I was returning from hunting in a jolting little trap, and overcome by
the stifling heat of a cloudy summer day (it is well known that the
heat is often more insupportable on such days than in bright days,
especially when there is no wind), I dozed and was shaken about,
resigning myself with sullen fortitude to being persecuted by the fine
white dust which was incessantly raised from the beaten road by the
warped and creaking wheels, when suddenly my attention was aroused by
the extraordinary uneasiness and agitated movements of my coachman, who
had till that instant been more soundly dozing than I. He began tugging
at the reins, moved uneasily on the box, and started shouting to the
horses, staring all the while in one direction. I looked round. We were
driving through a wide ploughed plain; low hills, also ploughed over,
ran in gently sloping, swelling waves over it; the eye took in some
five miles of deserted country; in the distance the round-scolloped
tree-tops of some small birch-copses were the only objects to break the
almost straight line of the horizon. Narrow paths ran over the fields,
disappeared into the hollows, and wound round the hillocks. On one of
these paths, which happened to run into our road five hundred paces
ahead of us, I made out a kind of procession. At this my coachman was
looking.
It was a funeral. In front, in a little cart harnessed with one horse,
and advancing at a walking pace, came the priest; beside him sat the
deacon driving; behind the cart four peasants, bareheaded, carried the
coffin, covered with a white cloth; two women followed the coffin. The
shrill wailing voice of one of them suddenly reached my ears; I
listened; she was intoning a dirge. Very dismal sounded this chanted,
monotonous, hopelessly-sorrowful lament among the empty fields. The
coachman whipped up the horses; he wanted to get in front of this
procession. To meet a corpse on the road is a bad omen. And he did
succeed in galloping ahead beyond this path before the funeral had had
time to turn out of it into the high-road; but we had hardly got a
hundred paces beyond this point, when suddenly our trap jolted
violently, heeled on one side, and all but overturned. The coachman
pulled up the galloping horses, and spat with a gesture of his hand.
'What is it?' I asked.
My coachman got down without speaking or hurrying himself.
'But what is it?'
'The axle is broken ... it caught fire,' he replied gloomily, and he
suddenly arranged the collar on the off-side horse with such
indignation that it was almost pushed over, but it stood its ground,
snorted, shook itself, and tranquilly began to scratch its foreleg
below the knee with its teeth.
I got out and stood for some time on the road, a prey to a vague and
unpleasant feeling of helplessness. The right wheel was almost
completely bent in under the trap, and it seemed to turn its
centre-piece upwards in dumb despair.
'What are we to do now?' I said at last.
'That's what's the cause of it!' said my coachman, pointing with his
whip to the funeral procession, which had just turned into the highroad
and was approaching us. 'I have always noticed that,' he went on; 'it's
a true saying--"Meet a corpse"--yes, indeed.'
And again he began worrying the off-side horse, who, seeing his
ill-humour, resolved to remain perfectly quiet, and contented itself
with discreetly switching its tail now and then. I walked up and down a
little while, and then stopped again before the wheel.
Meanwhile the funeral had come up to us. Quietly turning off the road
on to the grass, the mournful procession moved slowly past us. My
coachman and I took off our caps, saluted the priest, and exchanged
glances with the bearers. They moved with difficulty under their
burden, their broad chests standing out under the strain. Of the two
women who followed the coffin, one was very old and pale; her set face,
terribly distorted as it was by grief, still kept an expression of
grave and severe dignity. She walked in silence, from time to time
lifting her wasted hand to her thin drawn lips. The other, a young
woman of five-and-twenty, had her eyes red and moist and her whole face
swollen with weeping; as she passed us she ceased wailing, and hid her
face in her sleeve.... But when the funeral had got round us and turned
again into the road, her piteous, heart-piercing lament began again. My
coachman followed the measured swaying of the coffin with his eyes in
silence. Then he turned to me.
'It's Martin, the carpenter, they're burying,' he said; 'Martin of
Ryaby.'
'How do you know?'
'I know by the women. The old one is his mother, and the young one's
his wife.'
'Has he been ill, then?'
'Yes ... fever. The day before yesterday the overseer sent for the
doctor, but they did not find the doctor at home. He was a good
carpenter; he drank a bit, but he was a good carpenter. See how upset
his good woman is.... But, there; women's tears don't cost much, we
know. Women's tears are only water ... yes, indeed.'
And he bent down, crept under the side-horse's trace, and seized the
wooden yoke that passes over the horses' heads with both hands.
'Any way,' I observed, 'what are we going to do?'
My coachman just supported himself with his knees on the shaft-horse's
shoulder, twice gave the back-strap a shake, and straightened the pad;
then he crept out of the side-horse's trace again, and giving it a blow
on the nose as he passed, went up to the wheel. He went up to it, and,
never taking his eyes off it, slowly took out of the skirts of his coat
a box, slowly pulled open its lid by a strap, slowly thrust into it his
two fat fingers (which pretty well filled it up), rolled and rolled up
some snuff, and creasing up his nose in anticipation, helped himself to
it several times in succession, accompanying the snuff-taking every
time by a prolonged sneezing. Then, his streaming eyes blinking
faintly, he relapsed into profound meditation.
'Well?' I said at last.
My coachman thrust his box carefully into his pocket, brought his hat
forward on to his brows without the aid of his hand by a movement of
his head, and gloomily got up on the box.
'What are you doing?' I asked him, somewhat bewildered.
'Pray be seated,' he replied calmly, picking up the reins.
'But how can we go on?'
'We will go on now.'
'But the axle.'
'Pray be seated.'
'But the axle is broken.'
'It is broken; but we will get to the settlement ... at a walking pace,
of course. Over here, beyond the copse, on the right, is a settlement;
they call it Yudino.'
'And do you think we can get there?'
My coachman did not vouchsafe me a reply.
'I had better walk,' I said.
'As you like....' And he nourished his whip. The horses started.
We did succeed in getting to the settlement, though the right front
wheel was almost off, and turned in a very strange way. On one hillock
it almost flew off, but my coachman shouted in a voice of exasperation,
and we descended it in safety.
Yudino settlement consisted of six little low-pitched huts, the walls
of which had already begun to warp out of the perpendicular, though
they had certainly not been long built; the back-yards of some of the
huts were not even fenced in with a hedge. As we drove into this
settlement we did not meet a single living soul; there were no hens
even to be seen in the street, and no dogs, but one black crop-tailed
cur, which at our approach leaped hurriedly out of a perfectly dry and
empty trough, to which it must have been driven by thirst, and at once,
without barking, rushed headlong under a gate. I went up to the first
hut, opened the door into the outer room, and called for the master of
the house. No one answered me. I called once more; the hungry mewing of
a cat sounded behind the other door. I pushed it open with my foot; a
thin cat ran up and down near me, her green eyes glittering in the
dark. I put my head into the room and looked round; it was empty, dark,
and smoky. I returned to the yard, and there was no one there
either.... A calf lowed behind the paling; a lame grey goose waddled a
little away. I passed on to the second hut. Not a soul in the second
hut either. I went into the yard....
In the very middle of the yard, in the glaring sunlight, there lay,
with his face on the ground and a cloak thrown over his head, a boy, as
it seemed to me. In a thatched shed a few paces from him a thin little
nag with broken harness was standing near a wretched little cart. The
sunshine falling in streaks through the narrow cracks in the
dilapidated roof, striped his shaggy, reddish-brown coat in small bands
of light. Above, in the high bird-house, starlings were chattering and
looking down inquisitively from their airy home. I went up to the
sleeping figure and began to awaken him.
He lifted his head, saw me, and at once jumped up on to his feet....
'What? what do you want? what is it?' he muttered, half asleep.