Short Stories by Chekhov
it, and the chimney of the samovar through a crack of which golden
sparks were dropping.
"And here is my cell," said the old man, stooping down and going into a
little room with a low-pitched ceiling, and an atmosphere unbearably
stifling from the proximity of the kitchen.
Here three women were sitting at the table regaling themselves. Seeing
the visitors, they exchanged glances and left off eating.
"Well, did you get it?" one of them, apparently the "virago" herself,
asked abruptly.
"Yes, yes," muttered the old man. "Well, Boris, pray sit down.
Everything is plain here, young man . . . we live in a simple way."
He bustled about in an aimless way. He felt ashamed before his son, and
at the same time apparently he wanted to keep up before the women his
dignity as cock of the walk, and as a forsaken, unhappy father.
"Yes, young man, we live simply with no nonsense," he went on muttering.
"We are simple people, young man. . . . We are not like you, we don't
want to keep up a show before people. No! . . . Shall we have a drink of
vodka?"
One of the women (she was ashamed to drink before a stranger) heaved a
sigh and said:
"Well, I'll have another drink on account of the mushrooms. . . . They
are such mushrooms, they make you drink even if you don't want to. Ivan
Gerasimitch, offer the young gentleman, perhaps he will have a drink!"
The last word she pronounced in a mincing drawl.
"Have a drink, young man!" said the father, not looking at his son. "We
have no wine or liqueurs, my boy, we live in a plain way."
"He doesn't like our ways," sighed the "virago." "Never mind, never
mind, he'll have a drink."
Not to offend his father by refusing, Boris took a wineglass and drank
in silence. When they brought in the samovar, to satisfy the old man, he
drank two cups of disgusting tea in silence, with a melancholy face.
Without a word he listened to the virago dropping hints about there
being in this world cruel, heartless children who abandon their parents.
"I know what you are thinking now!" said the old man, after drinking
more and passing into his habitual state of drunken excitement. "You
think I have let myself sink into the mire, that I am to be pitied, but
to my thinking, this simple life is much more normal than your life, . .
. I don't need anybody, and . . . and I don't intend to eat humble pie.
. . . I can't endure a wretched boy's looking at me with compassion."
After tea he cleaned a herring and sprinkled it with onion, with such
feeling, that tears of emotion stood in his eyes. He began talking again
about the races and his winnings, about some Panama hat for which he had
paid sixteen roubles the day before. He told lies with the same relish
with which he ate herring and drank. His son sat on in silence for an
hour, and began to say good-bye.
"I don't venture to keep you," the old man said, haughtily. "You must
excuse me, young man, for not living as you would like!"
He ruffled up his feathers, snorted with dignity, and winked at the
women.
"Good-bye, young man," he said, seeing his son into the entry.
"Attendez."
In the entry, where it was dark, he suddenly pressed his face against
the young man's sleeve and gave a sob.
"I should like to have a look at Sonitchka," he whispered. "Arrange it,
Borenka, my angel. I'll shave, I'll put on your suit . . . I'll put on a
straight face . . . I'll hold my tongue while she is there. Yes, yes, I
will hold my tongue!"
He looked round timidly towards the door, through which the women's
voices were heard, checked his sobs, and said aloud:
"Good-bye, young man! Attendez." ON THE ROAD
"Upon the breast of a gigantic crag, A golden cloudlet rested for one
night." LERMONTOV.
IN the room which the tavern keeper, the Cossack Semyon Tchistopluy,
called the "travellers' room," that is kept exclusively for travellers,
a tall, broad-shouldered man of forty was sitting at the big unpainted
table. He was asleep with his elbows on the table and his head leaning
on his fist. An end of tallow candle, stuck into an old pomatum pot,
lighted up his light brown beard, his thick, broad nose, his sunburnt
cheeks, and the thick, black eyebrows overhanging his closed eyes. . . .
The nose and the cheeks and the eyebrows, all the features, each taken
separately, were coarse and heavy, like the furniture and the stove in
the "travellers' room," but taken all together they gave the effect of
something harmonious and even beautiful. Such is the lucky star, as it
is called, of the Russian face: the coarser and harsher its features the
softer and more good-natured it looks. The man was dressed in a
gentleman's reefer jacket, shabby, but bound with wide new braid, a
plush waistcoat, and full black trousers thrust into big high boots.
On one of the benches, which stood in a continuous row along the wall, a
girl of eight, in a brown dress and long black stockings, lay asleep on
a coat lined with fox. Her face was pale, her hair was flaxen, her
shoulders were narrow, her whole body was thin and frail, but her nose
stood out as thick and ugly a lump as the man's. She was sound asleep,
and unconscious that her semi-circular comb had fallen off her head and
was cutting her cheek.
The "travellers' room" had a festive appearance. The air was full of the
smell of freshly scrubbed floors, there were no rags hanging as usual on
the line that ran diagonally across the room, and a little lamp was
burning in the corner over the table, casting a patch of red light on
the ikon of St. George the Victorious. From the ikon stretched on each
side of the corner a row of cheap oleographs, which maintained a strict
and careful gradation in the transition from the sacred to the profane.
In the dim light of the candle end and the red ikon lamp the pictures
looked like one continuous stripe, covered with blurs of black. When the
tiled stove, trying to sing in unison with the weather, drew in the air
with a howl, while the logs, as though waking up, burst into bright
flame and hissed angrily, red patches began dancing on the log walls,
and over the head of the sleeping man could be seen first the Elder
Seraphim, then the Shah Nasir-ed-Din, then a fat, brown baby with goggle
eyes, whispering in the ear of a young girl with an extraordinarily
blank, and indifferent face. . . .
Outside a storm was raging. Something frantic and wrathful, but
profoundly unhappy, seemed to be flinging itself about the tavern with
the ferocity of a wild beast and trying to break in. Banging at the
doors, knocking at the windows and on the roof, scratching at the walls,
it alternately threatened and besought, then subsided for a brief
interval, and then with a gleeful, treacherous howl burst into the
chimney, but the wood flared up, and the fire, like a chained dog, flew
wrathfully to meet its foe, a battle began, and after it-sobs, shrieks,
howls of wrath. In all of this there was the sound of angry misery and
unsatisfied hate, and the mortified impatience of something accustomed
to triumph.
Bewitched by this wild, inhuman music the "travellers' room" seemed
spellbound for ever, but all at once the door creaked and the potboy, in
a new print shirt, came in. Limping on one leg, and blinking his sleepy
eyes, he snuffed the candle with his fingers, put some more wood on the
fire and went out. At once from the church, which was three hundred
paces from the tavern, the clock struck midnight. The wind played with
the chimes as with the snowflakes; chasing the sounds of the clock it
whirled them round and round over a vast space, so that some strokes
were cut short or drawn out in long, vibrating notes, while others were
completely lost in the general uproar. One stroke sounded as distinctly
in the room as though it had chimed just under the window. The child,
sleeping on the fox-skin, started and raised her head. For a minute she
stared blankly at the dark window, at Nasir-ed-Din over whom a crimson
glow from the fire flickered at that moment, then she turned her eyes
upon the sleeping man.
"Daddy," she said.
But the man did not move. The little girl knitted her brow angrily, lay
down, and curled up her legs. Someone in the tavern gave a loud,
prolonged yawn. Soon afterwards there was the squeak of the swing door
and the sound of indistinct voices. Someone came in, shaking the snow
off, and stamping in felt boots which made a muffled thud.
"What is it?" a woman's voice asked languidly.
"Mademoiselle Ilovaisky has come, . . ." answered a bass voice.
Again there was the squeak of the swing door. Then came the roar of the
wind rushing in. Someone, probably the lame boy, ran to the door leading
to the "travellers' room," coughed deferentially, and lifted the latch.
"This way, lady, please," said a woman's voice in dulcet tones. "It's
clean in here, my beauty. . . ."
The door was opened wide and a peasant with a beard appeared in the
doorway, in the long coat of a coachman, plastered all over with snow
from head to foot, and carrying a big trunk on his shoulder. He was
followed into the room by a feminine figure, scarcely half his height,
with no face and no arms, muffled and wrapped up like a bundle and also
covered with snow. A damp chill, as from a cellar, seemed to come to the
child from the coachman and the bundle, and the fire and the candles
flickered.
"What nonsense!" said the bundle angrily, "We could go perfectly well.
We have only nine more miles to go, mostly by the forest, and we should
not get lost. . . ."
"As for getting lost, we shouldn't, but the horses can't go on, lady!"
answered the coachman. "And it is Thy Will, O Lord! As though I had done
it on purpose!"
"God knows where you have brought me. . . . Well, be quiet. . . . There
are people asleep here, it seems. You can go. . . ."
The coachman put the portmanteau on the floor, and as he did so, a great
lump of snow fell off his shoulders. He gave a sniff and went out.
Then the little girl saw two little hands come out from the middle of
the bundle, stretch upwards and begin angrily disentangling the network
of shawls, kerchiefs, and scarves. First a big shawl fell on the ground,
then a hood, then a white knitted kerchief. After freeing her head, the
traveller took off her pelisse and at once shrank to half the size. Now
she was in a long, grey coat with big buttons and bulging pockets. From
one pocket she pulled out a paper parcel, from the other a bunch of big,
heavy keys, which she put down so carelessly that the sleeping man
started and opened his eyes. For some time he looked blankly round him
as though he didn't know where he was, then he shook his head, went to
the corner and sat down. . . . The newcomer took off her great coat,
which made her shrink to half her size again, she took off her big felt
boots, and sat down, too.
By now she no longer resembled a bundle: she was a thin little brunette
of twenty, as slim as a snake, with a long white face and curly hair.
Her nose was long and sharp, her chin, too, was long and sharp, her
eyelashes were long, the corners of her mouth were sharp, and, thanks to
this general sharpness, the expression of her face was biting. Swathed
in a closely fitting black dress with a mass of lace at her neck and
sleeves, with sharp elbows and long pink fingers, she recalled the
portraits of mediæval English ladies. The grave concentration of her
face increased this likeness.
The lady looked round at the room, glanced sideways at the man and the
little girl, shrugged her shoulders, and moved to the window. The dark
windows were shaking from the damp west wind. Big flakes of snow
glistening in their whiteness, lay on the window frame, but at once
disappeared, borne away by the wind. The savage music grew louder and
louder. . . .