"I don't understand what you lie for," said the other lanky one angrily; "you lie like a brute." "God strike me, it's the truth!"
"It's as much a truth as that a louse coughs!"
"Hi, hi," grins Iona, "what gay young gentlemen!"
"Pshaw, go to the devil!" i ndignantly says the hump-back.
"Are you going to get on or not, you old pest? Is that the way to drive? Use the whip a bit! Go on, devil, go on, give it him well!"
Iona feels at his back the little man wriggling, and the tremble in his voice. He listens to the insults hurled at him, sees the people, and little by little the feeling of loneliness leaves him. The hump-back goes on swearing until he gets mixed up in some elaborate six-foot oath, or chokes with coughing. The lankies begin to talk about a certain Nadejda Petrovna. Iona looks round at them several times; he waits for a temporary silence, then, turning round again, he murmurs:
"My son—died this week."
"We must all die," sighed the hump-back, wiping his lips after an attack of coughing. "Now, hurry up, hurry up! Gentlemen, I really cannot go any farther like this! When will he get us there?"
"Well, just you stimulate him a little in the neck!"
"You old pest, do you hear, I'll bone your neck for you! If one treated the like of you with ceremony one would have to go on foot! Do you hear, old serpent Gorinytch! Or do you not care a spit?"
Iona hears rather than feels the blows they deal him.
"Hi, hi," he laughs. "They are gay young gentlemen, God bless 'em ! "
"Cabby, are you married?" asks a lanky one.
"I? Hi, hi, gay young gentlemen! Now I have only a wife: the moist ground. . . . Hi, ho, ho . . . that is to say, the grave! My son has died, and I am alive. . . . A wonderful thing, death mistook the door . . . instead of coming to me, it went to my son. . . ."
Iona turns round to tell them how his son died, but at thi.= moment the hump-back, giving a little sigh, announces, "Thank God, they have at last reached their destination," and Iona watches them disappear through the dark entrance. Once more he is alone, and again surrounded by silence. . . . His grief, which had abated for a short while, returns and rends his heart with greater force. With an anxious and a hurried look, he searches among the crowds passing on either side of the street to find if there is just one person who will listen to him. But the crowds hurry by without noticing him or his trouble. Yet it is such an immense, illimitable grief. Should his heart break and the grief pour out, it would flow over the whole earth it seems, and yet, no one sees it. It has managed to conceal itself in such an insignificant shell that no one can see it even by day and with a light.
Iona sees a hall-porter with some sacking, and decides to talk to him.
"Friend, what sort of time is it?" he asks.
"Past nine. What are you standing here for? Move on."
Iona moves on a few steps, doubles himself up, and aban- dons himself to his grief. He sees it is useless to turn to people for help. In less than five minutes he straightens himself, holds up his head as if he felt some sharp pain, and gives a tug at the reins: he can bear it no longer, "The stables," he thinks, and the little horse, as if he understood, starts off at a trot.
About an hour and a half later Iona is seated by a large dirty stove. Around the stove, on the floor, on the benches, people are snoring; the air is thick and suffocatingly hot. Iona looks at the sleepers, scratches himself, and regrets having returned so early.
"I have not even earned my fodder," he thinks. "That's what's my trouble. A man who knows his job, who has had enough to eat, and his horse too, can always sleep peace- fully."
A young cab-driver in one of the corners half gets up, grunts sleepily, and stretches towards a bucket of water.
"Do you want a drink?" Iona asks him.
"Don't I want a drink!''
"That's so? Your good health! But listen, mate—you know, my son is dead. . . . Did you hear? This week, in hospital. . . . It's a long story."
Iona looks to see what effect his words have, but sees none —the young man has hidden his face, and is fast asleep again. The old man sighs, and scratches his head. Just as much as the young one wanted to drink, the old man wanted to talk. It will soon be a week since his son died, and he has not been able to speak about it properly to anyone. One must tell it slowly and carefully; how his son fell ill, how he suf- fered, what he said before he died, how he died. One must describe every detail of the funeral, and the journey to the hospital to fetch the defunct's clothes. His daughter Anissia remained in the village—one must talk about her too. Was it nothing he had to tell? Surely the listener would gasp and sigh, and sympathise with him? It is better, too, to talk to women; although they are stupid, two words are enough to make them sob.
"I'll go and look at my horse," thinks Iona; "there's always time to sleep. No fear of that!"
He puts on his coat, and goes to the stables to his horse; he thinks of the corn, the hay, the weather. When he is alone, he dare not think of his son; he could speak about him to anyone, but to think of him, and picture him to himself. is unbearably painful.
"Are you tucking in?" Iona asks his horse, looking at his bright eyes; "go on, tuck in, though we've not earned our corn, we can eat hay. Yes! I am too old to drive—my son could have, not I. He was a first-rate cab-driver. If only he had lived! "
Iona is silent for a moment, then continues:
"That's how it is, my old horse. There's no more Kuzma lonitch. He has left us to live, and he went off pop. Now let's say, you had a foal, you were that foal's mother, and sud- denly, let's say, that foal went and left you to live after him. It would be sad, wouldn't it?"
The little horse munches, listens, and breathes over his master's hand. . . .
Iona's feelings are too much for him, and he tells the iittle horse the whole story.
AN INADVERTENCE.
Pvotr Petrovitch Strizhin, the nephew of Madame Ivanov, the colonel's widow,—the man whose new goloshes were stolen last year,—came home from a christening party at two o'clock in the morning. To avoid waking the household he took off his things in the lobby, made his way on tiptoe to his room, holding his breath, and began getting ready for bed without lighting a candle.
Strizhin leads a sober and regular life. He has a sancti- monious expression of face, he reads nothing but religious and edifying books, but at the christening party, in his de- light that Lyubov Spiridonovna had passed through her con- finement successfully, he had permitted himself to drink four glasses of vodka and a glass of wine, the taste of which sug- gested something midway between vinegar and castor oil. Spirituous liquors are like sea-water and glory: the more you imbibe of them the greater your thirst. And now as he undressed, Strizhin was aware of an overwhelming craving for drink.
"I believe Dashenka has some vodka in the cupboard in the right-hand corner," he thought. "If I drink one wine-glassful, she won't notice it."
After some hesitation, overcoming his fears, Strizhin went to the cupboard. Cautiously opening the door he felt in the right-hand corner for a bottle and poured out a wine-glassful, put the bottle back in its place, then, making the sign of the cross, drank it off. And immediately something like a miracle took plact. Strizhin was flung back from the cupboard to the chest with fearful force like a bomb. There were flashes be- fore his eyes, he felt as though he could not breathe, and all
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over his body he had a sensation as though he had fallen into a marsh full of leeches. It seemed to him as though, instead of vodka, he had swallowed dynamite, which blew up his body, the house, and the whole street. . . . His head, his arms, his legs—all seemed to be torn off and to be flying away some- where to the devil, into space.
For somt three minutes he lay on the chest, not moving and scarcely breathing, then he got up and asked himself: