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Updated: May 21, 2025
Varka goes out into the road and cries there, but all at once someone hits her on the back of her head so hard that her forehead knocks against a birch tree. She raises her eyes, and sees facing her, her master, the shoemaker. "What are you about, you scabby slut?" he says. "The child is crying, and you are asleep!"
Varka lays her head on the edge of the cradle, and rocks her whole body to overcome her sleepiness, but yet her eyes are glued together, and her head is heavy. "Varka, heat the stove!" she hears the master's voice through the door. So it is time to get up and set to work. Varka leaves the cradle, and runs to the shed for firewood. She is glad.
Varka takes the baby, puts him in the cradle and begins rocking it again. The green patch and the shadows gradually disappear, and now there is nothing to force itself on her eyes and cloud her brain. But she is as sleepy as before, fearfully sleepy!
"Give the baby here!" the same voice repeats, this time harshly and angrily. "Are you asleep, you wretched girl?" Varka jumps up, and looking round grasps what is the matter: there is no high road, no Pelageya, no people meeting them, there is only her mistress, who has come to feed the baby, and is standing in the middle of the room.
Picking out the very biggest apple in the store-room he stole into the kitchen, slipped it into Pelageya's hand, and darted headlong away. NIGHT. Varka, the little nurse, a girl of thirteen, is rocking the cradle in which the baby is lying, and humming hardly audibly: "Hush-a-bye, my baby wee, While I sing a song for thee."
The hallucination takes possession of Varka. She gets up from her stool, and with a broad smile on her face and wide unblinking eyes, she walks up and down the room. She feels pleased and tickled at the thought that she will be rid directly of the baby that binds her hand and foot. . . . Kill the baby and then sleep, sleep, sleep. . . .
Varka splits a piece of wood, but has scarcely time to light the splinters and put them in the samovar, when she hears a fresh order: "Varka, clean the master's goloshes!" She sits down on the floor, cleans the goloshes, and thinks how nice it would be to put her head into a big deep golosh, and have a little nap in it. . . . And all at once the golosh grows, swells, fills up the whole room.
A cart has been sent to take Yefim to the hospital. He gets ready and goes. . . . But now it is a clear bright morning. Pelageya is not at home; she has gone to the hospital to find what is being done to Yefim. Somewhere there is a baby crying, and Varka hears someone singing with her own voice: "Hush-a-bye, my baby wee, I will sing a song to thee."
While the stout, broad-shouldered woman nurses the child and soothes it, Varka stands looking at her and waiting till she has done. And outside the windows the air is already turning blue, the shadows and the green patch on the ceiling are visibly growing pale, it will soon be morning. "Take him," says her mistress, buttoning up her chemise over her bosom; "he is crying. He must be bewitched."
When one moves and runs about, one is not so sleepy as when one is sitting down. She brings the wood, heats the stove, and feels that her wooden face is getting supple again, and that her thoughts are growing clearer. "Varka, set the samovar!" shouts her mistress.
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