Short Stories by Chekhov
at Mitka.
"What is your name?" the deacon asks.
"Fedya."
"And your name from your father?"
"I don't know."
"What is your papa's name?"
"Ivan Petrovitch."
"And your surname?"
I make no answer.
"How old are you?"
"Nearly nine."
When I get home I go to bed quickly, that I may not see them eating
supper; and, shutting my eyes, dream of how fine it would be to endure
martyrdom at the hands of some Herod or Dioskorus, to live in the
desert, and, like St. Serafim, feed the bears, live in a cell, and eat
nothing but holy bread, give my property to the poor, go on a pilgrimage
to Kiev. I hear them laying the table in the dining-room--they are going
to have supper, they will eat salad, cabbage pies, fried and baked fish.
How hungry I am! I would consent to endure any martyrdom, to live in the
desert without my mother, to feed bears out of my own hands, if only I
might first eat just one cabbage pie!
"Lord, purify me a sinner," I pray, covering my head over. "Guardian
angel, save me from the unclean spirit."
The next day, Thursday, I wake up with my heart as pure and clean as a
fine spring day. I go gaily and boldly into the church, feeling that I
am a communicant, that I have a splendid and expensive shirt on, made
out of a silk dress left by my grandmother. In the church everything has
an air of joy, happiness, and spring. The faces of the Mother of God and
St. John the Divine are not so sorrowful as yesterday. The faces of the
communicants are radiant with hope, and it seems as though all the past
is forgotten, all is forgiven. Mitka, too, has combed his hair, and is
dressed in his best. I look gaily at his protruding ears, and to show
that I have nothing against him, I say:
"You look nice to-day, and if your hair did not stand up so, and you
weren't so poorly dressed, everybody would think that your mother was
not a washerwoman but a lady. Come to me at Easter, we will play
knuckle-bones."
Mitka looks at me mistrustfully, and shakes his fist at me on the sly.
And the lady I saw yesterday looks lovely. She is wearing a light blue
dress, and a big sparkling brooch in the shape of a horse-shoe. I admire
her, and think that, when I am grown-up, I will certainly marry a woman
like that, but remembering that getting married is shameful, I leave off
thinking about it, and go into the choir where the deacon is already
reading the "hours."
WHITEBROW
A HUNGRY she-wolf got up to go hunting. Her cubs, all three of them,
were sound asleep, huddled in a heap and keeping each other warm. She
licked them and went off.
It was already March, a month of spring, but at night the trees snapped
with the cold, as they do in December, and one could hardly put one's
tongue out without its being nipped. The wolf-mother was in delicate
health and nervous; she started at the slightest sound, and kept hoping
that no one would hurt the little ones at home while she was away. The
smell of the tracks of men and horses, logs, piles of faggots, and the
dark road with horse-dung on it frightened her; it seemed to her that
men were standing behind the trees in the darkness, and that dogs were
howling somewhere beyond the forest.
She was no longer young and her scent had grown feebler, so that it
sometimes happened that she took the track of a fox for that of a dog,
and even at times lost her way, a thing that had never been in her
youth. Owing to the weakness of her health she no longer hunted calves
and big sheep as she had in old days, and kept her distance now from
mares with colts; she fed on nothing but carrion; fresh meat she tasted
very rarely, only in the spring when she would come upon a hare and take
away her young, or make her way into a peasant's stall where there were
lambs.
Some three miles from her lair there stood a winter hut on the posting
road. There lived the keeper Ignat, an old man of seventy, who was
always coughing and talking to himself; at night he was usually asleep,
and by day he wandered about the forest with a single-barrelled gun,
whistling to the hares. He must have worked among machinery in early
days, for before he stood still he always shouted to himself: "Stop the
machine!" and before going on: "Full speed!" He had a huge black dog of
indeterminate breed, called Arapka. When it ran too far ahead he used to
shout to it: "Reverse action!" Sometimes he used to sing, and as he did
so staggered violently, and often fell down (the wolf thought the wind
blew him over), and shouted: "Run off the rails!"
The wolf remembered that, in the summer and autumn, a ram and two ewes
were pasturing near the winter hut, and when she had run by not so long
ago she fancied that she had heard bleating in the stall. And now, as
she got near the place, she reflected that it was already March, and, by
that time, there would certainly be lambs in the stall. She was
tormented by hunger, she thought with what greediness she would eat a
lamb, and these thoughts made her teeth snap, and her eyes glitter in
the darkness like two sparks of light.
Ignat's hut, his barn, cattle-stall, and well were surrounded by high
snowdrifts. All was still. Arapka was, most likely, asleep in the barn.
The wolf clambered over a snowdrift on to the stall, and began
scratching away the thatched roof with her paws and her nose. The straw
was rotten and decaying, so that the wolf almost fell through; all at
once a smell of warm steam, of manure, and of sheep's milk floated
straight to her nostrils. Down below, a lamb, feeling the cold, bleated
softly. Leaping through the hole, the wolf fell with her four paws and
chest on something soft and warm, probably a sheep, and at the same
moment, something in the stall suddenly began whining, barking, and
going off into a shrill little yap; the sheep huddled against the wall,
and the wolf, frightened, snatched the first thing her teeth fastened
on, and dashed away. . . .
She ran at her utmost speed, while Arapka, who by now had scented the
wolf, howled furiously, the frightened hens cackled, and Ignat, coming
out into the porch, shouted: "Full speed! Blow the whistle!"
And he whistled like a steam-engine, and then shouted: "Ho-ho-ho-ho!"
and all this noise was repeated by the forest echo. When, little by
little, it all died away, the wolf somewhat recovered herself, and began
to notice that the prey she held in her teeth and dragged along the snow
was heavier and, as it were, harder than lambs usually were at that
season; and it smelt somehow different, and uttered strange sounds. . .
. The wolf stopped and laid her burden on the snow, to rest and begin
eating it, then all at once she leapt back in disgust. It was not a
lamb, but a black puppy, with a big head and long legs, of a large
breed, with a white patch on his brow, like Arapka's. Judging from his
manners he was a simple, ignorant, yard-dog. He licked his crushed and
wounded back, and, as though nothing was the matter, wagged his tail and
barked at the wolf. She growled like a dog, and ran away from him. He
ran after her. She looked round and snapped her teeth. He stopped in
perplexity, and, probably deciding that she was playing with him, craned
his head in the direction he had come from, and went off into a shrill,
gleeful bark, as though inviting his mother Arapka to play with him and
the wolf.
It was already getting light, and when the wolf reached her home in the
thick aspen wood, each aspen tree could be seen distinctly, and the
woodcocks were already awake, and the beautiful male birds often flew
up, disturbed by the incautious gambols and barking of the puppy.
"Why does he run after me?" thought the wolf with annoyance. "I suppose
he wants me to eat him."
She lived with her cubs in a shallow hole; three years before, a tall
old pine tree had been torn up by the roots in a violent storm, and the
hole had been formed by it. Now there were dead leaves and moss at the
bottom, and around it lay bones and bullocks' horns, with which the
little ones played. They were by now awake, and all three of them, very
much alike, were standing in a row at the edge of their hole, looking at
their returning mother, and wagging their tails. Seeing them, the puppy
stopped a little way off, and stared at them for a very long time;
seeing that they, too, were looking very attentively at him, he began
barking angrily, as at strangers.
By now it was daylight and the sun had risen, the snow sparkled all
around, but still the puppy stood a little way off and barked. The cubs
sucked their mother, pressing her thin belly with their paws, while she
gnawed a horse's bone, dry and white; she was tormented by hunger, her
head ached from the dog's barking, and she felt inclined to fall on the
uninvited guest and tear him to pieces.
At last the puppy was hoarse and exhausted; seeing they were not afraid
of him, and not even attending to him, he began somewhat timidly
approaching the cubs, alternately squatting down and bounding a few
steps forward. Now, by daylight, it was easy to have a good look at him.
. . . His white forehead was big, and on it was a hump such as is only
seen on very stupid dogs; he had little, blue, dingy-looking eyes, and
the expression of his whole face was extremely stupid. When he reached
the cubs he stretched out his broad paws, laid his head upon them, and
began:
"Mnya, myna . . . nga--nga--nga . . . !"
The cubs did not understand what he meant, but they wagged their tails.
Then the puppy gave one of the cubs a smack on its big head with his
paw. The cub, too, gave him a smack on the head. The puppy stood
sideways to him, and looked at him askance, wagging his tail, then
dashed off, and ran round several times on the frozen snow. The cubs ran
after him, he fell on his back and kicked up his legs, and all three of
them fell upon him, squealing with delight, and began biting him, not to
hurt but in play. The crows sat on the high pine tree, and looked down
on their struggle, and were much troubled by it. They grew noisy and
merry. The sun was hot, as though it were spring; and the woodcocks,
continually flitting through the pine tree that had been blown down by
the storm, looked as though made of emerald in the brilliant sunshine.
As a rule, wolf-mothers train their children to hunt by giving them prey
to play with; and now watching the cubs chasing the puppy over the
frozen snow and struggling with him, the mother thought:
"Let them learn."
When they had played long enough, the cubs went into the hole and lay
down to sleep. The puppy howled a little from hunger, then he, too,
stretched out in the sunshine. And when they woke up they began playing
again.
All day long, and in the evening, the wolf-mother was thinking how the
lamb had bleated in the cattle-shed the night before, and how it had
smelt of sheep's milk, and she kept snapping her teeth from hunger, and
never left off greedily gnawing the old bone, pretending to herself that
it was the lamb. The cubs sucked their mother, and the puppy, who was
hungry, ran round them and sniffed at the snow.
"I'll eat him . . ." the mother-wolf decided.
She went up to him, and he licked her nose and yapped at her, thinking
that she wanted to play with him. In the past she had eaten dogs, but
the dog smelt very doggy, and in the delicate state of her health she
could not endure the smell; she felt disgusted and walked away. . . .
Towards night it grew cold. The puppy felt depressed and went home.
When the wolf-cubs were fast asleep, their mother went out hunting
again. As on the previous night she was alarmed at every sound, and she
was frightened by the stumps, the logs, the dark juniper bushes, which
stood out singly, and in the distance were like human beings. She ran on