Short Stories by Chekhov
Two of the inhabitants of N. were sitting in the chaise; they were a
merchant of N. called Ivan Ivanitch Kuzmitchov, a man with a shaven face
wearing glasses and a straw hat, more like a government clerk than a
merchant, and Father Christopher Sireysky, the priest of the Church of
St. Nikolay at N., a little old man with long hair, in a grey canvas
cassock, a wide-brimmed top-hat and a coloured embroidered girdle. The
former was absorbed in thought, and kept tossing his head to shake off
drowsiness; in his countenance an habitual business-like reserve was
struggling with the genial expression of a man who has just said good-
bye to his relatives and has had a good drink at parting. The latter
gazed with moist eyes wonderingly at God's world, and his smile was so
broad that it seemed to embrace even the brim of his hat; his face was
red and looked frozen. Both of them, Father Christopher as well as
Kuzmitchov, were going to sell wool. At parting with their families they
had just eaten heartily of pastry puffs and cream, and although it was
so early in the morning had had a glass or two. . . . Both were in the
best of humours.
Apart from the two persons described above and the coachman Deniska, who
lashed the pair of frisky bay horses, there was another figure in the
chaise--a boy of nine with a sunburnt face, wet with tears. This was
Yegorushka, Kuzmitchov's nephew. With the sanction of his uncle and the
blessing of Father Christopher, he was now on his way to go to school.
His mother, Olga Ivanovna, the widow of a collegiate secretary, and
Kuzmitchov's sister, who was fond of educated people and refined
society, had entreated her brother to take Yegorushka with him when he
went to sell wool and to put him to school; and now the boy was sitting
on the box beside the coachman Deniska, holding on to his elbow to keep
from falling off, and dancing up and down like a kettle on the hob, with
no notion where he was going or what he was going for. The rapid motion
through the air blew out his red shirt like a balloon on his back and
made his new hat with a peacock's feather in it, like a coachman's, keep
slipping on to the back of his head. He felt himself an intensely
unfortunate person, and had an inclination to cry.
When the chaise drove past the prison, Yegorushka glanced at the
sentinels pacing slowly by the high white walls, at the little barred
windows, at the cross shining on the roof, and remembered how the week
before, on the day of the Holy Mother of Kazan, he had been with his
mother to the prison church for the Dedication Feast, and how before
that, at Easter, he had gone to the prison with Deniska and Ludmila the
cook, and had taken the prisoners Easter bread, eggs, cakes and roast
beef. The prisoners had thanked them and made the sign of the cross, and
one of them had given Yegorushka a pewter buckle of his own making.
The boy gazed at the familiar places, while the hateful chaise flew by
and left them all behind. After the prison he caught glimpses of black
grimy foundries, followed by the snug green cemetery surrounded by a
wall of cobblestones; white crosses and tombstones, nestling among green
cherry-trees and looking in the distance like patches of white, peeped
out gaily from behind the wall. Yegorushka remembered that when the
cherries were in blossom those white patches melted with the flowers
into a sea of white; and that when the cherries were ripe the white
tombstones and crosses were dotted with splashes of red like
bloodstains. Under the cherry trees in the cemetery Yegorushka's father
and granny, Zinaida Danilovna, lay sleeping day and night. When Granny
had died she had been put in a long narrow coffin and two pennies had
been put upon her eyes, which would not keep shut. Up to the time of her
death she had been brisk, and used to bring soft rolls covered with
poppy seeds from the market. Now she did nothing but sleep and sleep. .
. .
Beyond the cemetery came the smoking brickyards. From under the long
roofs of reeds that looked as though pressed flat to the ground, a thick
black smoke rose in great clouds and floated lazily upwards. The sky was
murky above the brickyards and the cemetery, and great shadows from the
clouds of smoke crept over the fields and across the roads. Men and
horses covered with red dust were moving about in the smoke near the
roofs.
The town ended with the brickyards and the open country began.
Yegorushka looked at the town for the last time, pressed his face
against Deniska's elbow, and wept bitterly.
"Come, not done howling yet, cry-baby!" cried Kuzmitchov. "You are
blubbering again, little milksop! If you don't want to go, stay behind;
no one is taking you by force!
"Never mind, never mind, Yegor boy, never mind," Father Christopher
muttered rapidly--"never mind, my boy. . . . Call upon God. . . . You are
not going for your harm, but for your good. Learning is light, as the
saying is, and ignorance is darkness. . . . That is so, truly."
"Do you want to go back?" asked Kuzmitchov.
"Yes, . . . yes, . . ." answered Yegorushka, sobbing.
"Well, you'd better go back then. Anyway, you are going for nothing;
it's a day's journey for a spoonful of porridge."
"Never mind, never mind, my boy," Father Christopher went on. "Call upon
God. . . . Lomonosov set off with the fishermen in the same way, and he
became a man famous all over Europe. Learning in conjunction with faith
brings forth fruit pleasing to God. What are the words of the prayer?
For the glory of our Maker, for the comfort of our parents, for the
benefit of our Church and our country. . . . Yes, indeed!"
"The benefit is not the same in all cases," said Kuzmitchov, lighting a
cheap cigar; "some will study twenty years and get no sense from it."
"That does happen."
"Learning is a benefit to some, but others only muddle their brains. My
sister is a woman who does not understand; she is set upon refinement,
and wants to turn Yegorka into a learned man, and she does not
understand that with my business I could settle Yegorka happily for the
rest of his life. I tell you this, that if everyone were to go in for
being learned and refined there would be no one to sow the corn and do
the trading; they would all die of hunger."
"And if all go in for trading and sowing corn there will be no one to
acquire learning."
And considering that each of them had said something weighty and
convincing, Kuzmitchov and Father Christopher both looked serious and
cleared their throats simultaneously.
Deniska, who had been listening to their conversation without
understanding a word of it, shook his head and, rising in his seat,
lashed at both the bays. A silence followed.
Meanwhile a wide boundless plain encircled by a chain of low hills lay
stretched before the travellers' eyes. Huddling together and peeping out
from behind one another, these hills melted together into rising ground,
which stretched right to the very horizon and disappeared into the lilac
distance; one drives on and on and cannot discern where it begins or
where it ends. . . . The sun had already peeped out from beyond the town
behind them, and quietly, without fuss, set to its accustomed task. At
first in the distance before them a broad, bright, yellow streak of
light crept over the ground where the earth met the sky, near the little
barrows and the windmills, which in the distance looked like tiny men
waving their arms. A minute later a similar streak gleamed a little
nearer, crept to the right and embraced the hills. Something warm
touched Yegorushka's spine; the streak of light, stealing up from
behind, darted between the chaise and the horses, moved to meet the
other streak, and soon the whole wide steppe flung off the twilight of
early morning, and was smiling and sparkling with dew.
The cut rye, the coarse steppe grass, the milkwort, the wild hemp, all
withered from the sultry heat, turned brown and half dead, now washed by
the dew and caressed by the sun, revived, to fade again. Arctic petrels
flew across the road with joyful cries; marmots called to one another in
the grass. Somewhere, far away to the left, lapwings uttered their
plaintive notes. A covey of partridges, scared by the chaise, fluttered
up and with their soft "trrrr!" flew off to the hills. In the grass
crickets, locusts and grasshoppers kept up their churring, monotonous
music.
But a little time passed, the dew evaporated, the air grew stagnant, and
the disillusioned steppe began to wear its jaded July aspect. The grass
drooped, everything living was hushed. The sun-baked hills, brownish-
green and lilac in the distance, with their quiet shadowy tones, the
plain with the misty distance and, arched above them, the sky, which
seems terribly deep and transparent in the steppes, where there are no
woods or high hills, seemed now endless, petrified with dreariness. . .
.
How stifling and oppressive it was! The chaise raced along, while
Yegorushka saw always the same--the sky, the plain, the low hills . . . .
The music in the grass was hushed, the petrels had flown away, the
partridges were out of sight, rooks hovered idly over the withered
grass; they were all alike and made the steppe even more monotonous.
A hawk flew just above the ground, with an even sweep of its wings,
suddenly halted in the air as though pondering on the dreariness of
life, then fluttered its wings and flew like an arrow over the steppe,
and there was no telling why it flew off and what it wanted. In the
distance a windmill waved its sails. . . .
Now and then a glimpse of a white potsherd or a heap of stones broke the
monotony; a grey stone stood out for an instant or a parched willow with
a blue crow on its top branch; a marmot would run across the road
and--again there flitted before the eyes only the high grass, the low
hills, the rooks. . . .
But at last, thank God, a waggon loaded with sheaves came to meet them;
a peasant wench was lying on the very top. Sleepy, exhausted by the
heat, she lifted her head and looked at the travellers. Deniska gaped,
looking at her; the horses stretched out their noses towards the
sheaves; the chaise, squeaking, kissed the waggon, and the pointed ears
passed over Father Christopher's hat like a brush.
"You are driving over folks, fatty!" cried Deniska. "What a swollen lump
of a face, as though a bumble-bee had stung it!"
The girl smiled drowsily, and moving her lips lay down again; then a
solitary poplar came into sight on the low hill. Someone had planted it,
and God only knows why it was there. It was hard to tear the eyes away
from its graceful figure and green drapery. Was that lovely creature
happy? Sultry heat in summer, in winter frost and snowstorms, terrible
nights in autumn when nothing is to be seen but darkness and nothing is
to be heard but the senseless angry howling wind, and, worst of all,
alone, alone for the whole of life . . . . Beyond the poplar stretches
of wheat extended like a bright yellow carpet from the road to the top
of the hills. On the hills the corn was already cut and laid up in
sheaves, while at the bottom they were still cutting. . . . Six mowers
were standing in a row swinging their scythes, and the scythes gleamed
gaily and uttered in unison together "Vzhee, vzhee!" From the movements
of the peasant women binding the sheaves, from the faces of the mowers,
from the glitter of the scythes, it could be seen that the sultry heat
was baking and stifling. A black dog with its tongue hanging out ran
from the mowers to meet the chaise, probably with the intention of
barking, but stopped halfway and stared indifferently at Deniska, who
shook his whip at him; it was too hot to bark! One peasant woman got up
and, putting both hands to her aching back, followed Yegorushka's red