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In the distance, where the eye could not distinguish between the sky and the plain, there was a bright gleam of light. A little way off from me sat Savka. With his legs tucked under him like a Turk and his head hanging, he looked pensively at Kutka.
"Why do you look cross, as though your aunt were your mother?" he asked. With all his soft-heartedness and good-nature, Savka despised women. He behaved carelessly, condescendingly with them, and even stooped to scornful laughter of their feelings for himself. God knows, perhaps this careless, contemptuous manner was one of the causes of his irresistible attraction for the village Dulcineas.
She lived in the village, and her husband came home there from the line every night. "Your goings on with the women will lead to trouble, my boy," said I. "Well, may be...." And after a moment's thought Savka added: "I've said so to the women; they won't heed me....They don't trouble about it, the silly things!"
They have killed you? Stay dead. That's certain. And I'll carry off Savka; I'll carry him off!" His curt, barking phrases, full of good-natured irony, perplexed the mother. But his last words aroused envy in her. While walking along the street in the face of a cold wind and rain; she thought of Nikolay, "What a man he's become! Think of it!"
When she had gone another hundred paces she looked round once more and sat down. "You ought at least to hide behind a bush..." I said to Savka. "If the husband sees you..." "He knows, anyway, who it is Agafya has come from.... The women don't go to the kitchen garden at night for cabbages we all know that." I glanced at Savka's face.
Thus I noticed that he had on, that evening, a new woven belt and a crimson ribbon on which a copper cross hung round his dirty neck. I knew of the weakness of the fair sex for Savka, and I knew that he did not like talking about it, and so I did not carry my inquiries any further.
There was an instant when, seeming to come to herself, she drew herself up to get upon her feet, but then some invincible and implacable force seemed to push her whole body, and she sank down beside Savka again. "Bother him!" she said, with a wild, guttural laugh, and reckless determination, impotence, and pain could be heard in that laugh.
It seemed as though the soft sounds that enchanted the ear came, not from birds or insects, but from the stars looking down upon us from the sky.... Savka was the first to break the silence. He slowly turned his eyes from black Kutka and said: "I see you are dull, sir. Let's have supper."
"You live all alone, but what lots of good things you have," I said, pointing to the bowl. "Where do you get them from?" "The women bring them," mumbled Savka. "What do they bring them to you for?" "Oh... from pity." Not only Savka's menu, but his clothing, too, bore traces of feminine "pity."
"There she is," said Savka, pointing in the direction of the ford. I glanced and saw Agafya. Dishevelled, with her kerchief dropping off her head, she was crossing the river, holding up her skirt. Her legs were scarcely moving.... "The cat knows whose meat it has eaten," muttered Savka, screwing up his eyes as he looked at her.
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