Short Stories by Chekhov
up at four o'clock all this week . . . ."
"No, it's not you but I who am miserable, you wretched boy! It's I that
am miserable! You've worn me to a threadpaper, you Herod, you torment,
you bane of my life! I pay for you, you good-for-nothing rubbish; I've
bent my back toiling for you, I'm worried to death, and, I may say, I am
unhappy, and what do you care? How do you work?"
"I . . . I do work. All night. . . . You've seen it yourself."
"I prayed to God to take me, but He won't take me, a sinful woman . . .
. You torment! Other people have children like everyone else, and I've
one only and no sense, no comfort out of him. Beat you? I'd beat you,
but where am I to find the strength? Mother of God, where am I to find
the strength?"
The mamma hid her face in the folds of her blouse and broke into sobs.
Vanya wriggled with anguish and pressed his forehead against the wall.
The aunt came in.
"So that's how it is. . . . Just what I expected," she said, at once
guessing what was wrong, turning pale and clasping her hands. "I've been
depressed all the morning. . . . There's trouble coming, I thought . . .
and here it's come. . . ."
"The villain, the torment!"
"Why are you swearing at him?" cried the aunt, nervously pulling her
coffee-coloured kerchief off her head and turning upon the mother. "It's
not his fault! It's your fault! You are to blame! Why did you send him
to that high school? You are a fine lady! You want to be a lady? A-a-ah!
I dare say, as though you'll turn into gentry! But if you had sent him,
as I told you, into business . . . to an office, like my Kuzya . . .
here is Kuzya getting five hundred a year. . . . Five hundred roubles is
worth having, isn't it? And you are wearing yourself out, and wearing
the boy out with this studying, plague take it! He is thin, he coughs .
. . just look at him! He's thirteen, and he looks no more than ten."
"No, Nastenka, no, my dear! I haven't thrashed him enough, the torment!
He ought to have been thrashed, that's what it is! Ugh . . . Jesuit,
Mahomet, torment!" she shook her fist at her son. "You want a flogging,
but I haven't the strength. They told me years ago when he was little,
'Whip him, whip him!' I didn't heed them, sinful woman as I am. And now
I am suffering for it. You wait a bit! I'll flay you! Wait a bit . . .
."
The mamma shook her wet fist, and went weeping into her lodger's room.
The lodger, Yevtihy Kuzmitch Kuporossov, was sitting at his table,
reading "Dancing Self-taught." Yevtihy Kuzmitch was a man of
intelligence and education. He spoke through his nose, washed with a
soap the smell of which made everyone in the house sneeze, ate meat on
fast days, and was on the look-out for a bride of refined education, and
so was considered the cleverest of the lodgers. He sang tenor.
"My good friend," began the mamma, dissolving into tears. "If you would
have the generosity--thrash my boy for me. . . . Do me the favour! He's
failed in his examination, the nuisance of a boy! Would you believe it,
he's failed! I can't punish him, through the weakness of my ill-health.
. . . Thrash him for me, if you would be so obliging and considerate,
Yevtihy Kuzmitch! Have regard for a sick woman!"
Kuporossov frowned and heaved a deep sigh through his nose. He thought a
little, drummed on the table with his fingers, and sighing once more,
went to Vanya.
"You are being taught, so to say," he began, "being educated, being
given a chance, you revolting young person! Why have you done it?"
He talked for a long time, made a regular speech. He alluded to science,
to light, and to darkness.
"Yes, young person."
When he had finished his speech, he took off his belt and took Vanya by
the hand.
"It's the only way to deal with you," he said. Vanya knelt down
submissively and thrust his head between the lodger's knees. His
prominent pink ears moved up and down against the lodger's new serge
trousers, with brown stripes on the outer seams.
Vanya did not utter a single sound. At the family council in the
evening, it was decided to send him into business.
VANKA
VANKA ZHUKOV, a boy of nine, who had been for three months apprenticed
to Alyahin the shoemaker, was sitting up on Christmas Eve. Waiting till
his master and mistress and their workmen had gone to the midnight
service, he took out of his master's cupboard a bottle of ink and a pen
with a rusty nib, and, spreading out a crumpled sheet of paper in front
of him, began writing. Before forming the first letter he several times
looked round fearfully at the door and the windows, stole a glance at
the dark ikon, on both sides of which stretched shelves full of lasts,
and heaved a broken sigh. The paper lay on the bench while he knelt
before it.
"Dear grandfather, Konstantin Makaritch," he wrote, "I am writing you a
letter. I wish you a happy Christmas, and all blessings from God
Almighty. I have neither father nor mother, you are the only one left
me."
Vanka raised his eyes to the dark ikon on which the light of his candle
was reflected, and vividly recalled his grandfather, Konstantin
Makaritch, who was night watchman to a family called Zhivarev. He was a
thin but extraordinarily nimble and lively little old man of sixty-five,
with an everlastingly laughing face and drunken eyes. By day he slept in
the servants' kitchen, or made jokes with the cooks; at night, wrapped
in an ample sheepskin, he walked round the grounds and tapped with his
little mallet. Old Kashtanka and Eel, so-called on account of his dark
colour and his long body like a weasel's, followed him with hanging
heads. This Eel was exceptionally polite and affectionate, and looked
with equal kindness on strangers and his own masters, but had not a very
good reputation. Under his politeness and meekness was hidden the most
Jesuitical cunning. No one knew better how to creep up on occasion and
snap at one's legs, to slip into the store-room, or steal a hen from a
peasant. His hind legs had been nearly pulled off more than once, twice
he had been hanged, every week he was thrashed till he was half dead,
but he always revived.
At this moment grandfather was, no doubt, standing at the gate, screwing
up his eyes at the red windows of the church, stamping with his high
felt boots, and joking with the servants. His little mallet was hanging
on his belt. He was clasping his hands, shrugging with the cold, and,
with an aged chuckle, pinching first the housemaid, then the cook.
"How about a pinch of snuff?" he was saying, offering the women his
snuff-box.
The women would take a sniff and sneeze. Grandfather would be
indescribably delighted, go off into a merry chuckle, and cry:
"Tear it off, it has frozen on!"
They give the dogs a sniff of snuff too. Kashtanka sneezes, wriggles her
head, and walks away offended. Eel does not sneeze, from politeness, but
wags his tail. And the weather is glorious. The air is still, fresh, and
transparent. The night is dark, but one can see the whole village with
its white roofs and coils of smoke coming from the chimneys, the trees
silvered with hoar frost, the snowdrifts. The whole sky spangled with
gay twinkling stars, and the Milky Way is as distinct as though it had
been washed and rubbed with snow for a holiday. . . .
Vanka sighed, dipped his pen, and went on writing:
"And yesterday I had a wigging. The master pulled me out into the yard
by my hair, and whacked me with a boot-stretcher because I accidentally
fell asleep while I was rocking their brat in the cradle. And a week ago
the mistress told me to clean a herring, and I began from the tail end,
and she took the herring and thrust its head in my face. The workmen
laugh at me and send me to the tavern for vodka, and tell me to steal
the master's cucumbers for them, and the master beats me with anything
that comes to hand. And there is nothing to eat. In the morning they
give me bread, for dinner, porridge, and in the evening, bread again;
but as for tea, or soup, the master and mistress gobble it all up
themselves. And I am put to sleep in the passage, and when their
wretched brat cries I get no sleep at all, but have to rock the cradle.
Dear grandfather, show the divine mercy, take me away from here, home to
the village. It's more than I can bear. I bow down to your feet, and
will pray to God for you for ever, take me away from here or I shall
die."
Vanka's mouth worked, he rubbed his eyes with his black fist, and gave a
sob.
"I will powder your snuff for you," he went on. "I will pray for you,
and if I do anything you can thrash me like Sidor's goat. And if you
think I've no job, then I will beg the steward for Christ's sake to let
me clean his boots, or I'll go for a shepherd-boy instead of Fedka. Dear
grandfather, it is more than I can bear, it's simply no life at all. I
wanted to run away to the village, but I have no boots, and I am afraid
of the frost. When I grow up big I will take care of you for this, and
not let anyone annoy you, and when you die I will pray for the rest of
your soul, just as for my mammy's."
"Moscow is a big town. It's all gentlemen's houses, and there are lots
of horses, but there are no sheep, and the dogs are not spiteful. The
lads here don't go out with the star, and they don't let anyone go into
the choir, and once I saw in a shop window fishing-hooks for sale,
fitted ready with the line and for all sorts of fish, awfully good ones,
there was even one hook that would hold a forty-pound sheat-fish. And I
have seen shops where there are guns of all sorts, after the pattern of
the master's guns at home, so that I shouldn't wonder if they are a
hundred roubles each. . . . And in the butchers' shops there are grouse
and woodcocks and fish and hares, but the shopmen don't say where they
shoot them."
"Dear grandfather, when they have the Christmas tree at the big house,
get me a gilt walnut, and put it away in the green trunk. Ask the young
lady Olga Ignatyevna, say it's for Vanka."
Vanka gave a tremulous sigh, and again stared at the window. He
remembered how his grandfather always went into the forest to get the
Christmas tree for his master's family, and took his grandson with him.
It was a merry time! Grandfather made a noise in his throat, the forest
crackled with the frost, and looking at them Vanka chortled too. Before
chopping down the Christmas tree, grandfather would smoke a pipe, slowly
take a pinch of snuff, and laugh at frozen Vanka. . . . The young fir
trees, covered with hoar frost, stood motionless, waiting to see which
of them was to die. Wherever one looked, a hare flew like an arrow over
the snowdrifts . . . . Grandfather could not refrain from shouting:
"Hold him, hold him . . . hold him! Ah, the bob-tailed devil!"
When he had cut down the Christmas tree, grandfather used to drag it to
the big house, and there set to work to decorate it. . . . The young
lady, who was Vanka's favourite, Olga Ignatyevna, was the busiest of
all. When Vanka's mother Pelageya was alive, and a servant in the big
house, Olga Ignatyevna used to give him goodies, and having nothing
better to do, taught him to read and write, to count up to a hundred,
and even to dance a quadrille. When Pelageya died, Vanka had been
transferred to the servants' kitchen to be with his grandfather, and
from the kitchen to the shoemaker's in Moscow.
"Do come, dear grandfather," Vanka went on with his letter. "For
Christ's sake, I beg you, take me away. Have pity on an unhappy orphan
like me; here everyone knocks me about, and I am fearfully hungry; I
can't tell you what misery it is, I am always crying. And the other day
the master hit me on the head with a last, so that I fell down. My life
is wretched, worse than any dog's. . . . I send greetings to Alyona,