章节正文
Nikita suddenly remarked, as if it were a pleasant thing.
'What is that?' he added, pointing to some potato vines that
showed up from under the snow.
Vasili Andreevich stopped the perspiring horse, whose deep
sides were heaving heavily.
'What is it?'
'Why, we are on the Zakharov lands. See where we've got to!'
'Nonsense!' retorted Vasili Andreevich.
'It's not nonsense, Vasili Andreevich. It's the truth,'
replied Nikita. 'You can feel that the sledge is going over a
potato-field, and there are the heaps of vines which have been
carted here. It's the Zakharov factory land.'
'Dear me, how we have gone astray!' said Vasili Andreevich.
'What are we to do now?'
'We must go straight on, that's all. We shall come out
somewhere--if not at Zakharova, then at the proprietor's farm,'
said Nikita.
Vasili Andreevich agreed, and drove as Nikita had indicated.
So they went on for a considerable time. At times they came
onto bare fields and the sledge-runners rattled over frozen
lumps of earth. Sometimes they got onto a winter-rye field, or
a fallow field on which they could see stalks of wormwood, and
straws sticking up through the snow and swaying in the wind;
sometimes they came onto deep and even white snow, above which
nothing was to be seen.
The snow was falling from above and sometimes rose from below.
The horse was evidently exhausted, his hair had all curled up
from sweat and was covered with hoar-frost, and he went at a
walk. Suddenly he stumbled and sat down in a ditch or
water-course. Vasili Andreevich wanted to stop, but Nikita
cried to him:
'Why stop? We've got in and must get out. Hey, pet! Hey,
darling! Gee up, old fellow!' he shouted in a cheerful tone to
the horse, jumping out of the sledge and himself getting stuck
in the ditch.
The horse gave a start and quickly climbed out onto the frozen
bank. It was evidently a ditch that had been dug there.
'Where are we now?' asked Vasili Andreevich.
'We'll soon find out!' Nikita replied. 'Go on, we'll get
somewhere.'
'Why, this must be the Goryachkin forest!' said Vasili
Andreevich, pointing to something dark that appeared amid the
snow in front of them.
'We'll see what forest it is when we get there,' said Nikita.
He saw that beside the black thing they had noticed, dry,
oblong willow-leaves were fluttering, and so he knew it was not
a forest but a settlement, but he did not wish to say so. And
in fact they had not gone twenty-five yards beyond the ditch
before something in front of them, evidently trees, showed up
black, and they heard a new and melancholy sound. Nikita had
guessed right: it was not a wood, but a row of tall willows
with a few leaves still fluttering on them here and there.
They had evidently been planted along the ditch round a
threshing-floor. Coming up to the willows, which moaned sadly
in the wind, the horse suddenly planted his forelegs above the
height of the sledge, drew up his hind legs also, pulling the
sledge onto higher ground, and turned to the left, no longer
sinking up to his knees in snow. They were back on a road.
'Well, here we are, but heaven only knows where!' said Nikita.
The horse kept straight along the road through the drifted
snow, and before they had gone another hundred yards the
straight line of the dark wattle wall of a barn showed up black
before them, its roof heavily covered with snow which poured
down from it. After passing the barn the road turned to the
wind and they drove into a snow-drift. But ahead of them was a
lane with houses on either side, so evidently the snow had been
blown across the road and they had to drive through the drift.
And so in fact it was. Having driven through the snow they
came out into a street. At the end house of the village some
frozen clothes hanging on a line--shirts, one red and one
white, trousers, leg-bands, and a petticoat--fluttered wildly
in the wind. The white shirt in particular struggled
desperately, waving its sleeves about.
'There now, either a lazy woman or a dead one has not taken her
clothes down before the holiday,' remarked Nikita, looking at
the fluttering shirts.
III
At the entrance to the street the wind still raged and the road
was thickly covered with snow, but well within the village it
was calm, warm, and cheerful. At one house a dog was barking,
at another a woman, covering her head with her coat, came
running from somewhere and entered the door of a hut, stopping
on the threshold to have a look at the passing sledge. In the
middle of the village girls could be heard singing.
Here in the village there seemed to be less wind and snow, and
the frost was less keen.
'Why, this is Grishkino,' said Vasili Andreevich.
'So it is,' responded Nikita.
It really was Grishkino, which meant that they had gone too far
to the left and had travelled some six miles, not quite in the
direction they aimed at, but towards their destination for all
that.
From Grishkino to Goryachkin was about another four miles.
In the middle of the village they almost ran into a tall man
walking down the middle of the street.
'Who are you?' shouted the man, stopping the horse, and
recognizing Vasili Anereevich he immediately took hold of the
shaft, went along it hand over hand till he reached the sledge,
and placed himself on the driver's seat.
He was Isay, a peasant of Vasili Andreevich's acquaintance, and
well known as the principal horse-thief in the district.
'Ah, Vasili Andreevich! Where are you off to?' said Isay,
enveloping Nikita in the odour of the vodka he had drunk.
'We were going to Goryachkin.'
'And look where you've got to! You should have gone through
Molchanovka.'
'Should have, but didn't manage it,' said Vasili Andreevich,
holding in the horse.
'That's a good horse,' said Isay, with a shrewd glance at
Mukhorty, and with a practised hand he tightened the loosened
knot high in the horse's bushy tail.
'Are you going to stay the night?'
'No, friend. I must get on.'
'Your business must be pressing. And who is this? Ah, Nikita
Stepanych!'
'Who else?' replied Nikita. 'But I say, good friend, how are
we to avoid going astray again?'
'Where can you go astray here? Turn back straight down the
street and then when you come out keep straight on. Don't take
to the left. You will come out onto the high road, and then
turn to the right.'
'And where do we turn off the high road? As in summer, or the
winter way?' asked Nikita.
'The winter way. As soon as you turn off you'll see some
bushes, and opposite them there is a way-mark--a large oak, one
with branches--and that's the way.'
Vasili Andreevich turned the horse back and drove through the
outskirts of the village.
'Why not stay the night?' Isay shouted after them.
But Vasili Andreevich did not answer and touched up the horse.
Four miles of good road, two of which lay through the forest,
seemed easy to manage, especially as the wind was apparently
quieter and the snow had stopped.
Having driven along the trodden village street, darkened here
and there by fresh manure, past the yard where the clothes hung
out and where the white shirt had broken loose and was now
attached only by one frozensleeve, they again came within
sound of the weird moan of the willows, and again emerged on
the open fields. The storm, far from ceasing, seemed to have
grown yet stronger. The road was completely covered with
drifting snow, and only the stakes showed that they had not
lost their way. But even the stakes ahead of them were not
easy to see, since the wind blew in their faces.
Vasili Andreevich screwed up his eyes, bent down his head, and
looked out for the way-marks, but trusted mainly to the horse's
sagacity, letting it take its own way. And the horse really
did not lose the road but followed its windings, turning now to
the right and now to the left and sensing it under his feet, so
that though the snow fell thicker and the wind strengthened
they still continued to see way-marks now to the left and now
to the right of them.
So they travelled on for about ten minutes, when suddenly,
through the slanting screen of wind-driven snow, something
black showed up which moved in front of the horse.
This was another sledge with fellow-travellers. Mukhorty
overtook them, and struck his hoofs against the back of the
sledge in front of them.
'Pass on . . . hey there . . . get in front!' cried voices from
the sledge.
Vasili Andreevich swerved aside to pass the other sledge.
In it sat three men and a woman, evidently visitors returning
from a feast. One peasant was whacking the snow-covered croup
of their little horse with a long switch, and the other two
sitting in front waved their arms and shouted something. The
woman, completely wrapped up and covered with snow, sat
drowsing and bumping at the back.
'Who are you?' shouted Vasili Andreevich.
'From A-a-a . . .' was all that could be heard.
'I say, where are you from?'
'From A-a-a-a!' one of the peasants shouted with all his might,
but still it was impossible to make out who they were.
'Get along! Keep up!' shouted another, ceaselessly beating
his horse with the switch.
'So you're from a feast, it seems?'
'Go on, go on! Faster, Simon! Get in front! Faster!'
The wings of the sledges bumped against one another, almost got
jammed but managed to separate, and the peasants' sledge began
to fall behind.
Their shaggy, big-bellied horse, all covered with snow,
breathed heavily under the low shaft-bow and, evidently using
the last of its strength, vainly endeavoured to escape from the
switch, hobbling with its short legs through the deep snow
which it threw up under itself.
Its muzzle, young-looking, with the nether lip drawn up like
that of a fish, nostrils distended and ears pressed back from
fear, kept up for a few seconds near Nikita's shoulder and then
began to fall behind.
'Just see what liquor does!' said Nikita. 'They've tired that
little horse to death. What pagans!'
For a few minutes they heard the panting of the tired little
horse and the drunken shouting of the peasants. Then the
panting and the shouts died away, and around them nothing could
be heard but the whistling of the wind in their ears and now
and then the squeak of their sledge-runners over a windswept
part of the road.
This encounter cheered and enlivened Vasili Andreevich, and he
drove on more boldly without examining the way-marks, urging on
the horse and trusting to him.
Nikita had nothing to do, and as usual in such circumstances
he drowsed, making up for much sleepless time. Suddenly the
horse stopped and Nikita nearly fell forward onto his nose.
'What is that?' he added, pointing to some potato vines that
showed up from under the snow.
Vasili Andreevich stopped the perspiring horse, whose deep
sides were heaving heavily.
'What is it?'
'Why, we are on the Zakharov lands. See where we've got to!'
'Nonsense!' retorted Vasili Andreevich.
'It's not nonsense, Vasili Andreevich. It's the truth,'
replied Nikita. 'You can feel that the sledge is going over a
potato-field, and there are the heaps of vines which have been
carted here. It's the Zakharov factory land.'
'Dear me, how we have gone astray!' said Vasili Andreevich.
'What are we to do now?'
'We must go straight on, that's all. We shall come out
somewhere--if not at Zakharova, then at the proprietor's farm,'
said Nikita.
Vasili Andreevich agreed, and drove as Nikita had indicated.
So they went on for a considerable time. At times they came
onto bare fields and the sledge-runners rattled over frozen
lumps of earth. Sometimes they got onto a winter-rye field, or
a fallow field on which they could see stalks of wormwood, and
straws sticking up through the snow and swaying in the wind;
sometimes they came onto deep and even white snow, above which
nothing was to be seen.
The snow was falling from above and sometimes rose from below.
The horse was evidently exhausted, his hair had all curled up
from sweat and was covered with hoar-frost, and he went at a
walk. Suddenly he stumbled and sat down in a ditch or
water-course. Vasili Andreevich wanted to stop, but Nikita
cried to him:
'Why stop? We've got in and must get out. Hey, pet! Hey,
darling! Gee up, old fellow!' he shouted in a cheerful tone to
the horse, jumping out of the sledge and himself getting stuck
in the ditch.
The horse gave a start and quickly climbed out onto the frozen
bank. It was evidently a ditch that had been dug there.
'Where are we now?' asked Vasili Andreevich.
'We'll soon find out!' Nikita replied. 'Go on, we'll get
somewhere.'
'Why, this must be the Goryachkin forest!' said Vasili
Andreevich, pointing to something dark that appeared amid the
snow in front of them.
'We'll see what forest it is when we get there,' said Nikita.
He saw that beside the black thing they had noticed, dry,
oblong willow-leaves were fluttering, and so he knew it was not
a forest but a settlement, but he did not wish to say so. And
in fact they had not gone twenty-five yards beyond the ditch
before something in front of them, evidently trees, showed up
black, and they heard a new and melancholy sound. Nikita had
guessed right: it was not a wood, but a row of tall willows
with a few leaves still fluttering on them here and there.
They had evidently been planted along the ditch round a
threshing-floor. Coming up to the willows, which moaned sadly
in the wind, the horse suddenly planted his forelegs above the
height of the sledge, drew up his hind legs also, pulling the
sledge onto higher ground, and turned to the left, no longer
sinking up to his knees in snow. They were back on a road.
'Well, here we are, but heaven only knows where!' said Nikita.
The horse kept straight along the road through the drifted
snow, and before they had gone another hundred yards the
straight line of the dark wattle wall of a barn showed up black
before them, its roof heavily covered with snow which poured
down from it. After passing the barn the road turned to the
wind and they drove into a snow-drift. But ahead of them was a
lane with houses on either side, so evidently the snow had been
blown across the road and they had to drive through the drift.
And so in fact it was. Having driven through the snow they
came out into a street. At the end house of the village some
frozen clothes hanging on a line--shirts, one red and one
white, trousers, leg-bands, and a petticoat--fluttered wildly
in the wind. The white shirt in particular struggled
desperately, waving its sleeves about.
'There now, either a lazy woman or a dead one has not taken her
clothes down before the holiday,' remarked Nikita, looking at
the fluttering shirts.
III
At the entrance to the street the wind still raged and the road
was thickly covered with snow, but well within the village it
was calm, warm, and cheerful. At one house a dog was barking,
at another a woman, covering her head with her coat, came
running from somewhere and entered the door of a hut, stopping
on the threshold to have a look at the passing sledge. In the
middle of the village girls could be heard singing.
Here in the village there seemed to be less wind and snow, and
the frost was less keen.
'Why, this is Grishkino,' said Vasili Andreevich.
'So it is,' responded Nikita.
It really was Grishkino, which meant that they had gone too far
to the left and had travelled some six miles, not quite in the
direction they aimed at, but towards their destination for all
that.
From Grishkino to Goryachkin was about another four miles.
In the middle of the village they almost ran into a tall man
walking down the middle of the street.
'Who are you?' shouted the man, stopping the horse, and
recognizing Vasili Anereevich he immediately took hold of the
shaft, went along it hand over hand till he reached the sledge,
and placed himself on the driver's seat.
He was Isay, a peasant of Vasili Andreevich's acquaintance, and
well known as the principal horse-thief in the district.
'Ah, Vasili Andreevich! Where are you off to?' said Isay,
enveloping Nikita in the odour of the vodka he had drunk.
'We were going to Goryachkin.'
'And look where you've got to! You should have gone through
Molchanovka.'
'Should have, but didn't manage it,' said Vasili Andreevich,
holding in the horse.
'That's a good horse,' said Isay, with a shrewd glance at
Mukhorty, and with a practised hand he tightened the loosened
knot high in the horse's bushy tail.
'Are you going to stay the night?'
'No, friend. I must get on.'
'Your business must be pressing. And who is this? Ah, Nikita
Stepanych!'
'Who else?' replied Nikita. 'But I say, good friend, how are
we to avoid going astray again?'
'Where can you go astray here? Turn back straight down the
street and then when you come out keep straight on. Don't take
to the left. You will come out onto the high road, and then
turn to the right.'
'And where do we turn off the high road? As in summer, or the
winter way?' asked Nikita.
'The winter way. As soon as you turn off you'll see some
bushes, and opposite them there is a way-mark--a large oak, one
with branches--and that's the way.'
Vasili Andreevich turned the horse back and drove through the
outskirts of the village.
'Why not stay the night?' Isay shouted after them.
But Vasili Andreevich did not answer and touched up the horse.
Four miles of good road, two of which lay through the forest,
seemed easy to manage, especially as the wind was apparently
quieter and the snow had stopped.
Having driven along the trodden village street, darkened here
and there by fresh manure, past the yard where the clothes hung
out and where the white shirt had broken loose and was now
attached only by one frozensleeve, they again came within
sound of the weird moan of the willows, and again emerged on
the open fields. The storm, far from ceasing, seemed to have
grown yet stronger. The road was completely covered with
drifting snow, and only the stakes showed that they had not
lost their way. But even the stakes ahead of them were not
easy to see, since the wind blew in their faces.
Vasili Andreevich screwed up his eyes, bent down his head, and
looked out for the way-marks, but trusted mainly to the horse's
sagacity, letting it take its own way. And the horse really
did not lose the road but followed its windings, turning now to
the right and now to the left and sensing it under his feet, so
that though the snow fell thicker and the wind strengthened
they still continued to see way-marks now to the left and now
to the right of them.
So they travelled on for about ten minutes, when suddenly,
through the slanting screen of wind-driven snow, something
black showed up which moved in front of the horse.
This was another sledge with fellow-travellers. Mukhorty
overtook them, and struck his hoofs against the back of the
sledge in front of them.
'Pass on . . . hey there . . . get in front!' cried voices from
the sledge.
Vasili Andreevich swerved aside to pass the other sledge.
In it sat three men and a woman, evidently visitors returning
from a feast. One peasant was whacking the snow-covered croup
of their little horse with a long switch, and the other two
sitting in front waved their arms and shouted something. The
woman, completely wrapped up and covered with snow, sat
drowsing and bumping at the back.
'Who are you?' shouted Vasili Andreevich.
'From A-a-a . . .' was all that could be heard.
'I say, where are you from?'
'From A-a-a-a!' one of the peasants shouted with all his might,
but still it was impossible to make out who they were.
'Get along! Keep up!' shouted another, ceaselessly beating
his horse with the switch.
'So you're from a feast, it seems?'
'Go on, go on! Faster, Simon! Get in front! Faster!'
The wings of the sledges bumped against one another, almost got
jammed but managed to separate, and the peasants' sledge began
to fall behind.
Their shaggy, big-bellied horse, all covered with snow,
breathed heavily under the low shaft-bow and, evidently using
the last of its strength, vainly endeavoured to escape from the
switch, hobbling with its short legs through the deep snow
which it threw up under itself.
Its muzzle, young-looking, with the nether lip drawn up like
that of a fish, nostrils distended and ears pressed back from
fear, kept up for a few seconds near Nikita's shoulder and then
began to fall behind.
'Just see what liquor does!' said Nikita. 'They've tired that
little horse to death. What pagans!'
For a few minutes they heard the panting of the tired little
horse and the drunken shouting of the peasants. Then the
panting and the shouts died away, and around them nothing could
be heard but the whistling of the wind in their ears and now
and then the squeak of their sledge-runners over a windswept
part of the road.
This encounter cheered and enlivened Vasili Andreevich, and he
drove on more boldly without examining the way-marks, urging on
the horse and trusting to him.
Nikita had nothing to do, and as usual in such circumstances
he drowsed, making up for much sleepless time. Suddenly the
horse stopped and Nikita nearly fell forward onto his nose.
- considerable [kən´sidərəbəl]
a.重要的；值得重视 (初中英语单词) - evidently [´evidəntli] ad.明显地 (初中英语单词)
- cheerful [´tʃiəful] a.快乐的；高兴的 (初中英语单词)
- driven [´driv(ə)n] drive 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- trousers [´trauzəz] n.裤子，长裤 (初中英语单词)
- peasant [´pezənt] n.农民；庄稼人 (初中英语单词)
- acquaintance [ə´kweintəns] n.相识；熟人，相识的人 (初中英语单词)
- principal [´prinsəpəl] a.主要的 n.负责人 (初中英语单词)
- frozen [´frəuzn] freeze 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- sleeve [sli:v] n.袖子；袖套 (初中英语单词)
- mainly [´meinli] ad.主要地；大体上 (初中英语单词)
- screen [skri:n] n.银幕 vt.遮蔽 (初中英语单词)
- liquor [´likə] n.酒类；(溶)液 (初中英语单词)
- drunken [´drʌŋkən] a.喝醉的；常醉的 (初中英语单词)
- encounter [in´kauntə] vt.&n.偶然相遇；冲突 (初中英语单词)
- nonsense [´nɔnsəns] n.胡说 int.胡说!废话 (高中英语单词)
- sledge [sledʒ] n.雪橇；大锤 (高中英语单词)
- melancholy [´melənkəli] n.忧郁 a.忧郁的 (高中英语单词)
- hanging [´hæŋiŋ] n.绞刑 a.悬挂着的 (高中英语单词)
- thickly [´θikli] ad.厚厚地；密密地 (高中英语单词)
- threshold [´θreʃhəuld] n.门槛；入门；开端 (高中英语单词)
- destination [,desti´neiʃən] n.目标地 (高中英语单词)
- shrewd [ʃru:d] a.精明的；狡猾的 (高中英语单词)
- switch [switʃ] n.开关 v.转换 (高中英语单词)
- vainly [´veinli] ad.虚荣地；自负地 (高中英语单词)
- squeak [skwi:k] n.&vi.(发)尖叫(声) (高中英语单词)
- boldly [´bəuldli] ad.大胆地；醒目地 (高中英语单词)
- astray [ə´strei] ad.&a.在歧途上(的) (英语四级单词)
- manure [mə´njuə] n.粪肥 vt.施肥于 (英语四级单词)
- shaggy [´ʃægi] a.蓬乱的；多粗毛的 (英语四级单词)
- muzzle [´mʌzəl] n.枪口，炮口 (英语四级单词)
- nether [´neðə] a.下面的；地下的 (英语六级单词)
- trusting [´trʌstiŋ] a.信任的；相信的 (英语六级单词)
- sleepless [´sli:pləs] a.失眠的；寂静的 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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