Short Stories by Chekhov
"She would begrudge me every farthing," he thought, with a glance at his
wife. "The lottery ticket is hers, not mine! Besides, what is the use of
her going abroad? What does she want there? She would shut herself up in
the hotel, and not let me out of her sight.... I know!"
And for the first time in his life his mind dwelt on the fact that his
wife had grown elderly and plain, and that she was saturated through and
through with the smell of cooking, while he was still young, fresh, and
healthy, and might well have got married again.
"Of course, all that is silly nonsense," he thought; "but... why should
she go abroad? What would she make of it? And yet she would go, of
course.... I can fancy... In reality it is all one to her, whether it is
Naples or Klin. She would only be in my way. I should be dependent upon
her. I can fancy how, like a regular woman, she will lock the money up
as soon as she gets it.... She will hide it from me.... She will look
after her relations and grudge me every farthing."
Ivan Dmitritch thought of her relations. All those wretched brothers and
sisters and aunts and uncles would come crawling about as soon as they
heard of the winning ticket, would begin whining like beggars, and
fawning upon them with oily, hypocritical smiles. Wretched, detestable
people! If they were given anything, they would ask for more; while if
they were refused, they would swear at them, slander them, and wish them
every kind of misfortune.
Ivan Dmitritch remembered his own relations, and their faces, at which
he had looked impartially in the past, struck him now as repulsive and
hateful.
"They are such reptiles!" he thought.
And his wife's face, too, struck him as repulsive and hateful. Anger
surged up in his heart against her, and he thought malignantly:
"She knows nothing about money, and so she is stingy. If she won it she
would give me a hundred roubles, and put the rest away under lock and
key."
And he looked at his wife, not with a smile now, but with hatred. She
glanced at him too, and also with hatred and anger. She had her own
daydreams, her own plans, her own reflections; she understood perfectly
well what her husband's dreams were. She knew who would be the first to
try and grab her winnings.
"It's very nice making daydreams at other people's expense!" is what her
eyes expressed. "No, don't you dare!"
Her husband understood her look; hatred began stirring again in his
breast, and in order to annoy his wife he glanced quickly, to spite her
at the fourth page on the newspaper and read out triumphantly:
"Series 9,499, number 46! Not 26!"
Hatred and hope both disappeared at once, and it began immediately to
seem to Ivan Dmitritch and his wife that their rooms were dark and small
and low-pitched, that the supper they had been eating was not doing them
good, but lying heavy on their stomachs, that the evenings were long and
wearisome....
"What the devil's the meaning of it?" said Ivan Dmitritch, beginning to
be ill-humoured. "Wherever one steps there are bits of paper under one's
feet, crumbs, husks. The rooms are never swept! One is simply forced to
go out. Damnation take my soul entirely! I shall go and hang myself on
the first aspen-tree!"
The Witch and Other Stories
THE WITCH
IT was approaching nightfall. The sexton, Savely Gykin, was lying in his
huge bed in the hut adjoining the church. He was not asleep, though it
was his habit to go to sleep at the same time as the hens. His coarse
red hair peeped from under one end of the greasy patchwork quilt, made
up of coloured rags, while his big unwashed feet stuck out from the
other. He was listening. His hut adjoined the wall that encircled the
church and the solitary window in it looked out upon the open country.
And out there a regular battle was going on. It was hard to say who was
being wiped off the face of the earth, and for the sake of whose
destruction nature was being churned up into such a ferment; but,
judging from the unceasing malignant roar, someone was getting it very
hot. A victorious force was in full chase over the fields, storming in
the forest and on the church roof, battering spitefully with its fists
upon the windows, raging and tearing, while something vanquished was
howling and wailing.... A plaintive lament sobbed at the window, on the
roof, or in the stove. It sounded not like a call for help, but like a
cry of misery, a consciousness that it was too late, that there was no
salvation. The snowdrifts were covered with a thin coating of ice; tears
quivered on them and on the trees; a dark slush of mud and melting snow
flowed along the roads and paths. In short, it was thawing, but through
the dark night the heavens failed to see it, and flung flakes of fresh
snow upon the melting earth at a terrific rate. And the wind staggered
like a drunkard. It would not let the snow settle on the ground, and
whirled it round in the darkness at random.
Savely listened to all this din and frowned. The fact was that he knew,
or at any rate suspected, what all this racket outside the window was
tending to and whose handiwork it was.
"I know!" he muttered, shaking his finger menacingly under the
bedclothes; "I know all about it."
On a stool by the window sat the sexton's wife, Raissa Nilovna. A tin
lamp standing on another stool, as though timid and distrustful of its
powers, shed a dim and flickering light on her broad shoulders, on the
handsome, tempting-looking contours of her person, and on her thick
plait, which reached to the floor. She was making sacks out of coarse
hempen stuff. Her hands moved nimbly, while her whole body, her eyes,
her eyebrows, her full lips, her white neck were as still as though they
were asleep, absorbed in the monotonous, mechanical toil. Only from time
to time she raised her head to rest her weary neck, glanced for a moment
towards the window, beyond which the snowstorm was raging, and bent
again over her sacking. No desire, no joy, no grief, nothing was
expressed by her handsome face with its turned-up nose and its dimples.
So a beautiful fountain expresses nothing when it is not playing.
But at last she had finished a sack. She flung it aside, and, stretching
luxuriously, rested her motionless, lack-lustre eyes on the window. The
panes were swimming with drops like tears, and white with short-lived
snowflakes which fell on the window, glanced at Raissa, and melted....
"Come to bed!" growled the sexton. Raissa remained mute. But suddenly
her eyelashes flickered and there was a gleam of attention in her eye.
Savely, all the time watching her expression from under the quilt, put
out his head and asked:
"What is it?"
"Nothing.... I fancy someone's coming," she answered quietly.
The sexton flung the quilt off with his arms and legs, knelt up in bed,
and looked blankly at his wife. The timid light of the lamp illuminated
his hirsute, pock-marked countenance and glided over his rough matted
hair.
"Do you hear?" asked his wife.
Through the monotonous roar of the storm he caught a scarcely audible
thin and jingling monotone like the shrill note of a gnat when it wants
to settle on one's cheek and is angry at being prevented.
"It's the post," muttered Savely, squatting on his heels.
Two miles from the church ran the posting road. In windy weather, when
the wind was blowing from the road to the church, the inmates of the hut
caught the sound of bells.
"Lord! fancy people wanting to drive about in such weather," sighed
Raissa.
"It's government work. You've to go whether you like or not."
The murmur hung in the air and died away.
"It has driven by," said Savely, getting into bed.
But before he had time to cover himself up with the bedclothes he heard
a distinct sound of the bell. The sexton looked anxiously at his wife,
leapt out of bed and walked, waddling, to and fro by the stove. The bell
went on ringing for a little, then died away again as though it had
ceased.
"I don't hear it," said the sexton, stopping and looking at his wife
with his eyes screwed up.
But at that moment the wind rapped on the window and with it floated a
shrill jingling note. Savely turned pale, cleared his throat, and
flopped about the floor with his bare feet again.
"The postman is lost in the storm," he wheezed out glancing malignantly
at his wife. "Do you hear? The postman has lost his way!... I... I know!
Do you suppose I... don't understand?" he muttered. "I know all about
it, curse you!"
"What do you know?" Raissa asked quietly, keeping her eyes fixed on the
window.
"I know that it's all your doing, you she-devil! Your doing, damn you!
This snowstorm and the post going wrong, you've done it all--you!"
"You're mad, you silly," his wife answered calmly.
"I've been watching you for a long time past and I've seen it. From the
first day I married you I noticed that you'd bitch's blood in you!"
"Tfoo!" said Raissa, surprised, shrugging her shoulders and crossing
herself. "Cross yourself, you fool!"
"A witch is a witch," Savely pronounced in a hollow, tearful voice,
hurriedly blowing his nose on the hem of his shirt; "though you are my
wife, though you are of a clerical family, I'd say what you are even at
confession.... Why, God have mercy upon us! Last year on the Eve of the
Prophet Daniel and the Three Young Men there was a snowstorm, and what
happened then? The mechanic came in to warm himself. Then on St.
Alexey's Day the ice broke on the river and the district policeman
turned up, and he was chatting with you all night... the damned brute!
And when he came out in the morning and I looked at him, he had rings
under his eyes and his cheeks were hollow! Eh? During the August fast
there were two storms and each time the huntsman turned up. I saw it
all, damn him! Oh, she is redder than a crab now, aha!"
"You didn't see anything."
"Didn't I! And this winter before Christmas on the Day of the Ten
Martyrs of Crete, when the storm lasted for a whole day and night--do you
remember?--the marshal's clerk was lost, and turned up here, the
hound.... Tfoo! To be tempted by the clerk! It was worth upsetting God's
weather for him! A drivelling scribbler, not a foot from the ground,
pimples all over his mug and his neck awry! If he were good-looking,
anyway--but he, tfoo! he is as ugly as Satan!"
The sexton took breath, wiped his lips and listened. The bell was not to
be heard, but the wind banged on the roof, and again there came a tinkle
in the darkness.
"And it's the same thing now!" Savely went on. "It's not for nothing the
postman is lost! Blast my eyes if the postman isn't looking for you! Oh,
the devil is a good hand at his work; he is a fine one to help! He will
turn him round and round and bring him here. I know, I see! You can't
conceal it, you devil's bauble, you heathen wanton! As soon as the storm
began I knew what you were up to."
"Here's a fool!" smiled his wife. "Why, do you suppose, you thick-head,
that I make the storm?"
"H'm!... Grin away! Whether it's your doing or not, I only know that
when your blood's on fire there's sure to be bad weather, and when
there's bad weather there's bound to be some crazy fellow turning up
here. It happens so every time! So it must be you!"
To be more impressive the sexton put his finger to his forehead, closed
his left eye, and said in a singsong voice:
"Oh, the madness! oh, the unclean Judas! If you really are a human being
and not a witch, you ought to think what if he is not the mechanic, or
the clerk, or the huntsman, but the devil in their form! Ah! You'd
better think of that!"
"Why, you are stupid, Savely," said his wife, looking at him
compassionately. "When father was alive and living here, all sorts of