Old Izergil and other stories / Старуха Изергиль и другие рассказы. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Shoving his cap inside his coat and carrying the level, Osip stepped on the ice, cautiously sliding his feet along its surface. No sooner had he done so than a wild cry came from the river bank behind.

“Where’re you going, you… sheep.”

“Keep going, no looking behind!” the leader commanded crisply.

“Get back, you devils!”

“Come on, lads, and keep God in your mind! He’s not going to invite us for the holidays…”

A policeman’s whistle was heard.

“Now we’re in for it!” Soldier grumbled aloud. “They’ll let the police know over on the other side – and if we get through alive we’ll be locked up for sure… I’m not going to take any responsibility for this…”

The string of men on the ice followed Osip’s ringing voice as if it were something tangible to cling to.

“Watch the ice in front of your feet!”

We were crossing the river diagonally upstream, and being the last I had a good view of small, dapper Osip with his white, fluff) head as he skilfully slid along, barely lifting his feet from the ice. Behind him, as if threaded on an invisible string, filed six dark figures, doubled over and unsteady on their feet; now and then their shadows appeared next to them, then disappeared underfoot only to spread out on the ice once more. Their heads were bent low, as if they were coming down a mountainside and were afraid of stumbling.

On the shore behind us a crowd evidently had gathered, for the outcry had risen to an unpleasant roar and you could no longer make out what they were shouting.

The cautious procession resolved itself into mechanical, tiresome work. Accustomed to walking fast, I now found myself sinking into that somnolent, detached frame of mind when the soul seems to grow void and all thought of self is forgotten, while vision and hearing become inordinately sharp. Underfoot was the bluish-grey, leaden ice worn thin by the current; its diffused glitter was blinding. Here and there it had cracked and jammed into hummocks, ground by the movement of the river into fragments porous like pumice-stone and as jagged as broken glass. Blue fissures yawned coldly, ready to trap the unwary foot. The wide-soled boots shuffled along and the voices of Boyev and Soldier, continually harping on the same theme, tried my patience.

“I’m not going to answer for this…”

“Neither will I…”

“Just because a man has the right to order you about doesn’t mean someone else mightn’t be a thousand times smarter…”

“You think being smart means anything – it’s a glib tongue that counts around here…”

Osip had tucked the hem of his sheepskin jacket under his belt and his legs, encased in pants of grey army cloth, strode along with the ease and resilience of a spring. It was as if some creature visible to him alone were dancing in front of him, preventing him from walking straight ahead, and he was doing his best to circumvent it, slip away from it, darting to the left or the right, sometimes doubling sharply in his tracks, and doing it all at a dance-step describing loops and semicircles on the ice. His voice rang out clearly and resonantly, and it was pleasant to hear it merge with the ringing of the church hells.

We were half-way across the four-hundred-sagene strip of ice when an ominous rumble came from upstream and at the same moment the ice shifted under my feet; taken by surprise I lost my balance and fell down on one knee. I looked up the river and terror gripped me by the throat, throttled me and made the world turn black in my eyes: the grey crust of ice had sprung to life, it was buckling up, sharp angles appeared on the even surface, and a strange crunching like heavy boots walking over broken glass, filled the air.

With a quiet rush, clear water appeared next to me, somewhere splintering wood whined like a living thing, the men shouted huddling together, and through it all rang the voice of Osip:

’’Scatter, there… Get away from each other… What are you crowding together for! She’s going good and proper now. Get a move on, lads!”

He leapt about as if attacked by wasps, jabbing the air around him with the level as though it were a gun and he were holding off some invisible assailant, while the town swam jerkily past him. Under me the ice crunched and crumpled into fine slivers, water washed against my feet and, springing up. I made a wild dash toward Osip.

“Where d’you think you’re going!” he shouted, swinging the level, “Stop, you bloody fool!”

The man before us was not the old Osip; the face had grown strangely young, all the familiar features had gone, his blue eyes were now grey, and the man seemed to have grown a half-arshin taller. Straight as a brand-new nail, his feet firmly planted, he was shouting with his mouth wide open:

“If you don’t stop running around and getting into a huddle I’ll smash your skulls in!”

Again he swung at me with the level.

“Where’re you going?”

“We’ll drown!” I said in a whisper.

“Hush!” Then, observing my sorry plight, he added softly:

“Any fool can drown, you make it your business to get out of here!”

Again he began shouting encouragements to the others his chest thrust out and his head thrown back.

The ice crackled and crunched as it broke up lazily. In the meantime we were slowly being carried past the town. Ashore it seemed some fabulous titan had awakened and was rending the earth asunder; the shoreline below us was stationary while the bank opposite was slowly moving upstream – it could only be a matter of moments before it was ripped apart.

This ominous, creeping movement seemed to cut off our last link with land; the familiar world was receding into oblivion and my breast was laden with grief and my knees quaked. Red clouds slowly sailed across the sky and the jagged chunks of ice catching their reflection turned red too as if with the strain of reaching out for me. All the vast earth was in the throes of the birth pangs of spring, racked by convulsions, its shaggy, moist breast heaving and its joints cracking; and in the massive body of the earth the river was a vein pulsating with thick, warm blood.

It hurt to realize one’s insignificance and helplessness in the midst of the calm, irresistible movement of the mass, and deep in the soul a bold dream took shape fed by this sensation of humiliation: if only I could reach out and lay my hand on the hill on shore and say:

“Stop until I reach you!”

The resonant pealing of the bells was now waning to a melancholy sigh, but I remembered that the next night they would once more speak out gaily to proclaim the resurrection.

If only I could live to hear them ringing!

…Seven dark figures danced Before my eyes as they leapt from one foothold to another and paddled in thin air with the boards they were carrying; and ahead of them the old man turned and twisted like a groundling, reminiscent of Nicholas the Miracle-Maker, his imperative voice ringing out ceaselessly:

“Keep your eyes op-e-n!”

The ice buckled and the living back of the river shivered and heaved underfoot like the whale in the “Hunch-Backed Horse“; and with increasing frequency the fluid body of the stream gushed from under the armour of ice – the cold, murky water that greedily licked at the men’s feet.

We moved along a narrow perch overhanging a deep abyss. The quiet, luring splash of the water conjured up visions of bottomless depths, of my body settling slowly, slowly into the dense icy mass, saw my eyes grow blind, my heart ceasing to beat. I recalled the drowned bodies I had seen, with their slimy skulls, bloated faces and glassy, bulging eyes, the fingers jutting out from swollen hands and the sodden skin that hung on the palms like a rag.

The first to get a ducking was Mokei Budyrin; he had been ahead of the Mordvinian, as silent and retiring as always; he had been calmer than the others and yet he disappeared as suddenly as if he had been pulled in by the legs, only his head and his hands gripping the plank remained above the ice.

“Lend a hand!” Osip cried. “Not all of you, one or two’ll be enough.”

“Never mind, boys,” said Mokei to the Mordvinian and me, as he blew the water out of his mouth. “I’ll manage… myself.”

He clambered onto the ice and shook himself.

“Damn it anyway, it looks as if you really might drown down here.”

His teeth chattering, he licked his wet moustache with his large tongue, his resemblance to a big, genial dog more marked than ever.

A transient recollection flashed in my mind; I remembered how a month before he had chopped off the thumb of his left hand at the first joint and picking up the pallid, blue-nailed joint had looked at it darkly, with wondering eyes, and addressed it in a low, apologetic tone:

“I’ve hacked at the poor thing so many times I’ve just lost count… It was out of joint anyway, didn’t work properly… So now I suppose I’ve got to bury it.” He carefully wrapped the amputated thumb into some shavings and put it in his pocket. Only then did he proceed to bandage the wound.

The next to get a ducking was Boyev; it looked as if he had purposely dived tinder the ice. He let out a frenzied cry at once.

“O-ow, help! I’m drowning! Save me, brothers, don’t let me go down…”