there is a pain in your heart that is worse than anything. Your heart aches beyond all endurance, and there is a wretchedness all over your body as though you were leading Death by the hand instead of an old woman. You are numb all over, turned to stone like a statue; you go on and feel as though it were not you walking, but someone else moving your legs instead of you. When your soul is frozen you don't know what you are doing: you are ready to leave the old woman with no one to guide her, or to pull a hot roll from off a hawker's tray, or to fight with someone. And when you come to your night's lodging into the warmth after the frost, there is not much joy in that either! You lie awake till midnight, crying, and don't know yourself what you are crying for. . . .'
'We must walk about the skating-ground before it gets dark,' said the governor's wife, who was bored with listening. 'Who's coming with me?'
The governor's wife went out and the whole company trooped out of the pavilion after her. Only the governor, the bishop, and the mayor remained.
'Queen of Heaven! and what I went through when I was a shopboy in a fish-shop!' Yegor Ivanitch went on, flinging up his arms so that his fox-lined coat fell open. 'One would go out to the shop almost before it was light . . . by eight o'clock I was completely frozen, my face was blue, my fingers were stiff so that I could not fasten my buttons nor count the money. One would stand in the cold, turn numb, and think, 'Lord, I shall have to stand like this right on till evening!' By dinner-time my stomach was pinched and my heart was aching. . . . Yes! And I was not much better afterwards when I had a shop of my own. The frost was intense and the shop was like a mouse-trap with draughts blowing in all directions; the coat I had on was, pardon me, mangy, as thin as paper, threadbare. . . . One would be chilled through and through, half dazed, and turn as cruel as the frost oneself: I would pull one by the ear so that I nearly pulled the ear off; I would smack another on the back of the head; I'd glare at a customer like a ruffian, a wild beast, and be ready to fleece him; and when I got home in the evening and ought to have gone to bed, I'd be ill-humoured and set upon my family, throwing it in their teeth that they were living upon me; I would make a row and carry on so that half a dozen policemen couldn't have managed me. The frost makes one spiteful and drives one to drink.'
Yegor Ivanitch clasped his hands and went on:
'And when we were taking fish to Moscow in the winter, Holy Mother!' And spluttering as he talked, he began describing the horrors he endured with his shopmen when he was taking fish to Moscow. . . .
'Yes,' sighed the governor, 'it is wonderful what a man can endure! You used to take wagon-loads of fish to Moscow, Yegor Ivanitch, while I in my time was at the war. I remember one extraordinary instance. . . .'
And the governor described how, during the last Russo-Turkish War, one frosty night the division in which he was had stood in the snow without moving for thirteen hours in a piercing wind; from fear of being observed the division did not light a fire, nor make a sound or a movement; they were forbidden to smoke. . . .
Reminiscences followed. The governor and the mayor grew lively and good-humoured, and, interrupting each other, began recalling their experiences. And the bishop told them how, when he was serving in Siberia, he had travelled in a sledge drawn by dogs; how one day, being drowsy, in a time of sharp frost he had fallen out of the sledge and been nearly frozen; when the Tunguses turned back and found him he was barely alive. Then, as by common agreement, the old men suddenly sank into silence, sat side by side, and mused.
'Ech!' whispered the mayor; 'you'd think it would be time to forget, but when you look at the water-carriers, at the schoolboys, at the convicts in their wretched gowns, it brings it all back! Why, only take those musicians who are playing now. I'll be bound, there is a pain in their hearts; a pinch at their stomachs, and their trumpets are freezing to their lips. . . . They play and think: 'Holy Mother! we have another three hours to sit here in the cold.' '
The old men sank into thought. They thought of that in man which is higher than good birth, higher than rank and wealth and learning, of that which brings the lowest beggar near to God: of the helplessness of man, of his sufferings and his patience. . . .
Meanwhile the air was turning blue . . . the door opened and two waiters from Savatin's walked in, carrying trays and a big muffled teapot. When the glasses had been filled and there was a strong smell of cinnamon and clove in the air, the door opened again, and there came into the pavilion a beardless young policeman whose nose was crimson, and who was covered all over with frost; he went up to the governor, and, saluting, said: 'Her Excellency told me to inform you that she has gone home.'
Looking at the way the policeman put his stiff, frozen fingers to his cap, looking at his nose, his lustreless eyes, and his hood covered with white frost near the mouth, they all for some reason felt that this policeman's heart must be aching, that his stomach must feel pinched, and his soul numb. . . .
'I say,' said the governor hesitatingly, 'have a drink of mulled wine!'
'It's all right . . . it's all right! Drink it up!' the mayor urged him, gesticulating; 'don't be shy!'
The policeman took the glass in both hands, moved aside, and, trying to drink without making any sound, began discreetly sipping from the glass. He drank and was overwhelmed with embarrassment while the old men looked at him in silence, and they all fancied that the pain was leaving the young policeman's heart, and that his soul was thawing. The governor heaved a sigh.
'It's time we were at home,' he said, getting up. 'Good-bye! I say,' he added, addressing the policeman, 'tell the musicians there to . . . leave off playing, and ask Pavel Semyonovitch from me to see they are given . . . beer or vodka.'
The governor and the bishop said good-bye to the mayor and went out of the pavilion.
Yegor Ivanitch attacked the mulled wine, and before the policeman had finished his glass succeeded in telling him a great many interesting things. He could not be silent.
NOTES
the Feast of Epiphany: January 6 (January 19 in pre-1918 Russia)
twenty-eight degrees of frost: 31 degrees below zero F.
The frost did drive out the French: Napoleon invaded Russia on June 24, 1812, but the severe winter and lack of supplies forced a costly retreat the folowing November
during the last Russo-Turkish War: 1877-1878
THE BEGGAR
by Anton Chekhov
'KIND sir, be so good as to notice a poor, hungry man. I have not tasted food for three days. I have not a five-kopeck piece for a night's lodging. I swear by God! For five years I was a village schoolmaster and lost my post through the intrigues of the Zemstvo. I was the victim of false witness. I have been out of a place for a year now.'
Skvortsov, a Petersburg lawyer, looked at the speaker's tattered dark blue overcoat, at his muddy, drunken eyes, at the red patches on his cheeks, and it seemed to him that he had seen the man before.
'And now I am offered a post in the Kaluga province,' the beggar continued, 'but I have not the means for the journey there. Graciously help me! I am ashamed to ask, but . . . I am compelled by circumstances.'
Skvortsov looked at his goloshes, of which one was shallow like a shoe, while the other came high up the leg like a boot, and suddenly remembered.
'Listen, the day before yesterday I met you in Sadovoy Street,' he said, 'and then you told me, not that you were a village schoolmaster, but that you were a student who had been expelled. Do you remember?'
'N-o. No, that cannot be so!' the beggar muttered in confusion. 'I am a village schoolmaster, and if you wish it I can show you documents to prove it.'
'That's enough lies! You called yourself a student, and even told me what you were expelled for. Do you remember?'
Skvortsov flushed, and with a look of disgust on his face turned away from the ragged figure.
'It's contemptible, sir!' he cried angrily. 'It's a swindle! I'll hand you over to the police, damn you! You are
