ON OFFICIAL DUTY

constable Loshadin, with his stick.

“It has all been according to the regulation,” he said, smiling naively as
he looked at the examining magistrate with his watery eyes, evidently
wishing to suggest by that smile that now everything was satisfactory, that
everything had turned out well.
He helped the examining magistrate into the sledge, tucked the
covering round him, and said:
“I hope you will be comfortable.”
The sledge moved off. Lyzhin looked round for the last time to say
good-by to Loshadin, but the latter was no longer by the sledge, but was
standing at the entrance, holding his stick at his side and eagerly talking to
the cook.
Again they drove through the village, again the same endless forest,
the same broad clearing, the fields, the telegraph-poles flashing by, which
were slowly being covered with soft snow. Now there was no blizzard,
everything was still as death, but the doctor and the examining
magistrate, chilled and silent, looked dejectedly at the road, and it seemed
to them that this waste of snow was endless and that they would never in
their lives get out of this forest. And both thought of life in the village. It
is true that there were people there devoured by ambition, who lived
without noticing the forest, the sky, the beauty and the marvels of nature;
such people remembered the forest and the fields only when the crops
promised to be bad or when the timber was being felled, when the “jay”
trees were attacked by moths, or when wolves attacked the cattle; to them,
nature was an enemy with which the peasants are continually fighting for
their crops, their meadows, their cattle. But, side by side with this
utilitarian view of life there was another which unconsciously accepted
nature as something mighty, mysterious, and hostile, to dread which was
an unseen force not subject to man, and there was no escaping it. It is as
unreasonable and senseless to be reconciled to the devouring power of this
force as to hope to vanquish it in striving to adapt life to one’s desires.
On returning, they learned that the snowstorm had so delayed the arrival
of officials and witnesses that the inquest over the insurance agent, Lesnitsky’s body could only commence in the evening. As the procedural
formalities unfolded, both the examining magistrate and the doctor couldn’t
help feeling numb to the core, realizing how detached and mechanical their

official duties seemed compared to the genuine, wrenching complexities of
human life they had briefly touched beyond the confines of their roles.
The story of Lesnitsky’s suicide and the constable’s toilsome existence
continued to resonate as an enduring reminder of the profound shared
connections and the inexplicable, often overlooked tapestry of life binding
them all.