"You shudjer trap or else I'll ledja have it!"
So sometimes you have a good fight, even to the death, or you just break a few arms and legs, punch out an eye or something. Because it's your neighbor. There were a lot of killings on account of these poles at first, but then, as always, people got used to it, they'd just scrape off "Arbat" and carve something new: "Pakhom lives here," or cuss words. Cuss words are fun to carve. Never boring. There aren't too many of them, but they're all so cheery. Lively. If a fellow is in a serious mood, if he feels like crying or a weariness comes over him, a weakness-he'll never say or write any cuss words. But if he gets good and mad, or falls down laughing, or if he's taken by surprise all of a sudden -then they kind of come rolling out all on their own.
GLAGOL
So nikita ivanich went and put his poles all over the place, and Benedikt kept banging his head on them. Lumps would pop up. That was too bad. The girls would probably giggle and whisper. They might stick their tongues out at him. Or shout from behind the gates and tease him: "Lumpy Bumpy!" One of them might run ahead on the path, stop right in front of him, raise her skirts and show him her bare ass. It was so insulting you could cry. Others, hiding in the izbas, laughed and squealed like harpies: there would be a shrieking and screeching all around, and you couldn't see who was doing it even if you turned your head, ears, or what-have-you to all sides. From those izbas where all the racket was, the shriek would up and jump to other izbas in the back row, and from there it would go to the third row, and from there out around the whole settlement. That's the way it always goes, spreading like a plague, like a fire when the wind blows the flames from yard to yard, God forbid. You could go stick your head into any house, push the door open with your boot, and shout in a furious voice: "Whaddya squawking about like a bunch of sick goats? Whasso funny?"-and they couldn't tell you. They don't know.