MASTER AND MAN
by Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy
1895
In the translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude
Distributed by the Tolstoy Library
I
It happened in the 'seventies in winter, on the day after St. Nicholas's
Day. There was a fete in the parish and the innkeeper, Vasili Andreevich
Brekhunov, a Second Guild merchant, being a church elder had to go to church,
and had also to entertain his relatives and friends at home.
But when the last of them had gone he at once began to prepare to drive
over to see a neighbouring proprietor about a grove which he had been bargaining
over for a long time. He was now in a hurry to start, lest buyers from the town
might forestall him in making a profitable purchase.
The youthful landowner was asking ten thousand rubles for the grove simply
because Vasili Andreevich was offering seven thousand. Seven thousand was,
however, only a third of its real value. Vasili Andreevich might perhaps have
got it down to his own price, for the woods were in his district and he had a
long-stand agreement with the other village dealers that no one should run up
the price in another's district, but he had now learnt that some timber dealers
from town meant to bid for the Goryachkin grove, and he resolved to go at once
and get the matter settled. So as soon as the feast was over, he took seven
hundred rubles from his strong box, added to them two thousand three hundred
rubles of church money he had in his keeping, so as to make up the sum to three
thousand; carefully counted the notes, and having put them into his pocketbook
made haste to start.
Nikita, the only one of Vasili Andreevich's labourers who was not drunk
that day, ran to harness the horse. Nikita, though an habitual drunkard, was not
drunk that day because since the last day before the fast, when he had drunk his
coat and leather boots, he had sworn off drink and had kept his vow for two
months, and was still keeping it despite the temptation of the vodka that had
been drunk everywhere during the first two days of the feast.
Nikita was a peasant of about fifty from a neighbouring village, "nat a
manager" as the peasants said of him, meaning that he was not the thrifty head
of a household but lived most of his time away from home as a labourer. He was
valued everywhere for his industry, dexterity, and strength at work, and still
more for his kindly and pleasant temper. But he never settled down anywhere for
long because about twice a year, or even oftener, he had a drinking bout, and
then besides spending all his clothes on drink he became turbulent and
quarrelsome. Vasili Andreevich himself had turned him away several times, but
had afterwards taken him back again -- valuing his honesty, his kindness to
animals, and especially his cheapness. Vasili Andreevich did not pay Nikita
the eighty rubles a year such a man was worth, but only about forty, which he
gave him haphazard, in small sums, and even that mostly not in cash but in goods
from his own shop and at high prices.
Nikita's wife Martha, who had once been a handsome vigorous woman, managed
the homestead with the help of her son and two daughters, and did not urge
Nikita to live at home: first because she had been living for some twenty years
already with a cooper, a peasant from another village who lodged in their house;
and secondly because though she managed her husband as she pleased when he was
sober, she feared him like fire when he was drunk. Once when he had got drunk
at home, Nikita, probably to make up for his submissiveness when sober, broke
open her box, took out her best clothes, snatched up an axe, and chopped all her
undergarments and dresses to bits. All the wages Nikita earned went to his
wife, and he raised no objection to that. So now, two days before the holiday,
Martha had been twice to see Vasili Andreevich and had got from him wheat flour,
tea, sugar, and a quart of vodka, the lot costing three rubles, and also five
rubles in cash, for which she thanked him as a special favour, though he owed
Nikita at least twenty rubles.
"What agreement did we ever draw up with you?" said Vasili Andreevich to
Nikita. "If you need anything, take it; you will work it off. I'm not like
others to keep you waiting, and making up accounts and reckoning fines. We deal
straight-forwardly. You serve me and I don't neglect you."
And when saying this Vasili Andreevich was honestly convinced that he was
Nikita's benefactor, and he knew how to put it so plausibly that all those who
depended on him for their money, beginning with Nikita, confirmed him in the
conviction that he was their benefactor and did
not overreach them.
"Yes, I understand, Vasili Andreevich. You know that I serve you and take
as much pains as I would for my own father. I understand very well!" Nikita
would reply. He was quite aware that Vasili Andreevich was cheating him, but at
the same time he felt that it was useless to try to clear up his accounts with
him or explain his side of the matter, and that as long as he had nowhere to go
he must accept what he could get.
Now, having heard his master's order to harness, he went as usual
cheerfully and willingly to the shed, stepping briskly and easily on his rather
turned-in feet; took down from a nail the heavy tasseled leather bridle, and
jingling the rings of the bit went to the closed stable where the horse he was
to harness was standing by himself.
"What, feeling lonely, feeling lonely, little silly?" said Nikita in answer
to the low whinny with which he was greeted by the good-tempered, medium-sized
bay stallion, with a rather slanting crupper, who stood alone in the shed. "Now
then, now then, there's time enough. Let me water you first," he went on,
speaking to the horse just as to someone who understood the words he was using
and having whisked the dusty, grooved back of the well-fed young stallion with
the skirt of his coat, he put a bridle on his handsome head, straightened his
ears and forelock, and having taken off his halter led him out to water.
Picking his way out of the dung-strewn stable, Mukhorty frisked, and making
play with his hind leg pretended that he meant to kick Nikita, who was running
at a trot beside him to the pump.
"Now then, now then, you rascal!" Nikita called out, well knowing how
carefully Mukhorty threw out his hind leg just to touch his greasy sheepskin
coat but not to strike him -- a trick Nikita much appreciated.
After a drink of the cold water the horse sighed, moving his strong wet
lips from the hairs of which transparent drops fell into the trough; then
standing still as if in thought, he suddenly gave a loud snort.
"If you don't want more, you needn't. But don't go asking for any later,"
said Nikita quite seriously and fully explaining his conduct to Mukhorty. Then
he ran back to the shed pulling the playful young horse, who wanted to gambol
all over the yard, by the rein.
There was no one else in the yard except a stranger, the cook's husband,
who had come for the holiday.
"Go and ask which sledge is to be harnessed -- the wide one or the small
one -- there's a good fellow!"
The cook's husband went into the house, which stood on an iron foundation
and was iron-roofed, and soon returned saying that the little one was to be
harnessed. By that time Nikita had put the collar and brass-studded bellyband
on Mukhorty and, carrying a light, painted shaftbow in one hand, was leading the
horse with the other up to two sledges that stood in the shed.
"All right, let it be the little one!" he said, backing the intelligent
horse, which all the time kept pretending to bite him, into the shafts, and with
the aid of the cook's husband he proceeded to harness. When everything was
nearly ready and only the reins had to be adjusted, Nikita sent the other man to
the shed for some straw and to the barn for a drugget.
"There, that's all right! Now, now, don't bristle up!" said Nikita,
pressing down into the sledge the freshly threshed oat straw the cook's husband
had brought. "And now let's spread the sacking like this, and the drugget over
it. There, like that it will be comfortable sitting," he went on, suiting the
action to the words and tucking the drugget all round over the straw to make a
seat.
"Thank you, dear man. Things always go quicker with two working at it!" he
added. And gathering up the leather reins fastened together by a brass ring,
Nikita took the driver's seat and started the impatient horse over the frozen
manure which lay in the yard, towards the gate.
"Uncle Nikita! I say, Uncle, Uncle!" a high-pitched voice shouted, and a
seven-year-old boy in a black sheepskin coat, new white felt boots, and a warm
cap, ran hurriedly out of the house into the yard. "Take me with you!" he
cried, fastening up his coat as he ran.
"All right, come along, darling!" said Nikita, and stopping the sledge he
picked up the master's pale thin little son, radiant with joy, and drove out
into the road.
It was past two o'clock and the day was windy, dull, and cold, with more
than twenty degrees Fahrenheit of frost. Half the sky was hidden by a lowering
dark cloud. In the yard it was quiet, but in the street the wind was felt more
keenly. The snow swept down from a neighbouring shed and whirled about in the
corner near the bath-house.
Hardly had Nikita driven out of the yard and turned the horse's head to the
house, before Vasili Andreevich emerged from the high porch in front of the
house with a cigarette in his mouth and wearing a cloth-covered sheepskin coat
tightly girdled low at his waist, and stepped onto the hard-trodden snow which
squeaked under the leather soles of his felt boots, and stopped. Taking a last
whiff of his cigarette he threw it down, stepped on it, and letting the smoke
escape through his moustache and looking askance at the horse that was coming
up, began to tuck in his sheepskin collar on both sides of his ruddy face,
clean-shaven except for the moustache, so that his breath should not moisten the
collar.
"See now! The young scamp is there already!" he exclaimed when he saw his
little son in the sledge. Vasili Andreevich was excited by the vodka he had
drunk with his visitors, and so he was even more pleased than usual with
everything that was his and all that he did. The sight of his son, whom he
always thought of as his heir, now gave him great satisfaction. He looked at
him, screwing up his eyes and showing his long teeth.
His wife -- pregnant, thin and pale, with her head and shoulders wrapped in
a shawl so that nothing of her face could be seen but her eyes -- stood behind
him in the vestibule to see him off.
"Now really, you ought to take Nikita with you," she said timidly, stepping
out from the doorway.
Vasili Andreevich did not answer. Her words evidently annoyed him and he
frowned angrily and spat.
"You have money on you," she continued in the same plaintive voice. "What
if the weather gets worse! Do take him, for goodness' sake!"
"Why? Don't I know the road that I must needs take a guide?" exclaimed
Vasili Andreevich, uttering every word very distinctly and compressing his lips
unnaturally, as he usually did when speaking to buyers and sellers.
"Really you ought to take him. I beg you in God's name!" his wife
repeated, wrapping her shawl more closely round her head.
"There, she sticks to it like a leech! ... where am I to take him?"
"I'm quite ready to go with you, Vasili Andreevich," said Nikita
cheerfully. "But they must feed the horses while I am away," he added, turning
to his master's wife.
"I'll look after them, Nikita dear. I'll tell Simon," replied the
mistress.
"Well, Vasili Andreevich, am I to come with you?" said Nikita, awaiting a
decision.
"It seems I must humour my old woman. But if you're coming you'd better
put on a warmer cloak," said Vasili Andreevich, smiling again as he winked at
Nikita's short sheepskin coat, which was torn under the arms and at the back,
was greasy and out of shape, frayed to a fringe round the skirt, and had endured
many things in its lifetime.
"Hey, dear man, come and hold the horse!" shouted Nikita to the cook's
husband, who was still in the yard.
"No, I will myself, I will myself!" shrieked the little boy, pulling his
hands, red with cold, out of his pickets, and seizing the cold leather reins.
"Only a moment, Father, Vasili Andreevich!" replied Nikita, and running
quickly with his in-turned toes in his felt boots with their soles patched with
felt, he hurried across the yard and into the workmen's hut.
"Arinushka! Get my coat down from the stove. I'm going with the master,"
he said, as he ran into the hut and took down his girdle from the nail on which
it hung.
The workmen's cook, who had had a sleep after dinner and was now getting
the samovar ready for her husband, turned cheerfully to Nikita, and infected by
his hurry began to move as quickly as he did, got down his miserable worn-out
cloth coat from the stove where it was drying, and began hurriedly shaking it
out and smoothing it down.
"There now, you'll have a chance of a holiday with your good man," said
Nikita, who from kindhearted politeness always said something to anyone he was
alone with.
Then, drawing his worn narrow girdle around him, he drew in his breath,
pulling in his lean stomach still more, and girdled himself as tightly as he
could over his sheepskin.
"There now," he said addressing himself no longer to the cook but the
girdle, as he tucked the ends in at the waist, "now you won't come undone!" And
working his shoulders up and down to free his arms, he put the coat over his
sheepskin, arched his back more strongly to ease his arms, poked himself under
the armpits, and took down his leather-covered mittens from the shelf. "Now
we're all right!"
"You ought to wrap your feet up, Nikita. Your boots are very bad."
Nikita stopped as if he had suddenly realized this. "Yes, I ought to. ...
But they'll do like this. It isn't far!" and he ran out into the yard.
"Won't you be cold, Nikita?" said the mistress as he came up to the sledge.
"Cold? No, I'm quite warm," answered Nikita as he pushed some straw up to
the forepart of the sledge so that it should cover his feet, and stowed away the
whip, which the good horse would not need, at the bottom of the sledge.
Vasili Andreevich, who was wearing two fur-lined coats one over the other,
was already in the sledge, his broad back filling nearly its whole rounded
width, and taking the reins he immediately touched the horse. Nikita jumped in
just as the sledge started, and seated himself in front on the left side, with
one leg hanging over the edge.
II
The good stallion took the sledge along at a brisk pace over the smooth-
frozen road through the village, the runners squeaking slightly as they went.
"Look at him hanging on there! Hand me the whip, Nikita!" shouted Vasili
Andreevich, evidently enjoying the sight of his "heir," who standing on the
runners was hanging on at the back of the sledge. "I'll give it you! Be off to
mamma, you dog!"
The boy jumped down. The horse increased his amble and, suddenly changing
foot, broke into a fast trot.
The Crosses, the village where Vasili Andreevich lived, consisted of six
houses. As soon as they had passed the blacksmith's hut, the last in the
village, they realized that the wind was much stronger than they had thought.
The road could hardly be seen. The tracks left by the sledge-runners were
immediately covered by snow and the road was only distinguished by the fact that
it was higher than the rest of the ground. There was a whirl of snow over the
fields and the line where sky and earth met could not been seen. The Telyatin
forest, usually clearly visible, now only loomed up occasionally and dimly
through the driving snowy dust. The wind came from the left, insistently
blowing over to one side the mane on Mukhorty's sleek neck and carrying aside
even his fluffy tail, which was tied in a simple knot. Nikita's wide coat-
collar, as he sat on the windy side, pressed close to his cheek and nose.
"This road doesn't give him a chance -- it's too snowy," said Vasili
Andreevich, who prided himself on his good horse. "I once drove to Pashutino
with him in half an hour."
"What?" asked Nikita, who could not hear on account of his collar.
"I say I once went to Pashutino in half an hour," shouted Vasili
Andreevich.
"It goes without saying that he's a good horse," replied Nikita.
They were silent for a while. But Vasili Andreevich wished to talk.
"Well, did you tell your wife not to give the cooper any vodka?" he began
in the same loud tone, quite convinced that Nikita must feel flattered to be
talking with so clever and important a person as himself, and he was so pleased
with his jest that it did not enter his head that the remark might be unpleasant
to Nikita.
The wind again prevented Nikita's hearing his master's words.
Vasili Andreevich repeated the jest about the cooper in his loud, clear
voice.
"That's their business, Vasili Andreevich. I don't pry into their affairs.
As long as she doesn't ill-treat our boy -- God be with them."
"That's so," said Vasili Andreevich. "Well, and will you be buying a horse
in spring?" he went on, changing the subject.
"Yes, I can't avoid it," answered Nikita, turning down his collar and
leaning back towards his master.
The conversation now became interesting to him and he did not wish to lose
a word.
"The lad's growing up. He must begin to plough for himself, but till now
we've always had to hire someone," he said.
"Well, why not have the lean-cruppered one. I won't charge much for it,"
shouted Vasili Andreevich, feeling animated, and consequently starting on his
favourite occupation -- that of horse- dealing -- which absorbed all his mental
powers.
"Or you might let me have fifteen rubles and I'll buy one at the horse-
market," said Nikita, who knew that the horse Vasili Andreevich wanted to sell
him would be dear at seven rubles, but that if he took it from him it would be
charged at twenty-five, and then he would be unable to draw any money for half a
year.
"It's a good horse. I think of your interest as of my own -- according to
conscience. Brekhunov isn't a man to wrong anyone. Let the loss be mine. I'm
not like others. Honestly!" he shouted in the voice in which he hypnotized his
customers and dealers. "It's a real good horse."
"Quite so!" said Nikita with a sigh, and convinced that there was nothing
more to listen to, he again released his collar, which immediately covered his
ear and face.
They drove on in silence for about half an hour. The wind blew sharply
onto Nikita's side and arm where his sheepskin was torn.
He huddled up and breathed into the collar which covered his mouth, and was
not wholly cold.
"What do you think -- shall we go through Karamyshevo or by the straight
road?" asked Vasili Andreevich.
The road through Karamyshevo was more frequented and was well marked with a
double row of high stakes. The straight road was nearer but little used and had
no stakes, or only poor ones covered with snow.
Nikita thought awhile.
"Though Karamyshevo is farther, it is better going," he said.
"But by the straight road, when once we get through the hollow by the
forest, it's good going -- sheltered," said Vasili Andreevich, who wished to go
the nearest way.
"Just a you please," said Nikita, and again let go of his collar.
Vasili Andreevich did as he had said, and having gone about half a verst
came to a tall oak stake which had a few dry leaves still dangling on it, and
there he turned to the left.
On turning they faced directly against the wind, and snow was beginning to
fall. Vasili Andreevich, who was driving, inflated his cheeks, blowing the
breath out through his moustache. Nikita dosed.
So they went on in silence for about ten minutes. Suddenly Vasili
Andreevich began saying something.
"Eh, what?" asked Nikita, opening his eyes.
Vasili Andreevich did not answer, but bent over, looking behind them and
then ahead of the horse. The sweat had curled Mukhorty's coat between his legs
and on his neck.
He went at a walk.
"What is it?" Nikita asked again.
"What is it? What is it?" Vasili Andreevich mimicked him angrily. "There
are no stakes to be seen! We must have got off the road!"
Well, pull up then, and I'll look for it," said Nikita, and jumping down
lightly from the sledge and taking the whip from under the straw, he went off to
the left from his own side of the sledge.
The snow was not deep that year, so that it was possible to walk anywhere,
but still in places it was knee-deep and got into Nikita's boots. He went about
feeling the ground with his feet and the whip, but could not find the road
anywhere.
"Well, how it is?" asked Vasili Andreevich when Nikita came back to the
sledge.
"There is no road this side. I must go to the other side and try there,"
said Nikita.
"There is something there in front. Go and have a look."
Nikita went to what had appeared dark, but found that it was earth which
the wind had blown from the bare fields of winter oats and had strewn over the
snow, colouring it. Having searched to the right also, he returned to the
sledge, brushed the snow from his coat, shook it out of his boots, and seated
himself once more.
"We must go to the right," he said decidedly. "The wind was blowing on our
left before, but now it is straight in my face. Drive to the right," he
repeated with decision.
Vasili Andreevich took his advice and turned to the right, but still there
was no road. They went on in that direction for some time. The wind was as
fierce as ever and it was snowing lightly.
"It seems, Vasili Andreevich, that we have gone quite astray," Nikita
suddenly remarked, as if it were a pleasant thing. "what is that?" he added,
pointing to some potato vines that showed up under the snow.
Vasili Andreevich stopped the perspiring horse, whose deep sides were
heaving heavily.
"What is it?"
"Why, we are on the Zakharov lands. See where we've got to!"
"Nonsense!" retorted Vasili Andreevich.
"It's not nonsense, Vasili Andreevich. It's the truth," replied Nikita.
"You can feel that the sledge is going over a potato-field, and there are the
heaps of vines which have been carted here. It's the Zakharov factory land."
"Dear me, how we have gone astray!" said Vasili Andreevich. "What are we
to do now?"
"We must go straight on, that's all. We shall come out somewhere -- if not
at Zakharova, then at the proprietor's farm," said Nikita.
Vasili Andreevich agreed, and drove as Nikita had indicated. So they went
on for a considerable time. At times they came onto bare fields and the sledge-
runners rattled over frozen lumps of earth. Sometimes they got onto a winter-
rye field, or a fallow field on which they could see stalks of wormwood, and
straws sticking up through the snow and swaying in the wind; sometimes they came
onto deep and even white snow, above which nothing was to be seen.
The snow was falling from above and sometimes rose from below. The horse
was evidently exhausted, his hair had all curled up from sweat and was covered
with hoar-frost, and he went at a walk. Suddenly he stumbled and sat down in a
ditch or water-course. Vasili Andreevich wanted to stop, but Nikita cried to
him:
"Why stop? We've got in and must get out. Hey, pet! Hey, darling! Gee
up, old fellow!" he shouted in a cheerful tone to the horse, jumping out of the
sledge and himself getting stuck in the ditch.
The horse gave a start and quickly climbed out onto the frozen bank. It
was evidently a ditch that had been dug there.
"Where are we now?" asked Vasili Andreevich.
"We'll soon find out!" Nikita replied. "Go on, we'll get somewhere."
"Why, this must be the Goryachkin forest!" said Vasili Andreevich, pointing
to something dark that appeared amid the snow in front of them.
"We'll see what forest it is when we get there," said Nikita.
He saw that beside the black thing they had noticed, dry, oblong willow-
leaves were fluttering, and so he knew it was not a forest but a settlement, but
he did not wish to say so. And in fact they had not gone twenty-five yards
beyond the ditch before something in front of them, evidently trees, showed up
black, and they heard a new and melancholy sound. Nikita had guessed right: it
was not a wood, but a row of tall willows with a few leaves still fluttering on
them hear and there. They had evidently been planted along the ditch round a
threshing-floor. Coming up to the willows, which moaned sadly in the wind, the
horse suddenly planted his forelegs above the height of the sledge, drew up his
hind legs also, pulling the sledge onto higher ground, and turned to the left,
no longer sinking up to his knees in snow. They were back on a road.
"Well, here we are, but heaven only knows where!" said Nikita.
The horse kept straight along the road through the drifted snow, and before
they had gone another hundred yards the straight line of the dark wattle wall of
a barn showed up black before them, its roof heavily covered with snow which
poured down from it. after passing the barn the road turned to the wind and
they drove into a snow-drift. But ahead of them was a lane with houses on
either side, so evidently the snow had been blown across the road and they had
to drive through the drift. And so in fact it was. Having driven through the
snow they came out into a street. At the end house of the village some frozen
clothes hanging on a line -- shirts, one red and one white, trousers, leg-
bands, and a petticoat -- fluttered wildly in the wind. The white shirt in
particular struggled desperately, waving its sleeves about.
"There now, either a lazy woman or a dead one has not taken her clothes
down before the holiday," remarked Nikita, looking at the fluttering shirts.
III
At the entrance to the street the wind still raged and the road was thickly
covered with snow, but well within the village it was calm, warm, and cheerful.
At one house a dog was barking, at another a woman, covering her head with her
coat, came running from somewhere and entered the door of a hut, stopping on the
threshold to have a look at the passing sledge. In the middle of the village
girls could be heard singing.
Here in the village there seemed to be less wind and snow, and the frost
was less keen.
"Why, this is Grishkino," said Vasili Andreevich.
"So it is," responded Nikita.
It really was Grishkino, which meant that they had gone too far to the left
and had traveled some six miles, not quite in the direction they aimed at, but
towards their destination for all that.
From Grishkino to Goryachkin was about another four miles.
In the middle of the village they almost ran into a tall man walking down
the middle of the street.
"Who are you?" shouted the man, stopping the horse, and recognizing Vasili
Andreevich he immediately took hold of the shaft, went along it hand over hand
till he reached the sledge, and placed himself on the driver's seat.
He was Isay, a peasant of Vasili Andreevich's acquaintance, and well known
as the principal horse-thief in the district.
"Ah, Vasili Andreevich! Where are you off to?" said Isay, enveloping
Nikita in the odour of the vodka he had drunk.
"We are going to Goryachkin."
"And look where you've got to! You should have gone through Molchanovka,"
"Should have, but didn't manage it," said Vasili Andreevich, holding in the
horse.
"That's a good horse," said Isay, with a shrewd glance at Mukhorty, and
with a practised hand he tightened the loosened know high in the horse's bushy
tail.
"Are you going to stay the night?"
"No, friend. I must get on."
"Your business must be pressing. And who is this? Ah, Nikita Stepanych!"
"Who else?" replied Nikita. "But I say, good friend, how are we to avoid
going astray again?"
"Where can you go astray here? Turn back straight down the street and then
when you come out keep straight on. Don't take to the left. You will come out
onto the high road, and then turn to the right."
"And where do we turn off the high road? As in summer, or the winter way?"
asked Nikita.
"The winter way. As soon as you turn off you'll see some bushes, and
opposite them there is a way-mark -- a large oak, one with branches -- and
that's the way."
Vasili Andreevich turned the horse back and drove through the outskirts of
the village.
"Why not stay the night?" Isay shouted after them.
But Vasili Andreevich did not answer and touched up the horse. Four miles
of good road, two of which lay through the forest, seemed easy to manage,
especially as the wind was apparently quieter and the snow had stopped.
Having driven along the trodden village street, darkened here and there by
fresh manure, past the yard where the clothes hung out and where the white shirt
had broken loose and was now attached only by one frozen sleeve, they again came
within sound of the weird moan of the willows, and again emerged on the open
fields. The storm, far from ceasing, seemed to have grown yet stronger. The
road was completely covered with drifting snow, and only the stakes showed that
they had not lost their way. But even the stakes ahead of them were not easy to
see, since the wind blew in their faces.
Vasili Andreevich screwed up his eyes, bent down his head, and looked out
for the way-marks, but trusted mainly to the horse's sagacity, letting it take
its own way. And the horse really did not lose the road but followed its
windings, turning how to the right and now to the left and sensing it under his
feet, so that though the snow fell thicker and the wind strengthened they still
continued to see way-marks now to the left and now to the right of them.
So they traveled on for about ten minutes, when suddenly, through the
slanting screen of wind-driven snow, something black showed up which moved in
front of the horse.
This was another sledge with fellow-travelers. Mukhorty over took them,
and struck his
hooves against the back of the sledge in front of him.
"Pass on ... hey there ... get in front!" cried voices from the sledge.
Vasili Andreevich swerved aside to pass the other sledge. In it sat three
men and a woman, evidently visitors returning from a feast. One peasant was
whacking the snow-covered croup of their little horse with a long switch, and
the other two sitting in front waved their arms and shouted something. The
woman, completely wrapped up and covered with snow, sat drowsing and bumping
at the back.
"Who are you?" shouted Vasili Andreevich.
"From A-a-a ... " was all that could be heard.
"I say, where are you from?"
"From A-a-a ...!" one of the peasants shouted with all his might, but still
it was impossible to make out who they were.
"Get along! Keep up!" shouted another, ceaselessly beating his horse with
the switch.
"So you're from a feast, it seems?"
"Go on, go on! Faster, Simon! Get in front! Faster!"
The wings of the sledges bumped against one another, almost got jammed but
managed to separate, and the peasants' sledge began to fall behind.
Their shaggy, big-bellied horse, all covered with snow, breathed heavily
under the low shaft-bow and, evidently using the last of its strength, vainly
endeavoured to escape from the switch, hobbling with its short legs through the
deep snow which it threw up under itself.
Its muzzle, young-looking, with the nether lip drawn up like that of a
fish, nostrils distendedand ears pressed back from fear, kept up for a few
seconds near Nikita's shoulder and then began to fall behind.
"Just see what liquor does!" said Nikita. "They've tired that little horse
to death. What pagans!"
For a few minutes they heard the panting of the tired little horse and the
drunken shouting of the peasants. Then the panting and the shouts died away,
and around them nothing could be heard but the whistling of the wind in their
ears and now and then the squeak of their sledge-runners over a windswept part
of the road.
This encounter cheered and enlivened Vasili Andreevich, and he drove on
more boldly without examining the way-marks, urging on the horse and trusting to
him.
Nikita had nothing to do, and as usual in such circumstances he drowsed,
making up for much sleepless time. Suddenly the horse stopped and Nikita nearly
fell forward onto his nose.
"You know we're off the track again!" said Vasili Andreevich.
"How's that?"
"Why there are no way-marks to be seen. We must have got off the road
again."
"Well, if we've lost the road we must find it," said Nikita curtly, and
getting out and stepping lightly on his pigeon-toed feet he started once more
going about on the snow.
He walked about for a long time, now disappearing and now reappearing, and
finally he came back.
"There is no road here. There may be farther on," he said, getting into
the sledge.
It was already growing dark. The snow-storm had not increased but had also
not subsided.
"If we could only hear those peasants!" said Vasili Andreevich.
"Well they haven't caught us up. We must have gone far astray. Or maybe
they have lost their way too."
"Where are we to go then?" asked Vasili Andreevich.
"Why, we must let the horse take its own way," said Nikita. "He will take
us right. Let me have the reins."
Vasili Andreevich gave him the reins, the more willingly because his hands
were beginning to feel frozen in his thick gloves.
Nikita took the reins, but only held them, trying not to shake them and
rejoicing at his favourite's sagacity. And indeed the clever horse, turning
first one ear and then the other now to one side and then to the other, began to
wheel round.
"The one thing he can't do is to talk," Nikita kept saying. "See what he
is doing! Go on, go on! You know best. that's it, that's it!"
The wind was now blowing from behind and it felt warmer.
"Yes, he's clever," Nikita continued, admiring the horse. "A Kirgiz horse
is strong but stupid. But this one -- just see what he's doing with his ears!
He doesn't need any telegraph. He can scent a mile off."
Before another half-hour had passed they saw something dark ahead of them -
- a wood or a village -- and stakes agaiin appeared to the right. They had
evidently come out onto the road.
"Why, that's Grishkino again!" Nikita suddenly exclaimed.
And indeed, there on their left was that same barn with the snow flying
from it, and farther on the same line with the frozen washing, shirts and
trousers, which still fluttered desperately in the wind.
Again they drove into the street and again it grew quiet, warm, and
cheerful, and again they could see the manure-stained street and hear voices and
songs and the barking of a dog. It was already so dark that there were lights
in some of the windows.
Half-way through the village Vasili Andreevich turned the horse towards a
large double-fronted brick house and stopped at the porch.
Nikita went to the lighted snow-covered window, in the rays of which flying
snow-flakes glittered, and knocked at it with his whip.
"Who's there?" a voice replied to his knock.
"From Kresty, the Brekhunovs, dear fellow," answered Nikita. "Just come
out for a minute."
someone moved from the window, and a minute or two later there was the
sound of the passage door as it came unstuck, then the latch of the outside door
clicked and a tall white-bearded peasant, with a sheepskin coat thrown over his
white holiday shirt, pushed his way out holding the door firmly against the
wind, followed by a lad in a red shirt and high leather boots.
"Is that you, Andreevich?" asked the old man.
"Yes, friend, we've gone astray," said Vasili Andreevich. "We wanted to
get to Goryachkin but found ourselves here. We went a second time but lost our
way again."
"Just see how you have gone astray!" said the old man. "Petrushka, go and
open the gate!" he added, turning to the lad in the red shirt.
"All right," said the lad in a cheerful voice, and ran back into the
passage.
"But we're not staying the night," said Vasili Andreevich.
"Where will you go in the night? You'd better stay!"
"I'd be glad to, but I must go on. It's business, and it can't be helped."
"Well, warm yourself at least. The samovar is just ready."
"Warm myself? Yes, I'll do that," said Vasili Andreevich. "It won't get
darker. The moon will rise and it will be lighter. Let's go in and warm
ourselves, Nikita."
"Well, why not? Let us warm ourselves," replied Nikita, who was stiff with
cold and anxious to warm his frozen limbs.
Vasili Andreevich went into the room with the old man, and Nikita drove
through the gate opened for him by Petrushka, by whose advice he backed the
horse under the penthouse. the ground was covered with manure and the tall bow
over the horse's head caught against the beam. The hens and the cock had
already settled to roost there, and clucked peevishly, clinging to the beam with
their claws. the disturbed sheep shied and rushed aside trampling the frozen
manure with their hooves. The dog yelped desperately with fright and anger and
then burst out barking like a puppy at the stranger.
Nikita talked to them all, excused himself to the fowls and assured them
that he would not disturb them again, rebuked the sheep for being frightened
without knowing why, and kept soothing the dog, while he tied up the horse.
"Now that will be all right," he said, knocking the snow off his clothes.
"Just hear how he barks!" he added, turning to the dog. "Be quiet, stupid! Be
quiet. You are only troubling yourself for nothing. we're not thieves, we're
friends...."
"And these are, it's said, the three domestic counsellors," remarked the
lad, and with his strong arms he pushed under the pent-roof the sledge that had
remained outside.
"Why counsellors?" asked Nikita.
"That's what is printed in Paulson. A thief creeps to a house -- the dog
barks, that means, 'Be on your guard!' The cock crows, that means, 'Get up!'
The cat licks herself -- that means, "A welcome guest is coming. Get ready to
receive him!'" said the lad with a smile.
Petrushka could read and write and knew Paulson's primer, his only book,
almost by heart, and he was fond of quoting sayings from it that he thought
suited the occasion, especially when he had had something to drink, as today.
"That's so," said Nikita.
"You must be chilled through and through," said Petrushka.
"Yes, I am rather," said Nikita, and they went across the yard and the
passage into the house.
IV
The household to which Vasili Andreevich had come was one of the richest in
the village. The family had five allotments, besides renting other land. They
had six horses, three cows, two calves, and some twenty sheep. There were
twenty-two members belonging to the homestead: four married sons, six
grandchildren (one of whom, Petrushka, was married), two great-grandchildren,
three orphans, and four daughters-in-law with their babies. It was one of the
few homesteads that remained still undivided, but even here the dull internal
work of disintegration which would inevitably lead to separation had already
begun, starting as usual among the women. Two sons were living in Moscow
as water-carriers, and one was in the army. At home now were the old man and
his wife, their second son who managed the homestead, the eldest who had come
from Moscow for the holiday, and all the women and children. Besides these
members of the family there was a visitor, a neighbour who was godfather to one
of the children.
Over the table in the room hung a lamp with a shade, which brightly lit up
the tea-things, a bottle of vodka, and some refreshments, besides illuminating
the brick walls, which in the far corner were hung with icons on both sides of
which were pictures. At the head of the table sat Vasili Andreevich in a black
sheepskin coat, sucking his frozen moustache and observing the room and the
people around him with his prominent hawk-like eyes. With him sat the old,
bald, white-bearded master of the house in a white homespun shirt, and next to
him the son home from Moscow for the holiday -- a man with a sturdy back and
powerful shoulders and clad in a thin print shirt -- then the second son, also
broad-shouldered, who acted as head of the house, and then a lean red-haired
peasant -- the neighbour.
Having had a drink of vodka and something to eat, they were about to take
tea, and the samovar standing on the floor beside the brick oven was already
humming. The children could be seen in the top bunks and on the top of the
oven. A woman sat on a lower bunk with a cradle beside her. The old housewife,
her face covered with wrinkles which wrinkled even her lips, was waiting on
Vasili Andreevich.
As Nikita entered the house she was offering her guest a small tumbler of
thick glass which she had just filled with vodka.
"Don't refuse Vasili Andreevich, you mustn't! Wish us a merry feast.
Drink it, dear!" she said.
the sight and smell of vodka, especially now when he was chilled through
and tired out, much disturbed Nikita's mind. He frowned, and having shaken the
snow off his cap and coat, stopped in front of the icons as if not seeing
anyone, crossed himself three times, and bowed to the icons. Then, turning to
the old master of the house and bowing first to him, then to all those at table,
then to the women who stood by the oven, and muttering: "A merry holiday!" he
beg taking off his outer things without looking at the table.
"Why, you're all covered with hoar-frost, old fellow!" said the eldest
brother, looking at Nikita's snow-covered face, eyes, and beard.
Nikita took off his coat, shook it again, hung it up beside the oven, and
came up to the table. He too was offered vodka. He went through a moment of
painful hesitation and nearly took up the glass and emptied the clear fragrant
liquid down his throat, but he glanced at Vasili Andreevich, remembered his oath
and the boots that he had sold for drink, recalled the cooper, remembered his
son for whom he had promised to buy a horse by spring, signed, and declined it.
"I don't drink, thank you kindly," he said frowning, and sat down on a
bench near the second window.
"How's that?" asked the eldest brother.
"I just don't drink," replied Nikita without lifting his eyes but looking
askance at his scanty beard and moustache and getting the icicles out of them.
"It's not good for him," said Vasili Andreevich, munching a cracknel after
emptying his glass.
"Well, then, have some tea," said the kindly old hostess. "You must be
chilled through, good soul. Why are you women dawdling so with the samovar?"
"It is ready," said one of the young women, and after flicking with her
apron the top of the samovar which was now boiling over, she carried it with an
effort to the table, raised it, and set it down with a thud.
Meanwhile Vasili Andreevich was telling how he had lost his way, how they
had come back twice to this same village, and how they had gone astray and had
met some drunken peasants. Their hosts were surprised, explained where and why
they had missed their way, said who the tipsy people they had met were, and told
them how they ought to go.
"A little child could find the way to Molchanovka from here. All you have
to do is to take the right turning from the high road. There's a bush you can
see just there. but you didn't even get that far!" said the neighbour.
"You's better stay the night. The women will make up beds for you," said
the old woman persuasively.
"You could go on in the morning and it would be pleasnter," said the old
man, confirming what his wife has said.
"I can't, friend. Business!" said Vasili Andreevich. "Lose an hour and
you can't catch it up
in a year," he added, remembering the grove and the dealers who might snatch
that deal from him. "We shall get there, shan't we?" he said, turning to
Nikita.
Nikita did not answer for some time, apparently still intent on thawing out
his beard and moustache.
"If only we don't go astray again," he replied gloomily.
He was gloomy because he passionately longed for some vodka, and the only
thing that could assuage that longing was tea and he had not yet been offered
any.
"But we have only to reach the turning and then we shan't go wrong. The
road will be through the forest the whole way," said Vasili Andreevich.
"It's just as you please, Vasili Andreevich. If we're to go, let us go,"
said Nikita, taking the glass of tea he was offered.
"We'll drink our tea and be off."
Nikita said nothing but only shook his head, and carefully pouring some tea
into his saucer began warming his hands, the fingers of which were always
swollen with hard work, over the steam. Then, biting off a tiny bit of sugar,
he bowed to his hosts, said, "Your health!" and drew in the steaming liquid.
"If somebody would see us as far as the turning," said Vasili Andreevich.
"Well, we can do that," said the eldest son. "Petrushka will harness and
go that far with you."
"Well, then, put in the horse, lad, and I shall be thankful to you for it."
"Oh, what for, dear man?" said the kindly old woman. "We are heartily glad
to do it."
"Petrushka, go and put in the mare," said the eldest brother.
"All right," replied Petruskha with a smile, and promptly snatching his cap
down from a nail he ran away to harness.
While the horse was being harnessed the talk returned to the point at which
it had stopped when Vasili Andreevich drove up to the window. The old man had
been complaining to his neighbour, the village elder, about his third son who
had not sent him anything for the holiday though he had sent a French shawl to
his wife.
"The young people are getting out of hand," said the old man.
"And how they do!" said the neighbour. "There's no managing them! They
know too much. There's Demochkin now, who broke his father's arm. It's all from
being too clever, it seems."
Nikita listened, watched their faces, and evidently would have liked to
share in the conversation, but he was too busy drinking his tea and only nodded
his head approvingly. He emptied one tumbler after another and grew warmer and
warmer and more and more comfortable. The talk continued on the same subject
for a long time -- the harmfulness of a household dividing up -- and it was
clearly not an abstract discussion but concerned the question of a separation in
that house; a separation demanded by the second son who sat there morosely
silent.
It was evidently a sore subject and absorbed them all, but out of propriety
they did not discuss their private affairs before strangers. At last, however,
the old man could not restrain himself, and with tears in his eyes declared that
he would not consent to a break-up of the family during his lifetime, that his
house was prospering, thank God, but that if they separated they would all have
to go begging.
"Just like the Matveevs," said the neighbour. "They used to have a proper
house, but now they've split up none of them has anything."
"And that is what you want to happen to us," said the old man, turning to
his son.
The son made no reply and there was an awkward pause. The silence was
broken by Petrushka, who having harnessed the horse had returned to the hut a
few minutes before this and had been listening all the time with a smile.
"There's a fable about that in Paulson," he said. "A father gave his sons
a broom to break. At first they could not break it, but when they took it twig
by twig they broke it easily. And it's the same here," and he gave a broad
smile. "I'm ready!" he added.
"If you're ready, let's go," said Vasili Andreevich. And as to separating,
don't you allow it, Grandfather. You've got everything together and you're the
master. Go to the Justice of the Peace. He'll say how things should be done."
"He carries on so, carries on so," the old man continued in a whining tone.
"There's no doing anything with him. It's as if the devil possessed him."
Nikita having meanwhile finished his fifth tumbler of tea laid it on its
side instead of turning it upside down, hoping to be offered a sixth glass. But
there was no more water in the samovar, so the hostess did not fill it up for
him. Besides, Vasili Andreevich was putting his things on, so there was nothing
for it but for Nikita to get up too, put back into the sugar-basin the lump of
sugar he had nibbled all round, wipe his perspiring face with the skirt of his
sheepskin, and go to put on his overcoat.
Having put it on he sighed deeply, thanked his hosts, said good-bye, and
went out of the warm bright room into the cold dark passage, through which the
wind was howling and where snow was blowing through the cracks of the shaking
door, and from there into the yard.
Petrushka stood in his sheepskin in the middle of the yard by his horse,
repeating some lines from Paulson's primer. He said with a smile:
"Storms with mist the sky conceal,
Snowy circles wheeling wild.
Now like savage beast 'twill howl,
and now 'tis wailing like a child."
Nikita nodded approvingly as he arranged the reins.
The old man, seeing Vasili Andreevich off, brought a lantern into the
passage to show him a light, but it was blown out at once. And even in the yard
it was evident that the snowstorm had become more violent.
"Well, this is weather!" thought Vasili Andreevich. "Perhaps we may not
get there after all. But there is nothing to be done. Business! Besides, we
have got ready, our host's horse has been harnessed, and we'll get there with
god's help!"
Their aged host also thought they ought not to go, but he had already tried
to persuade them to stay and had not been listened to.
"It's no use asking them again. Maybe my age makes me timid. They'll get
there all right, and at least we shall get to bed in good time and without any
fuss," he thought.
Petrushka did not think of danger. He knew the road and the whole district
so well, and the lines about "snowy circles wheeling wild" described what was
happening outside so aptly that it cheered him up. Nikita did not wish to go at
all, but he had been accustomed not to have his own way and to serve others for
so long that there was no one to hinder the departing travelers.
V
Vasili Andreevich went over to his sledge, found it with difficulty in the
darkness, climbed in and took the reins.
"Go on in front!" he cried.
Petruskha kneeling in his low sledge started his horse. Mukhorty, who had
been neighing for some time past, now scenting a mare ahead of him started after
her, and they drove out into the street. They drove again through the outskirts
of the village and along the same road, past the yard where the frozen linen had
hung (which, however, was no longer to be seen), past the same barn, which was
now snowed up almost to the roof and from which the snow was still endlessly
pouring, past the same dismally moaning, whistling, and swaying willows, and
again entered into the sea of blustering snow raging from above and below. The
wind was so strong that when it blew from the side and the travelers steered
against it, it tilted the sledges and turned the horses to one side. Petrushka
drove his good mare in front at a brisk trot and kept shouting lustily.
Mukhorty pressed after her.
After traveling so for about ten minutes, Petrushka turned round and
shouted something.
Neither Vasili Andreevich nor Nikita could hear anything because of the wind,
but they guessed that they had arrived at the turning. In fact Petrushka had
turned to the right, and now the wind that had blown from the side blew straight
into their faces, and through the snow they saw something dark on their right.
It was the bush at the turning.
"Well now, God speed you!"
"Thank you, Petrushka!"
"Storms with mis the sky conceal!" shouted Petrushka as he disappeared.
"There's a poet for you!" muttered Vasili Andreevich, pulling at the reins.
"Yes, a fine lad -- a true peasant," said Nikita.
They drove on.
Nikita wrapping his coat closely about him and pressing his head down so
close to his shoulders that his short beard covered his throat, sat silently,
trying not to lose the warmth he had obtained while drinking tea in the house.
Before him he saw the straight lines of the shafts which constantly deceived him
into thinking they were on a well traveled road, and the horse's swaying crupper
with his knotted tail blown to one side, and farther ahead the high shaft-bow
and the swaying head and neck of the horse with its waving mane. Now and then
he caught sight of a way-sign, so that he knew they were still on a road and
that there was nothing for him to be concerned about.
Vasili Andreevich drove on, leaving it to the horse to keep to the road.
But Mukhorty, though he had had a breathing-space in the village, ran
reluctantly, and seemed now and then to get off the road, so that Vasili
Andreevich had repeatedly to correct him.
"Here's a stake to the right, and another, and here's a third," Vasili
Andreevich counted, "and here in front is the forest," thought he, as he looked
at something dark in front of him. But what had seemed to him a forest was only
a bush. The passed the bush and drove on for another hundred yards but there
was no fourth way-mark nor any forest.
"We must reach the forest soon," thought Vasili Andreevich, and animated by
the vodka and the tea he did not stop but shook the reins, and the good obedient
horse responded, now ambling, now slowly trotting in the direction in which he
was sent, though he knew that he was not going the right way. Ten minutes went
by, but thee was still no forest.
"There now, we must be astray again," said Vasili Andreevich, pulling up.
Nikita silently got out of the sledge and holding his coat, which the wind
now wrapped closely about him and now almost tore off, started to feel about in
the snow, going first to one side and then to the other. Three or four times he
was completely lost to sight. At last he returned and took the reins from
Vasili Andreevich's hand.
"We must go to the right," he said sternly and peremptorily, as he turned
the horse.
"Well, if it's to the right, go to the right," said Vasili Andreevich,
yielding up the reins to Nikita and thrusting his freezing hands into his
sleeves.
Nikita did not reply.
"Now then, friend, stir yourself!" he shouted to the horse, but in spite of
the shake of the reins Mukhorty moved only at a walk.
The snow in places was up to his knees, and the sledge moved by fits and
starts with his every movement.
Nikita took the whip that hung over the front of the sledge and struck him
once. The good horse, unused to the ship, sprang forward and moved at a trot,
but immediately fell back into an amble and then to a walk. So they went on for
five minutes. It was dark and the snow whirled from above and rose from below,
so that sometimes the shaft-bow could not be seen. At times the sledge seemed
to stand still and the field to run backwards. Suddenly the horse stopped
abruptly, evidently aware of something close in front of him. Nikita again
sprang lightly out, throwing down the reins, and went ahead to see what had
brought him to a standstill, but hardly had he made a step in front of the horse
before his feet slipped and he went rolling down an incline.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" he said to himself as he fell, and he tried to stop his
fall but could not, and only stopped when his feet plunged into a thick layer of
snow that had drifted to the bottom of the hollow.
The fringe of a drift of snow that hung on the edge of the hollow,
disturbed by Nikita's fall, showered down on him and got inside his collar.
"What a thing to do!" said Nikita reproachfully, addressing the drift and
the hollow and shaking the snow from under his collar.
"Nikita! Hey, Nikita!" shouted Vasili Andreevich from above.
But Nikita did not reply. He was too occupied in shaking out the snow and
searching for the whip he had dropped when rolling down the incline. Having
found the whip he tried to climb straight up the bank where he had rolled down,
but it was impossible to do so: he kept rolling down again, and so he had to go
along at the foot of the hollow to find a way up. About seven yards farther on
he managed with difficulty to crawl up the incline on all fours, then he
followed the edge of the hollow back to the place where the horse should have
been. He could not see either horse or sledge, but as he walked against the
wind he heard Vasili Andreevich's shouts and Mukhorty's neighing, calling him.
"I'm coming! I'm coming! What are you cackling for?" he muttered.
Only when he had come up to the sledge could he make out the horse, and
Vasili Andreevich standing beside it and looking gigantic.
"Where the devil did you vanish to? We must go back, if only to
Grishkino," he began reproaching Nikita.
"Id be glad to get back, Vasili Andreevich, but which way are we to go?
there is such a ravine here that if we once get in it we shan't get out again.
I got stuck so fast there myself that I could hardly get out."
"What shall we do, then? We can't stay here! We must go somewhere!" said
Vasili Andreevich.
Nikita said nothing. He seated himself in the sledge with his back to the
wind, took off his boots, shook out the snow that had got into them, and taking
some straw from the bottom of the sledge, carefully plugged with it a hold in
his left boot.
Vasili Andreevich remained silent, as though now leaving everything to
Nikita. Having put his boots on again, Nikita drew his feet into the sledge,
put on his mittens and took up the reins, and directed the horse along the side
of the ravine. But they had not gone a hundred yards before the horse again
stopped short. The ravine was in front of him again.
Nikita again climbed out and again trudged about in the snow. He did this
for a considerable time and at last appeared from the opposite side to that from
which he had started.
"Vasili Andreevich, are you alive?" he called out.
"Here!" replied Vasili Andreevich. "Well, what now?"
"I can't make anything out. It's too dark. There's nothing but ravines.
We must drive against the wind again."
they set off once more. Again Nikita went stumbling through the snow,
again he fell in, again climbed out and trudged about, and at last quite out of
breath he sat down beside the sledge.
"Well, how now?" asked Vasili Andreevich.
"Why, I am quite worn out and the horse won't go."
"Then what's to be done?"
"Why, wait a minute."
Nikita went away again but soon returned.
"Follow me!" he said, going in front of the horse.
Vasili Andreevich no longer gave orders but implicitly did what Nikita told
him.
"Here, follow me!" Nikita shouted, stepping quickly to the right, and
seizing the rein he led Mukhorty down towards a snow-drift.
At first the horse held back, then he jerked forward, hoping to leap the
drift, but he had not the strength and sank into it up to his collar.
"Get out!" Nikita called to Vasili Andreevich who still sat in the sledge,
and taking hold of one shaft he moved the sledge closer to the horse. "It's
hard, brother!" he said to Mukhorty, "but it can't be helped. Make an effort!
Now, now, just a little one!" he shouted.
The horse gave a tug, then another, but failed to clear himself and settled
down again as if considering something.
"Now, brother, this won't do!" Nikita admonished him. "Now once more!"
Again Nikita tugged at the shaft on his side, and Vasili Andreevich did the
same on the other.
Mukhorty lifted his head and then gave a sudden jerk.
"That's it! That's it!" cried Nikita. "Don't be afraid -- you won't
sink!"
One plunge, another, and a third, and at last Mukhorty was out of the snow-
drift, and stood still, breathing heavily and shaking the snow off himself.
Nikita wished to lead him farther, but Vasili Andreevich, in his two fur coats,
was so out of breath that he could not walk farther and dropped into the sledge.
"Let me get my breath!" he said, unfastening the kerchief with which he had
tied the collar of his fur coat at the village.
"It's all right here. You lie there," said Nikita. "I will lead him
along." And with Vasili Andreevich in the sledge he led the horse by the bridle
about ten paces down and then up a slight rise, and stopped.
The place where Nikita had stopped was not completely in the hollow where
the snow sweeping down from the hillocks might have buried them altogether, but
still it was partly sheltered from the wind by the side of the ravine. There
were moments when the wind seemed to abate a little, but that did not last long
and as if to make up for that respite the storm swept down with tenfold vigour
and tore and whirled the more fiercely. Such a gust struck them at the moment
when Vasili Andreevich, having recovered his breath, got out of the sledge and
went up to Nikita to consult him as to what they should do. They both bent down
involuntarily and waited till the violence of the squall should have passed.
Mukhorty too laid back his ears and shook his head discontentedly. As soon as
the violence of the blast had abated a little, Nikita took off his mittens,
stuck them into his belt, breathed onto his hands, and began to undo the straps
of the shaft-bow.
"What's that you are doing there?" asked Vasili Andreevich.
"Unharnessing. What else is there to do? I have no strength left," said
Nikita as though excusing himself.
"Can't we drive somewhere?"
"No we can't. We shall only kill the horse. Why, the poor beast is not
himself now," said Nikita, pointing to the horse, which was standing
submissively waiting for what might come, with his steep wet sides heaving
heavily. "We shall have to stay the night here," he said, as if preparing to
spend the night at an inn, and he proceeded to unfasten the collar-straps. The
buckles came undone.
"But shan't we be frozen?" remarked Vasili Andreevich.
"Well, if we are we can't help it," said Nikita.
VI
Although Vasili Andreevich felt quite warm in his two fur coats, especially
after struggling in the snow-drift, a cold shiver ran down his back on realizing
that he must really spend the night where they were. To calm himself he sad
down in the sledge and got out his cigarettes and matches.
Nikita meanwhile unharnessed Mukhorty. He unstrapped the belly-band and
the back-band, took away the reins, loosened the collar-strap, and removed the
shaft-bow, talking to him all the time to encourage him.
"Now come out! come out!" he said, leading him clear of the shafts. "Now
we'll tie you up here and I'll put down some straw and take off your bridle.
When you've had a bite you'll feel more cheerful."
But Mukhorty was restless and evidently not comforted by Nikita's remarks.
He stepped now on one foot and now on another, and pressed close against the
sledge, turning his back to the wind and rubbing his head on Nikita's sleeve.
Then, as if not to pain Nikita by refusing his offer of the straw he put before
him, he hurriedly snatched a wisp out of the sledge, but immediately decided
that it was now no time to think of straw and threw it down, and the wind
instantly scattered it, carried it away and covered it with snow.
"Now we will set up a signal," said Nikita, and turning the front of the
sledge to the wind he tied the shafts together with a strap and set them up on
end in front of the sledge. "There now, when the snow covers us up, good folk
will see the shafts and dig us out," he said slapping his mittens together and
putting them on. "That's what the old folk taught us!"
Vasili Andreevich meanwhile had unfastened his coat, and holding its skirts
up for shelter, struck one sulphur match after another on the steel box. But
his hands trembled, and one match after another either did not kindle or was
blown out by the wind just as he was lifting it to the cigarette. At last a
match did burn up, and its flame lit up for a moment the fur of his coat, his
hand with the gold ring on the bent forefinger, and the snow-sprinkled oat-strap
that stuck out from under the drugget. The cigarette lighted, he eagerly took a
whiff or two, inhaled the smoke, let it out through his moustache, and would
have inhaled again, but the wind tore off the burning tobacco and whirled it
away as it had done the straw.
But even these few puffs had cheered him.
"If we must spend the night here, we must!" he said with decision. "Wait a
bit, I'll arrange a flag as well," he added, picking up the kerchief which he
had thrown down in the sledge after taking it from round his collar, and drawing
off his gloves and standing up on the front of the sledge and stretching himself
to reach the strap, he tied the kerchief to it with a tight knot.
The kerchief immediately began to flutter wildly, now clinging round the
shaft, now suddenly streaming out, stretching and flapping.
"Just see what a fine flat!" said Vasili Andreevich, admiring his handiwork
and letting himself down into the sledge. "We should be warmer together, but
there's not enough room for two," he added.
"I'll find a place," said Nikita. "But I must cover up the horse first --
he sweated so, poor thing. Let go!" he added, drawing the drugged from under
Vasili Andreevich.
Having got the drugged he folded it in two, and after taking off the
breechband and pad, covered Mukhorty with it.
"Anyhow it will be warmer, silly!" he said, putting back the breechband and
the pad on the horse over the drugget. Then having finished that business he
returned to the sledge, and addressing Vasili Andreevich, said: "You won't need
the sackcloth, will you? and let me have some straw."
And having taken these things from under Vasili Andreevich, Nikita went
behind the sledge, dug out a hole for himself in the snow, put straw into it,
wrapped his coat well round him, covered himself with the sackcloth, and pulling
his cap well down seated himself on the straw he had spread, and leant against
the wooden back of the sledge to shelter himself from the wind and the snow.
Vasili Andreevich shook his head disapprovingly at what Nikita was doing,
as in general he disapproved of the peasant's stupidity and lack of education,
and he began to settle himself down for the night.
He smoothed the remaining straw over the bottom of the sledge, putting more
if it under his side. Then he thrust his hands into his sleeves and settled
down, sheltering his head in the corner of the sledge from the wind in front.
He did not wish to sleep. He lay and thought: thought ever of the one
thing that constituted the sole aim, meaning, pleasure, and pride of his life -
of how much money he had made and might still make, of how much other people he
knew had made and possessed, and of how those others had made and were making
it, and how he, like them, might still make much more. The purchase of the
Goryachkin grove was a matter of immense importance to him. By that one deal he
hoped to make perhaps ten thousand rubles. He began mentally to reckon the
value of the wood he had inspected in autumn, and on five acres of which he had
counted all the trees.
"The oaks will go for sledge-runners. The undergrowth will take care of
itself, and there'll still be some thirty sazheens of firewood left on each
desyatin," said he to himself. "That means there will be at least two hundred
and twenty-five rubles' worth left on each desyatin. Fifty-six desyatins means
fifty-six hundred, and fifty-six hundreds, and fifty-six tens, and another
fifty-six tens, and then fifty-six fives...." He saw that it came out to more
than twelve thousand rubles, but could not reckon it up exactly without a
counting-frame. "But I won't give ten thousand, anyhow. I'll give about
eight thousand with a deduction on account of the glades. I'll grease the
surveyor's palm - give him a hundred rubles, or a hundred and fifty, and he'll
reckon that there are some five desyatins of glade to be deducted. And he'll
let it go for eight thousand. Three thousand cash down. That'll move him,
no fear!" he thought, and he pressed his pocket-book with his forearm.
"God only knows how we missed the turning. The forest ought to be there,
and a watchman's hut, and dogs barking. But the damned things don't bark when
they're wanted." He turned his collar down from his ear and listened, but as
before only the whistling of the wind could be heard, the flapping and
fluttering of the kerchief tied to the shafts, and the pelting of the snow
against the woodwork of the sledge. He again covered up his ear.
"If I had known I would have stayed the night. Well, no matter, we'll get
there to-morrow. It's only one day lost. And the others won't travel in such
weather." Then he remembered that on the 9th he had to receive payment from but
butcher for his oxen. "He meant to come himself, but he won't find me, and my
wife won't know how to receive the money. She doesn't know the right way of
doing things," he thought, recalling how at their party the day before she had
not known how to treat the police-officer who was their guest. "Of course she's
only a woman! Where could she have seen anything? In my father's time what was
our house like? Just a rich peasant's house: just an oatmill and an inn - that
was the whole property. But what have I done in these fifteen years? A shop,
two taverns, a flour-mill, a grain-store, two farms leased out, and a house with
an iron-roofed barn," he thought proudly. "Not as it was in Father's time! Who
is talked of in the whole district now? Brekhunov! And why? Because I stick
to business. I take trouble, not like others who lie abed or waste their time
on foolishness while I don't sleep of nights. Blizzard or no blizzard I start
out. So business gets done. They think money-making is a joke. No, take pains
and rack your brains! You get overtaken out of doors at night, like this, or
keep awake night after night till the thoughts whirling in your head make the
pillow turn," he meditated with pride. "They think people get on through luck.
After all, the Moronovs are now millionaires. And why? Take pains and God
gives. If only He grants me health!"
The thought that he might himself be a millionaire like Mironov, who began
with nothing, so excited Vasili Andreevich that he felt the need of talking to
somebody. But there was no one to talk
to.... If only he could have reached Goryachkin he would have talked to the
landlord and shown him a thing or two.
"Just see how it blows! It will snow us up so deep that we shan't be able
to get out in the morning!" he thought, listening to a gust of wind that blew
against the front of the sledge, bending it and lashing the snow against it. He
raised himself and looked round. All he could see through the whirling darkness
of Mukhorty's dark head, his back covered by the fluttering drugget, and his
thick knotted tail; while all round, in front and behind, was the same
fluctuating white darkness, sometimes seeming to get a little lighter and
sometimes growing denser still.
"A pity I listened to Nikita," he thought. "We ought to have driven on.
We should have come out somewhere, if only back to Grishkino and stayed the
night at Taras's. As it is we must sit here all night. But what was I thinking
about? Yes, that God gives to those who take trouble, but not to loafers, lie-
abeds, or fools. I must have a smoke!"
He sat down again, got out his cigarette-case, and stretched himself flat
on his stomach, screening the matches with the skirt of his coat. But the wind
found its way in and put out match after match. At last he got one to burn and
lit a cigarette. He was very glad that he had managed to do what he wanted, and
though the wind smoked more of the cigarette than he did, he still got two or
three puffs and felt more cheerful. He again leant back, wrapped himself up,
started reflecting and remembering, and suddenly and quite unexpectedly lost
consciousness and fell asleep.
Suddenly something seemed to give him a push and awoke him. Whether it was
Mukhorty who had pulled some straw from under him, or whether something within
him had startled him, at all events it woke him, and his heart began to beat
faster and faster so that the sledge seemed to tremble under him. He opened his
eyes. Everything around him was just as before. "It looks lighter," he
thought. "I expect it won't be long before dawn." But he at once remembered
that it was lighter because the moon had risen. He sat up and looked first at
the horse. Mukhorty still stood with his back to the wind, shivering all over.
One side of the drugget, which was completely covered with snow, had been blown
back, the breeching had slipped down and the snow-covered head with its waving
forelock and mane were now more visible. Vasili Andreevich leant over the back
of the sledge and looked behind. Nikita still sat in the same position in which
he had settled himself. The sacking with which he was covered, and his legs,
were thickly covered with snow.
"If only that peasant doesn't freeze to death! His clothes are so
wretched. I may be held responsible for him. What shiftless people they are -
such a want of education," thought Vasili Andreevich, and he felt like taking
the drugget off the horse and putting it over Nikita, but it would be very cold
to get out and move about and, moreover, the horse might freeze to death. "Why
did I bring him with me? It was all her stupidity!" he thought, recalling his
unloved wife, and he rolled over into his old place at the front part of the
sledge. "My uncle once spent a whole night like this," he reflected, and was
all right." But another case came at once to his mind. "But when they dug
Sebastian out he was dead - stiff like a frozen carcass. If I'd only stopped
the night in Grishkino all this would not have happened!"
And wrapping his coat carefully round him so that none of the warmth of the
fur should be wasted but should warm him all over, neck, knees, and feet, he
shut his eyes and tried to sleep again. But try as he would he could not get
drowsy, on the contrary he felt wide awake and animated. Again he began
counting his gains and the debts due to him, again he began bragging to himself
and feeling pleased with himself and his position, but all this was continually
disturbed by a stealthily approaching fear and by the unpleasant regret that he
had not remained in Grishkino.
"How different it would be to be lying warm on a bench!" He turned over
several times in his attempts to get into a more comfortable position more
sheltered from the wind, he wrapped up his legs closer, shut his eyes, and lay
still. But either his legs in their strong felt boots began to ache from being
bent in one position, or the wind blew in somewhere, and after lying still for a
short time he again began to recall the disturbing fact that he might now have
been lying quietly in the warm hut at Grishkino. He again sat up, turned about,
muffled himself up, and settled down once more.
Once he fancied that he heard a distant cock-crow. He felt glad, turned
down his coat-collar and listened with strained attention, but in spite of all
his efforts nothing could be heard but the wind whistling between the shafts,
the flapping of the kerchief, and the snow pelting against the frame of the
sledge.
Nikita sat just as he had done all the time, not moving and not even
answering Vasili Andreevich who had addressed him a couple of times. "He
doesn't care a bit - he's probably asleep!" thought Vasili Andreevich with
vexation, looking behind the sledge at Nikita who was covered with a thick layer
of snow.
Vasili Andreevich got up and lay down again some twenty times. It seemed
to him that the night would never end. "It must be getting near morning," he
thought, getting up and looking around. "Let's have a look at my watch. It
will be cold to unbutton, but if I only know that it's getting near morning I
shall at any rate feel more cheerful. We could begin harnessing."
In the depth of his heart Vasili Andreevich knew that it could not yet be
near morning, but he was growing more and more afraid, and wished both to get to
know and yet to deceive himself. He carefully undid the fastening of his
sheepskin, pushed in his hand, and felt about for a long time before he got to
his waistcoat. With great difficulty he managed to draw out his silver watch
with its enameled flower design, and tried to make out the time. He could not
see anything without a light. Again he went down on his knees and elbows as he
had done when he lighted a cigarette, got out his matches, and proceeded to
strike one. This time he went to work more carefully, and feeling with his
fingers for a match with the largest head and the greatest amount of phosphorus,
lit it at the first try. Bringing the face of the watch under the light he
could hardly believe his eyes.... It was only ten minutes past twelve. Almost
the whole night was still before him.
"Oh, how long the night is!" he thought, feeling a cold shudder run down
his back, and having fastened his fur coat again and wrapped himself up, he
snuggled into a corner of the sledge intending to wait patiently. Suddenly,
above the monotonous roar of the wind, he clearly distinguished another new and
living sound. It steadily strengthened, and having become quite clear
diminished just as gradually. Beyond all doubt it was a wolf, and he was so
near that the movement of his jaws as he changed his cry was brought down the
wind. Vasili Andreevich turned back the collar of his coat and listened
attentively. Mukhorty too strained to listen, moving his ears, and when the
wolf had ceased its howling he shifted from foot to foot and gave a warning
snort. After this Vasili Andreevich could not fall asleep again or even calm
himself. The more he tried to think of his accounts, his business, his
reputation, his worth and his wealth, the more and more was he mastered by fear,
and regrets that he had not stayed the night at Grishkino dominated and mingled
in all his thoughts.
"Devil take the forest! Things were all right without it, thank God. Ah,
if we had only put up for the night!" he said to himself. "They say it's
drunkards that freeze," he thought, "and I have had some drink." And observing
his sensations he noticed that he was beginning to shiver, without knowing
whether it was from cold or from fear. He tried to wrap himself up and lie down
as before, but could no longer do so. He could not stay in one position. He
wanted to get up, to do something to master the gathering fear that was rising
in him and against which he felt himself powerless. He again got out his
cigarettes and matches, but only three matches were left and they were bad ones.
The phosphorus rubbed off them all without lighting.
"The devil take you! Damned thing! Curse you!" he muttered, not knowing
whom or what he was cursing, and he flung away the crushed cigarette. He was
about to throw away the matchbox too, but checked the movement of his hand and
put the box in his pocket instead. He was seized with such unrest that he could
no longer remain in one spot. He climbed out of the sledge and standing with
his back to the wind began to shift his belt again, fastening it lower down in
the waist and tightening it.
"What's the use of lying and waiting for death? Better mount the horse and
get away!" The thought suddenly occurred to him. "The horse will move when he
has someone on his back. As for him," he thought of Nikita - "it's all the same
to him whether he lives or dies. What is his life worth? He won't grudge his
life, but I have something to live for, thank God."
He untied the horse, threw the reins over his neck and tried to mount, but
his coats and boots were so heavy that he failed. Then he clambered up in the
sledge and tried to mount from there, but the sledge tilted under his weight,
and he failed again. At last he drew Mukhorty nearer to the sledge, cautiously
balanced on one side of it, and managed to lie on his stomach across the horse's
back. After lying like that for a while he shifted forward once and again,
threw a leg over, and finally seated himself, supporting his feet on the loose
breeching straps. The shaking of the sledge awoke Nikita. He raised himself,
and it seemed to Vasili Andreevich that he said something.
"Listen to such fools as you! Am I to die like this for nothing?"
exclaimed Vasili Andreevich. And tucking the loose skirts of his fur coat in
under his knees, he turned the horse and rode away from the sledge in the
direction in which he thought the forest and the forester's hut must be.
VII
From the time he had covered himself with the sackcloth and seated himself
behind the sledge, Nikita had not stirred. Like all those who live in touch
with nature and have known want, he was patient and could wait for hours, even
days, without growing restless or irritable. He heard his master call him, but
did not answer because he did not want to move or talk. Though he still felt
some warmth from the tea he had drunk and from his energetic struggle when
clambering about in the snowdrift, he knew that this warmth would not last long
and that he had no strength left to warm himself again by moving about, for he
felt as tired as a horse when it stops and refuses to go further in spite of the
whip, and its master sees that it must be fed before it can work again. The
foot in the boot with a hole in it had already grown numb, and he could no
longer feel his big toe. Besides that, his whole body began to feel colder and
colder.
The thought that he might, and very probably would, die that night occurred
to him, but did not seem particularly unpleasant or dreadful. It did not seem
particularly unpleasant, because his whole life had been not a continual
holiday, but on the contrary an unceasing round of toil of which he was
beginning to feel weary. And it did not seem particularly dreadful, because
besides the masters he had served here, like Vasili Andreevich, he always felt
himself dependent on the Chief master, who had sent him into this life, and he
knew that when dying he would still be in that Master's power and would not be
ill-used by Him. "It seems a pity to give up what one is used to and accustomed
to. But there's nothing to be done, I shall get used to the new things."
"Sins?" he thought, and remembered his drunkenness, the money that had gone
on drink, how he had offended his wife, his cursing, his neglect of church and
of the fasts, and all the things the priest blamed him for at confession. "Of
course they are sins. But then, did I take them on of myself? That's evidently
how God made me. Well, and the sins? Where am I to escape to?"
So at first he thought of what might happen to him that night, and then did
not return such thoughts but gave himself up to whatever recollections came into
his head of themselves. Now he thought of Martha's arrival, of the drunkenness
among the workers and his own renunciation of drink, then of their present
journey and of Taras's house and the talk about the breaking-up of the family,
then of his own lad, and of Mukhorty now sheltered under the drugget, and then
of his master who made the sledge creak as he tossed about in it. "I expect
you're sorry yourself that you started out, dear man," he thought. "It would
seem hard to leave a life such as his! It's not like the likes of us."
Then all these recollections began to grow confused and got mixed in his
head, and he fell asleep.
But when Vasili Andreevich, getting on the horse, jerked the sledge,
against the back of which Nikita was leaning, and it shifted away and hit him in
the back with one of its runners, he awoke and had to change his position
whether he liked it or not. Straightening his legs with difficulty and shaking
the snow off them he got up, and an agonizing cold immediately penetrated his
whole body. On making out what was happening he called to Vasili Andreevich to
leave him the drugget which the horse no longer needed, so that he might wrap
himself in it.
But Vasili Andreevich did not stop, but disappeared amid the powdery snow.
Left alone, Nikita considered for a moment what he should do. He felt that
he had not the strength to go off in search of a house. It was no longer
possible to sit down in his old place - it was now all filled with snow. He
felt that he could not get warmer in the sledge either, for there was nothing to
cover himself with, and his coat and sheepskin no longer warmed him at all. He
felt as cold as though he had nothing on but a shirt. He became frightened.
"Lord, heavenly Father!" he muttered, and was comforted by the consciousness
that he was not alone but that there was One who heard him and would not abandon
him. He gave a deep sigh, and keeping the sackcloth over his head he got inside
the sledge and lay down in the place where his master had been.
But he could not get warm in the sledge either. At first he shivered all
over, then the shivering ceased and little by little he began to lose
consciousness. He did not know whether he was dying or falling asleep, but felt
equally prepared for the one as for the other.
VIII
Meanwhile Vasili Andreevich, with his feet and the ends of the reins, urged
the horse on in the direction in which for some reason he expected the forest
and forester's hut to be. The snow covered his eyes and the wind seemed intent
on stopping him, but bending forward and constantly lapping his coat over and
pushing it between himself and the cold harness pad which prevented him from
sitting properly, he kept urging the horse on. Mukhorty ambled on obediently
though with difficulty, in the direction in which he was driven.
Vasili Andreevich rode for about five minutes straight ahead, as he
thought, seeing nothing but the horse's head and the white waste, and hearing
only the whistle of the wind about the horse's ears and his coat collar.
Suddenly a dark patch showed up in front of him. His heart beat with joy,
and he rode towards the object, already seeing in imagination the walls of
village houses. But the dark patch was not stationary, it kept moving; and it
was not a village but some tall stalks of wormwood sticking up through the snow
on the boundary between two fields, and desperately tossing about under the
pressure of the wind which beat it all to one side and whistled through it. The
sight of that wormwood tormented by the pitiless wind made Vasili Andreevich
shudder, he knew not why, and he hurriedly began urging the horse on, not
noticing that when riding up to the wormwood he had quite changed his direction
and was now heading the opposite way, thought still imagining that he was riding
towards where the hut should be. But the horse kept making towards the right,
and Vasili Andreevich kept guiding it to the left.
Again something dark appeared in front of him. Again he rejoiced,
convinced that now it was certainly a village. But once more it was the same
boundary line overgrown with wormwood, once more the same wormwood desperately
tossed by the wind and carrying unreasoning terror to his heart. But its being
the same wormwood was not all, for beside it there was a horse's track partly
snowed over. Vasili Andreevich stopped, stooped down and looked carefully. It
was a horse-track only partially covered with snow, and could be none but his
own horse's hoofprints. He had evidently gone round in a small circle. "I
shall perish like that!" he thought, and not to give way to his terror he urged
on the horse still move, peering into the snowy darkness in which he saw only
flitting and fitful points of light. Once he thought he heard the barking of
dogs or the howling of wolves but the sounds were so faint and indistinct that
he did not know whether he heard them or merely imagined them, and he stopped
and began to listen intently.
Suddenly some terrible, deafening cry resounded near his ears, and
everything shivered and shook under him. He seized Mukhorty's neck, but that
too was shaking all over and the terrible cry grew still more frightful. For
some seconds Vasili Andreevich could not collect himself or understand what was
happening. It was only that Mukhorty, whether to encourage himself or to call
for help, had neighed loudly and resonantly. "Ugh, you wretch! How you
frightened me, damn you!" thought Vasili Andreevich. But even when he
understood the cause of his terror he could not shake it off.
"I must calm myself and think things over," he said to himself, but yet he
could not stop and continued to urge the horse on, without noticing that he was
now going with the wind instead of against it. His body, especially between his
legs where it touched the gad of the harness and was not covered by his
overcoats, was getting painfully cold, especially when the horse walked slowly.
His legs and arms trembled and his breathing came fast. He saw himself
perishing amid this dreadful snowy waste, and could see no means of escape.
Suddenly the horse under him tumbled into something and, sinking into a
snow-drift, began
to plunge and fell on his side. Vasili Andreevich jumped off, the horse
struggled to his feet, plunged
forward, gave one leap and another, neighed again, and dragging the drugget and
the breechband
after him, disappeared, leaving Vasili Andreevich alone on the snowdrift.
The latter pressed on after the horse, but the snow lay so deep and his
coats were so heavy that, sinking above his knees at each step, he stopped
breathless after taking not more than twenty steps. "The copse, the oxen, the
leasehold, the shop, the tavern, the house with the iron-roofed barn, and my
heir," thought he. "How can I leave all that? What does this mean? It cannot
be!" These thoughts flashed through his mind. Then he thought of the wormwood
tossed by the wind, which he had twice ridden past, and he was seized with such
terror that he did not believe in the reality of what was happening to him.
"Can this be a dream?" he thought, and tried to wake up but could not. It was
real snow that lashed his face and covered him and chilled his right hand from
which he had lost the glove, and this was a real desert in which he was now left
alone like that wormwood, awaiting an inevitable, speedy, and meaningless death.
"Queen of Heaven! Holy Father Nicholas, teacher of temperance!" he
thought, recalling the service of the day before and the holy icon with its
black face and gilt frame and the tapers which he sold to be set before that
icon which were almost immediately brought back to him scarcely burnt at all,
and which he put away in the storechest. He began to pray to that same Nicholas
the Wonder-Worker to save him, promising him a thanksgiving service and some
candles. But he clearly and indubitably realized that the icon, its frame, the
candles, the pries, and the thanksgiving service, though very important and
necessary in church, could do nothing for him here, and that there was and
could be no connection between those candles and services and his present
disastrous plight. "I must not despair," he thought. "I must follow the
horse's track before it is snowed under. He will lead me out, or I may even
catch him. Only I must not hurry, or I shall stick fast and be more lost than
ever."
But in spite of his resolution to go quietly, he rushed forward and even
ran, continually falling, getting up and falling again. The horse's track was
already hardly visible in places where the snow did not lie deep. "I am lost!"
thought Vasili Andreevich. I shall lose the track and not catch the horse."
But at the moment he saw something black. It was Mukhorty, and not only
Mukhorty, but the sledge with the shafts and the kerchief. Mukhorty, with the
sacking and the breechband twisted round to one side, was standing not in his
former place but nearer to the shafts, shaking his head which the reins he was
stepping on drew downwards. It turned out that Vasili Andreevich had sunk
in the same ravine Nikita had previously fallen into, and that Mukhorty was
bringing him back to the sledge and he had got off his back no more than fifty
paces from where the sledge was.
IX
Having stumbled back to the sledge Vasili Andreevich caught hold of it and
for a long time stood motionless, trying to calm himself and recover his breath.
Nikita was not in his former place, but something, already covered with snow,
was lying in the sledge and Vasili Andreevich concluded that this was Nikita.
His terror had now quite left him, and if he felt any fear it was lest the
dreadful terror should return that he had experienced when on the horse and
especially when he was left alone in the snowdrift. At any cost he had to avoid
that terror, and to keep it away he must do something -- occupy himself with
something. And the first thing he did was to turn his back to the wind and open
his fur coat. Then, as soon as he recovered his breath a little, he shook the
snow out of his boots and out of his left-hand glove (the right-hand glove was
hopelessly lost and by this time probably lying somewhere under a dozen inches
of snow); then as was his custom when going out of his shop to buy grain from
the peasants, he pulled his girdle low down and tightened it and prepared for
action. The first thing that occurred to him was to free Mukhorty's leg from
the rein. Having done that, and tethered him to the iron cramp at the front of
the sledge where he had been before, he was going round the horse's quarters to
put the breechband and pad straight and cover him with the cloth, but at that
moment he noticed that something was moving in the sledge and Nikita's head rose
up out of the snow that covered it. Nikita, who was half frozen, rose with
great difficulty and sat up, moving his hand before his nose in a strange manner
just as if he were driving away flies. He waved his hand and said something,
and seemed to Vasili Andreevich to be calling him. Vasili Andreevich left the
cloth unadjusted and went up to the sledge.
"What is it?" he asked. "What are you saying?"
"I'm dy...ing , that's what," said Nikita brokenly and with difficulty.
"Give what is owing to me to my lad, or to my wife, no matter."
"Why, are you really frozen?" asked Vasili Andreevich.
"I feel it's my death. Forgive me for Christ's sake..." said Nikita in a
tearful voice, continuing to wave his hand before his face as if driving away
flies.
Vasili Andreevich stood silent and motionless for half a minute. Then
suddenly, with the same resolution with which he used to strike hands when
making a good purchase, he took a stop back and turning up his sleeves began
raking the snow off Nikita and out of the sledge. Having done this he hurriedly
undid his girdle, opened out his fur coat, and having pushed Nikita down, law
down on top of him, covering him not only with his fur coat but with the whole
of his body, which glowed with warmth. After pushing the skirts of his coat
between Nikita and the sides of the sledge, and holding down its hem with his
knees, Vasili Andreevich lay like that face down, with his head pressed against
the front of the sledge. Here he no longer heard the horse's movements or the
whistling of the wind, but only Nikita's breathing. At first and for a long time
Nikita lay motionless, then he sighed deeply and moved.
"There, and you say you are dying! Lie still and get warm, that's our
way..." began Vasili Andreevich.
But to his great surprise he could say no more, for tears came to his eyes
and his lower jaw began to quiver rapidly. He stopped speaking and only gulped
down the rising in his throat. "Seems I was badly frightened and have gone
quite weak," he thought. But this weakness was not only not unpleasant, but
gave him a peculiar joy such as he had never felt before.
"That's our way!" he said to himself, experiencing a strange and solemn
tenderness. He lay like that for a long time, wiping his eyes on the fur of his
coat and tucking under his knew the right skirt, which the wind kept turning up.
But he longed so passionately to tell somebody of his joyful condition that
he said: "Nikita!"
"It's comfortable, warm!" came a voice from beneath.
"There, you see, friend, I was going to perish. And you would have been
frozen, and I should have..."
But again his jaws began to quiver and his eyes to fill with tears, and he
could say no more.
"Well, never mind," he thought. "I know about myself what I know."
He remained silent and lay like that for a long time.
Nikita kept him warm from below and his fur coats from above. Only his
hands, with which he kept his coat skirts down around Nikita's sides, and his
legs which the wind kept uncovering, began to freeze, especially his right hand
which had no glove. But he did not think of his legs or of his hands but only
of how to warm the peasant who was lying under him. He looked out several
times at Mukhorty and could see that his back was uncovered and the drugget and
breeching lying on the snow, and that he ought to get up and cover him, but he
could not bring himself to leave Nikita and disturb even for a moment the joyous
condition he was in. He no longer felt any kind of terror.
"No fear, we shan't lose him this time!" he said to himself, referring to
his getting the peasant warm with the same boastfulness with which he spoke of
his buying and selling.
Vasili Andreevich lay in that way for one hour, another, and a third, but
he was unconscious of the passage of time. At first impressions of the snow-
storm, the sledge-shafts, and the horse with the shaft-bow shaking before his
eyes, kept passing through his mind, then he remembered Nikita lying under him,
then recollections of the festival, his wife, the police-officer, and the box of
candles, began to mingle with these; then again Nikita, this time lying under
that box, then the peasants, customers and traders, and the white walls of his
house with its iron roof with Nikita lying underneath, presented themselves to
his imagination. After wards all these impressions blended into one
nothingness. As the colours of the rainbow unite into one white light, so all
these different impressions mingled into one, and he fell asleep.
For a long time he slept without dreaming, but just before dawn the visions
recommenced. It seemed to him that he was standing by the box of tapers and
that Tikhon's wife was asking for a five-kopek taper for the Church fete. He
wished to take one out and give it to her, but his hands would not lift, being
held tight in his pockets. He wanted to walk round the box but his feet would
not move and his new clean galoshes had grown to the stone floor, and he could
neither lift them nor get his feet out of the galoshes. Then the taper-box was
no longer a box but a bed, and suddenly Vasili Andreevich saw himself lying in
his bed at home. He was lying in his bed and could not get up. Yet it was
necessary for him to get up because Ivan Matveich, the police-officer, would
soon call for him and he had to go with him - either to bargain for the forest
or to put Mukhorty's breeching straight.
He asked his wife: "Nikolaevna, hasn't he come yet?" "No, he hasn't," she
replied. He heard someone drive up to the front steps. "It must be him," "No,
he's gone past." "Nikolaevna! I say Nikolaevna, isn't he here yet?" "No." He
was still lying on his bed and could not get up, but was always waiting. And
this waiting was uncanny and yet joyful. Then suddenly his joy was completed.
He whom he was expecting came; not Ivan Matveich the police-officer, but someone
else - yet it was he whom he had been waiting for. He came and called him; and
it was he who had called him and told him to lie down on Nikita. And Vasili
Andreevich was glad that one had come for him.
"I'm coming!" he cried joyfully, and that cry awoke him, but woke him up
not at all the same person he had been when he fell asleep. He tried to get up
but could not, tried to move his arm and could not, to move his leg and also
could not, to turn his head and could not. He was surprised but not at all
disturbed by this. He understood that this was death, and was not at all
disturbed by that either. He remembered that Nikita was lying under him and
that he had got warm and was alive, and it seemed to him that he was Nikita and
Nikita was he, and that his life was not in himself but in Nikita. He strained
his ears and heard Nikita breathing and even slightly snoring. "Nikita is
alive, so I too am alive!" he said to himself triumphantly.
And he remembered his money, his shop, his house, the buying and selling,
and Mironov's millions, and it was hard for him to understand why that man,
called Vasili Brekhunov, had troubled himself with all those things with which
he had been troubled.
"Well, it was because he did not know what the real thing was," he thought,
concerning that Vasili Brekhunov. "He did not know, but now I know and know for
sure. Now I know!" And again he heard the voice of the one who had called him
before. "I'm coming! Coming!" he responded gladly, and his whole being was
filled with joyful emotion. He felt himself free and that nothing could hold
him back any longer.
After that Vasili Andreevich neither saw, heard, nor felt anything more in
this world.
All around the snow still eddied. The same whirlwinds of snow circled
about, covering the dead Vasili Andreevich's fur coat, the shivering Mukhorty,
the sledge, now scarcely to be seen, and Nikita lying at the bottom of it, kept
warm beneath his dead master.
X
Nikita awoke before daybreak. He was aroused by the cold that had begun to
creep down his back. He had dreamt that he was coming from the mill with a load
of his master's flour and when crossing the stream had missed the bridge and let
the cart get stuck. And he saw that he had crawled under the cart and was
trying to lift it by arching his back. But strange to say the cart did not
move, it stuck to his back and he could neither lift it nor get out from under
it. It was crushing the whole of his loins. And how cold it felt! Evidently
he must crawl out. "Have done!" he exclaimed to whoever was pressing the cart
down on him. "Take out the sacks!" But the cart pressed down colder and
colder, and then he heard a strange knocking, awoke completely, and remembered
everything. The cold cart was his dead and frozen master lying upon him. And
the knock was produced by Mukhorty, who had twice struck the sledge with his
hoof.
"Andreevich! Eh, Andreevich!" Nikita called cautiously, beginning to
realize the truth, and straightening his back. But Vasili Andreevich did not
answer and his stomach and legs were stiff and cold and heavy like iron weights.
"He must had died! May the Kingdom of Heaven be his!" thought Nikita.
He turned his head, dug with his hand through the snow about him and opened
his eyes. It was daylight; the wind was whistling as before between the shafts,
and the snow was falling in the same way, except that it was no longer driving
against the frame of the sledge but silently covered both sledge and horse
deeper and deeper, and neither the horse's movements nor his breathing were
any longer to be heard.
"He must have frozen too," thought Nikita of Mukhorty, and indeed those
hoof knocks against the sledge, which had awakened Nikita, were the last efforts
the already numbed Mukhorty had made to keep on his feet before dying.
"O Lord God, it seems Thou are calling me too!" said Nikita. "Thy Holy
Will be done. But it's uncanny.... Still, a man can't die twice and must die
once. If only it would come soon!"
And he again drew in his head, closed his eyes, and became unconscious,
fully convinced that now he was certainly and finally dying.
It was not till noon that day that peasants dug Vasili Andreevich and
Nikita out of the snow with their shovels, not more than seventy yards from the
road and less than half a mile from the village.
The snow had hidden the sledge, but the shafts and the kerchief tied to
them were still visible. Mukhorty, buried up to his belly in snow, with the
breeching and drugget hanging down, stood all white, his dead head pressed
against his frozen throat; icicles hung from his nostrils, his eyes were
covered with hoar-frost as though filled with tears, and he had grown so thin in
that one night that he was nothing but skin and bone.
Vasili Andreevich was stiff as a frozen carcass, and when they rolled him
off Nikita his legs remained apart and his arms stretched out as they had been.
His bulging hawk eyes were frozen, and his open mouth under his clipped
moustache was full of snow. But Nikita though chilled through was still alive.
When he had been brought to, he felt sure that he was already dead and that what
was taking place with him was no longer happening in this world but in the next.
When he heard the peasants shouting as they dug him out and rolled the frozen
body of Vasili Andreevich from off him, he was at first surprised that in the
other world peasants should be shouting in the same old way and had the same
kind of body, and then when he realized that he was still in this world he was
sorry rather than glad, especially when he found that the toes on both his feet
were frozen.
Nikita lay in hospital for two months. They cut off three of his toes, but
the others recovered so that he was still able to work and went on living for
another twenty years, first as a farm-labourer, then in his old age as a
watchman. He died at home as he had wished, only this year, under the icons
with a lighted taper in his hands. Before he died he asked his wife's
forgiveness and forgave her for the cooper. He also took leave of his son and
grandchildren, and died sincerely glad that he was relieving his son and
daughter-in-law of the burden of having to feed him, and that he was now really
passing from this life of which he was weary into that other life which every
year and every hour grew clearer and more desirable to him. Whether he is
better or worse off there where he awoke after his death, whether he was
disappointed or found there what he expected, we shall all soon learn.
(
geocities.com/cmcarpenter28)