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THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS
THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS
PENGUIN BOOKS
THE DAY OF CHRISTMAS EVE ENDED, AND the night began, cold and clear. The stars and the crescent moon shone brightly upon the Christian world, helping all the good folks welcome the birth of our Savior. The cold grew sharper, yet the night was so quiet that one could hear the snow squeak under a traveler’s boots from half a mile away. Caroling hadn’t yet begun; village youths weren’t yet crowded outside the windows waiting for treats; the moon alone peeked through, as though inviting the girls to finish up their toilette and run out onto the clean, sparkling snow. Just then one of the chimneys began to belch clouds of black smoke, and along with them, straddling a broom, flew out a witch. If Sorochintsy’s property assessor happened to be passing by on a troika of horses in his resplendent winter attire, he surely would have noticed the witch, for that remarkable man noticed everything: every piglet, every bolt of cloth in a housewife’s trunk, each household article her husband left at the tavern on Sunday. But, unfortunately, the assessor wasn’t anywhere in the vicinity, and why would he be? He had his own district to mind.
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Excerpted from "The Night Before Christmas"
by .
Copyright © 2014 Nikolai Gogol.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
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