Short Fiction, Leo Tolstoy [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

me, especially as I know the bat is a bell, and Fyodor Filippitch can’t make it stop. And the bat, like an instrument of torture, is crushing my leg, which is chilled. I wake up.

I was waked up, it seemed to me, by our galloping very swiftly, and two voices talking quite close beside me.

“I say, Ignat, eh⁠ ⁠… Ignat!” said the voice of my driver; “take my fare; you’ve got to go anyway, and why should I go on for nothing⁠—take him!”

The voice of Ignat close beside me answered⁠—

“It’s no treat for me to have to answer for a passenger.⁠ ⁠… Will you stand me a pint bottle of vodka?”

“Go on with your pint bottle!⁠ ⁠… A dram, and I’ll say done.”

“A dram!” shouted another voice: “a likely idea! tire your horses for a dram!”

I opened my eyes. Still the same insufferable wavering snow floating before one’s eyes, the same drivers and horses, but beside me I saw a sledge. My driver had overtaken Ignat, and we had been for some time moving alongside. Although the voice from the other sledge advised him not to accept less than a pint, Ignat all at once pulled up his horses.

“Move the baggage in! Done! it’s your luck. Stand me a dram when we come tomorrow. Have you much baggage, eh?”

My driver jumped out into the snow with an alacrity quite unlike him, bowed to me, and begged me to get into Ignat’s sledge. I was perfectly ready to do so; but evidently the God-fearing peasant was so pleased that he wanted to lavish his gratitude and joy on someone. He bowed and thanked me, Alyoshka, and Ignashka.

“There, thank God too! Why, Lord ’a’ mercy, here we’ve been driving half the night, and don’t know ourselves where we’re going! He’ll take you all right, sir, but my horses are quite done up.”

And he moved my things with increased energy. While they were shifting my things, with the wind at my back almost carrying me off my legs, I went towards the second sledge. The sledge was more than a quarter buried in the snow, especially on the side where a cloak had been hung over the two drivers’ heads to keep off the wind; under the cloak it was sheltered and snug. The old man was lying just as before with his legs out, while the storyteller was still telling his story: “So at the very time when the general arrived in the king’s name, that is, to Mariya in the prison, Mariya says to him, ‘General! I don’t want you, and I cannot love you, and you are not my lover; my lover is that same prince.’⁠ ⁠… So then”⁠—he was going on, but, seeing me, he paused a moment, and began pulling at his pipe.

“Well, sir, are you come to listen to the tale?” said the other man, whom I have called the counsellor.

“Why, you are nice and cheerful in here!” I said.

“To be sure, it passes the time⁠—anyway, it keeps one from thinking.”

“Don’t you know, really, where we are now?” This question, it struck me, was not liked by the drivers.

“Why, who’s to make out where we are? Maybe we’ve got to the Kalmucks altogether,” answered the counsellor.

“What are we going to do?” I asked.

“What are we to do? Why, we’ll go on, and maybe we’ll get somewhere,” he said in a tone of displeasure.

“Well, but if we don’t get there, and the horses can go no further in the snow, what then?”

“What then? Nothing.”

“But we may freeze.”

“To be sure, we may, for there are no stacks to be seen now; we must have driven right out to the Kalmucks. The chief thing is, we must look about in the snow.”

“And aren’t you at all afraid of being frozen, sir?” said the old man, in a trembling voice.

Although he seemed to be jeering at me, I could see that he was shivering in every bone.

“Yes, it’s getting very cold,” I said.

“Ah, sir! You should do as I do; every now and then take a run; that would warm you.”

“It’s first-rate, the way you run after the sledge,” said the counsellor.

VII

“Please get in: it’s all ready!” Alyoshka called to me from the front sledge.

The blizzard was so terrific that it was only by my utmost efforts, bending double and clutching the skirts of my coat in both hands, that I managed to struggle through the whirling snow, which was blown up by the wind under my feet, and to make the few steps that separated me from the sledge. My former driver was kneeling in the middle of the empty sledge, but on seeing me he took off his big cap; whereupon the wind snatched at his hair furiously. He asked me for something for drink, but most likely had not expected me to give him anything extra, for my refusal did not in the least disappoint him. He thanked me for that too, put on his cap, and said to me, “Well, good luck to you, sir!” and tugging at his reins, and clucking to his horses, he drove away from us. After that, Ignashka too, with a swing of his whole body forward, shouted to his horses. Again the sound of the crunching of the hoofs, shouting, and bells replaced the sound of the howling of the wind, which was more audible when we were standing still.

For a quarter of an hour after moving I did not go to sleep, but amused myself by watching the figures of my new driver and horses. Ignashka sat up smartly, incessantly jumping up and down, swinging his arm with the whip over the horses, shouting, knocking one leg against the other, and bending forward to set straight the shaft-horse’s breech, which kept slipping to the right side. He was not tall, but seemed to be well built. Over his full coat he had on a cloak not tied in at the waist; the collar of it was open, and his neck