The night before Earter Sunday

The night before Earter Sunday the sky was overcast with masses of black cloud and rain began to fall. A raw darkness enveloped Tatarsk. At dusk the ice of the Don began to crack with a protracted rolling groan, and crushed by a mass of broken ice the first floe emerged from the water. The ice broke suddenly over a length of three miles, and drifted downstream. The floes crashed against one another and against the banks, to the sound of the church bell ringing measuredly for the service. At the first bend where the Don sweeps to the left, the ice was dammed up. The roar and scraping of the moving floes reached the village. The lads had gathered in the church enclosure. Through the open doors came the muffled tones of the service, light streamed gaily through the windows, whilst outside in the darkness the lads surreptiously tickled and kissed the girls, and whispered dirty stories to one another.
From the Don came a flowing whisper, rustle and crunch, as though a strongly built, gaily woman as tall as a poplar were passing by, her great, invisible skirts rustling.
At midnight, Mitka Korshunov, riding a horse bareback, clattering through the Egyptian darkness up to the church. He tied the reins to the horse’s mane, and with a smack of the hand on her flanks sent her back home. He listened to the sound of the hoofs for a moment, then, adjusting his belt, he went into the church. At the porch he removed his cap , bent his head devoutly. And thrusting aside the women, pressed to the altar. The Cossacks were crowed in a black mass on the left; on the right was an azure throng of women. Mitka found his father in the front row, and seizing him by the elbow, whispered into his ear:
‘Father, come outside for a moment.’
As he pressed out of the church through the dense curtain of mingled odours, Mitka nostrils quivered. He was overwhelmed by the vapour of burning wax, the stench of women’s sweaty bodies, the deathly odour of long-lying clothes brought out only at Christmas and Easter time, the smell of damp leather, naphthaline , and other, indistinguishable scents.
In the porch Mitka put his mouth close to his father’s ear and said:
‘Natalia is dying.’
From the book ‘And quiet Flows the Don’ by Mikhail Sholokhov, translated by Stephen Garry