Short Stories by Chekhov
to this day, but he himself, the General's son, is outside the
cemetery.... O Lord, forgive us our transgressions!" sighed the fish-
hawker. "There is only one day in the year when one may pray for such
people: the Saturday before Trinity.... You mustn't give alms to beggars
for their sake, it is a sin, but you may feed the birds for the rest of
their souls. The General's lady used to go out to the crossroads every
three days to feed the birds. Once at the cross-roads a black dog
suddenly appeared; it ran up to the bread, and was such a... we all know
what that dog was. The General's lady was like a half-crazy creature for
five days afterwards, she neither ate nor drank.... All at once she fell
on her knees in the garden, and prayed and prayed.... Well, good-by,
friends, the blessing of God and the Heavenly Mother be with you. Let us
go, Mihailo, you'll open the gate for me."
The fish-hawker and the porter went out. The coachman and Alyoshka went
out too, so as not to be left in the coach-house.
"The man was living and is dead!" said the coachman, looking towards the
windows where shadows were still flitting to and fro. "Only this morning
he was walking about the yard, and now he is lying dead."
"The time will come and we shall die too," said the porter, walking away
with the fish-hawker, and at once they both vanished from sight in the
darkness.
The coachman, and Alyoshka after him, somewhat timidly went up to the
lighted windows. A very pale lady with large tear stained eyes, and a
fine-looking gray headed man were moving two card-tables into the middle
of the room, probably with the intention of laying the dead man upon
them, and on the green cloth of the table numbers could still be seen
written in chalk. The cook who had run about the yard wailing in the
morning was now standing on a chair, stretching up to try and cover the
looking glass with a towel.
"Grandfather what are they doing?" asked Alyoshka in a whisper.
"They are just going to lay him on the tables," answered his
grandfather. "Let us go, child, it is bedtime."
The coachman and Alyoshka went back to the coach-house. They said their
prayers, and took off their boots. Stepan lay down in a corner on the
floor, Alyoshka in a sledge. The doors of the coach house were shut,
there was a horrible stench from the extinguished lantern. A little
later Alyoshka sat up and looked about him; through the crack of the
door he could still see a light from those lighted windows.
"Grandfather, I am frightened!" he said.
"Come, go to sleep, go to sleep!..."
"I tell you I am frightened!"
"What are you frightened of? What a baby!"
They were silent.
Alyoshka suddenly jumped out of the sledge and, loudly weeping, ran to
his grandfather.
"What is it? What's the matter?" cried the coachman in a fright, getting
up also.
"He's howling!"
"Who is howling?"
"I am frightened, grandfather, do you hear?"
The coachman listened.
"It's their crying," he said. "Come! there, little silly! They are sad,
so they are crying."
"I want to go home,..." his grandson went on sobbing and trembling all
over. "Grandfather, let us go back to the village, to mammy; come,
grandfather dear, God will give you the heavenly kingdom for it...."
"What a silly, ah! Come, be quiet, be quiet! Be quiet, I will light the
lantern,... silly!"
The coachman fumbled for the matches and lighted the lantern. But the
light did not comfort Alyoshka.
"Grandfather Stepan, let's go to the village!" he besought him, weeping.
"I am frightened here; oh, oh, how frightened I am! And why did you
bring me from the village, accursed man?"
"Who's an accursed man? You mustn't use such disrespectable words to
your lawful grandfather. I shall whip you."
"Do whip me, grandfather, do; beat me like Sidor's goat, but only take
me to mammy, for God's mercy!..."
"Come, come, grandson, come!" the coachman said kindly. "It's all right,
don't be frightened....I am frightened myself.... Say your prayers!"
The door creaked and the porter's head appeared. "Aren't you asleep,
Stepan?" he asked. "I shan't get any sleep all night," he said, coming
in. "I shall be opening and shutting the gates all night.... What are
you crying for, Alyoshka?"
"He is frightened," the coachman answered for his grandson.
Again there was the sound of a wailing voice in the air. The porter
said:
"They are crying. The mother can't believe her eyes.... It's dreadful
how upset she is."
"And is the father there?"
"Yes.... The father is all right. He sits in the corner and says
nothing. They have taken the children to relations.... Well, Stepan,
shall we have a game of trumps?"
"Yes," the coachman agreed, scratching himself, "and you, Alyoshka, go
to sleep. Almost big enough to be married, and blubbering, you rascal.
Come, go along, grandson, go along...."
The presence of the porter reassured Alyoshka. He went, not very
resolutely, towards the sledge and lay down. And while he was falling
asleep he heard a half-whisper.
"I beat and cover," said his grandfather.
"I beat and cover," repeated the porter.
The bell rang in the yard, the door creaked and seemed also saying: "I
beat and cover." When Alyoshka dreamed of the gentleman and, frightened
by his eyes, jumped up and burst out crying, it was morning, his
grandfather was snoring, and the coach-house no longer seemed terrible.
PANIC FEARS
DURING all the years I have been living in this world I have only three
times been terrified.
The first real terror, which made my hair stand on end and made shivers
run all over me, was caused by a trivial but strange phenomenon. It
happened that, having nothing to do one July evening, I drove to the
station for the newspapers. It was a still, warm, almost sultry evening,
like all those monotonous evenings in July which, when once they have
set in, go on for a week, a fortnight, or sometimes longer, in regular
unbroken succession, and are suddenly cut short by a violent
thunderstorm and a lavish downpour of rain that refreshes everything for
a long time.
The sun had set some time before, and an unbroken gray dusk lay all over
the land. The mawkishly sweet scents of the grass and flowers were heavy
in the motionless, stagnant air.
I was driving in a rough trolley. Behind my back the gardener's son
Pashka, a boy of eight years old, whom I had taken with me to look after
the horse in case of necessity, was gently snoring, with his head on a
sack of oats. Our way lay along a narrow by-road, straight as a ruler,
which lay hid like a great snake in the tall thick rye. There was a pale
light from the afterglow of sunset; a streak of light cut its way
through a narrow, uncouth-looking cloud, which seemed sometimes like a
boat and sometimes like a man wrapped in a quilt....
I had driven a mile and a half, or two miles, when against the pale
background of the evening glow there came into sight one after another
some graceful tall poplars; a river glimmered beyond them, and a
gorgeous picture suddenly, as though by magic, lay stretched before me.
I had to stop the horse, for our straight road broke off abruptly and
ran down a steep incline overgrown with bushes. We were standing on the
hillside and beneath us at the bottom lay a huge hole full of twilight,
of fantastic shapes, and of space. At the bottom of this hole, in a wide
plain guarded by the poplars and caressed by the gleaming river, nestled
a village. It was now sleeping.... Its huts, its church with the belfry,
its trees, stood out against the gray twilight and were reflected darkly
in the smooth surface of the river.
I waked Pashka for fear he should fall out and began cautiously going
down.
"Have we got to Lukovo?" asked Pashka, lifting his head lazily.
"Yes. Hold the reins!..."
I led the horse down the hill and looked at the village. At the first
glance one strange circumstance caught my attention: at the very top of
the belfry, in the tiny window between the cupola and the bells, a light
was twinkling. This light was like that of a smoldering lamp, at one
moment dying down, at another flickering up. What could it come from?
Its source was beyond my comprehension. It could not be burning at the
window, for there were neither ikons nor lamps in the top turret of the
belfry; there was nothing there, as I knew, but beams, dust, and
spiders' webs. It was hard to climb up into that turret, for the passage
to it from the belfry was closely blocked up.
It was more likely than anything else to be the reflection of some
outside light, but though I strained my eyes to the utmost, I could not
see one other speck of light in the vast expanse that lay before me.
There was no moon. The pale and, by now, quite dim streak of the
afterglow could not have been reflected, for the window looked not to
the west, but to the east. These and other similar considerations were
straying through my mind all the while that I was going down the slope
with the horse. At the bottom I sat down by the roadside and looked
again at the light. As before it was glimmering and flaring up.
"Strange," I thought, lost in conjecture. "Very strange."
And little by little I was overcome by an unpleasant feeling. At first I
thought that this was vexation at not being able to explain a simple
phenomenon; but afterwards, when I suddenly turned away from the light
in horror and caught hold of Pashka with one hand, it became clear that
I was overcome with terror....
I was seized with a feeling of loneliness, misery, and horror, as though
I had been flung down against my will into this great hole full of
shadows, where I was standing all alone with the belfry looking at me
with its red eye.
"Pashka!" I cried, closing my eyes in horror.
"Well?"
"Pashka, what's that gleaming on the belfry?"
Pashka looked over my shoulder at the belfry and gave a yawn.
"Who can tell?"
This brief conversation with the boy reassured me for a little, but not
for long. Pashka, seeing my uneasiness, fastened his big eyes upon the
light, looked at me again, then again at the light....
"I am frightened," he whispered.
At this point, beside myself with terror, I clutched the boy with one
hand, huddled up to him, and gave the horse a violent lash.
"It's stupid!" I said to myself. "That phenomenon is only terrible
because I don't understand it; everything we don't understand is
mysterious."
I tried to persuade myself, but at the same time I did not leave off
lashing the horse. When we reached the posting station I purposely
stayed for a full hour chatting with the overseer, and read through two
or three newspapers, but the feeling of uneasiness did not leave me. On
the way back the light was not to be seen, but on the other hand the
silhouettes of the huts, of the poplars, and of the hill up which I had
to drive, seemed to me as though animated. And why the light was there I
don't know to this day.
The second terror I experienced was excited by a circumstance no less
trivial.... I was returning from a romantic interview. It was one
o'clock at night, the time when nature is buried in the soundest,
sweetest sleep before the dawn. That time nature was not sleeping, and
one could not call the night a still one. Corncrakes, quails,
nightingales, and woodcocks were calling, crickets and grasshoppers were
chirruping. There was a light mist over the grass, and clouds were
scurrying straight ahead across the sky near the moon. Nature was awake,
as though afraid of missing the best moments of her life.
I walked along a narrow path at the very edge of a railway embankment.
The moonlight glided over the lines which were already covered with dew.
Great shadows from the clouds kept flitting over the embankment. Far