Short Stories by Chekhov
"I wouldn't say no... but, you see, they're getting ready," he assented.
"We are late, anyway."
"Do stay," she whispered, dropping her eyes and touching him by the
sleeve.
The postman got the knot undone at last and flung the hood over his
elbow, hesitating. He felt it comfortable standing by Raissa.
"What a... neck you've got!..." And he touched her neck with two
fingers. Seeing that she did not resist, he stroked her neck and
shoulders.
"I say, you are..."
"You'd better stay... have some tea."
"Where are you putting it?" The driver's voice could be heard outside.
"Lay it crossways."
"You'd better stay.... Hark how the wind howls."
And the postman, not yet quite awake, not yet quite able to shake off
the intoxicating sleep of youth and fatigue, was suddenly overwhelmed by
a desire for the sake of which mail-bags, postal trains... and all
things in the world, are forgotten. He glanced at the door in a
frightened way, as though he wanted to escape or hide himself, seized
Raissa round the waist, and was just bending over the lamp to put out
the light, when he heard the tramp of boots in the outer room, and the
driver appeared in the doorway. Savely peeped in over his shoulder. The
postman dropped his hands quickly and stood still as though irresolute.
"It's all ready," said the driver. The postman stood still for a moment,
resolutely threw up his head as though waking up completely, and
followed the driver out. Raissa was left alone.
"Come, get in and show us the way!" she heard.
One bell sounded languidly, then another, and the jingling notes in a
long delicate chain floated away from the hut.
When little by little they had died away, Raissa got up and nervously
paced to and fro. At first she was pale, then she flushed all over. Her
face was contorted with hate, her breathing was tremulous, her eyes
gleamed with wild, savage anger, and, pacing up and down as in a cage,
she looked like a tigress menaced with red-hot iron. For a moment she
stood still and looked at her abode. Almost half of the room was filled
up by the bed, which stretched the length of the whole wall and
consisted of a dirty feather-bed, coarse grey pillows, a quilt, and
nameless rags of various sorts. The bed was a shapeless ugly mass which
suggested the shock of hair that always stood up on Savely's head
whenever it occurred to him to oil it. From the bed to the door that led
into the cold outer room stretched the dark stove surrounded by pots and
hanging clouts. Everything, including the absent Savely himself, was
dirty, greasy, and smutty to the last degree, so that it was strange to
see a woman's white neck and delicate skin in such surroundings.
Raissa ran up to the bed, stretched out her hands as though she wanted
to fling it all about, stamp it underfoot, and tear it to shreds. But
then, as though frightened by contact with the dirt, she leapt back and
began pacing up and down again.
When Savely returned two hours later, worn out and covered with snow,
she was undressed and in bed. Her eyes were closed, but from the slight
tremor that ran over her face he guessed that she was not asleep. On his
way home he had vowed inwardly to wait till next day and not to touch
her, but he could not resist a biting taunt at her.
"Your witchery was all in vain: he's gone off," he said, grinning with
malignant joy.
His wife remained mute, but her chin quivered. Savely undressed slowly,
clambered over his wife, and lay down next to the wall.
"To-morrow I'll let Father Nikodim know what sort of wife you are!" he
muttered, curling himself up.
Raissa turned her face to him and her eyes gleamed.
"The job's enough for you, and you can look for a wife in the forest,
blast you!" she said. "I am no wife for you, a clumsy lout, a slug-a-
bed, God forgive me!"
"Come, come... go to sleep!"
"How miserable I am!" sobbed his wife. "If it weren't for you, I might
have married a merchant or some gentleman! If it weren't for you, I
should love my husband now! And you haven't been buried in the snow, you
haven't been frozen on the highroad, you Herod!"
Raissa cried for a long time. At last she drew a deep sigh and was
still. The storm still raged without. Something wailed in the stove, in
the chimney, outside the walls, and it seemed to Savely that the wailing
was within him, in his ears. This evening had completely confirmed him
in his suspicions about his wife. He no longer doubted that his wife,
with the aid of the Evil One, controlled the winds and the post sledges.
But to add to his grief, this mysteriousness, this supernatural, weird
power gave the woman beside him a peculiar, incomprehensible charm of
which he had not been conscious before. The fact that in his stupidity
he unconsciously threw a poetic glamour over her made her seem, as it
were, whiter, sleeker, more unapproachable.
"Witch!" he muttered indignantly. "Tfoo, horrid creature!"
Yet, waiting till she was quiet and began breathing evenly, he touched
her head with his finger... held her thick plait in his hand for a
minute. She did not feel it. Then he grew bolder and stroked her neck.
"Leave off!" she shouted, and prodded him on the nose with her elbow
with such violence that he saw stars before his eyes.
The pain in his nose was soon over, but the torture in his heart
remained.
PEASANT WIVES
IN the village of Reybuzh, just facing the church, stands a two-storeyed
house with a stone foundation and an iron roof. In the lower storey the
owner himself, Filip Ivanov Kashin, nicknamed Dyudya, lives with his
family, and on the upper floor, where it is apt to be very hot in summer
and very cold in winter, they put up government officials, merchants, or
landowners, who chance to be travelling that way. Dyudya rents some bits
of land, keeps a tavern on the highroad, does a trade in tar, honey,
cattle, and jackdaws, and has already something like eight thousand
roubles put by in the bank in the town.
His elder son, Fyodor, is head engineer in the factory, and, as the
peasants say of him, he has risen so high in the world that he is quite
out of reach now. Fyodor's wife, Sofya, a plain, ailing woman, lives at
home at her father-in-law's. She is for ever crying, and every Sunday
she goes over to the hospital for medicine. Dyudya's second son, the
hunchback Alyoshka, is living at home at his father's. He has only
lately been married to Varvara, whom they singled out for him from a
poor family. She is a handsome young woman, smart and buxom. When
officials or merchants put up at the house, they always insist on having
Varvara to bring in the samovar and make their beds.
One June evening when the sun was setting and the air was full of the
smell of hay, of steaming dung-heaps and new milk, a plain-looking cart
drove into Dyudya's yard with three people in it: a man of about thirty
in a canvas suit, beside him a little boy of seven or eight in a long
black coat with big bone buttons, and on the driver's seat a young
fellow in a red shirt.
The young fellow took out the horses and led them out into the street to
walk them up and down a bit, while the traveller washed, said a prayer,
turning towards the church, then spread a rug near the cart and sat down
with the boy to supper. He ate without haste, sedately, and Dyudya, who
had seen a good many travellers in his time, knew him from his manners
for a businesslike man, serious and aware of his own value.
Dyudya was sitting on the step in his waistcoat without a cap on,
waiting for the visitor to speak first. He was used to hearing all kinds
of stories from the travellers in the evening, and he liked listening to
them before going to bed. His old wife, Afanasyevna, and his daughter-
in-law Sofya, were milking in the cowshed. The other daughter-in-law,
Varvara, was sitting at the open window of the upper storey, eating
sunflower seeds.
"The little chap will be your son, I'm thinking?" Dyudya asked the
traveller.
"No; adopted. An orphan. I took him for my soul's salvation."
They got into conversation. The stranger seemed to be a man fond of
talking and ready of speech, and Dyudya learned from him that he was
from the town, was of the tradesman class, and had a house of his own,
that his name was Matvey Savitch, that he was on his way now to look at
some gardens that he was renting from some German colonists, and that
the boy's name was Kuzka. The evening was hot and close, no one felt
inclined for sleep. When it was getting dark and pale stars began to
twinkle here and there in the sky, Matvey Savitch began to tell how he
had come by Kuzka. Afanasyevna and Sofya stood a little way off,
listening. Kuzka had gone to the gate.
"It's a complicated story, old man," began Matvey Savitch, "and if I
were to tell you all just as it happened, it would take all night and
more. Ten years ago in a little house in our street, next door to me,
where now there's a tallow and oil factory, there was living an old
widow, Marfa Semyonovna Kapluntsev, and she had two sons: one was a
guard on the railway, but the other, Vasya, who was just my own age,
lived at home with his mother. Old Kapluntsev had kept five pair of
horses and sent carriers all over the town; his widow had not given up
the business, but managed the carriers as well as her husband had done,
so that some days they would bring in as much as five roubles from their
rounds.
"The young fellow, too, made a trifle on his own account. He used to
breed fancy pigeons and sell them to fanciers; at times he would stand
for hours on the roof, waving a broom in the air and whistling; his
pigeons were right up in the clouds, but it wasn't enough for him, and
he'd want them to go higher yet. Siskins and starlings, too, he used to
catch, and he made cages for sale. All trifles, but, mind you, he'd pick
up some ten roubles a month over such trifles. Well, as time went on,
the old lady lost the use of her legs and took to her bed. In
consequence of which event the house was left without a woman to look
after it, and that's for all the world like a man without an eye. The
old lady bestirred herself and made up her mind to marry Vasya. They
called in a matchmaker at once, the women got to talking of one thing
and another, and Vasya went off to have a look at the girls. He picked
out Mashenka, a widow's daughter. They made up their minds without loss
of time and in a week it was all settled. The girl was a little slip of
a thing, seventeen, but fair-skinned and pretty-looking, and like a lady
in all her ways; and a decent dowry with her, five hundred roubles, a
cow, a bed.... Well, the old lady--it seemed as though she had known it
was coming--three days after the wedding, departed to the Heavenly
Jerusalem where is neither sickness nor sighing. The young people gave
her a good funeral and began their life together. For just six months
they got on splendidly, and then all of a sudden another misfortune. It
never rains but it pours: Vasya was summoned to the recruiting office to
draw lots for the service. He was taken, poor chap, for a soldier, and
not even granted exemption. They shaved his head and packed him off to
Poland. It was God's will; there was nothing to be done. When he said
good-bye to his wife in the yard, he bore it all right; but as he
glanced up at the hay-loft and his pigeons for the last time, he burst
out crying. It was pitiful to see him.
"At first Mashenka got her mother to stay with her, that she mightn't be
dull all alone; she stayed till the baby--this very Kuzka here--was born,
and then she went off to Oboyan to another married daughter's and left
Mashenka alone with the baby. There were five peasants--the carriers--a
drunken saucy lot; horses, too, and dray-carts to see to, and then the