Short Stories by Chekhov
nearer, and the patch on which they walked seemed still the same patch.
They got a glimpse of a white, clumsy-looking stone, a small ravine, or
a bundle of hay dropped by a passer-by, the brief glimmer of a great
muddy puddle, or, suddenly, a shadow with vague outlines would come into
view ahead of them; the nearer they got to it the smaller and darker it
became; nearer still, and there stood up before the wayfarers a slanting
milestone with the number rubbed off, or a wretched birch-tree drenched
and bare like a wayside beggar. The birch-tree would whisper something
with what remained of its yellow leaves, one leaf would break off and
float lazily to the ground.... And then again fog, mud, the brown grass
at the edges of the road. On the grass hung dingy, unfriendly tears.
They were not the tears of soft joy such as the earth weeps at welcoming
the summer sun and parting from it, and such as she gives to drink at
dawn to the corncrakes, quails, and graceful, long-beaked crested
snipes. The travellers' feet stuck in the heavy, clinging mud. Every
step cost an effort.
Andrey Ptaha was somewhat excited. He kept looking round at the tramp
and trying to understand how a live, sober man could fail to remember
his name.
"You are an orthodox Christian, aren't you?" he asked.
"Yes," the tramp answered mildly.
"H'm... then you've been christened?"
"Why, to be sure! I'm not a Turk. I go to church and to the sacrament,
and do not eat meat when it is forbidden. And I observe my religious
duties punctually...."
"Well, what are you called, then?"
"Call me what you like, good man."
Ptaha shrugged his shoulders and slapped himself on the haunches in
extreme perplexity. The other constable, Nikandr Sapozhnikov, maintained
a staid silence. He was not so naive as Ptaha, and apparently knew very
well the reasons which might induce an orthodox Christian to conceal his
name from other people. His expressive face was cold and stern. He
walked apart and did not condescend to idle chatter with his companions,
but, as it were, tried to show everyone, even the fog, his sedateness
and discretion.
"God knows what to make of you," Ptaha persisted in addressing the
tramp. "Peasant you are not, and gentleman you are not, but some sort of
a thing between.... The other day I was washing a sieve in the pond and
caught a reptile--see, as long as a finger, with gills and a tail. The
first minute I thought it was a fish, then I looked--and, blow it! if it
hadn't paws. It was not a fish, it was a viper, and the deuce only knows
what it was.... So that's like you.... What's your calling?"
"I am a peasant and of peasant family," sighed the tramp. "My mamma was
a house serf. I don't look like a peasant, that's true, for such has
been my lot, good man. My mamma was a nurse with the gentry, and had
every comfort, and as I was of her flesh and blood, I lived with her in
the master's house. She petted and spoiled me, and did her best to take
me out of my humble class and make a gentleman of me. I slept in a bed,
every day I ate a real dinner, I wore breeches and shoes like a
gentleman's child. What my mamma ate I was fed on, too; they gave her
stuffs as a present, and she dressed me up in them.... We lived well! I
ate so many sweets and cakes in my childish years that if they could be
sold now it would be enough to buy a good horse. Mamma taught me to read
and write, she instilled the fear of God in me from my earliest years,
and she so trained me that now I can't bring myself to utter an
unrefined peasant word. And I don't drink vodka, my lad, and am neat in
my dress, and know how to behave with decorum in good society. If she is
still living, God give her health; and if she is dead, then, O Lord,
give her soul peace in Thy Kingdom, wherein the just are at rest."
The tramp bared his head with the scanty hair standing up like a brush
on it, turned his eyes upward and crossed himself twice.
"Grant her, O Lord, a verdant and peaceful resting-place," he said in a
drawling voice, more like an old woman's than a man's. "Teach Thy
servant Xenia Thy justifications, O Lord! If it had not been for my
beloved mamma I should have been a peasant with no sort of
understanding! Now, young man, ask me about anything and I understand it
all: the holy Scriptures and profane writings, and every prayer and
catechism. I live according to the Scriptures.... I don't injure anyone,
I keep my flesh in purity and continence, I observe the fasts, I eat at
fitting times. Another man will take no pleasure in anything but vodka
and lewd talk, but when I have time I sit in a corner and read a book. I
read and I weep and weep."
"What do you weep for?"
"They write so pathetically! For some books one gives but a five-kopeck
piece, and yet one weeps and sighs exceedingly over it."
"Is your father dead?" asked Ptaha.
"I don't know, good man. I don't know my parent; it is no use concealing
it. I judge that I was mamma's illegitimate son. My mamma lived all her
life with the gentry, and did not want to marry a simple peasant...."
"And so she fell into the master's hands," laughed Ptaha.
"She did transgress, that's true. She was pious, God-fearing, but she
did not keep her maiden purity. It is a sin, of course, a great sin,
there's no doubt about it, but to make up for it there is, maybe, noble
blood in me. Maybe I am only a peasant by class, but in nature a noble
gentleman."
The "noble gentleman" uttered all this in a soft, sugary tenor,
wrinkling up his narrow forehead and emitting creaking sounds from his
red, frozen little nose. Ptaha listened and looked askance at him in
wonder, continually shrugging his shoulders.
After going nearly five miles the constables and the tramp sat down on a
mound to rest.
"Even a dog knows his name," Ptaha muttered. "My name is Andryushka, his
is Nikandr; every man has his holy name, and it can't be forgotten.
Nohow."
"Who has any need to know my name?" sighed the tramp, leaning his cheek
on his fist. "And what advantage would it be to me if they did know it?
If I were allowed to go where I would--but it would only make things
worse. I know the law, Christian brothers. Now I am a tramp who doesn't
remember his name, and it's the very most if they send me to Eastern
Siberia and give me thirty or forty lashes; but if I were to tell them
my real name and description they would send me back to hard labour, I
know!"
"Why, have you been a convict?"
"I have, dear friend. For four years I went about with my head shaved
and fetters on my legs."
"What for?"
"For murder, my good man! When I was still a boy of eighteen or so, my
mamma accidentally poured arsenic instead of soda and acid into my
master's glass. There were boxes of all sorts in the storeroom, numbers
of them; it was easy to make a mistake over them."
The tramp sighed, shook his head, and said:
"She was a pious woman, but, who knows? another man's soul is a
slumbering forest! It may have been an accident, or maybe she could not
endure the affront of seeing the master prefer another servant....
Perhaps she put it in on purpose, God knows! I was young then, and did
not understand it all... now I remember that our master had taken
another mistress and mamma was greatly disturbed. Our trial lasted
nearly two years.... Mamma was condemned to penal servitude for twenty
years, and I, on account of my youth, only to seven."
"And why were you sentenced?"
"As an accomplice. I handed the glass to the master. That was always the
custom. Mamma prepared the soda and I handed it to him. Only I tell you
all this as a Christian, brothers, as I would say it before God. Don't
you tell anybody...."
"Oh, nobody's going to ask us," said Ptaha. "So you've run away from
prison, have you?"
"I have, dear friend. Fourteen of us ran away. Some folks, God bless
them! ran away and took me with them. Now you tell me, on your
conscience, good man, what reason have I to disclose my name? They will
send me back to penal servitude, you know! And I am not fit for penal
servitude! I am a refined man in delicate health. I like to sleep and
eat in cleanliness. When I pray to God I like to light a little lamp or
a candle, and not to have a noise around me. When I bow down to the
ground I like the floor not to be dirty or spat upon. And I bow down
forty times every morning and evening, praying for mamma."
The tramp took off his cap and crossed himself.
"And let them send me to Eastern Siberia," he said; "I am not afraid of
that."
"Surely that's no better?"
"It is quite a different thing. In penal servitude you are like a crab
in a basket: crowding, crushing, jostling, there's no room to breathe;
it's downright hell--such hell, may the Queen of Heaven keep us from it!
You are a robber and treated like a robber--worse than any dog. You can't
sleep, you can't eat or even say your prayers. But it's not like that in
a settlement. In a settlement I shall be a member of a commune like
other people. The authorities are bound by law to give me my share...
ye-es! They say the land costs nothing, no more than snow; you can take
what you like! They will give me corn land and building land and
garden.... I shall plough my fields like other people, sow seed. I shall
have cattle and stock of all sorts, bees, sheep, and dogs.... A Siberian
cat, that rats and mice may not devour my goods.... I will put up a
house, I shall buy ikons.... Please God, I'll get married, I shall have
children...."
The tramp muttered and looked, not at his listeners, but away into the
distance. Naive as his dreams were, they were uttered in such a genuine
and heartfelt tone that it was difficult not to believe in them. The
tramp's little mouth was screwed up in a smile. His eyes and little nose
and his whole face were fixed and blank with blissful anticipation of
happiness in the distant future. The constables listened and looked at
him gravely, not without sympathy. They, too, believed in his dreams.
"I am not afraid of Siberia," the tramp went on muttering. "Siberia is
just as much Russia and has the same God and Tsar as here. They are just
as orthodox Christians as you and I. Only there is more freedom there
and people are better off. Everything is better there. Take the rivers
there, for instance; they are far better than those here. There's no end
of fish; and all sorts of wild fowl. And my greatest pleasure, brothers,
is fishing. Give me no bread to eat, but let me sit with a fishhook.
Yes, indeed! I fish with a hook and with a wire line, and set creels,
and when the ice comes I catch with a net. I am not strong to draw up
the net, so I shall hire a man for five kopecks. And, Lord, what a
pleasure it is! You catch an eel-pout or a roach of some sort and are as
pleased as though you had met your own brother. And would you believe
it, there's a special art for every fish: you catch one with a live
bait, you catch another with a grub, the third with a frog or a
grasshopper. One has to understand all that, of course! For example,
take the eel-pout. It is not a delicate fish--it will take a perch; and a
pike loves a gudgeon, the shilishper likes a butterfly. If you fish for
a roach in a rapid stream there is no greater pleasure. You throw the
line of seventy feet without lead, with a butterfly or a beetle, so that
the bait floats on the surface; you stand in the water without your
trousers and let it go with the current, and tug! the roach pulls at it!
Only you have got to be artful that he doesn't carry off the bait, the
damned rascal. As soon as he tugs at your line you must whip it up; it's
no good waiting. It's wonderful what a lot of fish I've caught in my
time. When we were running away the other convicts would sleep in the