‘Not young for sure, but well enough, except that she were a little, bald, crooked and with gimlet eyes, but her face were smooth as a loaf nibbled by mice for a week or two, a fine woman, good. I got plenty of grub – eggs scrambled with sausage, vodka, lard, other tasty bites, and she became frisky with me she were ready to get under the quilt…but in the night I scarpered…’
‘Why not marry? It’s always five morgen….’
‘And the dead husband’s sheepskin. What do I want with a woman? I’m long sick of the whole tribe! All they do is shout, yell, rush about, like magpies on the fence. You say one word, she comes back with twenty like she’s shaking a handful of haulm …You have reasoning, she sweeps, unthinking with her tongue. You speak as one human being to another, and she neither understands, nor ponders but yatters any old thing. They say the Lord Jesus gave women only half a soul and it must be true – and let the devil rule the other half…’
Władysław Reymont, “The Peasants”, 1909
