But the man who was giving this advice not only did not unhitch one of his own side-horses or get out to look for the road, but did not show his nose from under his sheltering coat, and when Ignáshka, the leader, shouted in reply to one of his counsels that he should take on the lead himself if he knew which way to go, the advice-giver replied that if he were driving the courier’s tróyka he would take the lead and take us right onto the road. ‘But our horses won’t take the lead in a snow storm!’ he shouted – ‘they’re not that kind of horses!’
‘Then don’t bother me!’ Ignáshka replied, whistling cheerfully to his horses.
The other driver in the second sledge did not speak to Ignáshka at all, and in general took no part in the matter, though he was not asleep, as I concluded from his pipe being always alight, and because, whenever we stopped, I heard the even and continuous sound of his voice. He was telling a folk tale. Only once, when Ignáshka stopped for the sixth or seventh time, he apparently grew vexed at being interrupted during the pleasure of his drive, and shouted to him:
‘Hullo, why have you stopped again? Just look, he wants to find the road! He’s been told there’s a snow storm! The surveyor himself couldn’t find the road now. You should drive on as long as the horses will go, and then maybe we shan’t freeze to death … Go on, do!’
‘I daresay! Didn’t a postillion freeze to death last year?’ my driver remarked.
The driver of the third sledge did not wake up all the time. Once when we had stopped the advice-giver shouted:
‘Philip! Hullo, Philip!’ and receiving no reply remarked: ‘Hasn’t he frozen, perhaps?… Go and have a look, Ignáshka.’
Ignáshka, who found time for everything, walked up to the sledge and began to shake the sleeping man.
‘Just see what half a bottle of vodka has done! Talk about freezing!’ he said, shaking him.
The sleeper grunted something and cursed.
‘He’s alive, all right,’ said Ignáshka, and ran forward again. We drove on, and so fast that the little off-side sorrel of my tróyka, which my driver continually touched with the whip near his tail, now and then broke into an awkward little gallop.
V
IT was I think already near midnight when the little old man and Vasíli, who had gone after the runaway horses, rode up to us. They had managed to catch the horses and to find and overtake us; but how they had managed to do this in the thick blinding snow storm amid the bare steppe will always remain a mystery to me. The old man, swinging his elbows and legs, was riding the shaft-horse at a trot (the two side-horses were attached to its collar: one dare not let horses loose in a snow storm). When he came abreast of us he again began to scold my driver.
‘Look at the cross-eyed devil, really …’
‘Eh, Uncle Mítrich!’ the folk-tale teller in the second sledge called out: ‘Are you alive? Get in here with us.’
But the old man did not reply and continued his abuse. When he thought he had said enough he rode up to the second sledge.
‘Have you caught them all?’ someone in it asked.
‘What do you think?’
His small figure threw itself forward on the back of the trotting horse, then jumped down on the snow, and without stopping he ran after the sledge and tumbled in, his legs sticking out over its side. The tall Vasíli silently took his old place in the front sledge beside Ignáshka, and the two began to look for the road together.
‘How the old man nags … Lord God!’ muttered my driver.
For a long time after that we drove on without stopping over the white waste, in the cold, pellucid, and quivering light of the snow storm. I would open my eyes and the same clumsy snow-covered cap and back would be jolting before me: the same low shaft-bow, under which, between the taut leather reins and always at the same distance from me, the head of our shaft-horse kept bobbing with its black mane blown to one side by the wind. Looking across its back I could see the same little piebald off-horse on the right, with its tail tied up short, and the swingletree which sometimes knocked against the front of the sledge. I would look down – there was the same scurrying snow through which our runners were cutting, and which the wind resolutely bore away to one side. In front, always at the same distance away, glided the first tróyka, while to right and left everything glimmered white and dim. Vainly did my eye look for any new object: neither post, nor haystack, nor fence was to be seen. Everywhere all was white and fluctuating: now the horizon seemed immeasurably distant, now it closed in on all sides to within two paces of me; suddenly a high white wall would seem to rise up on the right and run beside the sledge, then it would suddenly vanish and rise again in front, only to glide on farther and farther away and again disappear. When I looked up it would seem lighter for a moment, as if I might see the stars through the haze, but the stars would run away higher and higher from my sight and only the snow would be visible, falling past my eyes onto my face and the collar of my fur cloak. The sky everywhere remained equally light, equally white, monotonous, colourless, and constantly shifting. The wind seemed to be changing: now it blew in my face and the snow plastered my eyes, now it blew from one side and annoyingly tossed the fur-collar of my cloak against my head and mockingly flapped my face with it; now it howled through some opening. I heard the soft incessant crunching of the hoofs and the runners on the snow, and the clang of the bells dying down when we drove through deep drifts. Only now and then, when we drove against the snow and glided over bare frozen ground, did Ignáshka’s energetic whistling and the sonorous sound of the bell with its accompanying bare fifth reach me, and give sudden relief to the dismal character of the desert; and then again the bells would sound monotonous, playing always with insufferable precision the same tune, which I involuntarily imagined I was hearing. One of my feet began to feel the frost, and when I turned to wrap myself up better, the snow that had settled on my collar and cap shifted down my neck and made me shiver, but on the whole I still felt warm in my fur cloak, and drowsiness overcame me.
VI
RECOLLECTIONS and pictures of the distant past superseded one another with increasing rapidity in my imagination.
‘That advice-giver who is always calling out from the second sledge – what sort of fellow can he be?’ I thought. ‘Probably red-haired, thick-set, and with short legs, like Theodore Filípych, our old butler.’ And I saw the staircase of our big house and five domestic serfs with heavy steps bringing a piano from the wing on slings made of towels, and Theodore Filípych with the sleeves of his nankeen coat turned up, holding one of the pedals, running forward, lifting a latch, pulling here at the slings, pushing there, crawling between people’s legs, getting into everybody’s way, and shouting incessantly in an anxious voice:
‘Lean it against yourselves, you there in front, you in front! That’s the way – the tail end up, up, up! Turn into the door! That’s the way.’
‘Just let us do it, Theodore Filípych! We can manage it alone,’ timidly remarks the gardener, pressed against the banisters quite red with straining, and with great effort holding up one corner of the grand piano.
But Theodore Filípych will not be quiet.
‘What does it mean?’ I reflect. ‘Does he think he is useful or necessary for the work in hand, or is he simply glad God has given him this self-confident persuasive eloquence, and enjoys dispensing it? That must be it.’ And then somehow I see the lake, and tired domestic serfs up to their knees in the water dragging a fishing-net, and again Theodore Filípych with a watering-pot, shouting at everybody as he runs up and down on the bank, now and then approaching the brink to empty out some turbid water and to take up fresh, while holding back the golden carp with his hand. But now it is a July noon. I am going somewhere over the freshly-mown grass in the garden, under the burning, vertical rays of the sun; I am still very young, and I feel a lack of something and a desire to fill that lack. I go to my favourite place by the lake, between the briar-rose bed and the birch avenue, and lie down to sleep. I remember the feeling with which, lying down, I looked across between the prickly red stems of the rose trees at the dark, dry, crumbly earth, and at the bright blue mirror of the lake. It is a feeling of naïve self-satisfaction and melancholy. Everything around me is beautiful, and that beauty affects me so powerfully that it seems to me that I myself am good, and the one thing that vexes me is that nobody is there to admire me. It is hot. I try to sleep so as to console myself, but the flies, the unendurable flies, give me no peace here either: they gather round me and, with a kind of dull persistence, hard as cherry-stones, jump from my forehead onto my hands. A bee buzzes not far from me in the blazing sunlight; yellow-winged butterflies fly from one blade of grass to another as if exhausted by the heat. I look up: it hurts my eyes – the sun glitters too brightly through the light foliage of the curly birch tree whose branches sway softly high above me, and it seems hotter than ever. I cover my face with my handkerchief: it feels stifling, and the flies seem to stick to my hands which begin to perspire. In the very centre of the wild rose bush sparrows begin to bustle about. One of them hops to the ground about two feet from me, energetically pretends to peck at the ground a couple of times, flies back into the bush, rustling the twigs, and chirping merrily flies away. Another also hops down, jerks his little tail, looks about him, chirps, and flies off quick as an arrow after the first one. From the lake comes a sound of beetles3 beating the wet linen, and the sound re-echoes and is borne down along the lake. Sounds of laughter and the voices and splashing of bathers are heard. A gust of wind rustles the crowns of the birch trees, still far from me, now it comes nearer and I hear it stir the grass, and now the leaves of the wild roses begin to flutter, pressed against their stems, and at last a fresh stream of air reaches me, lifting a corner of my handkerchief and tickling my moist face. Through the gap where the corner of the kerchief was lifted a fly comes in and flutters with fright close to my moist mouth. A dry twig presses against my back. No, I can’t lie stilclass="underline" I had better go and have a bathe. But just then, close to the rose bush, I hear hurried steps and a woman’s frightened voice: