Vasyl Stefanyk SIN ("Hrikh," 1927, Povne zibrannya tvoriv, 1949)

Kasiyanykha is thinking about what will happen. Yesterday her husband came back from the front, drank some water and is sleeping. One can smell railway soot on his clothing. On the shelf a candle is blinking. Near her, time after time a biggish girl, her daughter in marriage from before the war, keeps uncovering herself. And a little Russian bastard son keeps searching for her breasts. Her round breast, like a hill, and the lips of the bastard seem like those of a greedy serpent. She thinks that this boy is like a vampire who has sucked into himself all of her feminine honor and now is sucking at her blood. "How is it going to be when he gets up; boy, will he grab and wind about his hands those long braids of mine, will he ever drag my white body over the floors. Then he'll drag me to the threshold and the body will stay in the house but the head will roll off into the yard, so that dogs can lick blood off it. That's how you're going to atone your sin, you bitch. And this little puppy of mine will perish in dirt and derision; no one will give him a shirt to wear, and if unfortunately he manages to grow up, then he'll wander without me as a servant; he won't even know about his father who somewhere there in the open steppe knows nothing of him. Oh, my God, why have you punished me so severely that you took my reason away when he was looking into my eyes and when he rubbed his chest with my braids. You, God, are at fault for having taken away my reason. You wink at me with those bright stars and You laugh. May You be damned as I am." "My mother stood for two days near the door, sad, with her honor injured, and my sisters washed the diapers of the bastard with their tears. And father didn't come into the house for weeks, stayed outside and there ate his dry piece of bread. The priest cursed me in church, the people avoided me. Even a mountain could not endure such a heaviness upon it. I didn't jump into the Danube only because my little bastard son laughed at me with his silken eyes." She grabbed the child and tightly held it to her breast and kept on saying: "Who'd give me such a strength now so that I could go outside, sharpen a knife and plunge it into his chest, right into his heart. Oh, God, You give the temptation for sin, but You don't give the strength to wash away that sin. I won't kill you, you poor wretch, even though I feel inside me that I should; my heart quivers like a spider web in the wind. Oh, if I could only rip my heart out and shove it into your throat so that you'd die with two hearts and I without any." Morning. "Who's child is this?" "You know it's not yours, only mine." "We'll manage to feed this one too." "No, I don't want you to feed my child, I will feed it myself." She held the boy to herself with a steel grip and thought that he was going to strike them with an axe and wanted to make sure that she died first so that she wouldn't have to watch the quivering of the little hands. "Ah, so you're a sissy; you're not joking; it's easy for you to carry the disgrace of your wife." "You know that ever since I became a whore every bum in the village knocks on my windows at night; I'm no longer a wife for you; you don't need such a wife." "I'm leaving Kateryna for you; she's bigger, and she's yours; I'm going away with my child." From the chest she took out her dowry. For herself she took two shirts and a sheepskin. "The rest," she says, "is for Kateryna; she is very smart and a good girl and you'll manage with her very well." She walked down the street with her child. Her mother, father, sisters and all the neighbors shouted after her: "Don't go, don't go!" But she was almost running and when she got on top of the hill and saw the pillars of huge mountains and the bright rivers below, then she took a deep breath, gave her breast to her son and whispered: "My sin, my sin. I will atone you, and you will grow up for me strong and big, my son."