GLYEB GAVRILOVITCH SMIRNOV, a land surveyor, arrived at the station
of Gnilushki. He had another twenty or thirty miles to drive before
he would reach the estate which he had been summoned to survey. (If
the driver were not drunk and the horses were not bad, it would
hardly be twenty miles, but if the driver had had a drop and his
steeds were worn out it would mount up to a good forty.)
"Tell me, please, where can I get post-horses here?" the surveyor
asked of the station gendarme.
"What? Post-horses? There's no finding a decent dog for seventy
miles round, let alone post-horses. . . . But where do you want to
go?"
"To Dyevkino, General Hohotov's estate."
"Well," yawned the gendarme, "go outside the station, there are
sometimes peasants in the yard there, they will take passengers."
The surveyor heaved a sigh and made his way out of the station.
There, after prolonged enquiries, conversations, and hesitations,
he found a very sturdy, sullen-looking pock-marked peasant, wearing
a tattered grey smock and bark-shoes.
"You have got a queer sort of cart!" said the surveyor, frowning
as he clambered into the cart. "There is no making out which is the
back and which is the front."
"What is there to make out? Where the horse's tail is, there's the
front, and where your honour's sitting, there's the back."
The little mare was young, but thin, with legs planted wide apart
and frayed ears. When the driver stood up and lashed her with a
whip made of cord, she merely shook her head; when he swore at her
and lashed her once more, the cart squeaked and shivered as though
in a fever. After the third lash the cart gave a lurch, after the
fourth, it moved forward.
"Are we going to drive like this all the way?" asked the surveyor,
violently jolted and marvelling at the capacity of Russian drivers
for combining a slow tortoise-like pace with a jolting that turns
the soul inside out.
"We shall ge-et there!" the peasant reassured him. "The mare is
young and frisky. . . . Only let her get running and then there is
no stopping her. . . . No-ow, cur-sed brute!"
It was dusk by the time the cart drove out of the station. On the
surveyor's right hand stretched a dark frozen plain, endless and
boundless. If you drove over it you would certainly get to the other
side of beyond. On the horizon, where it vanished and melted into
the sky, there was the languid glow of a cold autumn sunset. . . .
On the left of the road, mounds of some sort, that might be last
year's stacks or might be a village, rose up in the gathering
darkness. The surveyor could not see what was in front as his whole
field of vision on that side was covered by the broad clumsy back
of the driver. The air was still, but it was cold and frosty.
"What a wilderness it is here," thought the surveyor, trying to
cover his ears with the collar of his overcoat. "Neither post nor
paddock. If, by ill-luck, one were attacked and robbed no one would
hear you, whatever uproar you made. . . . And the driver is not one
you could depend on. . . . Ugh, what a huge back! A child of nature
like that has only to move a finger and it would be all up with
one! And his ugly face is suspicious and brutal-looking."
"Hey, my good man!" said the surveyor, "What is your name?"
"Mine? Klim."
"Well, Klim, what is it like in your parts here? Not dangerous? Any
robbers on the road?"
"It is all right, the Lord has spared us. . . . Who should go robbing
on the road?"
"It's a good thing there are no robbers. But to be ready for anything
I have got three revolvers with me," said the surveyor untruthfully.
"And it doesn't do to trifle with a revolver, you know. One can
manage a dozen robbers. . . ."
It had become quite dark. The cart suddenly began creaking, squeaking,
shaking, and, as though unwillingly, turned sharply to the left.
"Where is he taking me to?" the surveyor wondered. "He has been
driving straight and now all at once to the left. I shouldn't wonder
if he'll take me, the rascal, to some den of thieves . . . and. . . .
Things like that do happen."
"I say," he said, addressing the driver, "so you tell me it's not
dangerous here? That's a pity. . . I like a fight with robbers. . . .
I am thin and sickly-looking, but I have the strength of a bull
. . . . Once three robbers attacked me and what do you think? I gave
one such a dressing that. . . that he gave up his soul to God, you
understand, and the other two were sent to penal servitude in
Siberia. And where I got the strength I can't say. . . . One grips
a strapping fellow of your sort with one hand and . . . wipes him
out."
Klim looked round at the surveyor, wrinkled up his whole face, and
lashed his horse.
"Yes . . ." the surveyor went on. "God forbid anyone should tackle
me. The robber would have his bones broken, and, what's more, he
would have to answer for it in the police court too. . . . I know
all the judges and the police captains, I am a man in the Government,
a man of importance. Here I am travelling and the authorities know
. . . they keep a regular watch over me to see no one does me a
mischief. There are policemen and village constables stuck behind
bushes all along the road. . . . Sto . . . sto . . . . stop!" the
surveyor bawled suddenly. "Where have you got to? Where are you
taking me to?"
"Why, don't you see? It's a forest!"
"It certainly is a forest," thought the surveyor. "I was frightened!
But it won't do to betray my feelings. . . . He has noticed already
that I am in a funk. Why is it he has taken to looking round at me
so often? He is plotting something for certain. . . . At first he
drove like a snail and now how he is dashing along!"
"I say, Klim, why are you making the horse go like that?"
"I am not making her go. She is racing along of herself. . . . Once
she gets into a run there is no means of stopping her. It's no
pleasure to her that her legs are like that."
"You are lying, my man, I see that you are lying. Only I advise you
not to drive so fast. Hold your horse in a bit. . . . Do you hear?
Hold her in!"
"What for?"
"Why . . . why, because four comrades were to drive after me from
the station. We must let them catch us up. . . . They promised to
overtake us in this forest. It will be more cheerful in their
company. . . . They are a strong, sturdy set of fellows. . . . And
each of them has got a pistol. Why do you keep looking round and
fidgeting as though you were sitting on thorns? eh? I, my good
fellow, er . . . my good fellow . . . there is no need to look
around at me . . . there is nothing interesting about me. . . .
Except perhaps the revolvers. Well, if you like I will take them
out and show you. . . ."
The surveyor made a pretence of feeling in his pockets and at that
moment something happened which he could not have expected with all
his cowardice. Klim suddenly rolled off the cart and ran as fast
as he could go into the forest.
"Help!" he roared. "Help! Take the horse and the cart, you devil,
only don't take my life. Help!"
There was the sound of footsteps hurriedly retreating, of twigs
snapping--and all was still. . . . The surveyor had not expected
such a _dénouement_. He first stopped the horse and then settled
himself more comfortably in the cart and fell to thinking.
"He has run off . . . he was scared, the fool. Well, what's to be
done now? I can't go on alone because I don't know the way; besides
they may think I have stolen his horse. . . . What's to be done?"
"Klim! Klim," he cried.
"Klim," answered the echo.
At the thought that he would have to sit through the whole night
in the cold and dark forest and hear nothing but the wolves, the
echo, and the snorting of the scraggy mare, the surveyor began to
have twinges down his spine as though it were being rasped with a
cold file.
"Klimushka," he shouted. "Dear fellow! Where are you, Klimushka?"
For two hours the surveyor shouted, and it was only after he was
quite husky and had resigned himself to spending the night in the
forest that a faint breeze wafted the sound of a moan to him.
"Klim, is it you, dear fellow? Let us go on."
"You'll mu-ur-der me!"
"But I was joking, my dear man! I swear to God I was joking! As
though I had revolvers! I told a lie because I was frightened. For
goodness sake let us go on, I am freezing!"
Klim, probably reflecting that a real robber would have vanished
long ago with the horse and cart, came out of the forest and went
hesitatingly up to his passenger.
"Well, what were you frightened of, stupid? I . . . I was joking
and you were frightened. Get in!"
"God be with you, sir," Klim muttered as he clambered into the cart,
"if I had known I wouldn't have taken you for a hundred roubles. I
almost died of fright. . . ."
Klim lashed at the little mare. The cart swayed. Klim lashed once
more and the cart gave a lurch. After the fourth stroke of the whip
when the cart moved forward, the surveyor hid his ears in his collar
and sank into thought.
The road and Klim no longer seemed dangerous to him.