The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Master and Man (16 page)

“Now what?” asked Vassili Andreyich.

“What d’you mean, what? I’m worn out, that’s what. The horse has had enough, too.”

“Then what are we to do?”

“Just wait a minute.”

Nikita went off again but came back quickly.

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

Vassili Andreyich wasn’t giving orders anymore, but obediently did what Nikita told him.

“This way, follow me!” Nikita shouted, going off quickly to the right, seizing Mukhorty’s reins and leading him down into some snowdrift.

At first the horse resisted, then darted forward, hoping to jump the drift, but failed and landed in it up to his neck.

“Get out!” Nikita yelled at Vassili Andreyich, who was still sitting in the sledge, and, grasping one of the shafts he started moving the sledge up to the horse. “I know it’s difficult, lovey,” he said to Mukhorty, “but what can we do? Make a little effort. Come on, just a little one,” he urged.

The horse jerked forward once, twice, but still couldn’t get out of the drift. He sat back again, as if considering something.

“Come on, brother; that’s not the way,” said Nikita, reproaching Mukhorty. “Try again.”

Once more Nikita pulled on his shaft and Vassili Andreyich did the same on the other side. The horse shook his head, then lunged forward.

“That’s it, lovey, come on—you won’t sink!” Nikita cried.

One plunge, another, a third, and the horse finally scrambled out of the drift. He stopped, breathing heavily and shaking himself.

Nikita wanted to lead him on, but Vassili Andreyich was so puffed in his two overcoats, he couldn’t walk and tumbled into the sledge.

“Let me get my breath back,” he said, untying the kerchief he had wound around the collar of his overcoat when they were in the village.

“You’re all right, just lie there,” said Nikita. “I’ll lead him.” And with Vassili Andreyich in the sledge he led the horse by the bridle—down ten paces, and then up a little, and then stopped.

The place where Nikita stopped was not right in a hollow, where the snow sweeping down its banks and collecting at the bottom would have buried them altogether. Nevertheless it was partially sheltered from the wind by the side of the gully. There were moments when the wind seemed to drop slightly, but they didn’t last. As if to make up for the lulls, the storm swooped down ten times stronger, whirling and tearing at them even more cruelly. Such a gust struck them just when Vassili Andreyich, having regained his breath, got out of the sledge and came up to Nikita to discuss what they should do next. Both instinctively bent over and waited to speak until the frenzy of the blast had died down. Mukhorty, too, laid back his ears discontentedly and shook his head. As soon as the squall had spent itself slightly, Nikita took off his gloves, tucked them into his belt, and began unfastening the straps of the shaft bow.

“What on earth are you doing?” asked Vassili Andreyich.

“Unhitching. What else can we do? I’ve no strength left,” said Nikita, as though excusing himself.

“Can’t we get out somewhere?”

“We can’t get out anywhere, we’ll just torment the horse. The poor thing’s whacked as it is,” said Nikita, pointing at the horse obediently standing there, ready and waiting, its wet, curved sides heaving. “We’ll have to spend the night here,” he repeated, just as though he was planning to spend the night at a coaching inn, and he started unbuckling the hame strap.
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The hames sprang apart.

“But won’t we freeze?” said Vassili Andreyich.

“So? If we’re to freeze, we can’t refuse,” said Nikita.

6

Vassili Andreyich was quite warm in his two fur coats, especially after his efforts in the snowdrift, but he felt a sudden chill run down his back when he realized they really would have to spend the night here. To calm himself, he sat down in the sledge and started getting out his cigarettes and matches.

Meanwhile, Nikita unharnessed the horse. He undid the girth and the back band, unhitched the reins, took off the tug, pulled out the high shaft bow, and kept up an encouraging conversation with the horse throughout.

“Come on, come on, step out of that,” he said, leading Mukhorty out of the shafts. “Look, we’ll tether you here. I’ll put a bit of straw down and get your bridle off,” he went on, doing as he said. “When you’ve had a bite you’ll feel more cheerful.”

But you could see that Mukhorty wasn’t reassured by Nikita’s words. He was anxious; he kept stepping from one hoof to the other, pressing up against the sledge, trying to turn his back to the wind, and rubbing his head against Nikita’s sleeve.

As though not wanting to refuse the kind offer of straw Nikita pushed under his muzzle, Mukhorty nosed up a tuft from the sledge, but immediately decided this was no time for straw and dropped it. The wind instantly carried it away, scattered it, and covered it with snow.

“Now we’ll make a signal,” said Nikita, turning the sledge into the wind and, binding the shafts together with the back band, he raised them upright and pulled them up to the front of the sledge. “Now when we get snowed under, good folk will see the shafts and dig us out,” said Nikita, slapping his gloves together and putting them back on. “That’s what the old ones taught me.”

Meanwhile, Vassili Andreyich had undone his fur coat and, holding its wide skirt against the wind, was striking one sulfur match after another on the steel box. But his hands were trembling. Match after match flared and went out, either before it had caught properly or just as he was bringing it up to the cigarette. At last one match burned well, momentarily lighting up the fur of his overcoat, his cupped hand with the gold signet ring on his forefinger, the oat straw poking out from under the sacking covered in snow—and the cigarette caught light. He inhaled greedily a couple of times, swallowed, and blew the smoke out through his mustache, but when he wanted to inhale again, the wind tore off the glowing tip of tobacco and scurried it away after the straw.

Even these few gulps of tobacco smoke cheered Vassili Andreyich.

“Well, that’s it, then. We’ll stop here for the night,” he said decisively. “Hang on a minute, I’ll make a flag as well,” he added, picking up the kerchief which he’d unwound from his collar and dropped into the sledge. Taking his gloves off, he stood on the front of the sledge and, stretching up to reach the back band, tightly knotted the kerchief to it right by the shaft.

The kerchief instantly fluttered desperately, flinging itself against the shafts, convulsing, stretching, and flapping.

“Just look at that!” said Vassili Andreyich, admiring his handiwork and settling back into the sledge. “We’d be warmer together, but there isn’t room for two,” he added.

“I’ll find myself somewhere,” said Nikita, “but we must cover the horse, he’s all of a sweat, poor thing. Forgive me,” he added, and going up to the sledge, pulled the sacking out from under Vassili Andreyich.

Having got the sacking, he folded it in two. Undoing the loin strap and taking off the bellyband, he covered Mukhorty with it.

“It’ll all keep you warmer, silly,” he said, buckling on the bellyband and loin strap over the sacking. “Can you spare me that ticking? And give me a little bit of straw?” he said, finishing with the horse and going up to the sledge again.

Pulling out both things from under Vassili Andreyich, Nikita went to the back of the sledge, dug himself out a small hollow in the snow there, lined it with straw, pulled his cap low, wrapped his kaftan tight, covered himself with the ticking, and sat down in the straw he had strewn, leaning against the back of the sledge which sheltered him from the wind and snow.
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Vassili Andreyich shook his head at what Nikita was doing—in his habitual disapproval of peasant ignorance and stupidity—and began settling himself for the night.

He spread out the remaining straw more evenly in the sledge, arranging a thicker layer under his side, and, thrusting his hands deep in his sleeves, snuggled his head into the front corner of the sledge against the splashboard, which sheltered him from the wind.

He didn’t want to sleep. He lay and thought—thought about the one and only thing, the single object, the sole reason, the joy and pride of his life. He thought about how much money he had made, and how much he could still make; he thought about how much other people he knew had made and how much money they had, and how these people made their money in the past and how they made it now, and how he, just like them, could still make a great deal more money. Buying the Goriachkin forest was immensely important to him. On this alone he hoped to make an immediate profit of some ten thousand rubles, perhaps. And he began totting up the value of the woodland he had inspected in the autumn, in which he had counted every single tree over a stretch of five acres.

“The oak will go for sledge runners. The logs—for building, obviously. And beside that there’ll be thirty sazhen of firewood to each des-yatina.
¹⁷
That means that at the very least there’ll be two hundred and twenty-five rubles’ worth left on every desyatina. Fifty-six desyatinas means fifty-six hundreds, and another fifty-six hundreds, and fifty-six tens, and another fifty-six tens, and then fifty-six fives. . . .” He saw that it came to more than twelve thousand rubles, but couldn’t calculate it exactly without an abacus. “Still, I won’t give ten thousand for it, only eight thousand, to allow a deduction for the clearings. I’ll butter up the surveyor—a hundred, or a hundred and fifty, should do it, and he’ll reckon up five desyatinas of clearings. And I’ll get it for eight thousand. I’ll give him three thousand cash down. That’ll soften him up,” he thought, squeezing his arm against the wallet in his pocket. “God knows how we lost our way after the turnoff! The forest should be here, and the watchman’s hut. We should hear dogs barking. But of course they don’t bark when you want them.” He moved his collar away from his ear and started listening. There was nothing to be heard but the perpetual howling of the wind, the kerchief fluttering and smacking against the shafts, and the snow stinging the sledge’s woodwork. He covered himself up again.

“If we’d only known, we’d have stayed the night. Well, it doesn’t matter, we’ll get there tomorrow. It’s only one more day. The others won’t set out in weather like this.” And he remembered that on the ninth the butcher was meant to pay for the wethers. “He meant to come himself; he won’t find me at home, and the wife won’t know how to get the money out of him. She hasn’t a clue, really uneducated. No idea how things should be done,” he thought, remembering how awkward she had been with the district police officer who visited them for the festival the day before. “What d’you expect? She’s a woman! What’s she seen in her life? What sort of a household did we have when our parents were alive? It wasn’t bad: a rich peasant’s holding—an oat mill and a coaching inn, that was the whole property. And what have I achieved in fifteen years? A shop, two taverns, a mill, a grain store, two farms on lease, a house with an iron-roofed barn,” he counted off with pride. “Not like in our parents’ time! And whose name counts in the district? Brekhunov.

“And why’s that? Because I keep my mind on the job, I put an effort into it, not like the others, layabouts and wastrels. I don’t sleep at nights. Blizzard or no blizzard, I’m on the road. And so things get done. They think they can make money larking about. No, take pains and rack your brains! That’s what gets you out in the fields at night, sleepless the whole night long. Your pillow spinning from the thoughts in your head,” he reflected proudly. “They think you get to be somebody just by luck. Look at the Mironovs—they’re millionaires now. And for why? Hard work. Man strives and God provides. God only grant me good health!”

And the thought that he could be a millionaire like Mironov, who had pulled himself up from nothing, excited Vassili Andreyich so much he felt the need to talk to somebody. But there was no one to talk to. If only he could have got to Goriachkin, he’d have talked to the landowner and shown him a thing or two.

“Good Lord, what a wind! It’ll snow us in so deep we won’t be able to get out in the morning!” he thought, listening to a gust of wind driving against the front of the sledge, bending the wood and thrashing it with snow. He lifted himself up and looked around. In the white wavering darkness he could only see Mukhorty’s dark head and back, covered with the flapping sackcloth, and his thick, knotted tail. Around them, on every side, before and behind, there was the same monotonous whitely wavering darkness, sometimes appearing to lighten slightly, only to grow thicker still.

“I shouldn’t have listened to Nikita,” he thought. “We should have driven on; we would have come out somewhere or other. At least we could have gone back to Grishkino, and stayed the night with Taras. Now we’ve got to sit here all night. But what was it I was thinking? Yes, God helps those that help themselves—not the loafers, layabouts, and fools. I must have a smoke!” He sat up, took out his cigarette case, and lay down on his stomach, to shelter the match flame with the skirt of his greatcoat, but the wind found a way in and blew out one match after another. In the end he managed to light one and began smoking. The fact that he’d got his own way pleased him very much. Although the wind smoked more of the cigarette than he did, he still got a good two or three puffs, and felt more cheerful. He threw himself into the back of the sledge again, wrapped himself up, started reminiscing and daydreaming—and suddenly, quite unexpectedly, lost consciousness and fell asleep.

But suddenly it was as though something jolted him and woke him up. Whether it was Mukhorty snatching some straw from under him, or something inside him, he was wide awake, his heart beating so quickly and with such force, the sledge seemed to be shaking under him. He opened his eyes. Everything was unchanged around him, but it did seem lighter. “It’s dawn,” he thought. “It can’t be long till morning.” But he remembered at once that it was only getting lighter because the moon had risen. He propped himself up and looked first at the horse. Mukhorty was still standing with his back to the wind, shivering all over. One side of the snow-covered sacking had blown back, the loin strap had slipped sideways, and the snowy head with its waving fringe and mane could be seen more clearly. Vassili Andreyich bent over to the back of the sledge and peered over the side. Nikita was still sitting in his original position. His legs, and the ticking covering him, were thickly overlaid with snow. “I hope that peasant doesn’t freeze; his clothes aren’t too good. I’ll be answerable for him, too. What a shiftless lot they are! Pure peasant ignorance, of course,” thought Vassili Andreyich. He would have taken the sacking off the horse to cover Nikita, but it was too cold to get up and move about, and he was afraid the horse might freeze. “And what made me take him? It was all her stupidity!” Vassili Andreyich thought, remembering his unloved wife, and rolled back into his former place in the front of the sledge. “My uncle once sat out a whole night in the snow like this,” he remembered, “and nothing happened. Yes, but when Sebastian was dug out,” he went on, promptly remembering another case, “he was dead, stiff all over, a frozen carcass.