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

was quite bare; his boots were not of felt, but of leather, and his cap was a small one, which he was continually taking off and shifting. His ears had no covering but his hair.

In all his actions could be detected not merely energy, but even more, it struck me, the desire to keep up his own energies. The further we went, the more and more frequently he jumped up and down on the box, shifted his position, slapped one leg against the other, and addressed remarks to me and Alyoshka. It seemed to me he was afraid of losing heart. And there was good reason; though we had good horses, the road became heavier and heavier at every step, and the horses unmistakably moved more unwillingly; he had to use the whip now, and the shaft-horse, a spirited, big, shaggy horse, stumbled twice, though at once taking fright, he darted forward and flung up his shaggy head almost to the very bells. The right trace-horse, whom I could not help watching, noticeably kept the traces slack, together with the long leather tassel of the breech, that shifted and shook up and down on the offside. He needed the whip, but, like a good, spirited horse, he seemed vexed at his own feebleness, and angrily dropped and flung up his head, as though asking for the rein. It certainly was terrible to see the blizzard getting more and more violent, the horses growing weaker, and the road getting worse, while we hadn’t a notion where we were and whether we should reach the station, or even a shelter of any sort. And ludicrous and strange it was to hear the bells ringing so gaily and unconcernedly, and Ignashka calling so briskly and jauntily, as though we were driving at midday in sunny, frosty Christmas weather, along some village street on a holiday; and strangest of all it was to think that we were going on all the while and going quickly, anywhere to get away from where we were. Ignashka sang a song, in the vilest falsetto, but so loudly and with breaks in it, filled in by such whistling, that it was odd to feel frightened as one listened to him.

“Hey, hey, what are you splitting your throat for, Ignashka?” I heard the voice of the counsellor. “Do stop it for an hour.”

“What?”

“Shut up!”

Ignat ceased. Again all was quiet, and the wind howled and whined, and the whirling snow began to lie thicker on our sledge. The counsellor came up to us.

“Well, what is it?”

“What, indeed; which way are we to go?”

“Who knows?”

“Why, are your feet frozen, that you keep beating them together?”

“They’re quite numb.”

“You should take a run. There’s something over yonder; isn’t it a Kalmuck encampment? It would warm your feet, anyway.”

“All right. Hold the horses⁠ ⁠… there.”

And Ignat ran in the direction indicated.

“One must keep looking and walking round, and one will find something; what’s the sense of driving on like a fool?” the counsellor said to me. “See, what a steam the horses are in!”

All the time Ignat was gone⁠—and that lasted so long that I began to be afraid he was lost⁠—the counsellor told me in a calm, self-confident tone, how one must act during a blizzard, how the best thing of all was to unyoke a horse and let it go its own way; that as God is holy, it would lead one right; how one could sometimes see by the stars, and how if he had been driving the leading sledge, we should have been at the station long ago.

“Well, is it?” he asked Ignat, who was coming back, stepping with difficulty almost knee-deep in the snow.

“Yes, it’s an encampment,” Ignat answered, panting, “but I don’t know what sort of a one. We must have come right out to Prolgovsky homestead, mate. We must bear more to the left.”

“What nonsense!⁠ ⁠… That’s our encampment, behind the village!” retorted the counsellor.

“But I tell you it’s not!”

“Why, I’ve looked, so I know. That’s what it will be; or if not that, then it’s Tamishevsko. We must keep more to the right, and we shall get out on the big bridge, at the eighth verst, directly.”

“I tell you it’s not so! Why, I’ve seen it!” Ignat answered with irritation.

“Hey, mate, and you call yourself a driver!”

“Yes, I do.⁠ ⁠… You go yourself!”

“What should I go for? I know as it is.”

Ignat unmistakably lost his temper; without replying, he jumped on the box and drove on.

“I say, my legs are numb; there’s no warming them,” he said to Alyoshka, clapping his legs together more and more frequently, and knocking off and scraping at the snow, that had got in above his boot-tops.

I felt awfully sleepy.

VIII

“Can I really be beginning to freeze?” I wondered sleepily. “Being frozen always begins by sleepiness, they say. Better be drowned than frozen⁠—let them drag me out in the net; but never mind, I don’t care whether it’s drowning or freezing, if only that stick, or whatever it is, wouldn’t poke me in the back, and I could forget everything.”

I lost consciousness for a second.

“How will it all end, though?” I suddenly wondered, opening my eyes for a minute and staring at the white expanse of snow; “how will it end, if we don’t come across any stacks, and the horses come to a standstill, which I fancy will happen soon? We shall all be frozen.” I must own that, though I was a little frightened, the desire that something extraordinary and rather tragic should happen to us was stronger than a little fear. It struck me that it would not be bad if, towards morning, the horses should reach some remote, unknown village with us half-frozen, some of us indeed completely frozen. And dreams of something like that floated with extraordinary swiftness and clearness before my imagination. The horses stop, the snow drifts higher and higher, and now nothing can be seen of the horses but their ears and the