THE turner, Grigory Petrov, who had been known for years past as a
splendid craftsman, and at the same time as the most senseless peasant
in the Galtchinskoy district, was taking his old woman to the hospital.
He had to drive over twenty miles, and it was an awful road. A
government post driver could hardly have coped with it, much less an
incompetent sluggard like Grigory. A cutting cold wind was blowing
straight in his face. Clouds of snowflakes were whirling round and
round in all directions, so that one could not tell whether the snow was
falling from the sky or rising from the earth. The fields, the telegraph
posts, and the forest could not be seen for the fog of snow. And when a
particularly violent gust of wind swooped down on Grigory, even the yoke
above the horse’s head could not be seen. The wretched, feeble little
nag crawled slowly along. It took all its strength to drag its legs out
of the snow and to tug with its head. The turner was in a hurry. He kept
restlessly hopping up and down on the front seat and lashing the horse’s
back.
“Don’t cry, Matryona,...” he muttered. “Have a little patience.
Please God we shall reach the hospital, and in a trice it will be the
right thing for you.... Pavel Ivanitch will give you some little
drops, or tell them to bleed you; or maybe his honor will be pleased to
rub you with some sort of spirit--it’ll... draw it out of your side.
Pavel Ivanitch will do his best. He will shout and stamp about, but he
will do his best.... He is a nice gentleman, affable, God give him
health! As soon as we get there he will dart out of his room and will
begin calling me names. ‘How? Why so?’ he will cry. ‘Why did you not
come at the right time? I am not a dog to be hanging about waiting on
you devils all day. Why did you not come in the morning? Go away! Get
out of my sight. Come again to-morrow.’ And I shall say: ‘Mr. Doctor!
Pavel Ivanitch! Your honor!’ Get on, do! plague take you, you devil! Get
on!”
The turner lashed his nag, and without looking at the old woman went on
muttering to himself:
“‘Your honor! It’s true as before God.... Here’s the Cross for you,
I set off almost before it was light. How could I be here in time if
the Lord.... The Mother of God... is wroth, and has sent such a
snowstorm? Kindly look for yourself.... Even a first-rate horse could
not do it, while mine--you can see for yourself--is not a horse but a
disgrace.’ And Pavel Ivanitch will frown and shout: ‘We know you! You
always find some excuse! Especially you, Grishka; I know you of old!
I’ll be bound you have stopped at half a dozen taverns!’ And I shall
say: ‘Your honor! am I a criminal or a heathen? My old woman is giving
up her soul to God, she is dying, and am I going to run from tavern to
tavern! What an idea, upon my word! Plague take them, the taverns!’ Then
Pavel Ivanitch will order you to be taken into the hospital, and I shall
fall at his feet.... ‘Pavel Ivanitch! Your honor, we thank you most
humbly! Forgive us fools and anathemas, don’t be hard on us peasants! We
deserve a good kicking, while you graciously put yourself out and mess
your feet in the snow!’ And Pavel Ivanitch will give me a look as
though he would like to hit me, and will say: ‘You’d much better not be
swilling vodka, you fool, but taking pity on your old woman instead
of falling at my feet. You want a thrashing!’ ‘You are right there--a
thrashing, Pavel Ivanitch, strike me God! But how can we help bowing
down at your feet if you are our benefactor, and a real father to us?
Your honor! I give you my word,... here as before God,... you
may spit in my face if I deceive you: as soon as my Matryona, this same
here, is well again and restored to her natural condition, I’ll make
anything for your honor that you would like to order! A cigarette-case,
if you like, of the best birchwood,... balls for croquet, skittles of
the most foreign pattern I can turn.... I will make anything for you!
I won’t take a farthing from you. In Moscow they would charge you four
roubles for such a cigarette-case, but I won’t take a farthing.’ The
doctor will laugh and say: ‘Oh, all right, all right.... I see! But
it’s a pity you are a drunkard....’ I know how to manage the gentry,
old girl. There isn’t a gentleman I couldn’t talk to. Only God grant we
don’t get off the road. Oh, how it is blowing! One’s eyes are full of
snow.”
And the turner went on muttering endlessly. He prattled on mechanically
to get a little relief from his depressing feelings. He had plenty of
words on his tongue, but the thoughts and questions in his brain
were even more numerous. Sorrow had come upon the turner unawares,
unlooked-for, and unexpected, and now he could not get over it, could
not recover himself. He had lived hitherto in unruffled calm, as though
in drunken half-consciousness, knowing neither grief nor joy, and now he
was suddenly aware of a dreadful pain in his heart. The careless idler
and drunkard found himself quite suddenly in the position of a busy man,
weighed down by anxieties and haste, and even struggling with nature.
The turner remembered that his trouble had begun the evening before.
When he had come home yesterday evening, a little drunk as usual, and
from long-established habit had begun swearing and shaking his fists,
his old woman had looked at her rowdy spouse as she had never looked
at him before. Usually, the expression in her aged eyes was that of a
martyr, meek like that of a dog frequently beaten and badly fed; this
time she had looked at him sternly and immovably, as saints in the holy
pictures or dying people look. From that strange, evil look in her eyes
the trouble had begun. The turner, stupefied with amazement, borrowed a
horse from a neighbor, and now was taking his old woman to the hospital
in the hope that, by means of powders and ointments, Pavel Ivanitch
would bring back his old woman’s habitual expression.
“I say, Matryona,...” the turner muttered, “if Pavel Ivanitch asks
you whether I beat you, say, ‘Never!’ and I never will beat you again. I
swear it. And did I ever beat you out of spite? I just beat you without
thinking. I am sorry for you. Some men wouldn’t trouble, but here I am
taking you.... I am doing my best. And the way it snows, the way it
snows! Thy Will be done, O Lord! God grant we don’t get off the road....
Does your side ache, Matryona, that you don’t speak? I ask you,
does your side ache?”
It struck him as strange that the snow on his old woman’s face was not
melting; it was queer that the face itself looked somehow drawn, and had
turned a pale gray, dingy waxen hue and had grown grave and solemn.
“You are a fool!” muttered the turner.... “I tell you on my
conscience, before God,... and you go and... Well, you are a fool!
I have a good mind not to take you to Pavel Ivanitch!”
The turner let the reins go and began thinking. He could not bring
himself to look round at his old woman: he was frightened. He was
afraid, too, of asking her a question and not getting an answer. At
last, to make an end of uncertainty, without looking round he felt his
old woman’s cold hand. The lifted hand fell like a log.
“She is dead, then! What a business!”
And the turner cried. He was not so much sorry as annoyed. He thought
how quickly everything passes in this world! His trouble had hardly
begun when the final catastrophe had happened. He had not had time to
live with his old woman, to show her he was sorry for her before she
died. He had lived with her for forty years, but those forty years had
passed by as it were in a fog. What with drunkenness, quarreling, and
poverty, there had been no feeling of life. And, as though to spite him,
his old woman died at the very time when he felt he was sorry for her,
that he could not live without her, and that he had behaved dreadfully
badly to her.
“Why, she used to go the round of the village,” he remembered. “I sent
her out myself to beg for bread. What a business! She ought to have
lived another ten years, the silly thing; as it is I’ll be bound she
thinks I really was that sort of man.... Holy Mother! but where the
devil am I driving? There’s no need for a doctor now, but a burial. Turn
back!”
Grigory turned back and lashed the horse with all his might. The road
grew worse and worse every hour. Now he could not see the yoke at
all. Now and then the sledge ran into a young fir tree, a dark object
scratched the turner’s hands and flashed before his eyes, and the field
of vision was white and whirling again.
“To live over again,” thought the turner.
He remembered that forty years ago Matryona had been young, handsome,
merry, that she had come of a well-to-do family. They had married her
to him because they had been attracted by his handicraft. All the
essentials for a happy life had been there, but the trouble was that,
just as he had got drunk after the wedding and lay sprawling on the
stove, so he had gone on without waking up till now. His wedding he
remembered, but of what happened after the wedding--for the life of him
he could remember nothing, except perhaps that he had drunk, lain on the
stove, and quarreled. Forty years had been wasted like that.
The white clouds of snow were beginning little by little to turn gray.
It was getting dusk.
“Where am I going?” the turner suddenly bethought him with a start.
“I ought to be thinking of the burial, and I am on the way to the
hospital.... It as is though I had gone crazy.”
Grigory turned round again, and again lashed his horse. The little nag
strained its utmost and, with a snort, fell into a little trot. The
turner lashed it on the back time after time.... A knocking was
audible behind him, and though he did not look round, he knew it was the
dead woman’s head knocking against the sledge. And the snow kept turning
darker and darker, the wind grew colder and more cutting....
“To live over again!” thought the turner. “I should get a new lathe,
take orders,... give the money to my old woman....”
And then he dropped the reins. He looked for them, tried to pick them
up, but could not--his hands would not work....
“It does not matter,” he thought, “the horse will go of itself, it knows
the way. I might have a little sleep now.... Before the funeral or
the requiem it would be as well to get a little rest....”
The turner closed his eyes and dozed. A little later he heard the horse
stop; he opened his eyes and saw before him something dark like a hut or
a haystack....
He would have got out of the sledge and found out what it was, but he
felt overcome by such inertia that it seemed better to freeze than move,
and he sank into a peaceful sleep.
He woke up in a big room with painted walls. Bright sunlight was
streaming in at the windows. The turner saw people facing him, and his
first feeling was a desire to show himself a respectable man who knew
how things should be done.
“A requiem, brothers, for my old woman,” he said. “The priest should be
told....”
“Oh, all right, all right; lie down,” a voice cut him short.
“Pavel Ivanitch!” the turner cried in surprise, seeing the doctor before
him. “Your honor, benefactor!”
He wanted to leap up and fall on his knees before the doctor, but felt
that his arms and legs would not obey him.
“Your honor, where are my legs, where are my arms!”
“Say good-by to your arms and legs.... They’ve been frozen off. Come,
come!... What are you crying for? You’ve lived your life, and thank
God for it! I suppose you have had sixty years of it--that’s enough for
you!...”
“I am grieving.... Graciously forgive me! If I could have another
five or six years!...”
“What for?”
“The horse isn’t mine, I must give it back.... I must bury my old
woman.... How quickly it is all ended in this world! Your honor,
Pavel Ivanitch! A cigarette-case of birchwood of the best! I’ll turn you
croquet balls....”
The doctor went out of the ward with a wave of his hand. It was all over
with the turner.