Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2

At the first posting station when the first driver had led away the horses and the new driver had not yet brought out the new ones and the Cossack had gone into the yard, Albina bent down and asked her husband how he was feeling and whether he needed anything.

‘Excellent, don’t worry. I don’t need anything. I wouldn’t mind lying here for two whole days.’

Towards evening they drew into a large village called Dergachi. To give her husband the chance to stretch his limbs and refresh himself Albina told the driver to stop not at the posting station but at a coaching inn, then immediately gave the Cossack some money and sent him off to buy milk and eggs. The tarantass was standing beneath a projecting roof. It was dark in the courtyard, and having stationed Ludwika to watch out for the Cossack, Albina released her husband and gave him food and drink, after which he crawled back into his hiding-place before the Cossack returned. They had a new team of horses brought round and continued on their way. Albina felt her spirits rising more and more and was unable to contain her cheerfulness and general delight. There was no one to talk to other than Ludwika, the Cossack and her little dog Trezorka, so she amused herself with them. Despite her plainness, at every contact with a man Ludwika would immediately detect him sending amorous glances in her direction, and she now suspected something of the sort in her relations with the burly and genial Ural Cossack with unusually bright and kind blue eyes who was escorting them and behaving most agreeably towards the two women, treating them with gentle and good-humoured kindness. Apart from Trezorka, whom Albina had to threaten to prevent him from sniffing about under the seat, she now found amusement in watching Ludwika’s coquettish advances to the Cossack, who was quite unaware of the intentions being ascribed to him, and smiled agreeably at her every remark. Albina, stimulated by her sense of danger, by her growing conviction that their plan was succeeding, and by the splendid weather and the fresh air of the steppe, was enjoying the return of those youthful high spirits and merriment which she had not felt for such a long time. Migurski could hear her cheerful chatter and he too, despite the physical discomfort which he concealed from them (for he was extremely hot and tormented by thirst), forgot about himself and rejoiced in Albina’s joy.

Towards evening on the second day something came into sight in distance through the mist. It was the town of Saratov and the Volga. The Cossack with his farsighted steppe-dweller’s eyes could distinguish the Volga and the masts of the ships, and he pointed them out to Ludwika. Ludwika said that she could see them too. But Albina could make out nothing, and remarked loudly, for her husband to hear:

‘Saratov, the Volga’ – and as though she was talking to Trezorka, Albina described to her husband everything as it came into view.

XI

Albina did not let the carriage drive into Saratov but made the driver stop on the left bank of the river at the settlement of Pokrovskaya directly opposite the town itself. Here she hoped that in the course of the night she would be able to talk to her husband and even get him out of the box. But throughout the short spring night the Cossack did not go away from the tarantass but sat next to it in an empty cart which was standing beneath a projecting roof. Ludwika, on Albina’s instructions, stayed in the tarantass and, convinced that it was on her account that the Cossack would not leave the tarantass, laughed and winked and hid her face in her shawl. But Albina could see nothing amusing in this and grew more and more worried, unable to understand why the Cossack was so doggedly attached to the vicinity of the tarantass.

Several times that short night in which dusk almost merged into morning twilight, Albina left her room in the coaching inn and walked along the stuffy verandah to the porch at the back of the building. The Cossack was still not asleep but was sitting on the empty cart, his legs dangling. Only just before dawn when the cocks were already awaking and calling from one farmyard to the next did Albina, going down to the yard, find an opportunity to exchange a few words with her husband. The Cossack was now snoring, sprawled in the cart. She cautiously approached the tarantass and knocked on the box.

‘Juzio!’ – No answer. ‘Juzio, Juzio,’ she repeated more loudly, now becoming alarmed.

‘What is it my dear, what is the matter?’ came Migurski’s sleepy voice from inside the box.

‘Why didn’t you answer me?’

‘I was asleep,’ he replied, and from the sound of his voice she knew that he was smiling. ‘Well, and can I come out?’ he asked.

‘No, you can’t, the Cossack is here.’ And as she spoke she glanced at the Cossack asleep in the cart.

And strange to say, although the Cossack was snoring, his eyes, his kindly blue eyes, were open. He looked at her, and only when his glance had lighted on her, closed his eyes.