United States or Czechia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Upon my word, the dog..." muttered Savka, looking with respect in the direction of the calling landrail. Knowing how fond Savka was of listening, I told him all I had learned about the landrail from sportsman's books. From the landrail I passed imperceptibly to the migration of the birds. Savka listened attentively, looking at me without blinking, and smiling all the while with pleasure.
Seeing near the shanty not one but two persons, she uttered a faint cry and fell back a step. "Ah... that is you!" said Savka, stuffing a scone into his mouth. "Ye-es... I," she mutte red, dropping on the ground a bundle of some sort and looking sideways at me. "Yakov sent his greetings to you and told me to give you... something here...." "Come, why tell stories? Yakov!" laughed Savka.
At first she walked fairly boldly, but soon terror and excitement got the upper hand; she turned round fearfully, stopped and took breath. "Yes, you are frightened!" Savka laughed mournfully, looking at the bright green streak left by Agafya in the dewy grass. "She doesn't want to go! Her husband's been standing waiting for her for a good hour.... Did you see him?"
His features were large, but his face was open, soft, and expressive as a woman's. Then he gazed with his mild, dreamy eyes at the copse, at the willows, slowly pulled a whistle out of his pocket, put it in his mouth and whistled the note of a hen-nightingale. And at once, as though in answer to his call, a landrail called on the opposite bank. "There's a nightingale for you..." laughed Savka.
"It's time it's time you were gone," Savka, tossing his head, took up my thought. "What are you sprawling here for? You shameless hussy!" Agafya started, took her head from his knees, glanced at me, and sank down beside him again. "You ought to have gone long ago," I said.
Besides there was not time to talk.... Kutka, who had been fidgeting about near us and patiently waiting for scraps, suddenly pricked up his ears and growled. We heard in the distance repeated splashing of water. "Someone is coming by the ford," said Savka. Three minutes later Kutka growled again and made a sound like a cough. "Shsh!" his master shouted at him.
Apart from his happy exterior and original manner, one must suppose that the touching position of Savka as an acknowledged failure and an unhappy exile from his own hut to the kitchen gardens also had an influence upon the women. "Tell the gentleman what you have come here for!" Savka went on, still holding Agafya by the waist. "Come, tell him, you good married woman! Ho-ho!
It need hardly be said that with such parsimony of movement Savka was as poor as a mouse and lived worse than any homeless outcast. As time went on, I suppose he accumulated arrears of taxes and, young and sturdy as he was, he was sent by the commune to do an old man's job to be watchman and scarecrow in the kitchen gardens.
It was Agafya laughing. "And the train?" I thought. "The train has come in long ago." Waiting a little longer, I went back to the shanty. Savka was sitting motionless, his legs crossed like a Turk, and was softly, scarcely audibly humming a song consisting of words of one syllable something like: "Out on you, fie on you... I and you."
"Oh, drink it up.... Your heart will feel warmer.... There!" Savka gave Agafya the crooked glass. She slowly drank the vodka, ate nothing with it, but drew a deep breath when she had finished. "You've brought something," said Savka, untying the bundle and throwing a condescending, jesting shade into his voice. "Women can never come without bringing something.
Word Of The Day