Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 1

I

HAVING drunk tea towards seven o’clock in the evening, I left a station, the name of which I have forgotten, though I know it was somewhere in the district of the Don Cossack Army near Novocherkássk. It was already dark when, having wrapped myself in my fur coat, I took my seat under the apron beside Alëshka in the sledge. Near the post-station it seemed mild and calm. Though no snow was falling, not a star was visible overhead and the sky looked extremely low and black, in contrast to the clean snowy plain spread out before us.

We had hardly passed the dark shapes of the windmills, one of which clumsily turned its large sails, and left the settlement behind us, when I noticed that the road had become heavier and deeper in snow, that the wind blew more fiercely on the left, tossing the horses’ tails and manes sideways, and that it kept carrying away the snow stirred up by the hoofs and sledge-runners. The sound of the bell began to die down, and through some opening in my sleeve a stream of cold air forced its way behind my back, and I recalled the station-master’s advice, not to start for fear of going astray all night and being frozen on the road.

‘Shan’t we be losing our way?’ I said to the driver, and not receiving an answer I put my question more definitely: ‘I say, driver, do you think we shall reach the next station without losing our way?’

‘God only knows,’ he answered without turning his head. ‘Just see how the snow drifts along the ground! Nothing of the road to be seen. O Lord!’

‘Yes, but you’d better tell me whether you expect to get me to the next station or not?’ I insisted. ‘Shall we get there?’

‘We ought to manage it,’ said the driver, and went on to add something the wind prevented my hearing.

I did not feel inclined to turn back, but the idea of straying about all night in the frost and snow storm on the perfectly bare steppe which made up that part of the Don Army district was also far from pleasant. Moreover, though I could not see my driver very well in the dark, I did not much like the look of him and he did not inspire me with confidence. He sat exactly in the middle of his seat with his legs in, instead of to one side; he was too big, he spoke lazily, his cap, not like those usually worn by drivers, was too big and flopped from side to side; besides, he did not urge the horses on properly, but held the reins in both hands, like a footman who had taken the coachman’s place on the box. But my chief reason for not believing in him was because he had a kerchief tied over his ears. In a word he did not please me, and that solemn stooping back of his looming in front of me seemed to bode no good.

‘In my opinion we’d better turn back,’ remarked Alëshka. ‘There’s no sense in getting lost!’

‘O Lord! Just look how the snow is driving, nothing of the road to be seen, and it’s closing my eyes right up … O Lord!’ muttered the driver.

We had not been going a quarter of an hour before the driver handed the reins to Alëshka, clumsily liberated his legs, and making the snow crunch with his big boots went to look for the track.

‘What is it? Where are you going? Are we off the road?’ I asked. But the driver did not answer and, turning his face away from the wind which was beating into his eyes, walked away from the sledge.

‘Well, is there a road?’ I asked when he returned.

‘No, there’s nothing,’ he answered with sudden impatience and irritation, as if I were to blame that he had strayed off the track, and having slowly thrust his big legs again into the front of the sledge he began arranging the reins with his frozen gloves.

‘What are we to do?’ I asked when we had started again.

‘What are we to do? We’ll drive where God sends us.’

And though we were quite evidently not following a road, we went on at the same slow trot, now through dry snow five inches deep, and now over brittle crusts of frozen snow.

Though it was cold, the snow on my fur collar melted very quickly; the drift along the ground grew worse and worse, and a few dry flakes began to fall from above.

It was plain that we were going heaven knows where, for having driven for another quarter of an hour we had not seen a single verst-post.

‘Well, what do you think?’ I asked the driver again. ‘Shall we get to the station?’

‘What station? We shall get back, if we give the horses their head they will take us there, but hardly to the next station – we might just perish.’

‘Well then, let us go back,’ I said. ‘And really …’

‘Then I am to turn back?’ said the driver.

‘Yes, yes, turn back!’

The driver gave the horses the reins. They began to run faster, and though I did not notice that we were turning, I felt the wind blowing from a different quarter, and we soon saw the windmills appearing through the snow. The driver cheered up and began to talk.

‘The other day the return sledges from the other station spent the whole night in a snow storm among haystacks and did not get in till the morning. Lucky that they got among those stacks, else they’d have all been frozen, it was so cold. As it is one of them had his feet frozen, and was at death’s door for three weeks with them.’

‘But it’s not cold now, and it seems calmer,’ I said. ‘We might perhaps go on?’

‘It’s warm enough, that’s true, but the snow is drifting. Now that we have it at our back it seems easier, but the snow is driving strongly. I might go if it were on courier-duty or something of the kind, but not of my own free will. It’s no joke if a passenger gets frozen. How am I to answer for your honour afterwards?’

II

JUST then we heard behind us the bells of several tróykas¹ which were rapidly overtaking us.

‘It’s the courier’s bell,’ said my driver. ‘There’s no other like it in the district.’

And in fact the bell of the front tróyka, the sound of which was already clearly borne to us by the wind, was exceedingly fine: clear, sonorous, deep, and slightly quivering. As I learnt afterwards it had been chosen by men who made a hobby of tróyka bells. There were three bells – a large one in the middle with what is called a crimson tone, and two small ones tuned to a third and a fifth. The ringing of that third and of the quivering fifth echoing in the air was extraordinarily effective and strangely beautiful in that silent and deserted steppe.

‘The post is going,’ said my driver, when the first of the three tróykas overtook us. ‘How is the road? Is it usable?’ he called out to the driver of the last sledge, but the man only shouted at his horses and did not reply.

The sound of the bells was quickly lost in the wind as soon as the post sledges had passed us.

I suppose my driver felt ashamed.

‘Well, let us try it again, sir!’ he said to me. ‘Others have made their way through and their tracks will be fresh.’

I agreed, and we turned again, facing the wind and struggling forward through the deep snow. I kept my eyes on the side of the road so as not to lose the track left by the tróykas. For some two versts the track was plainly visible, then only a slight unevenness where the runners had gone, and soon I was quite unable to tell whether it was a track or only a layer of driven snow. My eyes were dimmed by looking at the snow monotonously receding under the runners, and I began to look ahead. We saw the third verst-post, but were quite unable to find a fourth. As before we drove against the wind, and with the wind, and to the right and to the left, and at last we came to such a pass that the driver said we must have turned off to the right, I said we had gone to the left, and Alëshka was sure we had turned right back. Again we stopped several times and the driver disengaged his big feet and climbed out to look for the road, but all in vain. I too once went to see whether something I caught a glimpse of was not the road, but hardly had I taken some six steps with difficulty against the wind before I became convinced that similar layers of snow lay everywhere, and that I had seen the road only in my imagination. When I could no longer see the sledge I cried out: ‘Driver! Alëshka!’ but I felt how the wind caught my voice straight from my mouth and bore it instantly to a distance. I went to where the sledge had been – but it was not there; I went to the right, it was not there either. I am ashamed to remember in what a loud, piercing, and even rather despairing voice I again shouted ‘Driver!’ and there he was within two steps of me. His black figure, with the little whip and enormous cap pushed to one side, suddenly loomed up before me. He led me to the sledge.

‘Thank the Lord, it’s still warm,’ he said, ‘if the frost seized us it would be terrible … O Lord!’

‘Give the horses their head: let them take us back,’ I said, having seated myself in the sledge. ‘They will take us back, driver, eh?’

‘They ought to.’

He let go of the reins, struck the harness-pad of the middle horse with the whip, and we again moved on somewhere. We had travelled on for about half an hour when suddenly ahead of us we recognized the connoisseur’s bell and the other two, but this time they were coming towards us. There were the same three tróykas, which having delivered the mail were now returning to the station with relay horses attached. The courier’s tróyka with its big horses and musical bells ran quickly in front, with one driver on the driver’s seat shouting vigorously. Two drivers were sitting in the middle of each of the empty sledges that followed, and one could hear their loud and merry voices. One of them was smoking a pipe, and the spark that flared up in the wind showed part of his face.

Looking at them I felt ashamed that I had been afraid to go on, and my driver probably shared the same feeling, for we both said at once: ‘Let us follow them!’

III

MY driver, before the third tróyka had passed, began turning so clumsily that his shafts hit the horses attached behind it. They all three shied, broke their strap, and galloped aside.

‘You cross-eyed devil! Can’t you see when you’re turning into someone, you devil?’ one of the drivers seated in the last sledge – a short old man, as far as I could judge by his voice and figure – began to curse in hoarse, quivering tones, and quickly jumping out of the sledge he ran after the horses, still continuing his coarse and harsh abuse of my driver.

But the horses did not stop. The driver followed them, and in a moment both he and they were lost in the white mist of driving snow.

‘Vasí-i-li! Bring along the dun horse! I can’t catch them without,’ came his voice.

One of the other drivers, a very tall man, got out of his sledge, silently unfastened his three horses, climbed on one of them by its breeching, and disappeared at a clumsy gallop in the direction of the first driver.

We and the other two tróykas started after the courier’s tróyka, which with its bell ringing went along at full trot though there was no road.

‘Catch them! Not likely!’ said my driver of the one who had run after the horses. ‘If a horse won’t come to other horses, that shows it’s bewitched and will take you somewhere you’ll never return from.’

From the time he began following the others my driver seemed more cheerful and talkative, a fact of which I naturally took advantage, as I did not yet feel sleepy. I began asking where he came from, and why, and who he was, and it turned out that like myself he was from Túla province, a serf from Kirpíchnoe village, that they were short of land there and had had bad harvests since the cholera year. He was one of two brothers in the family, the third having gone as a soldier; that they had not enough grain to last till Christmas, and had to live on outside earnings. His youngest brother was head of the house, being married, while he himself was a widower. An artél² of drivers came from their village to these parts every year. Though he had not driven before, he had taken the job to help his brother, and lived, thank God, quite well, earning a hundred and twenty assignation rubles a year, of which he sent a hundred home to the family; and that life would be quite good ‘if only the couriers were not such beasts, and the people hereabouts not so abusive’.

‘Now why did that driver scold me so? O Lord! Did I set his horses loose on purpose? Do I mean harm to anybody? And why did he go galloping after them? They’d have come back of themselves, and now he’ll only tire out the horses and get lost himself,’ said the God-fearing peasant.

‘And what is that black thing there?’ I asked, noticing several dark objects in front of us.

‘Why, a train of carts. That’s pleasant driving!’ he went on, when we had come abreast of the huge mat-covered wagons on wheels, following one another. ‘Look, you can’t see a single soul – they’re all asleep. Wise horses know of themselves … you can’t make them miss the way anyhow … We’ve driven that way on contract work ourselves,’ he added, ‘so we know.’

It really was strange to see those huge wagons covered with snow from their matted tops to their very wheels, and moving along all alone. Only in the front corner of the wagon did the matting, covered two inches thick with snow, lift a bit and a cap appear for a moment from under it as our bells tinkled past. The large piebald horse, stretching its neck and straining its back, went evenly along the completely snow-hidden road, monotonously shaking its shaggy head under the whitened harness-bow, and pricking one snow-covered ear when we overtook it.

When we had gone on for another half-hour the driver again turned to me.

‘What d’you think, sir, are we going right?’

‘I don’t know,’ I answered.

‘At first the wind came that way, and now we are going right under the wind. No, we are not going where we ought, we are going astray again,’ he said quite calmly.

One saw that, though he was inclined to be a coward, yet ‘death itself is pleasant in company’ as the saying is, and he had become quite tranquil now that there were several of us and he no longer had to lead and be responsible. He made remarks on the blunders of the driver in front with the greatest coolness, as if it were none of his business. And in fact I noticed that we sometimes saw the front tróyka on the left and sometimes on the right; it even seemed to me that we were going round in a very small circle. However, that might be an optical illusion, like the impression that the leading tróyka was sometimes going uphill, and then along a slope, or downhill, whereas I knew that the steppe was perfectly level.

After we had gone on again for some time, I saw a long way off, on the very horizon as it seemed to me, a long, dark, moving stripe; and a moment later it became clear that it was the same train of wagons we had passed before. The snow was still covering their creaking wheels, some of which did not even turn any longer, the men were still asleep as before under the matting, and the piebald horse in front blew out its nostrils as before, sniffed at the road, and pricked its ears.

‘There, we’ve turned and turned and come back to the same wagons!’ exclaimed my driver in a dissatisfied voice. ‘The courier’s horses are good ones, that’s why he’s driving them so recklessly, but ours will stop altogether if we go on like this all night.’

He cleared his throat.

‘Let us turn back, sir, before we get into trouble!’

‘No! Why? We shall get somewhere.’

‘Where shall we get to? We shall spend the night in the steppe. How it is blowing! … O Lord!’

Though I was surprised that the driver of the front tróyka, having evidently lost the road and the direction, went on at a fast trot without looking for the road, and cheerfully shouting, I did not want to lag behind them.

‘Follow them!’ I said.

My driver obeyed, whipping up his horses more reluctantly than before, and did not turn to talk to me any more.

IV

THE storm grew more and more violent, and the snow fell dry and fine. I thought it was beginning to freeze: my cheeks and nose felt colder than before, and streams of cold air made their way more frequently under my fur coat, so that I had to wrap it closer around me. Sometimes the sledge bumped on the bare ice-glazed ground from which the wind had swept the snow. As I had already travelled more than five hundred versts without stopping anywhere for the night, I involuntarily kept closing my eyes and dozing off, although I was much interested to know how our wandering would end. Once when I opened my eyes I was struck for a moment by what seemed to me a bright light falling on the white plain; the horizon had widened considerably, the lowering black sky had suddenly vanished, and on all sides slanting white streaks of falling snow could be seen. The outlines of the front tróykas were more distinct, and as I looked up it seemed for a minute as though the clouds had dispersed, and that only the falling snow veiled the sky. While I was dozing the moon had risen and was casting its cold bright light through the tenuous clouds and the falling snow. The only things I saw clearly were my sledge, the horses, my driver, and the three tróykas in front of us: the courier’s sledge in which a driver still sat, as before, driving at a fast trot; the second, in which two drivers having laid down the reins and made a shelter for themselves out of a coat sat smoking their pipes all the time, as could be seen by the sparks that flew from them; and the third in which no one was visible, as probably the driver was lying asleep in the body of the sledge. The driver of the first tróyka, however, at the time I awoke, occasionally stopped his horses and sought for the road. As soon as we stopped the howling of the wind sounded louder and the vast quantity of snow borne through the air became more apparent. In the snow-shrouded moonlight I could see the driver’s short figure probing the snow in front of him with the handle of his whip, moving backwards and forwards in the white dimness, again returning to his sledge and jumping sideways onto his seat, and again amid the monotonous whistling of the wind I heard his dexterous, resonant cries urging on the horses, and the ringing of the bells. Whenever the driver of the front tróyka got out to search for some sign of a road or haystacks, there came from the second tróyka the bold, self-confident voice of one of the drivers shouting to him:

‘Hey, Ignéshka, you’ve borne quite to the left! Bear to the right, facing the wind!’ Or: ‘What are you twisting about for, quite uselessly? Follow the snow, see how the drifts lie, and we’ll come out just right.’ Or: ‘Take to the right, to the right, mate! See, there’s something black – it must be a post.’ Or: ‘What are you straying about for? Unhitch the piebald and let him run in front, he’ll lead you right out onto the road. That would be better.’

But the man who was giving this advice not only did not unhitch one of his own side-horses or get out to look for the road, but did not show his nose from under his sheltering coat, and when Ignáshka, the leader, shouted in reply to one of his counsels that he should take on the lead himself if he knew which way to go, the advice-giver replied that if he were driving the courier’s tróyka he would take the lead and take us right onto the road. ‘But our horses won’t take the lead in a snow storm!’ he shouted – ‘they’re not that kind of horses!’

‘Then don’t bother me!’ Ignáshka replied, whistling cheerfully to his horses.

The other driver in the second sledge did not speak to Ignáshka at all, and in general took no part in the matter, though he was not asleep, as I concluded from his pipe being always alight, and because, whenever we stopped, I heard the even and continuous sound of his voice. He was telling a folk tale. Only once, when Ignáshka stopped for the sixth or seventh time, he apparently grew vexed at being interrupted during the pleasure of his drive, and shouted to him:

‘Hullo, why have you stopped again? Just look, he wants to find the road! He’s been told there’s a snow storm! The surveyor himself couldn’t find the road now. You should drive on as long as the horses will go, and then maybe we shan’t freeze to death … Go on, do!’

‘I daresay! Didn’t a postillion freeze to death last year?’ my driver remarked.

The driver of the third sledge did not wake up all the time. Once when we had stopped the advice-giver shouted:

‘Philip! Hullo, Philip!’ and receiving no reply remarked: ‘Hasn’t he frozen, perhaps?… Go and have a look, Ignáshka.’

Ignáshka, who found time for everything, walked up to the sledge and began to shake the sleeping man.

‘Just see what half a bottle of vodka has done! Talk about freezing!’ he said, shaking him.

The sleeper grunted something and cursed.

‘He’s alive, all right,’ said Ignáshka, and ran forward again. We drove on, and so fast that the little off-side sorrel of my tróyka, which my driver continually touched with the whip near his tail, now and then broke into an awkward little gallop.

V

IT was I think already near midnight when the little old man and Vasíli, who had gone after the runaway horses, rode up to us. They had managed to catch the horses and to find and overtake us; but how they had managed to do this in the thick blinding snow storm amid the bare steppe will always remain a mystery to me. The old man, swinging his elbows and legs, was riding the shaft-horse at a trot (the two side-horses were attached to its collar: one dare not let horses loose in a snow storm). When he came abreast of us he again began to scold my driver.

‘Look at the cross-eyed devil, really …’

‘Eh, Uncle Mítrich!’ the folk-tale teller in the second sledge called out: ‘Are you alive? Get in here with us.’

But the old man did not reply and continued his abuse. When he thought he had said enough he rode up to the second sledge.

‘Have you caught them all?’ someone in it asked.

‘What do you think?’

His small figure threw itself forward on the back of the trotting horse, then jumped down on the snow, and without stopping he ran after the sledge and tumbled in, his legs sticking out over its side. The tall Vasíli silently took his old place in the front sledge beside Ignáshka, and the two began to look for the road together.

‘How the old man nags … Lord God!’ muttered my driver.

For a long time after that we drove on without stopping over the white waste, in the cold, pellucid, and quivering light of the snow storm. I would open my eyes and the same clumsy snow-covered cap and back would be jolting before me: the same low shaft-bow, under which, between the taut leather reins and always at the same distance from me, the head of our shaft-horse kept bobbing with its black mane blown to one side by the wind. Looking across its back I could see the same little piebald off-horse on the right, with its tail tied up short, and the swingletree which sometimes knocked against the front of the sledge. I would look down – there was the same scurrying snow through which our runners were cutting, and which the wind resolutely bore away to one side. In front, always at the same distance away, glided the first tróyka, while to right and left everything glimmered white and dim. Vainly did my eye look for any new object: neither post, nor haystack, nor fence was to be seen. Everywhere all was white and fluctuating: now the horizon seemed immeasurably distant, now it closed in on all sides to within two paces of me; suddenly a high white wall would seem to rise up on the right and run beside the sledge, then it would suddenly vanish and rise again in front, only to glide on farther and farther away and again disappear. When I looked up it would seem lighter for a moment, as if I might see the stars through the haze, but the stars would run away higher and higher from my sight and only the snow would be visible, falling past my eyes onto my face and the collar of my fur cloak. The sky everywhere remained equally light, equally white, monotonous, colourless, and constantly shifting. The wind seemed to be changing: now it blew in my face and the snow plastered my eyes, now it blew from one side and annoyingly tossed the fur-collar of my cloak against my head and mockingly flapped my face with it; now it howled through some opening. I heard the soft incessant crunching of the hoofs and the runners on the snow, and the clang of the bells dying down when we drove through deep drifts. Only now and then, when we drove against the snow and glided over bare frozen ground, did Ignáshka’s energetic whistling and the sonorous sound of the bell with its accompanying bare fifth reach me, and give sudden relief to the dismal character of the desert; and then again the bells would sound monotonous, playing always with insufferable precision the same tune, which I involuntarily imagined I was hearing. One of my feet began to feel the frost, and when I turned to wrap myself up better, the snow that had settled on my collar and cap shifted down my neck and made me shiver, but on the whole I still felt warm in my fur cloak, and drowsiness overcame me.

VI

RECOLLECTIONS and pictures of the distant past superseded one another with increasing rapidity in my imagination.

‘That advice-giver who is always calling out from the second sledge – what sort of fellow can he be?’ I thought. ‘Probably red-haired, thick-set, and with short legs, like Theodore Filípych, our old butler.’ And I saw the staircase of our big house and five domestic serfs with heavy steps bringing a piano from the wing on slings made of towels, and Theodore Filípych with the sleeves of his nankeen coat turned up, holding one of the pedals, running forward, lifting a latch, pulling here at the slings, pushing there, crawling between people’s legs, getting into everybody’s way, and shouting incessantly in an anxious voice:

‘Lean it against yourselves, you there in front, you in front! That’s the way – the tail end up, up, up! Turn into the door! That’s the way.’

‘Just let us do it, Theodore Filípych! We can manage it alone,’ timidly remarks the gardener, pressed against the banisters quite red with straining, and with great effort holding up one corner of the grand piano.

But Theodore Filípych will not be quiet.

‘What does it mean?’ I reflect. ‘Does he think he is useful or necessary for the work in hand, or is he simply glad God has given him this self-confident persuasive eloquence, and enjoys dispensing it? That must be it.’ And then somehow I see the lake, and tired domestic serfs up to their knees in the water dragging a fishing-net, and again Theodore Filípych with a watering-pot, shouting at everybody as he runs up and down on the bank, now and then approaching the brink to empty out some turbid water and to take up fresh, while holding back the golden carp with his hand. But now it is a July noon. I am going somewhere over the freshly-mown grass in the garden, under the burning, vertical rays of the sun; I am still very young, and I feel a lack of something and a desire to fill that lack. I go to my favourite place by the lake, between the briar-rose bed and the birch avenue, and lie down to sleep. I remember the feeling with which, lying down, I looked across between the prickly red stems of the rose trees at the dark, dry, crumbly earth, and at the bright blue mirror of the lake. It is a feeling of naïve self-satisfaction and melancholy. Everything around me is beautiful, and that beauty affects me so powerfully that it seems to me that I myself am good, and the one thing that vexes me is that nobody is there to admire me. It is hot. I try to sleep so as to console myself, but the flies, the unendurable flies, give me no peace here either: they gather round me and, with a kind of dull persistence, hard as cherry-stones, jump from my forehead onto my hands. A bee buzzes not far from me in the blazing sunlight; yellow-winged butterflies fly from one blade of grass to another as if exhausted by the heat. I look up: it hurts my eyes – the sun glitters too brightly through the light foliage of the curly birch tree whose branches sway softly high above me, and it seems hotter than ever. I cover my face with my handkerchief: it feels stifling, and the flies seem to stick to my hands which begin to perspire. In the very centre of the wild rose bush sparrows begin to bustle about. One of them hops to the ground about two feet from me, energetically pretends to peck at the ground a couple of times, flies back into the bush, rustling the twigs, and chirping merrily flies away. Another also hops down, jerks his little tail, looks about him, chirps, and flies off quick as an arrow after the first one. From the lake comes a sound of beetles³ beating the wet linen, and the sound re-echoes and is borne down along the lake. Sounds of laughter and the voices and splashing of bathers are heard. A gust of wind rustles the crowns of the birch trees, still far from me, now it comes nearer and I hear it stir the grass, and now the leaves of the wild roses begin to flutter, pressed against their stems, and at last a fresh stream of air reaches me, lifting a corner of my handkerchief and tickling my moist face. Through the gap where the corner of the kerchief was lifted a fly comes in and flutters with fright close to my moist mouth. A dry twig presses against my back. No, I can’t lie still: I had better go and have a bathe. But just then, close to the rose bush, I hear hurried steps and a woman’s frightened voice:

‘O God! How could such a thing happen! And none of the men are here!’

‘What is it? What is it?’ running out into the sunshine I ask a woman serf who hurries past me groaning. She only looks round, waves her arms, and runs on. But here comes seventy-year-old Matrëna hurrying to the lake, holding down with one hand the kerchief which is slipping off her head, and hopping and dragging one of her feet in its worsted stocking. Two little girls come running up hand in hand, and a ten-year-old boy, wearing his father’s coat and clutching the homespun skirt of one of the girls, keeps close behind them.

‘What has happened?’ I ask them.

‘A peasant is drowning.’

‘Where?’

‘In the lake.’

‘Who is he? One of ours?’

‘No, a stranger.’

Iván the coachman, dragging his heavy boots through the newly-mown grass, and the fat clerk Jacob, all out of breath, run to the pond and I after them.

I remember the feeling which said to me: ‘There you are, plunge in and pull out the peasant and save him, and everyone will admire you,’ which was exactly what I wanted.

‘Where is he? Where?’ I ask the throng of domestic serfs gathered on the bank.

‘Out there, in the very deepest part near the other bank, almost at the boathouse,’ says the washerwoman, hanging the wet linen on her wooden yoke. ‘I look, and see him dive; he just comes up and is gone, then comes up again and calls out: “I’m drowning, help!” and goes down again, and nothing but bubbles come up. Then I see that the man is drowning, so I give a yell: “Folk! A peasant’s drowning!” ’

And lifting the yoke to her shoulder the laundress waddles sideways along the path away from the lake.

‘Oh gracious, what a business!’ says Jacob Ivánov, the office clerk, in a despairing tone. ‘What a bother there’ll be with the rural court. We’ll never get through with it!’

A peasant carrying a scythe pushes his way through the throng of women, children, and old men who have gathered on the farther shore, and hanging his scythe on the branch of a willow slowly begins to take off his boots.

‘Where? Where did he go down?’ I keep asking, wishing to rush there and do something extraordinary.

But they point to the smooth surface of the lake which is occasionally rippled by the passing breeze. I do not understand how he came to drown; the water is just as smooth, lovely, and calm above him, shining golden in the midday sun, and it seems that I can do nothing and can astonish no one, especially as I am a very poor swimmer and the peasant is already pulling his shirt over his head and ready to plunge in. Everybody looks at him hopefully and with bated breath, but after going in up to his shoulders he slowly turns back and puts his shirt on again – he cannot swim.

People still come running and the thing grows and grows; the women cling to one another, but nobody does anything to help. Those who have just come give advice, and sigh, and their faces express fear and despair; but of those who have been there awhile, some, tired with standing, sit down on the grass, while some go away. Old Matrëna asks her daughter whether she shut the oven door, and the boy who is wearing his father’s coat diligently throws small stones into the water.

But now Theodore Filípych’s dog Tresórka, barking and looking back in perplexity, comes running down the hill, and then Theodore himself, running downhill and shouting, appears from behind the briar-rose bushes:

‘What are you standing there for?’ he cries, taking off his coat as he runs, ‘A man drowning, and they stand there! … Get me a rope!’

Everybody looks at Theodore Filípych with hope and fear as, leaning his hand on the shoulder of an obliging domestic serf, he prises off his right boot with the toe of the left.

‘Over there, where the people are, a little to the right of the willow, Theodore Filípych, just there!’ someone says to him.

‘I know,’ he replies, and knitting his brows, in response, no doubt, to the signs of shame among the crowd of women, he pulls off his shirt, removes the cross from his neck and hands it to the gardener’s boy who stands obsequiously before him, and then, stepping energetically over the cut grass, approaches the lake.

Tresórka, perplexed by the quickness of his master’s movements, has stopped near the crowd and with a smack of his lips eats a few blades of grass near the bank, then looks at his master intently and with a joyful yelp suddenly plunges with him into the water. For a moment nothing can be seen but foam and spray, which even reaches to us; but now Theodore Filípych, gracefully swinging his arms and rhythmically raising and lowering his back, swims briskly with long strokes to the opposite shore. Tresórka, having swallowed some water, returns hurriedly, shakes himself near the throng, and rubs his back on the grass. Just as Theodore Filípych reaches the opposite shore two coachmen come running up to the willow with a fishing-net wrapped round a pole. Theodore Filípych for some unknown reason lifts his arms, dives down once and then a second and a third time, on each occasion squirting a jet of water from his mouth, and gracefully tosses back his hair without answering the questions that are hurled at him from all sides. At last he comes out onto the bank, and as far as I can see only gives instructions as to spreading out the net. The net is drawn in, but there is nothing in it except ooze with a few small carp entangled in it. While the net is being lowered again I go round to that side.

The only sounds to be heard are Theodore Filípych’s voice giving orders, the plashing of the wet rope on the water, and sighs of terror. The wet rope attached to the right side of the net, more and more covered by grass, comes farther and farther out of the water.

‘Now then, pull together, harder, all together!’ shouts Theodore Filípych.

The floats appear dripping with water.

‘There is something coming, mates. It pulls heavy!’ someone calls out.

Now the net – in which two or three little carp are struggling – is dragged to the bank, wetting and pressing down the grass. And in the extended wings of the net, through a thin swaying layer of turbid water, something white comes in sight. Amid dead silence an impressive, though not loud, gasp of horror passes through the crowd.

‘Pull harder, onto the land!’ comes Theodore Filípych’s resolute voice, and the drowned body is dragged out to the willow over the stubble of burdock and thistle.

And now I see my good old aunt in her silk dress, with her face ready to burst into tears. I see her lilac sunshade with its fringe, which seems somehow incongruous in this scene of death, so terrible in its simplicity. I recall the disappointment her face expressed because arnica could be of no use, and I also recall the painful feeling of annoyance I experienced when, with the naïve egotism of love, she said: ‘Come away my dear. Oh, how dreadful it is! And you always go bathing and swimming by yourself.’

I remember how bright and hot the sun was as it baked the powdery earth underfoot; how it sparkled and mirrored in the lake; how the plump carp plashed near the banks and shoals of little fish rippled the water in the middle; how a hawk hovering high in the air circled over the ducklings, which quacking and splashing had come swimming out through the reeds into the middle of the lake; how curling white thunder-clouds gathered on the horizon; how the mud drawn out onto the bank by the net gradually receded; and how as I crossed the dike I again heard the blows of the beetles re-echoing over the lake.

But that beetle sounds as if two beetles were beating together in thirds, and that sound torments and worries me, the more so because I know that this beetle is a bell, and that Theodore Filípych will not make it stop. Then that beetle, like an instrument of torture, presses my foot which is freezing, and I fall asleep.

I am awakened, as it seems to me, by our galloping very fast and by two voices calling out quite close to me:

‘I say, Ignát! Eh, Ignát!’ my driver is saying. ‘You take my passenger. You have to go on anyhow, but what’s the use of my goading my horses uselessly? You take him!’

Ignát’s voice quite close to me replies:

‘Where’s the pleasure of making myself responsible for the passenger?… Will you stand me a bottle?’

‘Oh, come, a bottle … say half a bottle.’

‘Half a bottle, indeed!’ shouts another voice. ‘Wear out the horses for half a bottle!’

I open my eyes. Before them still flickers the same intolerable swaying snow, the same drivers and horses, but now we are abreast of another sledge. My driver has overtaken Ignát, and we drive side by side for some time. Though the voice from the other sledge advises him not to accept less than a bottle, Ignát suddenly reins in his tróyka.

‘Well, shift over. So be it! It’s your luck. You’ll stand half a bottle when we return to-morrow. Is there much luggage?’

My driver jumps out into the snow with unusual alacrity for him, bows to me, and begs me to change over into Ignát’s sledge. I am quite willing to, but evidently the God-fearing peasant is so pleased that he has to pour out his gratitude and delight to someone. He bows and thanks me, Alëshka, and Ignát.

‘There now, the Lord be praised! What was it like … O Lord! We have been driving half the night and don’t know where we are going. He’ll get you there, dear sir, but my horses are quite worn out.’

And he shifts my things with increased zeal.

While my things were being transferred I went with the wind, which almost lifted me off my feet, to the second sledge. That sledge, especially outside the coat which had been arranged over the two men’s heads to shelter them from the wind, was more than six inches deep in snow, but behind the coat it was quiet and comfortable. The old man still lay with his legs sticking out, and the story-teller was still going on with his tale:

‘Well, when the general comes to Mary in prison, in the King’s name, you know, Mary at once says to him: “General, I don’t need you and can’t love you, and so, you see, you are not my lover, but my lover is the prince himself …”

‘And just then …’ he went on, but seeing me he stopped for a moment and began filling his pipe.

‘Well, sir, have you come to listen to the tale?’ asked the other whom I called the advice-giver.

‘Yes, you’re well off here, quite jolly,’ I said.

‘Why not? It whiles away the time, anyhow it keeps one from thinking.’

‘And do you know where we are now?’

This question did not seem to please the drivers.

‘Who can make out where we are? Maybe we’ve driven into the Kulmýk country,’ answered the advice-giver.

‘Then what are we going to do?’ I asked.

‘What can we do? We’ll go on, and maybe we’ll get somewhere,’ he said in a dissatisfied tone.

‘But suppose we don’t get anywhere, and the horses stick in the snow – what then?’

‘What then? Why, nothing.’

‘But we might freeze.’

‘Of course we might, because one can’t even see any haystacks: we have got right among the Kulmýks. The chief thing is to watch the snow.’

‘And you seem afraid of getting frozen, sir,’ remarked the old man in a shaky voice.

Though he seemed to be chaffing me, it was evident that he was chilled to his very bones.

‘Yes, it is getting very cold,’ I said.

‘Eh, sir, you should do as I do, take a run now and then, that will warm you up.’

‘Yes, the chief thing is to have a run behind the sledge,’ said the advice-giver.

VII

‘WE’RE ready, your honour!’ shouted Alëshka from the front sledge.

The storm was so violent that, though I bent almost double and clutched the skirts of my cloak with both hands, I was hardly able to walk the few steps that separated me from the sledge, over the drifting snow which the wind swept from under my feet. My former driver was already kneeling in the middle of his empty sledge, but when he saw me going he took off his big cap (whereupon the wind lifted his hair furiously) and asked for a tip. Evidently he did not expect me to give him one, for my refusal did not grieve him in the least. He thanked me anyway, put his cap on again, and said: ‘God keep you, sir …’ and jerking his reins and clicking his tongue, turned away from us. Then Ignát swayed his whole back and shouted to the horses, and the sound of the snow crunching under their hoofs, the cries, and the bells, replaced the howling of the wind which had been peculiarly noticeable while we stood still.

For a quarter of an hour after my transfer I kept awake and amused myself watching my new driver and his horses. Ignát sat like a mettlesome fellow, continually rising in his seat, flourishing over the horses the arm from which his whip was hung, shouting, beating one foot against the other, and bending forward to adjust the breeching of the shaft-horse, which kept slipping to the right. He was not tall, but seemed to be well built. Over his sheepskin he wore a large, loose cloak without a girdle, the collar of which was turned down so that his neck was bare. He wore not felt but leather boots, and a small cap which he kept taking off and putting straight. His ears were only protected by his hair. In all his movements one was aware not only of energy, but even more, as it seemed to me, of a desire to arouse that energy in himself. And the farther we went the more often he straightened himself out, rose in his seat, beat his feet together, and addressed himself to Alëshka and me. It seemed to me that he was afraid of losing courage. And there was good reason for it: though the horses were good the road grew heavier and heavier at every step, and it was plain that they were running less willingly: it was already necessary to touch them up with the whip, and the shaft-horse, a good, big, shaggy animal, stumbled more than once, though immediately, as if frightened, it jerked forward again and tossed its shaggy head almost as high as the bell hanging from the bow above it. The right off-horse, which I could not help watching, with a long leather tassel to its breeching which shook and jerked on its off side, noticeably let its traces slacken and required the whip, but from habit as a good and even mettlesome horse seemed vexed at its own weakness, and angrily lowered and tossed its head at the reins. It was terrible to realize that the snow storm and the frost were increasing, the horses growing weaker, the road becoming worse, and that we did not at all know where we were, or where we were going – or whether we should reach a station or even a shelter of any sort; it seemed strange and ridiculous to hear the bells ringing so easily and cheerfully, and Ignát shouting as lustily and pleasantly as if we were out for a drive along a village street on a frosty noon during a Twelfth Night holiday – and it was stranger still that we were always driving and driving fast somewhere from where we were. Ignát began to sing some song in a horrid falsetto, but so loud and with such intervals, during which he whistled, that it seemed ridiculous to be afraid while one heard him.

‘Hey there, what are you splitting your throat for, Ignát?’ came the advice-giver’s voice. ‘Stop a minute!’

‘What?’

‘Sto-o-op!’

Ignát stopped. Again all became silent, and the wind howled and whined, and the whirling snow fell still more thickly into the sledge. The advice-giver came up to us.

‘Well, what now?’

‘What now? Where are we going?’

‘Who can tell?’

‘Are your feet freezing, that you knock them together so?’

‘Quite numb!’

‘You should go over there: look, where there’s something glimmering. It must be a Kulmýk camp. It would warm your feet too.’

‘All right. Hold the reins … here you are.’

And Ignát ran in the direction indicated.

‘You always have to go about a bit and look, then you find the way, or else what’s the good of driving about like a fool?’ the advice-giver said to me. ‘See how the horses are steaming.’

All the time Ignát was gone – and that lasted so long that I even began to fear he might have lost his way – the advice-giver kept telling me in a self-confident and calm tone how one should behave in a snow storm, that it was best to unharness a horse and let it go, and, as God is holy, it would be sure to lead one out, and how it is sometimes possible to find the way by the stars, and that had he been driving in front we should long ago have reached the station.

‘Well, is there anything?’ he asked Ignát when the latter came back, stepping with difficulty knee-deep through the snow.

‘There is, there is a camp of some sort,’ replied Ignát, gasping for breath, ‘but I can’t tell what it is. We must have strayed right into the Prológov estate. We must bear off to the left.’

‘What’s he jabbering about? It’s our camp that’s behind the Cossack village,’ rejoined the advice-giver.

‘I tell you it’s not!’

‘Well, I’ve had a look too, and I know: that’s what it is, and if it isn’t, then it’s Tamýshevsk. Anyhow we must bear to the right, and then we’ll come right out to the big bridge at the eighth verst.’

‘I tell you it’s nothing of the sort. Haven’t I looked?’ said Ignát with annoyance.

‘Eh, mate, and you call yourself a driver!’

‘Yes, a driver! … Go and look for yourself.’

‘Why should I go? I know without going.’

Ignát had evidently grown angry: he jumped into the sledge without replying and drove on.

‘How numb my legs have got! I can’t warm them up,’ said he to Alëshka, knocking his feet together oftener and oftener, and scooping up and emptying out the snow that had got into his boot-legs.

I felt dreadfully sleepy.

VIII

‘CAN it be that I am freezing to death?’ I thought, half asleep. ‘They say it always begins with drowsiness. It would be better to drown than to freeze – let them drag me out with a net; but it does not matter much whether I freeze or drown if only that stick, or whatever it is, would not prod me in the back and I could forget myself!’

I did so for a few seconds.

‘But how will all this end?’ I suddenly asked myself, opening my eyes for a moment and peering into the white expanse before me. ‘How will it all end? If we don’t find any haystacks and the horses stop, as they seem likely to do soon, we shall all freeze to death.’ I confess that, though I was a little afraid, the desire that something extraordinary, something rather tragic, should happen to us, was stronger in me than that fear. It seemed to me that it would not be bad if towards morning the horses brought us of their own accord, half-frozen, to some far-off unknown village, or if some of us were even to perish of the cold. Fancies of this kind presented themselves to me with extraordinary clearness and rapidity. The horses stop, the snow drifts higher and higher, and now nothing is seen of the horses but their ears and the bows above their heads, but suddenly Ignát appears above us with his tróyka, and drives past. We entreat him, we shout that he should take us, but the wind carries our voices away – we have no voices left. Ignát grins, shouts to his horses, whistles, and disappears into some deep, snow-covered ravine. The little old man jumps astride a horse, nourishes his elbows and tries to gallop away, but cannot stir from the spot; my former driver with the big cap rushes at him, drags him to the ground and tramples him into the snow. ‘You’re a wizard!’ he shouts. ‘You’re a scold! We shall all be lost together!’ But the old man breaks through the heap of snow with his head; and now he is not so much an old man as a hare, and leaps away from us. All the dogs bound after him. The advice-giver, who is Theodore Filípych, tells us all to sit round in a circle, that if the snow covers us it will be all right – we shall be warm that way. And really we are warm and cosy, only I want a drink. I fetch out my lunch-basket, and treat everybody to rum and sugar, and enjoy a drink myself. The story-teller spins a tale about the rainbow, and now there is a ceiling of snow and a rainbow above us. ‘Now let us each make himself a room in the snow and let us go to sleep!’ I say. The snow is soft and warm, like fur. I make myself a room and want to enter it, but Theodore Filípych, who has seen the money in my lunch-basket, says: ‘Stop! Give me your money – you have to die anyway!’ And he grabs me by the leg. I hand over the money and only ask him to let me go; but they won’t believe it is all the money I have, and want to kill me. I seize the old man’s hand and begin to kiss it with inexpressible pleasure: his hand is tender and sweet. At first he snatches it from me, but afterwards lets me have it, and even caresses me with his other hand. Then Theodore Filípych comes near and threatens me. I run away into my room: it is, however, no longer a room but a long white corridor, and someone is holding my legs. I wrench myself free. My clothes and part of my skin remain in the hands of the man who was holding me, but I only feel cold and ashamed – all the more ashamed because my aunt with her parasol and homoeopathic medicine-chest under her arm is coming towards me arm-in-arm with the drowned man. They are laughing and do not understand the signs I make to them. I throw myself into the sledge, my feet trail behind me in the snow, but the old man rushes after me flapping his elbows. He is already near, but I hear two church bells ringing in front of me, and know that I shall be saved when I get to them. The church bells sound nearer and nearer; but the little old man has caught up with me and falls with his stomach on my face, so that I can scarcely hear the bells. I again grasp his hand and begin to kiss it, but the little old man is no longer the little old man, he is the man who was drowned … and he shouts: ‘Ignát, stop! There are the Akhmétkins’ stacks, I think! Go and have a look at them!’ This is too terrible. No, I had better wake up …

I open my eyes. The wind has thrown the flap of Alëshka’s cloak over my face, my knee is uncovered, we are going over the bare frozen road, and the bells with their quivering third can be distinctly heard.

I look to see the haystacks, but now that my eyes are open I see no stacks, but a house with a balcony and the crenellated wall of a fortress. I am not interested enough to scrutinize this house and fortress: I am chiefly anxious to see the white corridor along which I ran, to hear the sound of the church bells, and to kiss the little old man’s hand. I close my eyes again and fall asleep.

IX

I SLEPT soundly, but heard the ringing of the bells all the time. They appeared to me in my dream now in the guise of a dog that barked and attacked me, now of an organ in which I was one of the pipes, and now of some French verses I was composing. Sometimes those bells seemed to be an instrument of torture which kept squeezing my right heel. I felt that so strongly that I woke up and opened my eyes, rubbing my foot. It was getting frost-bitten. The night was still light, misty, and white. The same motion was still shaking me and the sledge; the same Ignát sat sideways, knocking his feet together; the same off-horse with outstretched neck ran at a trot over the deep snow without lifting its feet much, while the tassel on the breeching bobbed and flapped against its belly. The head of the shaft-horse with its flying mane stooped and rose rhythmically as it alternately drew the reins tight and loosened them. But all this was covered with snow even more than before. The snow whirled about in front, at the side it covered the horses’ legs knee-deep, and the runners of the sledge, while it fell from above on our collars and caps. The wind blew now from the right, now from the left, playing with Ignát’s collar, the skirt of his cloak, the mane of the side-horse, and howling between the shafts and above the bow over the shaft-horse’s head.

It was growing terribly cold, and hardly had I put my head out of my coat-collar before the frosty, crisp, whirling snow covered my eyelashes, got into my nose and mouth, and penetrated behind my neck. When I looked round, everything was white, light and snowy, there was nothing to be seen but the dull light and the snow. I became seriously frightened. Alëshka was asleep at my feet at the bottom of the sledge, his whole back covered by a thick layer of snow. Ignát did not lose courage: he kept pulling at the reins, shouting, and clapping his feet together. The bell went on ringing just as wonderfully. The horses snorted a little, but ran more slowly and stumbled more and more often. Ignát again leaped up, waved his mitten, and again began singing in his strained falsetto. Before finishing the song he stopped the tróyka, threw down the reins on the front of the sledge, and got out. The wind howled furiously; the snow poured on the skirts of our cloaks as out of a scoop. I turned round: the third tróyka was not to be seen (it had lagged behind somewhere). Near the second sledge, in the snowy mist, I saw the little old man jumping from foot to foot. Ignát went some three steps from the sledge, and sitting down in the snow undid his girdle and pulled off his boots.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

‘I must change, or my feet will be quite frozen,’ he replied, and went on with what he was doing.

It was too cold to keep my neck out of my collar to watch what he was doing. I sat up straight, looking at the off-horse, which with one leg wearily stretched out, painfully whisked its tail that was tied in a knot and covered with snow. The thump Ignát gave the sledge as he jumped onto his seat roused me.

‘Where are we now?’ I asked. ‘Shall we get anywhere – say by daybreak?’

‘Don’t worry, we’ll get you there,’ he replied. ‘Now that I have changed, my feet are much warmer.’

And he drove on, the bell began to ring, the sledge swayed again, and the wind whistled under the runners. We again started to swim over the limitless sea of snow.

X

I FELL soundly asleep. When Alëshka woke me up by pushing me with his foot, and I opened my eyes, it was already morning. It seemed even colder than in the night. No more snow was falling from above, but a stiff dry wind continued to sweep the powdery snow across the plain, and especially under the hoofs of the horses and the runners of the sledge. In the east, to our right, the sky was heavy and of a dark bluish colour, but bright orange oblique streaks were growing more and more defined in it. Overhead, through flying white clouds as yet scarcely tinged, gleamed the pale blue of the sky; on the left, bright, light clouds were drifting. Everywhere, as far as eye could see, deep snow lay over the plain in sharply defined layers. Here and there could be seen greyish mounds, over which fine, crisp, powdery snow swept steadily. No track either of sledge, man, or beast could be seen. The outlines and colour of the driver’s back and of the horses were clearly and sharply visible even on the white background. The rim of Ignát’s dark-blue cap, his collar, his hair, and even his boots were white. The sledge was completely covered with snow. The right side and forelock of the grey shaft-horse were thick with snow, the legs of the off-horse on my side were covered with it up to the knee, and its curly sweating flank was covered and frozen to a rough surface. The tassel still bobbed up and down in tune to any rhythm you liked to imagine, and the off-horse itself kept running in the same way, only the sunken, heaving belly and drooping ears showing how exhausted she was. The one novel object that attracted my attention was a verst-post from which the snow was falling to the ground, and near which to the right the snow was swept into a mound by the wind, which still kept raging and throwing the crisp snow from side to side. I was very much surprised that we had travelled all night, twelve hours, with the same horses, without knowing where, and had arrived after all. Our bell seemed to tinkle yet more cheerfully. Ignát kept wrapping his cloak around him and shouting; the horses behind us snorted, and the bells of the little old man’s and the advice-giver’s tróyka tinkled, but the driver who had been asleep had certainly strayed from us in the steppe. After going another half-mile we came across the fresh, only partly obliterated, traces of a three-horsed sledge, and here and there pink spots of blood, probably from a horse that had overreached itself.

‘That’s Philip. Fancy his being ahead of us!’ said Ignát.

But here by the roadside a lonely little house with a signboard was seen in the midst of the snow, which covered it almost to the top of the windows and to the roof. Near the inn stood a tróyka of grey horses, their coats curly with sweat, their legs outstretched and their heads drooping wearily. At the door there was a shovel and the snow had been cleared away, but the howling wind continued to sweep and whirl snow off the roof.

At the sound of our bells, a tall, ruddy-faced, red-haired peasant came out with a glass of vodka in his hand, and shouted something. Ignát turned to me and asked permission to stop. Then for the first time I fairly saw his face.

XI

HIS face was not swarthy and lean with a straight nose, as I had expected judging by his hair and figure. It was a round, jolly, very snub-nosed face, with a large mouth and bright light-blue eyes. His cheeks and neck were red, as if rubbed with a flannel; his eyebrows, his long eyelashes, and the down that smoothly covered the bottom of his face, were plastered with snow and were quite white. We were only half a mile from our station and we stopped.

‘Only be quick about it!’ I said.

‘Just one moment,’ replied Ignát, springing down and walking over to Philip.

‘Let’s have it, brother,’ he said, taking the mitten from his right hand and throwing it down with his whip on the snow, and tossing back his head he emptied at a gulp the glass that was handed to him.

The innkeeper, probably a discharged Cossack, came out with a half-bottle in his hand.

‘Who shall I serve?’ said he.

Tall Vasíli, a thin, brown-haired peasant, with a goatee beard, and the advice-giver, a stout, light-haired man with a thick beard framing his red face, came forward and also drank a glass each. The little old man too went over to the drinkers, but was not served, and he went back to his horses, which were fastened behind the sledge, and began stroking one of them on the back and croup.

The little old man’s appearance was just what I had imagined it to be: small, thin, with a wrinkled livid face, a scanty beard, sharp little nose, and worn yellow teeth. He had a new driver’s cap on, but his coat was shabby, worn, smeared with tar, torn on one shoulder, had holes in the skirt, and did not cover his knees and the homespun trousers which were tucked into his huge felt boots. He himself was bent double, puckered up, his face and knees trembled, and he tramped about near the sledge evidently trying to get warm.

‘Come, Mítrich, you should have a glass; you’d get fine and warm,’ said the advice-giver.

Mítrich’s face twitched. He adjusted the harness of one of his horses, straightened the bow above its head, and came over to me.

‘Well, sir,’ he said, taking the cap off his grey head and bending low, ‘we have been wandering about together all night, looking for the road: won’t you give me enough for a small glass? Really sir, your honour! I haven’t anything to get warm on,’ he added with an ingratiating smile.

I gave him a quarter-ruble.⁴ The innkeeper brought out a small glass of vodka and handed it to the old man. He took off his mitten, together with the whip that hung on it, and put out his small, dark, rough, and rather livid hand towards the glass; but his thumb refused to obey him, as though it did not belong to him. He was unable to hold the glass and dropped it on the snow, spilling the vodka.

All the drivers burst out laughing.

‘See how frozen Mítrich is, he can’t even hold the vodka.’

But Mítrich was greatly grieved at having spilt the vodka.

However, they filled another glass for him and poured it into his mouth. He became cheerful in a moment, ran into the inn, lit his pipe, showed his worn yellow teeth, and began to swear at every word he spoke. Having drained the last glass, the drivers returned to their tróykas and we started again.

The snow kept growing whiter and brighter so that it hurt one’s eyes to look at it. The orange-tinted reddish streaks rose higher and higher, and growing brighter and brighter spread upwards over the sky; even the red disk of the sun became visible on the horizon through the blue-grey clouds; the sky grew more brilliant and of a deeper blue. On the road near the settlement the sledge tracks were clear, distinct, and yellowish, and here and there we were jolted by cradle-holes in the road; one could feel a pleasant lightness and freshness in the tense, frosty air.

My tróyka went very fast. The head of the shaft-horse, and its neck with its mane fluttering around the bow, swayed swiftly from side to side almost in one place under the special bell, the tongue of which no longer struck the sides but scraped against them. The good off-horses tugged together at the frozen and twisted traces, and sprang energetically, while the tassel bobbed from right under the horse’s belly to the breeching. Now and then an off-horse would stumble from the beaten track into the snowdrift, throwing up the snow into one’s eyes as it briskly got out again. Ignát shouted in his merry tenor; the dry frosty snow squeaked under the runners; behind us two little bells were ringing resonantly and festively, and I could hear the tipsy shouting of the drivers. I looked back. The grey shaggy off-horses, with their necks outstretched and breathing evenly, their bits awry, were leaping over the snow. Philip, flourishing his whip, was adjusting his cap; the little old man, with his legs hanging out, lay in the middle of the sledge as before.

Two minutes later my sledge scraped over the boards before the clean-swept entrance of the station house, and Ignát turned to me his snow-covered merry face, smelling of frost.

‘We’ve got you here after all, sir!’ he said.

¹ A tróyka is a three-horse sledge, or, more correctly, a team of three horses.

² An artél was a voluntary association of workers, which had a manager, contracted as a unit, and divided its earnings among its members.

³ The women take their clothes to rinse in lakes or streams, where they beat them with wooden beetles.

⁴ At that time about sixpence.