Short Stories by Chekhov
aside and ran out into the yard. In the shed a sleepy pig was grunting
with lazy regularity and a cow was knocking her horn. Yergunov lighted a
match and saw the pig, and the cow, and the dogs, which rushed at him on
all sides at seeing the light, but there was no trace of the horse.
Shouting and waving his arms at the dogs, stumbling over the drifts and
sticking in the snow, he ran out at the gate and fell to gazing into the
darkness. He strained his eyes to the utmost, and saw only the snow
flying and the snowflakes distinctly forming into all sorts of shapes;
at one moment the white, laughing face of a corpse would peep out of the
darkness, at the next a white horse would gallop by with an Amazon in a
muslin dress upon it, at the next a string of white swans would fly
overhead. . . . Shaking with anger and cold, and not knowing what to do,
Yergunov fired his revolver at the dogs, and did not hit one of them;
then he rushed back to the house.
When he went into the entry he distinctly heard someone scurry out of
the room and bang the door. It was dark in the room. Yergunov pushed
against the door; it was locked. Then, lighting match after match, he
rushed back into the entry, from there into the kitchen, and from the
kitchen into a little room where all the walls were hung with petticoats
and dresses, where there was a smell of cornflowers and fennel, and a
bedstead with a perfect mountain of pillows, standing in the corner by
the stove; this must have been the old mother's room. From there he
passed into another little room, and here he saw Lyubka. She was lying
on a chest, covered with a gay-coloured patchwork cotton quilt,
pretending to be asleep. A little ikon-lamp was burning in the corner
above the pillow.
"Where is my horse?" Yergunov asked.
Lyubka did not stir.
"Where is my horse, I am asking you?" Yergunov repeated still more
sternly, and he tore the quilt off her. "I am asking you, she-devil!" he
shouted.
She jumped up on her knees, and with one hand holding her shift and with
the other trying to clutch the quilt, huddled against the wall . . . .
She looked at Yergunov with repulsion and terror in her eyes, and, like
a wild beast in a trap, kept cunning watch on his faintest movement.
"Tell me where my horse is, or I'll knock the life out of you," shouted
Yergunov.
"Get away, dirty brute!" she said in a hoarse voice.
Yergunov seized her by the shift near the neck and tore it. And then he
could not restrain himself, and with all his might embraced the girl.
But hissing with fury, she slipped out of his arms, and freeing one
hand--the other was tangled in the torn shift--hit him a blow with her
fist on the skull.
His head was dizzy with the pain, there was a ringing and rattling in
his ears, he staggered back, and at that moment received another
blow--this time on the temple. Reeling and clutching at the doorposts,
that he might not fall, he made his way to the room where his things
were, and lay down on the bench; then after lying for a little time,
took the matchbox out of his pocket and began lighting match after match
for no object: he lit it, blew it out, and threw it under the table, and
went on till all the matches were gone.
Meanwhile the air began to turn blue outside, the cocks began to crow,
but his head still ached, and there was an uproar in his ears as though
he were sitting under a railway bridge and hearing the trains passing
over his head. He got, somehow, into his coat and cap; the saddle and
the bundle of his purchases he could not find, his knapsack was empty:
it was not for nothing that someone had scurried out of the room when he
came in from the yard.
He took a poker from the kitchen to keep off the dogs, and went out into
the yard, leaving the door open. The snow-storm had subsided and it was
calm outside. . . . When he went out at the gate, the white plain looked
dead, and there was not a single bird in the morning sky. On both sides
of the road and in the distance there were bluish patches of young
copse.
Yergunov began thinking how he would be greeted at the hospital and what
the doctor would say to him; it was absolutely necessary to think of
that, and to prepare beforehand to answer questions he would be asked,
but this thought grew blurred and slipped away. He walked along thinking
of nothing but Lyubka, of the peasants with whom he had passed the
night; he remembered how, after Lyubka struck him the second time, she
had bent down to the floor for the quilt, and how her loose hair had
fallen on the floor. His mind was in a maze, and he wondered why there
were in the world doctors, hospital assistants, merchants, clerks, and
peasants instead of simple free men? There are, to be sure, free birds,
free beasts, a free Merik, and they are not afraid of anyone, and don't
need anyone! And whose idea was it, who had decreed that one must get up
in the morning, dine at midday, go to bed in the evening; that a doctor
takes precedence of a hospital assistant; that one must live in rooms
and love only one's wife? And why not the contrary--dine at night and
sleep in the day? Ah, to jump on a horse without enquiring whose it is,
to ride races with the wind like a devil, over fields and forests and
ravines, to make love to girls, to mock at everyone . . . .
Yergunov thrust the poker into the snow, pressed his forehead to the
cold white trunk of a birch-tree, and sank into thought; and his grey,
monotonous life, his wages, his subordinate position, the dispensary,
the everlasting to-do with the bottles and blisters, struck him as
contemptible, sickening.
"Who says it's a sin to enjoy oneself?" he asked himself with vexation.
"Those who say that have never lived in freedom like Merik and
Kalashnikov, and have never loved Lyubka; they have been beggars all
their lives, have lived without any pleasure, and have only loved their
wives, who are like frogs."
And he thought about himself that he had not hitherto been a thief, a
swindler, or even a brigand, simply because he could not, or had not yet
met with a suitable opportunity. ----
A year and a half passed. In spring, after Easter, Yergunov, who had
long before been dismissed from the hospital and was hanging about
without a job, came out of the tavern in Ryepino and sauntered aimlessly
along the street.
He went out into the open country. Here there was the scent of spring,
and a warm caressing wind was blowing. The calm, starry night looked
down from the sky on the earth. My God, how infinite the depth of the
sky, and with what fathomless immensity it stretched over the world! The
world is created well enough, only why and with what right do people,
thought Yergunov, divide their fellows into the sober and the drunken,
the employed and the dismissed, and so on. Why do the sober and well fed
sleep comfortably in their homes while the drunken and the hungry must
wander about the country without a refuge? Why was it that if anyone had
not a job and did not get a salary he had to go hungry, without clothes
and boots? Whose idea was it? Why was it the birds and the wild beasts
in the woods did not have jobs and get salaries, but lived as they
pleased?
Far away in the sky a beautiful crimson glow lay quivering, stretched
wide over the horizon. Yergunov stopped, and for a long time he gazed at
it, and kept wondering why was it that if he had carried off someone
else's samovar the day before and sold it for drink in the taverns it
would be a sin? Why was it?
Two carts drove by on the road; in one of them there was a woman asleep,
in the other sat an old man without a cap on.
"Grandfather, where is that fire?" asked Yergunov.
"Andrey Tchirikov's inn," answered the old man.
And Yergunov recalled what had happened to him eighteen months before in
the winter, in that very inn, and how Merik had boasted; and he imagined
the old woman and Lyubka, with their throats cut, burning, and he envied
Merik. And when he walked back to the tavern, looking at the houses of
the rich publicans, cattle-dealers, and blacksmiths, he reflected how
nice it would be to steal by night into some rich man's house!
WARD NO. 6 I
IN the hospital yard there stands a small lodge surrounded by a perfect
forest of burdocks, nettles, and wild hemp. Its roof is rusty, the
chimney is tumbling down, the steps at the front-door are rotting away
and overgrown with grass, and there are only traces left of the stucco.
The front of the lodge faces the hospital; at the back it looks out into
the open country, from which it is separated by the grey hospital fence
with nails on it. These nails, with their points upwards, and the fence,
and the lodge itself, have that peculiar, desolate, God-forsaken look
which is only found in our hospital and prison buildings.
If you are not afraid of being stung by the nettles, come by the narrow
footpath that leads to the lodge, and let us see what is going on
inside. Opening the first door, we walk into the entry. Here along the
walls and by the stove every sort of hospital rubbish lies littered
about. Mattresses, old tattered dressing-gowns, trousers, blue striped
shirts, boots and shoes no good for anything--all these remnants are
piled up in heaps, mixed up and crumpled, mouldering and giving out a
sickly smell.
The porter, Nikita, an old soldier wearing rusty good-conduct stripes,
is always lying on the litter with a pipe between his teeth. He has a
grim, surly, battered-looking face, overhanging eyebrows which give him
the expression of a sheep-dog of the steppes, and a red nose; he is
short and looks thin and scraggy, but he is of imposing deportment and
his fists are vigorous. He belongs to the class of simple-hearted,
practical, and dull-witted people, prompt in carrying out orders, who
like discipline better than anything in the world, and so are convinced
that it is their duty to beat people. He showers blows on the face, on
the chest, on the back, on whatever comes first, and is convinced that
there would be no order in the place if he did not.
Next you come into a big, spacious room which fills up the whole lodge
except for the entry. Here the walls are painted a dirty blue, the
ceiling is as sooty as in a hut without a chimney--it is evident that in
the winter the stove smokes and the room is full of fumes. The windows
are disfigured by iron gratings on the inside. The wooden floor is grey
and full of splinters. There is a stench of sour cabbage, of smouldering
wicks, of bugs, and of ammonia, and for the first minute this stench
gives you the impression of having walked into a menagerie.
There are bedsteads screwed to the floor. Men in blue hospital dressing-
gowns, and wearing nightcaps in the old style, are sitting and lying on
them. These are the lunatics.
There are five of them in all here. Only one is of the upper class, the
rest are all artisans. The one nearest the door--a tall, lean workman
with shining red whiskers and tear-stained eyes--sits with his head
propped on his hand, staring at the same point. Day and night he
grieves, shaking his head, sighing and smiling bitterly. He takes a part
in conversation and usually makes no answer to questions; he eats and
drinks mechanically when food is offered him. From his agonizing,
throbbing cough, his thinness, and the flush on his cheeks, one may
judge that he is in the first stage of consumption. Next to him is a
little, alert, very lively old man, with a pointed beard and curly black
hair like a negro's. By day he walks up and down the ward from window to
window, or sits on his bed, cross-legged like a Turk, and, ceaselessly
as a bullfinch whistles, softly sings and titters. He shows his childish
gaiety and lively character at night also when he gets up to say his