He awoke after sunrise

He awoke after sunrise. In that short hour or so of sleep he had had many dreams, and all of them unpleasant.
When he woke up he sat a long time on his bed, staring idiotically with terror stricken eyes. ‘Such filthy dreams don’t bode any good. There’s some misfortune on the way,’ he decided , feeling an unpleasant weight on his heart and spitting with disgust at the very memory of his dreams.
He dressed in the gloomiest of moods, kicking away the cat which rubbed itself against his legs; at breakfast he called his wife a ‘little fool’ for not reason whatever, and when his daughter in law ineptly joined in the farm talk at the table, he even waved his spoon at her as if he were not a grown woman but a little girl. Siemion was highly amused at his father’s lack of control: he pulled a stupid, terrified face and winked at his wife, who shook with silent laughter. That put Yakov Lukich right out of humour: he flung his spoon down on the table and shouted in a voice quivering with rage:
’You’re grinning now, but before long you may be crying.’
To make things worse, as he demonstratively left the table without finishing his breakfast he put his hand down on the edge of his plate and sent his unfinished, hot beetroot soup over his trousers. His daughter in law hid her face with both hands and flew into the passage. Siemion remained seated at the table, his head in his hands; but his muscular back shook and his broad shoulders rose and fell with his laughter. Even Yakov’s everlastingly straight faced wife could not help laughing.
‘What’s the matter with you today, father?’ she asked. Did you get out of bed with your left foot first, or have you had a bad dream ?
From the book “Harvest on the Don” by Mikhail Sholokhov (translated from the Russian by H.C.Stevens)