Short Stories by Chekhov
Rise up, and take the Babe and His mother.'"
"The Babe and His mother," Olga repeated, and flushed all over with
emotion.
"'And flee into Egypt,... and tarry there until such time as...'"
At the word "tarry" Olga could not refrain from tears. Looking at her,
Marya began to whimper, and after her Ivan Makaritch's sister. The old
father cleared his throat, and bustled about to find something to give
his grand-daughter, but, finding nothing, gave it up with a wave of his
hand. And when the reading was over the neighbours dispersed to their
homes, feeling touched and very much pleased with Olga and Sasha.
As it was a holiday, the family spent the whole day at home. The old
woman, whom her husband, her daughters-in-law, her grandchildren all
alike called Granny, tried to do everything herself; she heated the
stove and set the samovar with her own hands, even waited at the midday
meal, and then complained that she was worn out with work. And all the
time she was uneasy for fear someone should eat a piece too much, or
that her husband and daughters-in-law would sit idle. At one time she
would hear the tavern-keeper's geese going at the back of the huts to
her kitchen-garden, and she would run out of the hut with a long stick
and spend half an hour screaming shrilly by her cabbages, which were as
gaunt and scraggy as herself; at another time she fancied that a crow
had designs on her chickens, and she rushed to attack it with loud words
of abuse. She was cross and grumbling from morning till night. And often
she raised such an outcry that passers-by stopped in the street.
She was not affectionate towards the old man, reviling him as a lazy-
bones and a plague. He was not a responsible, reliable peasant, and
perhaps if she had not been continually nagging at him he would not have
worked at all, but would have simply sat on the stove and talked. He
talked to his son at great length about certain enemies of his,
complained of the insults he said he had to put up with every day from
the neighbours, and it was tedious to listen to him.
"Yes," he would say, standing with his arms akimbo, "yes.... A week
after the Exaltation of the Cross I sold my hay willingly at thirty
kopecks a pood.... Well and good.... So you see I was taking the hay in
the morning with a good will; I was interfering with no one. In an
unlucky hour I see the village elder, Antip Syedelnikov, coming out of
the tavern. 'Where are you taking it, you ruffian?' says he, and takes
me by the ear."
Kiryak had a fearful headache after his drinking bout, and was ashamed
to face his brother.
"What vodka does! Ah, my God!" he muttered, shaking his aching head.
"For Christ's sake, forgive me, brother and sister; I'm not happy
myself."
As it was a holiday, they bought a herring at the tavern and made a soup
of the herring's head. At midday they all sat down to drink tea, and
went on drinking it for a long time, till they were all perspiring; they
looked positively swollen from the tea-drinking, and after it began
sipping the broth from the herring's head, all helping themselves out of
one bowl. But the herring itself Granny had hidden.
In the evening a potter began firing pots on the ravine. In the meadow
below the girls got up a choral dance and sang songs. They played the
concertina. And on the other side of the river a kiln for baking pots
was lighted, too, and the girls sang songs, and in the distance the
singing sounded soft and musical. The peasants were noisy in and about
the tavern. They were singing with drunken voices, each on his own
account, and swearing at one another, so that Olga could only shudder
and say:
"Oh, holy Saints!"
She was amazed that the abuse was incessant, and those who were loudest
and most persistent in this foul language were the old men who were so
near their end. And the girls and children heard the swearing, and were
not in the least disturbed by it, and it was evident that they were used
to it from their cradles.
It was past midnight, the kilns on both sides of the river were put out,
but in the meadow below and in the tavern the merrymaking still went on.
The old father and Kiryak, both drunk, walking arm-in-arm and jostling
against each other's shoulders, went to the barn where Olga and Marya
were lying.
"Let her alone," the old man persuaded him; "let her alone.... She is a
harmless woman.... It's a sin...."
"Ma-arya!" shouted Kiryak.
"Let her be.... It's a sin.... She is not a bad woman."
Both stopped by the barn and went on.
"I lo-ove the flowers of the fi-ield," the old man began singing
suddenly in a high, piercing tenor. "I lo-ove to gather them in the
meadows!"
Then he spat, and with a filthy oath went into the hut.
IV
Granny put Sasha by her kitchen-garden and told her to keep watch that
the geese did not go in. It was a hot August day. The tavernkeeper's
geese could make their way into the kitchen-garden by the backs of the
huts, but now they were busily engaged picking up oats by the tavern,
peacefully conversing together, and only the gander craned his head high
as though trying to see whether the old woman were coming with her
stick. The other geese might come up from below, but they were now
grazing far away the other side of the river, stretched out in a long
white garland about the meadow. Sasha stood about a little, grew weary,
and, seeing that the geese were not coming, went away to the ravine.
There she saw Marya's eldest daughter Motka, who was standing motionless
on a big stone, staring at the church. Marya had given birth to thirteen
children, but she only had six living, all girls, not one boy, and the
eldest was eight. Motka in a long smock was standing barefooted in the
full sunshine; the sun was blazing down right on her head, but she did
not notice that, and seemed as though turned to stone. Sasha stood
beside her and said, looking at the church:
"God lives in the church. Men have lamps and candles, but God has little
green and red and blue lamps like little eyes. At night God walks about
the church, and with Him the Holy Mother of God and Saint Nikolay, thud,
thud, thud!... And the watchman is terrified, terrified! Aye, aye,
dearie," she added, imitating her mother. "And when the end of the world
comes all the churches will be carried up to heaven."
"With the-ir be-ells?" Motka asked in her deep voice, drawling every
syllable.
"With their bells. And when the end of the world comes the good will go
to Paradise, but the angry will burn in fire eternal and unquenchable,
dearie. To my mother as well as to Marya God will say: 'You never
offended anyone, and for that go to the right to Paradise'; but to
Kiryak and Granny He will say: 'You go to the left into the fire.' And
anyone who has eaten meat in Lent will go into the fire, too."
She looked upwards at the sky, opening wide her eyes, and said:
"Look at the sky without winking, you will see angels."
Motka began looking at the sky, too, and a minute passed in silence.
"Do you see them?" asked Sasha.
"I don't," said Motka in her deep voice.
"But I do. Little angels are flying about the sky and flap, flap with
their little wings as though they were gnats."
Motka thought for a little, with her eyes on the ground, and asked:
"Will Granny burn?"
"She will, dearie."
From the stone an even gentle slope ran down to the bottom, covered with
soft green grass, which one longed to lie down on or to touch with one's
hands... Sasha lay down and rolled to the bottom. Motka with a grave,
severe face, taking a deep breath, lay down, too, and rolled to the
bottom, and in doing so tore her smock from the hem to the shoulder.
"What fun it is!" said Sasha, delighted.
They walked up to the top to roll down again, but at that moment they
heard a shrill, familiar voice. Oh, how awful it was! Granny, a
toothless, bony, hunchbacked figure, with short grey hair which was
fluttering in the wind, was driving the geese out of the kitchen-garden
with a long stick, shouting.
"They have trampled all the cabbages, the damned brutes! I'd cut your
throats, thrice accursed plagues! Bad luck to you!"
She saw the little girls, flung down the stick and picked up a switch,
and, seizing Sasha by the neck with her fingers, thin and hard as the
gnarled branches of a tree, began whipping her. Sasha cried with pain
and terror, while the gander, waddling and stretching his neck, went up
to the old woman and hissed at her, and when he went back to his flock
all the geese greeted him approvingly with "Ga-ga-ga!" Then Granny
proceeded to whip Motka, and in this Motka's smock was torn again.
Feeling in despair, and crying loudly, Sasha went to the hut to
complain. Motka followed her; she, too, was crying on a deeper note,
without wiping her tears, and her face was as wet as though it had been
dipped in water.
"Holy Saints!" cried Olga, aghast, as the two came into the hut. "Queen
of Heaven!"
Sasha began telling her story, while at the same time Granny walked in
with a storm of shrill cries and abuse; then Fyokla flew into a rage,
and there was an uproar in the hut.
"Never mind, never mind!" Olga, pale and upset, tried to comfort them,
stroking Sasha's head. "She is your grandmother; it's a sin to be angry
with her. Never mind, my child."
Nikolay, who was worn out already by the everlasting hubbub, hunger,
stifling fumes, filth, who hated and despised the poverty, who was
ashamed for his wife and daughter to see his father and mother, swung
his legs off the stove and said in an irritable, tearful voice,
addressing his mother:
"You must not beat her! You have no right to beat her!"
"You lie rotting on the stove, you wretched creature!" Fyokla shouted at
him spitefully. "The devil brought you all on us, eating us out of house
and home."
Sasha and Motka and all the little girls in the hut huddled on the stove
in the corner behind Nikolay's back, and from that refuge listened in
silent terror, and the beating of their little hearts could be
distinctly heard. Whenever there is someone in a family who has long
been ill, and hopelessly ill, there come painful moments when all
timidly, secretly, at the bottom of their hearts long for his death; and
only the children fear the death of someone near them, and always feel
horrified at the thought of it. And now the children, with bated breath,
with a mournful look on their faces, gazed at Nikolay and thought that
he was soon to die; and they wanted to cry and to say something friendly
and compassionate to him.
He pressed close to Olga, as though seeking protection, and said to her
softly in a quavering voice:
"Olya darling, I can't stay here longer. It's more than I can bear. For
God's sake, for Christ's sake, write to your sister Klavdia Abramovna.
Let her sell and pawn everything she has; let her send us the money. We
will go away from here. Oh, Lord," he went on miserably, "to have one
peep at Moscow! If I could see it in my dreams, the dear place!"
And when the evening came on, and it was dark in the hut, it was so
dismal that it was hard to utter a word. Granny, very ill-tempered,
soaked some crusts of rye bread in a cup, and was a long time, a whole
hour, sucking at them. Marya, after milking the cow, brought in a pail
of milk and set it on a bench; then Granny poured it from the pail into
a jug just as slowly and deliberately, evidently pleased that it was now
the Fast of the Assumption, so that no one would drink milk and it would
be left untouched. And she only poured out a very little in a saucer for
Fyokla's baby. When Marya and she carried the jug down to the cellar
Motka suddenly stirred, clambered down from the stove, and going to the
bench where stood the wooden cup full of crusts, sprinkled into it some
milk from the saucer.