Short Stories by Chekhov
the ice-covered snow, keeping away from the road. . . . All at once she
caught a glimpse of something dark, far away on the road. She strained
her eyes and ears: yes, something really was walking on in front, she
could even hear the regular thud of footsteps. Surely not a badger?
Cautiously holding her breath, and keeping always to one side, she
overtook the dark patch, looked round, and recognised it. It was the
puppy with the white brow, going with a slow, lingering step homewards.
"If only he doesn't hinder me again," thought the wolf, and ran quickly
on ahead.
But the homestead was by now near. Again she clambered on to the cattle-
shed by the snowdrift. The gap she had made yesterday had been already
mended with straw, and two new rafters stretched across the roof. The
wolf began rapidly working with her legs and nose, looking round to see
whether the puppy were coming, but the smell of the warm steam and
manure had hardly reached her nose before she heard a gleeful burst of
barking behind her. It was the puppy. He leapt up to the wolf on the
roof, then into the hole, and, feeling himself at home in the warmth,
recognising his sheep, he barked louder than ever. . . . Arapka woke up
in the barn, and, scenting a wolf, howled, the hens began cackling, and
by the time Ignat appeared in the porch with his single-barrelled gun
the frightened wolf was already far away.
"Fuite!" whistled Ignat. "Fuite! Full steam ahead!"
He pulled the trigger--the gun missed fire; he pulled the trigger
again--again it missed fire; he tried a third time--and a great blaze of
flame flew out of the barrel and there was a deafening boom, boom. It
kicked him violently on the shoulder, and, taking his gun in one hand
and his axe in the other, he went to see what the noise was about.
A little later he went back to the hut.
"What was it?" a pilgrim, who was staying the night at the hut and had
been awakened by the noise, asked in a husky voice.
"It's all right," answered Ignat. "Nothing of consequence. Our Whitebrow
has taken to sleeping with the sheep in the warm. Only he hasn't the
sense to go in at the door, but always tries to wriggle in by the roof.
The other night he tore a hole in the roof and went off on the spree,
the rascal, and now he has come back and scratched away the roof again."
"Stupid dog."
"Yes, there is a spring snapped in his brain. I do detest fools," sighed
Ignat, clambering on to the stove. "Come, man of God, it's early yet to
get up. Let us sleep full steam! . . ."
In the morning he called Whitebrow, smacked him hard about the ears, and
then showing him a stick, kept repeating to him:
"Go in at the door! Go in at the door! Go in at the door!"
KASHTANKA (A Story) I
|Misbehaviour
A YOUNG dog, a reddish mongrel, between a dachshund and a "yard-dog,"
very like a fox in face, was running up and down the pavement looking
uneasily from side to side. From time to time she stopped and, whining
and lifting first one chilled paw and then another, tried to make up her
mind how it could have happened that she was lost.
She remembered very well how she had passed the day, and how, in the
end, she had found herself on this unfamiliar pavement.
The day had begun by her master Luka Alexandritch's putting on his hat,
taking something wooden under his arm wrapped up in a red handkerchief,
and calling: "Kashtanka, come along!"
Hearing her name the mongrel had come out from under the work-table,
where she slept on the shavings, stretched herself voluptuously and run
after her master. The people Luka Alexandritch worked for lived a very
long way off, so that, before he could get to any one of them, the
carpenter had several times to step into a tavern to fortify himself.
Kashtanka remembered that on the way she had behaved extremely
improperly. In her delight that she was being taken for a walk she
jumped about, dashed barking after the trains, ran into yards, and
chased other dogs. The carpenter was continually losing sight of her,
stopping, and angrily shouting at her. Once he had even, with an
expression of fury in his face, taken her fox-like ear in his fist,
smacked her, and said emphatically: "Pla-a-ague take you, you pest!"
After having left the work where it had been bespoken, Luka Alexandritch
went into his sister's and there had something to eat and drink; from
his sister's he had gone to see a bookbinder he knew; from the
bookbinder's to a tavern, from the tavern to another crony's, and so on.
In short, by the time Kashtanka found herself on the unfamiliar
pavement, it was getting dusk, and the carpenter was as drunk as a
cobbler. He was waving his arms and, breathing heavily, muttered:
"In sin my mother bore me! Ah, sins, sins! Here now we are walking along
the street and looking at the street lamps, but when we die, we shall
burn in a fiery Gehenna. . . ."
Or he fell into a good-natured tone, called Kashtanka to him, and said
to her: "You, Kashtanka, are an insect of a creature, and nothing else.
Beside a man, you are much the same as a joiner beside a cabinet-maker.
. . ."
While he talked to her in that way, there was suddenly a burst of music.
Kashtanka looked round and saw that a regiment of soldiers was coming
straight towards her. Unable to endure the music, which unhinged her
nerves, she turned round and round and wailed. To her great surprise,
the carpenter, instead of being frightened, whining and barking, gave a
broad grin, drew himself up to attention, and saluted with all his five
fingers. Seeing that her master did not protest, Kashtanka whined louder
than ever, and dashed across the road to the opposite pavement.
When she recovered herself, the band was not playing and the regiment
was no longer there. She ran across the road to the spot where she had
left her master, but alas, the carpenter was no longer there. She dashed
forward, then back again and ran across the road once more, but the
carpenter seemed to have vanished into the earth. Kashtanka began
sniffing the pavement, hoping to find her master by the scent of his
tracks, but some wretch had been that way just before in new rubber
goloshes, and now all delicate scents were mixed with an acute stench of
india-rubber, so that it was impossible to make out anything.
Kashtanka ran up and down and did not find her master, and meanwhile it
had got dark. The street lamps were lighted on both sides of the road,
and lights appeared in the windows. Big, fluffy snowflakes were falling
and painting white the pavement, the horses' backs and the cabmen's
caps, and the darker the evening grew the whiter were all these objects.
Unknown customers kept walking incessantly to and fro, obstructing her
field of vision and shoving against her with their feet. (All mankind
Kashtanka divided into two uneven parts: masters and customers; between
them there was an essential difference: the first had the right to beat
her, and the second she had the right to nip by the calves of their
legs.) These customers were hurrying off somewhere and paid no attention
to her.
When it got quite dark, Kashtanka was overcome by despair and horror.
She huddled up in an entrance and began whining piteously. The long
day's journeying with Luka Alexandritch had exhausted her, her ears and
her paws were freezing, and, what was more, she was terribly hungry.
Only twice in the whole day had she tasted a morsel: she had eaten a
little paste at the bookbinder's, and in one of the taverns she had
found a sausage skin on the floor, near the counter --that was all. If
she had been a human being she would have certainly thought: "No, it is
impossible to live like this! I must shoot myself!" II
|A Mysterious Stranger
But she thought of nothing, she simply whined. When her head and back
were entirely plastered over with the soft feathery snow, and she had
sunk into a painful doze of exhaustion, all at once the door of the
entrance clicked, creaked, and struck her on the side. She jumped up. A
man belonging to the class of customers came out. As Kashtanka whined
and got under his feet, he could not help noticing her. He bent down to
her and asked:
"Doggy, where do you come from? Have I hurt you? O, poor thing, poor
thing. . . . Come, don't be cross, don't be cross. . . . I am sorry."
Kashtanka looked at the stranger through the snow-flakes that hung on
her eyelashes, and saw before her a short, fat little man, with a plump,
shaven face wearing a top hat and a fur coat that swung open.
"What are you whining for?" he went on, knocking the snow off her back
with his fingers. "Where is your master? I suppose you are lost? Ah,
poor doggy! What are we going to do now?"
Catching in the stranger's voice a warm, cordial note, Kashtanka licked
his hand, and whined still more pitifully.
"Oh, you nice funny thing!" said the stranger. "A regular fox! Well,
there's nothing for it, you must come along with me! Perhaps you will be
of use for something. . . . Well!"
He clicked with his lips, and made a sign to Kashtanka with his hand,
which could only mean one thing: "Come along!" Kashtanka went.
Not more than half an hour later she was sitting on the floor in a big,
light room, and, leaning her head against her side, was looking with
tenderness and curiosity at the stranger who was sitting at the table,
dining. He ate and threw pieces to her. . . . At first he gave her bread
and the green rind of cheese, then a piece of meat, half a pie and
chicken bones, while through hunger she ate so quickly that she had not
time to distinguish the taste, and the more she ate the more acute was
the feeling of hunger.
"Your masters don't feed you properly," said the stranger, seeing with
what ferocious greediness she swallowed the morsels without munching
them. "And how thin you are! Nothing but skin and bones. . . ."
Kashtanka ate a great deal and yet did not satisfy her hunger, but was
simply stupefied with eating. After dinner she lay down in the middle of
the room, stretched her legs and, conscious of an agreeable weariness
all over her body, wagged her tail. While her new master, lounging in an
easy-chair, smoked a cigar, she wagged her tail and considered the
question, whether it was better at the stranger's or at the carpenter's.
The stranger's surroundings were poor and ugly; besides the easy-chairs,
the sofa, the lamps and the rugs, there was nothing, and the room seemed
empty. At the carpenter's the whole place was stuffed full of things: he
had a table, a bench, a heap of shavings, planes, chisels, saws, a cage
with a goldfinch, a basin. . . . The stranger's room smelt of nothing,
while there was always a thick fog in the carpenter's room, and a
glorious smell of glue, varnish, and shavings. On the other hand, the
stranger had one great superiority--he gave her a great deal to eat and,
to do him full justice, when Kashtanka sat facing the table and looking
wistfully at him, he did not once hit or kick her, and did not once
shout: "Go away, damned brute!"
When he had finished his cigar her new master went out, and a minute
later came back holding a little mattress in his hands.
"Hey, you dog, come here!" he said, laying the mattress in the corner
near the dog. "Lie down here, go to sleep!"
Then he put out the lamp and went away. Kashtanka lay down on the
mattress and shut her eyes; the sound of a bark rose from the street,
and she would have liked to answer it, but all at once she was overcome
with unexpected melancholy. She thought of Luka Alexandritch, of his son
Fedyushka, and her snug little place under the bench. . . . She
remembered on the long winter evenings, when the carpenter was planing
or reading the paper aloud, Fedyushka usually played with her. . . . He