by Leo Tolstoy
Nikita, the only one of Vasili Andreyevich’s laborers who was not drunk that day, ran to harness the horse. Nikita, though an habitual drunkard, was not drunk that day because since the last day before the fast, when he had drunk his coat and leather boots, he had sworn off drink and had kept his vow for two months, and was still keeping it despite the temptation of the vodka that had been drunk everywhere during the first two days of the feast.
Nikita was a peasant of about fifty from a neighboring village, “not a manager” as the peasants said of him, meaning that he was not the thrifty head of a household but lived most of his time away from home as a laborer. He was valued everywhere for his industry, dexterity, and strength at work, and still more for his kindly and pleasant temper. But he never settled down anywhere for long because about twice a year, or even oftener, he had a drinking bout, and then besides spending all his clothes on drink he became turbulent and quarrelsome. Vasili Andreyevich himself had turned him away several times, but had afterwards taken him back again—valuing his honesty, his kindness to animals, and especially his cheapness. Vasili Andreyevich did not pay Nikita the eighty rubles a year such a man was worth, but only about forty, which he gave him haphazard, in small sums, and even that mostly not in cash but in goods from his own shop and at high prices.
Nikita’s wife Martha, who had once been a handsome vigorous woman, managed the homestead with the help of her son and two daughters, and did not urge Nikita to live at home: first because she had been living for some twenty years already with a cooper, a peasant from another village who lodged in their house; and secondly because though she managed her husband as she pleased when he was sober, she feared him like fire when he was drunk. Once when he had got drunk at home, Nikita, probably to make up for his submissiveness when sober, broke open her box, took out her best clothes, snatched up an axe, and chopped all her undergarments and dresses to bits. All the wages Nikita earned went to his wife, and he raised no objection to that. So now, two days before the holiday, Martha had been twice to see Vasili Andreyevich and had got from him wheat flour, tea, sugar, and a quart of vodka, the lot costing three rubles, and also five rubles in cash, for which she thanked him as for a special favor, though he owed Nikita at least twenty rubles.
“What agreement did we ever draw up with you?” said Vasili Andreyevich to Nikita. “If you need anything, take it; you will work it off. I’m not like others to keep you waiting, and making up accounts and reckoning fines. We deal straightforwardly. You serve me and I don’t neglect you.”
And when saying this Vasili Andreyevich was honestly convinced that he was Nikita’s benefactor, and he knew how to put it so plausibly that all those who depended on him for their money, beginning with Nikita, confirmed him in the conviction that he was their benefactor and did not overreach them.
“Yes, I understand, Vasili Andreyevich. You know that I serve you and take as much pains as I would for my own father. I understand very well!” Nikita would reply. He was quite aware that Vasili Andreyevich was cheating him, but at the same time he felt that it was useless to try to clear up his accounts with him or explain his side of the matter, and that as long as he had nowhere to go he must accept what he could get.
Now, having heard his master’s order to harness, he went as usual cheerfully and willingly to the shed, stepping briskly and easily on his rather turned-in feet; took down from a nail the heavy tasselled leather bridle, and jingling the rings of the bit went to the closed stable where the horse he was to harness was standing by himself.
“What, feeling lonely, feeling lonely, little silly?” said Nikita in answer to the low whinny with which he was greeted by the good-tempered, medium-sized bay stallion, with a rather slanting crupper, who stood alone in the shed. “Now then, now then, there’s time enough. Let me water you first,” he went on, speaking to the horse just as to someone who understood the words he was using, and having whisked the dusty, grooved back of the well-fed young stallion with the skirt of his coat, he put a bridle on his handsome head, straightened his ears and forelock, and having taken off his halter led him out to water.
Picking his way out of the dung-strewn stable, Mukhorty frisked, and making play with his hind leg pretended that he meant to kick Nikita, who was running at a trot beside him to the pump.
“Now then, now then, you rascal!” Nikita called out, well knowing how carefully Mukhorty threw out his hind leg just to touch his greasy sheepskin coat but not to strike him—a trick Nikita much appreciated.
After a drink of the cold water the horse sighed, moving his strong wet lips, from the hairs of which transparent drops fell into the trough; then standing still as if in thought, he suddenly gave a loud snort.
“If you don’t want any more, you needn’t. But don’t go asking for any later,” said Nikita quite seriously and fully explaining his conduct to Mukhorty. Then he ran back to the shed pulling the playful young horse, who wanted to gambol all over the yard, by the rein.
There was no one else in the yard except a stranger, the cook’s husband, who had come for the holiday.
“Go and ask which sledge is to be harnessed—the wide one or the small one—there’s a good fellow!”
The cook’s husband went into the house, which stood on an iron foundation and was iron-roofed, and soon returned saying that the little one was to be harnessed. By that time Nikita had put the collar and brass-studded belly band on Mukhorty and, carrying a light, painted shaft bow in one hand, was leading the horse with the other up to two sledges that stood in the shed.
“All right, let it be the little one!” he said, backing the intelligent horse, which all the time kept pretending to bite him, into the shafts, and with the aid of the cook’s husband he proceeded to harness. When everything was nearly ready and only the reins had to be adjusted, Nikita sent the other man to the shed for some straw and to the barn for a drugget.
“There, that’s all right! Now, now, don’t bristle up!” said Nikita, pressing down into the sledge the freshly threshed oat straw the cook’s husband had brought. “And now let’s spread the sacking like this, and the drugget over it. There, like that it will be comfortable sitting,” he went on, suiting the action to the words and tucking the drugget all round over the straw to make a seat.
“Thank you, dear man. Things always go quicker with two working at it!” he added. And gathering up the leather reins fastened together by a brass ring, Nikita took the driver’s seat and started the impatient horse over the frozen manure which lay in the yard, towards the gate.
“Uncle Nikita! I say, Uncle, Uncle!” a high-pitched voice shouted, and a seven-year-old boy in a black sheepskin coat, new white felt boots, and a warm cap, ran hurriedly out of the house into the yard. “Take me with you!” he cried, fastening up his coat as he ran.
“All right, come along, darling!” said Nikita, and stopping the sledge he picked up the master’s pale thin little son, radiant with joy, and drove out into the road.
It was past two o’clock and the day was windy, dull, and cold, with more than twenty degrees Fahrenheit of frost. Half the sky was hidden by a lowering dark cloud. In the yard it was quiet, but in the street the wind was felt more keenly. The snow swept down from a neighboring shed and whirled about in the corner near the bathhouse.
Hardly had Nikita driven out of the yard and turned the horse’s head to the house, before Vasili Andreyevich emerged from the high porch in front of the house with a cigarette in his mouth and wearing a cloth-covered sheepskin coat tightly girdled low at his waist, and stepped onto the hard-trodden snow which squeaked under the leather soles of his felt boots, and stopped. Taking a last whiff of his cigarette he threw it down, stepped on it, and letting the smoke escape through his mustache and looking askance at the horse that was coming up, began to tuck in his sheepskin collar on both sides of his ruddy face, clean-shaven except for the mustache, so that his breath should not moisten the collar.
“See now! The young scamp is there already!” he excl
aimed when he saw his little son in the sledge. Vasili Andreyevich was excited by the vodka he had drunk with his visitors, and so he was even more pleased than usual with everything that was his and all that he did. The sight of his son, whom he always thought of as his heir, now gave him great satisfaction. He looked at him, screwing up his eyes and showing his long teeth.
His wife—pregnant, thin, and pale, with her head and shoulders wrapped in a shawl so that nothing of her face could be seen but her eyes—stood behind him in the vestibule to see him off.
“Now really, you ought to take Nikita with you,” she said timidly, stepping out from the doorway.
Vasili Andreyevich did not answer. Her words evidently annoyed him and he frowned angrily and spat.
“You have money on you,” she continued in the same plaintive voice. “What if the weather gets worse! Do take him, for goodness’ sake!”
“Why? Don’t I know the road that I must needs take a guide?” exclaimed Vasili Andreyevich, uttering every word very distinctly and compressing his lips unnaturally, as he usually did when speaking to buyers and sellers.
“Really you ought to take him. I beg you in God’s name!” his wife repeated, wrapping her shawl more closely round her head.
“There, she sticks to it like a leech! . . . Where am I to take him?”
“I’m quite ready to go with you, Vasili Andreyevich,” said Nikita cheerfully. “But they must feed the horses while I am away,” he added, turning to his master’s wife.
“I’ll look after them, Nikita dear. I’ll tell Simon,” replied the mistress.
“Well, Vasili Andreyevich, am I to come with you?” said Nikita, awaiting a decision.
“It seems I must humor my old woman. But if you’re coming you’d better put on a warmer cloak,” said Vasili Andreyevich, smiling again as he winked at Nikita’s short sheepskin coat, which was torn under the arms and at the back, was greasy and out of shape, frayed to a fringe round the skirt, and had endured many things in its lifetime.
“Hey, dear man, come and hold the horse!” shouted Nikita to the cook’s husband, who was still in the yard.
“No, I will myself, I will myself!” shrieked the little boy, pulling his hands, red with cold, out of his pockets, and seizing the cold leather reins.
“Only don’t be too long dressing yourself up. Look alive!” shouted Vasili Andreyevich, grinning at Nikita.
“Only a moment, Father, Vasili Andreyevich!” replied Nikita, and running quickly with his inturned toes in his felt boots with their soles patched with felt, he hurried across the yard and into the workmen’s hut.
“Arinushka! Get my coat down from the stove. I’m going with the master,” he said, as he ran into the hut and took down his girdle from the nail on which it hung.
The workmen’s cook, who had had a sleep after dinner and was now getting the samovar ready for her husband, turned cheerfully to Nikita, and infected by his hurry began to move as quickly as he did, got down his miserable worn-out cloth coat from the stove where it was drying, and began hurriedly shaking it out and smoothing it down.
“There now, you’ll have a chance of a holiday with your good man,” said Nikita, who from kindhearted politeness always said something to anyone he was alone with.
Then, drawing his worn narrow girdle round him, he drew in his breath, pulling in his lean stomach still more, and girdled himself as tightly as he could over his sheepskin.
“There now,” he said addressing himself no longer to the cook but the girdle, as he tucked the ends in at the waist, “now you won’t come undone!” And working his shoulders up and down to free his arms, he put the coat over his sheepskin, arched his back more strongly to ease his arms, poked himself under the armpits, and took down his leather-covered mittens from the shelf. “Now we’re all right!”
“You ought to wrap your feet up, Nikita. Your boots are very bad.”
Nikita stopped as if he had suddenly realized this.
“Yes, I ought to.... But they’ll do like this. It isn’t far!” and he ran out into the yard.
“Won’t you be cold, Nikita?” said the mistress as he came up to the sledge.
“Cold? No, I’m quite warm,” answered Nikita as he pushed some straw up to the forepart of the sledge so that it should cover his feet, and stowed away the whip, which the good horse would not need, at the bottom of the sledge.
Vasili Andreyevich, who was wearing two fur-lined coats one over the other, was already in the sledge, his broad back filling nearly its whole rounded width, and taking the reins he immediately touched the horse. Nikita jumped in just as the sledge started, and seated himself in front on the left side, with one leg hanging over the edge.
II
The good stallion took the sledge along at a brisk pace over the smooth-frozen road through the village, the runners squeaking slightly as they went.
“Look at him hanging on there! Hand me the whip, Nikita!” shouted Vasili Andreyevich, evidently enjoying the sight of his “heir,” who standing on the runners was hanging on at the back of the sledge. “I’ll give it you! Be off to mamma, you dog!”
The boy jumped down. The horse increased his amble and, suddenly changing foot, broke into a fast trot.
The Crosses, the village where Vasili Andreyevich lived, consisted of six houses. As soon as they had passed the blacksmith’s hut, the last in the village, they realized that the wind was much stronger than they had thought. The road could hardly be seen. The tracks left by the sledge runners were immediately covered by snow and the road was only distinguished by the fact that it was higher than the rest of the ground. There was a whirl of snow over the fields and the line where sky and earth met could not be seen. The Telyatin forest, usually clearly visible, now only loomed up occasionally and dimly through the driving snowy dust. The wind came from the left, insistently blowing over to one side the mane on Mukhorty’s sleek neck and carrying aside even his fluffy tail, which was tied in a simple knot. Nikita’s wide coat-collar, as he sat on the windy side, pressed close to his cheek and nose.
“This road doesn’t give him a chance—it’s too snowy,” said Vasili Andreyevich, who prided himself on his good horse. “I once drove to Pashutino with him in half an hour.”
“What?” asked Nikita, who could not hear on account of his collar.
“I say I once went to Pashutino in half an hour,” shouted Vasili Andreyevich.
“It goes without saying that he’s a good horse,” replied Nikita.
They were silent for a while. But Vasili Andreyevich wished to talk.
“Well, did you tell your wife not to give the cooper any vodka?” he began in the same loud tone, quite convinced that Nikita must feel flattered to be talking with so clever and important a person as himself, and he was so pleased with his jest that it did not enter his head that the remark might be unpleasant to Nikita.
The wind again prevented Nikita’s hearing his master’s words.
Vasili Andreyevich repeated the jest about the cooper in his loud, clear voice.
“That’s their business, Vasili Andreyevich. I don’t pry into their affairs. As long as she doesn’t ill-treat our boy—God be with them.”
“That’s so,” said Vasili Andreyevich. “Well, and will you be buying a horse in spring?” he went on, changing the subject.
“Yes, I can’t avoid it,” answered Nikita, turning down his collar and leaning back towards his master.
The conversation now became interesting to him and he did not wish to lose a word.
“The lad’s growing up. He must begin to plough for himself, but till now we’ve always had to hire someone,” he said.
“Well, why not have the lean-cruppered one. I won’t charge much for it,” shouted Vasili Andreyevich, feeling animated, and consequently starting on his favorite occupation—that of horse dealing—which absorbed all his mental powers.
“Or you might let me have fifteen rubles and I’ll buy one at the horse market,” said Nikita, who knew that the
horse Vasili Andreyevich wanted to sell him would be dear at seven rubles, but that if he took it from him it would be charged at twenty-five, and then he would be unable to draw any money for half a year.
“It’s a good horse. I think of your interest as of my own—according to conscience. Brekhunov isn’t a man to wrong anyone. Let the loss be mine. I’m not like others. Honestly!” he shouted in the voice in which he hypnotized his customers and dealers. “It’s a real good horse.”
“Quite so!” said Nikita with a sigh, and convinced that there was nothing more to listen to, he again released his collar, which immediately covered his ear and face.
They drove on in silence for about half an hour. The wind blew sharply onto Nikita’s side and arm where his sheepskin was torn.
He huddled up and breathed into the collar which covered his mouth, and was not wholly cold.
“What do you think—shall we go through Karamyshevo or by the straight road?” asked Vasili Andreyevich.
The road through Karamyshevo was more frequented and was well marked with a double row of high stakes. The straight road was nearer but little used and had no stakes, or only poor ones covered with snow.
Nikita thought awhile.
“Though Karamyshevo is farther, it is better going,” he said.
