Short Stories by Chekhov
cleansing, scrubbing, painting. If the sky had been lower and smaller
and the river had not flowed so swiftly, they would have scoured them,
too, with bath-brick and rubbed them, too, with tow. Our walls were as
white as snow, but they were whitewashed; the floors were bright and
shining, but they were washed every day. The cat Bobtail (as a small
child I had cut off a good quarter of his tail with the knife used for
chopping the sugar, and that was why he was called Bobtail) was carried
off to the kitchen and put in charge of Anisya; Fedka was told that if
any of the dogs came near the front-door "God would punish him." But no
one was so badly treated as the poor sofas, easy-chairs, and rugs! They
had never, before been so violently beaten as on this occasion in
preparation for our visitor. My pigeons took fright at the loud thud of
the sticks, and were continually flying up into the sky.
The tailor Spiridon, the only tailor in the whole district who ventured
to make for the gentry, came over from Novostroevka. He was a hard-
working capable man who did not drink and was not without a certain
fancy and feeling for form, but yet he was an atrocious tailor. His work
was ruined by hesitation.... The idea that his cut was not fashionable
enough made him alter everything half a dozen times, walk all the way to
the town simply to study the dandies, and in the end dress us in suits
that even a caricaturist would have called outre and grotesque. We cut a
dash in impossibly narrow trousers and in such short jackets that we
always felt quite abashed in the presence of young ladies.
This Spiridon spent a long time taking my measure. He measured me all
over lengthways and crossways, as though he meant to put hoops round me
like a barrel; then he spent a long time noting down my measurements
with a thick pencil on a bit of paper, and ticked off all the
measurements with triangular signs. When he had finished with me he set
to work on my tutor, Yegor Alexyevitch Pobyedimsky. My beloved tutor was
then at the stage when young men watch the growth of their moustache and
are critical of their clothes, and so you can imagine the devout awe
with which Spiridon approached him. Yegor Alexyevitch had to throw back
his head, to straddle his legs like an inverted V, first lift up his
arms, then let them fall. Spiridon measured him several times, walking
round him during the process like a love-sick pigeon round its mate,
going down on one knee, bending double.... My mother, weary, exhausted
by her exertions and heated by ironing, watched these lengthy
proceedings, and said:
"Mind now, Spiridon, you will have to answer for it to God if you spoil
the cloth! And it will be the worse for you if you don't make them fit!"
Mother's words threw Spiridon first into a fever, then into a
perspiration, for he was convinced that he would not make them fit. He
received one rouble twenty kopecks for making my suit, and for
Pobyedimsky's two roubles, but we provided the cloth, the lining, and
the buttons. The price cannot be considered excessive, as Novostroevka
was about seven miles from us, and the tailor came to fit us four times.
When he came to try the things on and we squeezed ourselves into the
tight trousers and jackets adorned with basting threads, mother always
frowned contemptuously and expressed her surprise:
"Goodness knows what the fashions are coming to nowadays! I am
positively ashamed to look at them. If brother were not used to
Petersburg I would not get you fashionable clothes!"
Spiridon, relieved that the blame was thrown on the fashion and not on
him, shrugged his shoulders and sighed, as though to say:
"There's no help for it; it's the spirit of the age!"
The excitement with which we awaited the arrival of our guest can only
be compared with the strained suspense with which spiritualists wait
from minute to minute the appearance of a ghost. Mother went about with
a sick headache, and was continually melting into tears. I lost my
appetite, slept badly, and did not learn my lessons. Even in my dreams I
was haunted by an impatient longing to see a general--that is, a man with
epaulettes and an embroidered collar sticking up to his ears, and with a
naked sword in his hands, exactly like the one who hung over the sofa in
the drawing-room and glared with terrible black eyes at everybody who
dared to look at him. Pobyedimsky was the only one who felt himself in
his element. He was neither terrified nor delighted, and merely from
time to time, when he heard the history of the Gundasov family, said:
"Yes, it will be pleasant to have some one fresh to talk to."
My tutor was looked upon among us as an exceptional nature. He was a
young man of twenty, with a pimply face, shaggy locks, a low forehead,
and an unusually long nose. His nose was so big that when he wanted to
look close at anything he had to put his head on one side like a bird.
To our thinking, there was not a man in the province cleverer, more
cultivated, or more stylish. He had left the high-school in the class
next to the top, and had then entered a veterinary college, from which
he was expelled before the end of the first half-year. The reason of his
expulsion he carefully concealed, which enabled any one who wished to do
so to look upon my instructor as an injured and to some extent a
mysterious person. He spoke little, and only of intellectual subjects;
he ate meat during the fasts, and looked with contempt and condescension
on the life going on around him, which did not prevent him, however,
from taking presents, such as suits of clothes, from my mother, and
drawing funny faces with red teeth on my kites. Mother disliked him for
his "pride," but stood in awe of his cleverness.
Our visitor did not keep us long waiting. At the beginning of May two
wagon-loads of big boxes arrived from the station. These boxes looked so
majestic that the drivers instinctively took off their hats as they
lifted them down.
"There must be uniforms and gunpowder in those boxes," I thought.
Why "gunpowder"? Probably the conception of a general was closely
connected in my mind with cannons and gunpowder.
When I woke up on the morning of the tenth of May, nurse told me in a
whisper that "my uncle had come." I dressed rapidly, and, washing after
a fashion, flew out of my bedroom without saying my prayers. In the
vestibule I came upon a tall, solid gentleman with fashionable whiskers
and a foppish-looking overcoat. Half dead with devout awe, I went up to
him and, remembering the ceremonial mother had impressed upon me, I
scraped my foot before him, made a very low bow, and craned forward to
kiss his hand; but the gentleman did not allow me to kiss his hand: he
informed me that he was not my uncle, but my uncle's footman, Pyotr. The
appearance of this Pyotr, far better dressed than Pobyedimsky or me,
excited in me the utmost astonishment, which, to tell the truth, has
lasted to this day. Can such dignified, respectable people with stern
and intellectual faces really be footmen? And what for?
Pyotr told me that my uncle was in the garden with my mother. I rushed
into the garden.
Nature, knowing nothing of the history of the Gundasov family and the
rank of my uncle, felt far more at ease and unconstrained than I. There
was a clamour going on in the garden such as one only hears at fairs.
Masses of starlings flitting through the air and hopping about the walks
were noisily chattering as they hunted for cockchafers. There were
swarms of sparrows in the lilac-bushes, which threw their tender,
fragrant blossoms straight in one's face. Wherever one turned, from
every direction came the note of the golden oriole and the shrill cry of
the hoopoe and the red-legged falcon. At any other time I should have
begun chasing dragon-flies or throwing stones at a crow which was
sitting on a low mound under an aspen-tree, with his blunt beak turned
away; but at that moment I was in no mood for mischief. My heart was
throbbing, and I felt a cold sinking at my stomach; I was preparing
myself to confront a gentleman with epaulettes, with a naked sword, and
with terrible eyes!
But imagine my disappointment! A dapper little foppish gentleman in
white silk trousers, with a white cap on his head, was walking beside my
mother in the garden. With his hands behind him and his head thrown
back, every now and then running on ahead of mother, he looked quite
young. There was so much life and movement in his whole figure that I
could only detect the treachery of age when I came close up behind and
saw beneath his cap a fringe of close-cropped silver hair. Instead of
the staid dignity and stolidity of a general, I saw an almost
schoolboyish nimbleness; instead of a collar sticking up to his ears, an
ordinary light blue necktie. Mother and my uncle were walking in the
avenue talking together. I went softly up to them from behind, and
waited for one of them to look round.
"What a delightful place you have here, Klavdia!" said my uncle. "How
charming and lovely it is! Had I known before that you had such a
charming place, nothing would have induced me to go abroad all these
years."
My uncle stooped down rapidly and sniffed at a tulip. Everything he saw
moved him to rapture and excitement, as though he had never been in a
garden on a sunny day before. The queer man moved about as though he
were on springs, and chattered incessantly, without allowing mother to
utter a single word. All of a sudden Pobyedimsky came into sight from
behind an elder-tree at the turn of the avenue. His appearance was so
unexpected that my uncle positively started and stepped back a pace. On
this occasion my tutor was attired in his best Inverness cape with
sleeves, in which, especially back-view, he looked remarkably like a
windmill. He had a solemn and majestic air. Pressing his hat to his
bosom in Spanish style, he took a step towards my uncle and made a bow
such as a marquis makes in a melodrama, bending forward, a little to one
side.
"I have the honour to present myself to your high excellency," he said
aloud: "the teacher and instructor of your nephew, formerly a pupil of
the veterinary institute, and a nobleman by birth, Pobyedimsky!"
This politeness on the part of my tutor pleased my mother very much. She
gave a smile, and waited in thrilled suspense to hear what clever thing
he would say next; but my tutor, expecting his dignified address to be
answered with equal dignity--that is, that my uncle would say "H'm!" like
a general and hold out two fingers--was greatly confused and abashed when
the latter laughed genially and shook hands with him. He muttered
something incoherent, cleared his throat, and walked away.
"Come! isn't that charming?" laughed my uncle. "Just look! he has made
his little flourish and thinks he's a very clever fellow! I do like
that--upon my soul I do! What youthful aplomb, what life in that foolish
flourish! And what boy is this?" he asked, suddenly turning and looking
at me.
"That is my Andryushenka," my mother introduced me, flushing crimson.
"My consolation..."
I made a scrape with my foot on the sand and dropped a low bow.
"A fine fellow... a fine fellow..." muttered my uncle, taking his hand
from my lips and stroking me on the head. "So your name is Andrusha?
Yes, yes.... H'm!... upon my soul!... Do you learn lessons?"
My mother, exaggerating and embellishing as all mothers do, began to
describe my achievements in the sciences and the excellence of my
behaviour, and I walked round my uncle and, following the ceremonial
laid down for me, I continued making low bows. Then my mother began
throwing out hints that with my remarkable abilities it would not be
amiss for me to get a government nomination to the cadet school; but at