Frost

A "POPULAR" fete with a philanthropic object had been arranged on
the Feast of Epiphany in the provincial town of N----. They had
selected a broad part of the river between the market and the
bishop's palace, fenced it round with a rope, with fir-trees and
with flags, and provided everything necessary for skating, sledging,
and tobogganing. The festivity was organized on the grandest scale
possible. The notices that were distributed were of huge size and
promised a number of delights: skating, a military band, a lottery
with no blank tickets, an electric sun, and so on. But the whole
scheme almost came to nothing owing to the hard frost. From the eve
of Epiphany there were twenty-eight degrees of frost with a strong
wind; it was proposed to put off the fete, and this was not done
only because the public, which for a long while had been looking
forward to the fete impatiently, would not consent to any postponement.

"Only think, what do you expect in winter but a frost!" said the
ladies persuading the governor, who tried to insist that the fete
should be postponed. "If anyone is cold he can go and warm himself."

The trees, the horses, the men's beards were white with frost; it
even seemed that the air itself crackled, as though unable to endure
the cold; but in spite of that the frozen public were skating.
Immediately after the blessing of the waters and precisely at one
o'clock the military band began playing.

Between three and four o'clock in the afternoon, when the festivity
was at its height, the select society of the place gathered together
to warm themselves in the governor's pavilion, which had been put
up on the river-bank. The old governor and his wife, the bishop,
the president of the local court, the head master of the high school,
and many others, were there. The ladies were sitting in armchairs,
while the men crowded round the wide glass door, looking at the
skating.

"Holy Saints!" said the bishop in surprise; "what flourishes they
execute with their legs! Upon my soul, many a singer couldn't do a
twirl with his voice as those cut-throats do with their legs. Aie!
he'll kill himself!"

"That's Smirnov. . . . That's Gruzdev . . ." said the head master,
mentioning the names of the schoolboys who flew by the pavilion.

"Bah! he's all alive-oh!" laughed the governor. "Look, gentlemen,
our mayor is coming. . . . He is coming this way. . . . That's a
nuisance, he will talk our heads off now."

A little thin old man, wearing a big cap and a fur-lined coat hanging
open, came from the opposite bank towards the pavilion, avoiding
the skaters. This was the mayor of the town, a merchant, Eremeyev
by name, a millionaire and an old inhabitant of N----. Flinging
wide his arms and shrugging at the cold, he skipped along, knocking
one golosh against the other, evidently in haste to get out of the
wind. Half-way he suddenly bent down, stole up to some lady, and
plucked at her sleeve from behind. When she looked round he skipped
away, and probably delighted at having succeeded in frightening
her, went off into a loud, aged laugh.

"Lively old fellow," said the governor. "It's a wonder he's not
skating."

As he got near the pavilion the mayor fell into a little tripping
trot, waved his hands, and, taking a run, slid along the ice in his
huge golosh boots up to the very door.

"Yegor Ivanitch, you ought to get yourself some skates!" the governor
greeted him.

"That's just what I am thinking," he answered in a squeaky, somewhat
nasal tenor, taking off his cap. "I wish you good health, your
Excellency! Your Holiness! Long life to all the other gentlemen and
ladies! Here's a frost! Yes, it is a frost, bother it! It's deadly!"

Winking with his red, frozen eyes, Yegor Ivanitch stamped on the
floor with his golosh boots and swung his arms together like a
frozen cabman.

"Such a damnable frost, worse than any dog!" he went on talking,
smiling all over his face. "It's a real affliction!"

"It's healthy," said the governor; "frost strengthens a man and
makes him vigorous. . . ."

"Though it may be healthy, it would be better without it at all,"
said the mayor, wiping his wedge-shaped beard with a red handkerchief.
"It would be a good riddance! To my thinking, your Excellency, the
Lord sends it us as a punishment--the frost, I mean. We sin in
the summer and are punished in the winter. . . . Yes!"

Yegor Ivanitch looked round him quickly and flung up his hands.

"Why, where's the needful . . . to warm us up?" he asked, looking
in alarm first at the governor and then at the bishop. "Your
Excellency! Your Holiness! I'll be bound, the ladies are frozen
too! We must have something, this won't do!"

Everyone began gesticulating and declaring that they had not come
to the skating to warm themselves, but the mayor, heeding no one,
opened the door and beckoned to someone with his crooked finger. A
workman and a fireman ran up to him.

"Here, run off to Savatin," he muttered, "and tell him to make haste
and send here . . . what do you call it? . . . What's it to be?
Tell him to send a dozen glasses . . . a dozen glasses of mulled
wine, the very hottest, or punch, perhaps. . . ."

There was laughter in the pavilion.

"A nice thing to treat us to!"

"Never mind, we will drink it," muttered the mayor; "a dozen glasses,
then . . . and some Benedictine, perhaps . . . and tell them to
warm two bottles of red wine. . . . Oh, and what for the ladies?
Well, you tell them to bring cakes, nuts . . . sweets of some sort,
perhaps. . . . There, run along, look sharp!"

The mayor was silent for a minute and then began again abusing the
frost, banging his arms across his chest and thumping with his
golosh boots.

"No, Yegor Ivanitch," said the governor persuasively, "don't be
unfair, the Russian frost has its charms. I was reading lately that
many of the good qualities of the Russian people are due to the
vast expanse of their land and to the climate, the cruel struggle
for existence . . . that's perfectly true!"

"It may be true, your Excellency, but it would be better without
it. The frost did drive out the French, of course, and one can
freeze all sorts of dishes, and the children can go skating--
that's all true! For the man who is well fed and well clothed the
frost is only a pleasure, but for the working man, the beggar, the
pilgrim, the crazy wanderer, it's the greatest evil and misfortune.
It's misery, your Holiness! In a frost like this poverty is twice
as hard, and the thief is more cunning and evildoers more violent.
There's no gainsaying it! I am turned seventy, I've a fur coat now,
and at home I have a stove and rums and punches of all sorts. The
frost means nothing to me now; I take no notice of it, I don't care
to know of it, but how it used to be in old days, Holy Mother! It's
dreadful to recall it! My memory is failing me with years and I
have forgotten everything; my enemies, and my sins and troubles of
all sorts--I forget them all, but the frost--ough! How I remember
it! When my mother died I was left a little devil--this high--
a homeless orphan . . . no kith nor kin, wretched, ragged, little
clothes, hungry, nowhere to sleep--in fact, 'we have here no
abiding city, but seek the one to come.' In those days I used to
lead an old blind woman about the town for five kopecks a day . . .
the frosts were cruel, wicked. One would go out with the old woman
and begin suffering torments. My Creator! First of all you would
be shivering as in a fever, shrugging and dancing about. Then your
ears, your fingers, your feet, would begin aching. They would ache
as though someone were squeezing them with pincers. But all that
would have been nothing, a trivial matter, of no great consequence.
The trouble was when your whole body was chilled. One would walk
for three blessed hours in the frost, your Holiness, and lose all
human semblance. Your legs are drawn up, there is a weight on your
chest, your stomach is pinched; above all, 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.