Short Stories by Chekhov
and he used it, too. . . . Well, of course, they got the best of it
because there were eight of them. They hacked at the merchants so that
there was not a sound place left on their bodies; when they had finished
they dragged both of them off the road, the father to one side and the
son to the other. Opposite that cross there is another cross on this
side. . . . Whether it is still standing, I don't know. . . . I can't
see from here. . . ."
"It is," said Kiruha.
"They say they did not find much money afterwards."
"No," Panteley confirmed; "they only found a hundred roubles."
"And three of them died afterwards, for the merchant had cut them badly
with the scythe, too. They died from loss of blood. One had his hand cut
off, so that they say he ran three miles without his hand, and they
found him on a mound close to Kurikovo. He was squatting on his heels,
with his head on his knees, as though he were lost in thought, but when
they looked at him there was no life in him and he was dead. . . ."
"They found him by the track of blood," said Panteley.
Everyone looked at the cross, and again there was a hush. From
somewhere, most likely from the creek, floated the mournful cry of the
bird: "Sleep! sleep! sleep!"
"There are a great many wicked people in the world," said Emelyan.
"A great many," assented Panteley, and he moved up closer to the fire as
though he were frightened. "A great many," he went on in a low voice.
"I've seen lots and lots of them. . . . Wicked people! . . . I have seen
a great many holy and just, too. . . . Queen of Heaven, save us and have
mercy on us. I remember once thirty years ago, or maybe more, I was
driving a merchant from Morshansk. The merchant was a jolly handsome
fellow, with money, too . . . the merchant was . . . a nice man, no harm
in him. . . . So we put up for the night at an inn. And in Russia the
inns are not what they are in these parts. There the yards are roofed in
and look like the ground floor, or let us say like barns in good farms.
Only a barn would be a bit higher. So we put up there and were all
right. My merchant was in a room, while I was with the horses, and
everything was as it should be. So, lads, I said my prayers before going
to sleep and began walking about the yard. And it was a dark night, I
couldn't see anything; it was no good trying. So I walked about a bit up
to the waggons, or nearly, when I saw a light gleaming. What could it
mean? I thought the people of the inn had gone to bed long ago, and
besides the merchant and me there were no other guests in the inn. . . .
Where could the light have come from? I felt suspicious. . . . I went
closer . . . towards the light. . . . The Lord have mercy upon me! and
save me, Queen of Heaven! I looked and there was a little window with a
grating, . . . close to the ground, in the house. . . I lay down on the
ground and looked in; as soon as I looked in a cold chill ran all down
me. . . ."
Kiruha, trying not to make a noise, thrust a handful of twigs into the
fire. After waiting for it to leave off crackling and hissing, the old
man went on:
"I looked in and there was a big cellar, black and dark. . . . There was
a lighted lantern on a tub. In the middle of the cellar were about a
dozen men in red shirts with their sleeves turned up, sharpening long
knives. . . . Ugh! So we had fallen into a nest of robbers. . . . What's
to be done? I ran to the merchant, waked him up quietly, and said:
'Don't be frightened, merchant,' said I, 'but we are in a bad way. We
have fallen into a nest of robbers,' I said. He turned pale and asked:
'What are we to do now, Panteley? I have a lot of money that belongs to
orphans. As for my life,' he said, 'that's in God's hands. I am not
afraid to die, but it's dreadful to lose the orphans' money,' said he. .
. . What were we to do? The gates were locked; there was no getting out.
If there had been a fence one could have climbed over it, but with the
yard shut up! . . . 'Come, don't be frightened, merchant,' said I; 'but
pray to God. Maybe the Lord will not let the orphans suffer. Stay
still.' said I, 'and make no sign, and meanwhile, maybe, I shall think
of something. . . .' Right! . . . I prayed to God and the Lord put the
thought into my mind. . . . I clambered up on my chaise and softly, . .
. softly so that no one should hear, began pulling out the straw in the
thatch, made a hole and crept out, crept out. . . . Then I jumped off
the roof and ran along the road as fast as I could. I ran and ran till I
was nearly dead. . . . I ran maybe four miles without taking breath, if
not more. Thank God I saw a village. I ran up to a hut and began tapping
at a window. 'Good Christian people,' I said, and told them all about
it, 'do not let a Christian soul perish. . . .' I waked them all up. . .
. The peasants gathered together and went with me, . . one with a cord,
one with an oakstick, others with pitchforks. . . . We broke in the
gates of the inn-yard and went straight to the cellar. . . . And the
robbers had just finished sharpening their knives and were going to kill
the merchant. The peasants took them, every one of them, bound them and
carried them to the police. The merchant gave them three hundred roubles
in his joy, and gave me five gold pieces and put my name down. They said
that they found human bones in the cellar afterwards, heaps and heaps of
them. . . . Bones! . . . So they robbed people and then buried them, so
that there should be no traces. . . . Well, afterwards they were
punished at Morshansk."
Panteley had finished his story, and he looked round at his listeners.
They were gazing at him in silence. The water was boiling by now and
Styopka was skimming off the froth.
"Is the fat ready?" Kiruha asked him in a whisper.
"Wait a little. . . . Directly."
Styopka, his eyes fixed on Panteley as though he were afraid that the
latter might begin some story before he was back, ran to the waggons;
soon he came back with a little wooden bowl and began pounding some lard
in it.
"I went another journey with a merchant, too, . . ." Panteley went on
again, speaking as before in a low voice and with fixed unblinking
eyes. "His name, as I remember now, was Pyotr Grigoritch. He was a nice
man, . . . the merchant was. We stopped in the same way at an inn. . . .
He indoors and me with the horses. . . . The people of the house, the
innkeeper and his wife, seemed friendly good sort of people; the
labourers, too, seemed all right; but yet, lads, I couldn't sleep. I had
a queer feeling in my heart, . . . a queer feeling, that was just it.
The gates were open and there were plenty of people about, and yet I
felt afraid and not myself. Everyone had been asleep long ago. It was
the middle of the night; it would soon be time to get up, and I was
lying alone in my chaise and could not close my eyes, as though I were
some owl. And then, lads, I heard this sound, 'Toop! toop! toop!'
Someone was creeping up to the chaise. I poke my head out, and there was
a peasant woman in nothing but her shift and with her feet bare. . . .
'What do you want, good woman?' I asked. And she was all of a tremble;
her face was terror-stricken. . . 'Get up, good man,' said she; 'the
people are plotting evil. . . . They mean to kill your merchant. With my
own ears I heard the master whispering with his wife. . . .' So it was
not for nothing, the foreboding of my heart! 'And who are you?' I asked.
'I am their cook,' she said. . . . Right! . . . So I got out of the
chaise and went to the merchant. I waked him up and said: 'Things aren't
quite right, Pyotr Grigoritch. . . . Make haste and rouse yourself from
sleep, your worship, and dress now while there is still time,' I said;
'and to save our skins, let us get away from trouble.' He had no sooner
begun dressing when the door opened and, mercy on us! I saw, Holy
Mother! the innkeeper and his wife come into the room with three
labourers. . . . So they had persuaded the labourers to join them. 'The
merchant has a lot of money, and we'll go shares,' they told them. Every
one of the five had a long knife in their hand each a knife. The
innkeeper locked the door and said: 'Say your prayers, travellers, . . .
and if you begin screaming,' they said, 'we won't let you say your
prayers before you die. . . .' As though we could scream! I had such a
lump in my throat I could not cry out. . . . The merchant wept and said:
'Good Christian people! you have resolved to kill me because my money
tempts you. Well, so be it; I shall not be the first nor shall I be the
last. Many of us merchants have been murdered at inns. But why, good
Christian brothers,' says he, 'murder my driver? Why should he have to
suffer for my money?' And he said that so pitifully! And the innkeeper
answered him: 'If we leave him alive,' said he, 'he will be the first to
bear witness against us. One may just as well kill two as one. You can
but answer once for seven misdeeds. . . Say your prayers, that's all you
can do, and it is no good talking!' The merchant and I knelt down side
by side and wept and said our prayers. He thought of his children. I was
young in those days; I wanted to live. . . . We looked at the images and
prayed, and so pitifully that it brings a tear even now. . . . And the
innkeeper's wife looks at us and says: 'Good people,' said she, 'don't
bear a grudge against us in the other world and pray to God for our
punishment, for it is want that drives us to it.' We prayed and wept and
prayed and wept, and God heard us. He had pity on us, I suppose. . . .
At the very minute when the innkeeper had taken the merchant by the
beard to rip open his throat with his knife suddenly someone seemed to
tap at the window from the yard! We all started, and the innkeeper's
hands dropped. . . . Someone was tapping at the window and shouting:
'Pyotr Grigoritch,' he shouted, 'are you here? Get ready and let's go!'
The people saw that someone had come for the merchant; they were
terrified and took to their heels. . . . And we made haste into the
yard, harnessed the horses, and were out of sight in a minute. . ."
"Who was it knocked at the window?" asked Dymov.
"At the window? It must have been a holy saint or angel, for there was
no one else. . . . When we drove out of the yard there wasn't a soul in
the street. . . . It was the Lord's doing."
Panteley told other stories, and in all of them "long knives" figured
and all alike sounded made up. Had he heard these stories from someone
else, or had he made them up himself in the remote past, and afterwards,
as his memory grew weaker, mixed up his experiences with his
imaginations and become unable to distinguish one from the other?
Anything is possible, but it is strange that on this occasion and for
the rest of the journey, whenever he happened to tell a story, he gave
unmistakable preference to fiction, and never told of what he really had
experienced. At the time Yegorushka took it all for the genuine thing,
and believed every word; later on it seemed to him strange that a man
who in his day had travelled all over Russia and seen and known so much,
whose wife and children had been burnt to death, so failed to appreciate
the wealth of his life that whenever he was sitting by the camp fire he
was either silent or talked of what had never been.
Over their porridge they were all silent, thinking of what they had just
heard. Life is terrible and marvellous, and so, however terrible a story
you tell in Russia, however you embroider it with nests of robbers, long
knives and such marvels, it always finds an echo of reality in the soul
of the listener, and only a man who has been a good deal affected by
education looks askance distrustfully, and even he will be silent. The
cross by the roadside, the dark bales of wool, the wide expanse of the