Short Stories by Chekhov
"What an idea, mistress!" cried Pelageya, abashed. "They say such things
that . . . my goodness. . . ."
"She should say she doesn't like him!" thought Grisha.
"What an affected creature you are. . . . Do you like him?"
"But he is old, mistress!"
"Think of something else," nurse flew out at her from the next room. "He
has not reached his fortieth year; and what do you want a young man for?
Handsome is as handsome does. . . . Marry him and that's all about it!"
"I swear I won't," squealed Pelageya.
"You are talking nonsense. What sort of rascal do you want? Anyone else
would have bowed down to his feet, and you declare you won't marry him.
You want to be always winking at the postmen and tutors. That tutor that
used to come to Grishenka, mistress . . . she was never tired of making
eyes at him. O-o, the shameless hussy!"
"Have you seen this Danilo before?" mamma asked Pelageya.
"How could I have seen him? I set eyes on him to-day for the first time.
Aksinya picked him up and brought him along . . . the accursed devil. .
. . And where has he come from for my undoing!"
At dinner, when Pelageya was handing the dishes, everyone looked into
her face and teased her about the cabman. She turned fearfully red, and
went off into a forced giggle.
"It must be shameful to get married," thought Grisha. "Terribly
shameful."
All the dishes were too salt, and blood oozed from the half-raw
chickens, and, to cap it all, plates and knives kept dropping out of
Pelageya's hands during dinner, as though from a shelf that had given
way; but no one said a word of blame to her, as they all understood the
state of her feelings. Only once papa flicked his table-napkin angrily
and said to mamma:
"What do you want to be getting them all married for? What business is
it of yours? Let them get married of themselves if they want to."
After dinner, neighbouring cooks and maidservants kept flitting into the
kitchen, and there was the sound of whispering till late evening. How
they had scented out the matchmaking, God knows. When Grisha woke in the
night he heard his nurse and the cook whispering together in the
nursery. Nurse was talking persuasively, while the cook alternately
sobbed and giggled. When he fell asleep after this, Grisha dreamed of
Pelageya being carried off by Tchernomor and a witch.
Next day there was a calm. The life of the kitchen went on its
accustomed way as though the cabman did not exist. Only from time to
time nurse put on her new shawl, assumed a solemn and austere air, and
went off somewhere for an hour or two, obviously to conduct
negotiations. . . . Pelageya did not see the cabman, and when his name
was mentioned she flushed up and cried:
"May he be thrice damned! As though I should be thinking of him! Tfoo!"
In the evening mamma went into the kitchen, while nurse and Pelageya
were zealously mincing something, and said:
"You can marry him, of course--that's your business--but I must tell you,
Pelageya, that he cannot live here. . . . You know I don't like to have
anyone sitting in the kitchen. Mind now, remember . . . . And I can't
let you sleep out."
"Goodness knows! What an idea, mistress!" shrieked the cook. "Why do you
keep throwing him up at me? Plague take him! He's a regular curse,
confound him! . . ."
Glancing one Sunday morning into the kitchen, Grisha was struck dumb
with amazement. The kitchen was crammed full of people. Here were cooks
from the whole courtyard, the porter, two policemen, a non-commissioned
officer with good-conduct stripes, and the boy Filka. . . . This Filka
was generally hanging about the laundry playing with the dogs; now he
was combed and washed, and was holding an ikon in a tinfoil setting.
Pelageya was standing in the middle of the kitchen in a new cotton
dress, with a flower on her head. Beside her stood the cabman. The happy
pair were red in the face and perspiring and blinking with
embarrassment.
"Well . . . I fancy it is time," said the non-commissioned officer,
after a prolonged silence.
Pelageya's face worked all over and she began blubbering. . . .
The soldier took a big loaf from the table, stood beside nurse, and
began blessing the couple. The cabman went up to the soldier, flopped
down on his knees, and gave a smacking kiss on his hand. He did the same
before nurse. Pelageya followed him mechanically, and she too bowed down
to the ground. At last the outer door was opened, there was a whiff of
white mist, and the whole party flocked noisily out of the kitchen into
the yard.
"Poor thing, poor thing," thought Grisha, hearing the sobs of the cook.
"Where have they taken her? Why don't papa and mamma protect her?"
After the wedding there was singing and concertina-playing in the
laundry till late evening. Mamma was cross all the evening because nurse
smelt of vodka, and owing to the wedding there was no one to heat the
samovar. Pelageya had not come back by the time Grisha went to bed.
"The poor thing is crying somewhere in the dark!" he thought. "While the
cabman is saying to her 'shut up!'"
Next morning the cook was in the kitchen again. The cabman came in for a
minute. He thanked mamma, and glancing sternly at Pelageya, said:
"Will you look after her, madam? Be a father and a mother to her. And
you, too, Aksinya Stepanovna, do not forsake her, see that everything is
as it should be . . . without any nonsense. . . . And also, madam, if
you would kindly advance me five roubles of her wages. I have got to buy
a new horse-collar."
Again a problem for Grisha: Pelageya was living in freedom, doing as she
liked, and not having to account to anyone for her actions, and all at
once, for no sort of reason, a stranger turns up, who has somehow
acquired rights over her conduct and her property! Grisha was
distressed. He longed passionately, almost to tears, to comfort this
victim, as he supposed, of man's injustice. Picking out the very biggest
apple in the store-room he stole into the kitchen, slipped it into
Pelageya's hand, and darted headlong away.
SLEEPY
NIGHT. Varka, the little nurse, a girl of thirteen, is rocking the
cradle in which the baby is lying, and humming hardly audibly:
"Hush-a-bye, my baby wee, While I sing a song for thee."
A little green lamp is burning before the ikon; there is a string
stretched from one end of the room to the other, on which baby-clothes
and a pair of big black trousers are hanging. There is a big patch of
green on the ceiling from the ikon lamp, and the baby-clothes and the
trousers throw long shadows on the stove, on the cradle, and on Varka. .
. . When the lamp begins to flicker, the green patch and the shadows
come to life, and are set in motion, as though by the wind. It is
stuffy. There is a smell of cabbage soup, and of the inside of a boot-
shop.
The baby's crying. For a long while he has been hoarse and exhausted
with crying; but he still goes on screaming, and there is no knowing
when he will stop. And Varka is sleepy. Her eyes are glued together, her
head droops, her neck aches. She cannot move her eyelids or her lips,
and she feels as though her face is dried and wooden, as though her head
has become as small as the head of a pin.
"Hush-a-bye, my baby wee," she hums, "while I cook the groats for thee.
. . ."
A cricket is churring in the stove. Through the door in the next room
the master and the apprentice Afanasy are snoring. . . . The cradle
creaks plaintively, Varka murmurs--and it all blends into that soothing
music of the night to which it is so sweet to listen, when one is lying
in bed. Now that music is merely irritating and oppressive, because it
goads her to sleep, and she must not sleep; if Varka--God forbid!--should
fall asleep, her master and mistress would beat her.
The lamp flickers. The patch of green and the shadows are set in motion,
forcing themselves on Varka's fixed, half-open eyes, and in her half
slumbering brain are fashioned into misty visions. She sees dark clouds
chasing one another over the sky, and screaming like the baby. But then
the wind blows, the clouds are gone, and Varka sees a broad high road
covered with liquid mud; along the high road stretch files of wagons,
while people with wallets on their backs are trudging along and shadows
flit backwards and forwards; on both sides she can see forests through
the cold harsh mist. All at once the people with their wallets and their
shadows fall on the ground in the liquid mud. "What is that for?" Varka
asks. "To sleep, to sleep!" they answer her. And they fall sound asleep,
and sleep sweetly, while crows and magpies sit on the telegraph wires,
scream like the baby, and try to wake them.
"Hush-a-bye, my baby wee, and I will sing a song to thee," murmurs
Varka, and now she sees herself in a dark stuffy hut.
Her dead father, Yefim Stepanov, is tossing from side to side on the
floor. She does not see him, but she hears him moaning and rolling on
the floor from pain. "His guts have burst," as he says; the pain is so
violent that he cannot utter a single word, and can only draw in his
breath and clack his teeth like the rattling of a drum:
"Boo--boo--boo--boo. . . ."
Her mother, Pelageya, has run to the master's house to say that Yefim is
dying. She has been gone a long time, and ought to be back. Varka lies
awake on the stove, and hears her father's "boo--boo--boo." And then she
hears someone has driven up to the hut. It is a young doctor from the
town, who has been sent from the big house where he is staying on a
visit. The doctor comes into the hut; he cannot be seen in the darkness,
but he can be heard coughing and rattling the door.
"Light a candle," he says.
"Boo--boo--boo," answers Yefim.
Pelageya rushes to the stove and begins looking for the broken pot with
the matches. A minute passes in silence. The doctor, feeling in his
pocket, lights a match.
"In a minute, sir, in a minute," says Pelageya. She rushes out of the
hut, and soon afterwards comes back with a bit of candle.
Yefim's cheeks are rosy and his eyes are shining, and there is a
peculiar keenness in his glance, as though he were seeing right through
the hut and the doctor.
"Come, what is it? What are you thinking about?" says the doctor,
bending down to him. "Aha! have you had this long?"
"What? Dying, your honour, my hour has come. . . . I am not to stay
among the living."
"Don't talk nonsense! We will cure you!"
"That's as you please, your honour, we humbly thank you, only we
understand. . . . Since death has come, there it is."
The doctor spends a quarter of an hour over Yefim, then he gets up and
says:
"I can do nothing. You must go into the hospital, there they will
operate on you. Go at once . . . You must go! It's rather late, they
will all be asleep in the hospital, but that doesn't matter, I will give
you a note. Do you hear?"
"Kind sir, but what can he go in?" says Pelageya. "We have no horse."
"Never mind. I'll ask your master, he'll let you have a horse."
The doctor goes away, the candle goes out, and again there is the sound
of "boo--boo--boo." Half an hour later someone drives up to the hut. A
cart has been sent to take Yefim to the hospital. He gets ready and
goes. . . .
But now it is a clear bright morning. Pelageya is not at home; she has
gone to the hospital to find what is being done to Yefim. Somewhere
there is a baby crying, and Varka hears someone singing with her own
voice:
"Hush-a-bye, my baby wee, I will sing a song to thee."
Pelageya comes back; she crosses herself and whispers:
"They put him to rights in the night, but towards morning he gave up his
soul to God. . . . The Kingdom of Heaven be his and peace everlasting. .
. . They say he was taken too late. . . . He ought to have gone sooner.
. . ."