Short Stories by Chekhov
"He is in service at the merchant's," answered his father; "a keeper in
the woods. He is not a bad peasant, but too fond of his glass."
"He is no great help!" said the old woman tearfully. "Our men are a
grievous lot; they bring nothing into the house, but take plenty out.
Kiryak drinks, and so does the old man; it is no use hiding a sin; he
knows his way to the tavern. The Heavenly Mother is wroth."
In honour of the visitors they brought out the samovar. The tea smelt of
fish; the sugar was grey and looked as though it had been nibbled;
cockroaches ran to and fro over the bread and among the crockery. It was
disgusting to drink, and the conversation was disgusting, too--about
nothing but poverty and illnesses. But before they had time to empty
their first cups there came a loud, prolonged, drunken shout from the
yard:
"Ma-arya!"
"It looks as though Kiryak were coming," said the old man. "Speak of the
devil."
All were hushed. And again, soon afterwards, the same shout, coarse and
drawn-out as though it came out of the earth:
"Ma-arya!"
Marya, the elder sister-in-law, turned pale and huddled against the
stove, and it was strange to see the look of terror on the face of the
strong, broad-shouldered, ugly woman. Her daughter, the child who had
been sitting on the stove and looked so apathetic, suddenly broke into
loud weeping.
"What are you howling for, you plague?" Fyokla, a handsome woman, also
strong and broad-shouldered, shouted to her. "He won't kill you, no
fear!"
From his old father Nikolay learned that Marya was afraid to live in the
forest with Kiryak, and that when he was drunk he always came for her,
made a row, and beat her mercilessly.
"Ma-arya!" the shout sounded close to the door.
"Protect me, for Christ's sake, good people!" faltered Marya, breathing
as though she had been plunged into very cold water. "Protect me, kind
people...."
All the children in the hut began crying, and looking at them, Sasha,
too, began to cry. They heard a drunken cough, and a tall, black-bearded
peasant wearing a winter cap came into the hut, and was the more
terrible because his face could not be seen in the dim light of the
little lamp. It was Kiryak. Going up to his wife, he swung his arm and
punched her in the face with his fist. Stunned by the blow, she did not
utter a sound, but sat down, and her nose instantly began bleeding.
"What a disgrace! What a disgrace!" muttered the old man, clambering up
on to the stove. "Before visitors, too! It's a sin!"
The old mother sat silent, bowed, lost in thought; Fyokla rocked the
cradle.
Evidently conscious of inspiring fear, and pleased at doing so, Kiryak
seized Marya by the arm, dragged her towards the door, and bellowed like
an animal in order to seem still more terrible; but at that moment he
suddenly caught sight of the visitors and stopped.
"Oh, they have come,..." he said, letting his wife go; "my own brother
and his family...."
Staggering and opening wide his red, drunken eyes, he said his prayer
before the image and went on:
"My brother and his family have come to the parental home... from
Moscow, I suppose. The great capital Moscow, to be sure, the mother of
cities.... Excuse me."
He sank down on the bench near the samovar and began drinking tea,
sipping it loudly from the saucer in the midst of general silence.... He
drank off a dozen cups, then reclined on the bench and began snoring.
They began going to bed. Nikolay, as an invalid, was put on the stove
with his old father; Sasha lay down on the floor, while Olga went with
the other women into the barn.
"Aye, aye, dearie," she said, lying down on the hay beside Marya; "you
won't mend your trouble with tears. Bear it in patience, that is all. It
is written in the Scriptures: 'If anyone smite thee on the right cheek,
offer him the left one also.'... Aye, aye, dearie."
Then in a low singsong murmur she told them about Moscow, about her own
life, how she had been a servant in furnished lodgings.
"And in Moscow the houses are big, built of brick," she said; "and there
are ever so many churches, forty times forty, dearie; and they are all
gentry in the houses, so handsome and so proper!"
Marya told her that she had not only never been in Moscow, but had not
even been in their own district town; she could not read or write, and
knew no prayers, not even "Our Father." Both she and Fyokla, the other
sister-in-law, who was sitting a little way off listening, were
extremely ignorant and could understand nothing. They both disliked
their husbands; Marya was afraid of Kiryak, and whenever he stayed with
her she was shaking with fear, and always got a headache from the fumes
of vodka and tobacco with which he reeked. And in answer to the question
whether she did not miss her husband, Fyokla answered with vexation:
"Miss him!"
They talked a little and sank into silence.
It was cool, and a cock crowed at the top of his voice near the barn,
preventing them from sleeping. When the bluish morning light was already
peeping through all the crevices, Fyokla got up stealthily and went out,
and then they heard the sound of her bare feet running off somewhere.
II
Olga went to church, and took Marya with her. As they went down the path
towards the meadow both were in good spirits. Olga liked the wide view,
and Marya felt that in her sister-in-law she had someone near and akin
to her. The sun was rising. Low down over the meadow floated a drowsy
hawk. The river looked gloomy; there was a haze hovering over it here
and there, but on the further bank a streak of light already stretched
across the hill. The church was gleaming, and in the manor garden the
rooks were cawing furiously.
"The old man is all right," Marya told her, "but Granny is strict; she
is continually nagging. Our own grain lasted till Carnival. We buy flour
now at the tavern. She is angry about it; she says we eat too much."
"Aye, aye, dearie! Bear it in patience, that is all. It is written:
'Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden.'"
Olga spoke sedately, rhythmically, and she walked like a pilgrim woman,
with a rapid, anxious step. Every day she read the gospel, read it aloud
like a deacon; a great deal of it she did not understand, but the words
of the gospel moved her to tears, and words like "forasmuch as" and
"verily" she pronounced with a sweet flutter at her heart. She believed
in God, in the Holy Mother, in the Saints; she believed one must not
offend anyone in the world--not simple folks, nor Germans, nor gypsies,
nor Jews--and woe even to those who have no compassion on the beasts. She
believed this was written in the Holy Scriptures; and so, when she
pronounced phrases from Holy Writ, even though she did not understand
them, her face grew softened, compassionate, and radiant.
"What part do you come from?" Marya asked her.
"I am from Vladimir. Only I was taken to Moscow long ago, when I was
eight years old."
They reached the river. On the further side a woman was standing at the
water's edge, undressing.
"It's our Fyokla," said Marya, recognizing her. "She has been over the
river to the manor yard. To the stewards. She is a shameless hussy and
foul-mouthed--fearfully!"
Fyokla, young and vigorous as a girl, with her black eyebrows and her
loose hair, jumped off the bank and began splashing the water with her
feet, and waves ran in all directions from her.
"Shameless--dreadfully!" repeated Marya.
The river was crossed by a rickety little bridge of logs, and exactly
below it in the clear, limpid water was a shoal of broad-headed mullets.
The dew was glistening on the green bushes that looked into the water.
There was a feeling of warmth; it was comforting! What a lovely morning!
And how lovely life would have been in this world, in all likelihood, if
it were not for poverty, horrible, hopeless poverty, from which one can
find no refuge! One had only to look round at the village to remember
vividly all that had happened the day before, and the illusion of
happiness which seemed to surround them vanished instantly.
They reached the church. Marya stood at the entrance, and did not dare
to go farther. She did not dare to sit down either. Though they only
began ringing for mass between eight and nine, she remained standing the
whole time.
While the gospel was being read the crowd suddenly parted to make way
for the family from the great house. Two young girls in white frocks and
wide-brimmed hats walked in; with them a chubby, rosy boy in a sailor
suit. Their appearance touched Olga; she made up her mind from the first
glance that they were refined, well-educated, handsome people. Marya
looked at them from under her brows, sullenly, dejectedly, as though
they were not human beings coming in, but monsters who might crush her
if she did not make way for them.
And every time the deacon boomed out something in his bass voice she
fancied she heard "Ma-arya!" and she shuddered.
III
The arrival of the visitors was already known in the village, and
directly after mass a number of people gathered together in the hut. The
Leonytchevs and Matvyeitchevs and the Ilyitchovs came to inquire about
their relations who were in service in Moscow. All the lads of Zhukovo
who could read and write were packed off to Moscow and hired out as
butlers or waiters (while from the village on the other side of the
river the boys all became bakers), and that had been the custom from the
days of serfdom long ago when a certain Luka Ivanitch, a peasant from
Zhukovo, now a legendary figure, who had been a waiter in one of the
Moscow clubs, would take none but his fellow-villagers into his service,
and found jobs for them in taverns and restaurants; and from that time
the village of Zhukovo was always called among the inhabitants of the
surrounding districts Slaveytown. Nikolay had been taken to Moscow when
he was eleven, and Ivan Makaritch, one of the Matvyeitchevs, at that
time a headwaiter in the "Hermitage" garden, had put him into a
situation. And now, addressing the Matvyeitchevs, Nikolay said
emphatically:
"Ivan Makaritch was my benefactor, and I am bound to pray for him day
and night, as it is owing to him I have become a good man."
"My good soul!" a tall old woman, the sister of Ivan Makaritch, said
tearfully, "and not a word have we heard about him, poor dear."
"In the winter he was in service at Omon's, and this season there was a
rumour he was somewhere out of town, in gardens.... He has aged! In old
days he would bring home as much as ten roubles a day in the summer-
time, but now things are very quiet everywhere. The old man frets."
The women looked at Nikolay's feet, shod in felt boots, and at his pale
face, and said mournfully:
"You are not one to get on, Nikolay Osipitch; you are not one to get on!
No, indeed!"
And they all made much of Sasha. She was ten years old, but she was
little and very thin, and might have been taken for no more than seven.
Among the other little girls, with their sunburnt faces and roughly
cropped hair, dressed in long faded smocks, she with her white little
face, with her big dark eyes, with a red ribbon in her hair, looked
funny, as though she were some little wild creature that had been caught
and brought into the hut.
"She can read, too," Olga said in her praise, looking tenderly at her
daughter. "Read a little, child!" she said, taking the gospel from the
corner. "You read, and the good Christian people will listen."
The testament was an old and heavy one in leather binding, with dog's-
eared edges, and it exhaled a smell as though monks had come into the
hut. Sasha raised her eyebrows and began in a loud rhythmic chant:
"'And the angel of the Lord... appeared unto Joseph, saying unto him: