The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol by Nikolái Gógol Read Free Book Online Page B

lying here?They should have been taken out long ago.I’ve grown all befuddled on account of this stupid love.Tomorrow’s a feast day, and there’s all this trash lying around the house.I must take them to the smithy.”
    Here the blacksmith crouched down by the huge sacks, tied them tightly, and was about to haul them onto his shoulders.But it was obvious that his thoughts were wandering God knows where, otherwise he would have heard Choub hiss when his hair got caught by the rope that tied the sack and the stalwart headman begin to hiccup quite audibly.
    “Can it be that this worthless Oksana will never get out of my head?” the blacksmith said.“I don’t want to think about her, yet I do, and, as if on purpose, about nothing but her.What makes the thought come into my head against my will?Why the devil do these sacks seem heavier than before!There must be something in them besides coal.Fool that I am!I forgot that everything seems heavier to me now.Before, I used to be able to bend and unbend a copper coin or a horseshoe with one hand, and now I can’t lift a sack of coal.Soon the wind will knock me down.No,” he cried, cheering up after a pause, “what a woman I am!I won’t let anybody laugh at me!Let it even be ten sacks, I’ll lift them all.” And he briskly hauled sacks onto his shoulders that two strong men would have been unable to carry.“This one, too,” he went on, picking up the small one, at the bottom of which the devil lay curled up.“I think I put my tools in it.” Having said which, he left the house whistling the song:
No bothering with a wife for me.
    Noisier and noisier sounded the songs and shouts in the streets.The crowds of jostling folk were increased by those coming from neighboring villages.The lads frolicked and horsed around freely.Often amidst the carols one could hear some merry song made up on the spot by some young Cossack.Then suddenly one of the crowd, instead of a carol, would roar a New Year’s song at the top of his lungs:
Humpling, mumpling!
Give me a dumpling ,
A big ring of sausage ,
A bowl full of porridge!
    Loud laughter would reward the funny man.A little window would be raised, and the lean arm of an old woman—they were the only ones to stay inside now with the grave fathers—would reach out with a sausage or a piece of pie.Lads and girls held up their sacks, trying to be the first to catch the booty.In one spot the lads came from all sides and surrounded a group of girls: noise, shouts, one threw a snowball, another grabbed a sack with all sorts of things in it.Elsewhere the girls caught a lad, tripped him and sent him flying headlong to the ground together with his sack.It seemed they were ready to make merry all night long.And the night, as if on purpose, glowed so luxuriantly!And the glistening snow made the moonlight seem whiter still.
    The blacksmith stopped with his sacks.He imagined he heard Oksana’s voice and thin laughter in the crowd of girls.Every fiber of him twitched: flinging the sacks to the ground so that the deacon on the bottom groaned with pain and the headman hiccuped with his whole gullet, he trudged on, the small sack on his shoulder, with the crowd of lads that was following the crowd of girls in which he thought he had heard Oksana’s voice.
    “Yes, it’s she!standing like a tsaritsa, her black eyes shining!A handsome lad is telling her something; it must be funny, because she’s laughing.But she’s always laughing.” As if inadvertently, himself not knowing how, the blacksmith pushed through the crowd and stood next to her.
    “Ah, Vakula, you’re here!Good evening!” said the beauty with the very smile that all but drove Vakula out of his mind.“Well, did you get a lot for your caroling?Eh, such a little sack!And the booties that the tsaritsa wears, did you get them?Get me the booties and I’ll marry you!” She laughed and ran off with the crowd.
    The blacksmith stood as if rooted to the spot.“No, I can’t; it’s more