Chapter 12 "Prairie" Five

Fives The train of wagons stopped by a river outside a village.The sun is as hot as yesterday, and there is no wind at all, which makes people feel stuffy.There are a few willows on the bank of the river, but the shadows of the trees do not fall on the land, but on the water, becoming useless. Even lying in the shadows under the truck, it is still sweltering and suffocating. Panic.The water is blue against the sky and warmly lures people to it. Yegorushka had only now noticed a coachman named Styopka, an eighteen-year-old Ukrainian boy in a long shirt without a belt, and a pair of fat trousers with loose legs, His trouser legs fluttered like flags as he walked.

Quickly he undressed, ran down the high, steep bank, and jumped into the water with a splash.He got in the water three times and then swam on his back and closed his eyes for joy.His face was smiling and wrinkled as if he was itching and hurting and amused. The splashing of water and the loud breathing of swimmers became beautiful music to the ears of people who could not find shelter from the scorching heat and suffocating heat.Dymov and Kiruha's teacher Choepka quickly stripped off their clothes, laughed loudly, and jumped into the water one after another, taking a foretaste of the comfort.The sound of snorting, splashing water, and shouting resounded in the quiet, unremarkable river.Kiruha coughed, laughed, and shouted as if they were going to drown him, and Dymov chased him, trying to hold him by the hind legs.

"Ha-ha-ha!" he cried. "Get him! Get him!" Kiruha laughed loudly, very happy, but the expression on his face was the same astonishment and bewilderment as before on land, as if someone sneaked up behind him and hit him on the head with the back of an axe.Yegorushka also took off his clothes, but instead of going down the high slope of the river bank, he ran forward a few steps like a gust of wind, and flew down to a height of a foot and a half above the water.His body drew an arc in the air and fell into the water, sinking very deep, but never bottomed out.An unknown force, cooling and comforting him, lifted him up and carried him back to the surface.He surfaced, snorted, blew bubbles, and opened his eyes.But the sun happened to reflect on the water close to his face.First a blinding point of light, then a rainbow and a black speck, entered his eyes.He quickly sank into the water again, opened his eyes in the water, and saw a

A confused green, just like the sky on a moonlit night.The original force didn't let him sink to the bottom of the water, and didn't let him stay in the cool, but lifted him to the surface of the water.He got out of the water and took a deep breath. Not only did he feel refreshed in his chest, but he also felt it in his stomach.Then, in order to enjoy the water to the fullest, he allowed himself to do as many tricks as he liked: lying on his back on the water, enjoying himself, slapping the water, doing somersaults, and then swimming upstream with his back on his side, swimming on his back, swimming standing up. , In short, do as you please until you are tired from swimming.The reeds grew thickly on the opposite bank, and the banks were gilded by the sun, and the reed flowers hung low over the water like beautiful tassels.In one place the reeds were trembling, the reeds were nodding, and there was the sound of water splashing. It turned out that Styopka and Kiruha were "catching" shrimp.

"Shrimp! Look, boys, shrimp!" exclaimed Kiruha triumphantly, and sure enough, a shrimp came out. Yegorushka swam up to the reeds, sank into the water, and began to feel around the roots of the reeds.He searched around in the thin and sticky mud, and found a pointy object that was uncomfortable to touch. Maybe it really was a shrimp.But at that moment someone grabbed him by the hind legs and pulled him to the surface of the water.Yegorushka choked on the water, coughed, opened his eyes, and saw before him the dripping, smiling face of the troublemaker Dymov.The rascal was panting, and by the look in his eyes he was about to continue the joke.He tightened Yegorushka's leg with one hand, and was already raising the other hand to pinch his neck; Yegorushka was disgusted and frightened, as if he did not want him to touch him, and was afraid that the strong man would Drowning him, he broke free from his hand and said, "Fool! I'll give you a mouth!"

He felt that this was not enough to express his hatred, so he thought about it and said, "Bastard! You son of a bitch!" But Dymov didn't care, stopped answering Yegorushka, and swam to Kiruha, shouting: "Ha-ha-ha! Let's catch fish! Boy, let's catch fish." !" "Okay," Kiruha agreed. "There must be plenty of fish here..." "Styopka, run to the village and borrow a net from the peasant!" "They refused to give it!" "They will! Beg them! Tell them, for God's sake, beg them to lend it to us, for we are like pilgrims."

"It's real!" Styopka crawled out of the water, quickly put on his clothes, hat on, flapped his fat trousers, and ran to the village.Ever since Yegorushka's conflict with Dymov, water has lost all its charm.He got out of the water and began to dress.Panteley and Vasya were sitting on the high and steep bank, their legs hanging down, watching the swimmers.Ye Meiliyang stood naked in the water on the bank, the water was up to his knees.He was pulling the grass with one hand, fearing that he would fall, and rubbed his body with the other hand.His thin shoulder blades, combined with the lumps under his eyes and the way he was bent over, clearly afraid of the water, made him look ridiculous.His face is serious and stern.He looked at the water angrily, as if he was going to scold the water, because the water of the Donets had chilled him before and made his throat fall.

"Why don't you swim?" Yegorushka asked Vasya. "Oh, nothing. . . . I don't like swimming, . . . " answered Vasya. "Why is your jaw swollen?" "I'm sick. . . . I used to work in a match factory, sir. . . . The doctor says that's why my jaw is swollen. The air there is harmful to the body. Besides me, there are three companions." Their jaws were also swollen, and one of them had a completely rotted jaw." Styopka soon returned with the net.Dymov and Kiruha had been in the water for a long time, and their bodies were beginning to turn lavender, and their voices were hoarse, but they still enthusiastically caught fish.They first went to a place with deep water next to the reeds to catch them.There the river was up to Dymov's neck and up to little Kiruha's head.Kiruha choked on the water and blew out the blisters.Dymov tripped over a thorny reed, fell and got tangled in the net.The two struggled wildly in the water, making a lot of noise.The result of their fishing was just a mess.

"The water is very deep," said Kiruha hoarsely. "Can't catch anything!" "Stop pulling, you wretch!" cried Dymov, trying to cast the net in the right place. "Hold on tight!" "You can catch nothing here," Pantelew called to them from the bank. "You're scaring the fish away, you idiots! Go quietly to the left! The water is shallower over there!" Once a big fish flashed over the net; they all yelled, and Dymov punched the fish where it slipped with his fist, and his face took on a mournful look. "Alas!" cried Panteley, stamping his feet. "You let a bass go!

it ran! " Dymov and Kiruha moved quietly to the left, gradually groping their way to a shallower place, where they started fishing in earnest.They were about three hundred paces away from the wagon; they could be seen silently, with light steps, as far as they could go to the depths of the water and near the reeds, casting out their nets, which they drove into the nets to frighten the fish. Going in, he pumped water with his fists, making the reeds rustle. They walked from the reeds to the other side, pulled the net across, then raised their knees high with an air of disappointment, and walked back into the reeds.They were talking, but what they were talking about, no one could hear.The sun scorched their backs, the flies bit them, and their bodies turned from lavender to crimson.Styopka, bucket in hand, followed them, rolled his shirt up to his armpits, and held the bottom of his shirt between his teeth.Whenever he caught a fish he would hold it up and let it shine in the sun and say, "Look, what a perch! There are five of them already!"

Whenever Dymov, Kiruha, and Styopkala came out of the net, they could be seen groping for a long time in the mud of the net, putting some things into buckets and throwing others away.Sometimes they found something in the net, passed it to each other, looked at it curiously, and then dropped it again. ... "What is it?" the people on the shore shouted to them. Styopka answered something, but it was hard to catch.Then he crawled out of the water, bucket in his hands, forgetting to put down his shirt, and ran toward the van. "The bucket is full!" he gasped. "Give me another barrel!" Yegorushka looked into the bucket, and it was full.A small pike sticks its ugly nose out of the water, surrounded by shrimp and small fish.Yegorushka reached down to the bottom of the bucket and stirred the water, and the pike hid under the shrimp, and a perch and a carp came to the surface instead.Vasya also looked into the barrel.His eyes became oily as before when he saw the fox, and his face softened.He picked up something in the bucket, put it in his mouth, and chewed.He could be heard chewing and creaking. "Guys," said Styopka in amazement, "Vasya is eating live gizzards! Pooh! " "It's not goblin, it's minnow," Vasya replied quietly, still chewing. He pulled a fish tail out of his mouth, looked at it tenderly, and put it back in his mouth.As he chewed, his teeth creaked, and it seemed to Yegorushka that what he saw was not a human being.Vasya's swollen jaw, his dull eyes, his very piercing look, the fish's tail in his mouth, the tenderness with which he chewed the fish, made him look like an animal. Yegorushka was bored by his side.And the fishing was over.He walked up and down beside the truck, thought for a while, and walked slowly towards the village out of boredom. Before long, he was standing in the church, with his forehead pressed against someone's back that smelled of marijuana, listening to the choir.Mass is almost over.Yegorushka could not understand what was being sung in the church, so he was in no mood to listen.He listened for a while, yawned, and began to look at the backs of heads and backs.There was a man whose head was red and wet from a recent bath, and he recognized Yemeliyan.The hair around the back of his head was cut higher than ordinary people, and the hair at the sideburns was also cut higher than ordinary people. His two red ears stood up like two pieces of burdock, as if the ears themselves felt that they were born in the wrong place.Yegorushka, looking at the back of his head and his ears, felt for some reason that he must be very unfortunate.Yegorushka remembered the way he directed with both hands, his hoarse voice, and his timid way in the bath, and felt very sorry for him, and longed to say something kind to him. "I'm here too!" he said, tugging at his sleeve. Anyone who sings soprano or bass in a choir, especially if he has conducted only once in his life, is in the habit of looking upon children with sternness and disgust.Even after leaving the choir, they would not break the habit.Yemelyan turned to Yegorushka, frowned at him, and said: "Don't be naughty in church!" So Yegorushka pushed forward and came a little closer to the shrine.Here he saw some interesting people.On the right, in front of the crowd, there are a lady and a gentleman standing on the carpet.There is a chair behind each of them.The master, in his freshly ironed cocoon trousers, stood motionless, like a soldier saluting, his shaven blue chin raised high.In his turned-up collar, in his bluish chin, in his small bald head, in his thin walking stick, there was something of great dignity.Because of his excessive dignity, his neck was stretched hard, and his chin was raised so hard, it seemed that his head was about to fall off and fly upward at any time.The lady, fat and old, with a white silk shawl, and with her head on one side, looked as though she had just bestowed someone with some kind of favor, and was about to say: "Oh, don't bother to thank me! I don't like that. . . . " Around the carpet stood many Ukrainians like a thick wall. Yegorushka went to the shrine and began to kiss the statue.He knelt down and kowtowed in front of each statue in a hurry. Before he stood up, he looked back at those who were doing mass, and then stood up and kissed the statue.His forehead touched the cold floor, making him feel good.When the warden came down from the altar and snuffed out the wick with a pair of tweezers, Yegorushka quickly jumped up from the floor and ran to him. "Has the wafer been distributed yet?" he asked. "No, no more..." murmured the watchman sullenly, "there's no need to wait here. . . . " Mass was over.Yegorushka walked out of the church without haste, and went for a walk in the square.He had seen so many villages, squares, and peasants in his life that what he saw now did not interest him at all.He had nothing to do, and wanting to do something to kill the time, he went into a shop.A wide red cloth curtain hung at the door of the shop.It was a large, but poorly lit shop divided into two sides, with clothing and groceries on one side, and barrels of tar on the other, with horse yokes hanging from the ceiling, and a pleasant smell of leather and tar on both sides.Water had been sprinkled on the floor of the shop, probably by a great fantasist and free thinker, for the whole floor was literally covered with designs and spells.The well-fed shopkeeper, with a broad face and a round beard, probably a great Russian, stood behind the counter, with his belly pressed against a sloping desk.He was chewing sugar and drinking tea, drawing long breaths with each sip.There was complete indifference on his face, but the meaning could be heard in every long cry: "Wait, I'm going to beat you up!" "Give me a kopeck of sunflower seeds!" Yegorushka said to him. The innkeeper raised his eyebrows, came out from behind the counter, and poured into Yegorushka's pocket a kopeck's worth of sunflower seeds, which he measured out of an empty pomade bottle.Yegorushka did not want to go.He looked at the boxes of honey cakes carefully for a long time, thought for a while, pointed to those small honey cakes that were sticky together with brown mold spots due to age, and asked: "How much is this kind of honey cakes?" ?” "Two for a kopek." Yegorushka took out of his pocket the honey cake that the Jewish woman had given him the day before, and asked, "How much do you sell a cake like this?" The boss took the piece of cake with his hands, looked at it over and over, and raised an eyebrow. "Like this?" he asked. Then he raised another eyebrow, pondered for a moment, and replied: "Three kopecks for two. . . . " There was silence. "Whose family are you from?" the boss asked, taking a red copper teapot to pour tea for himself. "Ivan Ivanitch's nephew." "There are plenty of people named Ivan Ivanitch," said the proprietor, sighing.He glanced over Yegorushka's head towards the door, paused, and asked: "Would you like some tea?" "Excuse me..." agreed Yegorushka somewhat reluctantly, but he really wanted the morning tea that he was sure to have every morning. The boss poured him a cup of tea and brought him a piece of candy that had already been eaten. Yegorushka sat down on a folding chair and drank.He also wanted to ask how much a pound of sugared almonds cost, but just as he was about to ask, a customer came in, and the boss put his cup of tea aside and went about his business.He led the customer to the half where the tar smelled, and talked to him for a long time.The customer was probably a very stubborn and assertive person. He kept shaking his head to express his disapproval, and retreated step by step towards the door. The boss finally got him over with, and started pouring oats into a big sack for him. "You call that oatmeal?" the customer lamented. "It's not oats, it's bran, and a chicken would laugh at it. . . . No, I'm going to Bondarenko's!" When Yegorushka returned to the river, a small campfire was smoking on the bank.Here are the coachmen cooking.Styopka stood in the smoke, stirring the pot with a large chipped spoon.Not far away, Kiruha and Vasya, their eyes reddened by the smoke, were sitting there picking up fish.In front of them was a fishing net covered with mud and weeds, on which lay shiny fish and crawling shrimp. Emelyan, who had just returned from church, was sitting next to Panteley, waving his arms, and singing in a hoarse voice, just barely audible: "We are singing to you..." Dymov said in those Walk around the horse. Kiruha and Vasya packed up the fish, put the fish and live prawns into the bucket, washed them, and poured everything from the bucket into the boiling water. "Put oil in?" asked Styopka, skimming the foam off the water with a large spoon. "Why bother? The fish will produce its own oil," Kiruha answered. Before Styopka took the pot from the fire, he put three handfuls of millet and a spoonful of salt into the water.At the end, he tasted the taste, tapped his lips a few times, licked the spoon, and his throat rattled with satisfaction, which meant that the porridge was cooked. Everyone except Panteley sat down around the pot and ate with spoons. "Hey, you guys! Give that kid a spoon!" Panteley said sternly. "Probably he wants to eat too!" "We're country people's food!..." said Kiruha with a sigh. "When people are hungry, even country people's meals are delicious." They gave Yegorushka a spoon.He ate, but instead of sitting down, he stood by the pot, looking down into the pot as if looking into the abyss.There was a fishy smell in the pot, and fish scales were often found in the millet.Shrimp cannot be scooped up with a spoon, so the eater simply fishes it out of the pot with his hands.Vasya was especially unscrupulous in this respect, and not only wet his hands but also his sleeves in the porridge.However, Yegorushka still thought the porridge was delicious, and it reminded him of the shrimp soup his mother cooked for him every fasting day when he was at home.Panteley sat aside, chewing bread. "Grandpa, why don't you eat?" Ye Meiliyan asked him. "I don't eat shrimp....Damn it!" said the old man, turning away in disgust. They ate and chatted casually.From the conversation Yegorushka heard that his new friends, despite their differences in age and character, had one thing in common that made them like each other: they were all good in the past, and now they are not.They all spoke of their past with glee, but they treated the present with almost contempt.Yegorushka did not understand that the Russians liked to remember, but not to live.Before the meal was finished, he was deeply convinced that these people sitting around the pot were people who had been teased and humiliated by fate.Panteley said: Before there was a railway, he used to drive a truck convoy between Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod, earning so much money that he didn't know how to spend it.And what kind of merchants were the merchants in those days, what kind of fish were the fish in those days, and how cheap everything was!Now, the roads are shorter, the merchants are stingy, the common people are poor, food is more expensive, and everything is shrunk to an extremely small size.Yemeliyan told them that he used to work in the choir of the Lugansk factory, had a good voice, and was good at reading music scores.Now, he has become a farmer and lives off his elder brother.His brother allocated him some horses and sent him to work, for which he took half of his income.Vasya used to work in a match factory. Kiruha had once been a coachman in a good family, and was considered in the whole district to be an excellent coachman with three horses.Dymov is the son of a well-to-do farmer, who lives comfortably, has fun, and is carefree; but when he was just twenty years old, his strict and domineering father wanted to train him to do business, and he was afraid that he would live in a house. The family would spoil him and send him into the transport trade, like a farmer or laborer without a land.Styopka alone said nothing, but it was clear from his beardless face that his life must have been much better in the past. As soon as he mentioned his father, Dymov frowned and stopped eating.He looked gloomily at his companions, and rested his eyes on Yegorushka. "You cultist, take your hat off!" he said roughly. "Can you eat while wearing a hat? You're still a classy person!" Yegorushka took off his hat and said nothing, but he could no longer taste porridge, nor heard how Panteley and Vasya complained about him.Resentment against the troublemaker roiled depressingly in his chest.He made up his mind to make this man suffer no matter what. After dinner they all went to the van and lay down in the shadows. "Are we leaving soon, old man?" Yegorushka asked Panteley. "When God tells us to go, we will go. . . . Not yet, it's too hot. . . . Oh, Lord, it's your will, Holy Mother. . . . Lie down, boy!" Before long, there were snoring sounds from under every van.Yegorushka longed to go to the village again, but after thinking about it, he yawned and lay down next to the old man. "Notes" ①Here refers to the Russian pound, 1 Russian pound is equal to 409.5 grams.