subah--the morning

subah--the morning
Title: Snow Covered Morning Artist: Egidio Antonaccio
2008-03-30 03:34:10 GMTComments: 0 Permanent Link
Excerpt from The Cossacks--Eroskha the Old Cossack
Excerpt from The Cossacks--Eroskha the Old Cossack
Title: Springtime at Tillingbourne, Surrey Artist: Harold S. Palmer Eroshka, The Old CossackIt was quite true that Olenin had been walking about the yard when Maryanka entered the gate, and had heard her say, "That devil, our lodger, is walking about." He had spent that evening with Daddy Eroshka in the porch of his new lodging. He had had a table, a samovar, wine, and a candle brought out, and over a cup of tea and a cigar he listened to the tales the old man told seated on the threshold at his feet. Though the air was still, the candle dripped and flickered: now lighting up the post of the porch, now the table and crockery, now the dropped white head of the old man. Moths circled round the flame and, shedding the dust of their wings, fluttered on the table and in the glasses, flew into the candle flame, and disappeared in the black space beyond. Olenin and Eroshka had emptied five bottles of chikhir. Eroshka filled the glasses every time, offering one to Olenin, drinking his health, and talking untiringly. He told of Cossack life in the old days of his father, "The Broad," who alone had carried oh his back a boar's carcass weighing three hundred weight, and drank two pails of chikhir at one sitting. He told of his own days and his chum Girchik, with whom during the plague he used to smuggle felt croaks across the Terek. He told how one morning he had killed two deer, and about his "little soul" who used to run to him at the cordon at night. He told all this so eloquently and picturesquely that Olenin did not notice how time passed.