The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories

Master and Man

I

THIS WAS in the seventies, on the day after the winter feast of St. Nicholas.¹ It was the parish feast day, and for the village inn keeper, merchant of the second guild² Vassily Andreich Brekhunov, it was impossible to absent himself: he had to be in church—he was the church warden—and at home he had to receive and entertain his family and acquaintances. But now the last guests were gone, and Vassily Andreich started getting ready to go at once to a neighboring landowner for the purchase of a woods he had long been negotiating. Vassily Andreich was in a hurry to leave, so that the town merchants would not outbid him on this profitable purchase. The young landowner was asking ten thousand for the woods only because Vassily Andreich had offered seven. Seven, however, was only a third of the real value of the woods. Vassily Andreich might have bargained him down still more, because the lot was in his territory, and it was a long-standing rule between him and other village merchants of the district that one merchant would not run up the price in another’s territory, but Vassily Andreich had found out that the timber dealers from the provincial capital wanted to come and negotiate for the Goryachkino woods, and he had decided to go at once and close the deal with the landowner. And therefore, as soon as the feast was over, he took his own seven hundred roubles from the coffer, added two thousand three hundred of church money he had at his disposal, so as to make three thousand roubles, and, having carefully counted them and put them in his wallet, got ready to go.

His man Nikita, the only one of his workmen who was not drunk that day, ran to harness up. Nikita was not drunk that day because he was a drunkard, and now, since the beginning of the fast,³ when he had drunk up his coat and leather boots, he had sworn off drinking, and it was the second month that he hadn’t drunk anything; nor did he drink now, despite the temptation of the vodka drinking everywhere during the first two days of the feast.

Nikita was a fifty-year-old muzhik from a nearby village, an impractical fellow, as they said of him, who had spent most of his life not at home but with other people. He was valued everywhere for his industriousness, dexterity, and strength at work, and, above all, for his kind, pleasant character; but he never settled down anywhere, because twice a year, or even more often, he went on a drinking binge, and then, besides drinking up everything he had on, he became violent and quarrelsome. Vassily Andreich also fired him several times, but then took him back, valuing his honesty, his love of animals, and, above all, his cheapness. Vassily Andreich paid Nikita, not eighty roubles, which such a man was worth, but around forty, which he doled out to him without an accounting, and mostly not in money but in high-priced goods from the shop.

Nikita’s wife Marfa, once a beautiful, sprightly woman, looked after the house with her adolescent son and two girls, and did not invite Nikita to live at home, first, because she had already been living for some twenty years with a cooper, a muzhik from another village, who lodged in their house; and, second, because, though she ordered her husband about as she liked when he was sober, she feared him like fire when he was drunk. Once, having gotten drunk at home, Nikita, probably to vent all his sober submissiveness on his wife, broke open her trunk, took out her most treasured clothes, put them on the chopping block, and, seizing an axe, chopped all her sarafans and dresses into little pieces. The wages Nikita earned were all handed over to his wife, and Nikita did not object to that. And so now, two days before the feast, Marfa had come to Vassily Andreich and collected white flour, tea, sugar, and a half-pint bottle of vodka, some three roubles’ worth in all, plus five roubles in cash, and had thanked him profusely for it, as if for a special kindness, though at the cheapest rate Vassily Andreich owed them twenty roubles.

“Have there ever been any sort of conditions between us?” Vassily Andreich used to say to Nikita. “If you need anything, take it, you’ll work it off. With me it’s not like with others: delays, calculation, penalties. We go by honor. Serve me and I won’t abandon you.”

And in saying this, Vassily Andreich was sincerely convinced that he was Nikita’s benefactor: so convincingly did he know how to speak, and so firmly did all those who depended on his money, beginning with Nikita, uphold him in the conviction that he was not deceiving them, but was indeed their benefactor.

“I understand, Vassily Andreich. Seems I do serve you, I try hard, like for my own father. I understand very well,” Nikita replied, understanding very well that Vassily Andreich was cheating him, but feeling at the same time that there was no use even attempting to clear up his accounts with him, and one had to live, as long as there was no other work, and take what was given.

Now, having received his master’s order to harness up, Nikita, as always, cheerfully and eagerly, with the brisk, light step of his pigeontoed feet, went to the shed, took down a heavy leather bridle with a tassel from its nail, and, the rings of the curb bit jangling, went to the closed stable, where the horse that Vassily Andreich had told him to harness stood by itself.

“What, did you miss me, did you miss me, little fool?” said Nikita, responding to the faint whinny of greeting he was met with by the middle-size, well-built, slightly low-rumped dark bay stallion standing alone in the little stable. “Now, now, don’t rush, let me water you first,” he said to the horse, just as one does to beings who understand words, and, having brushed with the skirt of his coat the chafed, dusty back, fat and with a groove down the middle, he put the bridle on the stallion’s handsome young head, freed his ears and forelock, and, taking off the halter, led him out to water.

Carefully picking his way through the dung-heaped stable, Mukhorty frisked and bucked, pretending that he wanted to give a kick with his hind leg at Nikita, who was jogging beside him to the well.

“Go on, go on, you rascal!” muttered Nikita, who knew the care with which Mukhorty had thrown up his hind leg, just enough to touch his greasy sheepskin jacket but not to hit him, and who especially liked that trick.

After drinking the icy water, the horse sighed, moving his wet, firm lips, from the whiskers of which transparent drops dripped into the trough, and stood still as if in thought; then he suddenly gave a loud snort.

“If you don’t want to, you don’t have to, we’ll remember that; don’t go asking for more,” Nikita said with perfect seriousness and thoroughness, explaining his behavior to Mukhorty, and he ran back to the shed, tugging at the reins of the merry young horse, who went bucking and clattering all over the yard.

There were no workmen around; there was only one outsider, the cook’s husband, who had come for the feast.

“Go, dear heart,” Nikita said to him, “and ask which sleigh I should hitch up: the wide, low one or the wee one?”

The cook’s husband went to the iron-roofed house on high foundations and soon returned with the report that he was ordered to hitch up the wee one. Nikita meanwhile had already put the collar on, strapped on the studded gig saddle, and, carrying a light, painted shaft-bow in one hand and leading the horse with the other, was going to the two sleighs standing under the shed roof.

“If it’s the wee one, it’s the wee one,” he said and backed the intelligent horse, who kept pretending that he wanted to nip him, into the shafts, and with the help of the cook’s husband began harnessing up.

When everything was almost done, and it only remained to attach the reins, Nikita sent the cook’s husband to the shed for straw and to the barn for burlap.

“There, that’s fine. Now, now, don’t bristle up!” Nikita said as he packed the just-threshed oat straw brought by the cook’s husband down into the sleigh. “And now let’s spread the hop sacking this way and the burlap on top of it. There, like that, like that, and it’ll be nice to sit on,” he said, as he did what he was saying, tucking the burlap down over the straw on all sides around the seat.

“Thank you, dear heart,” Nikita said to the cook’s husband, “it’s always better with two.” And, sorting out the leather reins held together with a ring at the end, Nikita seated himself on the box and started the good horse, who was begging to go, across the frozen dung of the yard towards the gate.

“Uncle Nikita, uncle, hey, dear uncle!” a seven-year-old boy in a black coat, new white felt boots, and a warm hat cried behind him in a piping little voice, running hurriedly out of the front hall to the yard. “Let me get on,” he begged, buttoning up his coat as he ran.

“Well, well, hurry up, little fellow,” said Nikita and, stopping, he gave a seat to the master’s little son, pale, thin, and beaming with joy, and drove out to the street.

It was past two. It was frosty—about ten degrees—gray and windy. Half the sky was covered by a low, dark cloud. But in the yard it was still. In the street the wind was more noticeable: snow was blowing from the roof of a neighboring shed and swirling about at the corner by the bathhouse. Nikita had barely driven through the gate and turned the horse to the porch when Vassily Andreich, with a cigarette in his mouth, wearing a fleece-lined coat, girdled low and tightly with a sash, came out of the front hall to the high porch covered with trampled snow, which squeaked under his leather-covered felt boots, and stopped. Dragging on what remained of his cigarette, he threw it down and stepped on it, and, exhaling smoke through his mustaches and giving a sidelong glance at the approaching horse, began tucking in the fur collar of his coat on both sides of his ruddy face, clean-shaven except for the mustaches, so that his breath would not wet the fur.

“See what a prankster, he’s here already!” he said, seeing his son in the sleigh. Vassily Andreich was excited by the vodka he had drunk with his guests, and therefore was even more pleased than usual with everything that belonged to him and everything he did. The sight of his son, whom in his mind he always called his heir, afforded him great pleasure now; squinting and baring his long teeth, he looked at him.

Her head and shoulders wrapped in a woolen shawl so that only her eyes could be seen, Vassily Andreich’s wife, pregnant, pale, and thin, stood behind him in the front hall, seeing him off.

“Really, you ought to take Nikita,” she said, stepping timidly through the doorway.

Vassily Andreich said nothing and, in response to her words, which obviously displeased him, frowned angrily and spat.

“You’ve got money with you,” his wife went on in the same plaintive voice. “And, by God, the weather really may blow up.”

“What, don’t I know the way, that I need a guide?” Vassily Andreich said, with that unnatural tension of the lips with which he usually talked with sellers and buyers, pronouncing each syllable with particular distinctness.

“Well, really, you ought to take him. In God’s name I beg you!” his wife repeated, rewrapping her shawl on the other side.

“She sticks like a leaf in the bathhouse … Well, what should I take him for?”

“So then, Vassily Andreich, I’m ready,” Nikita said gaily. “As long as somebody feeds the horses while I’m gone,” he added, turning to the mistress.

“I’ll see to it, Nikitushka, I’ll tell Semyon,” said the mistress.

“So, do I go or what, Vassily Andreich?” Nikita said, waiting.

“I guess we’ve got to humor the old girl. Only if you come, go put on some warmer gear,” Vassily Andreich pronounced, smiling again and winking at Nikita’s greasy and bedraggled jacket, torn under the arms and on the back, and with a frayed hem, which had seen it all.

“Hey, dear heart, come and hold the horse!” Nikita shouted to the cook’s husband in the yard.

“I’ll do it, I’ll do it,” piped the boy, taking his chilled red hands from his pockets and snatching at the cold leather reins.

“Only don’t bother prettying up your gear. Step lively!” cried Vassily Andreich, giving Nikita a toothy smile.

“In a flash, dearest Vassily Andreich,” said Nikita, and trotting quickly in his old felt boots with mended soles, he ran back to the yard and to the workers’ cottage.

“Quick, Arinushka, give me my long coat from the stove⁴—I’m going with the master!” said Nikita, running into the cottage and taking his sash from a nail.

The cook, who had taken a nap after dinner and was now preparing the samovar for her husband, greeted Nikita cheerfully and, infected by his haste, got a move on like him, and took down from the stove a shabby, threadbare flannel kaftan that was drying there and hastily began shaking it and softening it up.

“Now you and your mister will have plenty of room for your fun,” Nikita said to the cook, always finding something to say, out of good-natured politeness, when he was left alone with a person.

And, twining the narrow, bedraggled little sash around him, he drew in his belly, skinny to begin with, and pulled it around the jacket as tight as he could.

“There you go,” he said after that, now addressing not the cook but the sash, as he tucked in its ends, “that way you won’t come undone,” and, raising and lowering his shoulders to make more room for his arms, he put his coat on over it and again arched his back so that his arms would be free, pulled it up under the armpits, and took his mittens from the shelf. “Well, there we are.”

“Maybe you want to put something else on your feet, Stepanych,” said the cook. “Your boots are no good.”

Nikita paused as if recollecting.

“Ought to … Well, but it’ll do like this, it’s not far!”

And he ran out to the yard.

“Won’t you be cold, Nikitushka?” said the mistress, when he came up to the sleigh.

“Why cold? I’m quite warm,” replied Nikita, spreading the straw in the front of the sleigh so as to cover his feet and putting the whip, unnecessary for a good horse, under the straw.

Vassily Andreich was already sitting in the sleigh, his back, covered with two fur coats, filling almost the entire curved rear of the sleigh, and, taking the reins, at once touched up the horse. Nikita, in motion, found room for himself at the front on the left side and hung one leg out.

II

WITH A SLIGHT SCREECH of the runners, the good stallion got the sleigh moving and set off at a brisk pace down the trampled snow of the village road.

“What are you hanging on for? Give me the whip, Nikita!” cried Vassily Andreich, obviously rejoicing at his heir, who had found a place behind on the runners. “I’ll give it to you! Run to your mother, you son of a bitch!”

The boy jumped off. Mukhorty speeded up his amble and, shifting feet, went into a trot.

Kresty, where Vassily Andreich’s house stood, consisted of six houses. As soon as they passed the last, the blacksmith’s, they noticed at once that the wind was much stronger than they had thought. The road could hardly be seen. The tracks of the runners were immediately blown over by snow, and the road could be made out only because it was higher than everything around. The fields were all in a whirl, and the limit where sky and earth met could not be seen. The Telyatino forest, usually quite visible, only occasionally showed faintly black through the snowy dust. The wind blew from the left, stubbornly throwing Mukhorty’s mane to one side of his firm, well-fed neck and turning aside his fluffy tail tied in a simple knot. Nikita was sitting on the windy side, and his wide collar was pressed to his face and nose.

“He can’t really run, too much snow,” said Vassily Andreich, proud of his good horse. “I once drove with him to Pashutino, took him half an hour.”

“Whazzat?” asked Nikita, not hearing well because of the collar.

“I say he made it to Pashutino in half an hour,” shouted Vassily Andreich.

“What’s there to talk about, he’s a good horse!”

They fell silent. But Vassily Andreich wanted to talk.

“So, I s’pose you told your missus not to give the cooper any drink?” Vassily Andreich began in the same loud voice, so convinced that it should be flattering to Nikita to talk with such an important and intelligent man as himself, and so pleased with his joke, that it never even entered his head that this conversation might be unpleasant for Nikita.

Nikita again did not hear his master’s words, which were carried away by the wind.

Vassily Andreich repeated his joke about the cooper in his loud, clear voice.

“God be with them, Vassily Andreich, I don’t go into those things. So long as she doesn’t mistreat the lad on me, God be with her.”

“That’s so,” said Vassily Andreich. “Well, and are you going to buy a horse come spring?” he started a new subject of conversation.

“No way around it,” replied Nikita, turning back the collar of his kaftan and leaning towards his master.

Now the conversation interested Nikita, and he wanted to hear everything.

“The lad’s grown up, he’s got to plow himself, and we keep hiring,” he said.

“Why, then take the goose-rumped one, I won’t ask a lot!” cried Vassily Andreich, feeling excited and as a result of that falling into his favorite occupation, which consumed all his mental powers—horse trading.

“Or else give me some fifteen roubles and I’ll buy one at the horse market,” said Nikita, knowing that a fair price for the goose-rumped one that Vassily Andreich was trying to foist on him was seven roubles, and that if Vassily Andreich sold him that horse, he would count it as twenty-five, and then he wouldn’t see any money from him for half a year.

“He’s a fine horse. I wish it for you as for myself. In all conscience. Brekhunov wouldn’t wrong a man. Let it be my loss, it’s not like with others. On my honor,” he cried in that voice with which he fine-talked his sellers and buyers. “A real horse!”

“That’s for sure,” Nikita said with a sigh, and seeing that there was no point in listening further, he let go of the collar, which at once covered his ear and face.

For half an hour they drove in silence. The wind blew through Nikita’s side and arm, where his coat was torn.

He hunched up and breathed into the collar, which covered his mouth, and was not cold all over.

“So, what do you think, shall we go through Karamyshevo or straight on?” asked Vassily Andreich.

The road to Karamyshevo was busier, marked by two rows of good stakes, but further. The straight way was closer, but the road was little used and had no stakes or else poor ones covered by the snow.

Nikita thought a little.

“To Karamyshevo’s further, but better going,” he said.

“But we’ve only got to go straight through the hollow without losing our way, and there the forest road’s good,” said Vassily Andreich, who wanted to go straight on.

“It’s up to you,” said Nikita, letting go of the collar again.

Vassily Andreich did just that and, having gone half a mile, at a tall oak branch swaying in the wind with dry leaves attached to it here and there, he turned left.

After the turn the wind was almost in their faces. And a light snow began to fall. Vassily Andreich drove on, puffing his cheeks and letting out his breath upwards through his mustaches. Nikita was dozing.

They rode silently like that for about ten minutes. Suddenly Vassily Andreich began to say something.

“Whazzat?” asked Nikita, opening his eyes.

Vassily Andreich did not answer and, twisting around, looked behind and then ahead over the horse. The horse, his coat curling from sweat in the groin and on the neck, went at a walk.

“Whazzat you said?” repeated Nikita.

“Whazzat, whazzat!” Vassily Andreich mimicked him angrily. “No stakes to be seen! We must have lost our way!”

“Stay here, I’ll look for the road,” said Nikita and, jumping lightly from the sleigh and taking the whip from under the straw, went to the left from the side he had been sitting on.

The snow was not deep that year, so that one could walk anywhere, but all the same it was knee-deep in some places and got into Nikita’s boot. Nikita walked about, felt with his feet and the whip, but there was no road anywhere.

“Well?” said Vassily Andreich, when Nikita came back to the sleigh.

“There’s no road on this side. I’ll have to go and walk around on that side.”

“Something looks black ahead there, go and have a look,” said Vassily Andreich.

Nikita went there, came to what looked black—it was black soil that had spread over the snow from the bared winter wheat and turned it black. Nikita walked about to the right, came back to the sleigh, beat the snow from himself, shook it out of his boot, and got into the sleigh.

“We’ve got to go to the right,” he said resolutely. “The wind was blowing on my left side and now it’s straight in my mug. Go to the right!” he resolutely said.

Vassily Andreich obeyed and bore to the right. But there was still no road. They went on that way for some time. The wind did not slacken, and light snow was falling.

“Looks like we’re quite lost, Vassily Andreich,” Nikita said suddenly, as if with pleasure. “What’s that?” he said, pointing to black potato tops sticking up from under the snow.

Vassily Andreich stopped the horse, who was already sweaty and heaving his steep flanks heavily.

“Well, what?” he asked.

“It means we’re on the Zakharovka field. That’s where we’ve got to!”

“Are you kidding?” Vassily Andreich shot back.

“I’m not kidding, Vassily Andreich, it’s the truth I’m telling,” said Nikita, “and you can hear it from the sleigh—we’re going over potatoes; and there’s the heap where they gathered the tops. It’s the Zakharovka factory field.”

“See where we’ve strayed to!” said Vassily Andreich. “What now?”

“We’ve got to go straight, that’s all, and we’ll come out somewhere,” said Nikita. “If not at Zakharovka, then at the manor farmstead.”

Vassily Andreich obeyed and sent the horse off as Nikita told him to. They rode like that for a rather long time. At times they came upon bared winter growth, and the sleigh rumbled over ridges of frozen earth. At times they came upon stubble fields of winter or spring crops, with clumps of wormwood and straw sticking up from under the snow; at times they drove into deep, uniformly white, level snow with nothing showing above it.

Snow fell from above and at times rose up from below. The horse, obviously tired out, had his hide all curled up and frosted with sweat and went at a walk. Suddenly he lost his footing and sat down in a pothole or ditch. Vassily Andreich wanted to stop, but Nikita shouted at him:

“What are you stopping for! We got into it—we’ve got to get out of it. Hup, my little dear! Hup, hup, my darling!” he cried in a merry voice to the horse, jumping out of the sleigh and sinking into the ditch himself.

The horse pulled and at once got out onto the frozen bank. Obviously it was a manmade ditch.

“Where are we?” said Vassily Andreich.

“We’ll soon find out!” replied Nikita. “Get going and we’ll see where we come out.”

“Oughtn’t that to be the Goryachkino forest?” said Vassily Andreich, pointing to something black showing through the snow ahead of them.

“We’ll come closer and see what sort of forest it is,” said Nikita.

Nikita saw dry, elongated willow leaves flying from the direction of that blackish something, and therefore knew it was not a forest but a dwelling, but he did not want to say so. And indeed, when they had gone another twenty yards from the ditch, what were obviously trees appeared black before them, and a new, dismal sound was heard. Nikita had guessed right: it was not a forest, but a row of tall willows, with some leaves still fluttering on them here and there. The willows had obviously been planted along the ditch of a threshing floor. Having come up close to the willows, which droned dismally in the wind, the horse suddenly planted his forelegs higher than the sleigh, got his hind legs onto the high place as well, turned to the left, and stopped sinking knee-deep into the snow. It was the road.

“So we’ve arrived,” said Nikita, “but there’s no knowing where.”

The horse went unerringly along the snow-covered road, and they had not gone a hundred yards when there appeared black before them the straight wattle strip of a threshing barn, under a roof thickly covered with snow, from which snow constantly sifted down. After passing the barn, the road turned into the wind, and they drove into a snowdrift. But ahead of them they could see the space between two houses, so that the snowdrift had obviously heaped up on the road, and they had to drive through it. And indeed, having driven through the snowdrift, they came out onto a street. By the first house, frozen laundry hung on a line, fluttering desperately in the wind: shirts, one red, one white, a pair of trousers, footcloths, and a skirt. The white shirt tore about especially desperately, waving its sleeves.

“See, the lazy wench didn’t take her laundry down for the feast day—or else she’s dying,” said Nikita, looking at the dangling shirts.

III

AT THE HEAD of the street it was still windy, and the road was snow-covered, but in the middle of the village it became still, warm, and cheerful. In one yard a dog was barking, in another a woman, pulling her coat over her head, came running from somewhere and went through the door of a cottage, stopping on the threshold to look at the passersby. From the middle of the village girls could be heard singing.

In the village it seemed there was less wind, snow, and cold.

“Why, this is Grishkino,” said Vassily Andreich.

“So it is,” replied Nikita.

And in fact it was Grishkino. It turned out that they had gone off to the left and driven some six miles not quite in the direction they wanted, but all the same heading towards their destination. It was about three miles from Goryachkino to Grishkino.

In the middle of the village they ran into a tall man walking down the middle of the road.

“Who’s that driving?” cried the man, stopping the horse, and, recognizing Vassily Andreich at once, he took hold of the shaft and, feeling his way along it, reached the sleigh and sat himself on the box.

It was Vassily Andreich’s acquaintance, the muzhik Isay, known in the neighborhood as a first-class horse thief.

“Ah! Vassily Andreich! Where in God’s name are you going?” said Isay, dousing Nikita with the smell of the vodka he had been drinking.

“We were going to Goryachkino.”

“And look where you wound up! You had to go towards Malakhovo.”

“Had to, maybe, but didn’t manage to,” said Vassily Andreich, stopping the horse.

“Nice little horse,” said Isay, looking the horse over and, with a habitual movement, tightening the loosened knot of the thick tail right up to the root.

“So you’ll spend the night, will you?”

“No, brother, we’ve absolutely got to go.”

“Got to, clearly. And who’s this? Ah, Nikita Stepanych!”

“Who else?” replied Nikita. “But tell us how, dear heart, so we don’t go astray again.”

“As if you could go astray! Turn back, go straight down the street, and, once out, keep on straight. Don’t bear to the left. You come to the high road, and then—to the right.”

“Where’s the turn off the high road? Like in summer or like in winter?” asked Nikita.

“Like in winter. Right as you get there—bushes, and across from the bushes a big oak stake, standing with leaves on it—that’s where.”

Vassily Andreich turned the horse around and drove through the settlement.

“Or else spend the night!” Isay called out behind them.

But Vassily Andreich did not answer him and kept touching up the horse: three miles of level road, almost half of which went through the forest, seemed an easy drive, the more so as the wind had apparently died down and it was snowing less.

Having gone back down the trampled road with fresh dung lying black on it here and there, and passed the yard with the laundry, where the white shirt had already been torn off and was hanging by one frozen sleeve, they came again to the fearfully droning willows and again found themselves in the open field. The snowstorm not only had not died down, but seemed to have intensified. The road was completely covered with snow, and they could tell that they had not gone astray only by the stakes. But even the stakes ahead were hard to make out, because the wind was in their faces.

Vassily Andreich squinted, lowered his head, and looked out for the stakes, but for the most part he let the horse go, trusting in him. And in fact the horse did not lose the way, and went on, turning now right, now left, following the curves of the road, which he felt under his feet, so that even though the snowfall grew stronger and the wind grew stronger, the stakes continued to be visible now on the right, now on the left.

They went on like that for some ten minutes, when suddenly something black appeared right in front of the horse, moving in the slanting net of wind-driven snow. These were fellow travelers. Mukhorty caught up with them and knocked his legs against the seat of the sleigh ahead of him.

“Go around … aro-o-ound … pass us!” they shouted from the sleigh.

Vassily Andreich began to go around. In the sleigh sat three muzhiks and a woman. They were obviously guests coming from the feast. One muzhik kept whipping the snow-covered rump of the little nag with a switch. The other two, sitting in front, were waving their arms and shouting something. The woman, all wrapped up and covered with snow, sat hunched in the back and did not move.

“Where from?” cried Vassily Andreich.

“A-a-a … skoe!” was all he could hear.

“Where from, I say.”

“A-a-a-skoe!” one of the muzhiks shouted with all his might, but it was still impossible to hear from where.

“Gee-up! Don’t slacken!” shouted the other, constantly whipping the little nag with the switch.

“From the feast, must be?”

“Go on, go on! Gee-up, Semka! Go around! Gee-up!”

The sleighs bumped fenders, almost snagged, came unsnagged, and the muzhiks’ sleigh began to drop behind.

The shaggy, fat-bellied little nag, all covered with snow, breathing heavily under the low shaft-bow, obviously using its last strength in a vain attempt to escape the switch that kept hitting it, hobbled over the deep snow on its short legs, kicking them under. Its muzzle, obviously young, the lower lip pulled up like a fish’s, nostrils dilated and ears lying low from fear, remained for a few seconds beside Nikita’s shoulder, then began to drop behind.

“That’s what drink’ll do,” said Nikita. “Put the final touch to the poor little nag. Downright heathens!”

For a few minutes they could hear the puffing of the worn-out little nag’s nostrils and the drunken shouting of the muzhiks, then the puffing died away, then the drunken shouting, too, fell silent. And again there was nothing to be heard around them except the wind whistling past their ears and, at times, the faint scraping of the runners over the bare spots in the road.

This meeting cheered and encouraged Vassily Andreich, and he drove his horse more boldly, not trying to make out the stakes, but relying on him.

There was nothing for Nikita to do, and, as always in such a situation, he dozed off, making up for much sleepless time. Suddenly the horse stopped, and Nikita nearly fell, nodding his nose forward.

“Again we’re going wrong,” said Vassily Andreich.

“What is it?”

“No stakes to be seen. Must have strayed from the road again.”

“If we’ve strayed from it, we’ll have to look for it,” Nikita said shortly, got up, and again, stepping lightly on his pigeon-toed feet, began walking over the snow.

He walked for a long time, disappearing from sight, reappearing again, disappearing again, and finally came back.

“There’s no road here, maybe somewhere ahead,” he said, getting into the sleigh.

It was beginning to grow noticeably dark. The snowstorm had not increased, but neither had it slackened.

“If only we could hear those muzhiks,” said Vassily Andreich.

“Yes, see, they haven’t caught up with us, we must’ve gone pretty far astray. Or maybe they have,” said Nikita.

“Where do we go now?” said Vassily Andreich.

“We must let the horse do it,” said Nikita. “He’ll bring us through. Give me the reins.”

Vassily handed over the reins the more willingly in that his hands, in their warm gloves, were beginning to freeze.

Nikita took the reins and merely held them, trying not to move them, and rejoicing at the intelligence of his favorite. Indeed, the intelligent horse, turning one ear, then the other, to one side, then the other, began to swing about.

“Only don’t tell him,” Nikita kept murmuring. “See what he’s doing! Go on, just go on. That’s it, that’s it.”

The wind began blowing from behind, it became warmer.

“He’s so smart,” Nikita went on rejoicing over the horse. “Take Kirghizenok—he’s strong, but stupid. But this one, look what he’s doing with his ears. No need for any telegraph, he hears a mile off.”

And half an hour had not gone by, when indeed something showed black ahead, either a forest or a village, and on the right side stakes appeared again. Evidently they had again come to the road.

“But this is Grishkino again,” Nikita suddenly said.

Indeed, to the left of them now was the same threshing barn with snow blowing off of it, and further on the same line with frozen laundry, shirts and trousers, which fluttered just as desperately in the wind.

Again they drove into the street, again it became quiet, warm, cheerful, again the dungy roadway could be seen, again voices and songs could be heard, again a dog barked. It was already so dark that lights shone in some of the windows.

Halfway down the street, Vassily Andreich turned the horse towards a big brick twin house and stopped him by the porch.

Nikita went to a snow-covered, lit-up window, in the light of which fluttering snowflakes sparkled, and knocked with the handle of the whip.

“Who’s there?” a voice responded to Nikita’s summons.

“Brekhunov, from Kresty, my dear man,” Nikita replied. “Come out for a moment!”

The man inside left the window, and in a couple of minutes—it could be heard—the door to the front hall came unstuck, then the latch to the outside door clicked, and in the doorway, holding the door because of the wind, a tall old muzhik with a white beard thrust himself out, a sheepskin jacket thrown over his festive white shirt, and behind him a lad in a red shirt and leather boots.

“Is that you, Andreich?” said the old man.

“We’ve lost our way, brother,” said Vassily Andreich. “We were going to Goryachkino and wound up here. We set off and lost our way again.”

“See how you’ve strayed,” said the old man. “Petrushka, go and open the gates!” he turned to the young man in the red shirt.

“Can do,” the young man replied in a merry voice and ran to the front hall.

“We won’t spend the night, brother,” said Vassily Andreich.

“Why go anywhere—it’s nighttime, spend the night!”

“I’d be glad to spend the night, but I must go. Business, brother, no help for it.”

“Well, at least warm up, the samovar’s just ready,” said the old man.

“Warm up—that we can do,” said Vassily Andreich. “It won’t get any darker, and once the moon rises, it’ll be brighter. Shall we go in and warm up, Nikita?”

“Well, yes, that we can do,” said Nikita, who was badly chilled and wished very much to get some warmth into his frozen limbs.

Vassily Andreich followed the old man into the cottage, and Nikita drove through the gates opened by Petrushka and, on his instructions, moved the horse under the shed of the barn. The shed was full of manure, and the high shaft-bow caught on the crossbeam. The hens and roosters already settled on the crossbeam cackled something in displeasure and scratched the beam with their feet. Disturbed sheep, stamping their hoofs on the frozen dung, shied away. A dog, squealing desperately with fright and anger, dissolved in puppyish barking at the stranger.

Nikita talked with them all: apologized to the hens, assured them that he would not disturb them any more, reproached the sheep for being afraid for no reason, and admonished the little dog, all the while he was tying up the horse.

“There, that’ll be just fine,” he said, shaking the snow off himself. “Look at him barking away!” he added to the dog. “That’ll do from you! Well, that’ll do, stupid, that’ll do. You’re only worrying yourself,” he said. “We’re not thieves, we’re friends …”

“The three domestic advisers, as they say,” said the lad, with his strong arm shoving the sleigh, which had remained outside, under the shed roof.

“How do you mean, advisers?” said Nikita.

“That’s what’s printed in Poolson:⁵ a thief sneaks up to the house, the dog barks—meaning ‘look sharp, watch out.’ A rooster crows—meaning ‘get up.’ A cat licks itself—meaning ‘a dear guest, get ready to welcome him,’” the lad said, smiling.

Petrukha could read and write and knew Paulson, the only book he owned, almost by heart, and, especially when he was a little tipsy, as now, he liked to quote sayings from it that seemed appropriate to the occasion.

“That’s exactly right,” said Nikita.

“I s’pose you’re chilled through, uncle?” added Petrukha.

“And then some,” said Nikita, and they went across the yard and through the front hall into the cottage.

IV

THE HOUSEHOLD where Vassily Andreich had stopped was one of the wealthiest in the village. The family owned five plots and also rented land elsewhere. They had six horses, three cows, two calves, and some twenty head of sheep. The family was made up of twenty-two souls in all: four married sons, six grandchildren, of whom one, Petrukha, was married, two great-grandchildren, three orphans, and four daughters-in-law with children. It was one of the rare houses that still remained undivided; but in it, too, an obscure inner work of dissension, begun as always among the women, was already going on, which inevitably would soon lead to division. Two of the sons were living in Moscow as water carriers; one was a soldier. At home now there were the old man, the old woman, the second son, who ran the farm, the eldest son, who had come from Moscow for the feast, and all the women and children; besides the family, there was a guest—a neighbor, godfather of one of the children.

In the cottage, a lamp with a shade above it hung over the table, brightly lighting up the tea things under it, a bottle of vodka, some food, and the brick walls hung with icons in the far right corner and some pictures on either side of them. At the table, in the place of honor, sat Vassily Andreich, in just his black sheepskin jacket, sucking on his frozen mustaches and looking at the people and the cottage around him with his prominent hawk’s eyes. Sitting at the table along with Vassily Andreich were the bald, white-bearded old master of the house in a white homespun shirt; beside him the son who had come from Moscow for the feast, with a stout back and shoulders, wearing a thin cotton shirt, and yet another son, broad-shouldered, the one who ran the farm for the household, and a lean, red-haired muzhik—the neighbor.

The muzhiks, having drunk and eaten, were just about to have tea, and the samovar was already humming, standing on the floor by the stove. On planks between the wall and stove, and on the stove itself, children could be seen. A woman was sitting on a bunk bed over a cradle. The little old mistress of the house, her face covered with tiny wrinkles in all directions, which wrinkled even her lips, was tending to Vassily Andreich.

Just as Nikita came into the cottage, she was offering her guest vodka, which she had poured into a thick-sided shot glass.

“Don’t begrudge us, Vassily Andreich, you mustn’t, you’ve got to drink for the feast,” she was saying. “Drink up, dearest.”

The sight and smell of vodka, especially now, chilled and weary as he was, deeply perplexed Nikita. He frowned and, having shaken the snow from his hat and kaftan, stood facing the icons and, as if seeing no one, crossed himself three times and bowed three times before them; then, turning to the old host, he bowed first to him, then to all who were at the table, then to the women standing by the stove, and saying, “Happy feast day!” began to undress without looking at the table.

“Well, you’re really frosted up, uncle,” said the elder brother, looking at Nikita’s face, eyes, and beard, all covered with snow.

Nikita took off his kaftan, shook it once more, hung it near the stove, and went to the table. He, too, was offered vodka. There was a moment of painful struggle: he almost took the little glass and tipped the fragrant, clear liquid into his mouth; but he glanced at Vassily Andreich, remembered his vow, remembered the drunk-up boots, remembered the cooper, remembered his lad, for whom he had promised to buy a horse by spring, sighed and refused.

“My humble thanks, I don’t drink,” he said, frowning, and sat down on a bench near the second window.

“Why’s that?” asked the elder brother.

“If I don’t drink, I don’t drink,” said Nikita, not raising his eyes and looking sidelong at his skimpy mustaches and beard as the icicles melted on them.

“It’s not good for him,” said Vassily Andreich, munching a pretzel after the glass he had drunk.

“Well, some tea, then,” said the kindly old woman. “I s’pose you’re chilled through, dear heart. Why are you women dawdling with the samovar?”

“It’s ready,” said a young woman, and she fanned the covered samovar, which was boiling over, with her apron, carried it with difficulty, lifted it, and banged it down on the table.

Meanwhile Vassily Andreich was telling how they had gone astray, how they had come back twice to the same village, how they had wandered about, how they had met some drunk people. The hosts were surprised, explained where and why they had lost their way, and who the drunk people they had met were, and taught them how to go.

“A little child could drive from here to Molchanovka, once you get to the turn from the high road—you’ll see a bush there. You just didn’t go far enough!” the neighbor said.

“Or else spend the night. The women will make up beds,” the old woman urged.

“You can go in the wee hours, that’d be the most nicest thing,” the old man agreed.

“Impossible, brother, it’s business!” said Vassily Andreich. “Lose an hour, and you spend a year catching up,” he added, remembering the woods and the merchants who might outbid him on the purchase. “Will we make it?” he turned to Nikita.

Nikita took a long time to answer, as if he was preoccupied with thawing out his beard and mustaches.

“If we don’t go astray again,” he said gloomily.

Nikita was gloomy because he passionately wanted vodka, and the one thing that could extinguish that desire was tea, but he had not yet been offered any.

“We only need to get to that turn, and from there on we won’t get lost; it’s a forest road all the way,” said Vassily Andreich.

“It’s your business, Vassily Andreich; if we go, we go,” said Nikita, taking the offered glass of tea.

“We’ll have tea and be off.”

Nikita said nothing, but only shook his head and, carefully pouring tea into the saucer, began warming his hands, the fingers permanently swollen from work, over the steam. Then, having bitten off a tiny piece of sugar, he bowed to the hosts and said:

“To your health,” and slurped up the warming liquid.

“If only somebody could take us to that turn,” said Vassily Andreich.

“Why, that can be done,” said the elder son. “Petrukha will hitch up and take you to the turn.”

“Hitch up, then, brother. I’ll thank you for it.”

“Ah, none of that, dearest,” said the kindly old woman. “We’re heartily glad.”

“Petrukha, go and hitch up the mare,” said the elder brother.

“Can do,” said Petrukha, smiling, and, snatching his hat from a nail, he ran at once to hitch up.

While the horse was being harnessed, the conversation returned to where it had stopped when Vassily Andreich drove up to the window. The old man was complaining to the neighbor, who was a headman, about the third son, who had sent him nothing for the feast, but had sent his wife a French kerchief.

“The young folk are getting out of hand,” said the old man.

“And how,” said the neighbor. “No managing ’em! Got too clever. Take Demochkin—broke his father’s arm. All from such great cleverness, plainly.”

Nikita listened, looked into their faces, and obviously also wished to take part in the conversation, but he was all engrossed in his tea and only nodded his head approvingly. He drank glass after glass and felt warmer and warmer, pleasanter and pleasanter. The conversation went on for a long time about the same thing, the harm of divisions; and the conversation was obviously not an abstract one, it had to do with the division of this household—a division demanded by the second son, who sat there and kept sullenly silent. Obviously, this was a sore spot, and the question concerned the whole family, but out of politeness they did not sort out their private affairs in front of strangers. But the old man finally could not hold himself back, and with tears in his voice he began talking about how he would not let them divide it up as long as he lived, that thank God he had such a house, and if they divided it up, they would all go begging through the world.

“Just like the Matveevs,” said the neighbor. “They had a real household, but they divided it up—now nobody’s got anything.”

“And that’s what you want,” the old man said to his son.

The son did not reply and an awkward silence ensued. This silence was broken by Petrukha, who had already harnessed the horse and had come back to the cottage a few minutes before then and kept smiling all the while.

“There’s a fable about that in Poolson,” he said. “A father gives his sons a besom to break. They couldn’t break it all at once, but twig by twig it was easy. It’s the same here,” he said with a broad smile. “Ready!” he added.

“If it’s ready, let’s go,” said Vassily Andreich. “And as for dividing up, don’t give in, grandpa. You earned it, you’re the master. Turn it over to the justice of the peace. He’ll show what’s right.”

“He’s so ornery, so ornery,” the old man kept repeating in his tearful voice, “there’s no getting on with him. Just like the devil’s got into him.”

Nikita, meanwhile, having finished his fifth glass of tea, still did not turn it upside down but laid it on its side, hoping they would give him a sixth. But there was no more water in the samovar, and the hostess did not pour him more, and Vassily Andreich began to dress. There was nothing to be done. Nitika also got up, put his thoroughly nibbled piece of sugar back into the sugar bowl, wiped his sweaty face, and went to put on his coat.

Having dressed, he sighed deeply, and, after thanking his hosts and taking leave of them, went out of the warm, bright room into the dark, cold front hall, rumbling from the wind that wanted to tear its way inside, and with snow blowing in through the cracks in the shaking outer door, and from there to the dark yard.

Petrukha in his fur coat stood with his horse in the middle of the yard and, smiling, recited verses from Paulson. He said: “The storm in darkness hides the sky, sending snowy gusts awhirl, now like a wild beast it cries, now it weeps like a little girl.”⁶

Nikita nodded his head approvingly and sorted out the reins.

The old man, seeing Vassily Andreich off, brought a lantern to the front hall to light the way, but the lantern was immediately blown out. Even in the yard one could see that the blizzard had picked up considerably.

“Well, what weather,” thought Vassily Andreich. “Very likely we won’t make it, but no help for it, it’s business! And I’m all ready, and the host’s horse is harnessed. We’ll make it, God willing!”

The old host also thought they should not be going, but he had already urged them to stay, and they had not listened. There was no point in asking again. “Maybe it’s old age that’s got me so timid, and they’ll make it all right,” he thought. “And at least we’ll get to bed on time. Without any fuss.”

Petrukha was not even thinking of any danger: he knew the road and the whole area so well, and besides, the line “sending snowy gusts awhirl” stirred him by expressing perfectly what was happening outside. Nikita did not want to go at all, but he had long since grown used to not having his own will and serving others, and so no one held back the departing men.

V

VASSILY ANDREICH WENT to the sleigh, barely making out where they were in the darkness, got into it, and took the reins.

“Go in front!” he shouted.

Petrukha, kneeling in the low, wide sleigh, started his horse. Mukhorty, who had long been neighing, sensing a mare ahead of him, tore after her, and they drove out to the street. Again they drove through the settlement by the same road, past the same yard with frozen laundry on the line, which now could not be seen; past the same barn, which was now buried almost to the roof, and from which snow poured endlessly; past the same gloomily rustling, whistling, and swaying willows; and again drove into that snowy sea raging above and below. The wind was so strong that when it blew from the side and the riders sailed into it, it made the sleigh list and pushed the horse sideways. Ahead of them, Petrukha drove his good mare at a shambling trot and kept shouting cheerily. Mukhorty went tearing after her.

Having gone like that for some ten minutes, Petrukha turned around and shouted something. Neither Vassily Andreich nor Nikita could hear because of the wind, but they guessed that they had come to the turn. Indeed, Petrukha turned to the right, and the wind, previously from the side, was again in their faces, and something black could be seen through the snow to the right. It was the little bush at the turn.

“Well, Godspeed!”

“Thanks, Petrukha!”

“The storm in darkness hides the sky,” Petrukha cried and vanished.

“See what a versifier,” said Vassily Andreich, and he snapped the reins.

“Yes, a fine fellow, a real muzhik,” said Nikita.

They drove on.

Nikita, wrapped up and drawing his head down into his shoulders so that his small beard lay on his neck, sat silently, trying not to lose the warmth he had accumulated in the cottage over tea. Ahead of him he saw the straight lines of the shafts, which kept deceiving him and appearing like a smooth road, the tossing rump of the horse with its knotted tail blown sideways, and further ahead the high shaft-bow and the horse’s swaying head and neck with its flying mane. From time to time his eyes caught sight of stakes, and he knew that so far they had been following the road and there was nothing for him to do.

Vassily Andreich drove, letting the horse himself keep to the road. But Mukhorty, though he had had some rest in the village, ran reluctantly and seemed to get off the road, so that Vassily Andreich had to correct him several times.

“Here’s one stake to the right, here’s another, here’s a third,” Vassily Andreich counted, “and here’s the forest ahead,” he thought, peering at something that showed black ahead of him. But what had seemed like a forest to him was only a bush. They passed by the bush, went some fifty yards further—there was no fourth stake, nor any forest. “It should be the forest any minute now,” thought Vassily Andreich and, excited by the drink and the tea, not stopping, he snapped the reins, and the good, submissive animal obeyed and, now at an amble, now at a brief trot, raced off where he had been sent, though he knew that where he had been sent was not at all where he ought to be going. Ten minutes went by, there was no forest.

“We’ve gone astray again!” said Vassily Andreich, stopping the horse.

Nikita silently got out of the sleigh and, holding his coat, which now clung to him with the wind, now flew open and wanted to tear itself off of him, went to flounder about in the snow; he went to one side, he went to the other. Three times or so he completely disappeared from sight. At last he came back and took the reins from Vassily Andreich’s hands.

“We must go to the right,” he said sternly and resolutely, turning the horse.

“Well, to the right, so go to the right,” said Vassily Andreich, surrendering the reins and tucking his chilled hands into his sleeves.

Nikita did not reply.

“Now, little friend, get to work!” he shouted to the horse; but, despite the snapping of the reins, the horse only went at a walk.

The snow was knee-deep in some places, and the sleigh jerked fitfully with each movement of the horse.

Nikita took the whip that hung in front and whipped the horse. The good horse, unaccustomed to whipping, plunged ahead, went into a trot, but at once changed back to an amble and then a walk. They went on like that for about five minutes. It was so dark and so smoky above and below that at times the shaft-bow could not be seen. The sleigh seemed at times to be standing in place and the fields rushing backwards. Suddenly the horse stopped abruptly, obviously feeling something wrong in front of him. Nikita again jumped out lightly, dropping the reins, and went ahead of the horse to see why he had stopped; but just as he tried to take a step in front of the horse, his feet slipped and he went sliding down some steep slope.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said to himself, falling and trying to stop, but he could not, and stopped only when his feet met with the dense mass of snow heaped up at the bottom of the ravine.

A snowdrift hanging on the edge of the slope, dislodged by Nikita’s fall, poured down on him and got behind his collar …

“So that’s how you are!” Nikita said reproachfully, addressing the snowdrift and the ravine, and shaking the snow from behind his collar.

“Nikita! Hey, Nikita!” Vassily Andreich shouted from above.

But Nikita did not respond.

He had no time: he shook off the snow, then looked for the whip he had dropped when he slid down the slope. Having found the whip, he tried to climb straight back up the way he had slid down, but the ascent was impossible; he kept sliding back down, so that from the bottom he had to search for a way up. Some twenty feet from the place where he had slid down, he managed with difficulty to climb up the hill on all fours and went along the ridge of the ravine to the place where the horse should have been. He saw no horse or sleigh; but as he was walking against the wind, he heard, before he saw them, the cries of Vassily Andreich and the whinnies of Mukhorty, who were calling to him.

“I’m coming, I’m coming, what are you hooting about!” he said.

Only when he came quite close to the sleigh did he see the horse and Vassily Andreich standing beside it, looking enormous.

“Where the devil did you disappear to? We’ve got to go back. At least we’ll get to Grishkino again,” the master angrily began to reproach Nikita.

“I’d be glad to turn back, Vassily Andreich, but which way do we go? There’s this big ravine here, fall into it and there’s no getting out. I made such a fine job of it, I could barely drag myself out.”

“But we’re not just going to stand here, are we? We’ve got to go somewhere,” said Vassily Andreich.

Nikita made no reply. He sat down in the sleigh with his back to the wind, took off his boots, shook out the snow that had gotten into them, and, picking up some straw, carefully plugged a hole in the left boot from inside.

Vassily Andreich was silent, as if leaving everything to Nikita now. After putting his boots back on, Nikita pulled his legs into the sleigh, put his mittens on again, took the reins, and turned the horse along the ravine. Before they had gone a hundred paces, the horse balked again. In front of him there was again a ravine.

Nikita got out again and again went floundering through the snow. He walked about for a long time. At last he appeared on the opposite side from where he had started.

“Andreich, are you alive?” he cried.

“Here!” responded Vassily Andreich. “Well, what?”

“Can’t make anything out. It’s dark. Ravines of some kind. Got to drive into the wind again.”

They drove on again, Nikita walked about again, floundering through the snow. Again he sat down, again he floundered about, and finally, out of breath, he stopped by the sleigh.

“Well, what?” asked Vassily Andreich.

“I’m all worn out! And the horse keeps stopping.”

“So what are we to do?”

“Wait a bit.”

Nikita left again and soon came back.

“Keep behind me,” he said, getting in front of the horse.

Vassily Andreich no longer gave any orders, but obediently did what Nikita told him.

“This way, after me!” shouted Nikita, stepping quickly to the right and seizing Mukhorty by the reins and leading him down somewhere into a snowdrift.

The horse balked at first, then plunged forward, hoping to jump over the drift, but could not make it and sank into it up to his collar.

“Get out!” Nikita shouted to Vassily Andreich, who went on sitting in the sleigh, and, taking hold of one shaft, he began to push the sleigh towards the horse. “It’s a bit hard, brother,” he said to Mukhorty, “but there’s no help for it, just give a try! Hup, hup, a little more!” he cried.

The horse plunged forward once, twice, but still failed to get out, and sat down again, as if thinking something over.

“No, brother, that’s no good,” Nikita admonished Mukhorty. “Once more now.”

Again Nikita pulled on the shaft on his side; Vassily Andreich did the same on the other side. The horse moved his head, then suddenly plunged on.

“Hup, now, don’t worry, you won’t sink,” cried Nikita.

One leap, a second, a third, and the horse finally got out of the snowdrift and stopped, breathing heavily and shaking off snow. Nikita wanted to lead him further, but Vassily Andreich got so out of breath in his two fur coats that he could not walk and collapsed into the sleigh.

“Let me catch my breath,” he said, loosening the kerchief he had tied around his coat collar in the village.

“Never mind, you lie there,” said Nikita, “I’ll lead him,” and, with Vassily Andreich in the sleigh, he led the horse by the bridle down some ten paces and then slightly up and stopped.

The place where Nikita stopped was not in the hollow, where snow blowing off the hillocks and settling there could bury them completely, but was still partly shielded from snow by the edge of the ravine. There were moments when the wind seemed to drop a little, but that did not last long, and afterwards, as if to make up for this respite, the storm swooped down with ten times the force, and tore and whirled still more angrily. One such gust of wind struck just as Vassily Andreich, having caught his breath, got out of the sleigh and went up to Nikita, to talk over what to do. They both involuntarily ducked their heads and did not speak, waiting for the fury of the gust to pass. Mukhorty also laid his ears back in displeasure and shook his head. When the gust of wind had passed slightly, Nikita took off his mittens, tucked them under his sash, breathed on his hands, and began to remove the reins from the shaft-bow.

“What’s that you’re doing?” asked Vassily Andreich.

“Unharnessing, what else? I’ve got no strength left,” Nikita said, as if apologizing.

“But won’t we get somewhere?”

“No, we won’t, we’ll only exhaust the horse. Look at the dear heart, he’s beside himself,” said Nikita, pointing to the horse standing there submissively, ready for anything, his steep and wet flanks heaving heavily. “We’ll have to spend the night,” he said, as if he was preparing to spend the night at a roadside inn, and he started unfastening the hame straps.

The hames sprang open.

“But won’t we freeze?” said Vassily Andreich.

“So? If you freeze, you can’t say no,” said Nikita.

VI

VASSILY ANDREICH WAS quite warm in his two fur coats, especially after the way he had floundered in the snowdrift, but a chill ran down his spine when he realized that they indeed had to spend the night there. To calm himself, he got into the sleigh and began taking out cigarettes and matches.

Nikita meanwhile was unharnessing the horse. He undid the girth, the saddle strap, removed the reins, took off the tugs, pulled out the shaft-bow, and never stopped speaking words of encouragement to the horse.

“Well, out you come, out you come,” he said, leading him out of the shafts. “We’ll tie you up here. I’ll give you some straw and unbridle you,” he said, while doing what he was saying. “You’ll have a bite to eat, that’ll cheer you up.”

But Mukhorty obviously was not to be calmed down by Nikita’s talk and felt anxious; he shifted from foot to foot, huddled up to the sleigh, standing with his rump to the wind, and rubbed his head against Nikita’s sleeve.

As if only so as not to refuse Nikita’s treat of straw, which Nikita put under his muzzle, Mukhorty impetuously snatched a wisp of straw from the sleigh, but at once decided that now was no time for straw, dropped it, and the wind immediately blew it about, carried it off, and covered it with snow.

“Now we’ll set up a marker,” said Nikita, turning the sleigh face to the wind, and, tying the shafts together with the saddle strap, he raised them up and pulled them towards the front of the sleigh. “If we get snowed in, good people will see the shafts and dig us out,” said Nikita, slapping his mittens together and putting them on. “That’s how the old folks taught us.”

Meanwhile Vassily Andreich, spreading the skirts of his coat and using them as a shield, was striking one sulfur match after another against a steel box, but his hands were shaking and the matches were blown out by the wind, some before they flared up, some just as he put them to the cigarette. Finally one match began to burn and lit up for a moment the fur of his coat, his hand with a gold signet ring on the bent index finger, and the snow-covered oat straw sticking up from under the burlap, and the cigarette caught. He dragged on it eagerly a couple of times, inhaled, let the smoke out through his mustaches, was about to inhale again, but the burning tobacco was blown off and carried away to where the straw had gone.

But even those few puffs of tobacco smoke cheered Vassily Andreich up.

“If it’s spend the night, it’s spend the night!” he said resolutely. “Wait, now, I’ll make us a flag, too,” he said, picking up the kerchief he had thrown into the sleigh when he untied his collar, and, taking off his gloves, he stood in front of the sleigh and, stretching out to reach the saddle strap, tied the kerchief to it in a tight knot near the shaft.

The kerchief at once began to flutter desperately, now sticking to the shaft, now suddenly pulling away, stretching out, and flapping.

“See how clever,” said Vassily Andreich, admiring his work, as he lowered himself into the sleigh. “It would be warmer together, but there’s no room for two,” he said.

“I’ll find a place,” replied Nikita, “only we’ve got to cover the horse, he’s all in a sweat, the dear heart. Give it here,” he added, and, going to the sleigh, he pulled the burlap from under Vassily Andreich.

And, having taken the burlap, he folded it in two and, first throwing off the girth and removing the gig saddle, covered Mukhorty with it.

“It’ll be all the warmer for you, little fool,” he said, putting the gig saddle and girth back on over the burlap. “And you won’t be needing the sacking, will you? Give me some straw, too,” said Nikita, finishing that task and going back to the sleigh.

And, having taken both from under Vassily Andreich, Nikita went behind the sleigh, dug a small hole for himself in the snow, put straw in it, and, pulling his hat down, wrapping himself in his kaftan, and covering himself with sacking, he sat on the spread straw, leaning against the back of the sleigh, which shielded him from the wind and snow.

Vassily Andreich shook his head disapprovingly at what Nikita was doing, as he generally did not approve of peasant ignorance and stupidity, and began to settle himself for the night.

He evened out the remaining straw in the sleigh, put a thicker layer under his side, and, tucking his hands into his sleeves, nestled his head in the corner of the sleigh, towards the front, to shelter himself from the wind.

He did not feel like sleeping. He lay there and thought: thought of ever the same thing, which constituted the sole aim, meaning, joy, and pride of his life—of how much money he had made and might still make; how much money other people he knew made and had, and how those other people had made and were making their money, and how he, like those others, might still make a great deal of money. The purchase of the Goryachkino woods constituted a matter of great importance to him. He hoped to make maybe ten thousand straight off on that woods. And mentally he began to evaluate the woods he had seen in the fall, in which he had counted all the trees on five acres of land.

“The oaks will go for runners. For timber, too, needless to say. And there’ll be some hundred cord of firewood per acre,” he said to himself. “At the worst I’ll end up with eighty-five roubles per acre. There are a hundred and fifty acres, so that means a hundred times eighty plus a hundred times five, plus fifty times eighty, plus fifty times five.” He could see that it came to over twelve thousand, but without an abacus he could not work it out precisely. “All the same I won’t give him ten thousand, but more like eight, and that minus the clearings. I’ll grease the surveyor’s palm—a hundred, a hundred and fifty. He’ll measure me up some fifteen acres of clearings. He’ll give it to me for eight. I’ll give him three thousand in cash. He’ll soften all right,” he thought, feeling the wallet in his pocket with his forearm. “And how we went astray after the turn, God knows! There should be a forest and a watch-house here. We should hear the dogs. But the cursed things don’t bark when they ought to.” He took his collar away from his ear and began to listen; he could hear the same whistling of the wind, the fluttering and snapping of the kerchief in the shafts, and the lashing of the falling snow against the bast of the sleigh. He covered himself again.

“If I’d known, I would have spent the night. Well, it’s all the same, we’ll get there tomorrow. Only one extra day. In such weather they won’t go there either.” And he remembered that by the ninth he was to get money from the butcher for the wethers. “He was going to come himself; he won’t find me—my wife won’t be able to take the money. Very ignorant. No way with people,” he went on thinking, recalling how she had not known how to behave with the police officer who had been their guest at yesterday’s feast. “You know—a woman! Where has she ever seen anything? What was our house when my parents were alive? Nothing much, rich village peasants: a grist mill and an inn—that was the whole property. And what have I done in fifteen years? A shop, two pot-houses, a flouring mill, a granary, two rented estates, a house and barn with iron roofs,” he recalled with pride. “A far cry from my father! Who makes noise in the district these days? Brekhunov.

“And why so? Because I stick to business, I try hard, not like others, who lie about or busy themselves with stupidities. I don’t sleep nights. Blizzard or no blizzard—I go. So my business gets done. They think making money’s just a joke. No, you’ve got to work at it, rack your brain. Spend the night in the fields like this and not sleep all night. So that the pillow whirls under your head from thinking,” he reflected with pride. “They think people make it through luck. Look, the Mironovs are in the millions now. And why? Hard work. God will give. If only God gives you health.”

And the thought that he, too, could be a millionaire like Mironov, who had started from nothing, so excited Vassily Andreich that he felt the need to talk with someone. But there was no one to talk with … If only he could get to Goryachkino, he would have a talk with the landowner, he would make him see straight.

“Look how it’s blowing! It’ll bury us so we’ll never get out in the morning!” he thought, listening to the gusts of wind blowing at the front of the sleigh, bending it, and lashing its bast with snow. He raised himself slightly and looked around: in the white, undulating darkness he could see only the black shape of Mukhorty’s head, and his back covered by the fluttering burlap, and his thick, knotted tail; but around on all sides, before, behind, there was one and the same uniform, white, undulating darkness, which sometimes seemed to grow a bit lighter, and sometimes thickened still more.

“And I was wrong to listen to Nikita,” he thought. “We ought to have gone on, we’d have gotten somewhere anyway. At least we could have gone back to Grishkino and spent the night at Taras’s. Now we’ve got to sit here all night. But what was it that was so nice? Ah, yes, that God gives to those who work hard, not to idlers, lie-abeds, or fools. And I must smoke!” He sat up, took out his cigarette case, lay on his stomach, shielding the fire from the wind with the skirt of his coat, but the wind found a way in and blew out one match after another. At last he managed to light one and began to smoke. The fact that he had brought it off gladdened him greatly. Though the wind smoked more of the cigarette than he did, he still took about three drags and began to feel cheerful again. He huddled against the back of the sleigh and again began to recall, to dream, and, quite unexpectedly, suddenly became oblivious and dozed off.

But suddenly it was if something nudged and roused him. Whether it was Mukhorty pulling straw from under him, or something inside him that stirred him, in any case he woke up, and his heart started pounding so rapidly and so hard that it seemed to him that the sled was shaking under him. He opened his eyes. Around him everything was the same, only it seemed brighter. “It’s getting brighter,” he thought, “it shouldn’t be long till morning.” But he remembered at once that it was brighter only because the moon had risen. He raised himself, looking first at the horse. Mukhorty still stood with his rump to the wind and was shaking all over. The snow-covered burlap was turned back on one side, the girth had also slipped sideways, and the snow-covered head with its windblown forelock and mane was now more visible. Vassily Andreich bent over and peered behind. Nikita was still sitting in the same position in which he had sat down. His legs and the sacking he had put over himself were thickly covered with snow. “The muzhik may well freeze; he’s got such poor clothes on him. I’d have to answer for him. Muddleheaded folk. Real ignorance,” thought Vassily Andreich, and he was going to take the burlap off the horse and cover Nikita, but it was too cold to get up and move, and he was afraid the horse, too, might freeze. “Why did I take him? It was all just her stupidity!” thought Vassily Andreich, remembering his unloved wife, and he rolled back again into his former place at the front of the sleigh. “My uncle once sat all night in the snow like this,” he recalled, “and nothing happened. Well, but Sebastian got dug out,” another case at once presented itself to him. “Dead he was, all stiff, like a frozen carcass.

“If I’d stayed overnight in Grishkino, nothing would have happened.” And, wrapping himself up carefully, so that the warmth of the fur would not be wasted anywhere, but would keep him warm all over, at the neck, at the knees, at the soles of his feet—he closed his eyes, trying to fall asleep again. But no matter how he tried now, he could not become oblivious, but, on the contrary, felt completely alert and animated. Again he began counting his gains, the debts people owed him; again he began boasting to himself and rejoicing over himself and his situation—but now it was all constantly interrupted by a sneaking fear and the vexing thought of why he had not stayed for the night in Grishkino. “That would be just the thing: lying on a bench, nice and warm.” He turned over several times, lay down, tried to find a position that was more comfortable and shielded from the wind, but it all seemed uncomfortable to him; again he would sit up, change position, wrap his legs, close his eyes, and lie still. But either his cramped feet in their stout felt boots began to ache, or it blew on him from somewhere, and having lain there for a short while, he would again remind himself with vexation of how he might now be lying peacefully in the warm cottage in Grishkino, and again he would sit up, turn over, wrap himself, and lie down again.

Once it seemed to Vassily Andreich that he heard a distant crowing of cocks. He was overjoyed, opened his coat, and began straining to hear, but no matter how he strained his hearing, he heard nothing except the sound of the wind whistling in the shafts and flapping the kerchief, and of snow lashing the bast of the sleigh.

Nikita sat all the while just as he had sat in the evening, not stirring and not even answering Vassily Andreich, who called to him a couple of times. “He couldn’t care less. Must be asleep,” Vassily Andreich thought vexedly, peering over the back of the sleigh at Nikita, who was thickly covered with snow.

Vassily Andreich got up and lay down some twenty times. It seemed to him that the night would never end. “It must be near morning by now,” he thought once, sitting up and looking around. “Let’s have a look at my watch. It’ll be cold uncovering myself. Well, but if I know it’s getting on towards morning, I’ll be more cheerful. We’ll start harnessing up.” In the depths of his soul, Vassily Andreich knew that it could not be morning yet, but he was becoming more and more scared, and he wanted both to test and to deceive himself. He carefully undid the hooks of his fur coat and, putting his hand in his bosom, fumbled there for a long time before he got to his waistcoat. With great difficulty he took out his silver watch with enamel flowers and began to look. Without light, nothing could be seen. He lay down again, propping himself on his elbows and knees, as he had done when lighting a cigarette, took out his matches, and began to strike one. This time he set to work more precisely, and, feeling with his fingers for the match with the biggest amount of phosphorus, he lit it the first time. Putting the face of the watch to the light, he looked and could not believe his eyes … It was only ten minutes past midnight. The whole night was still ahead of him.

“Oh, it’s a long night!” thought Vassily Andreich, feeling a chill run down his spine, and, hooking his coat and covering himself up again, he pressed himself into the corner of the sleigh, preparing to wait patiently. Suddenly, through the monotonous sound of the wind, he clearly heard some new, living sound. The sound increased regularly and, having reached perfect distinctness, began as regularly to diminish. There was no doubt that it was a wolf. And the wolf was so close that the changes in his voice as he moved his jaws could be clearly heard on the wind. Vassily Andreich opened his collar and listened attentively. Mukhorty also strained to listen, moving his ears, and when the wolf finished his part, he shifted his feet and snorted in warning. After that Vassily Andreich not only could not fall asleep, but could not even calm down. No matter how he tried to think of his accounts and affairs, and of his fame, and of his importance and wealth, fear took hold of him more and more, and all his thoughts were dominated by and mixed with the thought of why he had not stayed overnight in Grishkino.

“God keep it, the woods, there are enough deals without it, thank God. Ah, I should have spent the night!” he said to himself. “They say it’s drunk ones that freeze to death,” he thought. “And I drank.” And paying heed to his sensations, he felt he was beginning to tremble, not knowing himself why he was trembling—from cold or from fear. He tried to cover himself and lie down as before, but he could no longer do it. He could not stay put, he wanted to get up, to undertake something, so as to stifle the fear that was rising in him, against which he felt powerless. He took out his cigarettes and matches again, but there were only three matches left, and all of them bad. All three fizzled without catching fire.

“Ah, devil take you, cursed thing, go to hell!” he swore, not knowing at whom himself, and flung away the crumpled cigarette. He was about to fling away the matchbox as well, but stopped the movement of his arm and put the box in his pocket. He was overcome with such anxiety that he could no longer stay put. He got out of the sleigh, turned his back to the wind, and began rewinding the sash around him tighter and lower down.

“Why lie there waiting for death! Mount up and be off,” suddenly came to his head. “A mounted horse won’t stop. As for him,” he thought of Nikita, “it’s all the same if he dies. What kind of life has he got! He won’t feel sorry for his life, but for me, thank God, there’s something to live for …”

And, having untethered the horse, he threw the bridle over his head and went to jump onto him, but his fur coats and boots were so heavy that he fell off. Then he stood on the sleigh and tried to get onto the horse from there. But the sleigh rocked under his weight and he fell again. Finally, the third time, he moved the horse up to the sleigh, and, standing carefully on its edge, managed to lie belly-down across the horse’s back. After lying like that for a while, he shifted himself forward once, twice, and finally threw one leg over the horse’s back and sat up, the soles of his feet resting on the horizontal straps of the girth. The lurch of the sleigh as it rocked awoke Nikita, and he sat up, and it seemed to Vassily Andreich that he said something.

“Listen to you fools! What, should I perish like this, for nothing?” cried Vassily Andreich, and, tucking the flying skirts of his fur coat under his knees, he turned the horse and urged him away from the sleigh in the direction in which he supposed the forest and the watch-house should be.

VII

NIKITA, ever since he sat down, covered with sacking, behind the rear of the sleigh, had been sitting motionlessly. He, like all people who live with nature and know want, was patient and could wait calmly for hours, even days, without feeling either alarm or vexation. He heard the master call him but did not reply, because he did not want to move and reply. Though he was still warm from the tea he had drunk, and because he had moved a lot, floundering through the snowdrifts, he knew that this warmth would not last long, and that he would no longer be able to warm himself by moving, because he felt as tired as a horse feels when it stops and cannot go further, despite any whipping, and the master sees that he must feed it so that it will be able to work again. One of his feet, in the torn boot, was cold, and he could no longer feel the big toe. And, besides that, his whole body was growing colder and colder. The thought that he could, and even in all probability would, die that night occurred to him, but this thought seemed neither especially unpleasant nor especially frightening to him. This thought did not seem especially unpleasant to him, because his whole life was not a continuous feast, but, on the contrary, a ceaseless servitude, which was beginning to weary him. And this thought was not especially frightening to him, because, besides masters like Vassily Andreich whom he had served here, he always felt himself dependent in this life on the chief master, the one who had sent him into this life, and he knew that, on dying, he would remain in the power of that same master, and that that master would not mistreat him. “It’s a pity to abandon the accustomed, the usual? Well, no help for it, you’ll have to get used to the new.”

“Sins?” he thought and remembered his drunkenness, the drunk-up money, the mistreatment of his wife, the swearing, not going to church, not keeping the fasts, and all that the priest reprimanded him for at confession. “Sins, sure. But did I visit them on myself? It’s clear God made me this way. Well, sins then! No getting away from them!”

So he thought at first about what might happen to him that night, and then he no longer went back to those thoughts, but gave himself to reflections that came to him of themselves. Now he remembered Marfa’s visit, and the workers’ drunkenness, and his refusal to drink, then the present journey and Taras’s cottage, and the conversation about dividing up, then about his lad, and about Mukhorty, who would now get warm under the horse-cloth, then about his master, who made the sleigh creak turning over in it. “I don’t suppose the dear heart’s glad he went either. The kind of life he’s got, you don’t want to die. Not so the likes of us.” And all these recollections began to overlap and mix up in his head, and he fell asleep.

When Vassily Andreich, getting onto the horse, rocked the sleigh, and the rear of it, against which Nikita leaned his back, was thrown sideways and its runner hit him in the back, he woke up and was forced willy-nilly to change his position. Straightening his legs with difficulty and throwing the snow off of them, he got up, and at once an excruciating cold pierced his whole body. Realizing what was happening, he wanted Vassily Andreich to leave him the burlap, which the horse did not need now, so as to cover himself, and shouted that to him.

But Vassily Andreich did not stop and disappeared into the snowy dust.

Left alone, Nikita thought a moment about what he was to do. He did not feel strong enough to go in search of habitations. To sit in his old place was no longer possible—it was all buried in snow. And he felt he would not get warm in the sleigh, because he had nothing to cover himself with, and his kaftan and coat now did not warm him at all. He was as cold as if he were just in his shirt. It felt eerie to him. “Dear Father in heaven!” he said, and was reassured by the awareness that he was not alone, that someone heard him and would not abandon him. He sighed deeply and, without taking the sacking from his head, got into the sleigh and lay down in his master’s place.

But in the sleigh, too, he could not get warm. At first he shivered all over, then the shivering went away and he gradually began to lose consciousness. Whether he was dying or falling asleep he did not know, but he felt equally prepared for the one and for the other.

VIII

MEANWHILE VASSILY ANDREICH, with his feet and with the ends of the reins, urged the horse on towards where he supposed for some reason that the forest and the watch-house would be. The snow blinded his eyes, and the wind seemed to want to stop him, but, leaning forward and constantly wrapping himself tighter in his fur coat and tucking it under him, which made it hard to sit on the cold gig saddle, he kept urging the horse on. The horse, with difficulty, but obediently, ambled on where he was sent.

For some five minutes he rode, as it seemed to him, straight ahead, seeing nothing except the horse’s head and the white waste, and hearing nothing except the wind whistling past the horse’s ears and the collar of his own coat.

Suddenly something loomed up black ahead of him. His heart began to beat joyfully, and he rode towards that black thing, already seeing in it the walls of village houses. But the black thing was not still, but all astir, and was not a village, but a tall clump of wormwood growing on a boundary, sticking up from the snow and desperately tossing about under the pressure of the wind bending it all to one side and whistling through it. And for some reason the sight of this clump of wormwood tormented by the merciless wind made Vassily Andreich shudder, and he hastened to urge the horse on, not noticing that as he rode up to the wormwood he changed his former direction completely and was now urging his horse in a totally different direction, still imagining he was going towards where the watch-house should be. But the horse kept bearing to the right, and therefore he kept on turning him to the left.

Again something loomed up black ahead of him. He rejoiced, confident that now it was certainly the village. But it was again a boundary overgrown with wormwood. Again the dry weeds tossed just as desperately, for some reason filling Vassily Andreich with fear. But not only were they the same weeds—beside them were hoofprints that the wind was covering over. Vassily Andreich stopped, bent down, looked closely: they were horse tracks, lightly covered with snow, and they could be no one else’s but his. He was obviously going in a circle, and over a small space. “I’ll perish like this!” he thought, and, not to give way to fear, he began urging his horse on still harder, peering into the white, snowy murk, in which points of light seemed to appear to him, disappearing at once as soon as he peered at them. Once he seemed to hear the barking dogs or the howling of wolves, but the sounds were so faint and indistinct that he did not know whether he heard them or only imagined them, and, stopping, he began to listen.

Suddenly some dreadful, deafening cry rang out by his ears, and everything shuddered and shook under him. Vassily Andreich clutched the horse by the neck, but the horse’s neck was also shaking, and the dreadful cry became still more terrible. For a few seconds Vassily Andreich could not come to his senses and realize what had happened. What had happened was only that Mukhorty, either encouraging himself or calling for help, had neighed in his loud, ringing voice. “Pah, confound it, the damned beast scared me!” Vassily Andreich said to himself. But even having realized the true cause of his fear, he could no longer drive it away.

“I must think things over, steady myself,” he said to himself, and at the same time he could not help himself and kept urging the horse on, not noticing that he was now riding with the wind, not against it. His body, especially between the legs, where it was uncovered and touched the gig saddle, was chilled and ached, his arms and legs trembled, and he gasped for breath. He sees he is perishing in the middle of this dreadful snowy waste, and sees no means of salvation.

Suddenly the horse crashed down under him and, sinking into a snowdrift, began to struggle and fell on his side. Vassily Andreich jumped off him, wrenching askew the girth on which his foot rested and the gig saddle, which he held to as he jumped off. As soon as Vassily Andreich jumped off, the horse righted himself, plunged forward, made a leap, another, and, neighing again, dragging the trailing burlap and girth, disappeared from sight, leaving Vassily Andreich alone in the snowdrift. Vassily Andreich rushed after him, but the snow was so deep and the coats on him were so heavy that each leg sank over the knee, and, having gone no more than twenty steps, he got out of breath and stopped. “The woods, the wethers, the rent, the shop, the pot-houses, the house and barn with the iron roofs, the heir,” he thought, “what will become of it all? What is this? It can’t be!” flashed in his head. And for some reason he recalled the wind-tossed wormwood, which he had passed twice, and such terror came over him that he did not believe in the reality of what was happening to him. He thought: “Isn’t all this a dream?” and wanted to wake up, but there was nowhere to wake up in. This was real snow that lashed him in the face, and poured over him, and felt cold on his right hand, the glove for which he had lost, and this was a real waste, in which he now remained alone, like that wormwood, awaiting an inevitable, speedy, and senseless death.

“Queen of Heaven, holy father Nicholas, teacher of abstinence,” he remembered yesterday’s prayers, and the icon with its blackened face in the gilded casing, and the candles he had been selling to set before the icon, which had been brought back to him at once and he had put away, barely burnt, in a box. And he started asking that same Nicholas the Wonderworker to save him, promising him a prayer service and candles. But he realized at once, clearly, unquestionably, that that face, the casing, the candles, the priest, the prayer services—all of it was very important and necessary there in church, but that here they could do nothing for him, that between those candles and prayer services and his wretched present position there was not and could not be any connection. “I mustn’t be downcast,” he thought. “I must follow the horse’s tracks, or they, too, will get covered over” came to his head. “He’ll lead me out, and I may even catch him. Only I mustn’t hurry or I’ll get winded and that will be the end of me.” But despite his intention to go slowly, he rushed forward and ran, constantly falling, getting up, and falling again. The horse’s tracks were already becoming barely visible in places where the snow was not deep. “It’s the end of me,” thought Vassily Andreich, “I’ll lose the trail and not catch up with the horse.” But at that same moment, looking ahead, he saw something black. It was Mukhorty, and not only Mukhorty, but the sleigh, and the shafts with the kerchief. Mukhorty, girth and burlap askew, now stood, not in his former place, but closer to the shafts, and bobbed his head, pulled down by the reins he had stepped over. It turned out that Vassily Andreich had sunk into the same hollow in which he and Nikita had sunk, that the horse had been carrying him back to the sleigh, and that he had jumped off him no more than fifty paces from where the sleigh was.

IX

WALLOWING UP to the sleigh, Vassily Andreich took hold of it and stood motionless like that for a long time, trying to calm down and catch his breath. Nikita was not in his former place, but something already covered with snow was lying in the sleigh, and Vassily Andreich guessed that this was Nikita. Vassily Andreich’s fear was now gone completely, and if he was afraid of anything, it was that terrible state of fear he had experienced on the horse and especially when he was left alone in the snowdrift. He had at all costs to keep that fear away from him, and to keep it away he had to do something, to busy himself with something. And therefore the first thing he did was turn his back to the wind and untie his fur coat. Then, once he had caught his breath a little, he shook the snow out of his boots and out of his left glove, the right one being hopelessly lost and buried by now under a foot of snow; then he tied his sash again, tight and low down, as he used to do when coming out of the shop to buy grain that the muzhiks brought in carts, and prepared for action. The first task that presented itself to him was to free the horse’s leg. Vassily Andreich did just that and, having released the rein, tied Mukhorty again to the cramp-iron at the front of the sleigh in his former place and started going behind the horse to straighten the girth, the gig saddle, and the burlap on him; but just then he saw something move in the sleigh, and Nikita’s head rose from under the snow that covered it. Obviously with great effort, the already freezing Nikita raised himself, sat up, and waved his hand before his nose somehow strangely, as if driving flies away. He waved his hand and said something, calling Vassily Andreich, as it seemed to him. Vassily Andreich abandoned the burlap without having straightened it and went to the sleigh.

“What do you want?” he asked. “What are you saying?”

“I’m d-d-dying, that’s what,” Nikita said with difficulty, his voice faltering. “Give my pay to my lad or the woman, it’s all the same.”

“What, are you frozen?” asked Vassily Andreich.

“It’s my death, I feel it … forgive me, for Christ’s sake …” Nikita said in a tearful voice, while he went on waving his hands in front of his face as if driving flies away.

Vassily Andreich stood silent and motionless for half a minute, then suddenly, with the same resoluteness with which he used to strike a deal on a profitable purchase, he stepped back, pushed up his coat sleeves, and with both hands began scraping the snow from Nikita and out of the sleigh. Having scraped off the snow, Vassily Andreich hastily untied his sash, spread out his fur coat, and, pushing Nikita over, lay on top of him, covering him not only with his coat, but with his whole warm, flushed body. Tucking the sides of his coat between the bast of the sleigh and Nikita, and holding the skirt of it with his knees, Vassily Andreich lay facedown like that, his head resting on the bast in front, and no longer heard either the movement of the horse or the whistling of the storm, but listened only to Nikita’s breathing. At first Nikita lay motionless for a long time, then he sighed loudly and stirred.

“So there, and you said you were dying. Lie still, get warm, that’s how we …” Vassily Andreich began.

But, to his great surprise, he could not go on, because tears came to his eyes and his lower jaw trembled rapidly. He stopped speaking and only swallowed what kept rising in his throat. “I had a scare, clearly, got all weak,” he thought to himself. But this weakness not only was not unpleasant, but afforded him some peculiar, never yet experienced joy.

“That’s how we are,” he kept saying to himself, experiencing some peculiar, solemn tenderness. For quite a long time he lay silently like that, wiping his eyes against the fur of his coat and tucking under his knee the right coat skirt that the wind kept turning back.

But he so passionately wanted to tell someone about his joyful state.

“Nikita!” he said.

“Nice, warm,” he was answered from below.

“You know, brother, I nearly perished. And you’d have frozen, and I’d …”

But here again his cheekbones quivered, and his eyes again filled with tears, and he could not go on.

“Well, never mind,” he thought. “About myself I know what I know.”

And he fell silent. He lay like that for a long time.

He was warm underneath from Nikita, and warm above from the fur coat; only his hands, with which he held the skirts of his coat in place around Nikita’s sides, and his legs, which kept being uncovered by the wind, were beginning to suffer from the cold. His right hand without the glove suffered especially. But he did not think about his legs or hands, but only about warming up the muzhik who lay under him.

He glanced several times at the horse and saw that his back was uncovered and the burlap and girth were lying on the snow, that he ought to get up and cover the horse, but he could not resolve to leave Nikita and disturb the joyful state he was in even for a moment. He no longer felt any fear.

“No way he’ll get out of it,” he said to himself about keeping the muzhik warm, with the same boastfulness with which he talked about his buying and selling.

Vassily Andreich lay like that for an hour, two hours, three hours, but he did not notice the time passing. At first there raced through his imagination various impressions of the blizzard, of the shafts and the horse under the shaft-bow, jogging in front of his eyes, and then he remembered Nikita lying under him; then recollections of the feast began to mix in, of his wife, the police officer, the candle table, and again of Nikita lying under the candle table; then he began to picture muzhiks, sellers and buyers, and white walls, and houses with iron roofs, under which Nikita was lying; then it all mixed together, one thing going into another, and, as the colors of the rainbow combine into one white light, all these impressions came together into one nothing, and he fell asleep. He slept for a long time without dreaming, but before dawn dreams appeared again. He pictured himself as if he were standing by the candle table, and Tikhon’s wife was asking him for a five-kopeck candle for the feast, and he wants to take a candle and give it to her, but his hands do not rise, they are stuck in his pockets. He wants to go around the table, but his feet will not move, his new, just-cleaned galoshes are rooted to the stone floor, and he cannot lift them or get his feet out of them. And suddenly the candle table is no longer a candle table, but a bed, and Vassily Andreich sees himself lying on his belly on the candle table, that is, on his bed, in his house. And he lies on his bed and cannot get up, and he must get up, because Ivan Matveich, the police officer, is about to come for him, and he must go with Ivan Matveich either to bargain for the woods or to straighten the girth on Mukhorty. And he asks his wife: “Well, Nikolavna, has he come?” “No,” she says, “he hasn’t.” And he hears someone drive up to the porch. That must be him. No, it passed by. “Nikolavna, hey, Nikolavna, what, he’s still not here?” “No.” And he lies on his bed and still cannot get up, and he keeps waiting, and this waiting is both eerie and joyful. And suddenly his joy is fulfilled: the one he has been waiting for comes, and he is not Ivan Matveich, the police officer, he is someone else, but the very one he has been waiting for. He has come and is calling him, and this one who is calling him is the same one who called out to him and told him to lie on Nikita. And Vassily Andreich is glad that this someone has come for him. “I’m coming!” he cries joyfully, and this cry rouses him. And he wakes up, but wakes up not at all as he fell asleep. He wants to get up—and cannot, wants to move his arm—and cannot, his leg—and also cannot. He wants to turn his head—even that he cannot do. And he is surprised, but not in the least upset by it. He understands that this is death, and is not in the least upset by that either. And he remembers that Nikita is lying under him, and that he is warm and alive, and it seems to him that he is Nikita, and Nikita is he, and that his life is not in him, but in Nikita. He strains his hearing and hears Nikita breathing and even faintly snoring. “Nikita’s alive, which means I’m alive, too,” he says triumphantly to himself.

And he remembers about his money, about his shop, the house, the buying and selling, and the Mironovs’ millions; it is hard for him to understand why this man called Vassily Brekhunov was busy with all he was busy with. “Well, he didn’t know what it was about,” he thinks of Vassily Brekhunov. “He didn’t know, but now I know. Now there’s no mistake. Now I know.” And again he hears the call of the one who already called out to him. “I’m coming, I’m coming!” his whole being says joyfully, tenderly. And he feels that he is free and nothing holds him any more.

And Vassily Andreich no longer saw or heard or felt anything in this world.

All around was the same smoky dimness. The same whirls of snow blew up, covering the dead Vassily Andreich’s coat, and all of the shivering Mukhorty, and the barely visible sleigh, and deep inside it, lying under his now dead master, the warm Nikita.

X

NIKITA WOKE UP before morning. He was roused again by the cold that began to pierce his back. He dreamed he was coming from the mill with a cartload of flour for his master and, crossing a brook, missed the bridge and got the cart mired. And he saw himself crawling under the cart and lifting it, straightening his back. But, wondrous thing! The cart did not move and became stuck to his back, and he could neither lift the cart nor get out from under it. His whole lower back was crushed. And it was so cold! Clearly, he had to crawl out. “Enough of that,” he says to whoever is pressing the cart down on his back. “Unload the sacks!” But the cart presses down colder and colder, and suddenly there is some peculiar knocking, and he wakes up completely and remembers everything. The cold cart is his dead, frozen master lying on him. And the knocking is Mukhorty, striking the sleigh twice with his hoof.

“Andreich, hey, Andreich!” Nikita, straining his back, calls out warily to his master, already sensing the truth.

But Andreich does not respond, and his belly and legs are hard, and cold, and heavy as weights.

“All over, must be. God rest his soul!” thinks Nikita.

He turns his head, digs through the snow in front of him, and opens his eyes. Daylight. The wind whistles in the shafts as before, the snow pours down as before, with the only difference that it does not lash against the bast of the sleigh, but noiselessly covers the sleigh and the horse more and more, and no movement or breathing of the horse can be heard any longer. “Must be he froze, too,” Nikita thinks of Mukhorty. And indeed, those blows of the hoof on the sleigh that had awakened Nikita had been the dying attempts of the completely frozen Mukhorty to keep on his feet.

“Lord, dear Father, it’s clear You’re calling me, too,” Nikita says to himself. “Thy holy will be done. But it’s scary. Well, there’s no dying twice, but once will suffice. Only let it be quicker …” And he hides his hand again, closes his eyes, and becomes oblivious, fully convinced that he is now dying for certain and for good.

It was not until dinnertime of the coming day that some muzhiks dug Vassily Andreich and Nikita out with shovels, about two hundred feet from the road and less than half a mile from the village.

The snow had heaped up higher than the sleigh, but the shafts with the kerchief tied to them were still visible. Mukhorty, up to his belly in snow, with the girth and burlap to one side, stood all white, pressing his dead head to his stiffened windpipe, his nostrils hung with icicles, his eyes all frosty and also hung with ice as if with tears. He had wasted away so much in one night that he was left only skin and bones. Vassily Andreich was stiff as a frozen carcass, and as his legs had been spread, so they detached him, bowlegged, from Nikita. His protruding hawk’s eyes were iced over and his open mouth under his trimmed mustaches was packed with snow. But Nikita was alive, though all frostbitten. When Nikita was roused, he was sure that he was already dead now, and that what was being done with him now came not from this but from the other world. But when he heard the shouts of the muzhiks digging him out and hauling the stiffened Vassily Andreich off him, he was surprised at first that in the other world muzhiks shouted in the same way and there was this same body, but when he realized that he was still here in this world, he was more upset than gladdened by it, especially when he felt that the toes of both his feet were frostbitten.

Nikita lay in the hospital for two months. He had three toes amputated, but the rest healed, so that he could work, and he went on living for another twenty years—first as a hired man, and then, in old age, as a watchman. He died only this year, at home, as he wished, under the icons and with a lighted candle in his hands. Before death, he asked forgiveness from his old wife and forgave her for the cooper; he took leave of his lad and grandchildren as well, and died, truly glad that by his death he was relieving his son and daughter-in-law of the burden of extra bread and was himself really passing from this life, which wearied him, to that other life, which with every year and hour had become more clear and enticing to him. Whether it is better or worse for him there, where he awakened after this real death, whether he was disappointed or found there the very thing he expected, we shall all soon learn.

1894–95