Short Stories by Chekhov
he has six acres of garden, that he has pigsties and poultry houses, but
it is all wasted and no use. The flower garden is overgrown with weeds
and almost baked dry, while the boys play ball in the kitchen garden.
Isn't he a lazy brute? I assure you, though I have only the use of an
acre and a half with my lodgings, you will always find radishes, and
salad, and fennel, and onions, while that blackguard buys everything at
the market."
"He is a Russian, there is no doing anything with him," said Finks with
a condescending smile; "it's in the Russian blood. . . . They are a very
lazy people! If all property were given to Germans or Poles, in a year's
time you would not recognise the town."
The native in the blue trousers beckons a girl with a sieve, buys a
kopeck's worth of sunflower seeds from her and begins cracking them.
"A race of curs!" says Lyashkevsky angrily. "That's their only
occupation, they crack sunflower seeds and they talk politics! The devil
take them!"
Staring wrathfully at the blue trousers, Lyashkevsky is gradually roused
to fury, and gets so excited that he actually foams at the mouth. He
speaks with a Polish accent, rapping out each syllable venomously, till
at last the little bags under his eyes swell, and he abandons the
Russian "scoundrels, blackguards, and rascals," and rolling his eyes,
begins pouring out a shower of Polish oaths, coughing from his efforts.
"Lazy dogs, race of curs. May the devil take them!"
The native hears this abuse distinctly, but, judging from the appearance
of his crumpled little figure, it does not affect him. Apparently he has
long ago grown as used to it as to the buzzing of the flies, and feels
it superfluous to protest. At every visit Finks has to listen to a
tirade on the subject of the lazy good-for-nothing aborigines, and every
time exactly the same one.
"But . . . I must be going," he says, remembering that he has no time to
spare. "Good-bye!"
"Where are you off to?"
"I only looked in on you for a minute. The wall of the cellar has
cracked in the girls' high school, so they asked me to go round at once
to look at it. I must go."
"H'm. . . . I have told Varvara to get the samovar," says Lyashkevsky,
surprised. "Stay a little, we will have some tea; then you shall go."
Finks obediently puts down his hat on the table and remains to drink
tea. Over their tea Lyashkevsky maintains that the natives are
hopelessly ruined, that there is only one thing to do, to take them all
indiscriminately and send them under strict escort to hard labour.
"Why, upon my word," he says, getting hot, "you may ask what does that
goose sitting there live upon! He lets me lodgings in his house for
seven roubles a month, and he goes to name-day parties, that's all that
he has to live on, the knave, may the devil take him! He has neither
earnings nor an income. They are not merely sluggards and wastrels, they
are swindlers too, they are continually borrowing money from the town
bank, and what do they do with it? They plunge into some scheme such as
sending bulls to Moscow, or building oil presses on a new system; but to
send bulls to Moscow or to press oil you want to have a head on your
shoulders, and these rascals have pumpkins on theirs! Of course all
their schemes end in smoke . . . . They waste their money, get into a
mess, and then snap their fingers at the bank. What can you get out of
them? Their houses are mortgaged over and over again, they have no other
property--it's all been drunk and eaten up long ago. Nine-tenths of them
are swindlers, the scoundrels! To borrow money and not return it is
their rule. Thanks to them the town bank is going smash!"
"I was at Yegorov's yesterday," Finks interrupts the Pole, anxious to
change the conversation, "and only fancy, I won six roubles and a half
from him at picquet."
"I believe I still owe you something at picquet," Lyashkevsky
recollects, "I ought to win it back. Wouldn't you like one game?"
"Perhaps just one," Finks assents. "I must make haste to the high
school, you know."
Lyashkevsky and Finks sit down at the open window and begin a game of
picquet. The native in the blue trousers stretches with relish, and
husks of sunflower seeds fall in showers from all over him on to the
ground. At that moment from the gate opposite appears another native
with a long beard, wearing a crumpled yellowish-grey cotton coat. He
screws up his eyes affectionately at the blue trousers and shouts:
"Good-morning, Semyon Nikolaitch, I have the honour to congratulate you
on the Thursday."
"And the same to you, Kapiton Petrovitch!"
"Come to my seat! It's cool here!"
The blue trousers, with much sighing and groaning and waddling from side
to side like a duck, cross the street.
"Tierce major . . ." mutters Lyashkevsky, "from the queen. . . . Five
and fifteen. . . . The rascals are talking of politics. . . . Do you
hear? They have begun about England. I have six hearts."
"I have the seven spades. My point."
"Yes, it's yours. Do you hear? They are abusing Beaconsfield. They don't
know, the swine, that Beaconsfield has been dead for ever so long. So I
have twenty-nine. . . . Your lead."
"Eight . . . nine . . . ten . . . . Yes, amazing people, these Russians!
Eleven . . . twelve. . . . The Russian inertia is unique on the
terrestrial globe."
"Thirty . . . Thirty-one. . . . One ought to take a good whip, you know.
Go out and give them Beaconsfield. I say, how their tongues are wagging!
It's easier to babble than to work. I suppose you threw away the queen
of clubs and I didn't realise it."
"Thirteen . . . Fourteen. . . . It's unbearably hot! One must be made of
iron to sit in such heat on a seat in the full sun! Fifteen."
The first game is followed by a second, the second by a third. . . .
Finks loses, and by degrees works himself up into a gambling fever and
forgets all about the cracking walls of the high school cellar. As
Lyashkevsky plays he keeps looking at the aborigines. He sees them,
entertaining each other with conversation, go to the open gate, cross
the filthy yard and sit down on a scanty patch of shade under an aspen
tree. Between twelve and one o'clock the fat cook with brown legs
spreads before them something like a baby's sheet with brown stains upon
it, and gives them their dinner. They eat with wooden spoons, keep
brushing away the flies, and go on talking.
"The devil, it is beyond everything," cries Lyashkevsky, revolted. "I am
very glad I have not a gun or a revolver or I should have a shot at
those cattle. I have four knaves--fourteen. . . . Your point. . . . It
really gives me a twitching in my legs. I can't see those ruffians
without being upset."
"Don't excite yourself, it is bad for you."
"But upon my word, it is enough to try the patience of a stone!"
When he has finished dinner the native in blue trousers, worn out and
exhausted, staggering with laziness and repletion, crosses the street to
his own house and sinks feebly on to his bench. He is struggling with
drowsiness and the gnats, and is looking about him as dejectedly as
though he were every minute expecting his end. His helpless air drives
Lyashkevsky out of all patience. The Pole pokes his head out of the
window and shouts at him, spluttering:
"Been gorging? Ah, the old woman! The sweet darling. He has been
stuffing himself, and now he doesn't know what to do with his tummy! Get
out of my sight, you confounded fellow! Plague take you!"
The native looks sourly at him, and merely twiddles his fingers instead
of answering. A school-boy of his acquaintance passes by him with his
satchel on his back. Stopping him the native ponders a long time what to
say to him, and asks:
"Well, what now?"
"Nothing."
"How, nothing?"
"Why, just nothing."
"H'm. . . . And which subject is the hardest?"
"That's according." The school-boy shrugs his shoulders.
"I see--er . . . What is the Latin for tree?"
"Arbor."
"Aha. . . . And so one has to know all that," sighs the blue trousers.
"You have to go into it all. . . . It's hard work, hard work. . . . Is
your dear Mamma well?"
"She is all right, thank you."
"Ah. . . . Well, run along."
After losing two roubles Finks remembers the high school and is
horrified.
"Holy Saints, why it's three o'clock already. How I have been staying
on. Good-bye, I must run. . . ."
"Have dinner with me, and then go," says Lyashkevsky. "You have plenty
of time."
Finks stays, but only on condition that dinner shall last no more than
ten minutes. After dining he sits for some five minutes on the sofa and
thinks of the cracked wall, then resolutely lays his head on the cushion
and fills the room with a shrill whistling through his nose. While he is
asleep, Lyashkevsky, who does not approve of an afternoon nap, sits at
the window, stares at the dozing native, and grumbles:
"Race of curs! I wonder you don't choke with laziness. No work, no
intellectual or moral interests, nothing but vegetating . . . .
disgusting. Tfoo!"
At six o'clock Finks wakes up.
"It's too late to go to the high school now," he says, stretching. "I
shall have to go to-morrow, and now. . . . How about my revenge? Let's
have one more game. . . ."
After seeing his visitor off, between nine and ten, Lyashkevsky looks
after him for some time, and says:
"Damn the fellow, staying here the whole day and doing absolutely
nothing. . . . Simply get their salary and do no work; the devil take
them! . . . The German pig. . . ."
He looks out of the window, but the native is no longer there. He has
gone to bed. There is no one to grumble at, and for the first time in
the day he keeps his mouth shut, but ten minutes passes and he cannot
restrain the depression that overpowers him, and begins to grumble,
shoving the old shabby armchair:
"You only take up room, rubbishly old thing! You ought to have been
burnt long ago, but I keep forgetting to tell them to chop you up. It's
a disgrace!"
And as he gets into bed he presses his hand on a spring of the mattress,
frowns and says peevishly:
"The con--found--ed spring! It will cut my side all night. I will tell
them to rip up the mattress to-morrow and get you out, you useless
thing."
He falls asleep at midnight, and dreams that he is pouring boiling water
over the natives, Finks, and the old armchair.
AN INQUIRY
IT was midday. Voldyrev, a tall, thick-set country gentleman with a
cropped head and prominent eyes, took off his overcoat, mopped his brow
with his silk handkerchief, and somewhat diffidently went into the
government office. There they were scratching away. . . .
"Where can I make an inquiry here?" he said, addressing a porter who was
bringing a trayful of glasses from the furthest recesses of the office.
"I have to make an inquiry here and to take a copy of a resolution of
the Council."
"That way please! To that one sitting near the window!" said the porter,
indicating with the tray the furthest window. Voldyrev coughed and went
towards the window; there, at a green table spotted like typhus, was
sitting a young man with his hair standing up in four tufts on his head,
with a long pimply nose, and a long faded uniform. He was writing,
thrusting his long nose into the papers. A fly was walking about near
his right nostril, and he was continually stretching out his lower lip
and blowing under his nose, which gave his face an extremely care-worn
expression.
"May I make an inquiry about my case here . . . of you? My name is
Voldyrev. And, by the way, I have to take a copy of the resolution of
the Council of the second of March."
The clerk dipped his pen in the ink and looked to see if he had got too
much on it. Having satisfied himself that the pen would not make a blot,