The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Master and Man (17 page)

“If I’d stayed the night at Grishkino, none of this would have happened.” And, painstakingly wrapping himself tighter so that the heat of the fur didn’t get lost at any point but warmed him everywhere—at his neck, his knees, and the soles of his feet—he shut his eyes and tried to go to sleep again. But now, however hard he tried, he couldn’t drop off again. On the contrary, he felt completely wakeful and alert. Once more he began reckoning his profits, the debts owing to him. Once again, he began bragging to himself and gloating over his status, but now everything kept getting interrupted by a creeping terror and the nagging question, why hadn’t he stayed the night in Grishkino? “That would have been something, lying warm on a bunk.” He turned over several times, tucked himself in, tried to find a more comfortable position that was better sheltered from the wind, but everything seemed wrong to him. He kept lifting himself up, changing his place, bundling up his legs, shutting his eyes, and falling still again. But either his legs in their tight-fitting felt boots started aching, or a draft worked its way in somewhere, and having lain still a little while, the irksome thought would come back to him—how he could now be lying peacefully in the warm house at Grishkino—and he would sit up again, turn around, wrap himself up, and try to settle down again.

Once it seemed to Vassili Andreyich that he could hear cocks crowing in the distance. He felt glad, turned back his greatcoat, and started listening intently, but however hard he strained to hear, there wasn’t a sound, except the wind whining in the shafts and slapping the kerchief, and the snow pelting against the sides of the sledge.

Nikita was still sitting just as he had first sat down that night, not shifting at all, and not even answering Vassili Andreyich, who appealed to him several times. “What does he care? He must be asleep,” Vassili Andreyich thought resentfully, peering over the back of the sledge at Nikita under his thick covering of snow.

Vassili Andreyich sat up and lay down again twenty times or more. He felt as though this night would never end. “It must be near dawn by now,” he thought once, sitting up and looking around. “I’ll just have a look at my watch. It’ll be chilly unbuttoning. But if it’s coming up for morning, things’ll cheer up a bit. We can start harnessing.” In the depths of his soul Vassili Andreyich knew perfectly well it couldn’t be morning yet, but he was getting more and more afraid. He wanted to know the time, and to deceive himself about the time. He carefully undid the hooks of his sheepskin and plunged his hand into his breast, rummaging about for a long time before he could find his waistcoat. With considerable effort he dragged out his silver watch with its enamel flowers and peered at it. You could see nothing without a light. Once again he turned face downward on his hands and knees as he had done when he was smoking, got out his matches, and set about lighting them. This time he was more efficient, feeling with his fingertips for the match with the fattest phosphorus head, and lit it at the first attempt. He brought the watch face under the light, glanced at it, and couldn’t believe his eyes. . . . It was ten past midnight. The whole night still lay ahead of him.

“Oh what a long night this is!” thought Vassili Andreyich. A chill ran down his back. Hooking up his sheepskin and wrapping up again, he huddled into the corner of the sledge, preparing to wait patiently. Suddenly, through the uniform tumult of the wind he heard a new and living sound. It grew steadily louder and, at its clearest, just as steadily died away. There was no doubt that it was a wolf. And this wolf was so close that you could clearly hear on the wind the tone of his cry changing as he shifted his jaws. Vassili Andreyich turned back his collar and listened attentively. Mukhorty was listening equally tensely, turning his ears, and when the wolf stopped keening he shifted his legs and gave a warning snort. After that Vassili Andreyich certainly couldn’t get to sleep again, nor even calm himself. The more he tried to think of his enterprises and profits, his reputation, his wealth and his worth, the more fear possessed him, and all his thoughts were suffused by one thought—why hadn’t he stayed the night at Grishkino?

“Who cares about the forest? I’ve business enough as it is, thank God. Oh, I wish the night would end!” he said to himself. “They say drunks freeze to death,” he thought, “and I’ve had a drink or two.” And scrutinizing his sensations, he felt that he was beginning to tremble, not knowing what he was trembling from, cold or fear. He kept trying to wrap himself up and lie as before, but couldn’t anymore. He couldn’t stay still; he wanted to get up and busy himself with something, to choke back the fear rising in him, against which he felt quite powerless. He took out his matches and cigarettes again, but there were only three matches left, all of them bad. All three were duds and failed to catch.

“Devil take it! God rot you!” he swore, cursing he knew not what, and threw the crushed cigarette away. He wanted to chuck away the box, too, but stopped himself and thrust it into his pocket. He became so restless, he couldn’t stay still any longer. He got out of the sledge and, standing with his back to the wind, started tightening his belt low on his hips again.

“What’s the point of lying there, waiting for death to come? To get on horseback and ride off, now—” it suddenly occurred to him. “The horse won’t stop if I’m on its back. As for him,” he thought, of Nikita, “he’s going to die anyway. What sort of a life has he got? Even his life hardly matters to him—but as for me, thank God, I’ve got something to live for. . . .”

And, unhitching the horse, he threw the reins over Mukhorty’s neck and tried to leap on, but his two overcoats and his boots were so heavy he slipped off. Then he got up on the sledge and tried to mount from that. But the sledge rocked under his weight, and he slid off again. Finally, at the third attempt, he brought the horse closer to the sledge and, carefully standing on one side, managed to get himself belly down across the horse’s back. Having lain like that for a little, he shoved himself forward once, twice, and finally swung his leg over the horse’s back and seated himself, digging his soles down lengthwise along the breeching strap. The jolt of the rocking sledge woke Nikita, who raised himself up and appeared to Vassili Andreyich to be saying something.

“Listen to you idiots! What, am I going to die like that, just for nothing?” Vassili Andreyich shouted, and, tucking the loose skirts of his fur coat under his knees, he turned the horse and drove him away from the sledge, in the direction where he thought the forest and the watchman’s hut ought to be.

7

Ever since Nikita had sat down behind the back of the sledge, covered in the ticking, he had stayed absolutely still. Like all people who live with nature and know want, he was patient and could wait calmly for hours and even days, feeling neither anxiety nor irritation. He heard his master calling him, but didn’t answer because he didn’t want to move or to answer. Although he was still warm from the tea he had drunk and from moving about a lot, clambering through the snowdrifts, he knew his warmth wouldn’t last long. He had no strength left to get warmer by moving about. He felt as tired as a horse feels when it stops dead and however hard it’s hit, can’t go any farther, and the master sees the horse must be fed before it can work again. One foot in the torn boot had already gone numb and he couldn’t feel his big toe anymore. Apart from that, his whole body was getting colder and colder. The thought came to him that he might, and very probably would, die that night, but this thought didn’t seem particularly unpleasant to him, nor particularly frightening. It didn’t seem particularly unpleasant because his whole life hadn’t been a perpetual holiday but, on the contrary, an uninterrupted round of hard labor, which was beginning to tire him. Nor was it particularly frightening because, apart from the masters like Vassili Andreyich that he served here, in this life, he always felt himself dependent on the main master, the one who sent him into life. And he knew that even in death he would stay in this master’s power, and wouldn’t be treated badly. “Am I sorry to abandon the old things, the ones I know, where I feel at home? Well, nothing to be done, I’ll have to get used to the new.”

“Sins?” he thought, and remembered his drunkenness, the money he had squandered on drink, his ill-treatment of his wife, the swearing, the church days missed, the neglected fasts, and all the things the priest rebuked him for at confession. “They’re certainly sins. But did I bring them down on myself? God must have made me that way. So, they’re sins. And so what?”

And he thought first about what might happen to him that night, and then, no longer reverting to that, he gave himself up to the memories that came of their own accord. He thought first of Marfa’s arrival two days before, and the workers’ drunkenness, and his own renunciation of alcohol, and then of this day’s journey, and the home of Taras, and the talk of division; and then he thought of his son, and of Mukhorty, who would get warm now under the sacking, and then of his master, who was making the sledge squeak as he turned around in it. “He can’t be glad he came, either, poor soul,” he thought. “You wouldn’t want to die with a life like that. Not like me.” And all these ideas began plaiting themselves together, mixing in his head, and he fell asleep.

But when Vassili Andreyich rocked the sledge mounting the horse, and the backboard Nikita was leaning against jerked away completely and then hit him in the spine with one of the runners, he woke up and, willy-nilly, had to change his position. Straightening out his legs with difficulty and shaking the snow off them, he got up, and a piercing chill instantly ran through him. When he saw what was going on, he wanted Vassili Andreyich to leave him the sacking, which the horse no longer needed, so that he could cover himself with it. That was what he shouted to Vassili Andreyich.

But Vassili Andreyich didn’t stop and vanished into the snowy dust.

Left on his own, Nikita thought for a moment what he should do. He felt far too weak to go looking for houses. He couldn’t sit down anymore where he had sat earlier—the place was all covered in snow. Even in the sledge, he felt he wouldn’t get warm because he had nothing to cover himself and he was no longer remotely warmed by his kaftan and sheepskin. He felt as cold as if he were only wearing a shirt. He became frightened. “God in Heaven!” he muttered, and the knowledge that he wasn’t alone, that someone heard him and wouldn’t abandon him, calmed him. He took a deep breath and, without taking the ticking off his head, got into the sledge and lay down in his master’s place.

But it was quite impossible to get warm in the sledge either. At first his whole body trembled, then the trembling passed off and he gradually began to lose consciousness. Whether he was dying, or falling asleep, he couldn’t tell, but he felt equally prepared for both.
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8

Meanwhile Vassili Andreyich urged Mukhorty on with his heels and the ends of the reins, in the direction where for some reason he assumed the forest and watchman’s hut should be. The snow was blinding him, and the wind seemed to want to stop him, but he leaned forward, constantly pulling his fur coat close and tucking it between himself and the cold bellyband that prevented him getting a proper grip, whipping Mukhorty on without respite. Obediently but with difficulty, the horse went at an amble where he was told.

For about five minutes Vassili Andreyich rode in what seemed to him a straight line, seeing nothing except the horse’s head and the white waste, and hearing nothing except the wind tearing past the horse’s ears and the collar of his fur coat.

Suddenly something darkened in front of him. His heart leapt, and he rode toward the blackness, already seeing in it the walls of village houses. But the black thing wasn’t stationary, it kept moving; and it wasn’t a village, but some tall wormwood stalks, sticking up through the snow in the rough ground between two fields, desperately tossing about under a wind that dashed them sideways, hissing through them. And for some reason the sight of these weeds, mercilessly tormented by the wind, made Vassili Andreyich shudder; and he hurriedly began beating the horse on, not noticing that when he rode up to the clump of wormwood he had changed tack completely, and was now urging the horse in the opposite direction from before, still imagining that he was riding toward the place where the watchman’s hut should be. But the horse kept pulling to the right, and so he kept pulling it to the left.

Something grew dark in front of him again. He felt glad, sure that this time it really must be the village. But it was just another bit of scrub. For some reason the dreadful shaking of the tall, dry weeds filled Vassili Andreyich with terror. It wasn’t just that it was a very similar clump of wormwood. There were hoof prints beside it, drifting over with snow. Vassili Andreyich stopped, leaned over, and glanced at them. It was a horse track, lightly dusted with snow. There was no doubt it could only be his own. He was going round in a circle, and not a wide one either. “I’ll perish like this!” he thought, and to ward off his terror, he beat the horse on even more fiercely, peering into the white snowy gloom, in which little dots of light seemed to him to be sparkling, only to vanish when he looked at them. Once he thought he heard dogs barking, or wolves howling, but the sounds were so faint and indistinct, he couldn’t be sure whether he had actually heard something or only imagined it. He stopped, and started listening intently.

Suddenly a fearful, deafening cry broke out right beside him, and everything shuddered and trembled under him. Vassili Andreyich grabbed the horse’s neck, but the horse’s neck was all shaking, too, and the terrible cry became even more horrifying. For some seconds Vassili Andreyich couldn’t come to himself or understand what was happening. But it was only Mukhorty, neighing in his loud, resonant voice, either trying to cheer himself or calling for help. “Bloody brute! You terrified the life out of me, damn you!” Vassili Andreyich said to himself. But even when he understood the reason for his terror, he couldn’t shake it off.

“I must stop and think. I must calm down,” he kept saying to himself, and at the same time couldn’t stop himself beating the horse on, not noticing that now they were going with the wind rather than against it. His body was frozen and painful, especially his thighs, which were unprotected and rubbed against the brass-studded bellyband; his feet and hands trembled, and his breathing came in great jerks.