HREINN FRIÐFINNSSON

“Boys, have you heard”, Ilyusha began saying, “what happened to us in Varnavitsy just recently?”

“On that dam, you mean?” Fedya asked.

“ Ay, on that dam, the one that´s broken. That´s a real unclean place, real nasty and empty it is. Round there is all them gullies and ravines, and in the ravines there´s masses of snakes.”

“Well, what happened? Let´s hear.”

“This is what happened. Maybe you don´t know it, Fedya, but that´s the place where one of our drowned men is buried. And he drowned a long time back when the pond was still deep. Now only his gravestone can be seen, only there´s not much of it – it´s just a small mound... Anyhow, a day or so ago, the bailiff calls Yermil the dog-keeper and says to him:

“Off with you and fetch the mail.” Yermil´s always the one who goes to fetch the mail ´cos he´s done all his dogs in – they just don´t somehow seem to live when he´s around, and never did have much of a life no-how, though he´s a good man with dogs and took to it in every way. Anyhow, Yermil went for the mail, and then he mucked about in the town and set off home real drunk. And it´s night-time, a bright night, with the moon shining...

So he´s riding back across the dam, ´cos that´s where his route came out. And he´s riding along, this dog-keeper Yermil, and he sees a little lamb on the drowned man´s grave, all white and curly and pretty, and it´s walking about and Yermil thinks: “I´ll pick it up, I will, ´cos there´s no point in letting it get lost here,” and so he gets off his horse and picks it up in his arms – and the lamb doesn´t turn a hair. So Yermil walks back to the horse, but the horse backs away from him, snorts and shakes its head. So when he´s quieted it, he sits on it with the lamb and starts off again holding the lamb in front of him. He looks at

the lamb, he does, and the lamb looks right back at him right in the eyes.Then that Yermil the dog-keeper got frightened: “I don´t recall,” he thought, “no lambs looking me in the eye like that afore.” Anyhow, it didn´t seem nothing, so he starts stroking its wool and saying: “Sssh, there, sssh!” And the lamb bares its teeth at him sudden-like and says back to him: Sssh, there, sssh!...”

The narrator had hardly uttered this last sound when the dogs sprang up and with convulsive barks dashed from the fire, disappearing into the night. The boys were terrified. Vanya even jumped up from beneath his mat. Shouting, Pavlusha followed in hot pursuit of the dogs. Their barking quickly retreated into the distance. There was a noisy and restless scurrying of hoofs among the startled horses. Pavlusha gave loud calls: “Gray! Beetle!”

After a few seconds the barking ceased and Pavlusha´s voice sounded far away. There followed another short pause, while the boys exchanged puzzled looks as if anticipating something new. Suddenly a horse could be heards racing towards them; it stopped sharply at the very edge of the fire and Pavlusha, clutching hold by the reins, sprang agilely from its back. Both dogs also leapt into the circle of light and at once sat down, their red tongues hanging out.

“What´s there? What is it?” the boys asked.

“Nothing,” Pavlusha answered, waving away the horse. “The dogs caught a scent. I thought,” he added in a casual tone of voice, his chest heaving rapidly, “it might have been a wolf.”

Text taken from the book “Sketches from a Hunter´s Album” by Ivan Turgenev

(the Bezhin Lea part) (translation by Richard Freeborn, published by Penguin Classics)