Short Stories by Chekhov
one-eyed Yegorka, and the coachman, and don't give my concertina to
anyone. I remain, your grandson, Ivan Zhukov. Dear grandfather, do
come."
Vanka folded the sheet of writing-paper twice, and put it into an
envelope he had bought the day before for a kopeck. . . . After thinking
a little, he dipped the pen and wrote the address:
To grandfather in the village.
Then he scratched his head, thought a little, and added: Konstantin
Makaritch. Glad that he had not been prevented from writing, he put on
his cap and, without putting on his little greatcoat, ran out into the
street as he was in his shirt. . . .
The shopmen at the butcher's, whom he had questioned the day before,
told him that letters were put in post-boxes, and from the boxes were
carried about all over the earth in mailcarts with drunken drivers and
ringing bells. Vanka ran to the nearest post-box, and thrust the
precious letter in the slit. . . .
An hour later, lulled by sweet hopes, he was sound asleep. . . . He
dreamed of the stove. On the stove was sitting his grandfather, swinging
his bare legs, and reading the letter to the cooks. . . .
By the stove was Eel, wagging his tail.
AN INCIDENT
MORNING. Brilliant sunshine is piercing through the frozen lacework on
the window-panes into the nursery. Vanya, a boy of six, with a cropped
head and a nose like a button, and his sister Nina, a short, chubby,
curly-headed girl of four, wake up and look crossly at each other
through the bars of their cots.
"Oo-oo-oo! naughty children!" grumbles their nurse. "Good people have
had their breakfast already, while you can't get your eyes open."
The sunbeams frolic over the rugs, the walls, and nurse's skirts, and
seem inviting the children to join in their play, but they take no
notice. They have woken up in a bad humour. Nina pouts, makes a grimace,
and begins to whine:
"Brea-eakfast, nurse, breakfast!"
Vanya knits his brows and ponders what to pitch upon to howl over. He
has already begun screwing up his eyes and opening his mouth, but at
that instant the voice of mamma reaches them from the drawing-room,
saying: "Don't forget to give the cat her milk, she has a family now!"
The children's puckered countenances grow smooth again as they look at
each other in astonishment. Then both at once begin shouting, jump out
of their cots, and filling the air with piercing shrieks, run barefoot,
in their nightgowns, to the kitchen.
"The cat has puppies!" they cry. "The cat has got puppies!"
Under the bench in the kitchen there stands a small box, the one in
which Stepan brings coal when he lights the fire. The cat is peeping out
of the box. There is an expression of extreme exhaustion on her grey
face; her green eyes, with their narrow black pupils, have a languid,
sentimental look. From her face it is clear that the only thing lacking
to complete her happiness is the presence in the box of "him," the
father of her children, to whom she had abandoned herself so recklessly!
She wants to mew, and opens her mouth wide, but nothing but a hiss comes
from her throat; the squealing of the kittens is audible.
The children squat on their heels before the box, and, motionless,
holding their breath, gaze at the cat. . . . They are surprised,
impressed, and do not hear nurse grumbling as she pursues them. The most
genuine delight shines in the eyes of both.
Domestic animals play a scarcely noticed but undoubtedly beneficial part
in the education and life of children. Which of us does not remember
powerful but magnanimous dogs, lazy lapdogs, birds dying in captivity,
dull-witted but haughty turkeys, mild old tabby cats, who forgave us
when we trod on their tails for fun and caused them agonising pain? I
even fancy, sometimes, that the patience, the fidelity, the readiness to
forgive, and the sincerity which are characteristic of our domestic
animals have a far stronger and more definite effect on the mind of a
child than the long exhortations of some dry, pale Karl Karlovitch, or
the misty expositions of a governess, trying to prove to children that
water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen.
"What little things!" says Nina, opening her eyes wide and going off
into a joyous laugh. "They are like mice!"
"One, two, three," Vanya counts. "Three kittens. So there is one for
you, one for me, and one for somebody else, too."
"Murrm . . . murrm . . ." purrs the mother, flattered by their
attention. "Murrm."
After gazing at the kittens, the children take them from under the cat,
and begin squeezing them in their hands, then, not satisfied with this,
they put them in the skirts of their nightgowns, and run into the other
rooms.
"Mamma, the cat has got pups!" they shout.
Mamma is sitting in the drawing-room with some unknown gentleman. Seeing
the children unwashed, undressed, with their nightgowns held up high,
she is embarrassed, and looks at them severely.
"Let your nightgowns down, disgraceful children," she says. "Go out of
the room, or I will punish you."
But the children do not notice either mamma's threats or the presence of
a stranger. They put the kittens down on the carpet, and go off into
deafening squeals. The mother walks round them, mewing imploringly.
When, a little afterwards, the children are dragged off to the nursery,
dressed, made to say their prayers, and given their breakfast, they are
full of a passionate desire to get away from these prosaic duties as
quickly as possible, and to run to the kitchen again.
Their habitual pursuits and games are thrown completely into the
background.
The kittens throw everything into the shade by making their appearance
in the world, and supply the great sensation of the day. If Nina or
Vanya had been offered forty pounds of sweets or ten thousand kopecks
for each kitten, they would have rejected such a barter without the
slightest hesitation. In spite of the heated protests of the nurse and
the cook, the children persist in sitting by the cat's box in the
kitchen, busy with the kittens till dinner-time. Their faces are earnest
and concentrated and express anxiety. They are worried not so much by
the present as by the future of the kittens. They decide that one kitten
shall remain at home with the old cat to be a comfort to her mother,
while the second shall go to their summer villa, and the third shall
live in the cellar, where there are ever so many rats.
"But why don't they look at us?" Nina wondered. "Their eyes are blind
like the beggars'."
Vanya, too, is perturbed by this question. He tries to open one kitten's
eyes, and spends a long time puffing and breathing hard over it, but his
operation is unsuccessful. They are a good deal troubled, too, by the
circumstance that the kittens obstinately refuse the milk and the meat
that is offered to them. Everything that is put before their little
noses is eaten by their grey mamma.
"Let's build the kittens little houses," Vanya suggests. "They shall
live in different houses, and the cat shall come and pay them visits. .
. ."
Cardboard hat-boxes are put in the different corners of the kitchen and
the kittens are installed in them. But this division turns out to be
premature; the cat, still wearing an imploring and sentimental
expression on her face, goes the round of all the hat-boxes, and carries
off her children to their original position.
"The cat's their mother," observed Vanya, "but who is their father?"
"Yes, who is their father?" repeats Nina.
"They must have a father."
Vanya and Nina are a long time deciding who is to be the kittens'
father, and, in the end, their choice falls on a big dark-red horse
without a tail, which is lying in the store-cupboard under the stairs,
together with other relics of toys that have outlived their day. They
drag him up out of the store-cupboard and stand him by the box.
"Mind now!" they admonish him, "stand here and see they behave
themselves properly."
All this is said and done in the gravest way, with an expression of
anxiety on their faces. Vanya and Nina refuse to recognise the existence
of any world but the box of kittens. Their joy knows no bounds. But they
have to pass through bitter, agonising moments, too.
Just before dinner, Vanya is sitting in his father's study, gazing
dreamily at the table. A kitten is moving about by the lamp, on stamped
note paper. Vanya is watching its movements, and thrusting first a
pencil, then a match into its little mouth. . . . All at once, as though
he has sprung out of the floor, his father is beside the table.
"What's this?" Vanya hears, in an angry voice.
"It's . . . it's the kitty, papa. . . ."
"I'll give it you; look what you have done, you naughty boy! You've
dirtied all my paper!"
To Vanya's great surprise his papa does not share his partiality for the
kittens, and, instead of being moved to enthusiasm and delight, he pulls
Vanya's ear and shouts:
"Stepan, take away this horrid thing."
At dinner, too, there is a scene. . . . During the second course there
is suddenly the sound of a shrill mew. They begin to investigate its
origin, and discover a kitten under Nina's pinafore.
"Nina, leave the table!" cries her father angrily. "Throw the kittens in
the cesspool! I won't have the nasty things in the house! . . ."
Vanya and Nina are horrified. Death in the cesspool, apart from its
cruelty, threatens to rob the cat and the wooden horse of their
children, to lay waste the cat's box, to destroy their plans for the
future, that fair future in which one cat will be a comfort to its old
mother, another will live in the country, while the third will catch
rats in the cellar. The children begin to cry and entreat that the
kittens may be spared. Their father consents, but on the condition that
the children do not go into the kitchen and touch the kittens.
After dinner, Vanya and Nina slouch about the rooms, feeling depressed.
The prohibition of visits to the kitchen has reduced them to dejection.
They refuse sweets, are naughty, and are rude to their mother. When
their uncle Petrusha comes in the evening, they draw him aside, and
complain to him of their father, who wanted to throw the kittens into
the cesspool.
"Uncle Petrusha, tell mamma to have the kittens taken to the nursery,"
the children beg their uncle, "do-o tell her."
"There, there . . . very well," says their uncle, waving them off. "All
right."
Uncle Petrusha does not usually come alone. He is accompanied by Nero, a
big black dog of Danish breed, with drooping ears, and a tail as hard as
a stick. The dog is silent, morose, and full of a sense of his own
dignity. He takes not the slightest notice of the children, and when he
passes them hits them with his tail as though they were chairs. The
children hate him from the bottom of their hearts, but on this occasion,
practical considerations override sentiment.
"I say, Nina," says Vanya, opening his eyes wide. "Let Nero be their
father, instead of the horse! The horse is dead and he is alive, you
see."
They are waiting the whole evening for the moment when papa will sit
down to his cards and it will be possible to take Nero to the kitchen
without being observed. . . . At last, papa sits down to cards, mamma is
busy with the samovar and not noticing the children. . . .
The happy moment arrives.
"Come along!" Vanya whispers to his sister.
But, at that moment, Stepan comes in and, with a snigger, announces:
"Nero has eaten the kittens, madam."
Nina and Vanya turn pale and look at Stepan with horror.
"He really has . . ." laughs the footman, "he went to the box and
gobbled them up."
The children expect that all the people in the house will be aghast and
fall upon the miscreant Nero. But they all sit calmly in their seats,