FROST

A "POPULAR" fête with a philanthropic object had been arranged on

the Feast of Epiphany in the provincial town of N----. They had

selected a broad part of the river between the market and the

bishop's palace, fenced it round with a rope, with fir-trees and

with flags, and provided everything necessary for skating, sledging,

and tobogganing. The festivity was organized on the grandest scale

possible. The notices that were distributed were of huge size and

promised a number of delights: skating, a military band, a lottery

with no blank tickets, an electric sun, and so on. But the whole

scheme almost came to nothing owing to the hard frost. From the eve

of Epiphany there were twenty-eight degrees of frost with a strong

wind; it was proposed to put off the fête, and this was not done

only because the public, which for a long while had been looking

forward to the fête impatiently, would not consent to any postponement.

"Only think, what do you expect in winter but a frost!" said the

ladies persuading the governor, who tried to insist that the fête

should be postponed. "If anyone is cold he can go and warm himself."

The trees, the horses, the men's beards were white with frost; it

even seemed that the air itself crackled, as though unable to endure

the cold; but in spite of that the frozen public were skating.

Immediately after the blessing of the waters and precisely at one

o'clock the military band began playing.

Between three and four o'clock in the afternoon, when the festivity

was at its height, the select society of the place gathered together

to warm themselves in the governor's pavilion, which had been put

up on the river-bank. The old governor and his wife, the bishop,

the president of the local court, the head master of the high school,

and many others, were there. The ladies were sitting in armchairs,

while the men crowded round the wide glass door, looking at the

skating.

"Holy Saints!" said the bishop in surprise; "what flourishes they

execute with their legs! Upon my soul, many a singer couldn't do a

twirl with his voice as those cut-throats do with their legs. Aie!

he'll kill himself!"

"That's Smirnov. . . . That's Gruzdev . . ." said the head master,

mentioning the names of the schoolboys who flew by the pavilion.

"Bah! he's all alive-oh!" laughed the governor. "Look, gentlemen,

our mayor is coming. . . . He is coming this way. . . . That's a

nuisance, he will talk our heads off now."

A little thin old man, wearing a big cap and a fur-lined coat hanging

open, came from the opposite bank towards the pavilion, avoiding

the skaters. This was the mayor of the town, a merchant, Eremeyev

by name, a millionaire and an old inhabitant of N----. Flinging

wide his arms and shrugging at the cold, he skipped along, knocking

one golosh against the other, evidently in haste to get out of the

wind. Half-way he suddenly bent down, stole up to some lady, and

plucked at her sleeve from behind. When she looked round he skipped

away, and probably delighted at having succeeded in frightening

her, went off into a loud, aged laugh.

"Lively old fellow," said the governor. "It's a wonder he's not

skating."

As he got near the pavilion the mayor fell into a little tripping

trot, waved his hands, and, taking a run, slid along the ice in his

huge golosh boots up to the very door.

"Yegor Ivanitch, you ought to get yourself some skates!" the governor

greeted him.

"That's just what I am thinking," he answered in a squeaky, somewhat

nasal tenor, taking off his cap. "I wish you good health, your

Excellency! Your Holiness! Long life to all the other gentlemen and

ladies! Here's a frost! Yes, it is a frost, bother it! It's deadly!"

Winking with his red, frozen eyes, Yegor Ivanitch stamped on the

floor with his golosh boots and swung his arms together like a

frozen cabman.

"Such a damnable frost, worse than any dog!" he went on talking,

smiling all over his face. "It's a real affliction!"

"It's healthy," said the governor; "frost strengthens a man and

makes him vigorous. . . ."

"Though it may be healthy, it would be better without it at all,"

said the mayor, wiping his wedge-shaped beard with a red handkerchief.

"It would be a good riddance! To my thinking, your Excellency, the

Lord sends it us as a punishment--the frost, I mean. We sin in

the summer and are punished in the winter. . . . Yes!"

Yegor Ivanitch looked round him quickly and flung up his hands.

"Why, where's the needful . . . to warm us up?" he asked, looking

in alarm first at the governor and then at the bishop. "Your

Excellency! Your Holiness! I'll be bound, the ladies are frozen

too! We must have something, this won't do!"

Everyone began gesticulating and declaring that they had not come

to the skating to warm themselves, but the mayor, heeding no one,

opened the door and beckoned to someone with his crooked finger. A

workman and a fireman ran up to him.

"Here, run off to Savatin," he muttered, "and tell him to make haste

and send here . . . what do you call it? . . . What's it to be?

Tell him to send a dozen glasses . . . a dozen glasses of mulled

wine, the very hottest, or punch, perhaps. . . ."

There was laughter in the pavilion.

"A nice thing to treat us to!"

"Never mind, we will drink it," muttered the mayor; "a dozen glasses,

then . . . and some Benedictine, perhaps . . . and tell them to

warm two bottles of red wine. . . . Oh, and what for the ladies?

Well, you tell them to bring cakes, nuts . . . sweets of some sort,

perhaps. . . . There, run along, look sharp!"

The mayor was silent for a minute and then began again abusing the

frost, banging his arms across his chest and thumping with his

golosh boots.

"No, Yegor Ivanitch," said the governor persuasively, "don't be

unfair, the Russian frost has its charms. I was reading lately that

many of the good qualities of the Russian people are due to the

vast expanse of their land and to the climate, the cruel struggle

for existence . . . that's perfectly true!"

"It may be true, your Excellency, but it would be better without

it. The frost did drive out the French, of course, and one can

freeze all sorts of dishes, and the children can go

skating--that's all true! For the man who is well fed and well clothed the

frost is only a pleasure, but for the working man, the beggar, the

pilgrim, the crazy wanderer, it's the greatest evil and misfortune.

It's misery, your Holiness! In a frost like this poverty is twice

as hard, and the thief is more cunning and evildoers more violent.

There's no gainsaying it! I am turned seventy, I've a fur coat now,

and at home I have a stove and rums and punches of all sorts. The

frost means nothing to me now; I take no notice of it, I don't care

to know of it, but how it used to be in old days, Holy Mother! It's

dreadful to recall it! My memory is failing me with years and I

have forgotten everything; my enemies, and my sins and troubles of

all sorts--I forget them all, but the frost--ough! How I remember

it! When my mother died I was left a little devil--this

high--a homeless orphan . . . no kith nor kin, wretched, ragged, little

clothes, hungry, nowhere to sleep--in fact, 'we have here no

abiding city, but seek the one to come.' In those days I used to

lead an old blind woman about the town for five kopecks a day . . .

the frosts were cruel, wicked. One would go out with the old woman

and begin suffering torments. My Creator! First of all you would

be shivering as in a fever, shrugging and dancing about. Then your

ears, your fingers, your feet, would begin aching. They would ache

as though someone were squeezing them with pincers. But all that

would have been nothing, a trivial matter, of no great consequence.

The trouble was when your whole body was chilled. One would walk

for three blessed hours in the frost, your Holiness, and lose all

human semblance. Your legs are drawn up, there is a weight on your

chest, your stomach is pinched; above all, there is a pain in your

heart that is worse than anything. Your heart aches beyond all

endurance, and there is a wretchedness all over your body as though

you were leading Death by the hand instead of an old woman. You are

numb all over, turned to stone like a statue; you go on and feel

as though it were not you walking, but someone else moving your

legs instead of you. When your soul is frozen you don't know what

you are doing: you are ready to leave the old woman with no one to

guide her, or to pull a hot roll from off a hawker's tray, or to

fight with someone. And when you come to your night's lodging into

the warmth after the frost, there is not much joy in that either!

You lie awake till midnight, crying, and don't know yourself what

you are crying for. . . ."

"We must walk about the skating-ground before it gets dark," said

the governor's wife, who was bored with listening. "Who's coming

with me?"

The governor's wife went out and the whole company trooped out of

the pavilion after her. Only the governor, the bishop, and the mayor

remained.

"Queen of Heaven! and what I went through when I was a shopboy in

a fish-shop!" Yegor Ivanitch went on, flinging up his arms so that

his fox-lined coat fell open. "One would go out to the shop almost

before it was light . . . by eight o'clock I was completely frozen,

my face was blue, my fingers were stiff so that I could not fasten

my buttons nor count the money. One would stand in the cold, turn

numb, and think, 'Lord, I shall have to stand like this right on

till evening!' By dinner-time my stomach was pinched and my heart

was aching. . . . Yes! And I was not much better afterwards when I

had a shop of my own. The frost was intense and the shop was like

a mouse-trap with draughts blowing in all directions; the coat I

had on was, pardon me, mangy, as thin as paper, threadbare. . . .

One would be chilled through and through, half dazed, and turn as

cruel as the frost oneself: I would pull one by the ear so that I

nearly pulled the ear off; I would smack another on the back of the

head; I'd glare at a customer like a ruffian, a wild beast, and be

ready to fleece him; and when I got home in the evening and ought

to have gone to bed, I'd be ill-humoured and set upon my family,

throwing it in their teeth that they were living upon me; I would

make a row and carry on so that half a dozen policemen couldn't

have managed me. The frost makes one spiteful and drives one to

drink."

Yegor Ivanitch clasped his hands and went on:

"And when we were taking fish to Moscow in the winter, Holy Mother!"

And spluttering as he talked, he began describing the horrors he

endured with his shopmen when he was taking fish to Moscow. . . .

"Yes," sighed the governor, "it is wonderful what a man can endure!

You used to take wagon-loads of fish to Moscow, Yegor Ivanitch,

while I in my time was at the war. I remember one extraordinary

instance. . . ."

And the governor described how, during the last Russo-Turkish War,

one frosty night the division in which he was had stood in the snow

without moving for thirteen hours in a piercing wind; from fear of

being observed the division did not light a fire, nor make a sound

or a movement; they were forbidden to smoke. . . .

Reminiscences followed. The governor and the mayor grew lively and

good-humoured, and, interrupting each other, began recalling their

experiences. And the bishop told them how, when he was serving in

Siberia, he had travelled in a sledge drawn by dogs; how one day,

being drowsy, in a time of sharp frost he had fallen out of the

sledge and been nearly frozen; when the Tunguses turned back and

found him he was barely alive. Then, as by common agreement, the

old men suddenly sank into silence, sat side by side, and mused.

"Ech!" whispered the mayor; "you'd think it would be time to forget,

but when you look at the water-carriers, at the schoolboys, at the

convicts in their wretched gowns, it brings it all back! Why, only

take those musicians who are playing now. I'll be bound, there is

a pain in their hearts; a pinch at their stomachs, and their trumpets

are freezing to their lips. . . . They play and think: 'Holy Mother!

we have another three hours to sit here in the cold.'"

The old men sank into thought. They thought of that in man which

is higher than good birth, higher than rank and wealth and learning,

of that which brings the lowest beggar near to God: of the helplessness

of man, of his sufferings and his patience. . . .

Meanwhile the air was turning blue . . . the door opened and two

waiters from Savatin's walked in, carrying trays and a big muffled

teapot. When the glasses had been filled and there was a strong

smell of cinnamon and clove in the air, the door opened again, and

there came into the pavilion a beardless young policeman whose nose

was crimson, and who was covered all over with frost; he went up

to the governor, and, saluting, said: "Her Excellency told me to

inform you that she has gone home."

Looking at the way the policeman put his stiff, frozen fingers to

his cap, looking at his nose, his lustreless eyes, and his hood

covered with white frost near the mouth, they all for some reason

felt that this policeman's heart must be aching, that his stomach

must feel pinched, and his soul numb. . . .

"I say," said the governor hesitatingly, "have a drink of mulled

wine!"

"It's all right . . . it's all right! Drink it up!" the mayor urged

him, gesticulating; "don't be shy!"

The policeman took the glass in both hands, moved aside, and, trying

to drink without making any sound, began discreetly sipping from

the glass. He drank and was overwhelmed with embarrassment while

the old men looked at him in silence, and they all fancied that the

pain was leaving the young policeman's heart, and that his soul was

thawing. The governor heaved a sigh.

"It's time we were at home," he said, getting up. "Good-bye! I say,"

he added, addressing the policeman, "tell the musicians there to

. . . leave off playing, and ask Pavel Semyonovitch from me to see

they are given . . . beer or vodka."

The governor and the bishop said good-bye to the mayor and went out

of the pavilion.

Yegor Ivanitch attacked the mulled wine, and before the policeman

had finished his glass succeeded in telling him a great many

interesting things. He could not be silent.