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Maybe he hasn't ridden away yet." Maxim felt cheerful again, but after waiting for Kuzma for some hours, he could bear it no longer, so he saddled a horse and went off to meet him. He met him just at the Ravine. "Well, have you seen the Cossack?" "I can't find him anywhere, he must have ridden on." "H'm . . . a queer business." Tortchakov took the bundle from Kuzma, and galloped on farther.
"That's all right, but we ought to have given the Cossack some. . . . Why, he was worse off than a beggar or an orphan. On the road, and far from home, and sick too." Tortchakov drank half a glass of tea, and neither ate nor drank anything more. He had no appetite, the tea seemed to choke him, and he felt depressed again. After breaking their fast, his wife and he lay down to sleep.
It was quiet. . . . The birds were hardly yet awake . . . . The corncrake uttered its clear note, and far away above a little tumulus, a sleepy kite floated, heavily flapping its wings, and no other living creature could be seen all over the steppe. Tortchakov drove on and thought that there was no better nor happier holiday than the Feast of Christ's Resurrection.
And it's a sin to cut it just anyhow." "Well, Cossack, don't be angry," laughed Tortchakov. "The wife forbids it! Good-bye. Good luck on your journey!" Maxim shook the reins, clicked to his horse, and the chaise rolled on squeaking. For some time his wife went on grumbling, and declaring that to cut the Easter cake before reaching home was a sin and not the proper thing.
When they had driven three-quarters of a mile from the Crooked Ravine, Tortchakov looked round and stared intently into the distance. "I can't see the Cossack," he said. "Poor, dear fellow, to take it into his head to fall ill on the road. There couldn't be a worse misfortune, to have to travel and not have the strength. . . . I shouldn't wonder if he dies by the roadside.
At the Crooked Ravine, which was just half-way on the journey home, Tortchakov and his wife saw a saddled horse standing motionless, and sniffing last year's dry grass. On a hillock beside the roadside a red-haired Cossack was sitting doubled up, looking at his feet. "Christ is risen!" Maxim shouted to him. "Wo-o-o!" "Truly He is risen," answered the Cossack, without raising his head.
"Easter cake?" Tortchakov repeated, "That we can, to be sure. . . . Stay, I'll. . . ." Maxim fumbled quickly in his pockets, glanced at his wife, and said: "I haven't a knife, nothing to cut it with. And I don't like to break it, it would spoil the whole cake. There's a problem! You look and see if you haven't a knife?" The Cossack got up groaning, and went to his saddle to get a knife.
We didn't give him any Easter cake, Lizaveta, and we ought to have given it. I'll be bound he wants to break his fast too." The sun had risen, but whether it was dancing or not Tortchakov did not see. He remained silent all the way home, thinking and keeping his eyes fixed on the horse's black tail.
"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.
"It is not alive," said his wife. "But there are people on it!" exclaimed Tortchakov, "there are really! Ivan Stepanitch told me that there are people on all the planets on the sun, and on the moon! Truly . . . but maybe the learned men tell lies the devil only knows! Stay, surely that's not a horse? Yes, it is!"
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