When
we had our one big snow storm earlier this winter, I decided I wanted to read a
story set in a snow storm. I had read Leo
Tolstoy’s story “Master and Man” many years ago, and decided it would be
perfect. It’s a story of a rich land
owner, Vasili Andreevich, and his servant Nikita, who get lost in a
snowstorm. I’m in the middle of a short
story analysis of this great story, and will post it when I’m done. But in the meantime I wanted to post this
great section. It’s chapter VIII of the
story. Nikita has given up trying to
find his way out of the blizzard and resolved that he will die. Vasili is in a panic and is making a vain
attempt to find his way. He pushes the
horse, Mukhorty, through the forest only to come back to the same place he
started.
Meanwhile Vasili
Andreevich, with his feet and the ends of the reins, urged the horse on in the
direction in which for some reason he expected the forest and forester's hut to
be. The snow covered his eyes and the wind seemed intent on stopping him, but
bending forward and constantly lapping his coat over and pushing it between
himself and the cold harness pad which prevented him from sitting properly, he
kept urging the horse on. Mukhorty ambled on obediently though with difficulty,
in the direction in which he was driven.
Vasili Andreevich rode
for about five minutes straight ahead, as he thought, seeing nothing but the
horse's head and the white waste, and hearing only the whistle of the wind
about the horse's ears and his coat collar.
Suddenly a dark patch
showed up in front of him. His heart beat with joy, and he rode towards the
object, already seeing in imagination the walls of village houses. But the dark
patch was not stationary, it kept moving; and it was not a village but some
tall stalks of wormwood sticking up through the snow on the boundary between
two fields, and desperately tossing about under the pressure of the wind which
beat it all to one side and whistled through it. The sight of that wormwood
tormented by the pitiless wind made Vasili Andreevich shudder, he knew not why,
and he hurriedly began urging the horse on, not noticing that when riding up to
the wormwood he had quite changed his direction and was now heading the
opposite way, though still imagining that he was riding towards where the hut
should be. But the horse kept making towards the right, and Vasili Andreevich
kept guiding it to the left.
Again something dark
appeared in front of him. Again he rejoiced, convinced that now it was
certainly a village. But once more it was the same boundary line overgrown with
wormwood, once more the same wormwood desperately tossed by the wind and
carrying unreasoning terror to his heart. But its being the same wormwood was
not all, for beside is there was a horse's track partly snowed over. Vasili
Andreevich stopped, stooped down and looked carefully. It was a horse-track
only partially covered with snow, and could be none but his own horse's
hoofprints. He had evidently gone round in a small circle. 'I shall perish like
that!' he thought, and not to give way to his terror he urged on the horse
still more, peering into the snowy darkness in which he saw only flitting and
fitful points of light. Once he thought he heard the barking of dogs or the
howling of wolves, but the sounds were so faint and indistinct that he did not
know whether he heard them or merely imagined them, and he stopped and began to
listen intently.
Suddenly some terrible,
deafening cry resounded near his ears, and everything shivered and shook under
him. He seized Mukhorty's neck, but that too was shaking all over and the
terrible cry grew still more frightful. For some seconds Vasili Andreevich
could not collect himself or understand what was happening. It was only that
Mukhorty, whether to encourage himself or to call for help, had neighed loudly
and resonantly. 'Ugh, you wretch! How you frightened me, damn you!' thought
Vasili Andreevich. But even when he understood the cause of his terror he could
not shake it off.
'I must calm myself and
think things over,' he said to himself, but yet he could not stop, and
continued to urge the horse on, without noticing that he was now going with the
wind instead of against it. His body, especially between his legs where it
touched the pad of the harness and was not covered by his overcoats, was
getting painfully cold, especially when the horse walked slowly. His legs and
arms trembled and his breathing came fast. He saw himself perishing amid this
dreadful snowy waste, and could see no means of escape.
Suddenly the horse under
him tumbled into something and, sinking into a snow-drift, began to plunge and
fell on his side. Vasili Andreevich jumped off, and in so doing dragged to one
side the breechband on which his foot was resting, and twisted round the pad to
which he held as he dismounted. As soon as he had jumped off, the horse
struggled to his feet, plunged forward, gave one leap and another, neighed
again, and dragging the drugget and the breechband after him, disappeared,
leaving Vasili Andreevich alone on the snow-drift.
The latter pressed on
after the horse, but the snow lay so deep and his coats were so heavy that,
sinking above his knees at each step, he stopped breathless after taking not
more than twenty steps. 'The copse, the oxen, the lease-hold, the shop, the
tavern, the house with the iron-roofed barn, and my heir,' thought he. 'How can
I leave all that? What does this mean? It cannot be!' These thoughts flashed
through his mind. Then he thought of the wormwood tossed by the wind, which he had
twice ridden past, and he was seized with such terror that he did not believe
in the reality of what was happening to him. 'Can this be a dream?' he thought,
and tried to wake up but could not. It was real snow that lashed his face and
covered him and chilled his right hand from which he had lost the glove, and
this was a real desert in which he was now left alone like that wormwood,
awaiting an inevitable, speedy, and meaningless death.
'Queen of Heaven! Holy
Father Nicholas, teacher of temperance!' he thought, recalling the service of
the day before and the holy icon with its black face and gilt frame, and the
tapers which he sold to be set before that icon and which were almost
immediately brought back to him scarcely burnt at all, and which he put away in
the store-chest. He began to pray to that same Nicholas the Wonder-Worker to
save him, promising him a thanksgiving service and some candles. But he clearly
and indubitably realized that the icon, its frame, the candles, the priest, and
the thanksgiving service, though very important and necessary in church, could
do nothing for him here, and that there was and could be no connexion between
those candles and services and his present disastrous plight. 'I must not
despair,' he thought. 'I must follow the horse's track before it is snowed
under. He will lead me out, or I may even catch him. Only I must not hurry, or
I shall stick fast and be more lost than ever.'
But in spite of his
resolution to go quietly, he rushed forward and even ran, continually falling,
getting up and falling again. The horse's track was already hardly visible in
places where the snow did not lie deep. 'I am lost!' thought Vasili Andreevich.
'I shall lose the track and not catch the horse.' But at that moment he saw
something black. It was Mukhorty, and not only Mukhorty, but the sledge with
the shafts and the kerchief. Mukhorty, with the sacking and the breechband
twisted round to one side, was standing not in his former place but nearer to
the shafts, shaking his head which the reins he was stepping on drew downwards.
It turned out that Vasili Andreevich had sunk in the same ravine Nikita had
previously fallen into, and that Mukhorty had been bringing him back to the
sledge and he had got off his back no more than fifty paces from where the
sledge was.
This
is such great writing. One feels the
panic and desperation. The horse brings
Vasili back to Nikita where the story’s climax will occur. You can read the story on line, here. I found the story even greater in this
reading than when I read it many years ago.
Stay tuned for my analysis.
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