Short Stories by Chekhov
Andreyitch stood the verger Matvey, the midwife Makaryevna, and her one-
armed son Mitka. There was no one else. The sacristan sang badly in an
unpleasant, hollow bass, but the tune and the words were so mournful
that the shopkeeper little by little lost the expression of dignity and
was plunged in sadness. He thought of his Mashutka,... he remembered she
had been born when he was still a lackey in the service of the owner of
Verhny Zaprudy. In his busy life as a lackey he had not noticed how his
girl had grown up. That long period during which she was being shaped
into a graceful creature, with a little flaxen head and dreamy eyes as
big as kopeck-pieces passed unnoticed by him. She had been brought up
like all the children of favorite lackeys, in ease and comfort in the
company of the young ladies. The gentry, to fill up their idle time, had
taught her to read, to write, to dance; he had had no hand in her
bringing up. Only from time to time casually meeting her at the gate or
on the landing of the stairs, he would remember that she was his
daughter, and would, so far as he had leisure for it, begin teaching her
the prayers and the scripture. Oh, even then he had the reputation of an
authority on the church rules and the holy scriptures! Forbidding and
stolid as her father's face was, yet the girl listened readily. She
repeated the prayers after him yawning, but on the other hand, when he,
hesitating and trying to express himself elaborately, began telling her
stories, she was all attention. Esau's pottage, the punishment of Sodom,
and the troubles of the boy Joseph made her turn pale and open her blue
eyes wide.
Afterwards when he gave up being a lackey, and with the money he had
saved opened a shop in the village, Mashutka had gone away to Moscow
with his master's family....
Three years before her death she had come to see her father. He had
scarcely recognized her. She was a graceful young woman with the manners
of a young lady, and dressed like one. She talked cleverly, as though
from a book, smoked, and slept till midday. When Andrey Andreyitch asked
her what she was doing, she had announced, looking him boldly straight
in the face: "I am an actress." Such frankness struck the former flunkey
as the acme of cynicism. Mashutka had begun boasting of her successes
and her stage life; but seeing that her father only turned crimson and
threw up his hands, she ceased. And they spent a fortnight together
without speaking or looking at one another till the day she went away.
Before she went away she asked her father to come for a walk on the bank
of the river. Painful as it was for him to walk in the light of day, in
the sight of all honest people, with a daughter who was an actress, he
yielded to her request.
"What a lovely place you live in!" she said enthusiastically. "What
ravines and marshes! Good heavens, how lovely my native place is!"
And she had burst into tears.
"The place is simply taking up room,..." Andrey Andreyvitch had thought,
looking blankly at the ravines, not understanding his daughter's
enthusiasm. "There is no more profit from them than milk from a billy-
goat."
And she had cried and cried, drawing her breath greedily with her whole
chest, as though she felt she had not a long time left to breathe.
Andrey Andreyitch shook his head like a horse that has been bitten, and
to stifle painful memories began rapidly crossing himself....
"Be mindful, O Lord," he muttered, "of Thy departed servant, the harlot
Mariya, and forgive her sins, voluntary or involuntary...."
The unseemly word dropped from his lips again, but he did not notice it:
what is firmly imbedded in the consciousness cannot be driven out by
Father Grigory's exhortations or even knocked out by a nail. Makaryevna
sighed and whispered something, drawing in a deep breath, while one-
armed Mitka was brooding over something....
"Where there is no sickness, nor grief, nor sighing," droned the
sacristan, covering his right cheek with his hand.
Bluish smoke coiled up from the censer and bathed in the broad, slanting
patch of sunshine which cut across the gloomy, lifeless emptiness of the
church. And it seemed as though the soul of the dead woman were soaring
into the sunlight together with the smoke. The coils of smoke like a
child's curls eddied round and round, floating upwards to the window
and, as it were, holding aloof from the woes and tribulations of which
that poor soul was full.
IN THE COACH-HOUSE
IT was between nine and ten o'clock in the evening. Stepan the coachman,
Mihailo the house-porter, Alyoshka the coachman's grandson, who had come
up from the village to stay with his grandfather, and Nikandr, an old
man of seventy, who used to come into the yard every evening to sell
salt herrings, were sitting round a lantern in the big coach-house,
playing "kings." Through the wide-open door could be seen the whole
yard, the big house, where the master's family lived, the gates, the
cellars, and the porter's lodge. It was all shrouded in the darkness of
night, and only the four windows of one of the lodges which was let were
brightly lit up. The shadows of the coaches and sledges with their
shafts tipped upwards stretched from the walls to the doors, quivering
and cutting across the shadows cast by the lantern and the players....
On the other side of the thin partition that divided the coach-house
from the stable were the horses. There was a scent of hay, and a
disagreeable smell of salt herrings coming from old Nikandr.
The porter won and was king; he assumed an attitude such as was in his
opinion befitting a king, and blew his nose loudly on a red-checked
handkerchief.
"Now if I like I can chop off anybody's head," he said. Alyoshka, a boy
of eight with a head of flaxen hair, left long uncut, who had only
missed being king by two tricks, looked angrily and with envy at the
porter. He pouted and frowned.
"I shall give you the trick, grandfather," he said, pondering over his
cards; "I know you have got the queen of diamonds."
"Well, well, little silly, you have thought enough!"
Alyoshka timidly played the knave of diamonds. At that moment a ring was
heard from the yard.
"Oh, hang you!" muttered the porter, getting up. "Go and open the gate,
O king!"
When he came back a little later, Alyoshka was already a prince, the
fish-hawker a soldier, and the coachman a peasant.
"It's a nasty business," said the porter, sitting down to the cards
again. "I have just let the doctors out. They have not extracted it."
"How could they? Just think, they would have to pick open the brains. If
there is a bullet in the head, of what use are doctors?"
"He is lying unconscious," the porter went on. "He is bound to die.
Alyoshka, don't look at the cards, you little puppy, or I will pull your
ears! Yes, I let the doctors out, and the father and mother in... They
have only just arrived. Such crying and wailing, Lord preserve us! They
say he is the only son.... It's a grief!"
All except Alyoshka, who was absorbed in the game, looked round at the
brightly lighted windows of the lodge.
"I have orders to go to the police station tomorrow," said the porter.
"There will be an inquiry... But what do I know about it? I saw nothing
of it. He called me this morning, gave me a letter, and said: 'Put it in
the letter-box for me.' And his eyes were red with crying. His wife and
children were not at home. They had gone out for a walk. So when I had
gone with the letter, he put a bullet into his forehead from a revolver.
When I came back his cook was wailing for the whole yard to hear."
"It's a great sin," said the fish-hawker in a husky voice, and he shook
his head, "a great sin!"
"From too much learning," said the porter, taking a trick; "his wits
outstripped his wisdom. Sometimes he would sit writing papers all
night.... Play, peasant!... But he was a nice gentleman. And so white
skinned, black-haired and tall!... He was a good lodger."
"It seems the fair sex is at the bottom of it," said the coachman,
slapping the nine of trumps on the king of diamonds. "It seems he was
fond of another man's wife and disliked his own; it does happen."
"The king rebels," said the porter.
At that moment there was again a ring from the yard. The rebellious king
spat with vexation and went out. Shadows like dancing couples flitted
across the windows of the lodge. There was the sound of voices and
hurried footsteps in the yard.
"I suppose the doctors have come again," said the coachman. "Our Mihailo
is run off his legs...."
A strange wailing voice rang out for a moment in the air. Alyoshka
looked in alarm at his grandfather, the coachman; then at the windows,
and said:
"He stroked me on the head at the gate yesterday, and said, 'What
district do you come from, boy?' Grandfather, who was that howled just
now?"
His grandfather trimmed the light in the lantern and made no answer.
"The man is lost," he said a little later, with a yawn. "He is lost, and
his children are ruined, too. It's a disgrace for his children for the
rest of their lives now."
The porter came back and sat down by the lantern.
"He is dead," he said. "They have sent to the almshouse for the old
women to lay him out."
"The kingdom of heaven and eternal peace to him!" whispered the
coachman, and he crossed himself.
Looking at him, Alyoshka crossed himself too.
"You can't pray for such as him," said the fish-hawker.
"Why not?"
"It's a sin."
"That's true," the porter assented. "Now his soul has gone straight to
hell, to the devil...."
"It's a sin," repeated the fish-hawker; "such as he have no funeral, no
requiem, but are buried like carrion with no respect."
The old man put on his cap and got up.
"It was the same thing at our lady's," he said, pulling his cap on
further. "We were serfs in those days; the younger son of our mistress,
the General's lady, shot himself through the mouth with a pistol, from
too much learning, too. It seems that by law such have to be buried
outside the cemetery, without priests, without a requiem service; but to
save disgrace our lady, you know, bribed the police and the doctors, and
they gave her a paper to say her son had done it when delirious, not
knowing what he was doing. You can do anything with money. So he had a
funeral with priests and every honor, the music played, and he was
buried in the church; for the deceased General had built that church
with his own money, and all his family were buried there. Only this is
what happened, friends. One month passed, and then another, and it was
all right. In the third month they informed the General's lady that the
watchmen had come from that same church. What did they want? They were
brought to her, they fell at her feet. 'We can't go on serving, your
excellency,' they said. 'Look out for other watchmen and graciously
dismiss us.' 'What for?' 'No,' they said, 'we can't possibly; your son
howls under the church all night.'"
Alyoshka shuddered, and pressed his face to the coachman's back so as
not to see the windows.
"At first the General's lady would not listen," continued the old man.
"'All this is your fancy, you simple folk have such notions,' she said.
'A dead man cannot howl.' Some time afterwards the watchmen came to her
again, and with them the sacristan. So the sacristan, too, had heard him
howling. The General's lady saw that it was a bad job; she locked
herself in her bedroom with the watchmen. 'Here, my friends, here are
twenty-five roubles for you, and for that go by night in secret, so that
no one should hear or see you, dig up my unhappy son, and bury him,' she
said, 'outside the cemetery.' And I suppose she stood them a glass...
And the watchmen did so. The stone with the inscription on it is there