‘Hey there, what are you splitting your throat for, Ignát?’ came the advice-giver’s voice. ‘Stop a minute!’
‘What?’
‘Sto-o-op!’
Ignát stopped. Again all became silent, and the wind howled and whined, and the whirling snow fell still more thickly into the sledge. The advice-giver came up to us.
‘Well, what now?’
‘What now? Where are we going?’
‘Who can tell?’
‘Are your feet freezing, that you knock them together so?’
‘Quite numb!’
‘You should go over there: look, where there’s something glimmering. It must be a Kulmýk camp. It would warm your feet too.’
‘All right. Hold the reins … here you are.’
And Ignát ran in the direction indicated.
‘You always have to go about a bit and look, then you find the way, or else what’s the good of driving about like a fool?’ the advice-giver said to me. ‘See how the horses are steaming.’
All the time Ignát was gone – and that lasted so long that I even began to fear he might have lost his way – the advice-giver kept telling me in a self-confident and calm tone how one should behave in a snow storm, that it was best to unharness a horse and let it go, and, as God is holy, it would be sure to lead one out, and how it is sometimes possible to find the way by the stars, and that had he been driving in front we should long ago have reached the station.
‘Well, is there anything?’ he asked Ignát when the latter came back, stepping with difficulty knee-deep through the snow.
‘There is, there is a camp of some sort,’ replied Ignát, gasping for breath, ‘but I can’t tell what it is. We must have strayed right into the Prológov estate. We must bear off to the left.’
‘What’s he jabbering about? It’s our camp that’s behind the Cossack village,’ rejoined the advice-giver.
‘I tell you it’s not!’
‘Well, I’ve had a look too, and I know: that’s what it is, and if it isn’t, then it’s Tamýshevsk. Anyhow we must bear to the right, and then we’ll come right out to the big bridge at the eighth verst.’
‘I tell you it’s nothing of the sort. Haven’t I looked?’ said Ignát with annoyance.
‘Eh, mate, and you call yourself a driver!’
‘Yes, a driver! … Go and look for yourself.’
‘Why should I go? I know without going.’
Ignát had evidently grown angry: he jumped into the sledge without replying and drove on.
‘How numb my legs have got! I can’t warm them up,’ said he to Alëshka, knocking his feet together oftener and oftener, and scooping up and emptying out the snow that had got into his boot-legs.
I felt dreadfully sleepy.
VIII
‘CAN it be that I am freezing to death?’ I thought, half asleep. ‘They say it always begins with drowsiness. It would be better to drown than to freeze – let them drag me out with a net; but it does not matter much whether I freeze or drown if only that stick, or whatever it is, would not prod me in the back and I could forget myself!’
I did so for a few seconds.
‘But how will all this end?’ I suddenly asked myself, opening my eyes for a moment and peering into the white expanse before me. ‘How will it all end? If we don’t find any haystacks and the horses stop, as they seem likely to do soon, we shall all freeze to death.’ I confess that, though I was a little afraid, the desire that something extraordinary, something rather tragic, should happen to us, was stronger in me than that fear. It seemed to me that it would not be bad if towards morning the horses brought us of their own accord, half-frozen, to some far-off unknown village, or if some of us were even to perish of the cold. Fancies of this kind presented themselves to me with extraordinary clearness and rapidity. The horses stop, the snow drifts higher and higher, and now nothing is seen of the horses but their ears and the bows above their heads, but suddenly Ignát appears above us with his tróyka, and drives past. We entreat him, we shout that he should take us, but the wind carries our voices away – we have no voices left. Ignát grins, shouts to his horses, whistles, and disappears into some deep, snow-covered ravine. The little old man jumps astride a horse, nourishes his elbows and tries to gallop away, but cannot stir from the spot; my former driver with the big cap rushes at him, drags him to the ground and tramples him into the snow. ‘You’re a wizard!’ he shouts. ‘You’re a scold! We shall all be lost together!’ But the old man breaks through the heap of snow with his head; and now he is not so much an old man as a hare, and leaps away from us. All the dogs bound after him. The advice-giver, who is Theodore Filípych, tells us all to sit round in a circle, that if the snow covers us it will be all right – we shall be warm that way. And really we are warm and cosy, only I want a drink. I fetch out my lunch-basket, and treat everybody to rum and sugar, and enjoy a drink myself. The story-teller spins a tale about the rainbow, and now there is a ceiling of snow and a rainbow above us. ‘Now let us each make himself a room in the snow and let us go to sleep!’ I say. The snow is soft and warm, like fur. I make myself a room and want to enter it, but Theodore Filípych, who has seen the money in my lunch-basket, says: ‘Stop! Give me your money – you have to die anyway!’ And he grabs me by the leg. I hand over the money and only ask him to let me go; but they won’t believe it is all the money I have, and want to kill me. I seize the old man’s hand and begin to kiss it with inexpressible pleasure: his hand is tender and sweet. At first he snatches it from me, but afterwards lets me have it, and even caresses me with his other hand. Then Theodore Filípych comes near and threatens me. I run away into my room: it is, however, no longer a room but a long white corridor, and someone is holding my legs. I wrench myself free. My clothes and part of my skin remain in the hands of the man who was holding me, but I only feel cold and ashamed – all the more ashamed because my aunt with her parasol and homoeopathic medicine-chest under her arm is coming towards me arm-in-arm with the drowned man. They are laughing and do not understand the signs I make to them. I throw myself into the sledge, my feet trail behind me in the snow, but the old man rushes after me flapping his elbows. He is already near, but I hear two church bells ringing in front of me, and know that I shall be saved when I get to them. The church bells sound nearer and nearer; but the little old man has caught up with me and falls with his stomach on my face, so that I can scarcely hear the bells. I again grasp his hand and begin to kiss it, but the little old man is no longer the little old man, he is the man who was drowned … and he shouts: ‘Ignát, stop! There are the Akhmétkins’ stacks, I think! Go and have a look at them!’ This is too terrible. No, I had better wake up …