hood.
“Vyborg!” the officer repeated. “Are you asleep, eh? Get on with it—Vyborg!”
To show he had heard, Iona pulled at the reins, sending whole layers of snow flying from the horse’s back and from his own shoulders. The officer sat down in the sleigh. The driver clucked with his tongue, stretched out his neck like a swan, rose in his seat, and more from habit than necessity, he flourished his whip. The little horse also stretched her neck, crooked her sticklike legs, and started off irresolutely.…
“Where are you going, you fool!” Iona was being assailed with shouts from some massive, dark object wavering to and fro in front of him. “Where the devil are you going? Stay on the right side of the road!”
“You don’t know how to drive! Stay on the right side!” the officer shouted angrily.
A coachman driving a private carriage was swearing at him, and a pedestrian, running across the road and brushing his shoulder against the mare’s nose, glanced up at him and shook the snow from his sleeve. Iona shifted about on the box, as though sitting on needles, thrust out his elbows, rolled his eyes like a madman, as though he did not understand where he was or what he was doing there.
“They’re all scoundrels,” the officer laughed. “All trying to shove into you, or fall under your horse. Quite a conspiracy!”
The driver turned towards the officer, his lips moving. He appeared about to say something, but the only sound coming from him was a hoarse wheezing cough.
“What is it?” the officer asked.
Iona’s lips twitched into a smile, and he strained his throat and croaked: “My son, sir. He died this week.”
“Hm, what did he die of?”
Iona turned his whole body round to face his fare.
“Who knows? They say it was fever.… He was in the hospital only three days, and then he died. It was God’s will!”
“Get over, damn you!” came a sudden shout out of the darkness. “Have you gone blind, you old idiot? Keep your eyes skinned!”
“Keep going,” the officer said. “This way we won’t get there till tomorrow morning. Put the whip to her!”
Once more the driver stretched his neck, rose in his seat, and with heavy grace flourished the whip. Several times he turned to watch his fare, but the officer’s eyes were closed and apparently he was in no mood to listen. And then, letting off the passenger in the Vyborg District, the driver stopped by a tavern, and again he remained motionless, doubled up on his box. And again the wet snow splashed him and his mare with its white paint. An hour passed, and then another.
Then three young men came loudly pounding the sidewalk in galoshes, quarreling furiously among themselves. Two were tall and slender, the third was a small hunchback.
“Driver, to the Police Bridge!” the hunchback shouted in a cracked voice. “The three of us for twenty kopecks!”
Iona tugged at the reins and smacked his lips. Twenty kopecks was not a fair price, but he did not care any more. Whether it was a ruble or five kopecks no longer mattered, so long as he had a fare. The young men, jostling and cursing one another, came up to the sleigh, and all three of them tried to jump onto the seat, and then they began to argue about which two should sit down, and who should be the one to stand up. After a long, fantastic, and ill-natured argument they decided that the hunchback would have to stand, because he was the shortest.
“Let’s go!” cried the hunchback in his cracked voice, taking his place and breathing down Iona’s neck. “Get going! Eh, brother, what a funny cap you’re wearing. You won’t find a worse one anywhere in St. Petersburg!”
“Hee-hee-hee,” Iona giggled. “Yes, it’s a funny cap.”
“Then get a move on! Are you going to crawl along all this time at the same pace? Do you want to get it in the neck?”
“My head’s splitting!” said one of the tall ones. “Yesterday at the Dukmassovs’, I drank all of four bottles of cognac with Vaska.”
“I don’t know why you have to tell lies,” the other tall one said angrily. “You lie like a swine!”
“May God strike me dead if I am not telling the truth!”
“A flea coughs the truth, too.”
“Hee-hee-hee,” Iona giggled. “What a lot of merry gentlemen.…”
“Pfui!” the hunchback exclaimed indignantly. “Damn you for an old idiot! Will you get a move on, or won’t you? Is that how to drive? Use the whip, dammit! Go on, you old devil, give it to her!”
Iona could feel at his back the hunchback’s wriggling body, and the tremble in the voice. He heard the insults which were being hurled at him, he saw the people in the street, and little by little the feeling of loneliness was lifted from his heart. The hunchback went on swearing until he choked on an elaborate six-story-high oath, and then was overcome with a fit of coughing. The tall ones began to talk about a certain Nadezhda Petrovna. Iona looked round at them. He waited until there was a short pause in the conversation, and then he turned again and murmured: “My son died—he died this week.…”
“We all die,” sighed the hunchback, wiping his lips after his fit of coughing. “Keep going, eh? Gentlemen, we simply can’t go any further like this. We’ll never get there!”
“Give him a bit of encouragement. Hit him in the neck!”
“Did you hear that, old pest? You’ll get it in the neck all right. One shouldn’t stand on ceremony with people like you—one might just as well walk. Do you hear me, you old snake? I don’t suppose you care a tinker’s damn about what we are saying.”
Then Iona heard rather than felt a thud on the nape of his neck.
