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"May you choke with my gun, you devil," says Slyunka, with his face twitching, and his shoulders, shrugging. "May you choke, you plague, you scoundrelly soul." Swearing and shaking his fists, he goes out of the tavern with Ryabov and stands still in the middle of the road. "He won't give it, the damned brute," he says, in a weeping voice, looking into Ryabov's face with an injured air.
"For stand-shooting, now is the very time . . ." Ryabov articulated, as though with an effort, stammering. After standing still for a little they walk out of the village, without saying a word to each other, and look towards the dark streak of the forest. The whole sky above the forest is studded with moving black spots, the rooks flying home to roost.
"He won't give it," booms Ryabov. The windows of the furthest huts, the starling cote on the tavern, the tops of the poplars, and the cross on the church are all gleaming with a bright golden flame. Now they can see only half of the sun, which, as it goes to its night's rest, is winking, shedding a crimson light, and seems laughing gleefully.
"We must wait another five days," says Slyunka, as he comes out from behind a bush with Ryabov. "It's too early!" They go homewards, and are silent all the way. MAXIM TORTCHAKOV, a farmer in southern Russia, was driving home from church with his young wife and bringing back an Easter cake which had just been blessed.
Slyunka and Ryabov can see the forest lying, a dark blur, to the right of the sun, a mile and a half from the village, and tiny clouds flitting over the clear sky, and they feel that the evening will be fine and still. "Now is just the time," says Slyunka, with his face twitching. "It would be nice to stand for an hour or two. He won't give it us, the damned brute. May he . . ."
"I haven't got a rouble. I swear to you, Semyon Mitritch, as God sees me: you give me the gun and I will go to-day with Ignashka and bring it you back again. I'll bring it back, strike me dead. May I have happiness neither in this world nor the next, if I don't." "Semyon Mitritch, do give it," Ignat Ryabov says in his bass, and his voice betrays a passionate desire to get what he asks for.
He crosses himself, holds out his hands to the ikon, calls his deceased father and mother to bear witness, but Semyon sighs and meekly looks as before at the string of bread rings. In the end Ignashka Ryabov, hitherto motionless, gets up impulsively and bows down to the ground before the innkeeper, but even that has no effect on him.
The other, Ignat Ryabov, a sturdy, broad-shouldered peasant who never does anything and is everlastingly silent, is sitting in the corner under a big string of bread rings.
"You must act fairly, Filimonushka. . . . A thing is not taken out of pawn just anyhow; you must pay the money. . . . Besides, what do you want to kill birds for? What's the use? It's Lent now you are not going to eat them." Slyunka exchanges glances with Ryabov in embarrassment, sighs, and says: "We would only go stand-shooting." "And what for? It's all foolishness.
Before the holy image, I tell you, only give me the gun!" "Gi-ive it," Ryabov says in his growling bass; they can hear him breathing hard, and it seems that he would like to say a great deal, but cannot find the words. "Gi-ive it." "No, brothers, and don't ask," sighs Semyon, shaking his head mournfully. "Don't lead me into sin. I won't give you the gun.
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