Short Stories by Chekhov
"You ought to stay at home in the business, Anisim," he said; "you would
be worth any price to me! I would shower gold on you from head to foot,
my son."
"It can't be done, papa."
The sherry was sour and smelt of sealing-wax, but they had another
glass.
When old Tsybukin returned home from the station, for the first moment
he did not recognize his younger daughter-in-law. As soon as her husband
had driven out of the yard, Lipa was transformed and suddenly brightened
up. Wearing a threadbare old petticoat, with her feet bare and her
sleeves tucked up to the shoulders, she was scrubbing the stairs in the
entry and singing in a silvery little voice, and when she brought out a
big tub of dirty water and looked up at the sun with her childlike smile
it seemed as though she, too, were a lark.
An old labourer who was passing by the door shook his head and cleared
his throat.
"Yes, indeed, your daughters-in-law, Grigory Petrovitch, are a blessing
from God," he said. "Not women, but treasures!"
V
On Friday the 8th of July, Elizarov, nicknamed Crutch, and Lipa were
returning from the village of Kazanskoe, where they had been to a
service on the occasion of a church holiday in the honour of the Holy
Mother of Kazan. A good distance after them walked Lipa's mother
Praskovya, who always fell behind, as she was ill and short of breath.
It was drawing towards evening.
"A-a-a..." said Crutch, wondering as he listened to Lipa. "A-a!... We-
ell!
"I am very fond of jam, Ilya Makaritch," said Lipa. "I sit down in my
little corner and drink tea and eat jam. Or I drink it with Varvara
Nikolaevna, and she tells some story full of feeling. We have a lot of
jam--four jars. 'Have some, Lipa; eat as much as you like.'"
"A-a-a, four jars!"
"They live very well. We have white bread with our tea; and meat, too,
as much as one wants. They live very well, only I am frightened with
them, Ilya Makaritch. Oh, oh, how frightened I am!"
"Why are you frightened, child?" asked Crutch, and he looked back to see
how far Praskovya was behind.
"To begin with, when the wedding had been celebrated I was afraid of
Anisim Grigoritch. Anisim Grigoritch did nothing, he didn't ill-treat
me, only when he comes near me a cold shiver runs all over me, through
all my bones. And I did not sleep one night, I trembled all over and
kept praying to God. And now I am afraid of Aksinya, Ilya Makaritch.
It's not that she does anything, she is always laughing, but sometimes
she glances at the window, and her eyes are so fierce and there is a
gleam of green in them--like the eyes of the sheep in the shed. The
Hrymin Juniors are leading her astray: 'Your old man,' they tell her,
'has a bit of land at Butyokino, a hundred and twenty acres,' they say,
'and there is sand and water there, so you, Aksinya,' they say, 'build a
brickyard there and we will go shares in it.' Bricks now are twenty
roubles the thousand, it's a profitable business. Yesterday at dinner
Aksinya said to my father-in-law: 'I want to build a brickyard at
Butyokino; I'm going into business on my own account.' She laughed as
she said it. And Grigory Petrovitch's face darkened, one could see he
did not like it. 'As long as I live,' he said, 'the family must not
break up, we must go on altogether.' She gave a look and gritted her
teeth.... Fritters were served, she would not eat them."
"A-a-a!..." Crutch was surprised.
"And tell me, if you please, when does she sleep?" said Lipa. "She
sleeps for half an hour, then jumps up and keeps walking and walking
about to see whether the peasants have not set fire to something, have
not stolen something.... I am frightened with her, Ilya Makaritch. And
the Hrymin Juniors did not go to bed after the wedding, but drove to the
town to go to law with each other; and folks do say it is all on account
of Aksinya. Two of the brothers have promised to build her a brickyard,
but the third is offended, and the factory has been at a standstill for
a month, and my uncle Prohor is without work and goes about from house
to house getting crusts. 'Hadn't you better go working on the land or
sawing up wood, meanwhile, uncle?' I tell him; 'why disgrace yourself?'
'I've got out of the way of it,' he says; 'I don't know how to do any
sort of peasant's work now, Lipinka.'..."
They stopped to rest and wait for Praskovya near a copse of young aspen-
trees. Elizarov had long been a contractor in a small way, but he kept
no horses, going on foot all over the district with nothing but a little
bag in which there was bread and onions, and stalking along with big
strides, swinging his arms. And it was difficult to walk with him.
At the entrance to the copse stood a milestone. Elizarov touched it;
read it. Praskovya reached them out of breath. Her wrinkled and always
scared-looking face was beaming with happiness; she had been at church
to-day like anyone else, then she had been to the fair and there had
drunk pear cider. For her this was unusual, and it even seemed to her
now that she had lived for her own pleasure that day for the first time
in her life. After resting they all three walked on side by side. The
sun had already set, and its beams filtered through the copse, casting a
light on the trunks of the trees. There was a faint sound of voices
ahead. The Ukleevo girls had long before pushed on ahead but had
lingered in the copse, probably gathering mushrooms.
"Hey, wenches!" cried Elizarov. "Hey, my beauties!"
There was a sound of laughter in response.
"Crutch is coming! Crutch! The old horseradish."
And the echo laughed, too. And then the copse was left behind. The tops
of the factory chimneys came into view. The cross on the belfry
glittered: this was the village: "the one at which the deacon ate all
the caviare at the funeral." Now they were almost home; they only had to
go down into the big ravine. Lipa and Praskovya, who had been walking
barefooted, sat down on the grass to put on their boots; Elizar sat down
with them. If they looked down from above Ukleevo looked beautiful and
peaceful with its willow-trees, its white church, and its little river,
and the only blot on the picture was the roof of the factories, painted
for the sake of cheapness a gloomy ashen grey. On the slope on the
further side they could see the rye--some in stacks and sheaves here and
there as though strewn about by the storm, and some freshly cut lying in
swathes; the oats, too, were ripe and glistened now in the sun like
mother-of-pearl. It was harvest-time. To-day was a holiday, to-morrow
they would harvest the rye and carry the hay, and then Sunday a holiday
again; every day there were mutterings of distant thunder. It was misty
and looked like rain, and, gazing now at the fields, everyone thought,
God grant we get the harvest in in time; and everyone felt gay and
joyful and anxious at heart.
"Mowers ask a high price nowadays," said Praskovya. "One rouble and
forty kopecks a day."
People kept coming and coming from the fair at Kazanskoe: peasant women,
factory workers in new caps, beggars, children.... Here a cart would
drive by stirring up the dust and behind it would run an unsold horse,
and it seemed glad it had not been sold; then a cow was led along by the
horns, resisting stubbornly; then a cart again, and in it drunken
peasants swinging their legs. An old woman led a little boy in a big cap
and big boots; the boy was tired out with the heat and the heavy boots
which prevented his bending his legs at the knees, but yet blew
unceasingly with all his might at a tin trumpet. They had gone down the
slope and turned into the street, but the trumpet could still be heard.
"Our factory owners don't seem quite themselves..." said Elizarov.
"There's trouble. Kostukov is angry with me. 'Too many boards have gone
on the cornices.' 'Too many? As many have gone on it as were needed,
Vassily Danilitch; I don't eat them with my porridge.' 'How can you
speak to me like that?' said he, 'you good-for-nothing blockhead! Don't
forget yourself! It was I made you a contractor.' 'That's nothing so
wonderful,' said I. 'Even before I was a contractor I used to have tea
every day.' 'You are a rascal...' he said. I said nothing. 'We are
rascals in this world,' thought I, 'and you will be rascals in the
next....' Ha-ha-ha! The next day he was softer. 'Don't you bear malice
against me for my words, Makaritch,' he said. 'If I said too much,' says
he, 'what of it? I am a merchant of the first guild, your superior--you
ought to hold your tongue.' 'You,' said I, 'are a merchant of the first
guild and I am a carpenter, that's correct. And Saint Joseph was a
carpenter, too. Ours is a righteous calling and pleasing to God, and if
you are pleased to be my superior you are very welcome to it, Vassily
Danilitch.' And later on, after that conversation I mean, I thought:
'Which was the superior? A merchant of the first guild or a carpenter?'
The carpenter must be, my child!"
Crutch thought a minute and added:
"Yes, that's how it is, child. He who works, he who is patient is the
superior."
By now the sun had set and a thick mist as white as milk was rising over
the river, in the church enclosure, and in the open spaces round the
factories. Now when the darkness was coming on rapidly, when lights were
twinkling below, and when it seemed as though the mists were hiding a
fathomless abyss, Lipa and her mother who were born in poverty and
prepared to live so till the end, giving up to others everything except
their frightened, gentle souls, may have fancied for a minute perhaps
that in the vast, mysterious world, among the endless series of lives,
they, too, counted for something, and they, too, were superior to
someone; they liked sitting here at the top, they smiled happily and
forgot that they must go down below again all the same.
At last they went home again. The mowers were sitting on the ground at
the gates near the shop. As a rule the Ukleevo peasants did not go to
Tsybukin's to work, and they had to hire strangers, and now in the
darkness it seemed as though there were men sitting there with long
black beards. The shop was open, and through the doorway they could see
the deaf man playing draughts with a boy. The mowers were singing
softly, scarcely audibly, or loudly demanding their wages for the
previous day, but they were not paid for fear they should go away before
to-morrow. Old Tsybukin, with his coat off, was sitting in his waistcoat
with Aksinya under the birch-tree, drinking tea; a lamp was burning on
the table.
"I say, grandfather," a mower called from outside the gates, as though
taunting him, "pay us half anyway! Hey, grandfather."
And at once there was the sound of laughter, and then again they sang
hardly audibly.... Crutch, too, sat down to have some tea.
"We have been at the fair, you know," he began telling them. "We have
had a walk, a very nice walk, my children, praise the Lord. But an
unfortunate thing happened: Sashka the blacksmith bought some tobacco
and gave the shopman half a rouble to be sure. And the half rouble was a
false one"--Crutch went on, and he meant to speak in a whisper, but he
spoke in a smothered husky voice which was audible to everyone. "The
half-rouble turned out to be a bad one. He was asked where he got it.
'Anisim Tsybukin gave it me,' he said. 'When I went to his wedding,' he
said. They called the police inspector, took the man away.... Look out,
Grigory Petrovitch, that nothing comes of it, no talk...."
"Gra-ndfather!" the same voice called tauntingly outside the gates.
"Gra-andfather!"
A silence followed.
"Ah, little children, little children, little children..." Crutch
muttered rapidly, and he got up. He was overcome with drowsiness. "Well,
thank you for the tea, for the sugar, little children. It is time to