kills the holy schemer, who did not undertake to pray for such an unheard-of sinner. Now, wherever he rules the horse, he moves to the Carpathian mountains. Here the motionless rider opened his eyes and laughed. And the sorcerer died, and, dead, he saw the dead rising from Kiev, from the Carpathians, from the land of Galich, and the rider was thrown into the abyss, and the dead plunged their teeth into him. Another one, taller and more terrible than all, wanted to rise from the ground and shook it mercilessly, but could not get up.

Noises, thunders the end of Kiev: Yesaul Gorobets celebrates the wedding of his son. Many people came to visit the Yesaul. In the old days they liked to eat well, they liked to drink even better, and even better they liked to have fun. The Cossack Mikitka also arrived on his bay horse, straight from a riotous drinking binge from Crossing the Field, where he gave red wine to the royal gentry for seven days and seven nights. The named brother of the Yesaul, Danilo Burulbash, also came from the other side of the Dnieper, where, between two mountains, was his farm, with his young wife Katerina and with a one-year-old son. The guests marveled at the white face of Pani Katerina, her eyebrows black as German velvet, her elegant cloth and underwear made of a blue half-tape, her boots with silver horseshoes; but they marveled even more that her old father had not come with her. For only a year he lived in the Zadneprovie, and for twenty-one he went missing and returned to his daughter when she had already married and given birth to a son. He would certainly tell a lot of marvelous things. Yes, how not to tell, having been in a foreign land for so long! Everything is wrong there: the people are not the same, and there are no churches of Christ ... But he did not come.

Gogol. Terrible revenge. audiobook

The guests were served varenukha with raisins and plums and a loaf on a large platter. The musicians set to work on his undershirt, sintered together with the money, and, having quieted down for a while, laid cymbals, violins and tambourines near them. Meanwhile, young women and maidens, having wiped themselves with embroidered scarves, stepped out again from their ranks; and the lads, clutching their sides, proudly looking around, were ready to rush towards them, as the old captain brought out two icons to bless the young. Those icons he got from an honest schemnik, Elder Bartholomew. Utensils are not rich in them, neither silver nor gold burns, but no evil spirit dares to touch the one who has them in the house. Raising the icons up, the captain was preparing to say a short prayer ... when suddenly the children playing on the ground screamed, frightened; and after them the people backed away, and they all pointed with fearful fingers at the Cossack standing in the middle of them. Who he was, no one knew. But he had already danced to the glory of a Cossack and had already managed to make the crowd around him laugh. When the captain raised the icons, suddenly his whole face changed: his nose grew and leaned to the side, instead of brown, green eyes jumped, his lips turned blue, his chin trembled and sharpened like a spear, a fang ran out of his mouth, a hump rose from behind his head, and became a Cossack - an old man.

- It is he! It is he! - shouted in the crowd, closely clinging to each other.

The sorcerer has reappeared! mothers shouted, grabbing their children in their arms.

Majestically and dignifiedly, the captain stepped forward and said in a loud voice, setting up icons against him:

- Get lost, the image of Satan, there is no place for you here! - And, hissing and clicking, like a wolf, his teeth, the wonderful old man disappeared.

Let's go, let's go and rustle, like the sea in bad weather, talk and speeches between the people.

- What is this sorcerer? asked young and unprecedented people.

- There will be trouble! the old ones said, shaking their heads.

And everywhere, throughout the wide courtyard of the Yesaul, they began to gather in groups and listen to stories about a wonderful sorcerer. But almost everyone spoke differently, and probably no one could tell about him.

A barrel of honey was rolled out into the yard and buckets of walnut wine were put in quite a few. Everything is fun again. The musicians thundered; girls, young women, dashing Cossacks in bright zhupans rushed. The ninety-year-old and hundred-year-old junk, having played up, began to dance for themselves, remembering the years that had not been lost for nothing. They feasted until late at night, and snorted in the way they no longer feast. The guests began to disperse, but little wandered home: many remained to spend the night with the captain in a wide courtyard; and even more Cossacks fell asleep on their own, uninvited, under the benches, on the floor, near the horse, near the barn; where the Cossack head staggered from drunkenness, there it lies and snores for the whole of Kiev.

Terrible revenge. Cartoon based on the novel by N. V. Gogol

II

Quietly shines all over the world: then the moon appeared from behind the mountain. As if with a Damascus road and white as snow, he covered the mountainous bank of the Dnieper with muslin, and the shadow went even further into the thicket of pines.

An oak tree floated in the middle of the Dnieper. Two boys are sitting in front; black Cossack hats on one side, and under the oars, as if from a flint and fire, splashes fly in all directions.

Why don't the Cossacks sing? They do not talk about how priests are already walking around the Ukraine and re-baptizing the Cossack people into Catholics; nor about how the horde fought for two days at Salt Lake. How can they sing, how can they talk about dashing deeds: their lord Danilo became thoughtful, and the sleeve of the crimson zhupan fell from the oak and draws water; their mistress Katerina quietly sways the child and does not take her eyes off him, and water falls on the elegant cloth not covered with linen with gray dust.

It is a pleasure to look from the middle of the Dnieper at the high mountains, at the wide meadows, at the green forests! Those mountains are not mountains: they have no soles, below them, as well as above, a sharp peak, and under them and above them there is a high sky. Those forests that stand on the hills are not forests: they are hair overgrown on the shaggy head of a forest grandfather. Under it, a beard is washed in the water, and under the beard and above the hair is the high sky. Those meadows are not meadows: that is a green belt that girded the round sky in the middle, and the moon walks in the upper half and in the lower half.

Pan Danilo does not look around, he looks at his young wife.

- What, my young wife, my golden Katerina, went into sadness?

- I did not go into sadness, my pan Danilo! I was terrified by wonderful stories about a sorcerer. They say that he was born so scary ... and none of the children from childhood wanted to play with him. Listen, Pan Danilo, how terribly they say: that it seemed to him that everything seemed to him, that everyone was laughing at him. If in the dark evening he would meet with some person, and it would immediately appear to him that he was opening his mouth and showing his teeth. And the next day they found that man dead. I was wonderful, I was scared when I listened to these stories, ”said Katerina, taking out a handkerchief and wiping the face of a child sleeping in her arms with it. Leaves and berries were embroidered with red silk on the scarf.

Pan Danilo did not say a word and began to glance at the dark side, where far from behind the forest a black earthen rampart loomed, from behind the rampart rose an old castle. Three wrinkles cut out at once over the eyebrows; his left hand stroked his valiant mustache.

“It’s not so scary that he’s a sorcerer,” he said, “as it’s scary that he is an unkind guest. What a whim came to him to drag himself here? I heard that the Poles want to build some kind of fortress in order to cut off our road to the Cossacks. Let it be true... I'll make a hell of a nest if word gets around that he's got a stash of some kind. I will burn the old sorcerer so that the ravens will have nothing to peck. However, I think he is not without gold and all good things. That's where the devil lives! If he has gold ... We will now sail past the crosses - this is a cemetery! here his unclean grandfathers rot. They say that they were all ready to sell themselves to Satan for money with a soul and skinned zhupans. If he definitely has gold, then there is nothing to delay now: it is not always possible to get it in a war ...

- I know what you're up to. Nothing bodes well for me meeting him. But you are breathing so heavily, you look so sternly, your eyes are so sullenly raised eyebrows! ..

- Shut up, grandma! Danilo said heartily. - Whoever contacts you will become a woman himself. Lad, give me fire in the cradle! - Here he turned to one of the rowers, who, knocking hot ashes out of his cradle, began to shift it into the cradle of his master. - Scares me with a sorcerer! continued Pan Danilo. - Kozak, thank God, is not afraid of devils or priests. It would be of great use if we began to obey wives. Isn't that right, lads? our wife is a cradle and a sharp saber!

Katerina fell silent, dropping her eyes into the sleepy water; and the wind pulled the water in ripples, and the whole Dnieper turned silver, like wolf hair in the middle of the night.

The oak turned and began to keep to the wooded bank. A cemetery was visible on the shore: dilapidated crosses crowded into a heap. Neither the viburnum grows between them, nor the grass turns green, only the moon warms them from the heavenly heights.

Do you guys hear the screams? Someone is calling us for help! said Pan Danilo, turning to his rowers.

“We hear screams, and it seems from the other side,” the lads said at once, pointing to the cemetery.

But everything was quiet. The boat turned and began to go around the protruding shore. Suddenly the rowers lowered their oars and fixed their eyes motionless. Pan Danilo also stopped: fear and cold cut through the Cossack veins.

The cross on the grave staggered, and a desiccated corpse quietly rose from it. Beard to the waist; on the fingers, the claws are long, even longer than the fingers themselves. Quietly he raised his hands. His face trembled and twisted. Apparently, he endured a terrible torment. “It's stuffy for me! stuffy! he moaned in a wild, inhuman voice. His voice, like a knife, scratched the heart, and the dead man suddenly went underground. Another cross shook, and again a dead man came out, even more terrible, even higher than before; all thickets, a beard to the knees and even longer bone claws. He shouted even more wildly: “It’s stuffy for me!” - and went underground. The third cross staggered, the third dead man rose. It seemed that only the bones rose high above the ground. Beard to the very heels; fingers with long claws dug into the ground. Terribly, he stretched his hands up, as if he wanted to get the moon, and screamed as if someone began to saw his yellow bones ...

The child, sleeping in Katerina's arms, screamed and woke up. The lady herself screamed. The rowers dropped their hats into the Dnieper. Pan himself shuddered.

Everything suddenly disappeared, as if it had never happened; however, for a long time the lads did not take up the oars.

Burulbash looked thoughtfully at the young wife, who, in fright, rocked the crying child in her arms, pressed her to his heart and kissed her on the forehead.

Don't be afraid, Katherine! Look, there's nothing! he said, pointing around. - This sorcerer wants to frighten people so that no one gets to his unclean nest. Bab only one he will scare with this! give me a son in my arms! - At this word, Pan Danilo raised his son up and brought it to his lips. - What, Ivan, are you not afraid of sorcerers? "No, tell me, aunt, I'm a Cossack." Come on, stop crying! we'll come home! When we get home, your mother will feed you porridge, put you to sleep in a cradle, and sing:

Lyuli, lyuli, lyuli!
Lyuli, son, Lyuli!
Yes, grow up, grow up in fun!
Cossacks to glory,
Ravens in reprisal!

Listen, Katerina, it seems to me that your father does not want to live in harmony with us. He arrived gloomy, stern, as if angry ... Well, dissatisfied, why come. I did not want to drink for the Cossack will! did not shake the child in his arms! At first I wanted to believe him everything that lies on the heart, but does not take something, and the speech stammered. No, he does not have a Cossack heart! Cossack hearts, when they meet where, how will they not beat out of the chest towards each other! What, my any lads, will the coast soon? Well, I'll give you new hats. To you, Stetsko, I will give it lined with velvet and gold. I took it off together with the head of the Tatar. I got all his shell; only his soul I set free. Well, get on it! Here, Ivan, we arrived, and you are still crying! Take it, Katherine!

Everyone left. A thatched roof appeared from behind the mountain: these are the grandfather's mansions of Pan Danil. Behind them there is still a mountain, and there is already a field, and there even a hundred versts pass, you will not find a single Cossack.

III

Pan Danil's farm between two mountains, in a narrow valley running down to the Dnieper. His mansions are low: the hut looks like that of ordinary Cossacks, and there is only one room in it; but there is room for him, and his wife, and an old maid, and ten fine fellows to fit in there. There are oak shelves around the walls at the top. Densely on them are bowls, pots for a meal. Among them there are silver cups, and cups set in gold, donated and obtained in the war. Below hang expensive muskets, sabers, squeaks, spears. Willingly and unwillingly, they passed from the Tatars, Turks and Poles; but a lot of them are memorized. Looking at them, Pan Danilo seemed to recall his contractions by the badges. Under the wall, below, smooth hewn oak benches. Near them, in front of the couch, hangs on ropes threaded into a ring screwed to the ceiling, a cradle. Throughout the room, the floor is smoothly killed and smeared with clay. Pan Danilo sleeps on benches with his wife. On the bench is an old maid. A small child amuses and lulls in the cradle. Good fellows spend the night on the floor. But it is better for a Cossack to sleep on smooth ground with a free sky; he doesn’t need a down jacket or a feather bed; he puts fresh hay under his head and stretches freely on the grass. It is fun for him, waking up in the middle of the night, to look at the high, star-sown sky and shudder from the night cold, which brought freshness to the Cossack bones. Stretching and mumbling through his sleep, he lights up the cradle and wraps himself tighter in the warm jacket.

Burulbash woke up not early after yesterday's fun and, waking up, sat down on a bench in the corner and began to sharpen the new Turkish saber he had exchanged; and Pani Katerina began to embroider a silk towel with gold. Suddenly, Katerina's father came in, angry, frowning, with an overseas cradle in his teeth, approached his daughter and began to ask her sternly: what was the reason for her returning home so late.

- About these cases, father-in-law, not her, but ask me! Not the wife, but the husband answers. We already do this, don't get angry! - said Danilo, not leaving his work. “Perhaps this does not happen in other unfaithful lands—I do not know.

The color came out on the stern face of the father-in-law and his eyes flashed wildly.

- Who, if not a father, should look after his daughter! he muttered to himself. - Well, I ask you: where did you drag yourself until late at night?

“But this is the case, dear father-in-law! To this I will tell you that I have long gone out of those who are swaddled by women. I know how to sit on a horse. I know how to hold a sharp sword in my hands. I also know how to do something else ... I know how not to give an answer to anyone in what I do.

- I see, Danilo, I know you want a quarrel! Whoever hides, surely, has a bad deed on his mind.

“Think what you want,” Danilo said, “I think to myself too. Thank God, I have not been in any other dishonorable business; always stood for the Orthodox faith and the homeland - not like some vagabonds roam God knows where, when the Orthodox fight to the death, and then come down to clean up the grain not sown by them. They don’t even look like Uniates: they won’t look into God’s church. Such would need to be interrogated in order, where they are dragged around.

- Hey, goat! do you know... I shoot badly: in just a hundred fathoms my bullet pierces the heart. I cut myself unenviably: from a person there are pieces smaller than cereals, from which porridge is cooked.

“I’m ready,” said Pan Danilo, smartly crossing the air with his saber, as if he knew what he had turned it into.

- Danilo! Katerina shouted loudly, grabbing his arm and hanging on to it. “Remember, madman, look at whom you are raising your hand!” Father, your hair is white as snow, and you flared up like an unreasonable lad!

- Wife! shouted Pan Danilo menacingly, “you know I don’t like this. Do your motherfucking business!

Sabers made a terrible sound; iron chopped iron, and the Cossacks sprinkled themselves with sparks, as if dust. Weeping, Katerina went into a special room, threw herself into bed and covered her ears so as not to hear saber blows. But the Cossacks did not fight so badly that it was possible to muffle their blows. Her heart wanted to break into pieces. All over her body she heard sounds passing: knock, knock. “No, I can’t stand it, I won’t stand it ... Maybe the scarlet blood is already bubbling from the white body. Maybe now my dear is exhausted; and I'm lying here! And all pale, barely taking a breath, she entered the hut.

The Cossacks fought evenly and terribly. Neither one nor the other prevails. Here comes Katherine's father - pan Danilo is served. Pan Danilo is coming - a stern father is served, and again on a par. Boil. They swung ... wow! the sabers clang... and, rattling, the blades flew off to the side.

– Thank you, God! said Katerina, and cried out again when she saw that the Cossacks had taken up their muskets. The flints were adjusted, the hammers cocked.

Shot pan Danilo - did not hit. Aimed father ... He is old; he does not see as sharply as a young man, but his hand does not tremble. A shot rang out… Pan Danilo staggered. Scarlet blood dyed the left sleeve of the Cossack zhupan.

- Not! he shouted, “I will not sell myself so cheaply. Not the left hand, but the right ataman. I have a Turkish pistol hanging on my wall; he has never cheated on me in all his life. Get off the wall, old comrade! show a friend a favor! Danilo held out his hand.

- Danilo! cried Katerina in despair, grabbing his hands and throwing herself at his feet. - I'm not praying for myself. There is only one end for me: that unworthy wife who lives after her husband; The Dnieper, the cold Dnieper will be my grave... But look at your son, Danilo, look at your son! Who will warm the poor child? Who will snuggle him? Who will teach him to fly on a black horse, to fight for his will and faith, to drink and walk like a Cossack? Get lost, my son, get lost! Your father doesn't want to know you! See how he turns his face away. ABOUT! I now know you! You are a beast, not a man! you have a wolf's heart, and the soul of a crafty reptile. I thought that you have a drop of pity, that a human feeling burns in your stone body. Madly, I was deceived. It will bring you joy. Your bones will dance in the coffin with joy when they hear how the wicked animals of the Poles will throw your son into the flames, when your son will scream under knives and sprinkles. Oh I know you! You would be glad to get up from the coffin and fan the fire with your hat that swirled under it!

- Wait, Katherine! go, my beloved Ivan, I will kiss you! No, my child, no one will touch your hair. You will grow up for the glory of the motherland; like a whirlwind you will fly before the Cossacks, with a velvet cap on your head, with a sharp saber in your hand. Give me your hand, father! Let's forget what happened between us. What I did wrong before you - I'm sorry. Why don't you give a hand? - Danilo said to Katerina's father, who stood in one place, not expressing either anger or reconciliation on his face.

- Father! cried Katerina, embracing and kissing him. - Do not be implacable, forgive Danila: he will not upset you more!

- For you only, my daughter, I forgive! he answered, kissing her and flashing a strange look in his eyes. Katerina shuddered a little: both the kiss and the strange glint of her eyes seemed strange to her. She leaned on the table on which Pan Danilo was bandaging his wounded hand, rethinking what he had done badly and not in a Cossack way, asking for forgiveness, not being guilty of anything.

IV

The day flashed, but not sunny: the sky was gloomy and a thin rain was sown on the fields, on the forests, on the wide Dnieper. Pani Katerina woke up, but not joyfully: her eyes were tearful, and she was all vague and restless.

- My dear husband, dear husband, I had a wonderful dream!

- What a dream, my any pani Katerina?

- I dreamed, wonderfully, really, and so vividly, as if in reality, - I dreamed that my father is the same freak that we saw at the Yesaul. But I beg you, do not believe the dream. You won't see such nonsense! It was as if I was standing in front of him, trembling all over, afraid, and my veins groaned from every word of his. If you heard what he said...

- What did he say, my golden Katerina?

- He said: “Look at me, Katerina, I'm good! People are wrong to say that I'm stupid. I will be a good husband to you. Look how I look with my eyes! Then he turned his fiery eyes on me, I screamed and woke up.

Yes, dreams tell a lot of truth. However, do you know that beyond the mountain it is not so calm? Almost the Poles began to peek out again. Gorobets sent me to tell me not to sleep. In vain only he cares; I don't sleep anyway. My lads cut down twelve notches that night. We will treat the Commonwealth with lead plums, and the gentry will also dance from batogs.

“Does your father know about this?”

“Your father is sitting on my neck!” I still can't figure it out. It is true that he committed many sins in a foreign land. Well, in fact, for a reason: he lives for about a month and at least once cheered up like a good Cossack! Didn't want to drink honey! Do you hear, Katerina, he didn’t want to drink the mead that I got from the Krestovsky Jews. Hey lad! shouted Pan Danilo. “Run, little one, to the cellar and bring some Jewish honey!” Burners do not even drink! what an abyss! It seems to me, Pani Katerina, that he does not believe in the Lord Christ either. BUT? what do you think?

“God knows what you are saying, Pan Danilo!”

- Wonderful, sir! Danilo continued, accepting an earthenware mug from the Cossack, “filthy Catholics are even greedy for vodka; Only Turks don't drink. What, Stetsko, drank a lot of honey in the cellar?

- I just tried, sir!

“You lie, son of a dog!” see how the flies attacked the mustache! I can see in my eyes that I took half a bucket. Hey, Cossacks! what a dashing people! everything is ready for a comrade, and the intoxicated will dry itself. I, Mrs. Katerina, have been drunk for some time. BUT?

- It's been a long time! and in the past...

“Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid, I won’t drink more mugs!” And here is the Turkish abbot intermeddle in the door! he said through his teeth, seeing his father-in-law bending down to enter the door.

“But what is it, my daughter!” - said the father, taking off his hat from his head and adjusting his belt, on which hung a saber with wonderful stones, - the sun is already high, and your dinner is not ready.

- Dinner is ready, sir, let's put it on now! Take out the pot of dumplings! - Pani Katerina said to the old servant, who was wiping the wooden dishes. “Wait, I’d better take it out myself,” Katerina continued, “and you call the lads.

They all sat down on the floor in a circle: against the pokut was sir father, on the left hand was sir Danilo, on the right hand was pani Katerina and ten most faithful fellows in blue and yellow zhupans.

- I don't like these dumplings! - said pan father, having eaten a little and put down the spoon, - there is no taste!

“I know that Jewish noodles are better for you,” Danilo thought to himself.

“Why, father-in-law,” he continued aloud, “do you say that there is no taste in dumplings?” Well made, right? My Katerina makes dumplings in such a way that even the hetman rarely gets to eat them. And there is nothing to disdain them. This is Christian food! All the holy people and saints of God ate dumplings.

Not a word father; Pan Danilo was also silent.

Roasted boar was served with cabbage and plums.

- I don't like pork! - said Katherine's father, scooping cabbage with a spoon.

Why not love pork? Danilo said. - Some Turks and Jews do not eat pork.

The father frowned even more sternly.

Only one lemyshka with milk was eaten by the old father, and instead of vodka he drank some black water from the flask that was in his bosom.

Having had lunch, Danilo fell asleep with a good sleep and woke up only around evening. He sat down and began to write sheets for the Cossack army; and Pani Katerina began to rock the cradle with her foot, sitting on the couch. Pan Danilo is sitting, looking with his left eye at the writing, and with his right eye at the window. And from the window the mountains and the Dnieper shine far away. Beyond the Dnieper the forests turn blue. The clearing night sky flashes from above. But Pan Danilo admires not the distant sky and not the blue forest: he looks at the protruding cape, on which the old castle blackened. It seemed to him that a narrow window in the castle flashed with fire. But everything is quiet. It certainly seemed to him. One can only hear how dull the Dnieper rustles below and from three sides, one after another, the blows of instantly awakened waves are heard. He doesn't rebel. He, like an old man, grumbles and grumbles; everything is not nice to him; everything changed around him; he is quietly at enmity with the coastal mountains, forests, meadows and brings a complaint against them to the Black Sea.

Here, along the wide Dnieper, a boat blackened, and something seemed to flash in the castle again. Danilo whistled slowly, and a faithful lad ran out to the whistle.

- Take, Stetsko, with you rather a sharp saber and a rifle and follow me!

- You are walking? asked Pani Katerina.

I'm coming, wife. We need to look at all the places, is everything in order.

“However, I am afraid to be alone. Sleep drives me that way. What if I dream the same thing? I'm not even sure if it really was a dream - it happened so vividly.

- The old woman remains with you; and the Cossacks are sleeping in the passage and in the yard!

- The old woman is already sleeping, but the Cossacks can’t believe it. Listen, Pan Danilo, lock me in the room and take the key with you. Then I won't be so scared; and let the Cossacks lie down in front of the door.

- So be it! Danilo said, dusting his rifle and pouring gunpowder onto the shelf.

The faithful Stetsko was already standing dressed in all his Cossack harness. Danilo put on his fur cap, closed the window, bolted the door, locked it, and slowly walked out of the yard, between his sleeping Cossacks, into the mountains.

The sky was almost completely clear. A fresh wind blew a little from the Dnieper. If the moaning of a seagull had not been heard from a distance, then everything would have seemed numb. But then a rustle seemed to be ... Burulbash with a faithful servant quietly hid behind a thorn bush that covered the felled fence. Someone in a red zhupan, with two pistols, with a saber at his side, was descending from the mountain.

- It's a father-in-law! said Pan Danilo, looking at him from behind a bush. - Why and where should he go at this time? Stetsko! do not yawn, look into both eyes, where pan father will take the road. - A man in a red zhupan went down to the very shore and turned to an outstanding cape. - BUT! that's where! said Pan Danilo. - What, Stetsko, he just dragged himself to the sorcerer in the hollow.

- Yes, that's right, not in another place, Pan Danilo! otherwise we would have seen it on the other side. But he disappeared near the castle.

“Wait, we’ll get out, and then we’ll follow the tracks.” There is something hidden here. No, Katerina, I told you that your father is not a kind person; not so he did everything, as an Orthodox.

Pan Danilo and his faithful lad have already flashed on the prominent shore. Now they are no longer visible. The deep forest that surrounded the castle hid them. The upper window lit up softly. Cossacks are standing below and thinking how to get in. There are no gates or doors to be seen. From the yard, right, there is a way; but how to enter there? From a distance you can hear chains rattling and dogs running.

- What do I think for a long time! - said Pan Danilo, seeing a tall oak in front of the window. "Stay right there, little one!" I will climb the oak; From it you can directly look out the window.

Then he took off his belt, threw his saber down so that it would not ring, and, grabbing the branches, rose up. The window was still lit. Sitting down on a bough, near the window, he grabbed a tree with his hand and looked: there was not even a candle in the room, but it was shining. There are strange signs on the walls. There are weapons hanging, but everything is strange: neither the Turks, nor the Crimeans, nor the Poles, nor the Christians, nor the glorious people of Sweden carry such things. Under the ceiling, bats flash back and forth, and the shadow from them flashes along the walls, along the doors, along the platform. Here the door opened without a creak. Someone in a red coat enters and goes straight to the table covered with a white tablecloth. "It's him, it's the father-in-law!" Pan Danilo sank a little lower and pressed himself closer to the tree.

But he has no time to look whether someone is looking out the window or not. He came overcast, out of sorts, pulled the tablecloth off the table - and suddenly a transparent blue light quietly spread throughout the room. Only the unmixed waves of the former pale gold shimmered, dived, as if in a blue sea, and stretched in layers, as if on marble. Then he put a pot on the table and began to throw some herbs into it.

Pan Danilo began to peer and did not notice the red zhupan on him; instead, wide trousers, such as the Turks wear, appeared on him; pistols behind the belt; on his head is some kind of wonderful hat, written all over with letters neither Russian nor Polish. He looked into the face - and the face began to change: the nose stretched out and hung over the lips; mouth in a minute resounded to the ears; a tooth peeped out of his mouth, bent to one side, and the same sorcerer who had appeared at the Yesaul's wedding stood in front of him. “Your dream is true, Katerina!” thought Burulbash.

The sorcerer began to walk around the table, the signs began to change faster on the wall, and the bats flew faster up and down, back and forth. The blue light became less and less frequent and seemed to be completely extinguished. And the room was already lit up with a thin pink light. It seemed that with a quiet ringing, a wonderful light was pouring into all corners, and suddenly it disappeared, and darkness became. There was only a noise, as if the wind was playing in the quiet hour of the evening, circling over the water mirror, bending the silver willows even lower into the water. And it seems to Pan Danila that the moon is shining in the room, the stars are walking, the dark blue sky is vaguely flashing, and the cold of the night air smelled even in his face. And it seems to Pan Danila (here he began to feel his mustache to see if he was sleeping) that it was no longer the sky in the room, but his own bedchamber: his Tatar and Turkish sabers hang on the wall; near the walls there are shelves, on the shelves there are household dishes and utensils; bread and salt on the table; a cradle hangs ... but instead of images, terrible faces look out; on the couch ... but the thickening fog covered everything, and it became dark again. And again, with a wonderful ringing, the whole room was lit up with a pink light, and again the sorcerer stands motionless in his wonderful turban. The sounds became stronger and thicker, the thin pink light became brighter, and something white, like a cloud, blew in the middle of the hut; and it seems to Pan Danila that the cloud is not a cloud, that a woman is standing there; only what is it made of: is it woven out of thin air? Why is she standing and not touching the ground, and not leaning on anything, and a pink light shines through her, and signs flash on the wall? Here she somehow moved her transparent head: her pale blue eyes shone softly; her hair curls and falls over her shoulders like a light gray mist; the lips are pale red, as if through the white-transparent morning sky the barely perceptible scarlet light of dawn is pouring; eyebrows darken slightly ... Ah! it's Katerina! Here Danilo felt that his members were chained; he struggled to speak, but his lips moved without a sound.

The sorcerer stood motionless in his place.

- Where have you been? he asked, and the one in front of him trembled.

- ABOUT! why did you call me? she moaned softly. – I was so happy. I was in the same place where I was born and lived for fifteen years. Oh how good it is! How green and fragrant is that meadow where I played as a child: the same wildflowers, and our hut, and the garden! Oh, how my good mother embraced me! What love she has in her eyes! She blushed me, kissed me on the lips and cheeks, combed my blond braid with a frequent comb ... Father! - then she fixed her pale eyes on the sorcerer, - why did you kill my mother?

The sorcerer shook his finger menacingly.

Did I ask you to talk about it? And the airy beauty trembled. - Where is your lady now?

- My lady, Katerina, now fell asleep, and I was delighted with that, fluttered and flew away. I have long wanted to see my mother. I suddenly became fifteen years old. I became as light as a bird. Why did you call me?

Do you remember everything I told you yesterday? the sorcerer asked, so quietly that he could hardly hear.

- I do remember; but what wouldn't I give just to forget it! Poor Katherine! she does not know much of what her soul knows.

"This is Catherine's soul," thought Pan Danilo; but still did not dare to move.

- Repent, father! Isn't it scary that after each murder of yours, the dead rise from their graves?

– You again for the old! the sorcerer interrupted sternly. “I will bet on my own, I will make you do what I want. Katerina will love me!..

“Oh, you are a monster, not my father! she moaned. - No, it won't be your way! True, you took with your impure charms the power to call out the soul and torment it; but God alone can force her to do what he pleases. No, Katerina will never, as long as I stay in her body, decide on a ungodly deed. Father, the Last Judgment is near! If you were not my father, and then you would not have forced me to cheat on my any, faithful husband. If my husband had not been faithful and sweet to me, then I would not have betrayed him, because God does not love perjured and unfaithful souls.

Here she fixed her pale eyes on the window, under which Pan Danilo was sitting, and stopped motionless ...

– Where are you looking? Who do you see there? the sorcerer shouted.

Air Katherine trembled. But Pan Danilo had already been on earth for a long time and was making his way with his faithful Stetsk to his mountains. "Scary, scary!" he said to himself, feeling some kind of timidity in the Cossack heart, and soon he passed his yard, where the Cossacks were just as soundly asleep, except for one who was sitting on the guard and smoking a cradle. The sky was full of stars.

V

How well you did to wake me up! said Katerina, wiping her eyes with the embroidered sleeve of her shirt and looking from head to toe as her husband stood before her. What a terrible dream I had! How hard my chest was breathing! Wow! .. It seemed to me that I was dying ...

What kind of dream, isn't it this one? And Burulbash began to tell his wife everything he had seen.

How did you know, my husband? asked Katerina, amazed. “But no, I don’t know much of what you tell me. No, I did not dream that my father killed my mother; no dead, nothing I saw. No, Danilo, you don't talk like that. Oh, how terrible my father is!

“It’s no wonder you haven’t seen much. You do not know even a tenth of what the soul knows. Do you know that your father is the Antichrist? Even last year, when I was going together with the Poles to attack the Crimeans (then I still held the hand of this unfaithful people), I was told by the abbot of the Brethren Monastery - he, the wife, is a holy man - that the Antichrist has the power to call out the soul of every person; and the soul walks of its own accord when he falls asleep, and flies together with the archangels around the divine room. I didn't see your father's face the first time. If I had known that you had such a father, I would not have married you; I would have thrown you and would not have accepted sin on my soul, having become related to the antichrist tribe.

- Danilo! - said Katerina, covering her face with her hands and sobbing, - am I guilty of what before you? Have I cheated on you, my any husband? What caused your anger? Didn't she serve you right? did you say a nasty word when you tossed and turned drunk from a valiant revel? Didn't she give birth to a black-browed son?

“Don’t cry, Katerina, I know you now and I won’t leave you for anything. All sins lie on your father.

No, don't call him my father! He is not my father. God knows, I renounce him, renounce my father! He is the antichrist, the apostate! If he disappears, he sinks - I will not give a hand to save him. If he dries from the secret grass, I will not give him water to drink. You are my father!

VI

In a deep basement near Pan Danil, behind three locks, sits a sorcerer, chained in iron chains; and far off, over the Dnieper, his demonic castle burns, and the waves, scarlet as blood, slurp and crowd around the ancient walls. Not for witchcraft and not for ungodly deeds, the sorcerer sits in a deep basement: God judges them; he sits for secret betrayal, for conspiracies with the enemies of the Orthodox Russian land - to sell the Ukrainian people to Catholics and burn down Christian churches. Gloomy sorcerer; thought black as night in his head. Only one day remains to live for him, and tomorrow it's time to say goodbye to the world. Tomorrow he will be executed. Not quite an easy execution awaits him; it is still mercy when they boil him alive in a cauldron or tear off his sinful skin. The sorcerer is gloomy, bowed his head. Maybe he already repents before his death, but not such sins that God would forgive him. At the top in front of him is a narrow window, intertwined with iron sticks. Raking his chains, he went to the window to see if his daughter would pass. She is meek, not remorseful, like a dove, if she will not have mercy on her father ... But there is no one. The road runs below; no one will walk on it. Below it walks the Dnieper; he does not care about anyone: he is raging, and it is sad for the prisoner to hear his monotonous noise.

Here someone appeared on the road - this is a Cossack! And the prisoner sighed heavily. Everything is empty again. Here someone is descending in the distance... A green kuntush is fluttering... a golden boat is burning on her head... It's her! He leaned closer to the window. It's getting close now...

– Katherine! daughter! have mercy, give mercy! ..

She is mute, she does not want to listen, she will not even look at the prison, and she has already passed, and has already disappeared. Empty all over the world. The Dnieper hums sadly. Sadness is in the heart. But does the sorcerer know this sadness?

The day is fading into evening. The sun has already set. Already there is none. Already evening: fresh; somewhere an ox mooed; sounds are wafting from somewhere - it’s true that somewhere people are coming home from work and having fun; a boat flickers along the Dnieper ... who needs a well! A silver sickle flashed in the sky. Here is someone coming from the opposite side of the road. Difficult to see in the dark. It's Katherine coming back.

“Daughter, for Christ’s sake! and ferocious wolf cubs will not tear their mother, daughter, although look at your criminal father! She doesn't listen and goes. - Daughter, for the sake of the unfortunate mother! .. - She stopped. “Come and take my last word!”

“Why are you calling me, apostate? Don't call me daughter! There is no relationship between us. What do you want from me for my poor mother?

– Katherine! The end is near for me: I know your husband wants to tie me to a mare's tail and let me through the field, and maybe even the most terrible execution will come up ...

- Is there a punishment in the world equal to your sins? Wait for her; no one will ask for you.

– Katherine! I am not afraid of execution, but torment in the next world ... You are innocent, Katerina, your soul will fly in paradise near God; but the soul of your apostate father will burn in eternal fire, and that fire will never go out: it will flare up stronger and stronger: no one will drop a drop of dew, nor will the wind smell ...

“I have no power to belittle this execution,” said Katerina, turning away.

– Katherine! hang on one word: you can save my soul. You don't know yet how good and merciful God is. Have you heard about the Apostle Paul, what a sinful person he was, but then he repented and became a saint.

What can I do to save your soul? - said Katerina, - should I, a weak woman, think about it!

- If I could get out of here, I would throw everything. I will repent: I will go to the caves, I will put on a stiff sackcloth on my body, I will pray to God day and night. Not only fast food, I won’t take fish in my mouth! I won't put down my clothes when I go to sleep! and I will all pray, all pray! And when the mercy of God does not remove even a hundredth of my sins from me, I will dig up to my neck in the ground or wall myself up in a stone wall; I will take neither food nor drink, and I will die; and I will give all my goodness to the blacks, so that for forty days and forty nights they will serve a memorial service for me.

Catherine thought.

- Although I will unlock it, I will not unchain your chains.

“I am not afraid of chains,” he said. “Are you saying they chained my hands and feet?” No, I put fog in their eyes and held out a dry tree instead of a hand. Here I am, look, there is not a single chain on me now! he said, stepping into the middle. - I would not be afraid of these walls and would pass through them, but your husband does not even know what kind of walls they are. They were built by the holy schemnik, and no evil spirit can bring the convict out of here without unlocking it with the very key with which the saint locked his cell. Such a cell I will dig for myself, an unheard-of sinner, when I go free.

- Listen, I'll let you out; but what if you deceive me,” said Katerina, stopping before the door, “and instead of repenting, you become the brother of the devil again?

“No, Katerina, I don’t have long to live. My end is near and without execution. Do you really think that I will betray myself to eternal torment?

Castles thundered.

- Goodbye! God bless you, my child! said the sorcerer, kissing her.

“Don’t touch me, you unheard-of sinner, leave quickly!” Katerina said. But he was gone.

“I let him out,” she said, frightened and looking wildly at the walls. What am I going to say to my husband now? I'm gone. Now I'm alive to bury myself in the grave! - and, sobbing, she almost fell on the stump on which the convict was sitting. “But I saved a soul,” she said quietly. “I have done a godly deed. But my husband... I deceived him the first time. Oh, how terrible, how difficult it will be for me to tell a lie in front of him. Someone is coming! It is he! husband! she screamed desperately and fell unconscious to the ground.

VII

- It's me, my own daughter! It's me, my heart! - Katerina heard, waking up, and saw an old servant in front of her. Baba, bending down, seemed to be whispering something and, stretching her withered hand over her, sprinkled her with cold water.

- Where I am? Katerina said, getting up and looking around. - The Dnieper roars before me, mountains behind me ... where did you take me, woman?

- I didn’t turn you on, but brought you out; carried me out of the stuffy basement in my arms. I locked it with a key so that you would not get anything from Pan Danil.

- Where is the key? said Katerina, looking at her belt. - I do not see him.

“Your husband untied him, to look at the sorcerer, my child.

- Look? .. Baba, I'm gone! Katherine screamed.

“May God have mercy on us from this, my child! Just be quiet, my panyanochka, no one will know anything!

“He ran away, the damned Antichrist!” Did you hear Katherine? he ran away! - said Pan Danilo, approaching his wife. Eyes threw fire; the saber, ringing, shook at his side.

Wife died.

“Did someone let him out, my favorite husband?” she said, trembling.

- Released, your truth; but let go of the devil. Look, instead of him, the log is clad in iron. God made it so that the devil is not afraid of the coats' paws! If only one of my Cossacks had kept the thought of this in his head, and I would have found out ... I would not have even found an execution for him!

“What if I…?” Katerina involuntarily uttered and, frightened, stopped.

“If you had taken it into your head, then you would not have been my wife.” Then I would have sewn you into a sack and drowned you in the very middle of the Dnieper! ..

The spirit took hold of Katerina, and it seemed to her that the hair began to separate on her head.

VIII

On the frontier road, in a tavern, the Poles have gathered and have been feasting for two days now. Something a lot of all the bastards. They agreed, it’s true, on some sort of collision: others have muskets; spurs clink, sabers rattle. The gentlemen are having fun and boasting, talking about their unprecedented deeds, mocking Orthodoxy, calling the Ukrainian people their lackeys and importantly twisting their mustaches, and importantly, with their heads up, are falling apart on the benches. With them and priests together. Only their priests are on their own level, and in appearance does not even look like a Christian priest: he drinks and walks with them and speaks shameful speeches with his ungodly language. The servants are in no way inferior to them: they threw back the sleeves of their tattered zhupans and trump cards, as if they were something worthwhile. They play cards, hit each other on the noses with cards. They took other people's wives with them. A scream, a fight!.. The pans rage and let go of things: they grab a Jew by the beard, paint a cross on his unholy forehead; they shoot at the women with blank charges and dance the Krakowiak with their wicked priest. There was no such temptation on Russian soil and from the Tatars. It can be seen that God had already determined for her sins to endure such shame! It is heard between the common sodom that they are talking about the Zadneprovsky farm of Pan Danil, about his beautiful wife ... This gang has gathered not for a good deed!

IX

Pan Danilo sits at a table in his room, leaning on his elbow, and thinks. Pani Katerina sits on the couch and sings a song.

- Something sad to me, my wife! said Pan Danilo. “My head hurts, and my heart hurts. Kinda hard for me! It can be seen that somewhere not far away my death is already walking.

“Oh my darling husband! bury your head in me! Why do you cherish such black thoughts to yourself, ”thought Katerina, but did not dare to say. It was bitter for her, guilty head, to accept men's caresses.

“Listen, my wife! - said Danilo, - do not leave your son when I am gone. You will not be happy from God if you throw him, neither in this nor in this light. It will be hard for my bones to rot in the damp earth; and it will be even harder for my soul.

What are you talking about, my husband? Didn't you mock us, weak wives? And now you're talking like a weak wife. You still have a long time to live.

- No, Katerina, the soul senses imminent death. There is something sad about the world. Bad times are coming. Oh, I remember, I remember the years; they surely won't come back! He was still alive, the honor and glory of our army, old Konashevich! As if Cossack regiments are now passing before my eyes! It was a golden time, Katherine! The old hetman sat on a black horse. A mace glittered in his hand; around Serdyuka; the red sea of ​​the Cossacks stirred on both sides. The hetman began to speak - and everything became rooted to the spot. The old man began to cry, as he began to remember our previous deeds and battles. Ah, if only you knew, Katerina, how we fought with the Turks then! A scar is still visible on my head. Four bullets flew through me in four places. And none of the wounds healed at all. How much gold did we collect then! Cossacks scooped expensive stones with their hats. What horses, Katerina, if you knew what horses we stole then! Oh, don't fight like that! It seems that he is not old, and his body is vigorous; and the Cossack sword falls out of my hands, I live without work, and I myself don’t know why I live. There is no order in Ukraine: colonels and captains squabble like dogs among themselves. There is no senior head over all. Our nobility changed everything to the Polish custom, adopted craftiness ... sold their souls, accepting the union. Judaism oppresses the poor people. O time, time! past time! where have you gone, my summers? I will drink to the former share and for the old years!

- How will we receive guests, sir? Poles are coming from the meadow side! - said, having entered the hut, Stetsko.

“I know why they are coming,” Danilo said, rising from his seat. - Saddle, my faithful servants, horses! put on a harness! swords drawn! do not forget to collect lead oatmeal. With honor it is necessary to meet guests!

But the Cossacks had not yet had time to mount their horses and load their muskets, and already the Poles, like a leaf that fell from a tree to the ground in autumn, dotted the mountain with themselves.

- Oh, yes, there is someone to talk to here! Danilo said, glancing at the fat lords, who were swinging importantly in front on horses in golden harness. “It looks like we’ll have a chance to take a walk for glory again!” Cheer up, Cossack soul, for the last time! Walk, lads, our holiday has come!

And the fun went through the mountains, and the feast was drunk: swords walk, bullets fly, horses neigh and trample. The scream makes my head go crazy; eyes blind from the smoke. Everything was mixed up. But the Cossack senses where a friend is, where an enemy is; if the bullet makes noise - the dashing rider falls from the horse; a saber whistles - a head rolls along the ground, muttering incoherent speeches with its tongue.

But the red top of Pan Danil's Cossack hat is visible in the crowd; a golden belt on a blue zhupan darts into the eyes; the black horse's mane curls like a whirlwind. Like a bird, he flickers here and there; shouts and waves a Damascus saber and cuts from the right and left shoulder. Ruby, goat! run, goat! tesh valiant heart; but do not look at the golden harness and zhupany! trample gold and stones under your feet! When, goat! run, goat! but look back: the impious Poles are already setting fire to the huts and driving away the frightened cattle. And, like a whirlwind, Pan Danilo turned back, and a hat with a red top flickered already near the huts, and the crowd thinned around him.

Not an hour, not another, Poles and Cossacks fight. There are not many of both. But Pan Danilo does not get tired: he knocks down the footmen from the saddle with his long spear, tramples on foot with a dashing horse. The yard is already being cleared, the Poles have already begun to scatter; the Cossacks are already ripping off the golden coats and rich harness from the dead; Pan Danilo was already gathering in pursuit, and he glanced to call his friends ... and he boiled all over with rage: Katherine's father seemed to him. Here he stands on a mountain and aims a musket at him. Danilo drove his horse straight towards him... Cossack, you're going to your death... The musket rattles - and the sorcerer disappeared behind the mountain. Only the faithful Stetsko saw a flash of red clothes and a wonderful hat. The Cossack staggered and fell to the ground.

Faithful Stetsko rushed to his master, his master lies, stretched out on the ground and closing his clear eyes. Crimson blood boiled on his chest. But, apparently, he sensed his faithful servant. Quietly raised his eyelids, his eyes flashed: “Farewell, Stetsko! tell Katerina not to leave her son! Do not leave him, my faithful servants! - and quieted down. The Cossack soul flew out of the noble body; lips turned blue. The Cossack sleeps soundly.

The faithful servant sobbed and waved his hand to Katerina: “Go, sir, go: your master has been playing up. He lies drunk on the damp earth. It won’t be long before he sobers up!”

Katerina threw up her hands and fell like a sheaf on the dead body. “My husband, are you lying here with your eyes closed? Arise, my beloved falcon, stretch out your hand! get up! look at your Katerina for once, move your lips, utter at least one word ... But you are silent, you are silent, my clear sir! You turned blue like the Black Sea. Your heart is not beating! Why are you so cold, my sir? it is evident that my tears do not burn, they cannot warm you! It can be seen that my cry is not loud, do not wake you up! Who will lead your regiments now? Who will rush on your black horse, roar loudly and wave his saber at the Cossacks? Cossacks, Cossacks! where is your honor and glory? Your honor and glory lie, closing your eyes, on the damp earth. Bury me, bury me with him! fill my eyes with earth! press the maple boards on my white breasts! I don't need my beauty anymore!"

Weeping and killing Katerina; and the whole distance is covered with dust: the old captain Gorobets jumps to the rescue.

X

The Dnieper is wonderful in calm weather, when it freely and smoothly rushes through forests and mountains full of its waters. It won't rustle; not thunder. You look, and you don’t know whether its majestic width is moving or not, and it seems as if it is all poured out of glass, and as if a blue mirror road, without measure in width, without end in length, flies and winds through the green world. It would be nice then for the hot sun to look around from above and plunge its rays into the cold glassy waters and the coastal forests to shine brightly in the waters. Green-haired! they crowd together with wildflowers to the waters and, bending down, look into them and do not look enough, and do not stop admiring their bright image, and smile at him, and greet him, nodding their branches. In the middle of the Dnieper, they do not dare to look: no one, except for the sun and the blue sky, looks into it. A rare bird will fly to the middle of the Dnieper. Lush! it has no equal river in the world. The Dnieper is also wonderful on a warm summer night, when everything falls asleep - both man, and beast, and bird; and God alone majestically surveys the sky and the earth and majestically shakes the robe. Stars are falling from the robe. The stars burn and shine over the world and all at once resound in the Dnieper. All of them are held by the Dnieper in its dark bosom. None will escape him; unless it goes out in the sky. The black forest, humiliated by sleeping crows, and the anciently broken mountains, hanging down, are trying to close it even with their long shadow - in vain! There is nothing in the world that could cover the Dnieper. Blue, blue, he walks in a smooth flood and the middle of the night, like the middle of the day; visible as far as the human eye can see. Basking and snuggling closer to the shores from the night cold, it gives a silver stream of itself; and it flashes like the band of a Damascus saber; and he, blue, fell asleep again. Wonderful and then the Dnieper, and there is no river equal to it in the world! When the blue clouds move like mountains across the sky, the black forest staggers to its roots, the oaks crackle and lightning, breaking between the clouds, illuminates the whole world at once - then the Dnieper is terrible! The water hills rumble, hitting the mountains, and with a gleam and a groan they run back, and weep, and flood into the distance. So the old mother of the Cossack is killed, escorting her son to the army. Loose and cheerful, he rides a black horse, akimbo and valiantly wringing his hat; and she, sobbing, runs after him, grabs him by the stirrup, catches the bit, and breaks her hands over him, and bursts into burning tears.

Burnt stumps and stones on the protruding shore turn wildly black between the waves. And it beats against the shore, rising up and falling down, a mooring boat. Which of the Cossacks dared to walk in a canoe at a time when the old Dnieper got angry? Apparently, he does not know that he swallows people like flies.

The boat moored, and the sorcerer got out of it. He is unhappy; he is bitter with the trizna that the Cossacks performed over their slain master. The Poles paid no little: forty-four pans with all the harness and zhupans, and thirty-three serfs were chopped into pieces; and the rest, along with the horses, were taken prisoner and sold to the Tatars.

He descended the stone steps, between the burnt stumps, down to where, deep in the ground, he had dug a dugout. Quietly he entered, without creaking the door, put a pot on the table, covered with a tablecloth, and began throwing some unknown herbs with his long arms; he took a kuhol made of some wonderful wood, scooped up water with it and began to pour it, moving his lips and doing some kind of incantations. A pink light appeared in the room; and it was terrible then to look into his face: it seemed bloody, deep wrinkles only blackened on it, and his eyes were like on fire. Wicked sinner! already his beard has long since turned gray, and his face is pitted with wrinkles, and he has dried up all over, but he still creates an ungodly intent. A white cloud began to waft in the middle of the hut, and something resembling joy flashed in his face. But why did he suddenly become motionless, with his mouth open, not daring to move, and why did his hair rise like bristles on his head? A strange face shone in the cloud before him. Uninvited, uninvited, it came to visit him; further on, more became clear and fixed eyes fixed. His features, eyebrows, eyes, lips - everything is unfamiliar to him. He had never seen him in his entire life. And it seems that there is little in him that is terrible, and an insurmountable horror attacked him. And the unfamiliar marvelous head through the cloud just as motionlessly looked at him. The cloud is already gone; and unknown features showed themselves even more sharply, and sharp eyes did not tear themselves away from him. The sorcerer turned as white as a sheet. He cried out in a wild, not his own voice, overturned the pot ... Everything was gone.

XI

- Calm yourself, my any sister! - said the old captain Gorobets. “Dreams rarely tell the truth.

- Lie down, sister! said his young daughter-in-law. - I will call the old woman, the fortuneteller; no force can stand against it. She will pour out a commotion for you.

- Do not be afraid of anything! - said his son, grabbing his saber, - no one will offend you.

Cloudy, cloudy eyes Katerina looked at everyone and could not find a word. “I made my own death. I released it." Finally she said:

- I have no peace from him! For ten days now I have been with you in Kiev; and the grief has not diminished a bit. I thought I would even raise my son in silence for revenge ... Terrible, terrible, he dreamed of me in a dream! God forbid and you see it! My heart is still beating. “I will kill your child, Katerina,” he shouted, “if you don’t marry me! ..” – and, sobbing, she rushed to the cradle, and the frightened child held out her hands and screamed.

The esaul's son boiled and sparkled with anger, hearing such speeches.

Yesaul Gorobets himself dispersed:

“Let him, the accursed Antichrist, try to come here; will taste whether there is strength in the hands of an old Cossack. God sees, - he said, raising his penetrating eyes upwards, - did I fly to give my hand to brother Danilo? His holy will! I found him already on a cold bed, on which many, many Cossack people lay down. But was not the feast for him magnificent? Have they released at least one Pole alive? Calm down, my child! no one will dare to offend you, unless there will be neither me nor my son.

Having finished his words, the old captain came to the cradle, and the child, seeing a red cradle hanging on his belt in a silver frame and a haman with a brilliant flint, stretched out her arms to him and laughed.

“He will follow his father,” said the old captain, taking off the cradle and giving it to him, “he hasn’t left the cradle yet, but he is already thinking of smoking the cradle.”

Katerina sighed softly and began to rock the cradle. They agreed to spend the night together, and after a little while they all fell asleep. Katerina fell asleep too.

Everything was quiet in the yard and in the hut; only the Cossacks who stood guard did not sleep. Suddenly Katerina woke up with a cry, and everyone woke up behind her. "He is killed, he is stabbed!" she screamed and rushed to the cradle.

Everyone surrounded the cradle and were petrified with fear, seeing that an inanimate child lay in it. Not a single one of them uttered a sound, not knowing what to think of the unheard-of villainy.

XII

Far from the Ukrainian region, passing through Poland, bypassing the populous city of Lemberg, high mountains go in rows. Mountain after mountain, as if with stone chains, they throw the earth to the right and left and encircle it with stone thickness so that the noisy and violent sea does not suck. Stone chains go to Wallachia and to the Sedmigrad region and a mass of steel in the form of a horseshoe between the Galich and Hungarian people. There are no such mountains in our side. The eye does not dare to look at them; and the human foot did not go to the top of others. Their appearance is also wonderful: didn’t the fervent sea run out of the wide shores into the storm, threw up ugly waves in a whirlwind, and they, petrified, remained motionless in the air? Have not heavy clouds broken from the sky and cluttered up the earth? for they also have the same gray color, and the white top glitters and sparkles in the sun. Even before the Carpathian Mountains you will hear Russian rumor, and beyond the mountains, in some places, it will echo as if a native word; but there already the faith is not the same, and the speech is not the same. There lives a not-so-popular Hungarian people; rides horses, cuts and drinks no worse than a Cossack; and for horse harness and expensive caftans, he does not skimp on taking gold pieces out of his pocket. Spacious and large there are lakes between the mountains. Like glass, they are motionless and, like a mirror, they give away the bare tops of the mountains and their green soles.

But who, in the middle of the night, whether the stars twinkle or not, rides a huge black horse? What hero with inhuman height gallops under mountains, over lakes, shines with a gigantic horse in motionless waters, and his endless shadow flickers terribly over the mountains? Shine chased armor; on the shoulder of the peak; saber rattles at the saddle; pulled down with a helmet; mustaches turn black; eyes closed; eyelashes lowered - he sleeps. And, sleepy, holds the reins; and behind him sits a baby page on the same horse and also sleeps and, sleepy, clings to the hero. Who is he, where, why is he going? - Who knows. Not a day, not two already, he moves over the mountains. The day will shine, the sun will rise, it is not visible; occasionally only the highlanders noticed that someone's long shadow flickered over the mountains, and the sky was clear, and the clouds would not pass over it. A little bit the night will bring darkness, again he is visible and echoes in the lakes, and behind him, trembling, his shadow gallops. He had already passed many mountains and rode up to Krivan. This mountain is not higher between the Carpathians; like a king she rises above the others. Here the horse and the rider stopped, and fell even deeper into sleep, and the clouds, descending, closed it.

XIII

“Sh… be quiet, baba! Don't knock like that, my child has fallen asleep. My son cried for a long time, now he is sleeping. I'm going to the forest, woman! Why are you looking at me like that? You are scary: iron tongs are pulled out of your eyes ... oh, how long! and they burn like fire! You are indeed a witch! Oh, if you are a witch, then get out of here! you will steal my son. What a stupid captain this is: he thinks it's fun for me to live in Kiev; no, my husband and son are here, who will look after the hut? I left so quietly that neither the cat nor the dog heard. You want, woman, to become young - it is not difficult at all: you only need to dance; look how I’m dancing…” And, having uttered such incoherent speeches, Katerina was already rushing about, looking madly in all directions and resting her hands on her hips. She stamped her feet with a screech; without measure, without tact, silver horseshoes rang. Unbraided black braids darted down her white neck. Like a bird, she flew without stopping, waving her arms and nodding her head, and it seemed as if, exhausted, she would either crash to the ground or fly out of the world.

The old nurse stood sadly, and her deep wrinkles filled with tears; a heavy stone lay on the hearts of the faithful lads who looked at their mistress. She was already completely weakened and lazily stamped her feet in one place, thinking that she was dancing a dove. “And I have a monisto, lads! - she said, finally stopping, - but you don’t have it! .. Where is my husband? she suddenly exclaimed, drawing a Turkish dagger from her belt. - ABOUT! this is not the right knife. At the same time, tears and longing appeared on her face. - My father's heart is far away; he won't get to it. He has a heart made of iron. He was forged by a witch on a hell fire. Why is my father not coming? doesn't he know it's time to stab him? Apparently, he wants me to come myself ... - And, without finishing, she laughed wonderfully. - A funny story came to my mind: I remembered how my husband was buried. After all, he was buried alive ... what laughter took me away! .. Listen, listen! And instead of words, she began to sing a song:

Live the wagon is crooked;
A Cossack lies with them,
Postilyany, chopping.
Hold the dart in the right hand,
From that drota krivtsya to run;
Live the river is crooked.
Stand above the river sycamore,
Above the sycamore the raven is crouching.
Mother weep for the Cossack.
Don't cry, mother, don't scold!
For already your son is married,
She took the panyanochka's wife,
In a pure field, a dugout,
I without a door, without a window.
That already pisni viyshov end.
The fish danced with cancer ...
And who doesn’t love me, his mother is shaking!

So all the songs mixed up with her. For a day or two she has been living in her hut and does not want to hear about Kiev, and does not pray, and runs away from people, and wanders through the dark oak forests from morning until late at night. Sharp boughs scratch the white face and shoulders; the wind ruffles the braided braids; old leaves rustle under her feet - she does not look at anything. At the hour when the evening dawn is fading, the stars have not yet appeared, the moon is not burning, and it’s already scary to walk in the forest: unbaptized children scratch and grab on branches, sob, laugh, roll in a club along the roads and in wide nettles; virgins who have destroyed their souls run out of the Dnieper waves in strings; hair flows from her green head to her shoulders, water, murmuring sonorously, runs from her long hair to the ground, and the maiden shines through the water, as if through a glass shirt; lips smile wonderfully, cheeks glow, eyes lure the soul ... she would burn with love, she would kiss ... Run, baptized person! her mouth is ice, her bed is cold water; she will tickle you and drag you into the river. Katerina does not look at anyone, is not afraid, mad, of mermaids, runs around late with her knife and is looking for her father.

Early in the morning some guest arrived, stately in appearance, in a red coat, and inquired about Pan Danil; hears everything, wipes his tear-stained eyes with his sleeve and shrugs his shoulders. He de fought together with the late Burulbash; they fought together with the Crimeans and Turks; whether he was expecting such an end for Pan Danilo. The guest also tells about many other things and wants to see Pani Katerina.

Katerina at first did not listen to anything that the guest said; in the end, she began, as a reasonable person, to listen to his speeches. He talked about how they lived with Danil, like brother with brother; how they once hid under the rowing from the Crimeans ... Katerina listened to everything and did not take her eyes off him.

"She's leaving! the boys thought as they looked at her. This guest will cure her! She already listens, how reasonable!”

Meanwhile, the guest began to tell how Pan Danilo, in the hour of a frank conversation, said to him: “Look, brother Koprian: when, by the will of God, I will not be in the world, take a wife to you, and let her be your wife ...”

Katherine glared at him terribly. "BUT! she screamed, "it's him!" it's the father!" - and rushed at him with a knife.

He fought for a long time, trying to wrest the knife from her. Finally he pulled it out, swung it - and a terrible thing happened: the father killed his crazy daughter.

The astonished Cossacks rushed at him; but the sorcerer had already managed to jump on his horse and disappeared from sight.

XIV

An unheard-of miracle appeared behind Kiev. All the pans and hetmans were going to marvel at this miracle: suddenly it became visible far to all corners of the world. In the distance the Liman turned blue, beyond the Liman the Black Sea was overflowing. Experienced people recognized both the Crimea, rising like a mountain from the sea, and the marsh Sivash. On the left hand, the land of Galich was visible.

– What is it? - interrogated the assembled people of old people, pointing to the gray and white tops that seemed far away in the sky and more like clouds.

“These are the Carpathian Mountains!” - said the old people, - among them there are those from whom the snow does not melt for a century, and the clouds stick and spend the night there.

Then a new marvel appeared: the clouds flew down from the highest mountain, and on top of it appeared a man on a horse, with his eyes closed, in full knightly harness, and so visible, as if he were standing close by.

Here, among the people who were amazed with fear, one jumped on a horse and, looking around marvelously, as if looking with his eyes to see if anyone was chasing him, hastily, with all his might, drove his horse. It was a sorcerer. What was he so afraid of? Looking with fear at the wonderful knight, he recognized on him the same face, which, uninvited, seemed to him when he was telling fortunes. He himself could not understand why everything was confused in him at such a sight, and, timidly looking around, he raced on his horse until evening overtook him and the stars peeped through. Then he turned back home, perhaps to interrogate the evil spirit, what such a miracle means. Already he wanted to jump with his horse across the narrow river, which acted as an arm of the Segedi road, when suddenly the horse stopped at full gallop, turned its muzzle towards him and - a miracle, laughed! white teeth gleamed terribly in two rows in the darkness. The hairs on the sorcerer's head stood on end. He screamed wildly and wept like a frenzy, and drove his horse straight to Kiev. It seemed to him that everything from all sides was running to catch him: the trees, surrounded by a dark forest and as if alive, nodding their black beards and stretching out their long branches, tried to strangle him; the stars seemed to run ahead of him, pointing out to everyone the sinner; the road itself, it seemed, raced in his footsteps. The desperate sorcerer flew to Kiev to the holy places.

XV

The schemer sat alone in his cave in front of the lamp and did not take his eyes off the holy book. It has been many years since he shut himself up in his cave. I already made myself a wooden coffin, in which I went to sleep instead of a bed. The holy elder closed his book and began to pray... Suddenly a man of a wonderful, terrible appearance ran in. The holy schemnik was amazed for the first time and retreated when he saw such a person. He was trembling all over like an aspen leaf; eyes squinted wildly; a terrible fire fearfully poured from the eyes; his ugly face trembled.

- Father, pray! pray! he shouted desperately, “pray for the lost soul!” - and crashed to the ground.

The holy schemnik crossed himself, took out a book, opened it, and in horror stepped back and dropped the book.

“No, unheard-of sinner! no mercy for you! run from here! I can't pray for you.

- Not? - shouted like a mad sinner.

“Look: the holy letters in the book are filled with blood. There has never been such a sinner in the world!

"Father, you're laughing at me!"

"Go, you damned sinner!" I don't laugh at you. Fear takes over me. It is not good for a person to be with you together!

- No no! you're laughing, don't speak... I see how your mouth parted: your old teeth are whitening in rows!..

And like a madman he rushed - and killed the holy schemer.

Something groaned heavily, and the groan was carried across the field and forest. Skinny, dry hands with long claws rose from behind the forest; shook and disappeared.

He no longer felt fear, he felt nothing. Everything seems to him somehow vaguely. Noisy in the ears, noisy in the head, as if from hops; and everything that is before the eyes is covered, as it were, with a cobweb. Jumping on his horse, he went straight to Kanev, thinking from there through Cherkasy to direct the path to the Tatars directly to the Crimea, without knowing why. He's been driving for a day or two, but still no Kanev. The road is the same; it would be time for him to show himself long ago, but Kanev is nowhere to be seen. Church tops gleamed in the distance. But this is not Kanev, but Shumsk. The sorcerer was amazed, seeing that he drove in a completely different direction. He drove his horse back to Kiev, and a day later the city appeared; but not Kiev, but Galich, a city even further from Kiev than Shumsk, and already not far from the Hungarians. Not knowing what to do, he turned his horse back again, but again he felt that he was going in the opposite direction and moving forward. Not a single person in the world could tell what was in the soul of the sorcerer; and if he looked in and saw what was going on there, he would not sleep enough at night and would not laugh even once. It wasn't anger, it wasn't fear, it wasn't bitter annoyance. There is no word in the world to describe it. He was burning, burning, he would like to trample the whole world with his horse, take all the land from Kiev to Galich with people, with everything and flood it in the Black Sea. But it was not out of malice that he wanted to do it; No, he didn't know why. He shuddered all over when the Carpathian Mountains and the high Krivan, which covered his crown, as if with a hat, with a gray cloud, already appeared close to him; and the horse was still rushing and was already scouring the mountains. The clouds cleared at once, and a rider appeared in front of him in terrible majesty ... He tries to stop, pulls on the bit tightly; the horse neighed wildly, raising its mane, and raced towards the knight. Here it seems to the sorcerer that everything in him froze, that the motionless horseman stirs and at once opens his eyes; saw the sorcerer rushing towards him and laughed. Like thunder, wild laughter scattered over the mountains and sounded in the heart of the sorcerer, shaking everything that was inside him. It seemed to him that as if someone strong had climbed into him and walked inside him and beat with hammers on his heart, on his veins ... this laughter resounded in him so terribly!

The rider grabbed the sorcerer's terrible hand and lifted him into the air. The sorcerer died instantly and opened his eyes after death. But there was already a dead man and he looked like a dead man. Neither the living nor the resurrected look so terrifying. He tossed and turned with dead eyes and saw the risen dead from Kiev, and from the land of Galich, and from the Carpathians, like two drops of water similar in face to him.

Pale, pale, taller than one another, boned one another, they stood around the rider who held the terrible prey in his hand. Once again the knight laughed and threw her into the abyss. And all the dead jumped into the abyss, picked up the dead man and plunged their teeth into him. Another one, taller than all, more terrible than all, wanted to rise from the earth; but he could not, was unable to do this, so great he grew in the earth; and if he had risen, he would have overturned the Carpathians, and the Sedmigrad and Turkish lands; He only moved a little, and from that came shaking all over the earth. And a lot of huts were overturned everywhere. And crushed a lot of people.

A whistle is often heard across the Carpathians, as if a thousand mills are making noise with wheels on the water. Then in the hopeless abyss, which no one who is afraid to pass by has ever seen, the dead gnaw at the dead. It often happened all over the world that the earth shook from one end to the other: this is why, literate people explain, that there is a mountain somewhere near the sea, from which flames are snatched out and burning rivers flow. But the old people who live both in Hungary and in the Galich land know this better and say: something great, a great dead man who has grown up in the earth, wants to rise and is shaking the earth.

XVI

In the city of Glukhovo, people gathered near the old bandura player and for an hour now they had been listening to the blind man playing the bandura. No bandura player has ever sung such wonderful songs so well. First, he spoke about the former hetmanate, for Sagaidachny and Khmelnitsky. Then it was a different time: the Cossacks were in glory; horses trampled the enemies, and no one dared to laugh at him. The old man also sang merry songs and looked at the people with his eyes, as if seeing; and the fingers, with bones made to them, flew like a fly over the strings, and it seemed that the strings themselves played; and around the people, the old people, hanging their heads, and the young, raising their eyes to the old man, did not dare to whisper among themselves.

“Wait a minute,” said the elder, “I’ll sing to you about one old thing.

The people moved even closer, and the blind man sang:

“For Pan Stepan, Prince of Sedmigrad, the Prince of Sedmigrad was king and among the Poles, two Cossacks lived: Ivan and Petro. They lived like brother and brother. “Look, Ivan, whatever you get, all in half: when someone has fun, fun to another; when someone woes - woe to both; when someone has prey, the prey is divided in half; when someone gets into a full - the other sell everything and give a ransom, otherwise go yourself into a full. And it is true that whatever the Cossacks got, they divided everything in half; whether someone else's cattle or horses were stolen, everything was divided in half.

King Stepan fought with Turchin. For three weeks now he has been at war with Turchin, but he still cannot drive him out. And the Turchin had such a pasha that he himself, with ten janissaries, could chop up an entire regiment. So King Stepan announced that if a daredevil was found and brought to him that pasha, alive or dead, he would give him alone as much salary as he gives for the whole army. "Let's go, brother, to catch pasha!" - said brother Ivan to Peter. And the Cossacks set off, one in one direction, the other in the other.

Whether he had caught Petro or not, Ivan was already leading the pasha with a lasso by the neck to the king himself. "Good fellow!" - said King Stepan and ordered that he alone be given such a salary as the whole army receives; and ordered that land be taken away to him wherever he thought of himself, and to give cattle, as much as he wished. As Ivan received a salary from the king, on the same day he divided everything equally between himself and Peter. Petro took half of the royal salary, but could not bear the fact that Ivan received such an honor from the king, and harbored deep revenge in his soul.

Both knights rode to the land granted by the king, beyond the Carpathians. The Cossack Ivan put his son on his horse with him, tying him to himself. It's already dusk, they're all on their way. The baby fell asleep, and Ivan himself began to doze. Do not slumber, Cossack, the roads are dangerous in the mountains!.. But the Cossack has such a horse that he knows the way everywhere, he will not stumble or stumble. There is a gap between the mountains, no one has seen the bottom in the gap; how much from the earth to the sky, so much to the bottom of that failure. There is a road just above the dip - two people can still pass, but three will never. The horse with the slumbering Cossack began to tread carefully. Petro rode beside him, trembling all over and holding his breath with joy. He looked back and pushed the named brother into the abyss. And the horse with the Cossack and the baby flew into the hole.

However, the Cossack seized on the bough, and only the horse flew to the bottom. He began to climb, with his son behind him, up; he didn’t get a bit, he looked up and saw that Petro was aiming a lance to push him back. “My righteous God, it would be better for me not to raise my eyes than to see how my brother instructs the lance to push me back ... My dear brother! prick me with a lance, when it is already written for me in my family, but take your son! what is the fault of an innocent baby, so that he would perish with such a cruel death? Petro laughed and pushed him with his lance, and the Cossack with the baby flew to the bottom. Petro took all the goods for himself and began to live like a pasha. No one had such herds as Peter had. There were not so many sheep and rams anywhere. And Peter died.

As Peter died, God called the souls of both brothers, Peter and Ivan, to judgment. “This man is a great sinner! God said. - Ivana! I will not choose his execution soon; Choose your own execution for him!” Ivan thought for a long time, imagining the execution, and finally said: “This man inflicted a great insult on me: he betrayed his brother, like Judas, and deprived me of my honest family and offspring on earth. And a man without an honest family and offspring is like a grain seed thrown into the ground and wasted in vain in the ground. There is no sprout - no one will know that a seed was thrown.

Make, God, so that all his offspring do not have happiness on earth! so that the last of his kind would be such a villain as has never happened in the world! and from each of his atrocities, so that his grandfathers and great-grandfathers would not find peace in coffins and, enduring torment unknown in the world, would rise from their graves! And Judas Petro, so that he would not be able to rise, and therefore would endure even bitter torment; and would have eaten the earth like a madman, and would have writhed under the earth!

And when the hour of measure comes in evil deeds to that person, raise me, God, from that pit on a horse to the highest mountain, and let him come to me, and I will throw him from that mountain into the deepest pit, and all the dead, his grandfathers and great-grandfathers, wherever they lived during their lifetime, so that everyone would reach out from different sides of the earth to gnaw at him for the torments that he inflicted on them, and forever gnawed at him, and I would have fun looking at his torments! And Judas Petro, so that he could not rise from the ground, so that he was eager to gnaw on himself, but would gnaw on himself, and his bones would grow more and more, so that through this his pain became even stronger. That torment for him will be the most terrible: for there is no greater torment for a person than to want to take revenge and not be able to take revenge.

“A terrible execution, invented by you, man! God said. “Let everything be as you said, but you also sit there forever on your horse, and there will be no kingdom of heaven for you while you sit there on your horse!” And then everything came true as it was said: to this day, a marvelous knight stands on a horse in the Carpathians, and sees how the dead gnaw at the dead man in the bottomless abyss, and feels how the dead man lying under the ground grows, gnaws his bones in terrible agony and shakes terribly all over the earth…”

The blind man has already finished his song; already began to pluck the strings again; he had already begun to sing funny tales about Khoma and Yerema, about Stklyar Stokoz... but old and young still did not think of waking up and stood for a long time with their heads bowed, thinking about the terrible thing that had happened in the old days.

A bloody cart rides, on that cart a Cossack lies, shot through, chopped up. In his right hand he holds a spear, blood runs from that spear; bloody river runs. A sycamore stands over the river, a raven croaks over the sycamore. The mother is crying about the Cossack. Don't cry mother, don't be sad! Your son got married, took his wife a lady, a dugout in an open field, without doors, without windows. And that's the end of the whole song. A fish danced with cancer ... And whoever does not love me, let his mother shake his fever!

"The Dnieper is wonderful in calm weather ...". All of us at school were forced to memorize this passage from Gogol. However, not everyone remembers what work it is from. Let's not torment the reader and say that this is an excerpt from the story "Terrible Revenge". "The Dnieper is wonderful in calm weather ..." - with these words, the 10th chapter of this work begins. That is what we will talk about today.

The story that interests us in 1831 was created by Gogol. "Terrible revenge", the summary of which interests us, is included in the collection, which the author called "Evenings on a farm near Dikanka". The work begins as follows.

Danila's wedding

In Kiev, once Yesaul Gorobets celebrated the wedding of his son. Many people gathered for it, including Danilo Burulbash, the brother of the owner, with Katerina, his young wife, and little son. Only Katerina's father, an old man who recently returned home after a 20-year absence, did not come to the wedding. When the owner brought out 2 icons to bless the young, everyone danced. A sorcerer suddenly appeared in the crowd and disappeared, frightened by the images.

Homecoming

Along the Dnieper at night, Danilo returns to the farm with his family and relatives. Katerina is frightened, but her husband is not afraid of the sorcerer. He is afraid of the Poles, who may cut off their path to the Cossacks. All his thoughts are on this as they pass the old sorcerer's castle and then sail past the graveyard. Meanwhile, crosses are shaking in the cemetery. Terrible dead appear from the graves. They stretch their bony hands towards the moon.

Quarrel between Danila and father-in-law

Here, at last, the newlyweds with their relatives return home, but the hut cannot accommodate a large family. Danilo and his absurd, gloomy father-in-law quarrel in the morning, it came to muskets and sabers. Danilo was wounded from Gogol's story, only the plea of ​​Katerina, who mentioned her little son, kept him from continuing the fight, and the Cossacks reconciled.

Who is the real father of Katerina?

Katerina soon told her husband her dream. She dreamed that her father was that terrible sorcerer. Danila does not like the foreign habits of his father-in-law, he suspects a non-Christ in him. However, we note, describing the plot of the story, that her husband is most worried about the Poles at this time, about which Gorobets again warns.

In the evening, Danilo goes on reconnaissance to the sorcerer's castle. He climbs an oak tree, looks out the window and sees a room lit by some unknown source. Terrible things are described further by Gogol ("Terrible Revenge"). Their summary is as follows. The father-in-law appears and begins to conjure. Here his appearance changes, he turns into a sorcerer dressed in Turkish attire. The father-in-law summons Katerina's soul. He demands that the girl love him, threatens in case of disobedience. However, Katerina's soul refuses this. Danilo is shocked by what he saw. He returns to his home, wakes up his wife and tells her everything. The girl renounces the sorcerer-father.

Fatal mistake

In Danila's basement, his father-in-law is sitting in iron chains. The sorcerer's castle is on fire, and tomorrow he will be executed. However, not for witchcraft, but for collusion with the Poles. The sorcerer inclines with promises to improve and deceive Katerina to release him in order to be able to save her soul. The girl lets him go, and hides the truth from her husband, realizing that she did something irreparable. Danilo anticipates imminent death. He asks Katerina to take care of her son.

The grief that befell Katherine

As expected, a large army of Poles attacks the farm. Poles steal cattle, set fire to huts. Danilo fights bravely, but he is overtaken by a bullet from a sorcerer who appears suddenly. Gorobets, who jumped to the rescue, is unable to console Katerina. The Poles are defeated, a sorcerer sails along the Dnieper to the ruins of the castle. He creates spells in the dugout, someone terrible appears at his call. Katerina lives at Gorobets, sees her former terrible dreams and is afraid for her son. The girl wakes up and discovers that her child has died. The mind of the heroine created by Gogol ("Terrible Revenge") cannot withstand all this. The summary of the work continues with the fact that the girl becomes insane.

Death of Katerina

Katerina, distraught, is looking for her father everywhere, longing for his death. A stranger arrives, who questions Danila and then mourns him. He wants to see Katerina, talks to her for a long time about her husband. It seems that the mind returns to the girl. However, when he says that Danilo asked him to take her to him after his death, Katerina recognizes her father in a stranger and throws herself at him with a knife. But the sorcerer is ahead of her. He kills his own daughter.

The further fate of the sorcerer

Behind Kiev is an unexpected miracle. The whole earth is illuminated, all its ends are visible. A huge horseman appears in the Carpathian mountains. The sorcerer from Gogol's story runs in fear. He recognizes in the rider an uninvited giant who appeared during divination. Nightmares haunt the sorcerer. He flees to the holy places of Kiev and kills an old man there who refused to pray for him. Wherever the sorcerer goes, his path lies to the Carpathian mountains. The rider suddenly opens his eyes. He is laughing. The sorcerer dies instantly. He sees already dead that all the dead from Galich, the Carpathians and Kiev stretched out their bony hands to him. The horseman threw them a sorcerer, and they sunk their teeth into him.

old song

Gogol Nikolai Vasilievich ends the story with an old song. It tells about King Stepan, who fought with the Turks, as well as about the Cossack brothers Ivan and Peter. Ivan caught the Turkish pasha and shared the king's reward with his brother. However, out of envy, Peter threw his brother into the abyss along with the baby son, and then took all the goods for himself. When Peter died, God allowed Ivan to choose the execution for his brother. Ivan cursed his offspring, saying that a terrible villain would be in the last generation of his brother. Ivan, on the other hand, will appear on a horse from the failure when the time for the death of the villain comes. He will throw him into the abyss, and all his ancestors will be drawn to gnaw this villain. Only Peter will not be able to rise and will gnaw at himself in impotent rage. God was surprised at the cruelty of this execution, but agreed with Ivan.

Thus ends the work that Gogol created ("Terrible Revenge"). We outlined a summary of its main events. We now turn to the analysis of this story.

The meaning of the work

Perhaps the most significant for Gogol and Russian literature in general from the stories of the "Evenings" cycle is "Terrible Revenge". This is a historical story. Its action is timed to the 1st half of the 17th century, when Ukraine fought against Turkey and the Commonwealth for national independence. In particular, Danilo Burulbash, the hero of the work, recalls how he participated in military campaigns led by Hetman Konashevich. At the same time, this story also bore a legendary-fantastic character. It touched upon the magical themes of the separation of the soul from the body, the execution of the villain in the offspring, the apocalyptic horseman, etc.

Two epic levels of work, two traditions

Andrei Bely, a symbolist poet, at the beginning of the 20th century put forward the thesis that Katerina's father and the sorcerer are not identical. This became the starting point for subsequent observations on the poetics of this story. In "Terrible Revenge", it would seem that 2 epic levels can be found: legendary and real, in which there is a conflict between Katerina's father and husband. At the second level, that is, in the legend, there is the supernatural. At the same time, Gogol Nikolai Vasilievich skillfully masks the border between them, so one world sometimes seems like a natural continuation of the other. The sorcerer for the reader is Katerina's father. At the same time, he is a legendary projection of his father. Being in a quarrel with his son-in-law, he acquires more and more the features of a terrible sorcerer, since everything that does not correspond to the principles established in the patriarchal community is considered as the machinations of the devil. This story arose, like other works of Gogol from "Evenings", at the intersection of two traditions: national-Ukrainian and Western-romantic (mainly German). The author in it mixed the features of folk tradition with elements of modern narration. In line with romanticism is found in the work of the author's personal attitude to what is happening.

The discovery made by the symbolists

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Symbolists discovered autobiography, which Gogol's works from "Evenings" and, in particular, "Terrible Revenge" have. V. V. Rozanov for the first time saw the projection of the author himself in the figure of the sorcerer. Andrei Bely (his portrait is presented above) compared Nikolai Vasilyevich with a sorcerer who runs away from the "rider in the Carpathians." He likened the author's love for Russia to the love for Katerina of the sorcerer from the story "Terrible Revenge". With such a look, her main characters have a symbolic meaning, they are images-symbols.