Short Stories by Chekhov
"It looks like a row, your honour . . ." says the policeman.
Otchumyelov makes a half turn to the left and strides towards the crowd.
He sees the aforementioned man in the unbuttoned waistcoat standing
close by the gate of the timber-yard, holding his right hand in the air
and displaying a bleeding finger to the crowd. On his half-drunken face
there is plainly written: "I'll pay you out, you rogue!" and indeed the
very finger has the look of a flag of victory. In this man Otchumyelov
recognises Hryukin, the goldsmith. The culprit who has caused the
sensation, a white borzoy puppy with a sharp muzzle and a yellow patch
on her back, is sitting on the ground with her fore-paws outstretched in
the middle of the crowd, trembling all over. There is an expression of
misery and terror in her tearful eyes.
"What's it all about?" Otchumyelov inquires, pushing his way through the
crowd. "What are you here for? Why are you waving your finger . . . ?
Who was it shouted?"
"I was walking along here, not interfering with anyone, your honour,"
Hryukin begins, coughing into his fist. "I was talking about firewood to
Mitry Mitritch, when this low brute for no rhyme or reason bit my
finger. . . . You must excuse me, I am a working man. . . . Mine is fine
work. I must have damages, for I shan't be able to use this finger for a
week, may be. . . . It's not even the law, your honour, that one should
put up with it from a beast. . . . If everyone is going to be bitten,
life won't be worth living. . . ."
"H'm. Very good," says Otchumyelov sternly, coughing and raising his
eyebrows. "Very good. Whose dog is it? I won't let this pass! I'll teach
them to let their dogs run all over the place! It's time these gentry
were looked after, if they won't obey the regulations! When he's fined,
the blackguard, I'll teach him what it means to keep dogs and such stray
cattle! I'll give him a lesson! . . . Yeldyrin," cries the
superintendent, addressing the policeman, "find out whose dog this is
and draw up a report! And the dog must be strangled. Without delay! It's
sure to be mad. . . . Whose dog is it, I ask?"
"I fancy it's General Zhigalov's," says someone in the crowd.
"General Zhigalov's, h'm. . . . Help me off with my coat, Yeldyrin . . .
it's frightfully hot! It must be a sign of rain. . . . There's one thing
I can't make out, how it came to bite you?" Otchumyelov turns to
Hryukin. "Surely it couldn't reach your finger. It's a little dog, and
you are a great hulking fellow! You must have scratched your finger with
a nail, and then the idea struck you to get damages for it. We all know
. . . your sort! I know you devils!"
"He put a cigarette in her face, your honour, for a joke, and she had
the sense to snap at him. . . . He is a nonsensical fellow, your
honour!"
"That's a lie, Squinteye! You didn't see, so why tell lies about it? His
honour is a wise gentleman, and will see who is telling lies and who is
telling the truth, as in God's sight. . . . And if I am lying let the
court decide. It's written in the law. . . . We are all equal nowadays.
My own brother is in the gendarmes . . . let me tell you. . . ."
"Don't argue!"
"No, that's not the General's dog," says the policeman, with profound
conviction, "the General hasn't got one like that. His are mostly
setters."
"Do you know that for a fact?"
"Yes, your honour."
"I know it, too. The General has valuable dogs, thoroughbred, and this
is goodness knows what! No coat, no shape. . . . A low creature. And to
keep a dog like that! . . . where's the sense of it. If a dog like that
were to turn up in Petersburg or Moscow, do you know what would happen?
They would not worry about the law, they would strangle it in a
twinkling! You've been injured, Hryukin, and we can't let the matter
drop. . . . We must give them a lesson! It is high time . . . . !"
"Yet maybe it is the General's," says the policeman, thinking aloud.
"It's not written on its face. . . . I saw one like it the other day in
his yard."
"It is the General's, that's certain!" says a voice in the crowd.
"H'm, help me on with my overcoat, Yeldyrin, my lad . . . the wind's
getting up. . . . I am cold. . . . You take it to the General's, and
inquire there. Say I found it and sent it. And tell them not to let it
out into the street. . . . It may be a valuable dog, and if every swine
goes sticking a cigar in its mouth, it will soon be ruined. A dog is a
delicate animal. . . . And you put your hand down, you blockhead. It's
no use your displaying your fool of a finger. It's your own fault. . .
."
"Here comes the General's cook, ask him. . . Hi, Prohor! Come here, my
dear man! Look at this dog. . . . Is it one of yours?"
"What an idea! We have never had one like that!"
"There's no need to waste time asking," says Otchumyelov. "It's a stray
dog! There's no need to waste time talking about it. . . . Since he says
it's a stray dog, a stray dog it is. . . . It must be destroyed, that's
all about it."
"It is not our dog," Prohor goes on. "It belongs to the General's
brother, who arrived the other day. Our master does not care for hounds.
But his honour is fond of them. . . ."
"You don't say his Excellency's brother is here? Vladimir Ivanitch?"
inquires Otchumyelov, and his whole face beams with an ecstatic smile.
"'Well, I never! And I didn't know! Has he come on a visit?
"Yes."
"Well, I never. . . . He couldn't stay away from his brother. . . . And
there I didn't know! So this is his honour's dog? Delighted to hear it.
. . . Take it. It's not a bad pup. . . . A lively creature. . . .
Snapped at this fellow's finger! Ha-ha-ha. . . . Come, why are you
shivering? Rrr . . . Rrrr. . . . The rogue's angry . . . a nice little
pup."
Prohor calls the dog, and walks away from the timber-yard with her. The
crowd laughs at Hryukin.
"I'll make you smart yet!" Otchumyelov threatens him, and wrapping
himself in his greatcoat, goes on his way across the square.
THE DEPENDENTS
MIHAIL PETROVITCH ZOTOV, a decrepit and solitary old man of seventy,
belonging to the artisan class, was awakened by the cold and the aching
in his old limbs. It was dark in his room, but the little lamp before
the ikon was no longer burning. Zotov raised the curtain and looked out
of the window. The clouds that shrouded the sky were beginning to show
white here and there, and the air was becoming transparent, so it must
have been nearly five, not more.
Zotov cleared his throat, coughed, and shrinking from the cold, got out
of bed. In accordance with years of habit, he stood for a long time
before the ikon, saying his prayers. He repeated "Our Father," "Hail
Mary," the Creed, and mentioned a long string of names. To whom those
names belonged he had forgotten years ago, and he only repeated them
from habit. From habit, too, he swept his room and entry, and set his
fat little four-legged copper samovar. If Zotov had not had these habits
he would not have known how to occupy his old age.
The little samovar slowly began to get hot, and all at once,
unexpectedly, broke into a tremulous bass hum.
"Oh, you've started humming!" grumbled Zotov. "Hum away then, and bad
luck to you!"
At that point the old man appropriately recalled that, in the preceding
night, he had dreamed of a stove, and to dream of a stove is a sign of
sorrow.
Dreams and omens were the only things left that could rouse him to
reflection; and on this occasion he plunged with a special zest into the
considerations of the questions: What the samovar was humming for? and
what sorrow was foretold by the stove? The dream seemed to come true
from the first. Zotov rinsed out his teapot and was about to make his
tea, when he found there was not one teaspoonful left in the box.
"What an existence!" he grumbled, rolling crumbs of black bread round in
his mouth. "It's a dog's life. No tea! And it isn't as though I were a
simple peasant: I'm an artisan and a house-owner. The disgrace!"
Grumbling and talking to himself, Zotov put on his overcoat, which was
like a crinoline, and, thrusting his feet into huge clumsy golosh-boots
(made in the year 1867 by a bootmaker called Prohoritch), went out into
the yard. The air was grey, cold, and sullenly still. The big yard, full
of tufts of burdock and strewn with yellow leaves, was faintly silvered
with autumn frost. Not a breath of wind nor a sound. The old man sat
down on the steps of his slanting porch, and at once there happened what
happened regularly every morning: his dog Lyska, a big, mangy, decrepit-
looking, white yard-dog, with black patches, came up to him with its
right eye shut. Lyska came up timidly, wriggling in a frightened way, as
though her paws were not touching the earth but a hot stove, and the
whole of her wretched figure was expressive of abjectness. Zotov
pretended not to notice her, but when she faintly wagged her tail, and,
wriggling as before, licked his golosh, he stamped his foot angrily.
"Be off! The plague take you!" he cried. "Con-found-ed bea-east!"
Lyska moved aside, sat down, and fixed her solitary eye upon her master.
"You devils!" he went on. "You are the last straw on my back, you
Herods."
And he looked with hatred at his shed with its crooked, overgrown roof;
there from the door of the shed a big horse's head was looking out at
him. Probably flattered by its master's attention, the head moved,
pushed forward, and there emerged from the shed the whole horse, as
decrepit as Lyska, as timid and as crushed, with spindly legs, grey
hair, a pinched stomach, and a bony spine. He came out of the shed and
stood still, hesitating as though overcome with embarrassment.
"Plague take you," Zotov went on. "Shall I ever see the last of you, you
jail-bird Pharaohs! . . . I wager you want your breakfast!" he jeered,
twisting his angry face into a contemptuous smile. "By all means, this
minute! A priceless steed like you must have your fill of the best oats!
Pray begin! This minute! And I have something to give to the
magnificent, valuable dog! If a precious dog like you does not care for
bread, you can have meat."
Zotov grumbled for half an hour, growing more and more irritated. In the
end, unable to control the anger that boiled up in him, he jumped up,
stamped with his goloshes, and growled out to be heard all over the
yard:
"I am not obliged to feed you, you loafers! I am not some millionaire
for you to eat me out of house and home! I have nothing to eat myself,
you cursed carcases, the cholera take you! I get no pleasure or profit
out of you; nothing but trouble and ruin, Why don't you give up the
ghost? Are you such personages that even death won't take you? You can
live, damn you! but I don't want to feed you! I have had enough of you!
I don't want to!"
Zotov grew wrathful and indignant, and the horse and the dog listened.
Whether these two dependents understood that they were being reproached
for living at his expense, I don't know, but their stomachs looked more
pinched than ever, and their whole figures shrivelled up, grew gloomier
and more abject than before. . . . Their submissive air exasperated
Zotov more than ever.
"Get away!" he shouted, overcome by a sort of inspiration. "Out of my
house! Don't let me set eyes on you again! I am not obliged to keep all
sorts of rubbish in my yard! Get away!"
The old man moved with little hurried steps to the gate, opened it, and
picking up a stick from the ground, began driving out his dependents.
The horse shook its head, moved its shoulder-blades, and limped to the
gate; the dog followed him. Both of them went out into the street, and,
after walking some twenty paces, stopped at the fence.
"I'll give it you!" Zotov threatened them.
When he had driven out his dependents he felt calmer, and began sweeping