“Hillo, Matvich! why don’t you have a half pint? fine thing for making you warm!” said the counsellor.
Matvich persisted in what he was doing. He put the harness of his horses to rights, put the low shaft right also and came to me.
“Look here, sir!” said he, taking his hat from off his grey hairs and bowing low, “all night long we’ve been wandering about with you, seeking the road; if only now you would stand a half pint. Yes, indeed, little father, your excellency! And there’s nothing like that for warming one,” he added with an obsequious smile.
I gave him a quarter-rouble. The innkeeper brought out a half-pint and handed it to the little old man. He drew off the whip-glove and extended a small, dark, crooked and slightly bluish hand towards the glass; but his thumb, which looked like ‘some one else’s, refused to obey him; he could not hold the glass, and, spilling the vodka, cast it upon the snow.
All the drivers began to laugh.
“Just look, Matvich is so frost-bitten that he cannot hold his wine.”
But Matvich was very angry that the wine was spilled. However, they filled him another glass and poured it into his mouth. Immediately he became very lively and merry, ran into the inn, lighted his pipe, began to simper, and show his worn, yellow teeth, and uttered an oath at every word. After drinking a final dram, the drivers dispersed to their various troikas and we proceeded. The snow was just as white and glaring as ever, so that it stung the eye that gazed at it.
The orange and reddish strips of cloud, mounting higher and higher, and growing ever brighter and brighter, spread over the sky; even the red sphere of the sun appeared on the horizon in the midst of dove-coloured clouds, the azure of the sky grew ever more dazzling and deeper. On the road, near the posting station, the track was clear, precise, and yellowish; here and there were holes; in the frozen, compressed air there was a sensation of pleasant lightness and freshness.
My troika ran very swiftly. The head of the thill horse and her neck, with the mane spread widely over the shaft-bow, bobbed rapidly up and down, almost in one place; beneath sounded the pleasant bells whose tongues no longer beat, but rubbed against their sides. The good side horses, tugging together at the congealed and crooked reins, energetically bounded forward; the tassels kept bumping away beneath their very bellies and hindmost harness.
Occasionally the side horse would stumble into one of the holes in the dilapidated road, and, with its eyes full of snow-dust, would struggle briskly out of it again. Ignashka now shouted to his horses in a merry tenor; the dry frost crackled beneath the sides of the sledges; from behind us came the solemnly sonorous sounds of two sledge-bells and the drunken shouting of the drivers. I glanced back, the grey, shaggy side horses, extending their necks, and breathing methodically, with curving bits, were bounding over the snow. Philip shaking his whip, was adjusting his hat; the little old man, with drawn up legs, was lying at full length, just as before, in the middle sledge.
In two minutes the sledge began to grate upon the well-swept boards of the approach to the posting-station, and Ignashka turned towards me his snowcovered, merry, weather-beaten face.
“We’ve arrived, you see, sir!” said he.
Two Hussars
Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude 1905
EARLY IN THE nineteenth century, when there were as yet no railways or macadamized roads, no gaslight, no stearine candles, no low couches with sprung cushions, no unvarnished furniture, no disillusioned youths with eye glasses, no liberalizing women philosophers, nor any charming dames aux camelias of whom there are so many in our times, in those naive days, when leaving Moscow for Petersburg in a coach or carriage provided with a kitchenful of home-made provisions one traveled for eight days along a soft, dusty or muddy road and believed in chopped cutlets, sledge-bells, and plain rolls; when in the long autumn evenings the tallow candles, around which family groups of twenty or thirty people gathered, had to be snuffed; when ball-rooms were illuminated by candelabra with wax or spermaceti candles, when furniture was arranged symmetrically, when our fathers were still young and proved it not only by the absence of wrinkles and grey hair but by fighting duels for the sake of a woman and rushing from the opposite corner of a room to pick up a bit of handkerchief purposely or accidentally dropped; when our mothers wore short-waisted dresses and enormous sleeves and decided family affairs by drawing lots, when the charming dames aux camelias hid from the light of day-in those naïve days of Masonic lodges, Martinists, and Tugenbudns, the days of Miloradoviches and Davydovs and Pushkins-a meeting of landed proprietors was held in the Government town of K — , and the nobility elections were being concluded.
I
“Well, never mind, the saloon will do,” said a young officer in a fur cloak and hussar’s cap, who had just got out of a post-sledge and was entering the best hotel in the town of K — .
“The assembly, your Excellency, is enormous,” said the boots, who had already managed to learn from the orderly that the hussar’s name was Count Turbin, and therefore addressed him as “your Excellency.”
“The proprietress of Afremovo with her daughters has said she is leaving this evening, so No. 11 will be at your disposal as soon as they go,” continued the boots, stepping softly before the count along the passage and continually looking round.
In the general saloon at a little table under the dingy full-length portrait of the Emperor Alexander the First, several men, probably belonging to the local nobility, sat drinking champagne, while at another side of the room sat some travelers-tradesmen in blue, fur-lined cloaks.
Entering the room and calling in Blucher, a gigantic grey mastiff he had brought with him, the count threw off his cloak, the collar of which was still covered with hoar-frost, called for vodka, sat down at the table in his blue-satin Cossack jacket, and entered into conversation with the gentlemen there.
The handsome open countenance of the newcomer immediately predisposed them in his favour and they offered him a glass of champagne. The count first drank a glass of vodka and then ordered another bottle of champagne to treat his new acquaintances. The sledge-driver came in to ask for a tip.
“Sashka!” shouted the count. “Give him something!”
The driver went out with Sashka but came back again with the money in his hand.
“Look here, y’r ‘xcelence, haven’t I done my very best for y’r honour? Didn’t you promise me half a ruble, and he’s only given me a quarter!”
“Give him a ruble, Sashka.”
Sashka cast down his eyes and looked at the driver’s feet.
“He’s had enough!” he said, in a bass voice. “And besides, I have no more money.”
The count drew from his pocket-book the two five-ruble notes which were all it contained and gave one of them to the driver, who kissed his hand and went off.
“I’ve run it pretty close!” said the count. “These are my last five rubles.”
“Real hussar fashion, Count,” said one of the nobles who from his moustache, voice, and a certain energetic freedom about his legs, was evidently a retired cavalryman. “Are you staying here some time, Count?”
“I must get some money. I shouldn’t have stayed here at all but for that. And there are no rooms to be had, devil take them, in this accursed pub.”
“Permit me, Count,” said the cavalryman. “Will you not join me? My room in No. 7 . . . If you do not mind just for the night. And then you’ll stay a couple of days with us? It happens that the Marechal de la Noblesse is giving a ball tonight. You would make him very happy by going.”
“Yes, Count, do stay,” said another, a handsome young man. “You have surely no reason to hurry away! You know this only comes once in three years-the elections, I mean. You should at least have a look at our young ladies, Count!”
“Sashka, get my clean linen ready. I am going to the bath,” said the count, rising, “and from there perhaps I may look in at the Marshal’s.”
Then, having called the waiter and whispered something to him to which the latter replied with a smile, “That can all be arranged,” he went out.
“So I’ll order my trunk to be taken to your room, old fellow,” shouted the count from the passage.
“Please do, I shall be most happy,” replied the cavalryman, running to the door. “No. 7-don’t forget.”
When the count’s footsteps could no longer be heard the cavalryman returned to his place and sitting close to one of the group-a government official-and looking him straight in the face with smiling eyes, said: “It is the very man, you know!”
“No!”
“I tell you it is! It is the very same duellist hussar-the famous Turbin. He knew me-I bet you anything he knew me. Why, he and I went on the spree for three weeks without a break when I was at Lebedyani for remounts. There was one thing he and I did together. . . . He’s a fine fellow, eh?”
“A splendid fellow. And so pleasant in his manner!
