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268 16 ABOUT AN ENCHANTED MILL F. F. Kabrenov In a certain tsardom, in a certain country, and in fact in the one in which we live, on a flat place, like on a harrow, about two hundred versts to one side . . . This is no tale; it’s the pre-tale. The tale will be on Saturday after dinner when we eat soft bread and sip sour borsch. Then I’ll tell you the tale. In a certain place there lived an old man with his old woman. They were rich, but they had no children. They kept a mare, a cow, and a sheep. Once, after they had been thinking it over, the old man said to the old woman: “Yes, Old Woman, now we have become old. We’ll die, and all our wealth will be worthless, there’s no one to leave it to. And so that people don’t just cart it away, we ought to build ourselves a mill—and one that has an entrance but no exit.” Well, the old woman agreed to this. He got up in the morning quite early, washed himself quite well, prayed to God, and equipped himself for the way, the road. Whether he walked near or far, low or high, soon a tale is told but a deed is measured by its success. He met a peasant quite by chance. They exchanged greetings, and the peasant asked the old man, “Where are you going, Grandfather, where does your path take you?” “Well, I’ve set off to find a craftsman, I have to build a mill that has an entrance but no exit.” “Now then, I’ll build it. Only give me for the work that which you don’t know you have at home.” So the old man answered: “I know everything. If the mare give birth to a colt, I’ll give you the colt; if the cow calves, I’ll give you the calf; if the bitch has pups, I’ll give you a pup.” “So then, you’re agreed to give me what you don’t know you have at home?” About an Enchanted Mill 269 “I agree.” So they wrote out a contract. They cut one of the old man’s fingers, and with his own blood he wrote, “I shall give for the work on the mill that which I don’t know I have at home.” So then the peasant said to him: “Now, Grandfather, go home. In what place are you thinking of building the mill, and shall I build you a big one? Measure it out, and pound in stakes at the corners.” They bid each other farewell, and the old man went home. And at that time while the old man was out, the old woman got pregnant and gave birth to a little boy and a little girl. She called the boy Ivan and the little girl Maria. So as the old man was approaching the house, the old woman caught sight of him out the window, still in the field, she saw the old man coming, and she was overjoyed and went out to meet him with the little boy and little girl. When she went up to the old man, he asked her, “And whose children are these? Where did you get them?” The old woman told him that after his leaving she had given birth to two children. The old man quickly guessed it! “Why, it wasn’t just any simple person, likely, whom I engaged to build the mill. It was not for nothing that he asked for what I didn’t know I had at home. I didn’t know about these children, so I’ve given them to the devil for his work.” But he didn’t say anything to the old woman. He came home, measured out the place, and pounded in the stakes at the corners. When night came, then the work began. They hauled the logs, they built the mill. In the morning there was nobody there. But the mill was half-built in one night. When Vania and Mania were sleeping behind the partition, the old man said to the old woman, “You don’t know what, do you?” “No.” “Why, for building that mill I gave our children to no one other than the devil.” And the old woman replied, “Well, if they’ve been given over, there’s nothing to be done.” They both cried...

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