Short Stories by Chekhov
"I . . . I . . . I'm not funking it, but I . . . I . . . I'm sorry for
mamma."
"Say once and for all, are you going or are you not?"
"I am going, only . . . wait a little . . . I want to be at home a
little."
"In that case I will go by myself," Lentilov declared. "I can get on
without you. And you wanted to hunt tigers and fight! Since that's how
it is, give me back my cartridges!"
At this Volodya cried so bitterly that his sisters could not help crying
too. Silence followed.
"So you are not coming?" Lentilov began again.
"I . . . I . . . I am coming!"
"Well, put on your things, then."
And Lentilov tried to cheer Volodya up by singing the praises of
America, growling like a tiger, pretending to be a steamer, scolding
him, and promising to give him all the ivory and lions' and tigers'
skins.
And this thin, dark boy, with his freckles and his bristling shock of
hair, impressed the little girls as an extraordinary remarkable person.
He was a hero, a determined character, who knew no fear, and he growled
so ferociously, that, standing at the door, they really might imagine
there was a tiger or lion inside. When the little girls went back to
their room and dressed, Katya's eyes were full of tears, and she said:
"Oh, I feel so frightened!"
Everything was as usual till two o'clock, when they sat down to dinner.
Then it appeared that the boys were not in the house. They sent to the
servants' quarters, to the stables, to the bailiff's cottage. They were
not to be found. They sent into the village-- they were not there.
At tea, too, the boys were still absent, and by supper-time Volodya's
mother was dreadfully uneasy, and even shed tears.
Late in the evening they sent again to the village, they searched
everywhere, and walked along the river bank with lanterns. Heavens! what
a fuss there was!
Next day the police officer came, and a paper of some sort was written
out in the dining-room. Their mother cried. . . .
All of a sudden a sledge stopped at the door, with three white horses in
a cloud of steam.
"Volodya's come," someone shouted in the yard.
"Master Volodya's here!" bawled Natalya, running into the dining-room.
And Milord barked his deep bass, "bow-wow."
It seemed that the boys had been stopped in the Arcade, where they had
gone from shop to shop asking where they could get gunpowder.
Volodya burst into sobs as soon as he came into the hall, and flung
himself on his mother's neck. The little girls, trembling, wondered with
terror what would happen next. They saw their father take Volodya and
Lentilov into his study, and there he talked to them a long while.
"Is this a proper thing to do?" their father said to them. "I only pray
they won't hear of it at school, you would both be expelled. You ought
to be ashamed, Mr. Lentilov, really. It's not at all the thing to do!
You began it, and I hope you will be punished by your parents. How could
you? Where did you spend the night?"
"At the station," Lentilov answered proudly.
Then Volodya went to bed, and had a compress, steeped in vinegar, on his
forehead.
A telegram was sent off, and next day a lady, Lentilov's mother, made
her appearance and bore off her son.
Lentilov looked morose and haughty to the end, and he did not utter a
single word at taking leave of the little girls. But he took Katya's
book and wrote in it as a souvenir: "Montehomo, the Hawk's Claw, Chief
of the Ever Victorious."
SHROVE TUESDAY
"PAVEL VASSILITCH!" cries Pelageya Ivanovna, waking her husband. "Pavel
Vassilitch! You might go and help Styopa with his lessons, he is sitting
crying over his book. He can't understand something again!"
Pavel Vassilitch gets up, makes the sign of the cross over his mouth as
he yawns, and says softly: "In a minute, my love!"
The cat who has been asleep beside him gets up too, straightens out its
tail, arches its spine, and half-shuts its eyes. There is stillness. . .
. Mice can be heard scurrying behind the wall-paper. Putting on his
boots and his dressing-gown, Pavel Vassilitch, crumpled and frowning
from sleepiness, comes out of his bedroom into the dining-room; on his
entrance another cat, engaged in sniffing a marinade of fish in the
window, jumps down to the floor, and hides behind the cupboard.
"Who asked you to sniff that!" he says angrily, covering the fish with a
sheet of newspaper. "You are a pig to do that, not a cat. . . ."
From the dining-room there is a door leading into the nursery. There, at
a table covered with stains and deep scratches, sits Styopa, a high-
school boy in the second class, with a peevish expression of face and
tear-stained eyes. With his knees raised almost to his chin, and his
hands clasped round them, he is swaying to and fro like a Chinese idol
and looking crossly at a sum book.
"Are you working?" asks Pavel Vassilitch, sitting down to the table and
yawning. "Yes, my boy. . . . We have enjoyed ourselves, slept, and eaten
pancakes, and to-morrow comes Lenten fare, repentance, and going to
work. Every period of time has its limits. Why are your eyes so red? Are
you sick of learning your lessons? To be sure, after pancakes, lessons
are nasty to swallow. That's about it."
"What are you laughing at the child for?" Pelageya Ivanovna calls from
the next room. "You had better show him instead of laughing at him.
He'll get a one again to-morrow, and make me miserable."
"What is it you don't understand?" Pavel Vassilitch asks Styopa.
"Why this . . . division of fractions," the boy answers crossly. "The
division of fractions by fractions. . . ."
"H'm . . . queer boy! What is there in it? There's nothing to understand
in it. Learn the rules, and that's all. . . . To divide a fraction by a
fraction you must multiply the numerator of the first fraction by the
denominator of the second, and that will be the numerator of the
quotient. . . . In this case, the numerator of the first fraction. . .
."
"I know that without your telling me," Styopa interrupts him, flicking a
walnut shell off the table. "Show me the proof."
"The proof? Very well, give me a pencil. Listen. . . . Suppose we want
to divide seven eighths by two fifths. Well, the point of it is, my boy,
that it's required to divide these fractions by each other. . . . Have
they set the samovar?"
"I don't know."
"It's time for tea. . . . It's past seven. Well, now listen. We will
look at it like this. . . . Suppose we want to divide seven eighths not
by two fifths but by two, that is, by the numerator only. We divide it,
what do we get?
"Seven sixteenths."
"Right. Bravo! Well, the trick of it is, my boy, that if we . . . so if
we have divided it by two then. . . . Wait a bit, I am getting muddled.
I remember when I was at school, the teacher of arithmetic was called
Sigismund Urbanitch, a Pole. He used to get into a muddle over every
lesson. He would begin explaining some theory, get in a tangle, and turn
crimson all over and race up and down the class-room as though someone
were sticking an awl in his back, then he would blow his nose half a
dozen times and begin to cry. But you know we were magnanimous to him,
we pretended not to see it. 'What is it, Sigismund Urbanitch?' we used
to ask him. 'Have you got toothache?' And what a set of young ruffians,
regular cut-throats, we were, but yet we were magnanimous, you know!
There weren't any boys like you in my day, they were all great hulking
fellows, great strapping louts, one taller than another. For instance,
in our third class, there was Mamahin. My goodness, he was a solid chap!
You know, a regular maypole, seven feet high. When he moved, the floor
shook; when he brought his great fist down on your back, he would knock
the breath out of your body! Not only we boys, but even the teachers
were afraid of him. So this Mamahin used to . . ."
Pelageya Ivanovna's footsteps are heard through the door. Pavel
Vassilitch winks towards the door and says:
"There's mother coming. Let's get to work. Well, so you see, my boy," he
says, raising his voice. "This fraction has to be multiplied by that
one. Well, and to do that you have to take the numerator of the first
fraction. . ."
"Come to tea!" cries Pelageya Ivanovna. Pavel Vassilitch and his son
abandon arithmetic and go in to tea. Pelageya Ivanovna is already
sitting at the table with an aunt who never speaks, another aunt who is
deaf and dumb, and Granny Markovna, a midwife who had helped Styopa into
the world. The samovar is hissing and puffing out steam which throws
flickering shadows on the ceiling. The cats come in from the entry
sleepy and melancholy with their tails in the air. . . .
"Have some jam with your tea, Markovna," says Pelageya Ivanovna,
addressing the midwife. "To-morrow the great fast begins. Eat well to-
day."
Markovna takes a heaped spoonful of jam hesitatingly as though it were a
powder, raises it to her lips, and with a sidelong look at Pavel
Vassilitch, eats it; at once her face is overspread with a sweet smile,
as sweet as the jam itself.
"The jam is particularly good," she says. "Did you make it yourself,
Pelageya Ivanovna, ma'am?"
"Yes. Who else is there to do it? I do everything myself. Styopotchka,
have I given you your tea too weak? Ah, you have drunk it already. Pass
your cup, my angel; let me give you some more."
"So this Mamahin, my boy, could not bear the French master," Pavel
Vassilitch goes on, addressing his son. "'I am a nobleman,' he used to
shout, 'and I won't allow a Frenchman to lord it over me! We beat the
French in 1812!' Well, of course they used to thrash him for it . . .
thrash him dre-ead-fully, and sometimes when he saw they were meaning to
thrash him, he would jump out of window, and off he would go! Then for
five or six days afterwards he would not show himself at the school. His
mother would come to the head-master and beg him for God's sake: 'Be so
kind, sir, as to find my Mishka, and flog him, the rascal!' And the
head-master would say to her: 'Upon my word, madam, our five porters
aren't a match for him!'"
"Good heavens, to think of such ruffians being born," whispers Pelageya
Ivanovna, looking at her husband in horror. "What a trial for the poor
mother!"
A silence follows. Styopa yawns loudly, and scrutinises the Chinaman on
the tea-caddy whom he has seen a thousand times already. Markovna and
the two aunts sip tea carefully out of their saucers. The air is still
and stifling from the stove. . . . Faces and gestures betray the sloth
and repletion that comes when the stomach is full, and yet one must go
on eating. The samovar, the cups, and the table-cloth are cleared away,
but still the family sits on at the table. . . . Pelageya Ivanovna is
continually jumping up and, with an expression of alarm on her face,
running off into the kitchen, to talk to the cook about the supper. The
two aunts go on sitting in the same position immovably, with their arms
folded across their bosoms and doze, staring with their pewtery little
eyes at the lamp. Markovna hiccups every minute and asks:
"Why is it I have the hiccups? I don't think I have eaten anything to
account for it . . . nor drunk anything either. . . . Hic!"
Pavel Vassilitch and Styopa sit side by side, with their heads touching,
and, bending over the table, examine a volume of the "Neva" for 1878.
"'The monument of Leonardo da Vinci, facing the gallery of Victor
Emmanuel at Milan.' I say! . . . After the style of a triumphal arch. .
. . A cavalier with his lady. . . . And there are little men in the
distance. . . ."
"That little man is like a schoolfellow of mine called Niskubin," says
Styopa.
"Turn over. . . . 'The proboscis of the common house-fly seen under the
microscope.' So that's a proboscis! I say--a fly. Whatever would a bug