“The fourth is at the top of the tree! . . .” sighed my mother. “My own brother, we grew up together, yet I fear to think of him! . . . He is a Privy Councillor, a general! How shall I meet my angel? What shall I say to him — I, an uneducated fool? For fifteen long years I haven't seen him once! Andriushenka!” My mother turned to me. “Rejoice, donkey! God has sent you your uncle for your future welfare!”
Her detailed history of the Gundasoff's heralded a household revolution hitherto witnessed only at Christmas. Only the river and the firmament were spared. Everything else within reach was scoured, scrubbed, and painted, and had the sky been smaller and nearer, had the river's course been slower, they too would have been rubbed with brick-bats and scoured with bast-ribbons. The walls, already whiter than snow, were whitewashed again; the floors already shone and sparkled, but they were re-washed thenceforward every day. The old cat Kutsi, so nicknamed after I had docked his tail with a sugar-knife, was exiled to the kitchen and handed over to Anisya, and Fedka was warned that “God would punish him” if the dogs came near the stairs. But the worst sufferings were reserved for the helpless carpets and arm-chairs. Never were they beaten so fiercely as on the eve of my uncle's advent. My pigeons, hearing the swish of the beaters' sticks, shuddered, and disappeared in the sky.
