“Bang! Crash!” came again. “Bang!”
And he suddenly remembered how once in the zemstvo office, when he was talking with an accountant, a gentleman came over to the desk, dark-eyed, dark-haired, thin, pale; he had an unpleasant look in his eyes, as people do when they have taken a long after-dinner nap, and it spoiled his fine, intelligent profile; and the high boots he wore were unbecoming and seemed crude on him. The accountant introduced him: “This is our zemstvo agent.”
“So that was Lesnitsky … this same one …” Lyzhin now realized.
He remembered Lesnitsky’s soft voice, pictured his way of walking, and it seemed to him that someone was now walking around him, walking in the same way as Lesnitsky.
He suddenly became frightened, his head felt cold.
“Who’s there?” he asked in alarm.
“The biddle.”
“What do you want here?”
“To ask your permission, Your Honor. Earlier you said there was no need for the headman, but I’m afraid he may get angry He told me to come. So maybe I’ll go.”
“Ah, you! I’m sick of it…” Lyzhin said in vexation and covered himself up again.
“He may get angry … I’ll go, Your Honor, you have a good stay.”
And Loshadin left. There was coughing and half-whispered talk in the front hall. The witnesses must have come back.
“Tomorrow we’ll let the poor fellows go home earlier …” thought the coroner. “We’ll start the autopsy as soon as it’s light.”
He was beginning to doze off when suddenly there came someone’s steps again, not timid this time, but quick, loud. The slamming of a door, voices, the scrape of a match …
“Are you asleep? Are you asleep?” Dr. Starchenko asked hurriedly and angrily, lighting one match after another; he was all covered with snow, and gave off cold. “Are you asleep? Get up, let’s go to von Taunitz. He’s sent horses to fetch you. Let’s go, you’ll at least get supper there, and sleep like a human being. You see, I came for you myself. The horses are excellent, we’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“And what time is it now?”
“A quarter past ten.”
Sleepy and displeased, Lyzhin put on his boots, fur coat, hat, and hood, and went outside with the doctor. It was not too freezing, but a strong, piercing wind was blowing, driving billows of snow down the street, which looked as if they were fleeing in terror; high drifts were already piled up by the fence and near the porches. The doctor and the coroner got into the sleigh, and the white driver leaned over them to button up the flap. They both felt hot.
“Drive!”
They went through the village. “Turning up fluffy furrows …”3the coroner thought listlessly, watching the outrunner working his legs. There were lights in all the cottages, as on the eve of a great feast: the peasants had not gone to bed for fear of the dead man. The driver was glumly silent; he must have grown bored standing by the zemstvo cottage, and now was also thinking of the dead man.
“When they learned at Taunitz’s that you were spending the night in the cottage,” said Starchenko, “they all fell on me for not bringing you along.”
As they drove out of the village, at a bend, the driver suddenly shouted at the top of his lungs:
“Clear the way!”
Some man flashed by; he had stepped off the road and was standing knee-deep in the snow, looking at the troika; the coroner saw the crook-topped stick, the beard, the bag at his side, and it seemed to him that it was Loshadin, and it even seemed to him that he was smiling. He flashed by and disappeared.
The road first ran along the edge of the forest, then down the wide forest cutting; old pines flashed by, and young birches, and tall, young gnarled oaks, standing solitarily in the recently cleared openings, but soon everything in the air became confused in the billows of snow; the driver claimed he could see the forest, but the coroner could see nothing but the outrunner. The wind blew in their backs.
Suddenly the horses stopped.
“Well, what now?” Starchenko asked crossly.
The driver silently got down from the box and began running around the sleigh, stepping on his heels; he made wider and wider circles, moving further and further from the sleigh, and it looked as if he were dancing; finally he came back and began turning to the right.
“Have you lost the way, or what?” asked Starchenko.
“Never mi-i-ind …”
Here was some little village with not a single light. Again the forest, the fields, again they lost the way, and the driver got down from the box and danced. The troika raced down a dark avenue, raced quickly, and the excited outrunner kicked the front of the sleigh. Here the trees made a hollow, frightening noise, it was pitch-dark, as if they were racing into some sort of abyss, and suddenly their eyes were dazzled by the bright light of a front entrance and windows, they heard loud, good-natured barking, voices … They had arrived.
While they were taking off their coats and boots downstairs, someone upstairs was playing
“That’s splendid,” said von Taunitz, a fat man with an incredibly thick neck and side-whiskers, shaking the
