Short Stories by Chekhov
railway line in the coolest possible way stole three hundred trucks from
the N. line. It's a fact, sir! I swear it! They carried them off,
repainted them, put their letters on them, and that's all about it. The
N. line sends its agents everywhere, they hunt and hunt. And then--can
you imagine it?--the Company happen to come upon a broken-down carriage
of the Z. line. They repair it at their depot, and all at once, bless my
soul! see their own mark on the wheels What do you say to that? Eh? If I
did it they would send me to Siberia, but the railway companies simply
snap their fingers at it!"
It is pleasant to Malahin to talk to educated, cultured people. He
strokes his beard and joins in the conversation with dignity.
"Take this case, gentlemen, for instance," he says. "I am transporting
cattle to X. Eight vanloads. Very good.... Now let us say they charge me
for each vanload as a weight of ten tons; eight bullocks don't weigh ten
tons, but much less, yet they don't take any notice of that...."
At that instant Yasha walks into the room looking for his father. He
listens and is about to sit down on a chair, but probably thinking of
his weight goes and sits on the window-sill.
"They don't take any notice of that," Malahin goes on, "and charge me
and my son the third-class fare, too, forty-two roubles, for going in
the van with the bullocks. This is my son Yakov. I have two more at
home, but they have gone in for study. Well and apart from that it is my
opinion that the railways have ruined the cattle trade. In old days when
they drove them in herds it was better."
The old man's talk is lengthy and drawn out. After every sentence he
looks at Yasha as though he would say: "See how I am talking to clever
people."
"Upon my word!" the inspector interrupts him. "No one is indignant, no
one criticizes. And why? It is very simple. An abomination strikes the
eye and arouses indignation only when it is exceptional, when the
established order is broken by it. Here, where, saving your presence, it
constitutes the long-established program and forms and enters into the
basis of the order itself, where every sleeper on the line bears the
trace of it and stinks of it, one too easily grows accustomed to it!
Yes, sir!"
The second bell rings, the gentlemen in the queer overcoat gets up. The
inspector takes him by the arm and, still talking with heat, goes off
with him to the platform. After the third bell the station-master runs
into his room, and sits down at his table.
"Listen, with what number am I to go?" asks Malahin.
The station-master looks at a form and says indignantly:
"Are you Malahin, eight vanloads? You must pay a rouble a van and six
roubles and twenty kopecks for stamps. You have no stamps. Total,
fourteen roubles, twenty kopecks."
Receiving the money, he writes something down, dries it with sand, and,
hurriedly snatching up a bundle of forms, goes quickly out of the room.
At ten o'clock in the evening Malahin gets an answer from the traffic
manager: "Give precedence."
Reading the telegram through, the old man winks significantly and, very
well pleased with himself, puts it in his pocket.
"Here," he says to Yasha, "look and learn."
At midnight his train goes on. The night is dark and cold like the
previous one; the waits at the stations are long. Yasha sits on the cape
and imperturbably strums on the accordion, while the old man is still
more eager to exert himself. At one of the stations he is overtaken by a
desire to lodge a complaint. At his request a gendarme sits down and
writes:
"November 10, 188-.--I, non-commissioned officer of the Z. section of the
N. police department of railways, Ilya Tchered, in accordance with
article II of the statute of May 19, 1871, have drawn up this protocol
at the station of X. as herewith follows.... "
"What am I to write next?" asks the gendarme.
Malahin lays out before him forms, postal and telegraph receipts,
accounts.... He does not know himself definitely what he wants of the
gendarme; he wants to describe in the protocol not any separate episode
but his whole journey, with all his losses and conversations with
station-masters--to describe it lengthily and vindictively.
"At the station of Z.," he says, "write that the station-master
unlinked my vans from the troop train because he did not like my
countenance."
And he wants the gendarme to be sure to mention his countenance. The
latter listens wearily, and goes on writing without hearing him to the
end. He ends his protocol thus:
"The above deposition I, non-commissioned officer Tchered, have written
down in this protocol with a view to present it to the head of the Z.
section, and have handed a copy thereof to Gavril Malahin."
The old man takes the copy, adds it to the papers with which his side
pocket is stuffed, and, much pleased, goes back to his van.
In the morning Malahin wakes up again in a bad humor, but his wrath
vents itself not on Yasha but the cattle.
"The cattle are done for!" he grumbles. "They are done for! They are at
the last gasp! God be my judge! they will all die. Tfoo!"
The bullocks, who have had nothing to drink for many days, tortured by
thirst, are licking the hoar frost on the walls, and when Malachin goes
up to them they begin licking his cold fur jacket. From their clear,
tearful eyes it can be seen that they are exhausted by thirst and the
jolting of the train, that they are hungry and miserable.
"It's a nice job taking you by rail, you wretched brutes!" mutters
Malahin. "I could wish you were dead to get it over! It makes me sick to
look at you!"
At midday the train stops at a big station where, according to the
regulations, there was drinking water provided for cattle.
Water is given to the cattle, but the bullocks will not drink it: the
water is too cold....
Two more days and nights pass, and at last in the distance in the murky
fog the city comes into sight. The journey is over. The train comes to a
standstill before reaching the town, near a goods' station. The
bullocks, released from the van, stagger and stumble as though they were
walking on slippery ice.
Having got through the unloading and veterinary inspection, Malahin and
Yasha take up their quarters in a dirty, cheap hotel in the outskirts of
the town, in the square in which the cattle-market is held. Their
lodgings are filthy and their food is disgusting, unlike what they ever
have at home; they sleep to the harsh strains of a wretched steam hurdy-
gurdy which plays day and night in the restaurant under their lodging.
The old man spends his time from morning till night going about looking
for purchasers, and Yasha sits for days in the hotel room, or goes out
into the street to look at the town. He sees the filthy square heaped up
with dung, the signboards of restaurants, the turreted walls of a
monastery in the fog. Sometimes he runs across the street and looks into
the grocer's shop, admires the jars of cakes of different colors, yawns,
and lazily saunters back to his room. The city does not interest him.
At last the bullocks are sold to a dealer. Malahin hires drovers. The
cattle are divided into herds, ten in each, and driven to the other end
of the town. The bullocks, exhausted, go with drooping heads through the
noisy streets, and look indifferently at what they see for the first and
last time in their lives. The tattered drovers walk after them, their
heads drooping too. They are bored.... Now and then some drover starts
out of his brooding, remembers that there are cattle in front of him
intrusted to his charge, and to show that he is doing his duty brings a
stick down full swing on a bullock's back. The bullock staggers with the
pain, runs forward a dozen paces, and looks about him as though he were
ashamed at being beaten before people.
After selling the bullocks and buying for his family presents such as
they could perfectly well have bought at home, Malahin and Yasha get
ready for their journey back. Three hours before the train goes the old
man, who has already had a drop too much with the purchaser and so is
fussy, goes down with Yasha to the restaurant and sits down to drink
tea. Like all provincials, he cannot eat and drink alone: he must have
company as fussy and as fond of sedate conversation as himself.
"Call the host!" he says to the waiter; "tell him I should like to
entertain him."
The hotel-keeper, a well-fed man, absolutely indifferent to his lodgers,
comes and sits down to the table.
"Well, we have sold our stock," Malahin says, laughing. "I have swapped
my goat for a hawk. Why, when we set off the price of meat was three
roubles ninety kopecks, but when we arrived it had dropped to three
roubles twenty-five. They tell us we are too late, we should have been
here three days earlier, for now there is not the same demand for meat,
St. Philip's fast has come.... Eh? It's a nice how-do-you-do! It meant a
loss of fourteen roubles on each bullock. Yes. But only think what it
costs to bring the stock! Fifteen roubles carriage, and you must put
down six roubles for each bullock, tips, bribes, drinks, and one thing
and another...."
The hotel-keeper listens out of politeness and reluctantly drinks tea.
Malahin sighs and groans, gesticulates, jests about his ill-luck, but
everything shows that the loss he has sustained does not trouble him
much. He doesn't mind whether he has lost or gained as long as he has
listeners, has something to make a fuss about, and is not late for his
train.
An hour later Malahin and Yasha, laden with bags and boxes, go
downstairs from the hotel room to the front door to get into a sledge
and drive to the station. They are seen off by the hotel-keeper, the
waiter, and various women. The old man is touched. He thrusts ten-kopeck
pieces in all directions, and says in a sing-song voice:
"Good by, good health to you! God grant that all may be well with you.
Please God if we are alive and well we shall come again in Lent. Good-
by. Thank you. God bless you!"
Getting into the sledge, the old man spends a long time crossing himself
in the direction in which the monastery walls make a patch of darkness
in the fog. Yasha sits beside him on the very edge of the seat with his
legs hanging over the side. His face as before shows no sign of emotion
and expresses neither boredom nor desire. He is not glad that he is
going home, nor sorry that he has not had time to see the sights of the
city.
"Drive on!"
The cabman whips up the horse and, turning round, begins swearing at the
heavy and cumbersome luggage.
* On many railway lines, in order to avoid accidents, it is against the
regulations to carry hay on the trains, and so live stock are without
fodder on the journey.--Author's Note.
**The train destined especially for the transport of troops is called
the troop train; when there are no troops it takes goods, and goes more
rapidly than ordinary goods train. --Author's Note.
SORROW
THE turner, Grigory Petrov, who had been known for years past as a
splendid craftsman, and at the same time as the most senseless peasant
in the Galtchinskoy district, was taking his old woman to the hospital.
He had to drive over twenty miles, and it was an awful road. A
government post driver could hardly have coped with it, much less an
incompetent sluggard like Grigory. A cutting cold wind was blowing
straight in his face. Clouds of snowflakes were whirling round and round
in all directions, so that one could not tell whether the snow was
falling from the sky or rising from the earth. The fields, the telegraph
posts, and the forest could not be seen for the fog of snow. And when a
particularly violent gust of wind swooped down on Grigory, even the yoke