“Let’s go out and have a look at the mare,” Iona thinks.  “There is always time for sleep....  You’ll have sleep enough, no fear....”

He puts on his coat and goes into the stables where his mare is standing.  He thinks about oats, about hay, about the weather....  He cannot think about his son when he is alone....  To talk about him with someone is possible, but to think of him and picture him is insufferable anguish....

“Are you munching?” Iona asks his mare, seeing her shining eyes.  “There, munch away, munch away....  Since we have not earned enough for oats, we will eat hay....  Yes,...  I have grown too old to drive....  My son ought to be driving, not I....  He was a real cabman....  He ought to have lived....”

Iona is silent for a while, and then he goes on: 

“That’s how it is, old girl....  Kuzma Ionitch is gone....  He said good-by to me....  He went and died for no reason....  Now, suppose you had a little colt, and you were own mother to that little colt. ...  And all at once that same little colt went and died....  You’d be sorry, wouldn’t you?...”

The little mare munches, listens, and breathes on her master’s hands.  Iona is carried away and tells her all about it.

CHAMPAGNE

A WAYFARER’S STORY

In the year in which my story begins I had a job at a little station on one of our southwestern railways.  Whether I had a gay or a dull life at the station you can judge from the fact that for fifteen miles round there was not one human habitation, not one woman, not one decent tavern; and in those days I was young, strong, hot-headed, giddy, and foolish.  The only distraction I could possibly find was in the windows of the passenger trains, and in the vile vodka which the Jews drugged with thorn-apple.  Sometimes there would be a glimpse of a woman’s head at a carriage window, and one would stand like a statue without breathing and stare at it until the train turned into an almost invisible speck; or one would drink all one could of the loathsome vodka till one was stupefied and did not feel the passing of the long hours and days.  Upon me, a native of the north, the steppe produced the effect of a deserted Tatar cemetery.  In the summer the steppe with its solemn calm, the monotonous chur of the grasshoppers, the transparent moonlight from which one could not hide, reduced me to listless melancholy; and in the winter the irreproachable whiteness of the steppe, its cold distance, long nights, and howling wolves oppressed me like a heavy nightmare.  There were several people living at the station:  my wife and I, a deaf and scrofulous telegraph clerk, and three watchmen.  My assistant, a young man who was in consumption, used to go for treatment to the town, where he stayed for months at a time, leaving his duties to me together with the right of pocketing his salary.  I had no children, no cake would have tempted visitors to come and see me, and I could only visit other officials on the line, and that no oftener than once a month.