The cook’s husband went into the house with its iron roof and raised foundations and soon came back saying they wanted the little one. Meanwhile, Nikita had already put on Mukhorty’s collar and brass-studded bellyband. Leading the horse by one hand, and carrying a light, painted wooden yoke in the other, he was on his way to the two sledges standing in the shed.
“If it’s the tiddler, then it’s the tiddler,” he said, backing the intelligent horse, which kept pretending to bite him, into the shafts and harnessing him with the help of the cook’s husband.
When everything was nearly ready, with only the reins to see to, Nikita sent the cook’s husband to the stable for straw and to the barn for sacking.
“There we go, darling. Steady now, no nonsense,” Nikita repeated to Mukhorty, cramming down into the sledge the freshly threshed oat straw the man brought him. “Now give me the bark ticking to tuck it in, and then we’ll put the sacking over the top. There now, that’ll be comfortable to sit on,” he went on, doing as he said and tucking the sacking in all around the straw on the seat.
“There we are. Thanks again, old man,” Nikita said to the cook’s husband. “It’s always easier with two.” And, untangling the reins looped together by a ring, Nikita took his place on the driver’s bench and set the kind horse, impatient to be gone, across the frozen manure to the yard gates.
“Uncle Nikit! Hey, uncle, uncle!” a thin little voice called behind him, and a seven-year-old boy in a short black sheepskin jacket, new white felt boots, and a warm hat ran hurriedly out of the house into the yard. “Take me, too,” he begged, buttoning up his half jacket as he ran.
“Up you come then, sweetheart,” said Nikita, pulling up. Making room for his master’s pale, skinny boy who was now glowing with delight, he drove out into the road.
It was past two in the afternoon. The day was freezing—ten degrees below, overcast, and windy. Half the sky was covered by dark, low cloud. In the yard it was sheltered. But on the road you could feel the wind; snow was pouring off a nearby barn roof and whirling around in the corner by the bath house. As soon as Nikita drove out of the yard gates and turned his horse to the wing of the house, Vassili Andreyich came out of the entrance, cigarette in mouth, his sheepskin-lined overcoat tightly belted low on his hips, the trampled snow on the high porch squeaking under his leather-soled felt boots. He stopped, sucked the last drag of his cigarette, dropped it underfoot, and ground it out. Glancing aside at the horse and breathing smoke through his mustache, he tucked in the corners of his collar on either side of his ruddy, clean-shaven cheeks, so that the fur wouldn’t get bedraggled by his breath.
“Well, what d’you know! There before me, are you?” he said, seeing his little boy in the sledge. Vassili Andreyich was lit up by the wine he had drunk with his guests and consequently extra satisfied by everything belonging to him and everything he did. The sight of his son, whom he always mentally called his heir, gave him huge pleasure at this moment. He looked at him, screwing up his eyes and showing his long teeth.
Vassili Andreyich’s thin, pale, pregnant wife was standing behind him in the entrance to see him off. Her head and shoulders were wrapped up in a woolen shawl so that only her eyes could be seen.
“You really should take Nikita with you,” she was saying as she came timidly out of the doorway.
Vassili Andreyich said nothing, and in response to her words, which were evidently not to his liking, frowned and spat crossly.
“You’re taking money with you,” his wife persisted in the same plaintive voice. “And the weather might turn bad, God forbid.”
“So I don’t know the way and have to take a guide with me?” Vassili Andreyich said through unnaturally tight lips, pronouncing each syllable with pointed precision, his habitual delivery when dealing with traders.
“No really, you should take him. For God’s sake, please do,” his wife repeated, winding her shawl the other way.
“Women! There’s no contradicting them!6 What on earth should I take him for?”
“It’s all right, Vassili Andreyich, I’m ready to come,” said Nikita cheerfully. “It’s just that the horses’ll have to be fed without me,” he added, turning to his mistress.
“I’ll see to that, Nikitushka. I’ll get Simyon to do it,” she said.
“Well, shall we go then, Vassili Andreyich?” Nikita asked, waiting.
“Seems we have to humor the missus. But if you are coming with me, go and get a warmer coat on,” said Vassili Andreyich, smiling again and winking at Nikita’s short coat, ripped in the armpits, torn across the back, frayed to a fringe along the hem, the sloppy, soiled witness to a lifetime’s labor.
“Hey, old chap, come and hold the horse for a minute!” Nikita shouted to the cook’s husband in the yard.
“Let me, let me!” squealed the boy, pulling his frozen little red hands out of his pockets and seizing the cold reins.
“No need to primp over that coat of yours, just hurry up!” Vassili Andreyich called out teasingly.
“In a jiffy, Vassili Andreyich,” said Nikita. Pigeon-toed in his old, felt-soled valenki,7 he quickly ran across the yard to the servants’ quarters.
“Come on, Arinushka, give me my coat off the stove—I’m to go with the master,” he said, bursting into the hut and snatching his cloth belt off its nail.
The cook, fresh from her after-dinner nap, was heating the samovar for her husband. Nikita’s haste was infectious. Bustling like him, with a cheery greeting, she seized his shabby kaftan from where it was drying on the stove and hurriedly started shaking out the coarse, crumpled cloth.
“So you’ll be getting a good bit of time off with your husband,” Nikita said to her. He was so good-natured and sympathetic, he always had a kind word for whoever he was with. And, drawing his narrow, frayed belt around him, he sucked in his already skinny stomach and pulled it as tight as he could around his short sheepskin coat.
“There we go,” he said, speaking now not to the cook but to his belt, tucking in its ends; “you can’t come undone like that,” and, shrugging his shoulders up and down to loosen the sleeves, he put on his kaftan, flexed his back to free his arms, slapped under his armpits, and picked his gloves off the shelf. “That’ll do.”
“You should wrap your feet up,” the cook said to him. “Your boots are no good.”
Nikita stopped, as if he’d just remembered.
“Yes, I should. . . . Well, it’ll do as it is; it’s not far.”
And he ran out into the yard.
“Won’t you be cold, Nikitushka?” asked his mistress, when he got to the sledge.
“It’s not a bit cold; I’m really warm,” said Nikita, rearranging the straw in the sledge, ready to cover his legs when he got in, and stowing the whip under the straw. There was no need for a whip on Mukhorty.
Vassili Andreyich was already on the seat, almost filling the body of the sledge with his broad back, clad in two fur-lined greatcoats. Taking the reins at once, he flicked the horse. Nikita jumped on as they moved off and squeezed himself in at his master’s left, with one leg hanging out.
2
With a light squeak of runners, they set off at a brisk pace down the smooth, icy village street.
“What are you doing, back there? Give me the whip, Nikita!” shouted Vassili Andreyich, evidently well pleased by his son and heir, who was trying to hang on by the runners at the back of the sledge. “You’ve got it coming to you! Young puppy! Run home to your mummy, scamp!”
The boy dropped off. Mukhorty quickened his pace and went into a trot.
Vassili Andreyich’s house was in Kresti, a village of six houses. As soon as they had passed the blacksmith’s, the last in the street, they realized the wind was much stronger than they had thought. The road was already almost invisible. The tracks of their sledge runners were instantly blown over with snow, and you could only make out the road because it was higher than the surrounding ground. The fields were a whirl of snow, and the line between earth and sky
couldn’t be seen. Telyatin’s forest, always a clear landmark, loomed fleetingly through the dust of snow. The wind blew from the left, persistently streaming to one side the mane on Mukhorty’s sleek, straight neck and tossing sideways his thick tail tied in a single knot. Nikita’s broad collar was plastered against his face and nose because he sat on the windward side.
“It’s too snowy to put him through his paces properly,” said Vassili Andreyich, proud of his lively horse. “I rode him to Pashutino in half an hour once.”
“What?” said Nikita, who couldn’t hear for his collar.
“To Pashutino, I said, he got there in half an hour,” Vassili Andreyich shouted.
“No question he’s a good horse,” Nikita replied.
They fell silent. But Vassili Andreyich wanted to talk.
“Well, I suppose you’ve told your wife to get her cooper off the drink?” he began in the same loud voice, perfectly convinced Nikita would be flattered to chat with someone as important and clever as himself, and so pleased with his little pleasantry, it didn’t even occur to him that Nikita might find the subject distasteful.
Once again Nikita failed to catch his master’s words that were carried away by the wind.
Vassili Andreyich repeated his joke about the barrel maker in his loud, precise voice.
“God be with them, Vassili Andreyich. I don’t meddle in their affairs. As long as she doesn’t ill-treat my boy, let be.”
“Yes indeed,” said Vassili Andreyich, and started a new tack. “Well, what d’you think, will you be buying a new horse in the spring?”
“Yes, I’ll have to,” said Nikita, holding back his collar and bending over to his master.
Now the conversation interested him, and he wanted to hear everything.
“My kid’s growing up; he’ll have to start plowing—we used to hire help,” he said.
“Well, why don’t you take the skinny one? I won’t ask much for him,” Vassili Andreyich shouted, in his animation turning to the one all-consuming interest that occupied all his thoughts—how to make a profit.
“Or you could give me just fifteen rubles, not more, and I’d get one at the horse fair,” said Nikita, knowing the horse his master wanted to palm off on him was worth no more than seven, but once Vassili Andreyich had given it to him in lieu of wages, he’d value it at twenty-five, and that meant half a year’s wages gone.
“It’s a good horse. I’ll deal with you as I would for myself. On my honor. Brekhunov never cheated anyone.8 I’d rather lose out myself than be like the others. On my word,” Vassili Andreyich shouted, in the voice he used to swindle his customers. “A fine horse!”
“No doubt,” said Nikita with a sigh, and, certain there was nothing more worth hearing, let go of his collar, which instantly covered his ear and face.
They drove on in silence for half an hour. The wind bit sharply into Nikita’s side and arm, where his coat was torn.
He hugged himself and breathed into the collar covering his mouth, and seemed to feel less cold.
“Well, what d’you think, should we go through Karamishevo or direct?” asked Vassili Andreyich.
The way through Karamishevo was by a busier road, marked with two rows of high stakes, but it took a longer way around. The direct route was shorter, but it was rarely used and had either no markers at all or poor ones that were snowed under.
Nikita thought a little.
“Through Karamishevo may be longer but it’s better going,” he decided.
“But if we go straight there’s only the hollow to pass without losing the road, and then by the forest it’s easy going,” said Vassili Andreyich, who wanted to go straight.
“As you wish,” said Nikita, letting go of his collar again.
Vassili Andreyich did as he wanted. After half a kilometer they turned left by a tall, upended oak branch bending in the wind, a few dry leaves still clinging to it.
The turn brought the wind almost full in their faces. A light snow began to fall. Vassili Andreyich was driving, puffing out his cheeks and breathing through his mustache. Nikita was dozing.
They drove in silence for ten minutes or so. Suddenly Vassili Andreyich began saying something.
“What?” said Nikita, opening his eyes.
Vassili Andreyich didn’t answer, bending around and looking behind him and in front, ahead of the horse. Mukhorty’s coat was curly with sweat on his neck and withers. He went at a walking pace.
“What is it, I said?” Nikita repeated.
“What? What?” Vassili Andreyich mocked him angrily. “No markers to be seen! We must have lost the road.”
“Then stop a minute and I’ll find it,” said Nikita. Jumping lightly off the sledge and taking out the whip from under the straw, he went left from his side of the sledge.
That year the snow wasn’t deep, so that you could drive everywhere, but all the same it was knee-deep in places and got into Nikita’s boots. He felt his way with his feet and the whip, but the road was nowhere to be found.
“Well?” asked Vassili Andreyich when he got back to the sledge.
“Nothing this side. I’ll have to feel about on the other side.”
“There’s something dark over there. Go and have a look,” said Vassili Andreyich.
Nikita made his way over to the dark thing. It was earth which the wind had blown from the bare fields of winter oats, blackening the snow. Having trudged about on the right as well, Nikita came back, beat the snow off himself, shook out his boots, and sat down in the sledge.
“We must drive to the right,” he said decisively. “The wind came at my left, and now it’s right in my face. Turn right,” he repeated firmly.
Vassili Andreyich obeyed and turned to the right. But there was still no road. They drove on like that for a while. The wind didn’t slacken, and it was snowing lightly.
“Well, it looks like we’ve completely lost the road, Vassili Andreyich,” Nikita said suddenly and, it seemed, with some satisfaction. “What’s that?” he added, pointing to a black potato stalk poking out of the snow.
Vassili Andreyich stopped Mukhorty, who was in a sweat and breathing heavily.
“What’s what?” he asked.
“We’re on the Zakharov lands, that’s what. That’s where we’ve got to!”
“Rubbish!”
“It’s not rubbish, Vassili Andreyich; I’m telling the truth,” said Nikita. “You can tell from the sound of the runners, too—we’re driving over a potato field, and that’s the stalks, heaped over there, where they’ve cleared the stubble. It’s the Zakharov factory land.”
“Good Lord, how badly we’ve gone astray!” said Vassili Andreyich. “What should we do?”
“Just go straight, we’ll get out somewhere,” said Nikita. “If not at Zakharovka, then we’ll get to the owner’s farm.”
Vassili Andreyich did as he was told and set Mukhorty off in Nikita’s direction. They went on like that for some time. Sometimes they drove onto bare fields and the runners grated over frozen lumps of earth. Sometimes they got into stubble land, winter crops, or fields sown for spring, where stalks of straw and wormwood poked out of the snow, shaken by the wind. Sometimes they ran into deep snow, lying uniformly white and even, above which nothing could be seen.
Snow fell from above and sometimes rose from underfoot.9 Mukhorty was clearly exhausted, going at a walk, his sweaty coat all curly and white with rime. Suddenly he stumbled and plunged down into a ditch or small watercourse. Vassili Andreyich wanted to pull him back, but Nikita shouted, “Don’t pull him! If we’re in we’ll have to climb out. Come on, sweetheart, come on, darling,” he cried out cheerfully to the horse, jumping out of the sledge and vanishing in his turn into the ditch.
Mukhorty took it at a run and quickly got himself back onto the icy bank. Evidently it was a man-made trench.
“Where on earth are we?” asked Vassili Andreyich.
“We’ll soon find out,” Nikita replied. “Let’s go; we’ll come out somewhere.??
?
“Isn’t that the Goriachkin forest?” said Vassili Andreyich, pointing to something dark, visible in the snow ahead.
“We’ll just drive up and see what sort of forest it is,” said Nikita.
He could see long, dry willow leaves driven by the wind from whatever was dark ahead, so he knew it must be some kind of settlement, not a forest—but he was reluctant to say so. True enough, they had driven barely two hundred meters beyond the ditch before dark trees showed up ahead and a doleful new sound could be heard. Nikita had guessed correctly; it was no forest but a row of tall willows, still tossing a few leaves. Evidently they had been planted along the trench of a threshing ground. When they drove up to the willows, sighing drearily in the wind, Mukhorty suddenly planted his forefeet higher than the sledge, got his hind legs up the rise as well, turned left, and stopped floundering up to his knees in snow. They had found a road.
“Well, we’ve arrived,” said Nikita, “but goodness knows where.”
The horse kept going straight along the road. After less than a kilometer they saw the straight line of a threshing barn’s dark wattle wall, its roof thickly coated with snow pouring continually over the edge. Skirting the barn, the road turned into the wind, and they ran into a snowdrift. But ahead they could see a lane between two houses. Evidently the snow had drifted down the lane and would have to be crossed. Sure enough, once over that, they came out into the village street. In the yard of the last house frozen washing still hung out. Two shirts, one red and one white, trousers, foot cloths and a petticoat flapped furiously on the line. The white shirt looked particularly despairing, shaking its arms and struggling.
“Just look, a lazy housewife, or a dead one, not taking her washing in before the holiday,” said Nikita, eyeing the fluttering shirts.
3
It was still windy at the end of the street, and the road was drifted over with snow, but in the middle of the village it grew quiet, warm, and cheery. A dog was barking in one yard. In another, a woman with her skirts wrapped around her head ran across to the door of her hut, pausing on the threshold to stare at the strangers. From the depths of the village girls’ voices could be heard singing.