When morning came the blizzard was still raging. In that grey whirling
tempest neither Durnovka nor the windmill on the promontory was
visible. Once in a while it grew brighter, once in a while the light
became like that at nightfall. The orchard was all white, and its roar
mingled with the roar of the wind, in which one kept imagining the peal
of bells. The sharp-pointed apexes of the snowdrifts were smoking. From
the porch, on which, with eyes screwed up, scenting athwart the chill
of the blizzard the savoury aroma from the chimney of the servant’s
wing, sat the watchdogs, all coated with snow. Kuzma was barely able
to make out the dark, misty forms of the peasants, their horses,
sledges, the jingling of the sleighbells. Two horses had been hitched
to the bridegroom’s sledge; one horse was allotted to that of the
bride. The sledges were covered with kazan felt lap robes with black
patterns on the ends. The participants in the ceremonial procession
had girt themselves with sashes of divers hues. The women, who had
donned wadded coats and wrapped their heads in shawls, walked to the
sledges circumspectly, taking tiny steps, ceremoniously remarking:
“Heavens, God’s daylight is not visible!” Rarely was a woman garbed in
her own clothes: everything had been collected among the neighbours.
Accordingly, special caution was needed not to fall, and they lifted
their long skirts as high as possible. The bride’s fur coat and her
blue gown had been turned up over her head, and she sat in the sledge
protected only by her white petticoat. Her head, adorned with a small
wreath of paper flowers, was enveloped in undershawls. She had become
so weak from her weeping that she saw as in a dream the dark figures
through the blizzard, heard its roar, the conversation, and the festive
pealing of the small bells. The horses laid their ears flat and tossed
their muzzles from side to side to escape the snow-laden gale; and it
bore away the chatter and the shouts of command, glued eyes tightly
together, whitened mustaches, beards, and caps, and the groomsmen had
difficulty in recognizing one another in the darkness and gloom.
“Ugh, damn it all!” exclaimed Vaska as he ducked his head, gathered
up the reins, and took his seat beside the bridegroom. And he shouted
roughly, indifferently, into the teeth of the storm: “Messrs. boyars,
bestow your blessing on the bridegroom, that he may go in search of his
bride!”
Some one made answer: “May God bless him.”
Then the sleighbells began to wail, the runners to screech; the
snowdrifts, as the runners cut through them, turned to smoke and small
whirlwinds; the forelocks, manes, and tails of the horses were blown to
one side....
At the church-warden’s house in the village, where they warmed
themselves up while waiting for the priest, all became well suffocated.
In the church, also, there was the odour of fire-gas, cold, and gloom,
thanks to the blizzard, the low ceilings, and the gratings in the
windows. Lighted candles were held only by the bridegroom and the bride
and in the hand of the swarthy priest. He had big cheek-bones, and he
bent low over his book, which was all bespattered with wax-droppings,
and read hurriedly through his spectacles. On the floor stood pools of
water--much snow had been brought in on their boots and bark-shoes.
The wind from the open door blew on their backs. The priest glanced
sternly now at the door, again at the groom and bride--at their tense
forms, prepared for anything that might present itself; at their faces,
congealed, as it were, in obedience and submission, illuminated from
below by the golden gleam of candles. From habit, he pronounced some
words as if he felt them, making them stand out apart from the touching
prayers; but in reality he was thinking not at all of the words or of
those to whom they were applied.
“‘O God most pure, the Creator of every living thing,’” he said
hastily, now lowering, now raising his voice. “‘Thou who didst bless
Thy servant Abraham, and, opening the womb of Sarah ... who didst give
Isaac unto Rebecca ... who didst join Jacob unto Rachel ... vouchsafe
unto these Thy servants....’”
“Name--?” he interrupted himself in a stern whisper, without altering
the expression of his countenance, addressing the lay reader. And,
having caught the answer, “Denis, Avdotya,” he continued, with feeling:
“‘Vouchsafe unto these Thy servants, Denis and Evdokhia, a peaceful
life, length of days, chastity ... grant that they may behold their
children’s children ... and give them of the dew of heaven from on
high.... Fill their houses with wheat and wine and oil ... exhalt thou
them like unto the cedars of Lebanon....’”
But even if those who were present had listened to him and understood,
they would have been thinking of the blizzard, the strange horses, the
return home through the twilight to Durnovka, Syery’s house--and not of
Abraham and Isaac. And they would have grinned at comparing Deniska to
a cedar of Lebanon. And it was awkward for Deniska himself, his short
legs encased in borrowed boots, his body clad in an old undercoat, to
admit that the bride was taller than he; it was awkward and terrible to
bear on his motionless head the imperial crown[36]--a huge brass crown
with a cross on top, resting far down on his very ears. And the hand of
the Bride, who looked more beautiful and more lifeless than ever in
her crown, trembled, and the wax of the melting candle dripped down on
the flounce of her blue gown....
The return home was more comfortable. The blizzard was even more
terrible in the twilight, but they were cheered by the consciousness
that a burden had been removed from their shoulders: whether for
good or for evil, the deed had been done. So they whipped up their
horses smartly, dashing ahead at random, trusting solely to the
ill-defined forms of the small trees which marked out the road. And
the loud-mouthed wife of Vanka Krasny stood upright in the leading
sledge and danced, flourishing her handkerchief and screeching to the
gale, through the dark, raging turmoil, through the snow which whipped
against her lips and drowned her wolf’s voice:
“The dove, the grey dove,
Has a head of gold.”
_Moscow, 1909._