It lives in the Tartar's reeds or in ours.

Wherever it happens to go, there is its home! Whatever God gives it, that it eats! But our people say we have to lick red-hot plates in hell for that.

And I think it's all a fraud,' he added after a pause.
'What is a fraud ?' asked Olenin.
'Why, what the preachers say.

We had an army captain in Chervlena who was my kunak: a fine fellow just like me.

He was killed in Chechnya.
Well, he used to say that the preachers invent all that out of their own heads.