Stories

surface with the puppy: from that time on, they were inseparable.

When I was twelve, I was sent to the seminary. I had not been home for two years, and on the third, I came to spend my vacation time with my father. The next morning, early, I put on my worn-out robe and wanted to go examine my familiar haunts. Just as I stepped into the yard, Levka was standing by the wattle fence, at the very spot where I used to give him pies. He rushed to me with such joy that tears welled up in my eyes. "Senka," he said, "I waited all night for Senka, Grusha said yesterday: Senka has arrived..." and he fawned upon me like a little animal, looking into my eyes with a kind of servility, asking: "You aren't angry with me? Everyone is angry at Levka—don't be angry, Senka—I will cry, don't be angry—I will catch a squirrel original: "векша" — a dialect or colloquial term for a squirrel for you." I rushed to hug Levka. This was so new, so unusual for him, that he simply sobbed and, grabbing my hand, kissed it. I could not pull my hand away, so tightly did he hold it. "Let's go to the forest," I said to him. "Let's go far, it will be good, very good," he replied. We went. He led the way for about four versts a unit of distance roughly equal to 1.06 kilometers through a forest that rose uphill, and suddenly brought me to an open place. Below, the Oka a major river in Russia flowed; all around for some twenty versts was one of the most magnificent rural views of Great Russia a historical term for the central regions of European Russia. "It is good here," Levka said: "It is good here." "What is good?" I asked him, wanting to test what he would say. He fixed a sort of uncertain gaze upon me; his face took on a different, pained expression; he sadly shook his head and said: "Levka does not know, it is just so good!" I felt ashamed.