Chapter 10 - Page 2

filled with tears, and he
had grown so thin in that one night that he was nothing but skin and
bone.

Vasili Andreevich was stiff as a frozen carcass, and when they rolled
him off Nikita his legs remained apart and his arms stretched out as
they had been. His bulging hawk eyes were frozen, and his open mouth
under his clipped moustache was full of snow. But Nikita though chilled
through was still alive. When he had been brought to, he felt sure
that he was already dead and that what was taking place with him was
no longer happening in this world but in the next. When he heard the
peasants shouting as they dug him out and rolled the frozen body of
Vasili Andreevich from off him, he was at first surprised that in the
other world peasants should be shouting in the same old way and had the
same kind of body, and then when he realized that he was still in this
world he was sorry rather than glad, especially when he found that the
toes on both his feet were frozen.

Nikita lay in hospital for two months. They cut off three of his toes,
but the others recovered so that he was still able to work and went on
living for another twenty years, first as a farm-labourer, then in his
old age as a watchman. He died at home as he had wished, only this year,
under the icons with a lighted taper in his hands. Before he died he
asked his wife's forgiveness and forgave her for the cooper. He also
took leave of his son and grandchildren, and died sincerely glad that
he was relieving his son and daughter-in-law of the burden of having to
feed him, and that he was now really passing from this life of which
he was weary into that other life which every year and every hour grew
clearer and more desirable to him. Whether he is better or worse off
there where he awoke after his death, whether he was disappointed or
found there what he expected, we shall all soon learn.