Short Stories by Chekhov
forest; I could not sleep, but I was off to the river. The rivers there
are wide and rapid, the banks are steep--awfully! It's all slumbering
forests on the bank. The trees are so tall that if you look to the top
it makes you dizzy. Every pine would be worth ten roubles by the prices
here."
In the overwhelming rush of his fancies, of artistic images of the past
and sweet presentiments of happiness in the future, the poor wretch sank
into silence, merely moving his lips as though whispering to himself.
The vacant, blissful smile never left his lips. The constables were
silent. They were pondering with bent heads. In the autumn stillness,
when the cold, sullen mist that rises from the earth lies like a weight
on the heart, when it stands like a prison wall before the eyes, and
reminds man of the limitation of his freedom, it is sweet to think of
the broad, rapid rivers, with steep banks wild and luxuriant, of the
impenetrable forests, of the boundless steppes. Slowly and quietly the
fancy pictures how early in the morning, before the flush of dawn has
left the sky, a man makes his way along the steep deserted bank like a
tiny speck: the ancient, mast-like pines rise up in terraces on both
sides of the torrent, gaze sternly at the free man and murmur
menacingly; rocks, huge stones, and thorny bushes bar his way, but he is
strong in body and bold in spirit, and has no fear of the pine-trees,
nor stones, nor of his solitude, nor of the reverberating echo which
repeats the sound of every footstep that he takes.
The peasants called up a picture of a free life such as they had never
lived; whether they vaguely recalled the images of stories heard long
ago or whether notions of a free life had been handed down to them with
their flesh and blood from far-off free ancestors, God knows!
The first to break the silence was Nikandr Sapozhnikov, who had not till
then let fall a single word. Whether he envied the tramp's transparent
happiness, or whether he felt in his heart that dreams of happiness were
out of keeping with the grey fog and the dirty brown mud--anyway, he
looked sternly at the tramp and said:
"It's all very well, to be sure, only you won't reach those plenteous
regions, brother. How could you? Before you'd gone two hundred miles
you'd give up your soul to God. Just look what a weakling you are! Here
you've hardly gone five miles and you can't get your breath."
The tramp turned slowly toward Nikandr, and the blissful smile vanished
from his face. He looked with a scared and guilty air at the peasant's
staid face, apparently remembered something, and bent his head. A
silence followed again.... All three were pondering. The peasants were
racking their brains in the effort to grasp in their imagination what
can be grasped by none but God--that is, the vast expanse dividing them
from the land of freedom. Into the tramp's mind thronged clear and
distinct pictures more terrible than that expanse. Before him rose
vividly the picture of the long legal delays and procrastinations, the
temporary and permanent prisons, the convict boats, the wearisome
stoppages on the way, the frozen winters, illnesses, deaths of
companions....
The tramp blinked guiltily, wiped the tiny drops of sweat from his
forehead with his sleeve, drew a deep breath as though he had just leapt
out of a very hot bath, then wiped his forehead with the other sleeve
and looked round fearfully.
"That's true; you won't get there!" Ptaha agreed. "You are not much of a
walker! Look at you--nothing but skin and bone! You'll die, brother!"
"Of course he'll die! What could he do?" said Nikandr. "He's fit for the
hospital now.... For sure!"
The man who had forgotten his name looked at the stern, unconcerned
faces of his sinister companions, and without taking off his cap,
hurriedly crossed himself, staring with wide-open eyes.... He trembled,
his head shook, and he began twitching all over, like a caterpillar when
it is stepped upon....
"Well, it's time to go," said Nikandr, getting up; "we've had a rest."
A minute later they were stepping along the muddy road. The tramp was
more bent than ever, and he thrust his hands further up his sleeves.
Ptaha was silent.
THE PIPE
MELITON SHISHKIN, a bailiff from the Dementyev farm, exhausted by the
sultry heat of the fir-wood and covered with spiders' webs and pine-
needles, made his way with his gun to the edge of the wood. His Damka--a
mongrel between a yard dog and a setter--an extremely thin bitch heavy
with young, trailed after her master with her wet tail between her legs,
doing all she could to avoid pricking her nose. It was a dull, overcast
morning. Big drops dripped from the bracken and from the trees that were
wrapped in a light mist; there was a pungent smell of decay from the
dampness of the wood.
There were birch-trees ahead of him where the wood ended, and between
their stems and branches he could see the misty distance. Beyond the
birch-trees someone was playing on a shepherd's rustic pipe. The player
produced no more than five or six notes, dragged them out languidly with
no attempt at forming a tune, and yet there was something harsh and
extremely dreary in the sound of the piping.
As the copse became sparser, and the pines were interspersed with young
birch-trees, Meliton saw a herd. Hobbled horses, cows, and sheep were
wandering among the bushes and, snapping the dry branches, sniffed at
the herbage of the copse. A lean old shepherd, bareheaded, in a torn
grey smock, stood leaning against the wet trunk of a birch-tree. He
stared at the ground, pondering something, and played his pipe, it
seemed, mechanically.
"Good-day, grandfather! God help you!" Meliton greeted him in a thin,
husky voice which seemed incongruous with his huge stature and big,
fleshy face. "How cleverly you are playing your pipe! Whose herd are you
minding?"
"The Artamonovs'," the shepherd answered reluctantly, and he thrust the
pipe into his bosom.
"So I suppose the wood is the Artamonovs' too?" Meliton inquired,
looking about him. "Yes, it is the Artamonovs'; only fancy... I had
completely lost myself. I got my face scratched all over in the
thicket."
He sat down on the wet earth and began rolling up a bit of newspaper
into a cigarette.
Like his voice, everything about the man was small and out of keeping
with his height, his breadth, and his fleshy face: his smiles, his eyes,
his buttons, his tiny cap, which would hardly keep on his big, closely-
cropped head. When he talked and smiled there was something womanish,
timid, and meek about his puffy, shaven face and his whole figure.
"What weather! God help us!" he said, and he turned his head from side
to side. "Folk have not carried the oats yet, and the rain seems as
though it had been taken on for good, God bless it."
The shepherd looked at the sky, from which a drizzling rain was falling,
at the wood, at the bailif's wet clothes, pondered, and said nothing.
"The whole summer has been the same," sighed Meliton. "A bad business
for the peasants and no pleasure for the gentry."
The shepherd looked at the sky again, thought a moment, and said
deliberately, as though chewing each word:
"It's all going the same way.... There is nothing good to be looked
for."
"How are things with you here?" Meliton inquired, lighting his
cigarette. "Haven't you seen any coveys of grouse in the Artamonovs'
clearing?"
The shepherd did not answer at once. He looked again at the sky and to
right and left, thought a little, blinked.... Apparently he attached no
little significance to his words, and to increase their value tried to
pronounce them with deliberation and a certain solemnity. The expression
of his face had the sharpness and staidness of old age, and the fact
that his nose had a saddle-shaped depression across the middle and his
nostrils turned upwards gave him a sly and sarcastic look.
"No, I believe I haven't," he said. "Our huntsman Eryomka was saying
that on Elijah's Day he started one covey near Pustoshye, but I dare say
he was lying. There are very few birds."
"Yes, brother, very few.... Very few everywhere! The shooting here, if
one is to look at it with common sense, is good for nothing and not
worth having. There is no game at all, and what there is is not worth
dirtying your hands over--it is not full-grown. It is such poor stuff
that one is ashamed to look at it."
Meliton gave a laugh and waved his hands.
"Things happen so queerly in this world that it is simply laughable and
nothing else. Birds nowadays have become so unaccountable: they sit late
on their eggs, and there are some, I declare, that have not hatched them
by St. Peter's Day!"
"It's all going the same," said the shepherd, turning his face upwards.
"There was little game last year, this year there are fewer birds still,
and in another five years, mark my words, there will be none at all. As
far as I can see there will soon be not only no game, but no birds at
all."
"Yes," Meliton assented, after a moment's thought. "That's true."
The shepherd gave a bitter smile and shook his head.
"It's a wonder," he said, "what has become of them all! I remember
twenty years ago there used to be geese here, and cranes and ducks and
grouse--clouds and clouds of them! The gentry used to meet together for
shooting, and one heard nothing but pouf-pouf-pouf! pouf-pouf-pouf!
There was no end to the woodcocks, the snipe, and the little teals, and
the water-snipe were as common as starlings, or let us say sparrows--lots
and lots of them! And what has become of them all? We don't even see the
birds of prey. The eagles, the hawks, and the owls have all gone....
There are fewer of every sort of wild beast, too. Nowadays, brother,
even the wolf and the fox have grown rare, let alone the bear or the
otter. And you know in old days there were even elks! For forty years I
have been observing the works of God from year to year, and it is my
opinion that everything is going the same way."
"What way?"
"To the bad, young man. To ruin, we must suppose... The time has come
for God's world to perish."
The old man put on his cap and began gazing at the sky.
"It's a pity," he sighed, after a brief silence. "O God, what a pity! Of
course it is God's will; the world was not created by us, but yet it is
a pity, brother. If a single tree withers away, or let us say a single
cow dies, it makes one sorry, but what will it be, good man, if the
whole world crumbles into dust? Such blessings, Lord Jesus! The sun, and
the sky, and the forest, and the rivers, and the creatures--all these
have been created, adapted, and adjusted to one another. Each has been
put to its appointed task and knows its place. And all that must
perish."
A mournful smile gleamed on the shepherd's face, and his eyelids
quivered.
"You say--the world is perishing," said Meliton, pondering. "It may be
that the end of the world is near at hand, but you can't judge by the
birds. I don't think the birds can be taken as a sign."
"Not the birds only," said the shepherd. "It's the wild beasts, too, and
the cattle, and the bees, and the fish.... If you don't believe me ask
the old people; every old man will tell you that the fish are not at all
what they used to be. In the seas, in the lakes, and in the rivers,
there are fewer fish from year to year. In our Pestchanka, I remember,
pike used to be caught a yard long, and there were eel-pouts, and roach,
and bream, and every fish had a presentable appearance; while nowadays,
if you catch a wretched little pikelet or perch six inches long you have
to be thankful. There are not any gudgeon even worth talking about.
Every year it is worse and worse, and in a little while there will be no