Nothing had been there. The wolves were in his own eyes. He knew this suddenly, and the cold grew deeper in his heart.
"Are you all right, Andrei?" Pyotr asked.
He nodded, cold and shamed by the death he saw for himself. He reached vaguely for Umnik's reins, remembered how he had beaten the pony, and patted his neck as he led Umnik away down the street. Umnik shook himself, walked slowly and with head hanging, as if perhaps a bit of the coldness had come into his heart too, as if it had been driven there with blows. He did not go home. He went to the house of old Mischa the hunter, which huddled small and antlered and not so bright as others between the market stalls and the public baths. Snow had drifted heavily there, almost buried it to the eaves on one side. The stone head of a forgotten hero loomed up, peering out of the snow with only the dimmest impression of features. He walked upon the porch and tied Umnik to its rail, stamped his boots and opened the first door, walked across the inner porch and rapped at the second.
There was no answer, no forbidding. "Mischa," he called, "it's Andrei Gorodin." He walked in, sweltering already in the warmth within, redolent with the smell of boiling oils and burned grease and dried herbs that was Mischa's house; antlers were everywhere, and feathers and a clutter of oddments. And a huddle of blankets before the fire. . . that was Mischa himself, a wrinkled face and dark narrow eyes and a skein of grisled hair trailing from his hood. One hand held a bundle of herbs which he had been crumbling into a saucer; there was no left hand: a wolf had gotten that, when Mischa had been a hunter himself. . . but that was before Andrei had been born. Andrei crouched down and met Mischa's sightless eyes.
"So?" asked Mischa.
The question stopped behind his lips. And slowly Mischa's hand lifted, touched his face spiderwise, drifted to his chest as if it searched for something there as well.
"A visit with no questions, Andrei Vasilyevitch?"
"I have lost my luck, Mischa."
"So." Mischa dipped up water from the kettle, ladled it into the bowl, passed it to him. He took the bowl in gloved hands, inhaled the vapor, sipped the surface, for there was danger in heat so intense after the cold outside. He drank more after a moment, but the cold did not leave, nor the veil on the world dimmish.
"I see wolves," Andrei said.
The darkened eyes rested on his, wrinkle-girt as though they were set in cracked stone.
"A white wolf," Andrei said. "Snow white. Ice white." Old Mischa crumbled more herbs into yet another bowl, ladled in more water, drank, black eyes hooded.
"I shot at it," Andrei said. "But it was there again today. I've looked into the sun, Mischa." Mischa stared at him as if the eyes could see.
"What shall I do, old hunter?"
Mischa moved his left hand, showing the stump. "Appease it," he said. "That is all you can hope to do."
Andrei set down the bowl, wrapped his furred arms the tighter about him, gazed at the old hunter. Wizard. Seer of visions-who had had the white sickness—and lived.
"You have looked," the seer said. "You have talked to the wind and heard it answer; you have run ahead of the wolf. And the light has got into your eyes, as it did your father's, my old friend. It took all of him. I gave it part of me. And I am still alive, Andrei Vasilyevitch. Your mother birthed you and pined away; and so they both went. But I am still alive, friend's son." Andrei stumbled up and hurried for the door, looked back at the wizened face shrouded in gray hood, single hand cupping the bowl. He felt the cold even greater than before, on face and in heart, wherever the blind hunter's fingers had touched. "I will bring your fee," he said, "on my next hunt, a fat rabbit or two, Mischa."
"I take nothing," the old man said. "Not from you, until you see, Andrei Vasilyevitch." He fled the house, stamped outside and closed the outer door. Umnik waited. He walked down the step to the pony, and noticed for the first time how the paint was peeling on the house opposite, how all the colors of Moskva looked gaudy, how stained the snow and how disarrayed the people, bundled in mismatched furs.
Slowly, with a squinting of his eye and a turning of his shoulder, he looked up. Colors shifted in the sky, danced along the rooftops, ran the ridges, streaming glories of pink and gold. Thiswas beauty. About him was painted ugliness.
All his heart longed to go on looking, to go out to the ice and ride into the north, into the pure fair beauty.
But the Wolf was there. And the beauty killed.
He shuddered, took Umnik's reins and walked slowly into the street, walked down it among people who stared curiously and whispered behind their hands. This was the wasting. He knew now. . . what drank up the souls of those who took ill with the sickness. It was vision. It was looking on all that hands made and knowing that one had only to look up—and having looked, to yield to that blankness which would exist after all the world was done. To measure one's self and one's acts against that white sheet, and to find them small, and unlovely after all. Beauty waited, outside the walls, near as a look at the unguarded sky; beauty waited. . . and the Wolf did.
Appease it, the old hunter said, no longer a hunter, Mischa who saw no more sunrises, who had given a part of himself to the wolves. . . to the Wolf.
He went home. Ilya and Ivan Nikolaev ran outside to meet him, and the women and children too, concerned for him. Anna came, and Katya, each hugging him. Quietly he took the harness from Umnik and expected he should go away to his stable. . . but Umnik stood. "Take him," he bade little Ivan, and the boy led the pony away. Andrei looked after the plodding horse and shivered. He felt within his gloved hand another hand, felt a touch upon his arm. . . . He looked into Anna's loving eyes, into her face, saw flaws which he had never seen before, the length of nose, the breadth of cheek, the imperfection of her brow. On it was the tiny fleck of a scar, not centered, and her hair, which he had always thought bright as the sunset on snow, was dull, the braids lusterless against the snowflakes blowing upon them, tiny stars sticking in the loose hair. . . . This was beauty, recalling cold, and fear.
"Come in," Anna urged him, and he surrendered the harness to Ilya, walked with Anna's hand in his, before them all to the house and the inner porch. He shed his outdoor boots and furs, and greeted the children indoors with a touch of his hand and greeted the old ones by the hearth with a kiss, seeing everywhere mortality, man's short span, and smallness.
"Andrei?" Anna sat by him, near the fireside, taking his hand again. He kissed and held hers because it was kind, but love and hope were dried up in him. . . a hunter who could not go outside the walls again, who sat with his soul withering within him.
There was nothing beautiful among men. There was only that beauty above and about Moskva. It would draw the mind from him, or cost the light of his eyes. He stared into the fire, and it was nothing to the brilliance of the sun on ice.
A silence settled about him, whether it was the silence of the house, that they knew there was something amiss with him, or the silence in his soul. He thought how easy it should be, how direly easy tomorrow noon, to walk outside, to stare at the sun until he had no more sight, but even then, there would be the memory.
He thought again and again of old Mischa, who had lost his eyes and lost his hand. . . appease it: but which had gone first, which availed against the Wolf? He should have asked.
"Andrei?" Hya took his arm. He heard someone weeping by him, perhaps Anna, or some other one who loved him. Perhaps it was himself. He saw Hya's face before his, much concerned, saw a hand pass before his eyes, heard them all discussing his plight, but he could not come back from that far place and argue with them. He had no desire in him.