Sleepy-Eye

NIGHT. Nursemaid Varka, aged thirteen, rocks the cradle where baby lies, and murmurs, almost inaudibly: “Bayu, bayushki, bayu!

Nurse will sing a song to you.”

In front of the ikon burns a green lamp; across the room from wall to wall stretches a cord on which hang baby clothes and a great pair of black trousers. On the ceiling above the lamp shines a great green spot, and the baby clothes and trousers cast long shadows on the stove, on the cradle, on Varka. When the lamp flickers, the spot and shadows move as if from a draught. It is stifling. There is a smell of soup and boots.

The child cries. It has long been hoarse and weak from crying, but still it cries, and who can say when it will be comforted? And Varka wants to sleep. Her eyelids droop, her head hangs, her neck pains her. She can hardly move her eyelids or her lips, and it seems to her that her face is sapless and petrified, and that her head has shriveled up to the size of a pinhead.