Short Stories by Chekhov
Varka goes out into the road and cries there, but all at once someone
hits her on the back of her head so hard that her forehead knocks
against a birch tree. She raises her eyes, and sees facing her, her
master, the shoemaker.
"What are you about, you scabby slut?" he says. "The child is crying,
and you are asleep!"
He gives her a sharp slap behind the ear, and she shakes her head, rocks
the cradle, and murmurs her song. The green patch and the shadows from
the trousers and the baby-clothes move up and down, nod to her, and soon
take possession of her brain again. Again she sees the high road covered
with liquid mud. The people with wallets on their backs and the shadows
have lain down and are fast asleep. Looking at them, Varka has a
passionate longing for sleep; she would lie down with enjoyment, but her
mother Pelageya is walking beside her, hurrying her on. They are
hastening together to the town to find situations.
"Give alms, for Christ's sake!" her mother begs of the people they meet.
"Show us the Divine Mercy, kind-hearted gentlefolk!"
"Give the baby here!" a familiar voice answers. "Give the baby here!"
the same voice repeats, this time harshly and angrily. "Are you asleep,
you wretched girl?"
Varka jumps up, and looking round grasps what is the matter: there is no
high road, no Pelageya, no people meeting them, there is only her
mistress, who has come to feed the baby, and is standing in the middle
of the room. While the stout, broad-shouldered woman nurses the child
and soothes it, Varka stands looking at her and waiting till she has
done. And outside the windows the air is already turning blue, the
shadows and the green patch on the ceiling are visibly growing pale, it
will soon be morning.
"Take him," says her mistress, buttoning up her chemise over her bosom;
"he is crying. He must be bewitched."
Varka takes the baby, puts him in the cradle and begins rocking it
again. The green patch and the shadows gradually disappear, and now
there is nothing to force itself on her eyes and cloud her brain. But
she is as sleepy as before, fearfully sleepy! Varka lays her head on the
edge of the cradle, and rocks her whole body to overcome her sleepiness,
but yet her eyes are glued together, and her head is heavy.
"Varka, heat the stove!" she hears the master's voice through the door.
So it is time to get up and set to work. Varka leaves the cradle, and
runs to the shed for firewood. She is glad. When one moves and runs
about, one is not so sleepy as when one is sitting down. She brings the
wood, heats the stove, and feels that her wooden face is getting supple
again, and that her thoughts are growing clearer.
"Varka, set the samovar!" shouts her mistress.
Varka splits a piece of wood, but has scarcely time to light the
splinters and put them in the samovar, when she hears a fresh order:
"Varka, clean the master's goloshes!"
She sits down on the floor, cleans the goloshes, and thinks how nice it
would be to put her head into a big deep golosh, and have a little nap
in it. . . . And all at once the golosh grows, swells, fills up the
whole room. Varka drops the brush, but at once shakes her head, opens
her eyes wide, and tries to look at things so that they may not grow big
and move before her eyes.
"Varka, wash the steps outside; I am ashamed for the customers to see
them!"
Varka washes the steps, sweeps and dusts the rooms, then heats another
stove and runs to the shop. There is a great deal of work: she hasn't
one minute free.
But nothing is so hard as standing in the same place at the kitchen
table peeling potatoes. Her head droops over the table, the potatoes
dance before her eyes, the knife tumbles out of her hand while her fat,
angry mistress is moving about near her with her sleeves tucked up,
talking so loud that it makes a ringing in Varka's ears. It is
agonising, too, to wait at dinner, to wash, to sew, there are minutes
when she longs to flop on to the floor regardless of everything, and to
sleep.
The day passes. Seeing the windows getting dark, Varka presses her
temples that feel as though they were made of wood, and smiles, though
she does not know why. The dusk of evening caresses her eyes that will
hardly keep open, and promises her sound sleep soon. In the evening
visitors come.
"Varka, set the samovar!" shouts her mistress. The samovar is a little
one, and before the visitors have drunk all the tea they want, she has
to heat it five times. After tea Varka stands for a whole hour on the
same spot, looking at the visitors, and waiting for orders.
"Varka, run and buy three bottles of beer!"
She starts off, and tries to run as quickly as she can, to drive away
sleep.
"Varka, fetch some vodka! Varka, where's the corkscrew? Varka, clean a
herring!"
But now, at last, the visitors have gone; the lights are put out, the
master and mistress go to bed.
"Varka, rock the baby!" she hears the last order.
The cricket churrs in the stove; the green patch on the ceiling and the
shadows from the trousers and the baby-clothes force themselves on
Varka's half-opened eyes again, wink at her and cloud her mind.
"Hush-a-bye, my baby wee," she murmurs, "and I will sing a song to
thee."
And the baby screams, and is worn out with screaming. Again Varka sees
the muddy high road, the people with wallets, her mother Pelageya, her
father Yefim. She understands everything, she recognises everyone, but
through her half sleep she cannot understand the force which binds her,
hand and foot, weighs upon her, and prevents her from living. She looks
round, searches for that force that she may escape from it, but she
cannot find it. At last, tired to death, she does her very utmost,
strains her eyes, looks up at the flickering green patch, and listening
to the screaming, finds the foe who will not let her live.
That foe is the baby.
She laughs. It seems strange to her that she has failed to grasp such a
simple thing before. The green patch, the shadows, and the cricket seem
to laugh and wonder too.
The hallucination takes possession of Varka. She gets up from her stool,
and with a broad smile on her face and wide unblinking eyes, she walks
up and down the room. She feels pleased and tickled at the thought that
she will be rid directly of the baby that binds her hand and foot. . . .
Kill the baby and then sleep, sleep, sleep. . . .
Laughing and winking and shaking her fingers at the green patch, Varka
steals up to the cradle and bends over the baby. When she has strangled
him, she quickly lies down on the floor, laughs with delight that she
can sleep, and in a minute is sleeping as sound as the dead.
CHILDREN
PAPA and mamma and Aunt Nadya are not at home. They have gone to a
christening party at the house of that old officer who rides on a little
grey horse. While waiting for them to come home, Grisha, Anya, Alyosha,
Sonya, and the cook's son, Andrey, are sitting at the table in the
dining-room, playing at loto. To tell the truth, it is bedtime, but how
can one go to sleep without hearing from mamma what the baby was like at
the christening, and what they had for supper? The table, lighted by a
hanging lamp, is dotted with numbers, nutshells, scraps of paper, and
little bits of glass. Two cards lie in front of each player, and a heap
of bits of glass for covering the numbers. In the middle of the table is
a white saucer with five kopecks in it. Beside the saucer, a half-eaten
apple, a pair of scissors, and a plate on which they have been told to
put their nutshells. The children are playing for money. The stake is a
kopeck. The rule is: if anyone cheats, he is turned out at once. There
is no one in the dining-room but the players, and nurse, Agafya
Ivanovna, is in the kitchen, showing the cook how to cut a pattern,
while their elder brother, Vasya, a schoolboy in the fifth class, is
lying on the sofa in the drawing-room, feeling bored.
They are playing with zest. The greatest excitement is expressed on the
face of Grisha. He is a small boy of nine, with a head cropped so that
the bare skin shows through, chubby cheeks, and thick lips like a
negro's. He is already in the preparatory class, and so is regarded as
grown up, and the cleverest. He is playing entirely for the sake of the
money. If there had been no kopecks in the saucer, he would have been
asleep long ago. His brown eyes stray uneasily and jealously over the
other players' cards. The fear that he may not win, envy, and the
financial combinations of which his cropped head is full, will not let
him sit still and concentrate his mind. He fidgets as though he were
sitting on thorns. When he wins, he snatches up the money greedily, and
instantly puts it in his pocket. His sister, Anya, a girl of eight, with
a sharp chin and clever shining eyes, is also afraid that someone else
may win. She flushes and turns pale, and watches the players keenly. The
kopecks do not interest her. Success in the game is for her a question
of vanity. The other sister, Sonya, a child of six with a curly head,
and a complexion such as is seen only in very healthy children,
expensive dolls, and the faces on bonbon boxes, is playing loto for the
process of the game itself. There is bliss all over her face. Whoever
wins, she laughs and claps her hands. Alyosha, a chubby, spherical
little figure, gasps, breathes hard through his nose, and stares open-
eyed at the cards. He is moved neither by covetousness nor vanity. So
long as he is not driven out of the room, or sent to bed, he is
thankful. He looks phlegmatic, but at heart he is rather a little beast.
He is not there so much for the sake of the loto, as for the sake of the
misunderstandings which are inevitable in the game. He is greatly
delighted if one hits another, or calls him names. He ought to have run
off somewhere long ago, but he won't leave the table for a minute, for
fear they should steal his counters or his kopecks. As he can only count
the units and numbers which end in nought, Anya covers his numbers for
him. The fifth player, the cook's son, Andrey, a dark-skinned and sickly
looking boy in a cotton shirt, with a copper cross on his breast, stands
motionless, looking dreamily at the numbers. He takes no interest in
winning, or in the success of the others, because he is entirely
engrossed by the arithmetic of the game, and its far from complex
theory; "How many numbers there are in the world," he is thinking, "and
how is it they don't get mixed up?"
They all shout out the numbers in turn, except Sonya and Alyosha. To
vary the monotony, they have invented in the course of time a number of
synonyms and comic nicknames. Seven, for instance, is called the
"ovenrake," eleven the "sticks," seventy-seven "Semyon Semyonitch,"
ninety "grandfather," and so on. The game is going merrily.
"Thirty-two," cries Grisha, drawing the little yellow cylinders out of
his father's cap. "Seventeen! Ovenrake! Twenty-eight! Lay them straight.
. . ."
Anya sees that Andrey has let twenty-eight slip. At any other time she
would have pointed it out to him, but now when her vanity lies in the
saucer with the kopecks, she is triumphant.
"Twenty-three!" Grisha goes on, "Semyon Semyonitch! Nine!"
"A beetle, a beetle," cries Sonya, pointing to a beetle running across
the table. "Aie!"
"Don't kill it," says Alyosha, in his deep bass, "perhaps it's got
children . . . ."
Sonya follows the black beetle with her eyes and wonders about its
children: what tiny little beetles they must be!
"Forty-three! One!" Grisha goes on, unhappy at the thought that Anya has
already made two fours. "Six!"
"Game! I have got the game!" cries Sonya, rolling her eyes coquettishly
and giggling.
The players' countenances lengthen.