A Dead Body

A still August night. A mist is rising slowly from the fields and casting an opaque veil over everything within eyesight. Lighted up by the moon, the mist gives the impression at one moment of a calm, boundless sea, at the next of an immense white wall. The air is damp and chilly. Morning is still far off. A step from the byroad which runs along the edge of the forest a little fire is gleaming. A dead body, covered from head to foot with new white linen, is lying under a young oak tree. A wooden icon is lying on its breast. Beside the corpse almost on the road sits the “watch”⁠—two peasants performing one of the most disagreeable and uninviting of peasants’ duties. One, a tall young fellow with a scarcely perceptible moustache and thick black eyebrows, in a tattered sheepskin and bark shoes, is sitting on the wet grass, his feet stuck out straight in front of him, and is trying to while away the time with work. He bends his long neck, and breathing loudly through his nose, makes a spoon out of a big crooked bit of wood; the other⁠—a little scraggy, pockmarked peasant with an aged face, a scanty moustache, and a little goat’s beard⁠—sits with his hands dangling loose on his knees, and without moving gazes listlessly at the light.

A small campfire is lazily burning down between them, throwing a red glow on their faces. There is perfect stillness. The only sounds are the scrape of the knife on the wood and the crackling of damp sticks in the fire.

“Don’t you go to sleep, Syoma⁠ ⁠…” says the young man.

“I⁠ ⁠… I am not asleep⁠ ⁠…” stammers the goat-beard.

“That’s all right.⁠ ⁠… It would be dreadful to sit here alone, one would be frightened. You might tell me something, Syoma.”

“You are a queer fellow, Syomushka! Other people will laugh and tell a story and sing a song, but you⁠—there is no making you out. You sit like a scarecrow in the garden and roll your eyes at the fire. You can’t say anything properly⁠ ⁠… when you speak you seem frightened. I dare say you are fifty, but you have less sense than a child. Aren’t you sorry that you are a simpleton?”

“I am sorry,” the goat-beard answers gloomily.