Short Stories by Chekhov
in the Caucasus, but now lived on his own farm, and who had once been
young, strong, and vigorous, but now was old, dried up, and bent, with
shaggy eyebrows and a greenish-grey moustache, was returning from the
town to his farm one hot summer's day. In the town he had confessed and
received absolution, and had made his will at the notary's (a fortnight
before he had had a slight stroke), and now all the while he was in the
railway carriage he was haunted by melancholy, serious thoughts of
approaching death, of the vanity of vanities, of the transitoriness of
all things earthly. At the station of Provalye--there is such a one on
the Donetz line--a fair-haired, plump, middle-aged gentleman with a
shabby portfolio stepped into the carriage and sat down opposite. They
got into conversation.
"Yes," said Ivan Abramitch, looking pensively out of window, "it is
never too late to marry. I myself married when I was forty-eight; I was
told it was late, but it has turned out that it was not late or early,
but simply that it would have been better not to marry at all. Everyone
is soon tired of his wife, but not everyone tells the truth, because,
you know, people are ashamed of an unhappy home life and conceal it.
It's 'Manya this' and 'Manya that' with many a man by his wife's side,
but if he had his way he'd put that Manya in a sack and drop her in the
water. It's dull with one's wife, it's mere foolishness. And it's no
better with one's children, I make bold to assure you. I have two of
them, the rascals. There's nowhere for them to be taught out here in the
steppe; I haven't the money to send them to school in Novo Tcherkask,
and they live here like young wolves. Next thing they will be murdering
someone on the highroad."
The fair-haired gentleman listened attentively, answered questions
briefly in a low voice, and was apparently a gentleman of gentle and
modest disposition. He mentioned that he was a lawyer, and that he was
going to the village Dyuevka on business.
"Why, merciful heavens, that is six miles from me!" said Zhmuhin in a
tone of voice as though someone were disputing with him. "But excuse me,
you won't find horses at the station now. To my mind, the very best
thing you can do, you know, is to come straight to me, stay the night,
you know, and in the morning drive over with my horses."
The lawyer thought a moment and accepted the invitation.
When they reached the station the sun was already low over the steppe.
They said nothing all the way from the station to the farm: the jolting
prevented conversation. The trap bounded up and down, squeaked, and
seemed to be sobbing, and the lawyer, who was sitting very
uncomfortably, stared before him, miserably hoping to see the farm.
After they had driven five or six miles there came into view in the
distance a low-pitched house and a yard enclosed by a fence made of
dark, flat stones standing on end; the roof was green, the stucco was
peeling off, and the windows were little narrow slits like screwed-up
eyes. The farm stood in the full sunshine, and there was no sign either
of water or trees anywhere round. Among the neighbouring landowners and
the peasants it was known as the Petchenyegs' farm. Many years before, a
land surveyor, who was passing through the neighbourhood and put up at
the farm, spent the whole night talking to Ivan Abramitch, was not
favourably impressed, and as he was driving away in the morning said to
him grimly:
"You are a Petchenyeg,* my good sir!"
* The Petchenyegs were a tribe of wild Mongolian nomads who made
frequent inroads upon the Russians in the tenth and eleventh
centuries.--Translator's Note.
From this came the nickname, the Petchenyegs' farm, which stuck to the
place even more when Zhmuhin's boys grew up and began to make raids on
the orchards and kitchen-gardens. Ivan Abramitch was called "You Know,"
as he usually talked a very great deal and frequently made use of that
expression.
In the yard near a barn Zhmuhin's sons were standing, one a young man of
nineteen, the other a younger lad, both barefoot and bareheaded. Just at
the moment when the trap drove into the yard the younger one flung high
up a hen which, cackling, described an arc in the air; the elder shot at
it with a gun and the hen fell dead on the earth.
"Those are my boys learning to shoot birds flying," said Zhmuhin.
In the entry the travellers were met by a little thin woman with a pale
face, still young and beautiful; from her dress she might have been
taken for a servant.
"And this, allow me to introduce her," said Zhmuhin, "is the mother of
my young cubs. Come, Lyubov Osipovna," he said, addressing her, "you
must be spry, mother, and get something for our guest. Let us have
supper. Look sharp!"
The house consisted of two parts: in one was the parlour and beside it
old Zhmuhin's bedroom, both stuffy rooms with low ceilings and
multitudes of flies and wasps, and in the other was the kitchen in which
the cooking and washing was done and the labourers had their meals; here
geese and turkey-hens were sitting on their eggs under the benches, and
here were the beds of Lyubov Osipovna and her two sons. The furniture in
the parlour was unpainted and evidently roughly made by a carpenter;
guns, game-bags, and whips were hanging on the walls, and all this old
rubbish was covered with the rust of years and looked grey with dust.
There was not one picture; in the corner was a dingy board which had at
one time been an ikon.
A young Little Russian woman laid the table and handed ham, then
beetroot soup. The visitor refused vodka and ate only bread and
cucumbers.
"How about ham?" asked Zhmuhin.
"Thank you, I don't eat it," answered the visitor, "I don't eat meat at
all."
"Why is that?"
"I am a vegetarian. Killing animals is against my principles."
Zhmuhin thought a minute and then said slowly with a sigh:
"Yes . . . to be sure. . . . I saw a man who did not eat meat in town,
too. It's a new religion they've got now. Well, it's good. We can't go
on always shooting and slaughtering, you know; we must give it up some
day and leave even the beasts in peace. It's a sin to kill, it's a sin,
there is no denying it. Sometimes one kills a hare and wounds him in the
leg, and he cries like a child. . . . So it must hurt him!"
"Of course it hurts him; animals suffer just like human beings."
"That's true," Zhmuhin assented. "I understand that very well," he went
on, musing, "only there is this one thing I don't understand: suppose,
you know, everyone gave up eating meat, what would become of the
domestic animals--fowls and geese, for instance?"
"Fowls and geese would live in freedom like wild birds."
"Now I understand. To be sure, crows and jackdaws get on all right
without us. Yes. . . . Fowls and geese and hares and sheep, all will
live in freedom, rejoicing, you know, and praising God; and they will
not fear us, peace and concord will come. Only there is one thing, you
know, I can't understand," Zhmuhin went on, glancing at the ham. "How
will it be with the pigs? What is to be done with them?"
"They will be like all the rest--that is, they will live in freedom."
"Ah! Yes. But allow me to say, if they were not slaughtered they would
multiply, you know, and then good-bye to the kitchen-gardens and the
meadows. Why, a pig, if you let it free and don't look after it, will
ruin everything in a day. A pig is a pig, and it is not for nothing it
is called a pig. . . ."
They finished supper. Zhmuhin got up from the table and for a long while
walked up and down the room, talking and talking. . . . He was fond of
talking of something important or serious and was fond of meditating,
and in his old age he had a longing to reach some haven, to be
reassured, that he might not be so frightened of dying. He had a longing
for meekness, spiritual calm, and confidence in himself, such as this
guest of theirs had, who had satisfied his hunger on cucumbers and
bread, and believed that doing so made him more perfect; he was sitting
on a chest, plump and healthy, keeping silent and patiently enduring his
boredom, and in the dusk when one glanced at him from the entry he
looked like a big round stone which one could not move from its place.
If a man has something to lay hold of in life he is all right.
Zhmuhin went through the entry to the porch, and then he could be heard
sighing and saying reflectively to himself: "Yes. . . . To be sure. . .
. " By now it was dark, and here and there stars could be seen in the
sky. They had not yet lighted up indoors. Someone came into the parlour
as noiselessly as a shadow and stood still near the door. It was Lyubov
Osipovna, Zhmuhin's wife.
"Are you from the town?" she asked timidly, not looking at her visitor.
"Yes, I live in the town."
"Perhaps you are something in the learned way, sir; be so kind as to
advise us. We ought to send in a petition."
"To whom?" asked the visitor.
"We have two sons, kind gentleman, and they ought to have been sent to
school long ago, but we never see anyone and have no one to advise us.
And I know nothing. For if they are not taught they will have to serve
in the army as common Cossacks. It's not right, sir! They can't read and
write, they are worse than peasants, and Ivan Abramitch himself can't
stand them and won't let them indoors. But they are not to blame. The
younger one, at any rate, ought to be sent to school, it is such a
pity!" she said slowly, and there was a quiver in her voice; and it
seemed incredible that a woman so small and so youthful could have
grown-up children. "Oh, it's such a pity!"
"You don't know anything about it, mother, and it is not your affair,"
said Zhmuhin, appearing in the doorway. "Don't pester our guest with
your wild talk. Go away, mother!"
Lyubov Osipovna went out, and in the entry repeated once more in a thin
little voice: "Oh, it's such a pity!"
A bed was made up for the visitor on the sofa in the parlour, and that
it might not be dark for him they lighted the lamp before the ikon.
Zhmuhin went to bed in his own room. And as he lay there he thought of
his soul, of his age, of his recent stroke which had so frightened him
and made him think of death. He was fond of philosophizing when he was
in quietness by himself, and then he fancied that he was a very earnest,
deep thinker, and that nothing in this world interested him but serious
questions. And now he kept thinking and he longed to pitch upon some one
significant thought unlike others, which would be a guide to him in
life, and he wanted to think out principles of some sort for himself so
as to make his life as deep and earnest as he imagined that he felt
himself to be. It would be a good thing for an old man like him to
abstain altogether from meat, from superfluities of all sorts. The time
when men give up killing each other and animals would come sooner or
later, it could not but be so, and he imagined that time to himself and
clearly pictured himself living in peace with all the animals, and
suddenly he thought again of the pigs, and everything was in a tangle in
his brain.
"It's a queer business, Lord have mercy upon us," he muttered, sighing
heavily. "Are you asleep?" he asked.
"No."
Zhmuhin got out of bed and stopped in the doorway with nothing but his
shirt on, displaying to his guest his sinewy legs, that looked as dry as
sticks.
"Nowadays, you know," he began, "all sorts of telegraphs, telephones,
and marvels of all kinds, in fact, have come in, but people are no
better than they were. They say that in our day, thirty or forty years
ago, men were coarse and cruel; but isn't it just the same now? We
certainly did not stand on ceremony in our day. I remember in the
Caucasus when we were stationed by a little river with nothing to do for