The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol (6 page)

THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

T
HE LAST DAY
before Christmas had passed.
A wintry, clear night came.
The stars peeped out.
The crescent moon rose majestically in the sky to give light to good people and all the world, so that everyone could merrily go caroling and glorify Christ.
^*
The frost had increased since morning; but it was so still that the frosty creaking under your boots could be heard for half a mile.
Not one group of young lads had shown up under the windows of the houses yet; only the moon peeked stealthily into them, as if inviting the girls sprucing themselves up to hurry and run out to the creaking snow.
Here smoke curled from the chimney of one cottage and went in a cloud across the sky, and along with the smoke rose a witch riding on a broom.

If the Sorochintsy assessor had been passing by just then, driving
a troika of hired horses, in a hat with a lamb’s wool band after the uhlan fashion, in a dark blue coat lined with astrakhan, with the devilishly woven whip he used to urge his coachman on, he would surely have noticed her, for no witch in the world could elude the Sorochintsy assessor.
He could count off how many piglets each woman’s sow had farrowed, and how much linen lay in every chest, and precisely which of his clothes and chattels a good man had pawned in the tavern of a Sunday.
But the Sorochintsy assessor was not passing by, and what business did he have with other people, since he had his own territory.
And the witch, meanwhile, rose so high that she was only a black spot flitting overhead.
But wherever the spot appeared, the stars disappeared from the sky one after another.
Soon the witch had a sleeve full of them.
Three or four still shone.
Suddenly, from the opposite direction, another little spot appeared, grew bigger, began to spread, and was no longer a little spot.
A nearsighted man, even if he put the wheels of the commissar’s britzka on his nose for spectacles, still wouldn’t have been able to make out what it was.
From the front, a perfect German:
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the narrow little muzzle, constantly twitching and sniffing at whatever came along, ended in a round snout, as with our pigs; the legs were so thin that if the headman of Yareskov had had such legs, he’d have broken them in the first Cossack dance.
To make up for that, from behind he was a real provincial attorney in uniform, because he had a tail hanging there, sharp and long as uniform coattails nowadays; and only by the goat’s beard under his muzzle, the little horns sticking up on his head, and the fact that he was no whiter than a chimney sweep, could you tell that he was not a German or a provincial attorney, but simply a devil who had one last night to wander about the wide world and teach good people to sin.
Tomorrow, as the first bells rang for matins, he would run for his den, tail between his legs, without looking back.

Meanwhile the devil was quietly sneaking toward the moon and had already reached out his hand to snatch it, but suddenly pulled
it back as if burnt, sucked his fingers, shook his leg, and ran around to the other side, but again jumped away and pulled his hand back.
However, despite all his failures, the sly devil did not give up his pranks.
Running up to it, he suddenly seized the moon with both hands, wincing and blowing, tossing it from one hand to the other, like a muzhik who takes a coal for his pipe in his bare hands; at last he hastily hid it in his pocket and ran on as if nothing had happened.

In Dikanka nobody realized that the devil had stolen the moon.
True, the local scrivener, leaving the tavern on all fours, saw the moon dancing about in the sky for no reason and swore to it by God before the whole village; but people shook their heads and even made fun of him.
But what led the devil to decide on such a lawless business?
Here’s what: he knew that the wealthy Cossack Choub had been invited for kutya
¹
by the deacon, and that there would also be the headman, a relative of the deacon’s in a blue frock coat who sang in the bishop’s choir and could hit the lowest bass notes, the Cossack Sverbyguz, and others; that besides kutya there would be spiced vodka, saffron vodka, and lots of other things to eat.
And meanwhile his daughter, the beauty of the village, would stay at home, and this daughter would certainly be visited by the blacksmith, a stalwart and fine fellow, whom the devil found more disgusting than Father Kondrat’s sermons.
The blacksmith devoted his leisure time to painting and was reputed to be the best artist in the whole neighborhood.
The then still-living chief L——ko himself had summoned him specially to Poltava to paint the wooden fence around his house.
All the bowls from which the Dikanka Cossacks supped their borscht had been decorated by the blacksmith.
The blacksmith was a God-fearing man and often painted icons of the saints: even now you can find his evangelist Luke in the T—— church.
But the triumph of his art was one picture painted on the church wall in the right-hand vestibule, in which he portrayed Saint Peter on the day of the Last Judgment, with the keys in his hand, driving the evil spirit out of hell; the frightened devil is rushing in all directions, sensing his doom, and the formerly confined sinners are beating him and
driving him about with whips, sticks, and whatever else they can find.
All the while the artist was working on this picture, painting it on a big wooden board, the devil tried as hard as he could to hinder him: shoved his arm invisibly, raised up ashes from the forge in the smithy and poured them over the picture; but the work got done despite all, the board was brought to church and set into the wall in the vestibule, and ever since then the devil had sworn vengeance on the blacksmith.

One night only was left him to wander about the wide world, but on this night, too, he sought some way to vent his anger on the blacksmith.
And for that he decided to steal the moon, in hopes that old Choub was lazy and not easy to budge, and the deacon’s place was not all that close to his: the road went beyond the village, past the mills, past the cemetery, and around the gully.
If it had been a moonlit night, the spiced vodka and saffron vodka might have tempted Choub, but in such darkness you would hardly succeed in dragging him down from the stove
²
and getting him out of the cottage.
And the blacksmith, who had long been on bad terms with him, would never dare visit his daughter with him there, for all his strength.

So it was that, as soon as the devil hid the moon in his pocket, it suddenly became so dark all over the world that no one could find the way to the tavern, to say nothing of the deacon’s.
The witch, seeing herself suddenly in the dark, cried out.
Here the devil, sidling up to her, took her under the arm and started whispering in her ear what is usually whispered to the whole of womankind.
Wondrous is the working of the world!
All who live in it try to mimic and mock one another.
Before, it used to be that in Mirgorod only the judge and the mayor went about during the winter in cloth-covered sheepskin coats, and all of petty clerkdom wore plain uncovered ones; but now both the assessor and the surveyor have got themselves up in new coats of Reshetilovo astrakhan covered with broadcloth.
Two years ago the clerk and the local scrivener bought themselves some blue Chinese cotton for sixty kopecks a yard.
The sacristan had baggy summer trousers of nankeen and a waistcoat of striped worsted made for himself.
In short, everything tries to get ahead!
When will these people cease their
vanity!
I’ll bet many would be surprised to see the devil getting up to it as well.
What’s most vexing is that he must fancy he’s a handsome fellow, whereas—it’s shameful to look him in the face.
A mug, as Foma Grigorievich says, that’s the vilest of the vile, and yet he, too, goes philandering!
But it got so dark in the sky, and under the sky, that it was no longer possible to see what went on further between them.

“S
O, CHUM, YOU
haven’t been to the deacon’s new house yet?” the Cossack Choub was saying as he came out the door of his cottage to a tall, lean muzhik in a short sheepskin jacket with a stubbly chin that showed it hadn’t been touched in over two weeks by the broken piece of scythe a muzhik usually shaves with for lack of a razor.
“There’ll be good drinking there tonight!” Choub continued, with a grin on his face.
“We’d better not be late.”

With that, Choub straightened the belt that tightly girded his coat, pulled his hat down hard, clutched his knout—a terror and threat to bothersome dogs—but, looking up, he stopped …

“What the devil!
Look, look, Panas!…”

“What?” said his chum, and also threw his head back.

“How, what?
There’s no moon!”

“What the deuce!
It’s a fact, there’s no moon.”

“None at all,” said Choub, somewhat vexed at the chum’s unfailing indifference.
“Not that you care, I suppose.”

“But what can I do?”

“It had to happen,” Choub went on, wiping his mustache on his sleeve, “some devil—may the dog have no glass of vodka in the morning—had to interfere!… Really, as if for a joke … I looked out the window on purpose as I sat inside: a wonder of a night!
Clear, snow shining in the moonlight.
Everything bright as day.
The moment I step out the door—it’s pitch-dark!”

Choub spent a long time grumbling and swearing, all the while pondering what to decide.
He was dying to chatter about all sorts of nonsense at the deacon’s, where, without any doubt, the headman was already sitting, and the visiting bass, and the tar dealer Mikita, who went off to the Poltava market every two weeks and cracked such jokes that good people held their sides from laughter.
Choub could already picture mentally the spiced vodka standing on the table.
All this was tempting, it’s true; but the darkness of the night reminded him of the laziness so dear to all Cossacks.
How good it would be to lie on the stove now, with his knees bent, calmly smoking his pipe and listening, through an entrancing drowsiness, to the carols and songs of the merry lads and girls coming in crowds to the windows.
He would, without any doubt, have decided on the latter if he had been alone, but now for the two of them it would not be so boring or scary to walk through the dark night, and he did not really want to appear lazy or cowardly before the others.
Having finished swearing, he again turned to the chum:

“So there’s no moon, chum?”

“No.”

“It’s odd, really!
Give me a pinch.
Fine snuff you’ve got there, chum!
Where do you get it?”

“The devil it’s fine,” replied the chum, closing the birchbark pouch all covered with pinpricked designs.
“It wouldn’t make an old hen sneeze!”

“I remember,” Choub went on in the same way, “the late tavern keeper Zozulia once brought me some snuff from Nezhin.
Ah, what snuff that was!
such good snuff!
So, then, chum, what are we going to do?
It’s dark out.”

“Let’s stay home, then, if you like,” said the chum, grasping the door handle.

If the chum hadn’t said it, Choub would certainly have decided to stay home, but now something seemed to tug at him to do the contrary.

“No, chum, let’s go!
It’s impossible, we have to go!”

Having said that, he was already annoyed with himself for it.
He very much disliked dragging himself anywhere on such a night; but it was a comfort to him that he himself had purposely wanted it and was not doing as he had been advised.

The chum, showing not the least vexation on his face, like a man to whom it was decidedly all the same whether he stayed home or dragged himself out, looked around, scratched his shoulders
with the butt of his whip, and the two chums set out on their way.

N
OW LET’S HAVE
a look at what the beautiful daughter was doing, left alone.
Oksana had not yet turned seventeen, but already in almost all the world, on this side of Dikanka and on the other, the talk was of nothing but her.
The young lads, one and all, declared that there had never been, nor ever would be, a better girl in the village.
Oksana knew and heard all that was said about her, and was capricious, as beauties will be.
If she had gone about not in a checkered wraparound and a woolen apron, but in some sort of capote, she would have sent all her maids scurrying.
The lads chased after her in droves, but, losing patience, gradually dropped out and turned to others less spoiled.
The blacksmith alone persisted and would not leave off his wooing, though he was treated no better than the rest.

After her father left, she spent a long time dressing up and putting on airs before a small tin-framed mirror, and couldn’t have enough of admiring herself.
“Why is it that people decided to praise my prettiness?” she said as if distractedly, so as to chat with herself about something.
“People lie, I’m not pretty at all.” But in the mirror flashed her fresh face, alive in its child’s youngness, with shining dark eyes and an inexpressibly lovely smile which burned the soul through, and all at once proved the opposite.
“Are my dark eyebrows and eyes,” the beauty went on, not letting go of the mirror, “so pretty that they have no equal in the world?
What’s so pretty about this upturned nose?
and these cheeks?
and lips?
As if my dark braids are pretty!
Ugh!
they could be frightening in the evening: they twist and twine around my head like long snakes.
I see now that I’m not pretty at all!” and then, holding the mirror further away from her face, she exclaimed: “No, I am pretty!
Ah, how pretty!
A wonder!
What joy I’ll bring to the one whose wife I become!
How my husband will admire me!
He won’t know who he is.
He’ll kiss me to death.”