Short Stories by Chekhov
Granny, coming back into the hut, sat down to her soaked crusts again,
while Sasha and Motka, sitting on the stove, gazed at her, and they were
glad that she had broken her fast and now would go to hell. They were
comforted and lay down to sleep, and Sasha as she dozed off to sleep
imagined the Day of Judgment: a huge fire was burning, somewhat like a
potter's kiln, and the Evil One, with horns like a cow's, and black all
over, was driving Granny into the fire with a long stick, just as Granny
herself had been driving the geese.
V
On the day of the Feast of the Assumption, between ten and eleven in the
evening, the girls and lads who were merrymaking in the meadow suddenly
raised a clamour and outcry, and ran in the direction of the village;
and those who were above on the edge of the ravine could not for the
first moment make out what was the matter.
"Fire! Fire!" they heard desperate shouts from below. "The village is on
fire!"
Those who were sitting above looked round, and a terrible and
extraordinary spectacle met their eyes. On the thatched roof of one of
the end cottages stood a column of flame, seven feet high, which curled
round and scattered sparks in all directions as though it were a
fountain. And all at once the whole roof burst into bright flame, and
the crackling of the fire was audible.
The light of the moon was dimmed, and the whole village was by now
bathed in a red quivering glow: black shadows moved over the ground,
there was a smell of burning, and those who ran up from below were all
gasping and could not speak for trembling; they jostled against each
other, fell down, and they could hardly see in the unaccustomed light,
and did not recognize each other. It was terrible. What seemed
particularly dreadful was that doves were flying over the fire in the
smoke; and in the tavern, where they did not yet know of the fire, they
were still singing and playing the concertina as though there were
nothing the matter.
"Uncle Semyon's on fire," shouted a loud, coarse voice.
Marya was fussing about round her hut, weeping and wringing her hands,
while her teeth chattered, though the fire was a long way off at the
other end of the village. Nikolay came out in high felt boots, the
children ran out in their little smocks. Near the village constable's
hut an iron sheet was struck. Boom, boom, boom!... floated through the
air, and this repeated, persistent sound sent a pang to the heart and
turned one cold. The old women stood with the holy ikons. Sheep, calves,
cows were driven out of the back-yards into the street; boxes,
sheepskins, tubs were carried out. A black stallion, who was kept apart
from the drove of horses because he kicked and injured them, on being
set free ran once or twice up and down the village, neighing and pawing
the ground; then suddenly stopped short near a cart and began kicking it
with his hind-legs.
They began ringing the bells in the church on the other side of the
river.
Near the burning hut it was hot and so light that one could distinctly
see every blade of grass. Semyon, a red-haired peasant with a long nose,
wearing a reefer-jacket and a cap pulled down right over his ears, sat
on one of the boxes which they had succeeded in bringing out: his wife
was lying on her face, moaning and unconscious. A little old man of
eighty, with a big beard, who looked like a gnome--not one of the
villagers, though obviously connected in some way with the fire--walked
about bareheaded, with a white bundle in his arms. The glare was
reflected on his bald head. The village elder, Antip Syedelnikov, as
swarthy and black-haired as a gypsy, went up to the hut with an axe, and
hacked out the windows one after another--no one knew why--then began
chopping up the roof.
"Women, water!" he shouted. "Bring the engine! Look sharp!"
The peasants, who had been drinking in the tavern just before, dragged
the engine up. They were all drunk; they kept stumbling and falling
down, and all had a helpless expression and tears in their eyes.
"Wenches, water!" shouted the elder, who was drunk, too. "Look sharp,
wenches!"
The women and the girls ran downhill to where there was a spring, and
kept hauling pails and buckets of water up the hill, and, pouring it
into the engine, ran down again. Olga and Marya and Sasha and Motka all
brought water. The women and the boys pumped the water; the pipe hissed,
and the elder, directing it now at the door, now at the windows, held
back the stream with his finger, which made it hiss more sharply still.
"Bravo, Antip!" voices shouted approvingly. "Do your best."
Antip went inside the hut into the fire and shouted from within.
"Pump! Bestir yourselves, good Christian folk, in such a terrible
mischance!"
The peasants stood round in a crowd, doing nothing but staring at the
fire. No one knew what to do, no one had the sense to do anything,
though there were stacks of wheat, hay, barns, and piles of faggots
standing all round. Kiryak and old Osip, his father, both tipsy, were
standing there, too. And as though to justify his doing nothing, old
Osip said, addressing the woman who lay on the ground:
"What is there to trouble about, old girl! The hut is insured--why are
you taking on?"
Semyon, addressing himself first to one person and then to another, kept
describing how the fire had started.
"That old man, the one with the bundle, a house-serf of General
Zhukov's.... He was cook at our general's, God rest his soul! He came
over this evening: 'Let me stay the night,' says he.... Well, we had a
glass, to be sure.... The wife got the samovar--she was going to give the
old fellow a cup of tea, and in an unlucky hour she set the samovar in
the entrance. The sparks from the chimney must have blown straight up to
the thatch; that's how it was. We were almost burnt ourselves. And the
old fellow's cap has been burnt; what a shame!"
And the sheet of iron was struck indefatigably, and the bells kept
ringing in the church the other side of the river. In the glow of the
fire, Olga, breathless, looking with horror at the red sheep and the
pink doves flying in the smoke, kept running down the hill and up again.
It seemed to her that the ringing went to her heart with a sharp stab,
that the fire would never be over, that Sasha was lost.... And when the
ceiling of the hut fell in with a crash, the thought that now the whole
village would be burnt made her weak and faint, and she could not go on
fetching water, but sat down on the ravine, setting the pail down near
her; beside her and below her, the peasant women sat wailing as though
at a funeral.
Then the stewards and watchmen from the estate the other side of the
river arrived in two carts, bringing with them a fire-engine. A very
young student in an unbuttoned white tunic rode up on horseback. There
was the thud of axes. They put a ladder to the burning framework of the
house, and five men ran up it at once. Foremost of them all was the
student, who was red in the face and shouting in a harsh hoarse voice,
and in a tone as though putting out fires was a thing he was used to.
They pulled the house to pieces, a beam at a time; they dragged away the
corn, the hurdles, and the stacks that were near.
"Don't let them break it up!" cried stern voices in the crowd. "Don't
let them."
Kiryak made his way up to the hut with a resolute air, as though he
meant to prevent the newcomers from breaking up the hut, but one of the
workmen turned him back with a blow in his neck. There was the sound of
laughter, the workman dealt him another blow, Kiryak fell down, and
crawled back into the crowd on his hands and knees.
Two handsome girls in hats, probably the student's sisters, came from
the other side of the river. They stood a little way off, looking at the
fire. The beams that had been dragged apart were no longer burning, but
were smoking vigorously; the student, who was working the hose, turned
the water, first on the beams, then on the peasants, then on the women
who were bringing the water.
"George!" the girls called to him reproachfully in anxiety, "George!"
The fire was over. And only when they began to disperse they noticed
that the day was breaking, that everyone was pale and rather dark in the
face, as it always seems in the early morning when the last stars are
going out. As they separated, the peasants laughed and made jokes about
General Zhukov's cook and his cap which had been burnt; they already
wanted to turn the fire into a joke, and even seemed sorry that it had
so soon been put out.
"How well you extinguished the fire, sir!" said Olga to the student.
"You ought to come to us in Moscow: there we have a fire every day."
"Why, do you come from Moscow?" asked one of the young ladies.
"Yes, miss. My husband was a waiter at the Slavyansky Bazaar. And this
is my daughter," she said, indicating Sasha, who was cold and huddling
up to her. "She is a Moscow girl, too."
The two young ladies said something in French to the student, and he
gave Sasha a twenty-kopeck piece.
Old Father Osip saw this, and there was a gleam of hope in his face.
"We must thank God, your honour, there was no wind," he said, addressing
the student, "or else we should have been all burnt up together. Your
honour, kind gentlefolks," he added in embarrassment in a lower tone,
"the morning's chilly... something to warm one... half a bottle to your
honour's health."
Nothing was given him, and clearing his throat he slouched home. Olga
stood afterwards at the end of the street and watched the two carts
crossing the river by the ford and the gentlefolks walking across the
meadow; a carriage was waiting for them the other side of the river.
Going into the hut, she described to her husband with enthusiasm:
"Such good people! And so beautiful! The young ladies were like
cherubim."
"Plague take them!" Fyokla, sleepy, said spitefully.
VI
Marya thought herself unhappy, and said that she would be very glad to
die; Fyokla, on the other hand, found all this life to her taste: the
poverty, the uncleanliness, and the incessant quarrelling. She ate what
was given her without discrimination; slept anywhere, on whatever came
to hand. She would empty the slops just at the porch, would splash them
out from the doorway, and then walk barefoot through the puddle. And
from the very first day she took a dislike to Olga and Nikolay just
because they did not like this life.
"We shall see what you'll find to eat here, you Moscow gentry!" she said
malignantly. "We shall see!"
One morning, it was at the beginning of September, Fyokla, vigorous,
good-looking, and rosy from the cold, brought up two pails of water;
Marya and Olga were sitting meanwhile at the table drinking tea.
"Tea and sugar," said Fyokla sarcastically. "The fine ladies!" she
added, setting down the pails. "You have taken to the fashion of tea
every day. You better look out that you don't burst with your tea-
drinking," she went on, looking with hatred at Olga. "That's how you
have come by your fat mug, having a good time in Moscow, you lump of
flesh!" She swung the yoke and hit Olga such a blow on the shoulder that
the two sisters-in-law could only clasp their hands and say:
"Oh, holy Saints!"
Then Fyokla went down to the river to wash the clothes, swearing all the
time so loudly that she could be heard in the hut.
The day passed and was followed by the long autumn evening. They wound
silk in the hut; everyone did it except Fyokla; she had gone over the
river. They got the silk from a factory close by, and the whole family
working together earned next to nothing, twenty kopecks a week.
"Things were better in the old days under the gentry," said the old
father as he wound silk. "You worked and ate and slept, everything in