Short Stories by Chekhov
the psalms. . . . I haven't read them to-day."
"The psalms can wait."
"Ivan Ivanitch, that is my rule every day. . . . I can't . . ."
"God will overlook it."
For a full quarter of an hour Father Christopher stood facing the east
and moving his lips, while Kuzmitchov looked at him almost with hatred
and impatiently shrugged his shoulders. He was particularly irritated
when, after every "Hallelujah," Father Christopher drew a long breath,
rapidly crossed himself and repeated three times, intentionally raising
his voice so that the others might cross themselves, "Hallelujah,
hallelujah, hallelujah! Glory be to Thee, O Lord!" At last he smiled,
looked upwards at the sky, and, putting the psalter in his pocket, said:
"Finis!"
A minute later the chaise had started on the road. As though it were
going backwards and not forwards, the travellers saw the same scene as
they had before midday.
The low hills were still plunged in the lilac distance, and no end could
be seen to them. There were glimpses of high grass and heaps of stones;
strips of stubble land passed by them and still the same rooks, the same
hawk, moving its wings with slow dignity, moved over the steppe. The air
was more sultry than ever; from the sultry heat and the stillness
submissive nature was spellbound into silence . . . . No wind, no fresh
cheering sound, no cloud.
But at last, when the sun was beginning to sink into the west, the
steppe, the hills and the air could bear the oppression no longer, and,
driven out of all patience, exhausted, tried to fling off the yoke. A
fleecy ashen-grey cloud unexpectedly appeared behind the hills. It
exchanged glances with the steppe, as though to say, "Here I am," and
frowned. Suddenly something burst in the stagnant air; there was a
violent squall of wind which whirled round and round, roaring and
whistling over the steppe. At once a murmur rose from the grass and last
year's dry herbage, the dust curled in spiral eddies over the road,
raced over the steppe, and carrying with it straws, dragon flies and
feathers, rose up in a whirling black column towards the sky and
darkened the sun. Prickly uprooted plants ran stumbling and leaping in
all directions over the steppe, and one of them got caught in the
whirlwind, turned round and round like a bird, flew towards the sky, and
turning into a little black speck, vanished from sight. After it flew
another, and then a third, and Yegorushka saw two of them meet in the
blue height and clutch at one another as though they were wrestling.
A bustard flew up by the very road. Fluttering his wings and his tail,
he looked, bathed in the sunshine, like an angler's glittering tin fish
or a waterfly flashing so swiftly over the water that its wings cannot
be told from its antenna, which seem to be growing before, behind and on
all sides. . . . Quivering in the air like an insect with a shimmer of
bright colours, the bustard flew high up in a straight line, then,
probably frightened by a cloud of dust, swerved to one side, and for a
long time the gleam of his wings could be seen. . . .
Then a corncrake flew up from the grass, alarmed by the hurricane and
not knowing what was the matter. It flew with the wind and not against
it, like all the other birds, so that all its feathers were ruffled up
and it was puffed out to the size of a hen and looked very angry and
impressive. Only the rooks who had grown old on the steppe and were
accustomed to its vagaries hovered calmly over the grass, or taking no
notice of anything, went on unconcernedly pecking with their stout beaks
at the hard earth.
There was a dull roll of thunder beyond the hills; there came a whiff of
fresh air. Deniska gave a cheerful whistle and lashed his horses. Father
Christopher and Kuzmitchov held their hats and looked intently towards
the hills. . . . How pleasant a shower of rain would have been!
One effort, one struggle more, and it seemed the steppe would have got
the upper hand. But the unseen oppressive force gradually riveted its
fetters on the wind and the air, laid the dust, and the stillness came
back again as though nothing had happened, the cloud hid, the sun-baked
hills frowned submissively, the air grew calm, and only somewhere the
troubled lapwings wailed and lamented their destiny. . . .
Soon after that the evening came on. III
In the dusk of evening a big house of one storey, with a rusty iron roof
and with dark windows, came into sight. This house was called a posting-
inn, though it had nothing like a stableyard, and it stood in the middle
of the steppe, with no kind of enclosure round it. A little to one side
of it a wretched little cherry orchard shut in by a hurdle fence made a
dark patch, and under the windows stood sleepy sunflowers drooping their
heavy heads. From the orchard came the clatter of a little toy windmill,
set there to frighten away hares by the rattle. Nothing more could be
seen near the house, and nothing could be heard but the steppe. The
chaise had scarcely stopped at the porch with an awning over it, when
from the house there came the sound of cheerful voices, one a man's,
another a woman's; there was the creak of a swing-door, and in a flash a
tall gaunt figure, swinging its arms and fluttering its coat, was
standing by the chaise. This was the innkeeper, Moisey Moisevitch, a man
no longer young, with a very pale face and a handsome beard as black as
charcoal. He was wearing a threadbare black coat, which hung flapping on
his narrow shoulders as though on a hatstand, and fluttered its skirts
like wings every time Moisey Moisevitch flung up his hands in delight or
horror. Besides his coat the innkeeper was wearing full white trousers,
not stuck into his boots, and a velvet waistcoat with brown flowers on
it that looked like gigantic bugs.
Moisey Moisevitch was at first dumb with excess of feeling on
recognizing the travellers, then he clasped his hands and uttered a
moan. His coat swung its skirts, his back bent into a bow, and his pale
face twisted into a smile that suggested that to see the chaise was not
merely a pleasure to him, but actually a joy so sweet as to be painful.
"Oh dear! oh dear!" he began in a thin sing-song voice, breathless,
fussing about and preventing the travellers from getting out of the
chaise by his antics. "What a happy day for me! Oh, what am I to do now?
Ivan Ivanitch! Father Christopher! What a pretty little gentleman
sitting on the box, God strike me dead! Oh, my goodness! why am I
standing here instead of asking the visitors indoors? Please walk in, I
humbly beg you. . . . You are kindly welcome! Give me all your things. .
. . Oh, my goodness me!"
Moisey Moisevitch, who was rummaging in the chaise and assisting the
travellers to alight, suddenly turned back and shouted in a voice as
frantic and choking as though he were drowning and calling for help:
"Solomon! Solomon!"
"Solomon! Solomon!" a woman's voice repeated indoors.
The swing-door creaked, and in the doorway appeared a rather short young
Jew with a big beak-like nose, with a bald patch surrounded by rough red
curly hair; he was dressed in a short and very shabby reefer jacket,
with rounded lappets and short sleeves, and in short serge trousers, so
that he looked skimpy and short-tailed like an unfledged bird. This was
Solomon, the brother of Moisey Moisevitch. He went up to the chaise,
smiling rather queerly, and did not speak or greet the travellers.
"Ivan Ivanitch and Father Christopher have come," said Moisey Moisevitch
in a tone as though he were afraid his brother would not believe him.
"Dear, dear! What a surprise! Such honoured guests to have come us so
suddenly! Come, take their things, Solomon. Walk in, honoured guests."
A little later Kuzmitchov, Father Christopher, and Yegorushka were
sitting in a big gloomy empty room at an old oak table. The table was
almost in solitude, for, except a wide sofa covered with torn American
leather and three chairs, there was no other furniture in the room. And,
indeed, not everybody would have given the chairs that name. They were a
pitiful semblance of furniture, covered with American leather that had
seen its best days, and with backs bent backwards at an unnaturally
acute angle, so that they looked like children's sledges. It was hard to
imagine what had been the unknown carpenter's object in bending the
chairbacks so mercilessly, and one was tempted to imagine that it was
not the carpenter's fault, but that some athletic visitor had bent the
chairs like this as a feat, then had tried to bend them back again and
had made them worse. The room looked gloomy, the walls were grey, the
ceilings and the cornices were grimy; on the floor were chinks and
yawning holes that were hard to account for (one might have fancied they
were made by the heel of the same athlete), and it seemed as though the
room would still have been dark if a dozen lamps had hung in it. There
was nothing approaching an ornament on the walls or the windows. On one
wall, however, there hung a list of regulations of some sort under a
two-headed eagle in a grey wooden frame, and on another wall in the same
sort of frame an engraving with the inscription, "The Indifference of
Man." What it was to which men were indifferent it was impossible to
make out, as the engraving was very dingy with age and was extensively
flyblown. There was a smell of something decayed and sour in the room.
As he led the visitors into the room, Moisey Moisevitch went on
wriggling, gesticulating, shrugging and uttering joyful exclamations; he
considered these antics necessary in order to seem polite and agreeable.
"When did our waggons go by?" Kuzmitchov asked.
"One party went by early this morning, and the other, Ivan Ivanitch, put
up here for dinner and went on towards evening."
"Ah! . . . Has Varlamov been by or not?"
"No, Ivan Ivanitch. His clerk, Grigory Yegoritch, went by yesterday
morning and said that he had to be to-day at the Molokans' farm."
"Good! so we will go after the waggons directly and then on to the
Molokans'."
"Mercy on us, Ivan Ivanitch!" Moisey Moisevitch cried in horror,
flinging up his hands. "Where are you going for the night? You will have
a nice little supper and stay the night, and to-morrow morning, please
God, you can go on and overtake anyone you like."
"There is no time for that. . . . Excuse me, Moisey Moisevitch, another
time; but now I must make haste. We'll stay a quarter of an hour and
then go on; we can stay the night at the Molokans'."
"A quarter of an hour!" squealed Moisey Moisevitch. "Have you no fear of
God, Ivan Ivanitch? You will compel me to hide your caps and lock the
door! You must have a cup of tea and a snack of something, anyway."
"We have no time for tea," said Kuzmitchov.
Moisey Moisevitch bent his head on one side, crooked his knees, and put
his open hands before him as though warding off a blow, while with a
smile of agonized sweetness he began imploring:
"Ivan Ivanitch! Father Christopher! Do be so good as to take a cup of
tea with me. Surely I am not such a bad man that you can't even drink
tea in my house? Ivan Ivanitch!"
"Well, we may just as well have a cup of tea," said Father Christopher,
with a sympathetic smile; "that won't keep us long."
"Very well," Kuzmitchov assented.
Moisey Moisevitch, in a fluster uttered an exclamation of joy, and
shrugging as though he had just stepped out of cold weather into warm,
ran to the door and cried in the same frantic voice in which he had
called Solomon:
"Rosa! Rosa! Bring the samovar!"
A minute later the door opened, and Solomon came into the room carrying
a large tray in his hands. Setting the tray on the table, he looked away
sarcastically with the same queer smile as before. Now, by the light of