en with meat cut into small
pieces; then they ate roast meat--pork, goose, veal or rennet, with
gruel--then again a bowl of soup with vermicelli, and all this was
usually followed by dessert. They drank kvass made of red bilberries,
juniper-berries, or of bread--Antonina Ivanovna always carried a stock
of different kinds of kvass. They ate in silence, only now and then
uttering a sigh of fatigue; the children each ate out of a separate
bowl, the adults eating out of one bowl. Stupefied by such a dinner,
they went to sleep; and for two or three hours Mayakin's house was
filled with snoring and with drowsy sighs.

Awaking from sleep, they drank tea and talked about local news, the
choristers, the deacons, weddings, or the dishonourable conduct of this
or that merchant. After tea Mayakin used to say to his wife:

"Well, mother, hand me the Bible."

Yakov Tarasovich used to read the Book of Job more often than anything
else. Putting his heavy, silver-framed spectacles on his big, ravenous
nose, he looked around at his listeners to see whether all were in their
places.

They were all seated where he was accustomed to see them and on their
faces was a familiar, dull and timid expression of piety.

"There was a man in the land of Uz," began Mayakin, in a hoarse voice,
and Foma, sitting beside Luba on the lounge in the corner of the room,
knew beforehand that soon his godfather would become silent and pat his
bald head with his hand. He sat and, listening, pictured to himself
this man from the land of Uz. The man was tall and bare, his eyes were
enormously large, like those of the image of the Saviour, and his voice
was like a big brass trumpet on which the soldiers played in the camps.
The man was constantly growing bigger and bigger; and, reaching the sky,
he thrust his dark hands into the clouds, and, tearing them asunder,
cried out in a terrible voice:

"Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged
in?"

Dread fell on Foma, and he trembled, slumber fled from his eyes, he
heard the voice of his godfather, who said, with a light smile, now and
then pinching his beard:

"See how audacious he was!"

The boy knew that his godfather spoke of the man from the land of Uz,
and the godfather's smile soothed the child. So the man would not break
the sky; he would not rend it asunder with his terrible arms. And then
Foma sees the man again--he sits on the ground, "his flesh is clothed
with worms an