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Updated: May 14, 2025
"Styopka, run to the village and ask the peasants for a net! "They won't give it to me." "They will, you ask them. Tell them that they should give it to us for Christ's sake, because we are just the same as pilgrims." "That's true." Styopka clambered out of the water, dressed quickly, and without a cap on he ran, his full trousers flapping, to the village.
Every time Dymov, Kiruha and Styopka pulled out the net they could be seen fumbling about in the mud in it, putting some things into the pail and throwing other things away; sometimes they passed something that was in the net from hand to hand, examined it inquisitively, then threw that, too, away. "What is it?" they shouted to them from the bank.
"Shall I put in some fat?" asked Styopka, skimming off the froth. "No need. The fish will make its own gravy," answered Kiruha. Before taking the cauldron off the fire Styopka scattered into the water three big handfuls of millet and a spoonful of salt; finally he tried it, smacked his lips, licked the spoon, and gave a self-satisfied grunt, which meant that the grain was done.
The fire flared up brightly; Styopka was enveloped in black smoke, and the shadow cast by the cross danced along the road in the dusk beside the waggons. "Yes, they were killed," Dymov said reluctantly. "Two merchants, father and son, were travelling, selling holy images. They put up in the inn not far from here that is now kept by Ignat Fomin.
'Well, Mihal Savelitch, I began, 'have you caught any fish? 'Here, if you will deign to look in the basket: I have caught two perch and five roaches.... Show them, Styopka. Styopushka stretched out the basket to me. 'How are you, Styopka? I asked him. 'Oh oh not not not so badly, your honour, answered Stepan, stammering as though he had a heavy weight on his tongue. 'And is Mitrofan well?
His spoon was not like those the others had, but was made of cypress wood, with a little cross on it. Yegorushka, looking at him, thought of the little ikon glass and asked Styopka softly: "Why does Grandfather sit apart?" "He is an Old Believer," Styopka and Vassya answered in a whisper. And as they said it they looked as though they were speaking of some secret vice or weakness.
Styopka, a waggoner whom Yegorushka noticed now for the first time, a Little Russian lad of eighteen, in a long shirt without a belt, and full trousers that flapped like flags as he walked, undressed quickly, ran along the steep bank and plunged into the water. He dived three times, then swam on his back and shut his eyes in his delight.
"Oh, I don't care for it, . . ." answered Vassya. "How is it your chin is swollen?" "It's bad. . . . I used to work at the match factory, little sir. . . . The doctor used to say that it would make my jaw rot. The air is not healthy there. There were three chaps beside me who had their jaws swollen, and with one of them it rotted away altogether." Styopka soon came back with the net.
"No, I haven't." "Yefim Zhmenya, the uncle of Styopka, the blacksmith. The whole district round knew him. Aye, he was a cursed old man, he was! I knew him for sixty years, ever since Tsar Alexander who beat the French was brought from Taganrog to Moscow.
The water was boiling by now and Styopka was skimming off the froth. "Is the fat ready?" Kiruha asked him in a whisper. "Wait a little. . . . Directly." Styopka, his eyes fixed on Panteley as though he were afraid that the latter might begin some story before he was back, ran to the waggons; soon he came back with a little wooden bowl and began pounding some lard in it.
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