I was drawing near to my destination. Around me stretched a dismal wasteland crosscut by hills and ravines. Everything was covered with snow. The sun was setting. Our kibitka drove along the narrow road, or, rather, track, left by peasant sledges. Suddenly the driver started looking to one side, and finally, taking off his cap, turned around to me and said:
“Master, won’t you order me to turn back?”
“Why?”
“The weather’s uncertain: the wind’s picking up a little—see how it’s sweeping off the fresh snow?”
“What’s the harm in that?”
“And do you see that there?” (The driver pointed to the east with his whip.)
“I see nothing but the white steppe and the clear sky.”
“No, there—over there: that little cloud.”
I did in fact see a white cloud on the edge of the horizon, which I took at first for a distant hill. The driver explained to me that the little cloud heralded a storm.
I had heard about the blizzards in those parts and knew that they could bury whole trains of sledges. Savelyich, agreeing with the driver, advised me to turn back. But the wind did not seem strong to me; I hoped to reach the next posting station in good time and told them to speed it up.
The driver went into a gallop; but he kept glancing to the east. The horses raced swiftly. The wind meanwhile was growing stronger by the minute. The little cloud turned into a white storm-cloud, which rose heavily, grew, and gradually covered the sky. Fine snow began to fall—and suddenly thick flakes came pouring down. The wind howled; a blizzard set in. In one moment the dark sky blended with the sea of snow. Everything vanished.
“Well, master,” shouted the driver, “bad luck: it’s a snowstorm.”
I peeked out of the kibitka: everything was dark and whirling. The wind howled with such fierce expressiveness that it seemed animate; Savelyich and I were covered with snow; the horses slowed to a walk—and soon stopped.
“Why don’t you go on?” I asked the driver impatiently.
“Why go on?” he replied, climbing down from the box. “We don’t know where we’ve got to as it is: there’s no road, and darkness all around.”
I started to scold him. Savelyich interceded for him.
“Why on earth didn’t you listen to him?” he said crossly. “You should have gone back to the inn, drunk your tea, slept till morning, the storm would have died down, we would have gone on. What’s the hurry? It’s not as if there’s a wedding!”
Savelyich was right. There was nothing to be done. The snow just poured down. A drift was piling up around the kibitka. The horses stood hanging their heads and shuddering occasionally. The driver walked around and, having nothing to do, kept adjusting the harness. Savelyich grumbled; I looked in all directions, hoping to see at least some sign of a dwelling or a road, but could make out nothing except the hazy whirl of the blizzard…Suddenly I saw something black.
“Hey, driver!” I shouted. “Look: what’s that blackness over there?”
The driver strained his eyes.
“God knows, master,” he said, climbing back into his seat. “Could be a wagon, could be a tree, but it seems like it’s moving. Must be either a wolf or a man.”
I ordered him to drive towards the unknown object, which at once started to move towards us. Two minutes later we came up to a man.
“Hey, my good man!” the driver called to him. “Tell us, do you know where the road is?”
“The road’s right here; I’m standing on a firm strip of it,” the wayfarer said. “But what use is that?”
“Listen, good fellow,” I said to him, “are you familiar with these parts? Can you lead me to a night’s lodgings?”
“I know these parts,” the wayfarer replied. “By God, I’ve roamed and ridden all over them. But you see what the weather’s like: you’re sure to lose your way. Better stay here and wait it out, Maybe the storm will die down and the sky will clear: then we’ll find our way by the stars.”
His coolheadedness encouraged me. I had already resolved to entrust myself to God’s will and spend the night in the middle of the steppe, when the wayfarer suddenly climbed nimbly up to the box and said to the driver:
“Well, by God, there’s a house nearby; turn right and drive on.”
“Why should I go to the right?” the driver asked with displeasure. “Where do you see a road? Oh, yes, yes, of course: why spare another man’s horse?”
The driver seemed right to me.
“In fact,” I said, “what makes you think there’s a house nearby?”
“Because the wind blew from there,” said the wayfarer, “and I smelled smoke. We must be close to a village.”
His shrewdness and keen sense of smell amazed me. I told the driver to go there. The horses stepped heavily through the deep snow. The kibitka moved slowly, now driving up a drift, now sinking into a gully, and tilting now to one side, now to the other. It was like a ship sailing on a stormy sea. Savelyich groaned and kept lurching into me. I lowered the matting, wrapped myself in my fur coat, and dozed off, lulled by the singing of the storm and the rocking of the slowly moving kibitka.
I had a dream, which I can never forget and in which to this day I see something prophetic, when I weigh it against the strange circumstances of my life. The reader will forgive me, for he probably knows from his own experience how natural it is for a man to give himself up to superstition, despite all possible scorn for such prejudices.
I was in that state of mind and feeling when reality, yielding to reverie, merges with it in the vague visions of first sleep. It seemed to me that the storm was still raging and we were still wandering in the snowy desert…Suddenly I saw gates and drove into the courtyard of our estate. My first thought was fear that father might be angry at my involuntary return under the parental roof and would consider it deliberate disobedience. In apprehension I jumped out of the kibitka, and I see mother coming to meet me on the porch with a look of profound grief. “Quiet,” she says to me, “father is ill and dying, and he wishes to bid you farewell.” Stricken with fear, I follow her to the bedroom. I see that the room is faintly lit; by the bed stand people with sorrowful faces. I quietly approach the bed; mother lifts the curtain and says: “Andrei Petrovich, Petrusha is here; he came back, having learned of your illness; give him your blessing.” I knelt down and turned my eyes to the sick man. What’s this?…Instead of my father, I see a muzhik with a black beard lying in the bed and looking merrily at me. In bewilderment I turn to mother, I say to her: “What does this mean? This isn’t father. Why on earth should I ask a blessing from a muzhik?” “Never mind, Petrusha,” mother replied. “He is your proxy father; kiss his hand and let him bless you…” I did not consent. Then the muzhik leaped up from the bed, snatched an axe from behind his back, and started swinging it in all directions. I wanted to flee…and could not; the room became filled with dead bodies; I stumbled over bodies and slipped in pools of blood…The frightful muzhik called to me affectionately, saying: “Don’t be afeared, come, I’ll give you my blessing…” Terror and bewilderment seized me…And just then I woke up. The horses had stopped; Savelyich was pulling me by the arm, saying: “Get out, master: we’ve arrived.”
“Arrived where?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.
“At a coaching inn. The Lord helped us, we ran right into the fence. Get out, master, go quickly and warm up.”
I got out of the kibitka. The storm was still going on, though with less force. It was pitch-dark. The innkeeper met us at the gate, holding a lantern under the skirt of his coat, and led me to a room, small but quite clean; it was lit by a pine splint. On the wall hung a rifle and a tall Cossack hat.
The innkeeper, a Yaik Cossack,7 seemed to be about sixty, still hale and hearty. Savelyich followed me in, carrying the cellaret, called for fire so as to prepare tea, which had never before seemed so necessary to me. The innkeeper went to see to it.
“And where is our guide?” I asked Savelyich.
�
��Here, Your Honor,” answered a voice from above. I looked up at the sleeping shelf above the stove8 and saw a black beard and two flashing eyes.
“What, brother, chilled through?”
“How could I not be, in nothing but a flimsy coat! There was a sheepskin, but, why hide my sins, I pawned it yesterday in the pot-house: it didn’t seem all that cold.”
Just then the innkeeper came in with a boiling samovar. I offered our guide a cup of tea; the muzhik climbed down from the shelf. His appearance struck me as remarkable: he was about forty, of average height, lean and broad-shouldered. His black beard had streaks of gray; his lively big eyes darted about. His face had a rather pleasant but sly expression. His hair was trimmed in a bowl cut. He wore a ragged coat and Tatar balloon trousers. I handed him a cup of tea; he tried it and winced.
“Your Honor, do me a favor—tell them to bring me a glass of vodka; tea’s not a Cossack drink.”
I willingly carried out his wish. The innkeeper took a bottle and a glass from the sideboard, went up to him, and, looking him in the face, said: “Aha, so you’re in our parts again! What wind blows you here?”
My guide winked meaningfully and answered with a saying: “To the garden I flew; pecked hempseed and rue; granny threw a stone—but missed. And what about your folk?”
“Our folk!” the innkeeper replied, continuing the allegorical conversation. “They were about to ring for vespers. ‘No, don’t,’ the priest’s wife whispers. The priest has gone away; the devils in the churchyard play.”
“Quiet, uncle,” my vagabond retorted. “If there’s rain, there’ll be mushrooms; and if there’s mushrooms, there’ll be a basket. But for now,” here he winked again, “hide your axe behind your back: the forester’s around. Your Honor! To your health!” With those words he took the glass, crossed himself, and drank it at one gulp. Then he bowed to me and went back to the shelf.
I could understand nothing of this thieves’ talk then; but later I realized that it had to do with the affairs of the Yaik army, just pacified after the revolt of 1772.9 Savelyich listened with an air of great displeasure. He kept glancing suspiciously now at the innkeeper, now at the guide. The coaching inn, or umyet, as it is called locally, was set apart, in the steppe, far from any village, and very much resembled a robbers’ den. But there was nothing to be done. It was impossible to think of continuing on our way. Savelyich’s anxiety amused me greatly. Meanwhile I settled down to spend the night and lay on a bench. Savelyich decided to install himself on the stove; the innkeeper lay on the floor. Soon the whole cottage was snoring, and I fell into a dead sleep.
Waking up rather late the next morning, I saw that the storm had abated. The sun was shining. Snow lay in a dazzling mantle over the boundless steppe. The horses were harnessed. I paid the innkeeper, who took such a moderate payment that even Savelyich did not argue with him and start bargaining as he usually did, and the previous day’s suspicions were completely erased from his mind. I summoned our guide, thanked him for his help, and told Savelyich to tip him fifty kopecks. Savelyich frowned.
“Tip him fifty kopecks!” he said. “What for? Because you were so good as to bring him to the inn? Say what you like, sir: we have no extra half-roubles. If we tip everybody, we’ll go hungry ourselves soon enough.”
I could not argue with Savelyich. The money, by my promise, was entirely at his disposal. I was annoyed, however, that I could not thank a man who had saved me, if not from disaster, at least from a very unpleasant situation.
“Very well,” I said coolly, “if you don’t want to give him fifty kopecks, find him something from my clothes. He’s dressed too lightly. Give him my hareskin coat.”
“Mercy me, dearest Pyotr Andreich!” said Savelyich. “Why give him your hareskin coat? The dog will drink it up at the first pot-house.”
“It’s no care of yours, old fellow,” said my vagabond, “whether I drink it up or not. His Honor is granting me a coat off his back: that’s your master’s will, and your serf business is to obey, not to argue.”
“You’ve got no fear of God, you robber!” Savelyich replied in an angry voice. “You see the little one still can’t reason, and you’re glad to fleece him on account of his simplicity. What do you need the master’s coat for? It won’t even fit on your cursed shoulders.”
“I beg you not to be too clever,” I said to my tutor. “Bring the coat here right now.”
“Lord God!” my Savelyich groaned. “The hareskin coat’s nearly brand-new! And it’s for anybody but this beggarly drunkard!”
Nevertheless, the hareskin coat appeared. The muzhik tried it on at once. Indeed, the coat, which I had already outgrown, was a bit tight on him. Nevertheless, he contrived to get into it, bursting it at the seams. Savelyich almost howled when he heard the threads rip. The vagabond was extremely pleased with my gift. He took me to the kibitka and said with a low bow: “Thank you, Your Honor! May the Lord reward you for your kindness. I’ll never forget your good turn.” He went his way, and I headed further on, paying no attention to Savelyich’s annoyance, and soon forgot about the previous day’s blizzard, my guide, and my hareskin coat.
On arriving in Orenburg, I went straight to the general. I saw a man, tall but already bent with age. His long hair was completely white. His old, faded uniform recalled the warrior from the time of Anna Ioannovna,10 and his speech strongly smacked of German pronunciation. I handed him father’s letter. Seeing his name, he gave me a quick glance.
“My Gott,” he said, “it dossn’t seem so long since Andrei Petrofich vas your age, and now see vat a fine young man he’s got for himzelf. Ach, time, time!”
He unsealed the letter and began to read it in a low voice, making his own observations:
“ ‘My dear sir, Andrei Karlovich, I hope that Your Excellency…’ Vat are dese ceremonies? Pah, he should be ashamed! Off course, discipline iss before efferyting, but iss diss the vay to write to an old kamrad?…‘Your Excellency hass not forgotten…’ Hm…‘and…when…de late field marshal Mün…campaign…and also…Karolinka…’ Aha, Bruder! So he still remembers our old pranks? ‘Now about business…to you my scapegrace’…Hm…‘keep him in hedgehog mittens’…Vat are dese ‘hedgehog mittens’? Muss be a Russian saying…Vass iss diss ‘keep him in hedgehog mittens’?” he repeated, turning to me.
“It means,” I replied, looking as innocent as I could, “to treat gently, not too strictly, allow greater freedom—keep in hedgehog mittens.”
“Hm, I see…‘and allow him no freedom’…no, ‘hedgehog mittens’ muss mean something else…‘Vit this…his passport’…Vere iss it? Ah, here it iss…‘report to the Semyonovsky’…Goot, goot: it vill all be done…‘Allow me, ignoring rank, to embrace you and…old comrade and friend’—ah! dere it iss…and so on and so forth…Well, my dear fellow,” he said, having read the letter and set my passport aside, “it will all be done: you’ll be transferred to the * * * regiment as an officer, and, so that you lose no time, you’ll go tomorrow to the Belogorsk fortress, where you will be under the command of Captain Mironov, a good and honorable man. You’ll be in real army service, and learn discipline. There’s nothing for you to do in Orenburg: dissipation is harmful for a young man. And today you are welcome to dine with me.”
“Worse and worse,” I thought to myself. “What use was it being a sergeant of the guards in my mother’s womb! Where did it get me? To the * * * regiment and a godforsaken fortress on the edge of the Kirghiz-Kaissak steppe!…”
I had dinner with Andrei Karlovich, the third man being his old adjutant. Strict German economy reigned at his table, and I think the fear of occasionally seeing an extra guest at his bachelor meals was partly the cause of my hasty removal to the garrison. The next day I took leave of the general and headed for my destination.
CHAPTER THREE
The Fortress
So the fortress is our home,
Bread and water we live by;
And when our fierce foes do come
To
snatch a piece of our good pie,
We prepare a merry feast
Of grapeshot for our welcome guests.
SOLDIERS’ SONG
Old-fashioned folk, my dear sir.
The Dunce11
The Belogorsk fortress was twenty-five miles from Orenburg. The road went along the steep bank of the Yaik. The river was not yet frozen over, and its leaden waves showed a dreary black between the monotonous banks covered with white snow. Beyond them stretched the Kirghiz steppe. I sank into reflections, for the most part sad. Garrison life held little attraction for me. I tried to imagine Captain Mironov, my future superior, and pictured him as a stern, cross old man, who knew nothing except his service, and ready to put me under arrest on bread and water for any trifle. Meanwhile it was getting dark. We were driving rather quickly.
“Is it far to the fortress?” I asked the driver.
“Not far,” he replied. “There, you can already see it.”
I looked all around, expecting to see formidable bastions, towers, and ramparts; but I saw nothing except a little village surrounded by a stockade. On one side stood three or four haystacks, half covered with snow; on the other, a lopsided windmill with its bast sails hanging lazily.
“Where is the fortress?” I asked in surprise.
“Here,” the driver replied, pointing to the little village, and with those words we drove into it. By the gate I saw an old cast-iron cannon; the streets were narrow and crooked, the cottages low and mostly thatch-roofed. I ordered the driver to go to the commandant’s, and a moment later the kibitka drew up in front of a little wooden house, built on a rise near a church, also wooden.
No one came out to meet me. I went into the front hall and opened the door to the anteroom. An old veteran was sitting on a table, sewing a blue patch on the elbow of a green uniform. I told him to announce me.
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