Short Stories by Chekhov
great surprise of everyone; and the fact that he had ended his life so
strangely, after unpacking his eatables and laying them out on the
table, and with the samovar before him, led many people to suspect that
it was a case of murder; an inquest was necessary.
In the outer room the doctor and the examining magistrate shook the snow
off themselves and knocked it off their boots. And meanwhile the old
village constable, Ilya Loshadin, stood by, holding a little tin lamp.
There was a strong smell of paraffin.
"Who are you?" asked the doctor.
"Conshtable,..." answered the constable.
He used to spell it "conshtable" when he signed the receipts at the post
office.
"And where are the witnesses?"
"They must have gone to tea, your honor."
On the right was the parlor, the travelers' or gentry's room; on the
left the kitchen, with a big stove and sleeping shelves under the
rafters. The doctor and the examining magistrate, followed by the
constable, holding the lamp high above his head, went into the parlor.
Here a still, long body covered with white linen was lying on the floor
close to the table-legs. In the dim light of the lamp they could clearly
see, besides the white covering, new rubber goloshes, and everything
about it was uncanny and sinister: the dark walls, and the silence, and
the goloshes, and the stillness of the dead body. On the table stood a
samovar, cold long ago; and round it parcels, probably the eatables.
"To shoot oneself in the Zemstvo hut, how tactless!" said the doctor.
"If one does want to put a bullet through one's brains, one ought to do
it at home in some outhouse."
He sank on to a bench, just as he was, in his cap, his fur coat, and his
felt overboots; his fellow-traveler, the examining magistrate, sat down
opposite.
"These hysterical, neurasthenic people are great egoists," the doctor
went on hotly. "If a neurasthenic sleeps in the same room with you, he
rustles his newspaper; when he dines with you, he gets up a scene with
his wife without troubling about your presence; and when he feels
inclined to shoot himself, he shoots himself in a village in a Zemstvo
hut, so as to give the maximum of trouble to everybody. These gentlemen
in every circumstance of life think of no one but themselves! That's why
the elderly so dislike our 'nervous age.'"
"The elderly dislike so many things," said the examining magistrate,
yawning. "You should point out to the elder generation what the
difference is between the suicides of the past and the suicides of to-
day. In the old days the so-called gentleman shot himself because he had
made away with Government money, but nowadays it is because he is sick
of life, depressed.... Which is better?"
"Sick of life, depressed; but you must admit that he might have shot
himself somewhere else."
"Such trouble!" said the constable, "such trouble! It's a real
affliction. The people are very much upset, your honor; they haven't
slept these three nights. The children are crying. The cows ought to be
milked, but the women won't go to the stall--they are afraid... for fear
the gentleman should appear to them in the darkness. Of course they are
silly women, but some of the men are frightened too. As soon as it is
dark they won't go by the hut one by one, but only in a flock together.
And the witnesses too...."
Dr. Startchenko, a middle-aged man in spectacles with a dark beard, and
the examining magistrate Lyzhin, a fair man, still young, who had only
taken his degree two years before and looked more like a student than an
official, sat in silence, musing. They were vexed that they were late.
Now they had to wait till morning, and to stay here for the night,
though it was not yet six o'clock; and they had before them a long
evening, a dark night, boredom, uncomfortable beds, beetles, and cold in
the morning; and listening to the blizzard that howled in the chimney
and in the loft, they both thought how unlike all this was the life
which they would have chosen for themselves and of which they had once
dreamed, and how far away they both were from their contemporaries, who
were at that moment walking about the lighted streets in town without
noticing the weather, or were getting ready for the theatre, or sitting
in their studies over a book. Oh, how much they would have given now
only to stroll along the Nevsky Prospect, or along Petrovka in Moscow,
to listen to decent singing, to sit for an hour or so in a restaurant!
"Oo-oo-oo-oo!" sang the storm in the loft, and something outside slammed
viciously, probably the signboard on the hut. "Oo-oo-oo-oo!"
"You can do as you please, but I have no desire to stay here," said
Startchenko, getting up. "It's not six yet, it's too early to go to bed;
I am off. Von Taunitz lives not far from here, only a couple of miles
from Syrnya. I shall go to see him and spend the evening there.
Constable, run and tell my coachman not to take the horses out. And what
are you going to do?" he asked Lyzhin.
"I don't know; I expect I shall go to sleep."
The doctor wrapped himself in his fur coat and went out. Lyzhin could
hear him talking to the coachman and the bells beginning to quiver on
the frozen horses. He drove off.
"It is not nice for you, sir, to spend the night in here," said the
constable; "come into the other room. It's dirty, but for one night it
won't matter. I'll get a samovar from a peasant and heat it directly.
I'll heap up some hay for you, and then you go to sleep, and God bless
you, your honor."
A little later the examining magistrate was sitting in the kitchen
drinking tea, while Loshadin, the constable, was standing at the door
talking. He was an old man about sixty, short and very thin, bent and
white, with a naive smile on his face and watery eyes, and he kept
smacking with his lips as though he were sucking a sweetmeat. He was
wearing a short sheepskin coat and high felt boots, and held his stick
in his hands all the time. The youth of the examining magistrate aroused
his compassion, and that was probably why he addressed him familiarly.
"The elder gave orders that he was to be informed when the police
superintendent or the examining magistrate came," he said, "so I suppose
I must go now.... It's nearly three miles to the volost, and the storm,
the snowdrifts, are something terrible--maybe one won't get there before
midnight. Ough! how the wind roars!"
"I don't need the elder," said Lyzhin. "There is nothing for him to do
here."
He looked at the old man with curiosity, and asked:
"Tell me, grandfather, how many years have you been constable?"
"How many? Why, thirty years. Five years after the Freedom I began going
as constable, that's how I reckon it. And from that time I have been
going every day since. Other people have holidays, but I am always
going. When it's Easter and the church bells are ringing and Christ has
risen, I still go about with my bag--to the treasury, to the post, to the
police superintendent's lodgings, to the rural captain, to the tax
inspector, to the municipal office, to the gentry, to the peasants, to
all orthodox Christians. I carry parcels, notices, tax papers, letters,
forms of different sorts, circulars, and to be sure, kind gentleman,
there are all sorts of forms nowadays, so as to note down the
numbers--yellow, white, and red--and every gentleman or priest or well-to-
do peasant must write down a dozen times in the year how much he has
sown and harvested, how many quarters or poods he has of rye, how many
of oats, how many of hay, and what the weather's like, you know, and
insects, too, of all sorts. To be sure you can write what you like, it's
only a regulation, but one must go and give out the notices and then go
again and collect them. Here, for instance, there's no need to cut open
the gentleman; you know yourself it's a silly thing, it's only dirtying
your hands, and here you have been put to trouble, your honor; you have
come because it's the regulation; you can't help it. For thirty years I
have been going round according to regulation. In the summer it is all
right, it is warm and dry; but in winter and autumn it's uncomfortable.
At times I have been almost drowned and almost frozen; all sorts of
things have happened--wicked people set on me in the forest and took away
my bag; I have been beaten, and I have been before a court of law."
"What were you accused of?"
"Of fraud."
"How do you mean?"
"Why, you see, Hrisanf Grigoryev, the clerk, sold the contractor some
boards belonging to someone else--cheated him, in fact. I was mixed up in
it. They sent me to the tavern for vodka; well, the clerk did not share
with me--did not even offer me a glass; but as through my poverty I
was--in appearance, I mean--not a man to be relied upon, not a man of any
worth, we were both brought to trial; he was sent to prison, but, praise
God! I was acquitted on all points. They read a notice, you know, in the
court. And they were all in uniforms--in the court, I mean. I can tell
you, your honor, my duties for anyone not used to them are terrible,
absolutely killing; but to me it is nothing. In fact, my feet ache when
I am not walking. And at home it is worse for me. At home one has to
heat the stove for the clerk in the volost office, to fetch water for
him, to clean his boots."
"And what wages do you get?" Lyzhin asked.
"Eighty-four roubles a year."
"I'll bet you get other little sums coming in. You do, don't you?"
"Other little sums? No, indeed! Gentlemen nowadays don't often give
tips. Gentlemen nowadays are strict, they take offense at anything. If
you bring them a notice they are offended, if you take off your cap
before them they are offended. 'You have come to the wrong entrance,'
they say. 'You are a drunkard,' they say. 'You smell of onion; you are a
blockhead; you are the son of a bitch.' There are kind-hearted ones, of
course; but what does one get from them? They only laugh and call one
all sorts of names. Mr. Altuhin, for instance, he is a good-natured
gentleman; and if you look at him he seems sober and in his right mind,
but so soon as he sees me he shouts and does not know what he means
himself. He gave me such a name 'You,' said he,..." The constable
uttered some word, but in such a low voice that it was impossible to
make out what he said.
"What?" Lyzhin asked. "Say it again."
"'Administration,'" the constable repeated aloud. "He has been calling
me that for a long while, for the last six years. 'Hullo,
Administration!' But I don't mind; let him, God bless him! Sometimes a
lady will send one a glass of vodka and a bit of pie and one drinks to
her health. But peasants give more; peasants are more kind-hearted, they
have the fear of God in their hearts: one will give a bit of bread,
another a drop of cabbage soup, another will stand one a glass. The
village elders treat one to tea in the tavern. Here the witnesses have
gone to their tea. 'Loshadin,' they said, 'you stay here and keep watch
for us,' and they gave me a kopeck each. You see, they are frightened,
not being used to it, and yesterday they gave me fifteen kopecks and
offered me a glass."
"And you, aren't you frightened?"
"I am, sir; but of course it is my duty, there is no getting away from
it. In the summer I was taking a convict to the town, and he set upon me
and gave me such a drubbing! And all around were fields, forest--how
could I get away from him? It's just the same here. I remember the
gentleman, Mr. Lesnitsky, when he was so high, and I knew his father and
mother. I am from the village of Nedoshtchotova, and they, the Lesnitsky
family, were not more than three-quarters of a mile from us and less
than that, their ground next to ours, and Mr. Lesnitsky had a sister, a
God-fearing and tender-hearted lady. Lord keep the soul of Thy servant