The Cook_s Wedding and Other Stories Anton Pavlovich Chekhov 1627 downloads.pdf

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Cook's Wedding and
Other Stories
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will
have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using
this eBook.

Title: The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories

Author: Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Translator: Constance Garnett

Release date: September 9, 2004 [eBook #13417]
Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13417

Credits: Etext produced by James Rusk

HTML file produced by David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COOK'S
WEDDING AND OTHER STORIES ***

THE TALES OF CHEKHOV
Volume 12

THE COOK’S WEDDING AND OTHER STORIES

By Anton Tchekhov
Translated by Constance Garnett

CONTENTS
THE COOK’S WEDDING
SLEEPY
CHILDREN
THE RUNAWAY
GRISHA
OYSTERS
HOME
A CLASSICAL STUDENT
VANKA
AN INCIDENT
A DAY IN THE COUNTRY
BOYS
SHROVE TUESDAY
THE OLD HOUSE

IN PASSION WEEK
WHITEBROW
KASHTANKA
A CHAMELEON
THE DEPENDENTS
WHO WAS TO BLAME?
THE BIRD MARKET
AN ADVENTURE
THE FISH
ART
THE SWEDISH MATCH

THE COOK’S WEDDING

G
RISHA, a fat, solemn little person of seven, was standing by the
kitchen door listening and peeping through the keyhole. In the
kitchen something extraordinary, and in his opinion never seen
before, was taking place. A big, thick-set, red-haired peasant, with a beard,
and a drop of perspiration on his nose, wearing a cabman’s full coat, was
sitting at the kitchen table on which they chopped the meat and sliced the
onions. He was balancing a saucer on the five fingers of his right hand and
drinking tea out of it, and crunching sugar so loudly that it sent a shiver
down Grisha’s back. Aksinya Stepanovna, the old nurse, was sitting on the
dirty stool facing him, and she, too, was drinking tea. Her face was grave,
though at the same time it beamed with a kind of triumph. Pelageya, the
cook, was busy at the stove, and was apparently trying to hide her face. And
on her face Grisha saw a regular illumination: it was burning and shifting
through every shade of colour, beginning with a crimson purple and ending
with a deathly white. She was continually catching hold of knives, forks,
bits of wood, and rags with trembling hands, moving, grumbling to herself,
making a clatter, but in reality doing nothing. She did not once glance at the
table at which they were drinking tea, and to the questions put to her by the
nurse she gave jerky, sullen answers without turning her face.
“Help yourself, Danilo Semyonitch,” the nurse urged him hospitably.
“Why do you keep on with tea and nothing but tea? You should have a drop
of vodka!”
And nurse put before the visitor a bottle of vodka and a wine-glass, while
her face wore a very wily expression.
“I never touch it. . . . No . . .” said the cabman, declining. “Don’t press
me, Aksinya Stepanovna.”
“What a man! . . . A cabman and not drink! . . . A bachelor can’t get on
without drinking. Help yourself!”

The cabman looked askance at the bottle, then at nurse’s wily face, and
his own face assumed an expression no less cunning, as much as to say,
“You won’t catch me, you old witch!”
“I don’t drink; please excuse me. Such a weakness does not do in our
calling. A man who works at a trade may drink, for he sits at home, but we
cabmen are always in view of the public. Aren’t we? If one goes into a
pothouse one finds one’s horse gone; if one takes a drop too much it is
worse still; before you know where you are you will fall asleep or slip off
the box. That’s where it is.”
“And how much do you make a day, Danilo Semyonitch?”
“That’s according. One day you will have a fare for three roubles, and
another day you will come back to the yard without a farthing. The days are
very different. Nowadays our business is no good. There are lots and lots of
cabmen as you know, hay is dear, and folks are paltry nowadays and always
contriving to go by tram. And yet, thank God, I have nothing to complain
of. I have plenty to eat and good clothes to wear, and . . . we could even
provide well for another. . .” (the cabman stole a glance at Pelageya) “if it
were to their liking. . . .”
Grisha did not hear what was said further. His mamma came to the door
and sent him to the nursery to learn his lessons.
“Go and learn your lesson. It’s not your business to listen here!”
When Grisha reached the nursery, he put “My Own Book” in front of
him, but he did not get on with his reading. All that he had just seen and
heard aroused a multitude of questions in his mind.
“The cook’s going to be married,” he thought. “Strange—I don’t
understand what people get married for. Mamma was married to papa,
Cousin Verotchka to Pavel Andreyitch. But one might be married to papa
and Pavel Andreyitch after all: they have gold watch-chains and nice suits,
their boots are always polished; but to marry that dreadful cabman with a
red nose and felt boots. . . . Fi! And why is it nurse wants poor Pelageya to
be married?”

When the visitor had gone out of the kitchen, Pelageya appeared and
began clearing away. Her agitation still persisted. Her face was red and
looked scared. She scarcely touched the floor with the broom, and swept
every corner five times over. She lingered for a long time in the room where
mamma was sitting. She was evidently oppressed by her isolation, and she
was longing to express herself, to share her impressions with some one, to
open her heart.
“He’s gone,” she muttered, seeing that mamma would not begin the
conversation.
“One can see he is a good man,” said mamma, not taking her eyes off her
sewing. “Sober and steady.”
“I declare I won’t marry him, mistress!” Pelageya cried suddenly,
flushing crimson. “I declare I won’t!”
“Don’t be silly; you are not a child. It’s a serious step; you must think it
over thoroughly, it’s no use talking nonsense. Do you like him?”
“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

N
IGHT. 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. . . .”
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

P
APA 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.
“Must make sure!” says Grisha, looking with hatred at Sonya.
Exercising his rights as a big boy, and the cleverest, Grisha takes upon
himself to decide. What he wants, that they do. Sonya’s reckoning is slowly
and carefully verified, and to the great regret of her fellow players, it
appears that she has not cheated. Another game is begun.
“I did see something yesterday!” says Anya, as though to herself. “Filipp
Filippitch turned his eyelids inside out somehow and his eyes looked red
and dreadful, like an evil spirit’s.”
“I saw it too,” says Grisha. “Eight! And a boy at our school can move his
ears. Twenty-seven!”
Andrey looks up at Grisha, meditates, and says:
“I can move my ears too. . . .”
“Well then, move them.”
Andrey moves his eyes, his lips, and his fingers, and fancies that his ears
are moving too. Everyone laughs.
“He is a horrid man, that Filipp Filippitch,” sighs Sonya. “He came into
our nursery yesterday, and I had nothing on but my chemise . . . And I felt
so improper!”

“Game!” Grisha cries suddenly, snatching the money from the saucer.
“I’ve got the game! You can look and see if you like.”
The cook’s son looks up and turns pale.
“Then I can’t go on playing any more,” he whispers.
“Why not?”
“Because . . . because I have got no more money.”
“You can’t play without money,” says Grisha.
Andrey ransacks his pockets once more to make sure. Finding nothing in
them but crumbs and a bitten pencil, he drops the corners of his mouth and
begins blinking miserably. He is on the point of crying. . . .
“I’ll put it down for you!” says Sonya, unable to endure his look of
agony. “Only mind you must pay me back afterwards.”
The money is brought and the game goes on.
“I believe they are ringing somewhere,” says Anya, opening her eyes
wide.
They all leave off playing and gaze open-mouthed at the dark window.
The reflection of the lamp glimmers in the darkness.
“It was your fancy.”
“At night they only ring in the cemetery,” says Andrey.
“And what do they ring there for?”
“To prevent robbers from breaking into the church. They are afraid of the
bells.”
“And what do robbers break into the church for?” asks Sonya.
“Everyone knows what for: to kill the watchmen.”
A minute passes in silence. They all look at one another, shudder, and go
on playing. This time Andrey wins.

“He has cheated,” Alyosha booms out, apropos of nothing.
“What a lie, I haven’t cheated.”
Andrey turns pale, his mouth works, and he gives Alyosha a slap on the
head! Alyosha glares angrily, jumps up, and with one knee on the table,
slaps Andrey on the cheek! Each gives the other a second blow, and both
howl. Sonya, feeling such horrors too much for her, begins crying too, and
the dining-room resounds with lamentations on various notes. But do not
imagine that that is the end of the game. Before five minutes are over, the
children are laughing and talking peaceably again. Their faces are tear-
stained, but that does not prevent them from smiling; Alyosha is positively
blissful, there has been a squabble!
Vasya, the fifth form schoolboy, walks into the dining-room. He looks
sleepy and disillusioned.
“This is revolting!” he thinks, seeing Grisha feel in his pockets in which
the kopecks are jingling. “How can they give children money? And how can
they let them play games of chance? A nice way to bring them up, I must
say! It’s revolting!”
But the children’s play is so tempting that he feels an inclination to join
them and to try his luck.
“Wait a minute and I’ll sit down to a game,” he says.
“Put down a kopeck!”
“In a minute,” he says, fumbling in his pockets. “I haven’t a kopeck, but
here is a rouble. I’ll stake a rouble.”
“No, no, no. . . . You must put down a kopeck.”
“You stupids. A rouble is worth more than a kopeck anyway,” the
schoolboy explains. “Whoever wins can give me change.”
“No, please! Go away!”
The fifth form schoolboy shrugs his shoulders, and goes into the kitchen
to get change from the servants. It appears there is not a single kopeck in

the kitchen.
“In that case, you give me change,” he urges Grisha, coming back from
the kitchen. “I’ll pay you for the change. Won’t you? Come, give me ten
kopecks for a rouble.”
Grisha looks suspiciously at Vasya, wondering whether it isn’t some
trick, a swindle.
“I won’t,” he says, holding his pockets.
Vasya begins to get cross, and abuses them, calling them idiots and
blockheads.
“I’ll put down a stake for you, Vasya!” says Sonya. “Sit down.” He sits
down and lays two cards before him. Anya begins counting the numbers.
“I’ve dropped a kopeck!” Grisha announces suddenly, in an agitated
voice. “Wait!”
He takes the lamp, and creeps under the table to look for the kopeck.
They clutch at nutshells and all sorts of nastiness, knock their heads
together, but do not find the kopeck. They begin looking again, and look till
Vasya takes the lamp out of Grisha’s hands and puts it in its place. Grisha
goes on looking in the dark. But at last the kopeck is found. The players sit
down at the table and mean to go on playing.
“Sonya is asleep!” Alyosha announces.
Sonya, with her curly head lying on her arms, is in a sweet, sound,
tranquil sleep, as though she had been asleep for an hour. She has fallen
asleep by accident, while the others were looking for the kopeck.
“Come along, lie on mamma’s bed!” says Anya, leading her away from
the table. “Come along!”
They all troop out with her, and five minutes later mamma’s bed presents
a curious spectacle. Sonya is asleep. Alyosha is snoring beside her. With
their heads to the others’ feet, sleep Grisha and Anya. The cook’s son,
Andrey too, has managed to snuggle in beside them. Near them lie the
kopecks, that have lost their power till the next game. Good-night!

THE RUNAWAY

I
T had been a long business. At first Pashka had walked with his mother
in the rain, at one time across a mown field, then by forest paths, where
the yellow leaves stuck to his boots; he had walked until it was
daylight. Then he had stood for two hours in the dark passage, waiting for
the door to open. It was not so cold and damp in the passage as in the yard,
but with the high wind spurts of rain flew in even there. When the passage
gradually became packed with people Pashka, squeezed among them,
leaned his face against somebody’s sheepskin which smelt strongly of salt
fish, and sank into a doze. But at last the bolt clicked, the door flew open,
and Pashka and his mother went into the waiting-room. All the patients sat
on benches without stirring or speaking. Pashka looked round at them, and
he too was silent, though he was seeing a great deal that was strange and
funny. Only once, when a lad came into the waiting-room hopping on one
leg, Pashka longed to hop too; he nudged his mother’s elbow, giggled in his
sleeve, and said: “Look, mammy, a sparrow.”
“Hush, child, hush!” said his mother.
A sleepy-looking hospital assistant appeared at the little window.
“Come and be registered!” he boomed out.
All of them, including the funny lad who hopped, filed up to the window.
The assistant asked each one his name, and his father’s name, where he
lived, how long he had been ill, and so on. From his mother’s answers,
Pashka learned that his name was not Pashka, but Pavel Galaktionov, that
he was seven years old, that he could not read or write, and that he had been
ill ever since Easter.
Soon after the registration, he had to stand up for a little while; the doctor
in a white apron, with a towel round his waist, walked across the waiting-
room. As he passed by the boy who hopped, he shrugged his shoulders, and
said in a sing-song tenor:

“Well, you are an idiot! Aren’t you an idiot? I told you to come on
Monday, and you come on Friday. It’s nothing to me if you don’t come at
all, but you know, you idiot, your leg will be done for!”
The lad made a pitiful face, as though he were going to beg for alms,
blinked, and said:
“Kindly do something for me, Ivan Mikolaitch!”
“It’s no use saying ‘Ivan Mikolaitch,’” the doctor mimicked him. “You
were told to come on Monday, and you ought to obey. You are an idiot, and
that is all about it.”
The doctor began seeing the patients. He sat in his little room, and called
up the patients in turn. Sounds were continually coming from the little
room, piercing wails, a child’s crying, or the doctor’s angry words:
“Come, why are you bawling? Am I murdering you, or what? Sit quiet!”
Pashka’s turn came.
“Pavel Galaktionov!” shouted the doctor.
His mother was aghast, as though she had not expected this summons,
and taking Pashka by the hand, she led him into the room.
The doctor was sitting at the table, mechanically tapping on a thick book
with a little hammer.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, without looking at them.
“The little lad has an ulcer on his elbow, sir,” answered his mother, and
her face assumed an expression as though she really were terribly grieved at
Pashka’s ulcer.
“Undress him!”
Pashka, panting, unwound the kerchief from his neck, then wiped his
nose on his sleeve, and began deliberately pulling off his sheepskin.
“Woman, you have not come here on a visit!” said the doctor angrily.
“Why are you dawdling? You are not the only one here.”

Pashka hurriedly flung the sheepskin on the floor, and with his mother’s
help took off his shirt. . . The doctor looked at him lazily, and patted him on
his bare stomach.
“You have grown quite a respectable corporation, brother Pashka,” he
said, and heaved a sigh. “Come, show me your elbow.”
Pashka looked sideways at the basin full of bloodstained slops, looked at
the doctor’s apron, and began to cry.
“May-ay!” the doctor mimicked him. “Nearly old enough to be married,
spoilt boy, and here he is blubbering! For shame!”
Pashka, trying not to cry, looked at his mother, and in that look could be
read the entreaty: “Don’t tell them at home that I cried at the hospital.”
The doctor examined his elbow, pressed it, heaved a sigh, clicked with
his lips, then pressed it again.
“You ought to be beaten, woman, but there is no one to do it,” he said.
“Why didn’t you bring him before? Why, the whole arm is done for. Look,
foolish woman. You see, the joint is diseased!”
“You know best, kind sir . . .” sighed the woman.
“Kind sir. . . . She’s let the boy’s arm rot, and now it is ‘kind sir.’ What
kind of workman will he be without an arm? You’ll be nursing him and
looking after him for ages. I bet if you had had a pimple on your nose,
you’d have run to the hospital quick enough, but you have left your boy to
rot for six months. You are all like that.”
The doctor lighted a cigarette. While the cigarette smoked, he scolded the
woman, and shook his head in time to the song he was humming inwardly,
while he thought of something else. Pashka stood naked before him,
listening and looking at the smoke. When the cigarette went out, the doctor
started, and said in a lower tone:
“Well, listen, woman. You can do nothing with ointments and drops in
this case. You must leave him in the hospital.”
“If necessary, sir, why not?

“We must operate on him. You stop with me, Pashka,” said the doctor,
slapping Pashka on the shoulder. “Let mother go home, and you and I will
stop here, old man. It’s nice with me, old boy, it’s first-rate here. I’ll tell you
what we’ll do, Pashka, we will go catching finches together. I will show
you a fox! We will go visiting together! Shall we? And mother will come
for you tomorrow! Eh?”
Pashka looked inquiringly at his mother.
“You stay, child!” she said.
“He’ll stay, he’ll stay!” cried the doctor gleefully. “And there is no need
to discuss it. I’ll show him a live fox! We will go to the fair together to buy
candy! Marya Denisovna, take him upstairs!”
The doctor, apparently a light-hearted and friendly fellow, seemed glad to
have company; Pashka wanted to oblige him, especially as he had never in
his life been to a fair, and would have been glad to have a look at a live fox,
but how could he do without his mother?
After a little reflection he decided to ask the doctor to let his mother stay
in the hospital too, but before he had time to open his mouth the lady
assistant was already taking him upstairs. He walked up and looked about
him with his mouth open. The staircase, the floors, and the doorposts—
everything huge, straight, and bright-were painted a splendid yellow colour,
and had a delicious smell of Lenten oil. On all sides lamps were hanging,
strips of carpet stretched along the floor, copper taps stuck out on the walls.
But best of all Pashka liked the bedstead upon which he was made to sit
down, and the grey woollen coverlet. He touched the pillows and the
coverlet with his hands, looked round the ward, and made up his mind that
it was very nice at the doctor’s.
The ward was not a large one, it consisted of only three beds. One bed
stood empty, the second was occupied by Pashka, and on the third sat an old
man with sour eyes, who kept coughing and spitting into a mug. From
Pashka’s bed part of another ward could be seen with two beds; on one a
very pale wasted-looking man with an india-rubber bottle on his head was
asleep; on the other a peasant with his head tied up, looking very like a
woman, was sitting with his arms spread out.

After making Pashka sit down, the assistant went out and came back a
little later with a bundle of clothes under her arm.
“These are for you,” she said, “put them on.”
Pashka undressed and, not without satisfaction began attiring himself in
his new array. When he had put on the shirt, the drawers, and the little grey
dressing-gown, he looked at himself complacently, and thought that it
would not be bad to walk through the village in that costume. His
imagination pictured his mother’s sending him to the kitchen garden by the
river to gather cabbage leaves for the little pig; he saw himself walking
along, while the boys and girls surrounded him and looked with envy at his
little dressing-gown.
A nurse came into the ward, bringing two tin bowls, two spoons, and two
pieces of bread. One bowl she set before the old man, the other before
Pashka.
“Eat!” she said.
Looking into his bowl, Pashka saw some rich cabbage soup, and in the
soup a piece of meat, and thought again that it was very nice at the doctor’s,
and that the doctor was not nearly so cross as he had seemed at first. He
spent a long time swallowing the soup, licking the spoon after each
mouthful, then when there was nothing left in the bowl but the meat he stole
a look at the old man, and felt envious that he was still eating the soup.
With a sigh Pashka attacked the meat, trying to make it last as long as
possible, but his efforts were fruitless; the meat, too, quickly vanished.
There was nothing left but the piece of bread. Plain bread without anything
on it was not appetising, but there was no help for it. Pashka thought a little,
and ate the bread. At that moment the nurse came in with another bowl.
This time there was roast meat with potatoes in the bowl.
“And where is the bread?” asked the nurse.
Instead of answering, Pashka puffed out his cheeks, and blew out the air.
“Why did you gobble it all up?” said the nurse reproachfully. “What are
you going to eat your meat with?”

She went and fetched another piece of bread. Pashka had never eaten
roast meat in his life, and trying it now found it very nice. It vanished
quickly, and then he had a piece of bread left bigger than the first. When the
old man had finished his dinner, he put away the remains of his bread in a
little table. Pashka meant to do the same, but on second thoughts ate his
piece.
When he had finished he went for a walk. In the next ward, besides the
two he had seen from the door, there were four other people. Of these only
one drew his attention. This was a tall, extremely emaciated peasant with a
morose-looking, hairy face. He was sitting on the bed, nodding his head and
swinging his right arm all the time like a pendulum. Pashka could not take
his eyes off him for a long time. At first the man’s regular pendulum-like
movements seemed to him curious, and he thought they were done for the
general amusement, but when he looked into the man’s face he felt
frightened, and realised that he was terribly ill. Going into a third ward he
saw two peasants with dark red faces as though they were smeared with
clay. They were sitting motionless on their beds, and with their strange
faces, in which it was hard to distinguish their features, they looked like
heathen idols.
“Auntie, why do they look like that?” Pashka asked the nurse.
“They have got smallpox, little lad.”
Going back to his own ward, Pashka sat down on his bed and began
waiting for the doctor to come and take him to catch finches, or to go to the
fair. But the doctor did not come. He got a passing glimpse of a hospital
assistant at the door of the next ward. He bent over the patient on whose
head lay a bag of ice, and cried: “Mihailo!”
But the sleeping man did not stir. The assistant made a gesture and went
away. Pashka scrutinised the old man, his next neighbour. The old man
coughed without ceasing and spat into a mug. His cough had a long-drawn-
out, creaking sound.
Pashka liked one peculiarity about him; when he drew the air in as he
coughed, something in his chest whistled and sang on different notes.
“Grandfather, what is it whistles in you?” Pashka asked.

The old man made no answer. Pashka waited a little and asked:
“Grandfather, where is the fox?”
“What fox?”
“The live one.”
“Where should it be? In the forest!”
A long time passed, but the doctor still did not appear. The nurse brought
in tea, and scolded Pashka for not having saved any bread for his tea; the
assistant came once more and set to work to wake Mihailo. It turned blue
outside the windows, the wards were lighted up, but the doctor did not
appear. It was too late now to go to the fair and catch finches; Pashka
stretched himself on his bed and began thinking. He remembered the candy
promised him by the doctor, the face and voice of his mother, the darkness
in his hut at home, the stove, peevish granny Yegorovna . . . and he
suddenly felt sad and dreary. He remembered that his mother was coming
for him next day, smiled, and shut his eyes.
He was awakened by a rustling. In the next ward someone was stepping
about and speaking in a whisper. Three figures were moving about
Mihailo’s bed in the dim light of the night-light and the ikon lamp.
“Shall we take him, bed and all, or without?” asked one of them.
“Without. You won’t get through the door with the bed.”
“He’s died at the wrong time, the Kingdom of Heaven be his!”
One took Mihailo by his shoulders, another by his legs and lifted him up:
Mihailo’s arms and the skirt of his dressing-gown hung limply to the
ground. A third—it was the peasant who looked like a woman—crossed
himself, and all three tramping clumsily with their feet and stepping on
Mihailo’s skirts, went out of the ward.
There came the whistle and humming on different notes from the chest of
the old man who was asleep. Pashka listened, peeped at the dark windows,
and jumped out of bed in terror.

“Ma-a-mka!” he moaned in a deep bass.
And without waiting for an answer, he rushed into the next ward. There
the darkness was dimly lighted up by a night-light and the ikon lamp; the
patients, upset by the death of Mihailo, were sitting on their bedsteads: their
dishevelled figures, mixed up with the shadows, looked broader, taller, and
seemed to be growing bigger and bigger; on the furthest bedstead in the
corner, where it was darkest, there sat the peasant moving his head and his
hand.
Pashka, without noticing the doors, rushed into the smallpox ward, from
there into the corridor, from the corridor he flew into a big room where
monsters, with long hair and the faces of old women, were lying and sitting
on the beds. Running through the women’s wing he found himself again in
the corridor, saw the banisters of the staircase he knew already, and ran
downstairs. There he recognised the waiting-room in which he had sat that
morning, and began looking for the door into the open air.
The latch creaked, there was a whiff of cold wind, and Pashka,
stumbling, ran out into the yard. He had only one thought—to run, to run!
He did not know the way, but felt convinced that if he ran he would be sure
to find himself at home with his mother. The sky was overcast, but there
was a moon behind the clouds. Pashka ran from the steps straight forward,
went round the barn and stumbled into some thick bushes; after stopping for
a minute and thinking, he dashed back again to the hospital, ran round it,
and stopped again undecided; behind the hospital there were white crosses.
“Ma-a-mka!” he cried, and dashed back.
Running by the dark sinister buildings, he saw one lighted window.
The bright red patch looked dreadful in the darkness, but Pashka, frantic
with terror, not knowing where to run, turned towards it. Beside the window
was a porch with steps, and a front door with a white board on it; Pashka
ran up the steps, looked in at the window, and was at once possessed by
intense overwhelming joy. Through the window he saw the merry affable
doctor sitting at the table reading a book. Laughing with happiness, Pashka
stretched out his hands to the person he knew and tried to call out, but some

unseen force choked him and struck at his legs; he staggered and fell down
on the steps unconscious.
When he came to himself it was daylight, and a voice he knew very well,
that had promised him a fair, finches, and a fox, was saying beside him:
“Well, you are an idiot, Pashka! Aren’t you an idiot? You ought to be
beaten, but there’s no one to do it.”

GRISHA

G
RISHA, a chubby little boy, born two years and eight months ago,
is walking on the boulevard with his nurse. He is wearing a long,
wadded pelisse, a scarf, a big cap with a fluffy pom-pom, and warm
over-boots. He feels hot and stifled, and now, too, the rollicking April
sunshine is beating straight in his face, and making his eyelids tingle.
The whole of his clumsy, timidly and uncertainly stepping little figure
expresses the utmost bewilderment.
Hitherto Grisha has known only a rectangular world, where in one corner
stands his bed, in the other nurse’s trunk, in the third a chair, while in the
fourth there is a little lamp burning. If one looks under the bed, one sees a
doll with a broken arm and a drum; and behind nurse’s trunk, there are a
great many things of all sorts: cotton reels, boxes without lids, and a broken
Jack-a-dandy. In that world, besides nurse and Grisha, there are often
mamma and the cat. Mamma is like a doll, and puss is like papa’s fur-coat,
only the coat hasn’t got eyes and a tail. From the world which is called the
nursery a door leads to a great expanse where they have dinner and tea.
There stands Grisha’s chair on high legs, and on the wall hangs a clock
which exists to swing its pendulum and chime. From the dining-room, one
can go into a room where there are red arm-chairs. Here, there is a dark
patch on the carpet, concerning which fingers are still shaken at Grisha.
Beyond that room is still another, to which one is not admitted, and where
one sees glimpses of papa—an extremely enigmatical person! Nurse and
mamma are comprehensible: they dress Grisha, feed him, and put him to
bed, but what papa exists for is unknown. There is another enigmatical
person, auntie, who presented Grisha with a drum. She appears and
disappears. Where does she disappear to? Grisha has more than once looked
under the bed, behind the trunk, and under the sofa, but she was not there.
In this new world, where the sun hurts one’s eyes, there are so many
papas and mammas and aunties, that there is no knowing to whom to run.
But what is stranger and more absurd than anything is the horses. Grisha

gazes at their moving legs, and can make nothing of it. He looks at his nurse
for her to solve the mystery, but she does not speak.
All at once he hears a fearful tramping. . . . A crowd of soldiers, with red
faces and bath brooms under their arms, move in step along the boulevard
straight upon him. Grisha turns cold all over with terror, and looks
inquiringly at nurse to know whether it is dangerous. But nurse neither
weeps nor runs away, so there is no danger. Grisha looks after the soldiers,
and begins to move his feet in step with them himself.
Two big cats with long faces run after each other across the boulevard,
with their tongues out, and their tails in the air. Grisha thinks that he must
run too, and runs after the cats.
“Stop!” cries nurse, seizing him roughly by the shoulder. “Where are you
off to? Haven’t you been told not to be naughty?”
Here there is a nurse sitting holding a tray of oranges. Grisha passes by
her, and, without saying anything, takes an orange.
“What are you doing that for?” cries the companion of his travels,
slapping his hand and snatching away the orange. “Silly!”
Now Grisha would have liked to pick up a bit of glass that was lying at
his feet and gleaming like a lamp, but he is afraid that his hand will be
slapped again.
“My respects to you!” Grisha hears suddenly, almost above his ear, a
loud thick voice, and he sees a tall man with bright buttons.
To his great delight, this man gives nurse his hand, stops, and begins
talking to her. The brightness of the sun, the noise of the carriages, the
horses, the bright buttons are all so impressively new and not dreadful, that
Grisha’s soul is filled with a feeling of enjoyment and he begins to laugh.
“Come along! Come along!” he cries to the man with the bright buttons,
tugging at his coattails.
“Come along where?” asks the man.
“Come along!” Grisha insists.

He wants to say that it would be just as well to take with them papa,
mamma, and the cat, but his tongue does not say what he wants to.
A little later, nurse turns out of the boulevard, and leads Grisha into a big
courtyard where there is still snow; and the man with the bright buttons
comes with them too. They carefully avoid the lumps of snow and the
puddles, then, by a dark and dirty staircase, they go into a room. Here there
is a great deal of smoke, there is a smell of roast meat, and a woman is
standing by the stove frying cutlets. The cook and the nurse kiss each other,
and sit down on the bench together with the man, and begin talking in a low
voice. Grisha, wrapped up as he is, feels insufferably hot and stifled.
“Why is this?” he wonders, looking about him.
He sees the dark ceiling, the oven fork with two horns, the stove which
looks like a great black hole.
“Mam-ma,” he drawls.
“Come, come, come!” cries the nurse. “Wait a bit!”
The cook puts a bottle on the table, two wine-glasses, and a pie. The two
women and the man with the bright buttons clink glasses and empty them
several times, and, the man puts his arm round first the cook and then the
nurse. And then all three begin singing in an undertone.
Grisha stretches out his hand towards the pie, and they give him a piece
of it. He eats it and watches nurse drinking. . . . He wants to drink too.
“Give me some, nurse!” he begs.
The cook gives him a sip out of her glass. He rolls his eyes, blinks,
coughs, and waves his hands for a long time afterwards, while the cook
looks at him and laughs.
When he gets home Grisha begins to tell mamma, the walls, and the bed
where he has been, and what he has seen. He talks not so much with his
tongue, as with his face and his hands. He shows how the sun shines, how
the horses run, how the terrible stove looks, and how the cook drinks. . . .

In the evening he cannot get to sleep. The soldiers with the brooms, the
big cats, the horses, the bit of glass, the tray of oranges, the bright buttons,
all gathered together, weigh on his brain. He tosses from side to side,
babbles, and, at last, unable to endure his excitement, begins crying.
“You are feverish,” says mamma, putting her open hand on his forehead.
“What can have caused it?
“Stove!” wails Grisha. “Go away, stove!”
“He must have eaten too much . . .” mamma decides.
And Grisha, shattered by the impressions of the new life he has just
experienced, receives a spoonful of castor-oil from mamma.

OYSTERS

I
NEED no great effort of memory to recall, in every detail, the rainy
autumn evening when I stood with my father in one of the more
frequented streets of Moscow, and felt that I was gradually being
overcome by a strange illness. I had no pain at all, but my legs were giving
way under me, the words stuck in my throat, my head slipped weakly on
one side . . . It seemed as though, in a moment, I must fall down and lose
consciousness.
If I had been taken into a hospital at that minute, the doctors would have
had to write over my bed: Fames, a disease which is not in the manuals of
medicine.
Beside me on the pavement stood my father in a shabby summer
overcoat and a serge cap, from which a bit of white wadding was sticking
out. On his feet he had big heavy goloshes. Afraid, vain man, that people
would see that his feet were bare under his goloshes, he had drawn the tops
of some old boots up round the calves of his legs.
This poor, foolish, queer creature, whom I loved the more warmly the
more ragged and dirty his smart summer overcoat became, had come to
Moscow, five months before, to look for a job as copying-clerk. For those
five months he had been trudging about Moscow looking for work, and it
was only on that day that he had brought himself to go into the street to beg
for alms.
Before us was a big house of three storeys, adorned with a blue signboard
with the word “Restaurant” on it. My head was drooping feebly backwards
and on one side, and I could not help looking upwards at the lighted
windows of the restaurant. Human figures were flitting about at the
windows. I could see the right side of the orchestrion, two oleographs,
hanging lamps . . . . Staring into one window, I saw a patch of white. The
patch was motionless, and its rectangular outlines stood out sharply against
the dark, brown background. I looked intently and made out of the patch a

white placard on the wall. Something was written on it, but what it was, I
could not see. . .
For half an hour I kept my eyes on the placard. Its white attracted my
eyes, and, as it were, hypnotised my brain. I tried to read it, but my efforts
were in vain.
At last the strange disease got the upper hand.
The rumble of the carriages began to seem like thunder, in the stench of
the street I distinguished a thousand smells. The restaurant lights and the
lamps dazzled my eyes like lightning. My five senses were overstrained and
sensitive beyond the normal. I began to see what I had not seen before.
“Oysters . . .” I made out on the placard.
A strange word! I had lived in the world eight years and three months,
but had never come across that word. What did it mean? Surely it was not
the name of the restaurant-keeper? But signboards with names on them
always hang outside, not on the walls indoors!
“Papa, what does ‘oysters’ mean?” I asked in a husky voice, making an
effort to turn my face towards my father.
My father did not hear. He was keeping a watch on the movements of the
crowd, and following every passer-by with his eyes. . . . From his eyes I
saw that he wanted to say something to the passers-by, but the fatal word
hung like a heavy weight on his trembling lips and could not be flung off.
He even took a step after one passer-by and touched him on the sleeve, but
when he turned round, he said, “I beg your pardon,” was overcome with
confusion, and staggered back.
“Papa, what does ‘oysters’ mean?” I repeated.
“It is an animal . . . that lives in the sea.”
I instantly pictured to myself this unknown marine animal. . . . I thought
it must be something midway between a fish and a crab. As it was from the
sea they made of it, of course, a very nice hot fish soup with savoury pepper
and laurel leaves, or broth with vinegar and fricassee of fish and cabbage, or
crayfish sauce, or served it cold with horse-radish. . . . I vividly imagined it

being brought from the market, quickly cleaned, quickly put in the pot,
quickly, quickly, for everyone was hungry . . . awfully hungry! From the
kitchen rose the smell of hot fish and crayfish soup.
I felt that this smell was tickling my palate and nostrils, that it was
gradually taking possession of my whole body. . . . The restaurant, my
father, the white placard, my sleeves were all smelling of it, smelling so
strongly that I began to chew. I moved my jaws and swallowed as though I
really had a piece of this marine animal in my mouth . . .
My legs gave way from the blissful sensation I was feeling, and I
clutched at my father’s arm to keep myself from falling, and leant against
his wet summer overcoat. My father was trembling and shivering. He was
cold . . .
“Papa, are oysters a Lenten dish?” I asked.
“They are eaten alive . . .” said my father. “They are in shells like
tortoises, but . . . in two halves.”
The delicious smell instantly left off affecting me, and the illusion
vanished. . . . Now I understood it all!
“How nasty,” I whispered, “how nasty!”
So that’s what “oysters” meant! I imagined to myself a creature like a
frog. A frog sitting in a shell, peeping out from it with big, glittering eyes,
and moving its revolting jaws. I imagined this creature in a shell with claws,
glittering eyes, and a slimy skin, being brought from the market. . . . The
children would all hide while the cook, frowning with an air of disgust,
would take the creature by its claw, put it on a plate, and carry it into the
dining-room. The grown-ups would take it and eat it, eat it alive with its
eyes, its teeth, its legs! While it squeaked and tried to bite their lips. . . .
I frowned, but . . . but why did my teeth move as though I were
munching? The creature was loathsome, disgusting, terrible, but I ate it, ate
it greedily, afraid of distinguishing its taste or smell. As soon as I had eaten
one, I saw the glittering eyes of a second, a third . . . I ate them too. . . . At
last I ate the table-napkin, the plate, my father’s goloshes, the white placard
. . . I ate everything that caught my eye, because I felt that nothing but

eating would take away my illness. The oysters had a terrible look in their
eyes and were loathsome. I shuddered at the thought of them, but I wanted
to eat! To eat!
“Oysters! Give me some oysters!” was the cry that broke from me and I
stretched out my hand.
“Help us, gentlemen!” I heard at that moment my father say, in a hollow
and shaking voice. “I am ashamed to ask but—my God!—I can bear no
more!”
“Oysters!” I cried, pulling my father by the skirts of his coat.
“Do you mean to say you eat oysters? A little chap like you!” I heard
laughter close to me.
Two gentlemen in top hats were standing before us, looking into my face
and laughing.
“Do you really eat oysters, youngster? That’s interesting! How do you eat
them?”
I remember that a strong hand dragged me into the lighted restaurant. A
minute later there was a crowd round me, watching me with curiosity and
amusement. I sat at a table and ate something slimy, salt with a flavour of
dampness and mouldiness. I ate greedily without chewing, without looking
and trying to discover what I was eating. I fancied that if I opened my eyes I
should see glittering eyes, claws, and sharp teeth.
All at once I began biting something hard, there was a sound of a
scrunching.
“Ha, ha! He is eating the shells,” laughed the crowd. “Little silly, do you
suppose you can eat that?”
After that I remember a terrible thirst. I was lying in my bed, and could
not sleep for heartburn and the strange taste in my parched mouth. My
father was walking up and down, gesticulating with his hands.
“I believe I have caught cold,” he was muttering. “I’ve a feeling in my
head as though someone were sitting on it. . . . Perhaps it is because I have

not . . . er . . . eaten anything to-day. . . . I really am a queer, stupid creature.
. . . I saw those gentlemen pay ten roubles for the oysters. Why didn’t I go
up to them and ask them . . . to lend me something? They would have given
something.”
Towards morning, I fell asleep and dreamt of a frog sitting in a shell,
moving its eyes. At midday I was awakened by thirst, and looked for my
father: he was still walking up and down and gesticulating.

HOME

“S
OMEONE came from the Grigoryevs’ to fetch a book, but I said
you were not at home. The postman brought the newspaper and
two letters. By the way, Yevgeny Petrovitch, I should like to ask
you to speak to Seryozha. To-day, and the day before yesterday, I have
noticed that he is smoking. When I began to expostulate with him, he put
his fingers in his ears as usual, and sang loudly to drown my voice.”
Yevgeny Petrovitch Bykovsky, the prosecutor of the circuit court, who
had just come back from a session and was taking off his gloves in his
study, looked at the governess as she made her report, and laughed.
“Seryozha smoking . . .” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “I can picture
the little cherub with a cigarette in his mouth! Why, how old is he?”
“Seven. You think it is not important, but at his age smoking is a bad and
pernicious habit, and bad habits ought to be eradicated in the beginning.”
“Perfectly true. And where does he get the tobacco?”
“He takes it from the drawer in your table.”
“Yes? In that case, send him to me.”
When the governess had gone out, Bykovsky sat down in an arm-chair
before his writing-table, shut his eyes, and fell to thinking. He pictured his
Seryozha with a huge cigar, a yard long, in the midst of clouds of tobacco
smoke, and this caricature made him smile; at the same time, the grave,
troubled face of the governess called up memories of the long past, half-
forgotten time when smoking aroused in his teachers and parents a strange,
not quite intelligible horror. It really was horror. Children were mercilessly
flogged and expelled from school, and their lives were made a misery on
account of smoking, though not a single teacher or father knew exactly
what was the harm or sinfulness of smoking. Even very intelligent people
did not scruple to wage war on a vice which they did not understand.
Yevgeny Petrovitch remembered the head-master of the high school, a very

cultured and good-natured old man, who was so appalled when he found a
high-school boy with a cigarette in his mouth that he turned pale,
immediately summoned an emergency committee of the teachers, and
sentenced the sinner to expulsion. This was probably a law of social life: the
less an evil was understood, the more fiercely and coarsely it was attacked.
The prosecutor remembered two or three boys who had been expelled
and their subsequent life, and could not help thinking that very often the
punishment did a great deal more harm than the crime itself. The living
organism has the power of rapidly adapting itself, growing accustomed and
inured to any atmosphere whatever, otherwise man would be bound to feel
at every moment what an irrational basis there often is underlying his
rational activity, and how little of established truth and certainty there is
even in work so responsible and so terrible in its effects as that of the
teacher, of the lawyer, of the writer. . . .
And such light and discursive thoughts as visit the brain only when it is
weary and resting began straying through Yevgeny Petrovitch’s head; there
is no telling whence and why they come, they do not remain long in the
mind, but seem to glide over its surface without sinking deeply into it. For
people who are forced for whole hours, and even days, to think by routine
in one direction, such free private thinking affords a kind of comfort, an
agreeable solace.
It was between eight and nine o’clock in the evening. Overhead, on the
second storey, someone was walking up and down, and on the floor above
that four hands were playing scales. The pacing of the man overhead who,
to judge from his nervous step, was thinking of something harassing, or was
suffering from toothache, and the monotonous scales gave the stillness of
the evening a drowsiness that disposed to lazy reveries. In the nursery, two
rooms away, the governess and Seryozha were talking.
“Pa-pa has come!” carolled the child. “Papa has co-ome. Pa! Pa! Pa!”
“Votre père vous appelle, allez vite!” cried the governess, shrill as a
frightened bird. “I am speaking to you!”
“What am I to say to him, though?” Yevgeny Petrovitch wondered.

But before he had time to think of anything whatever his son Seryozha, a
boy of seven, walked into the study.
He was a child whose sex could only have been guessed from his dress:
weakly, white-faced, and fragile. He was limp like a hot-house plant, and
everything about him seemed extraordinarily soft and tender: his
movements, his curly hair, the look in his eyes, his velvet jacket.
“Good evening, papa!” he said, in a soft voice, clambering on to his
father’s knee and giving him a rapid kiss on his neck. “Did you send for
me?”
“Excuse me, Sergey Yevgenitch,” answered the prosecutor, removing
him from his knee. “Before kissing we must have a talk, and a serious talk .
. . I am angry with you, and don’t love you any more. I tell you, my boy, I
don’t love you, and you are no son of mine. . . .”
Seryozha looked intently at his father, then shifted his eyes to the table,
and shrugged his shoulders.
“What have I done to you?” he asked in perplexity, blinking. “I haven’t
been in your study all day, and I haven’t touched anything.”
“Natalya Semyonovna has just been complaining to me that you have
been smoking. . . . Is it true? Have you been smoking?”
“Yes, I did smoke once. . . . That’s true. . . .”
“Now you see you are lying as well,” said the prosecutor, frowning to
disguise a smile. “Natalya Semyonovna has seen you smoking twice. So
you see you have been detected in three misdeeds: smoking, taking
someone else’s tobacco, and lying. Three faults.”
“Oh yes,” Seryozha recollected, and his eyes smiled. “That’s true, that’s
true; I smoked twice: to-day and before.”
“So you see it was not once, but twice. . . . I am very, very much
displeased with you! You used to be a good boy, but now I see you are
spoilt and have become a bad one.”
Yevgeny Petrovitch smoothed down Seryozha’s collar and thought:

“What more am I to say to him!”
“Yes, it’s not right,” he continued. “I did not expect it of you. In the first
place, you ought not to take tobacco that does not belong to you. Every
person has only the right to make use of his own property; if he takes
anyone else’s . . . he is a bad man!” (“I am not saying the right thing!”
thought Yevgeny Petrovitch.) “For instance, Natalya Semyonovna has a box
with her clothes in it. That’s her box, and we—that is, you and I—dare not
touch it, as it is not ours. That’s right, isn’t it? You’ve got toy horses and
pictures. . . . I don’t take them, do I? Perhaps I might like to take them, but .
. . they are not mine, but yours!”
“Take them if you like!” said Seryozha, raising his eyebrows. “Please
don’t hesitate, papa, take them! That yellow dog on your table is mine, but I
don’t mind. . . . Let it stay.”
“You don’t understand me,” said Bykovsky. “You have given me the dog,
it is mine now and I can do what I like with it; but I didn’t give you the
tobacco! The tobacco is mine.” (“I am not explaining properly!” thought the
prosecutor. “It’s wrong! Quite wrong!”) “If I want to smoke someone else’s
tobacco, I must first of all ask his permission. . . .”
Languidly linking one phrase on to another and imitating the language of
the nursery, Bykovsky tried to explain to his son the meaning of property.
Seryozha gazed at his chest and listened attentively (he liked talking to his
father in the evening), then he leaned his elbow on the edge of the table and
began screwing up his short-sighted eyes at the papers and the inkstand. His
eyes strayed over the table and rested on the gum-bottle.
“Papa, what is gum made of?” he asked suddenly, putting the bottle to his
eyes.
Bykovsky took the bottle out of his hands and set it in its place and went
on:
“Secondly, you smoke. . . . That’s very bad. Though I smoke it does not
follow that you may. I smoke and know that it is stupid, I blame myself and
don’t like myself for it.” (“A clever teacher, I am!” he thought.) “Tobacco is
very bad for the health, and anyone who smokes dies earlier than he should.
It’s particularly bad for boys like you to smoke. Your chest is weak, you

haven’t reached your full strength yet, and smoking leads to consumption
and other illness in weak people. Uncle Ignat died of consumption, you
know. If he hadn’t smoked, perhaps he would have lived till now.”
Seryozha looked pensively at the lamp, touched the lamp-shade with his
finger, and heaved a sigh.
“Uncle Ignat played the violin splendidly!” he said. “His violin is at the
Grigoryevs’ now.”
Seryozha leaned his elbows on the edge of the table again, and sank into
thought. His white face wore a fixed expression, as though he were
listening or following a train of thought of his own; distress and something
like fear came into his big staring eyes. He was most likely thinking now of
death, which had so lately carried off his mother and Uncle Ignat. Death
carries mothers and uncles off to the other world, while their children and
violins remain upon the earth. The dead live somewhere in the sky beside
the stars, and look down from there upon the earth. Can they endure the
parting?
“What am I to say to him?” thought Yevgeny Petrovitch. “He’s not
listening to me. Obviously he does not regard either his misdoings or my
arguments as serious. How am I to drive it home?”
The prosecutor got up and walked about the study.
“Formerly, in my time, these questions were very simply settled,” he
reflected. “Every urchin who was caught smoking was thrashed. The
cowardly and faint-hearted did actually give up smoking, any who were
somewhat more plucky and intelligent, after the thrashing took to carrying
tobacco in the legs of their boots, and smoking in the barn. When they were
caught in the barn and thrashed again, they would go away to smoke by the
river . . . and so on, till the boy grew up. My mother used to give me money
and sweets not to smoke. Now that method is looked upon as worthless and
immoral. The modern teacher, taking his stand on logic, tries to make the
child form good principles, not from fear, nor from desire for distinction or
reward, but consciously.”
While he was walking about, thinking, Seryozha climbed up with his legs
on a chair sideways to the table, and began drawing. That he might not spoil

official paper nor touch the ink, a heap of half-sheets, cut on purpose for
him, lay on the table together with a blue pencil.
“Cook was chopping up cabbage to-day and she cut her finger,” he said,
drawing a little house and moving his eyebrows. “She gave such a scream
that we were all frightened and ran into the kitchen. Stupid thing! Natalya
Semyonovna told her to dip her finger in cold water, but she sucked it . . .
And how could she put a dirty finger in her mouth! That’s not proper, you
know, papa!”
Then he went on to describe how, while they were having dinner, a man
with a hurdy-gurdy had come into the yard with a little girl, who had
danced and sung to the music.
“He has his own train of thought!” thought the prosecutor. “He has a little
world of his own in his head, and he has his own ideas of what is important
and unimportant. To gain possession of his attention, it’s not enough to
imitate his language, one must also be able to think in the way he does. He
would understand me perfectly if I really were sorry for the loss of the
tobacco, if I felt injured and cried. . . . That’s why no one can take the place
of a mother in bringing up a child, because she can feel, cry, and laugh
together with the child. One can do nothing by logic and morality. What
more shall I say to him? What?”
And it struck Yevgeny Petrovitch as strange and absurd that he, an
experienced advocate, who spent half his life in the practice of reducing
people to silence, forestalling what they had to say, and punishing them,
was completely at a loss and did not know what to say to the boy.
“I say, give me your word of honour that you won’t smoke again,” he
said.
“Word of hon-nour!” carolled Seryozha, pressing hard on the pencil and
bending over the drawing. “Word of hon-nour!”
“Does he know what is meant by word of honour?” Bykovsky asked
himself. “No, I am a poor teacher of morality! If some schoolmaster or one
of our legal fellows could peep into my brain at this moment he would call
me a poor stick, and would very likely suspect me of unnecessary subtlety. .
. . But in school and in court, of course, all these wretched questions are far

more simply settled than at home; here one has to do with people whom one
loves beyond everything, and love is exacting and complicates the question.
If this boy were not my son, but my pupil, or a prisoner on his trial, I should
not be so cowardly, and my thoughts would not be racing all over the
place!”
Yevgeny Petrovitch sat down to the table and pulled one of Seryozha’s
drawings to him. In it there was a house with a crooked roof, and smoke
which came out of the chimney like a flash of lightning in zigzags up to the
very edge of the paper; beside the house stood a soldier with dots for eyes
and a bayonet that looked like the figure 4.
“A man can’t be taller than a house,” said the prosecutor.
Seryozha got on his knee, and moved about for some time to get
comfortably settled there.
“No, papa!” he said, looking at his drawing. “If you were to draw the
soldier small you would not see his eyes.”
Ought he to argue with him? From daily observation of his son the
prosecutor had become convinced that children, like savages, have their
own artistic standpoints and requirements peculiar to them, beyond the
grasp of grown-up people. Had he been attentively observed, Seryozha
might have struck a grown-up person as abnormal. He thought it possible
and reasonable to draw men taller than houses, and to represent in pencil,
not only objects, but even his sensations. Thus he would depict the sounds
of an orchestra in the form of smoke like spherical blurs, a whistle in the
form of a spiral thread. . . . To his mind sound was closely connected with
form and colour, so that when he painted letters he invariably painted the
letter L yellow, M red, A black, and so on.
Abandoning his drawing, Seryozha shifted about once more, got into a
comfortable attitude, and busied himself with his father’s beard. First he
carefully smoothed it, then he parted it and began combing it into the shape
of whiskers.
“Now you are like Ivan Stepanovitch,” he said, “and in a minute you will
be like our porter. Papa, why is it porters stand by doors? Is it to prevent
thieves getting in?”

The prosecutor felt the child’s breathing on his face, he was continually
touching his hair with his cheek, and there was a warm soft feeling in his
soul, as soft as though not only his hands but his whole soul were lying on
the velvet of Seryozha’s jacket.
He looked at the boy’s big dark eyes, and it seemed to him as though
from those wide pupils there looked out at him his mother and his wife and
everything that he had ever loved.
“To think of thrashing him . . .” he mused. “A nice task to devise a
punishment for him! How can we undertake to bring up the young? In old
days people were simpler and thought less, and so settled problems boldly.
But we think too much, we are eaten up by logic . . . . The more developed
a man is, the more he reflects and gives himself up to subtleties, the more
undecided and scrupulous he becomes, and the more timidity he shows in
taking action. How much courage and self-confidence it needs, when one
comes to look into it closely, to undertake to teach, to judge, to write a thick
book. . . .”
It struck ten.
“Come, boy, it’s bedtime,” said the prosecutor. “Say good-night and go.”
“No, papa,” said Seryozha, “I will stay a little longer. Tell me something!
Tell me a story. . . .”
“Very well, only after the story you must go to bed at once.”
Yevgeny Petrovitch on his free evenings was in the habit of telling
Seryozha stories. Like most people engaged in practical affairs, he did not
know a single poem by heart, and could not remember a single fairy tale, so
he had to improvise. As a rule he began with the stereotyped: “In a certain
country, in a certain kingdom,” then he heaped up all kinds of innocent
nonsense and had no notion as he told the beginning how the story would
go on, and how it would end. Scenes, characters, and situations were taken
at random, impromptu, and the plot and the moral came of itself as it were,
with no plan on the part of the story-teller. Seryozha was very fond of this
improvisation, and the prosecutor noticed that the simpler and the less
ingenious the plot, the stronger the impression it made on the child.

“Listen,” he said, raising his eyes to the ceiling. “Once upon a time, in a
certain country, in a certain kingdom, there lived an old, very old emperor
with a long grey beard, and . . . and with great grey moustaches like this.
Well, he lived in a glass palace which sparkled and glittered in the sun, like
a great piece of clear ice. The palace, my boy, stood in a huge garden, in
which there grew oranges, you know . . . bergamots, cherries . . . tulips,
roses, and lilies-of-the-valley were in flower in it, and birds of different
colours sang there. . . . Yes. . . . On the trees there hung little glass bells,
and, when the wind blew, they rang so sweetly that one was never tired of
hearing them. Glass gives a softer, tenderer note than metals. . . . Well, what
next? There were fountains in the garden. . . . Do you remember you saw a
fountain at Auntie Sonya’s summer villa? Well, there were fountains just
like that in the emperor’s garden, only ever so much bigger, and the jets of
water reached to the top of the highest poplar.”
Yevgeny Petrovitch thought a moment, and went on:
“The old emperor had an only son and heir of his kingdom—a boy as
little as you. He was a good boy. He was never naughty, he went to bed
early, he never touched anything on the table, and altogether he was a
sensible boy. He had only one fault, he used to smoke. . . .”
Seryozha listened attentively, and looked into his father’s eyes without
blinking. The prosecutor went on, thinking: “What next?” He spun out a
long rigmarole, and ended like this:
“The emperor’s son fell ill with consumption through smoking, and died
when he was twenty. His infirm and sick old father was left without anyone
to help him. There was no one to govern the kingdom and defend the
palace. Enemies came, killed the old man, and destroyed the palace, and
now there are neither cherries, nor birds, nor little bells in the garden. . . .
That’s what happened.”
This ending struck Yevgeny Petrovitch as absurd and naïve, but the
whole story made an intense impression on Seryozha. Again his eyes were
clouded by mournfulness and something like fear; for a minute he looked
pensively at the dark window, shuddered, and said, in a sinking voice:
“I am not going to smoke any more. . . .”

When he had said good-night and gone away his father walked up and
down the room and smiled to himself.
“They would tell me it was the influence of beauty, artistic form,” he
meditated. “It may be so, but that’s no comfort. It’s not the right way, all the
same. . . . Why must morality and truth never be offered in their crude form,
but only with embellishments, sweetened and gilded like pills? It’s not
normal. . . . It’s falsification . . . deception . . . tricks . . . .”
He thought of the jurymen to whom it was absolutely necessary to make
a “speech,” of the general public who absorb history only from legends and
historical novels, and of himself and how he had gathered an understanding
of life not from sermons and laws, but from fables, novels, poems.
“Medicine should be sweet, truth beautiful, and man has had this foolish
habit since the days of Adam . . . though, indeed, perhaps it is all natural,
and ought to be so. . . . There are many deceptions and delusions in nature
that serve a purpose.”
He set to work, but lazy, intimate thoughts still strayed through his mind
for a good while. Overhead the scales could no longer be heard, but the
inhabitant of the second storey was still pacing from one end of the room to
another.

A CLASSICAL STUDENT

B
EFORE setting off for his examination in Greek, Vanya kissed all
the holy images. His stomach felt as though it were upside down;
there was a chill at his heart, while the heart itself throbbed and
stood still with terror before the unknown. What would he get that day? A
three or a two? Six times he went to his mother for her blessing, and, as he
went out, asked his aunt to pray for him. On the way to school he gave a
beggar two kopecks, in the hope that those two kopecks would atone for his
ignorance, and that, please God, he would not get the numerals with those
awful forties and eighties.
He came back from the high school late, between four and five. He came
in, and noiselessly lay down on his bed. His thin face was pale. There were
dark rings round his red eyes.
“Well, how did you get on? How were you marked?” asked his mother,
going to his bedside.
Vanya blinked, twisted his mouth, and burst into tears. His mother turned
pale, let her mouth fall open, and clasped her hands. The breeches she was
mending dropped out of her hands.
“What are you crying for? You’ve failed, then?” she asked.
“I am plucked. . . . I got a two.”
“I knew it would be so! I had a presentiment of it,” said his mother.
“Merciful God! How is it you have not passed? What is the reason of it?
What subject have you failed in?”
“In Greek. . . . Mother, I . . . They asked me the future of phero, and I . . .
instead of saying oisomai said opsomai. Then . . . then there isn’t an accent,
if the last syllable is long, and I . . . I got flustered. . . . I forgot that the
alpha was long in it . . . . I went and put in the accent. Then Artaxerxov told
me to give the list of the enclitic particles. . . . I did, and I accidentally
mixed in a pronoun . . . and made a mistake . . . and so he gave me a two. . .

. I am a miserable person. . . . I was working all night. . . I’ve been getting
up at four o’clock all this week . . . .”
“No, it’s not you but I who am miserable, you wretched boy! It’s I that
am miserable! You’ve worn me to a threadpaper, you Herod, you torment,
you bane of my life! I pay for you, you good-for-nothing rubbish; I’ve bent
my back toiling for you, I’m worried to death, and, I may say, I am
unhappy, and what do you care? How do you work?”
“I . . . I do work. All night. . . . You’ve seen it yourself.”
“I prayed to God to take me, but He won’t take me, a sinful woman . . . .
You torment! Other people have children like everyone else, and I’ve one
only and no sense, no comfort out of him. Beat you? I’d beat you, but
where am I to find the strength? Mother of God, where am I to find the
strength?”
The mamma hid her face in the folds of her blouse and broke into sobs.
Vanya wriggled with anguish and pressed his forehead against the wall. The
aunt came in.
“So that’s how it is. . . . Just what I expected,” she said, at once guessing
what was wrong, turning pale and clasping her hands. “I’ve been depressed
all the morning. . . . There’s trouble coming, I thought . . . and here it’s
come. . . .”
“The villain, the torment!”
“Why are you swearing at him?” cried the aunt, nervously pulling her
coffee-coloured kerchief off her head and turning upon the mother. “It’s not
his fault! It’s your fault! You are to blame! Why did you send him to that
high school? You are a fine lady! You want to be a lady? A-a-ah! I dare say,
as though you’ll turn into gentry! But if you had sent him, as I told you, into
business . . . to an office, like my Kuzya . . . here is Kuzya getting five
hundred a year. . . . Five hundred roubles is worth having, isn’t it? And you
are wearing yourself out, and wearing the boy out with this studying, plague
take it! He is thin, he coughs . . . just look at him! He’s thirteen, and he
looks no more than ten.”

“No, Nastenka, no, my dear! I haven’t thrashed him enough, the torment!
He ought to have been thrashed, that’s what it is! Ugh . . . Jesuit, Mahomet,
torment!” she shook her fist at her son. “You want a flogging, but I haven’t
the strength. They told me years ago when he was little, ‘Whip him, whip
him!’ I didn’t heed them, sinful woman as I am. And now I am suffering for
it. You wait a bit! I’ll flay you! Wait a bit . . . .”
The mamma shook her wet fist, and went weeping into her lodger’s
room. The lodger, Yevtihy Kuzmitch Kuporossov, was sitting at his table,
reading “Dancing Self-taught.” Yevtihy Kuzmitch was a man of intelligence
and education. He spoke through his nose, washed with a soap the smell of
which made everyone in the house sneeze, ate meat on fast days, and was
on the look-out for a bride of refined education, and so was considered the
cleverest of the lodgers. He sang tenor.
“My good friend,” began the mamma, dissolving into tears. “If you
would have the generosity—thrash my boy for me. . . . Do me the favour!
He’s failed in his examination, the nuisance of a boy! Would you believe it,
he’s failed! I can’t punish him, through the weakness of my ill-health. . . .
Thrash him for me, if you would be so obliging and considerate, Yevtihy
Kuzmitch! Have regard for a sick woman!”
Kuporossov frowned and heaved a deep sigh through his nose. He
thought a little, drummed on the table with his fingers, and sighing once
more, went to Vanya.
“You are being taught, so to say,” he began, “being educated, being given
a chance, you revolting young person! Why have you done it?”
He talked for a long time, made a regular speech. He alluded to science,
to light, and to darkness.
“Yes, young person.”
When he had finished his speech, he took off his belt and took Vanya by
the hand.
“It’s the only way to deal with you,” he said. Vanya knelt down
submissively and thrust his head between the lodger’s knees. His prominent

pink ears moved up and down against the lodger’s new serge trousers, with
brown stripes on the outer seams.
Vanya did not utter a single sound. At the family council in the evening,
it was decided to send him into business.

VANKA

V
ANKA ZHUKOV, a boy of nine, who had been for three months
apprenticed to Alyahin the shoemaker, was sitting up on Christmas
Eve. Waiting till his master and mistress and their workmen had
gone to the midnight service, he took out of his master’s cupboard a bottle
of ink and a pen with a rusty nib, and, spreading out a crumpled sheet of
paper in front of him, began writing. Before forming the first letter he
several times looked round fearfully at the door and the windows, stole a
glance at the dark ikon, on both sides of which stretched shelves full of
lasts, and heaved a broken sigh. The paper lay on the bench while he knelt
before it.
“Dear grandfather, Konstantin Makaritch,” he wrote, “I am writing you a
letter. I wish you a happy Christmas, and all blessings from God Almighty. I
have neither father nor mother, you are the only one left me.”
Vanka raised his eyes to the dark ikon on which the light of his candle
was reflected, and vividly recalled his grandfather, Konstantin Makaritch,
who was night watchman to a family called Zhivarev. He was a thin but
extraordinarily nimble and lively little old man of sixty-five, with an
everlastingly laughing face and drunken eyes. By day he slept in the
servants’ kitchen, or made jokes with the cooks; at night, wrapped in an
ample sheepskin, he walked round the grounds and tapped with his little
mallet. Old Kashtanka and Eel, so-called on account of his dark colour and
his long body like a weasel’s, followed him with hanging heads. This Eel
was exceptionally polite and affectionate, and looked with equal kindness
on strangers and his own masters, but had not a very good reputation. Under
his politeness and meekness was hidden the most Jesuitical cunning. No
one knew better how to creep up on occasion and snap at one’s legs, to slip
into the store-room, or steal a hen from a peasant. His hind legs had been
nearly pulled off more than once, twice he had been hanged, every week he
was thrashed till he was half dead, but he always revived.

At this moment grandfather was, no doubt, standing at the gate, screwing
up his eyes at the red windows of the church, stamping with his high felt
boots, and joking with the servants. His little mallet was hanging on his
belt. He was clasping his hands, shrugging with the cold, and, with an aged
chuckle, pinching first the housemaid, then the cook.
“How about a pinch of snuff?” he was saying, offering the women his
snuff-box.
The women would take a sniff and sneeze. Grandfather would be
indescribably delighted, go off into a merry chuckle, and cry:
“Tear it off, it has frozen on!”
They give the dogs a sniff of snuff too. Kashtanka sneezes, wriggles her
head, and walks away offended. Eel does not sneeze, from politeness, but
wags his tail. And the weather is glorious. The air is still, fresh, and
transparent. The night is dark, but one can see the whole village with its
white roofs and coils of smoke coming from the chimneys, the trees
silvered with hoar frost, the snowdrifts. The whole sky spangled with gay
twinkling stars, and the Milky Way is as distinct as though it had been
washed and rubbed with snow for a holiday. . . .
Vanka sighed, dipped his pen, and went on writing:
“And yesterday I had a wigging. The master pulled me out into the yard
by my hair, and whacked me with a boot-stretcher because I accidentally
fell asleep while I was rocking their brat in the cradle. And a week ago the
mistress told me to clean a herring, and I began from the tail end, and she
took the herring and thrust its head in my face. The workmen laugh at me
and send me to the tavern for vodka, and tell me to steal the master’s
cucumbers for them, and the master beats me with anything that comes to
hand. And there is nothing to eat. In the morning they give me bread, for
dinner, porridge, and in the evening, bread again; but as for tea, or soup, the
master and mistress gobble it all up themselves. And I am put to sleep in the
passage, and when their wretched brat cries I get no sleep at all, but have to
rock the cradle. Dear grandfather, show the divine mercy, take me away
from here, home to the village. It’s more than I can bear. I bow down to

your feet, and will pray to God for you for ever, take me away from here or
I shall die.”
Vanka’s mouth worked, he rubbed his eyes with his black fist, and gave a
sob.
“I will powder your snuff for you,” he went on. “I will pray for you, and
if I do anything you can thrash me like Sidor’s goat. And if you think I’ve
no job, then I will beg the steward for Christ’s sake to let me clean his
boots, or I’ll go for a shepherd-boy instead of Fedka. Dear grandfather, it is
more than I can bear, it’s simply no life at all. I wanted to run away to the
village, but I have no boots, and I am afraid of the frost. When I grow up
big I will take care of you for this, and not let anyone annoy you, and when
you die I will pray for the rest of your soul, just as for my mammy’s.”
“Moscow is a big town. It’s all gentlemen’s houses, and there are lots of
horses, but there are no sheep, and the dogs are not spiteful. The lads here
don’t go out with the star, and they don’t let anyone go into the choir, and
once I saw in a shop window fishing-hooks for sale, fitted ready with the
line and for all sorts of fish, awfully good ones, there was even one hook
that would hold a forty-pound sheat-fish. And I have seen shops where there
are guns of all sorts, after the pattern of the master’s guns at home, so that I
shouldn’t wonder if they are a hundred roubles each. . . . And in the
butchers’ shops there are grouse and woodcocks and fish and hares, but the
shopmen don’t say where they shoot them.”
“Dear grandfather, when they have the Christmas tree at the big house,
get me a gilt walnut, and put it away in the green trunk. Ask the young lady
Olga Ignatyevna, say it’s for Vanka.”
Vanka gave a tremulous sigh, and again stared at the window. He
remembered how his grandfather always went into the forest to get the
Christmas tree for his master’s family, and took his grandson with him. It
was a merry time! Grandfather made a noise in his throat, the forest
crackled with the frost, and looking at them Vanka chortled too. Before
chopping down the Christmas tree, grandfather would smoke a pipe, slowly
take a pinch of snuff, and laugh at frozen Vanka. . . . The young fir trees,
covered with hoar frost, stood motionless, waiting to see which of them was
to die. Wherever one looked, a hare flew like an arrow over the snowdrifts .

. . . Grandfather could not refrain from shouting: “Hold him, hold him . . .
hold him! Ah, the bob-tailed devil!”
When he had cut down the Christmas tree, grandfather used to drag it to
the big house, and there set to work to decorate it. . . . The young lady, who
was Vanka’s favourite, Olga Ignatyevna, was the busiest of all. When
Vanka’s mother Pelageya was alive, and a servant in the big house, Olga
Ignatyevna used to give him goodies, and having nothing better to do,
taught him to read and write, to count up to a hundred, and even to dance a
quadrille. When Pelageya died, Vanka had been transferred to the servants’
kitchen to be with his grandfather, and from the kitchen to the shoemaker’s
in Moscow.
“Do come, dear grandfather,” Vanka went on with his letter. “For Christ’s
sake, I beg you, take me away. Have pity on an unhappy orphan like me;
here everyone knocks me about, and I am fearfully hungry; I can’t tell you
what misery it is, I am always crying. And the other day the master hit me
on the head with a last, so that I fell down. My life is wretched, worse than
any dog’s. . . . I send greetings to Alyona, one-eyed Yegorka, and the
coachman, and don’t give my concertina to anyone. I remain, your
grandson, Ivan Zhukov. Dear grandfather, do come.”
Vanka folded the sheet of writing-paper twice, and put it into an envelope
he had bought the day before for a kopeck. . . . After thinking a little, he
dipped the pen and wrote the address:

To grandfather in the village.

Then he scratched his head, thought a little, and added: Konstantin
Makaritch. Glad that he had not been prevented from writing, he put on his
cap and, without putting on his little greatcoat, ran out into the street as he
was in his shirt. . . .
The shopmen at the butcher’s, whom he had questioned the day before,
told him that letters were put in post-boxes, and from the boxes were
carried about all over the earth in mailcarts with drunken drivers and
ringing bells. Vanka ran to the nearest post-box, and thrust the precious
letter in the slit. . . .

An hour later, lulled by sweet hopes, he was sound asleep. . . . He
dreamed of the stove. On the stove was sitting his grandfather, swinging his
bare legs, and reading the letter to the cooks. . . .
By the stove was Eel, wagging his tail.

AN INCIDENT

M
ORNING. Brilliant sunshine is piercing through the frozen
lacework on the window-panes into the nursery. Vanya, a boy of
six, with a cropped head and a nose like a button, and his sister
Nina, a short, chubby, curly-headed girl of four, wake up and look crossly at
each other through the bars of their cots.
“Oo-oo-oo! naughty children!” grumbles their nurse. “Good people have
had their breakfast already, while you can’t get your eyes open.”
The sunbeams frolic over the rugs, the walls, and nurse’s skirts, and seem
inviting the children to join in their play, but they take no notice. They have
woken up in a bad humour. Nina pouts, makes a grimace, and begins to
whine:
“Brea-eakfast, nurse, breakfast!”
Vanya knits his brows and ponders what to pitch upon to howl over. He
has already begun screwing up his eyes and opening his mouth, but at that
instant the voice of mamma reaches them from the drawing-room, saying:
“Don’t forget to give the cat her milk, she has a family now!”
The children’s puckered countenances grow smooth again as they look at
each other in astonishment. Then both at once begin shouting, jump out of
their cots, and filling the air with piercing shrieks, run barefoot, in their
nightgowns, to the kitchen.
“The cat has puppies!” they cry. “The cat has got puppies!”
Under the bench in the kitchen there stands a small box, the one in which
Stepan brings coal when he lights the fire. The cat is peeping out of the box.
There is an expression of extreme exhaustion on her grey face; her green
eyes, with their narrow black pupils, have a languid, sentimental look. From
her face it is clear that the only thing lacking to complete her happiness is
the presence in the box of “him,” the father of her children, to whom she
had abandoned herself so recklessly! She wants to mew, and opens her

mouth wide, but nothing but a hiss comes from her throat; the squealing of
the kittens is audible.
The children squat on their heels before the box, and, motionless, holding
their breath, gaze at the cat. . . . They are surprised, impressed, and do not
hear nurse grumbling as she pursues them. The most genuine delight shines
in the eyes of both.
Domestic animals play a scarcely noticed but undoubtedly beneficial part
in the education and life of children. Which of us does not remember
powerful but magnanimous dogs, lazy lapdogs, birds dying in captivity,
dull-witted but haughty turkeys, mild old tabby cats, who forgave us when
we trod on their tails for fun and caused them agonising pain? I even fancy,
sometimes, that the patience, the fidelity, the readiness to forgive, and the
sincerity which are characteristic of our domestic animals have a far
stronger and more definite effect on the mind of a child than the long
exhortations of some dry, pale Karl Karlovitch, or the misty expositions of a
governess, trying to prove to children that water is made up of hydrogen
and oxygen.
“What little things!” says Nina, opening her eyes wide and going off into
a joyous laugh. “They are like mice!”
“One, two, three,” Vanya counts. “Three kittens. So there is one for you,
one for me, and one for somebody else, too.”
“Murrm . . . murrm . . .” purrs the mother, flattered by their attention.
“Murrm.”
After gazing at the kittens, the children take them from under the cat, and
begin squeezing them in their hands, then, not satisfied with this, they put
them in the skirts of their nightgowns, and run into the other rooms.
“Mamma, the cat has got pups!” they shout.
Mamma is sitting in the drawing-room with some unknown gentleman.
Seeing the children unwashed, undressed, with their nightgowns held up
high, she is embarrassed, and looks at them severely.

“Let your nightgowns down, disgraceful children,” she says. “Go out of
the room, or I will punish you.”
But the children do not notice either mamma’s threats or the presence of
a stranger. They put the kittens down on the carpet, and go off into
deafening squeals. The mother walks round them, mewing imploringly.
When, a little afterwards, the children are dragged off to the nursery,
dressed, made to say their prayers, and given their breakfast, they are full of
a passionate desire to get away from these prosaic duties as quickly as
possible, and to run to the kitchen again.
Their habitual pursuits and games are thrown completely into the
background.
The kittens throw everything into the shade by making their appearance
in the world, and supply the great sensation of the day. If Nina or Vanya had
been offered forty pounds of sweets or ten thousand kopecks for each
kitten, they would have rejected such a barter without the slightest
hesitation. In spite of the heated protests of the nurse and the cook, the
children persist in sitting by the cat’s box in the kitchen, busy with the
kittens till dinner-time. Their faces are earnest and concentrated and express
anxiety. They are worried not so much by the present as by the future of the
kittens. They decide that one kitten shall remain at home with the old cat to
be a comfort to her mother, while the second shall go to their summer villa,
and the third shall live in the cellar, where there are ever so many rats.
“But why don’t they look at us?” Nina wondered. “Their eyes are blind
like the beggars’.”
Vanya, too, is perturbed by this question. He tries to open one kitten’s
eyes, and spends a long time puffing and breathing hard over it, but his
operation is unsuccessful. They are a good deal troubled, too, by the
circumstance that the kittens obstinately refuse the milk and the meat that is
offered to them. Everything that is put before their little noses is eaten by
their grey mamma.
“Let’s build the kittens little houses,” Vanya suggests. “They shall live in
different houses, and the cat shall come and pay them visits. . . .”

Cardboard hat-boxes are put in the different corners of the kitchen and
the kittens are installed in them. But this division turns out to be premature;
the cat, still wearing an imploring and sentimental expression on her face,
goes the round of all the hat-boxes, and carries off her children to their
original position.
“The cat’s their mother,” observed Vanya, “but who is their father?”
“Yes, who is their father?” repeats Nina.
“They must have a father.”
Vanya and Nina are a long time deciding who is to be the kittens’ father,
and, in the end, their choice falls on a big dark-red horse without a tail,
which is lying in the store-cupboard under the stairs, together with other
relics of toys that have outlived their day. They drag him up out of the store-
cupboard and stand him by the box.
“Mind now!” they admonish him, “stand here and see they behave
themselves properly.”
All this is said and done in the gravest way, with an expression of anxiety
on their faces. Vanya and Nina refuse to recognise the existence of any
world but the box of kittens. Their joy knows no bounds. But they have to
pass through bitter, agonising moments, too.
Just before dinner, Vanya is sitting in his father’s study, gazing dreamily
at the table. A kitten is moving about by the lamp, on stamped note paper.
Vanya is watching its movements, and thrusting first a pencil, then a match
into its little mouth. . . . All at once, as though he has sprung out of the
floor, his father is beside the table.
“What’s this?” Vanya hears, in an angry voice.
“It’s . . . it’s the kitty, papa. . . .”
“I’ll give it you; look what you have done, you naughty boy! You’ve
dirtied all my paper!”
To Vanya’s great surprise his papa does not share his partiality for the
kittens, and, instead of being moved to enthusiasm and delight, he pulls

Vanya’s ear and shouts:
“Stepan, take away this horrid thing.”
At dinner, too, there is a scene. . . . During the second course there is
suddenly the sound of a shrill mew. They begin to investigate its origin, and
discover a kitten under Nina’s pinafore.
“Nina, leave the table!” cries her father angrily. “Throw the kittens in the
cesspool! I won’t have the nasty things in the house! . . .”
Vanya and Nina are horrified. Death in the cesspool, apart from its
cruelty, threatens to rob the cat and the wooden horse of their children, to
lay waste the cat’s box, to destroy their plans for the future, that fair future
in which one cat will be a comfort to its old mother, another will live in the
country, while the third will catch rats in the cellar. The children begin to
cry and entreat that the kittens may be spared. Their father consents, but on
the condition that the children do not go into the kitchen and touch the
kittens.
After dinner, Vanya and Nina slouch about the rooms, feeling depressed.
The prohibition of visits to the kitchen has reduced them to dejection. They
refuse sweets, are naughty, and are rude to their mother. When their uncle
Petrusha comes in the evening, they draw him aside, and complain to him
of their father, who wanted to throw the kittens into the cesspool.
“Uncle Petrusha, tell mamma to have the kittens taken to the nursery,”
the children beg their uncle, “do-o tell her.”
“There, there . . . very well,” says their uncle, waving them off. “All
right.”
Uncle Petrusha does not usually come alone. He is accompanied by Nero,
a big black dog of Danish breed, with drooping ears, and a tail as hard as a
stick. The dog is silent, morose, and full of a sense of his own dignity. He
takes not the slightest notice of the children, and when he passes them hits
them with his tail as though they were chairs. The children hate him from
the bottom of their hearts, but on this occasion, practical considerations
override sentiment.

“I say, Nina,” says Vanya, opening his eyes wide. “Let Nero be their
father, instead of the horse! The horse is dead and he is alive, you see.”
They are waiting the whole evening for the moment when papa will sit
down to his cards and it will be possible to take Nero to the kitchen without
being observed. . . . At last, papa sits down to cards, mamma is busy with
the samovar and not noticing the children. . . .
The happy moment arrives.
“Come along!” Vanya whispers to his sister.
But, at that moment, Stepan comes in and, with a snigger, announces:
“Nero has eaten the kittens, madam.”
Nina and Vanya turn pale and look at Stepan with horror.
“He really has . . .” laughs the footman, “he went to the box and gobbled
them up.”
The children expect that all the people in the house will be aghast and fall
upon the miscreant Nero. But they all sit calmly in their seats, and only
express surprise at the appetite of the huge dog. Papa and mamma laugh.
Nero walks about by the table, wags his tail, and licks his lips complacently
. . . the cat is the only one who is uneasy. With her tail in the air she walks
about the rooms, looking suspiciously at people and mewing plaintively.
“Children, it’s past nine,” cries mamma, “it’s bedtime.”
Vanya and Nina go to bed, shed tears, and spend a long time thinking
about the injured cat, and the cruel, insolent, and unpunished Nero.

A DAY IN THE COUNTRY
BETWEEN eight and nine o’clock in the morning.

A
dark leaden-coloured mass is creeping over the sky towards the sun.
Red zigzags of lightning gleam here and there across it. There is a
sound of far-away rumbling. A warm wind frolics over the grass,
bends the trees, and stirs up the dust. In a minute there will be a spurt of
May rain and a real storm will begin.
Fyokla, a little beggar-girl of six, is running through the village, looking
for Terenty the cobbler. The white-haired, barefoot child is pale. Her eyes
are wide-open, her lips are trembling.
“Uncle, where is Terenty?” she asks every one she meets. No one
answers. They are all preoccupied with the approaching storm and take
refuge in their huts. At last she meets Silanty Silitch, the sacristan, Terenty’s
bosom friend. He is coming along, staggering from the wind.
“Uncle, where is Terenty?”
“At the kitchen-gardens,” answers Silanty.
The beggar-girl runs behind the huts to the kitchen-gardens and there
finds Terenty; the tall old man with a thin, pock-marked face, very long
legs, and bare feet, dressed in a woman’s tattered jacket, is standing near the
vegetable plots, looking with drowsy, drunken eyes at the dark storm-cloud.
On his long crane-like legs he sways in the wind like a starling-cote.
“Uncle Terenty!” the white-headed beggar-girl addresses him. “Uncle,
darling!”
Terenty bends down to Fyokla, and his grim, drunken face is overspread
with a smile, such as come into people’s faces when they look at something
little, foolish, and absurd, but warmly loved.

“Ah! servant of God, Fyokia,” he says, lisping tenderly, “where have you
come from?”
“Uncle Terenty,” says Fyokia, with a sob, tugging at the lapel of the
cobbler’s coat. “Brother Danilka has had an accident! Come along!”
“What sort of accident? Ough, what thunder! Holy, holy, holy. . . . What
sort of accident?”
“In the count’s copse Danilka stuck his hand into a hole in a tree, and he
can’t get it out. Come along, uncle, do be kind and pull his hand out!”
“How was it he put his hand in? What for?”
“He wanted to get a cuckoo’s egg out of the hole for me.”
“The day has hardly begun and already you are in trouble. . . .” Terenty
shook his head and spat deliberately. “Well, what am I to do with you now?
I must come . . . I must, may the wolf gobble you up, you naughty children!
Come, little orphan!”
Terenty comes out of the kitchen-garden and, lifting high his long legs,
begins striding down the village street. He walks quickly without stopping
or looking from side to side, as though he were shoved from behind or
afraid of pursuit. Fyokla can hardly keep up with him.
They come out of the village and turn along the dusty road towards the
count’s copse that lies dark blue in the distance. It is about a mile and a half
away. The clouds have by now covered the sun, and soon afterwards there
is not a speck of blue left in the sky. It grows dark.
“Holy, holy, holy . . .” whispers Fyokla, hurrying after Terenty. The first
rain-drops, big and heavy, lie, dark dots on the dusty road. A big drop falls
on Fyokla’s cheek and glides like a tear down her chin.
“The rain has begun,” mutters the cobbler, kicking up the dust with his
bare, bony feet. “That’s fine, Fyokla, old girl. The grass and the trees are
fed by the rain, as we are by bread. And as for the thunder, don’t you be
frightened, little orphan. Why should it kill a little thing like you?”

As soon as the rain begins, the wind drops. The only sound is the patter
of rain dropping like fine shot on the young rye and the parched road.
“We shall get soaked, Fyolka,” mutters Terenty. “There won’t be a dry
spot left on us. . . . Ho-ho, my girl! It’s run down my neck! But don’t be
frightened, silly. . . . The grass will be dry again, the earth will be dry again,
and we shall be dry again. There is the same sun for us all.”
A flash of lightning, some fourteen feet long, gleams above their heads.
There is a loud peal of thunder, and it seems to Fyokla that something big,
heavy, and round is rolling over the sky and tearing it open, exactly over her
head.
“Holy, holy, holy . . .” says Terenty, crossing himself. “Don’t be afraid,
little orphan! It is not from spite that it thunders.”
Terenty’s and Fyokla’s feet are covered with lumps of heavy, wet clay. It
is slippery and difficult to walk, but Terenty strides on more and more
rapidly. The weak little beggar-girl is breathless and ready to drop.
But at last they go into the count’s copse. The washed trees, stirred by a
gust of wind, drop a perfect waterfall upon them. Terenty stumbles over
stumps and begins to slacken his pace.
“Whereabouts is Danilka?” he asks. “Lead me to him.”
Fyokla leads him into a thicket, and, after going a quarter of a mile,
points to Danilka. Her brother, a little fellow of eight, with hair as red as
ochre and a pale sickly face, stands leaning against a tree, and, with his
head on one side, looking sideways at the sky. In one hand he holds his
shabby old cap, the other is hidden in an old lime tree. The boy is gazing at
the stormy sky, and apparently not thinking of his trouble. Hearing footsteps
and seeing the cobbler he gives a sickly smile and says:
“A terrible lot of thunder, Terenty. . . . I’ve never heard so much thunder
in all my life.”
“And where is your hand?”
“In the hole. . . . Pull it out, please, Terenty!”

The wood had broken at the edge of the hole and jammed Danilka’s
hand: he could push it farther in, but could not pull it out. Terenty snaps off
the broken piece, and the boy’s hand, red and crushed, is released.
“It’s terrible how it’s thundering,” the boy says again, rubbing his hand.
“What makes it thunder, Terenty?”
“One cloud runs against the other,” answers the cobbler. The party come
out of the copse, and walk along the edge of it towards the darkened road.
The thunder gradually abates, and its rumbling is heard far away beyond the
village.
“The ducks flew by here the other day, Terenty,” says Danilka, still
rubbing his hand. “They must be nesting in the Gniliya Zaimishtcha
marshes. . . . Fyolka, would you like me to show you a nightingale’s nest?”
“Don’t touch it, you might disturb them,” says Terenty, wringing the
water out of his cap. “The nightingale is a singing-bird, without sin. He has
had a voice given him in his throat, to praise God and gladden the heart of
man. It’s a sin to disturb him.”
“What about the sparrow?”
“The sparrow doesn’t matter, he’s a bad, spiteful bird. He is like a
pickpocket in his ways. He doesn’t like man to be happy. When Christ was
crucified it was the sparrow brought nails to the Jews, and called ‘alive!
alive!’”
A bright patch of blue appears in the sky.
“Look!” says Terenty. “An ant-heap burst open by the rain! They’ve been
flooded, the rogues!”
They bend over the ant-heap. The downpour has damaged it; the insects
are scurrying to and fro in the mud, agitated, and busily trying to carry
away their drowned companions.
“You needn’t be in such a taking, you won’t die of it!” says Terenty,
grinning. “As soon as the sun warms you, you’ll come to your senses again.
. . . It’s a lesson to you, you stupids. You won’t settle on low ground another
time.”

They go on.
“And here are some bees,” cries Danilka, pointing to the branch of a
young oak tree.
The drenched and chilled bees are huddled together on the branch. There
are so many of them that neither bark nor leaf can be seen. Many of them
are settled on one another.
“That’s a swarm of bees,” Terenty informs them. “They were flying
looking for a home, and when the rain came down upon them they settled.
If a swarm is flying, you need only sprinkle water on them to make them
settle. Now if, say, you wanted to take the swarm, you would bend the
branch with them into a sack and shake it, and they all fall in.”
Little Fyokla suddenly frowns and rubs her neck vigorously. Her brother
looks at her neck, and sees a big swelling on it.
“Hey-hey!” laughs the cobbler. “Do you know where you got that from,
Fyokia, old girl? There are Spanish flies on some tree in the wood. The rain
has trickled off them, and a drop has fallen on your neck —that’s what has
made the swelling.”
The sun appears from behind the clouds and floods the wood, the fields,
and the three friends with its warm light. The dark menacing cloud has gone
far away and taken the storm with it. The air is warm and fragrant. There is
a scent of bird-cherry, meadowsweet, and lilies-of-the-valley.
“That herb is given when your nose bleeds,” says Terenty, pointing to a
woolly-looking flower. “It does good.”
They hear a whistle and a rumble, but not such a rumble as the storm-
clouds carried away. A goods train races by before the eyes of Terenty,
Danilka, and Fyokla. The engine, panting and puffing out black smoke,
drags more than twenty vans after it. Its power is tremendous. The children
are interested to know how an engine, not alive and without the help of
horses, can move and drag such weights, and Terenty undertakes to explain
it to them:

“It’s all the steam’s doing, children. . . . The steam does the work. . . .
You see, it shoves under that thing near the wheels, and it . . . you see . . . it
works. . . .”
They cross the railway line, and, going down from the embankment,
walk towards the river. They walk not with any object, but just at random,
and talk all the way. . . . Danilka asks questions, Terenty answers them. . . .
Terenty answers all his questions, and there is no secret in Nature which
baffles him. He knows everything. Thus, for example, he knows the names
of all the wild flowers, animals, and stones. He knows what herbs cure
diseases, he has no difficulty in telling the age of a horse or a cow. Looking
at the sunset, at the moon, or the birds, he can tell what sort of weather it
will be next day. And indeed, it is not only Terenty who is so wise. Silanty
Silitch, the innkeeper, the market-gardener, the shepherd, and all the
villagers, generally speaking, know as much as he does. These people have
learned not from books, but in the fields, in the wood, on the river bank.
Their teachers have been the birds themselves, when they sang to them, the
sun when it left a glow of crimson behind it at setting, the very trees, and
wild herbs.
Danilka looks at Terenty and greedily drinks in every word. In spring,
before one is weary of the warmth and the monotonous green of the fields,
when everything is fresh and full of fragrance, who would not want to hear
about the golden may-beetles, about the cranes, about the gurgling streams,
and the corn mounting into ear?
The two of them, the cobbler and the orphan, walk about the fields, talk
unceasingly, and are not weary. They could wander about the world
endlessly. They walk, and in their talk of the beauty of the earth do not
notice the frail little beggar-girl tripping after them. She is breathless and
moves with a lagging step. There are tears in her eyes; she would be glad to
stop these inexhaustible wanderers, but to whom and where can she go? She
has no home or people of her own; whether she likes it or not, she must
walk and listen to their talk.
Towards midday, all three sit down on the river bank. Danilka takes out
of his bag a piece of bread, soaked and reduced to a mash, and they begin to
eat. Terenty says a prayer when he has eaten the bread, then stretches

himself on the sandy bank and falls asleep. While he is asleep, the boy
gazes at the water, pondering. He has many different things to think of. He
has just seen the storm, the bees, the ants, the train. Now, before his eyes,
fishes are whisking about. Some are two inches long and more, others are
no bigger than one’s nail. A viper, with its head held high, is swimming
from one bank to the other.
Only towards the evening our wanderers return to the village. The
children go for the night to a deserted barn, where the corn of the commune
used to be kept, while Terenty, leaving them, goes to the tavern. The
children lie huddled together on the straw, dozing.
The boy does not sleep. He gazes into the darkness, and it seems to him
that he is seeing all that he has seen in the day: the storm-clouds, the bright
sunshine, the birds, the fish, lanky Terenty. The number of his impressions,
together with exhaustion and hunger, are too much for him; he is as hot as
though he were on fire, and tosses from, side to side. He longs to tell
someone all that is haunting him now in the darkness and agitating his soul,
but there is no one to tell. Fyokla is too little and could not understand.
“I’ll tell Terenty to-morrow,” thinks the boy.
The children fall asleep thinking of the homeless cobbler, and, in the
night, Terenty comes to them, makes the sign of the cross over them, and
puts bread under their heads. And no one sees his love. It is seen only by the
moon which floats in the sky and peeps caressingly through the holes in the
wall of the deserted barn.

BOYS
“VOLODYA’S come!” someone shouted in the yard.

“M
aster Volodya’s here!” bawled Natalya the cook, running into
the dining-room. “Oh, my goodness!”
The whole Korolyov family, who had been expecting their
Volodya from hour to hour, rushed to the windows. At the front door stood a
wide sledge, with three white horses in a cloud of steam. The sledge was
empty, for Volodya was already in the hall, untying his hood with red and
chilly fingers. His school overcoat, his cap, his snowboots, and the hair on
his temples were all white with frost, and his whole figure from head to foot
diffused such a pleasant, fresh smell of the snow that the very sight of him
made one want to shiver and say “brrr!”
His mother and aunt ran to kiss and hug him. Natalya plumped down at
his feet and began pulling off his snowboots, his sisters shrieked with
delight, the doors creaked and banged, and Volodya’s father, in his
waistcoat and shirt-sleeves, ran out into the hall with scissors in his hand,
and cried out in alarm:
“We were expecting you all yesterday? Did you come all right? Had a
good journey? Mercy on us! you might let him say ‘how do you do’ to his
father! I am his father after all!”
“Bow-wow!” barked the huge black dog, Milord, in a deep bass, tapping
with his tail on the walls and furniture.
For two minutes there was nothing but a general hubbub of joy. After the
first outburst of delight was over the Korolyovs noticed that there was,
besides their Volodya, another small person in the hall, wrapped up in
scarves and shawls and white with frost. He was standing perfectly still in a
corner, in the shadow of a big fox-lined overcoat.
“Volodya darling, who is it?” asked his mother, in a whisper.

“Oh!” cried Volodya. “This is—let me introduce my friend Lentilov, a
schoolfellow in the second class. . . . I have brought him to stay with us.”
“Delighted to hear it! You are very welcome,” the father said cordially.
“Excuse me, I’ve been at work without my coat. . . . Please come in!
Natalya, help Mr. Lentilov off with his things. Mercy on us, do turn that dog
out! He is unendurable!”
A few minutes later, Volodya and his friend Lentilov, somewhat dazed by
their noisy welcome, and still red from the outside cold, were sitting down
to tea. The winter sun, making its way through the snow and the frozen
tracery on the window-panes, gleamed on the samovar, and plunged its pure
rays in the tea-basin. The room was warm, and the boys felt as though the
warmth and the frost were struggling together with a tingling sensation in
their bodies.
“Well, Christmas will soon be here,” the father said in a pleasant sing-
song voice, rolling a cigarette of dark reddish tobacco. “It doesn’t seem
long since the summer, when mamma was crying at your going . . . and here
you are back again. . . . Time flies, my boy. Before you have time to cry out,
old age is upon you. Mr. Lentilov, take some more, please help yourself! We
don’t stand on ceremony!”
Volodya’s three sisters, Katya, Sonya, and Masha (the eldest was eleven),
sat at the table and never took their eyes off the newcomer.
Lentilov was of the same height and age as Volodya, but not as round-
faced and fair-skinned. He was thin, dark, and freckled; his hair stood up
like a brush, his eyes were small, and his lips were thick. He was, in fact,
distinctly ugly, and if he had not been wearing the school uniform, he might
have been taken for the son of a cook. He seemed morose, did not speak,
and never once smiled. The little girls, staring at him, immediately came to
the conclusion that he must be a very clever and learned person. He seemed
to be thinking about something all the time, and was so absorbed in his own
thoughts, that, whenever he was spoken to, he started, threw his head back,
and asked to have the question repeated.
The little girls noticed that Volodya, who had always been so merry and
talkative, also said very little, did not smile at all, and hardly seemed to be

glad to be home. All the time they were at tea he only once addressed his
sisters, and then he said something so strange. He pointed to the samovar
and said:
“In California they don’t drink tea, but gin.”
He, too, seemed absorbed in his own thoughts, and, to judge by the looks
that passed between him and his friend Lentilov, their thoughts were the
same.
After tea, they all went into the nursery. The girls and their father took up
the work that had been interrupted by the arrival of the boys. They were
making flowers and frills for the Christmas tree out of paper of different
colours. It was an attractive and noisy occupation. Every fresh flower was
greeted by the little girls with shrieks of delight, even of awe, as though the
flower had dropped straight from heaven; their father was in ecstasies too,
and every now and then he threw the scissors on the floor, in vexation at
their bluntness. Their mother kept running into the nursery with an anxious
face, asking:
“Who has taken my scissors? Ivan Nikolaitch, have you taken my
scissors again?”
“Mercy on us! I’m not even allowed a pair of scissors!” their father
would respond in a lachrymose voice, and, flinging himself back in his
chair, he would pretend to be a deeply injured man; but a minute later, he
would be in ecstasies again.
On his former holidays Volodya, too, had taken part in the preparations
for the Christmas tree, or had been running in the yard to look at the snow
mountain that the watchman and the shepherd were building. But this time
Volodya and Lentilov took no notice whatever of the coloured paper, and
did not once go into the stable. They sat in the window and began
whispering to one another; then they opened an atlas and looked carefully at
a map.
“First to Perm . . .” Lentilov said, in an undertone, “from there to
Tiumen, then Tomsk . . . then . . . then . . . Kamchatka. There the
Samoyedes take one over Behring’s Straits in boats . . . . And then we are in
America. . . . There are lots of furry animals there. . . .”

“And California?” asked Volodya.
“California is lower down. . . . We’ve only to get to America and
California is not far off. . . . And one can get a living by hunting and
plunder.”
All day long Lentilov avoided the little girls, and seemed to look at them
with suspicion. In the evening he happened to be left alone with them for
five minutes or so. It was awkward to be silent.
He cleared his throat morosely, rubbed his left hand against his right,
looked sullenly at Katya and asked:
“Have you read Mayne Reid?”
“No, I haven’t. . . . I say, can you skate?”
Absorbed in his own reflections, Lentilov made no reply to this question;
he simply puffed out his cheeks, and gave a long sigh as though he were
very hot. He looked up at Katya once more and said:
“When a herd of bisons stampedes across the prairie the earth trembles,
and the frightened mustangs kick and neigh.”
He smiled impressively and added:
“And the Indians attack the trains, too. But worst of all are the
mosquitoes and the termites.”
“Why, what’s that?”
“They’re something like ants, but with wings. They bite fearfully. Do you
know who I am?”
“Mr. Lentilov.”
“No, I am Montehomo, the Hawk’s Claw, Chief of the Ever Victorious.”
Masha, the youngest, looked at him, then into the darkness out of
window and said, wondering:
“And we had lentils for supper yesterday.”

Lentilov’s incomprehensible utterances, and the way he was always
whispering with Volodya, and the way Volodya seemed now to be always
thinking about something instead of playing . . . all this was strange and
mysterious. And the two elder girls, Katya and Sonya, began to keep a
sharp look-out on the boys. At night, when the boys had gone to bed, the
girls crept to their bedroom door, and listened to what they were saying. Ah,
what they discovered! The boys were planning to run away to America to
dig for gold: they had everything ready for the journey, a pistol, two knives,
biscuits, a burning glass to serve instead of matches, a compass, and four
roubles in cash. They learned that the boys would have to walk some
thousands of miles, and would have to fight tigers and savages on the road:
then they would get gold and ivory, slay their enemies, become pirates,
drink gin, and finally marry beautiful maidens, and make a plantation.
The boys interrupted each other in their excitement. Throughout the
conversation, Lentilov called himself “Montehomo, the Hawk’s Claw,” and
Volodya was “my pale-face brother!”
“Mind you don’t tell mamma,” said Katya, as they went back to bed.
“Volodya will bring us gold and ivory from America, but if you tell mamma
he won’t be allowed to go.”
The day before Christmas Eve, Lentilov spent the whole day poring over
the map of Asia and making notes, while Volodya, with a languid and
swollen face that looked as though it had been stung by a bee, walked about
the rooms and ate nothing. And once he stood still before the holy image in
the nursery, crossed himself, and said:
“Lord, forgive me a sinner; Lord, have pity on my poor unhappy
mamma!”
In the evening he burst out crying. On saying good-night he gave his
father a long hug, and then hugged his mother and sisters. Katya and Sonya
knew what was the matter, but little Masha was puzzled, completely
puzzled. Every time she looked at Lentilov she grew thoughtful and said
with a sigh:
“When Lent comes, nurse says we shall have to eat peas and lentils.”

Early in the morning of Christmas Eve, Katya and Sonya slipped quietly
out of bed, and went to find out how the boys meant to run away to
America. They crept to their door.
“Then you don’t mean to go?” Lentilov was saying angrily. “Speak out:
aren’t you going?”
“Oh dear,” Volodya wept softly. “How can I go? I feel so unhappy about
mamma.”
“My pale-face brother, I pray you, let us set off. You declared you were
going, you egged me on, and now the time comes, you funk it!”
“I . . . I . . . I’m not funking it, but I . . . I . . . I’m sorry for mamma.”
“Say once and for all, are you going or are you not?”
“I am going, only . . . wait a little . . . I want to be at home a little.”
“In that case I will go by myself,” Lentilov declared. “I can get on
without you. And you wanted to hunt tigers and fight! Since that’s how it is,
give me back my cartridges!”
At this Volodya cried so bitterly that his sisters could not help crying too.
Silence followed.
“So you are not coming?” Lentilov began again.
“I . . . I . . . I am coming!”
“Well, put on your things, then.”
And Lentilov tried to cheer Volodya up by singing the praises of
America, growling like a tiger, pretending to be a steamer, scolding him,
and promising to give him all the ivory and lions’ and tigers’ skins.
And this thin, dark boy, with his freckles and his bristling shock of hair,
impressed the little girls as an extraordinary remarkable person. He was a
hero, a determined character, who knew no fear, and he growled so
ferociously, that, standing at the door, they really might imagine there was a
tiger or lion inside. When the little girls went back to their room and
dressed, Katya’s eyes were full of tears, and she said:

“Oh, I feel so frightened!”
Everything was as usual till two o’clock, when they sat down to dinner.
Then it appeared that the boys were not in the house. They sent to the
servants’ quarters, to the stables, to the bailiff’s cottage. They were not to be
found. They sent into the village— they were not there.
At tea, too, the boys were still absent, and by supper-time Volodya’s
mother was dreadfully uneasy, and even shed tears.
Late in the evening they sent again to the village, they searched
everywhere, and walked along the river bank with lanterns. Heavens! what
a fuss there was!
Next day the police officer came, and a paper of some sort was written
out in the dining-room. Their mother cried. . . .
All of a sudden a sledge stopped at the door, with three white horses in a
cloud of steam.
“Volodya’s come,” someone shouted in the yard.
“Master Volodya’s here!” bawled Natalya, running into the dining-room.
And Milord barked his deep bass, “bow-wow.”
It seemed that the boys had been stopped in the Arcade, where they had
gone from shop to shop asking where they could get gunpowder.
Volodya burst into sobs as soon as he came into the hall, and flung
himself on his mother’s neck. The little girls, trembling, wondered with
terror what would happen next. They saw their father take Volodya and
Lentilov into his study, and there he talked to them a long while.
“Is this a proper thing to do?” their father said to them. “I only pray they
won’t hear of it at school, you would both be expelled. You ought to be
ashamed, Mr. Lentilov, really. It’s not at all the thing to do! You began it,
and I hope you will be punished by your parents. How could you? Where
did you spend the night?”
“At the station,” Lentilov answered proudly.

Then Volodya went to bed, and had a compress, steeped in vinegar, on his
forehead.
A telegram was sent off, and next day a lady, Lentilov’s mother, made her
appearance and bore off her son.
Lentilov looked morose and haughty to the end, and he did not utter a
single word at taking leave of the little girls. But he took Katya’s book and
wrote in it as a souvenir: “Montehomo, the Hawk’s Claw, Chief of the Ever
Victorious.”

SHROVE TUESDAY

“P
AVEL VASSILITCH!” cries Pelageya Ivanovna, waking her
husband. “Pavel Vassilitch! You might go and help Styopa with
his lessons, he is sitting crying over his book. He can’t
understand something again!”
Pavel Vassilitch gets up, makes the sign of the cross over his mouth as he
yawns, and says softly: “In a minute, my love!”
The cat who has been asleep beside him gets up too, straightens out its
tail, arches its spine, and half-shuts its eyes. There is stillness. . . . Mice can
be heard scurrying behind the wall-paper. Putting on his boots and his
dressing-gown, Pavel Vassilitch, crumpled and frowning from sleepiness,
comes out of his bedroom into the dining-room; on his entrance another cat,
engaged in sniffing a marinade of fish in the window, jumps down to the
floor, and hides behind the cupboard.
“Who asked you to sniff that!” he says angrily, covering the fish with a
sheet of newspaper. “You are a pig to do that, not a cat. . . .”
From the dining-room there is a door leading into the nursery. There, at a
table covered with stains and deep scratches, sits Styopa, a high-school boy
in the second class, with a peevish expression of face and tear-stained eyes.
With his knees raised almost to his chin, and his hands clasped round them,
he is swaying to and fro like a Chinese idol and looking crossly at a sum
book.
“Are you working?” asks Pavel Vassilitch, sitting down to the table and
yawning. “Yes, my boy. . . . We have enjoyed ourselves, slept, and eaten
pancakes, and to-morrow comes Lenten fare, repentance, and going to
work. Every period of time has its limits. Why are your eyes so red? Are
you sick of learning your lessons? To be sure, after pancakes, lessons are
nasty to swallow. That’s about it.”

“What are you laughing at the child for?” Pelageya Ivanovna calls from
the next room. “You had better show him instead of laughing at him. He’ll
get a one again to-morrow, and make me miserable.”
“What is it you don’t understand?” Pavel Vassilitch asks Styopa.
“Why this . . . division of fractions,” the boy answers crossly. “The
division of fractions by fractions. . . .”
“H’m . . . queer boy! What is there in it? There’s nothing to understand in
it. Learn the rules, and that’s all. . . . To divide a fraction by a fraction you
must multiply the numerator of the first fraction by the denominator of the
second, and that will be the numerator of the quotient. . . . In this case, the
numerator of the first fraction. . . .”
“I know that without your telling me,” Styopa interrupts him, flicking a
walnut shell off the table. “Show me the proof.”
“The proof? Very well, give me a pencil. Listen. . . . Suppose we want to
divide seven eighths by two fifths. Well, the point of it is, my boy, that it’s
required to divide these fractions by each other. . . . Have they set the
samovar?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s time for tea. . . . It’s past seven. Well, now listen. We will look at it
like this. . . . Suppose we want to divide seven eighths not by two fifths but
by two, that is, by the numerator only. We divide it, what do we get?
“Seven sixteenths.”
“Right. Bravo! Well, the trick of it is, my boy, that if we . . . so if we have
divided it by two then. . . . Wait a bit, I am getting muddled. I remember
when I was at school, the teacher of arithmetic was called Sigismund
Urbanitch, a Pole. He used to get into a muddle over every lesson. He
would begin explaining some theory, get in a tangle, and turn crimson all
over and race up and down the class-room as though someone were sticking
an awl in his back, then he would blow his nose half a dozen times and
begin to cry. But you know we were magnanimous to him, we pretended
not to see it. ‘What is it, Sigismund Urbanitch?’ we used to ask him. ‘Have

you got toothache?’ And what a set of young ruffians, regular cut-throats,
we were, but yet we were magnanimous, you know! There weren’t any
boys like you in my day, they were all great hulking fellows, great strapping
louts, one taller than another. For instance, in our third class, there was
Mamahin. My goodness, he was a solid chap! You know, a regular maypole,
seven feet high. When he moved, the floor shook; when he brought his
great fist down on your back, he would knock the breath out of your body!
Not only we boys, but even the teachers were afraid of him. So this
Mamahin used to . . .”
Pelageya Ivanovna’s footsteps are heard through the door. Pavel
Vassilitch winks towards the door and says:
“There’s mother coming. Let’s get to work. Well, so you see, my boy,” he
says, raising his voice. “This fraction has to be multiplied by that one. Well,
and to do that you have to take the numerator of the first fraction. . .”
“Come to tea!” cries Pelageya Ivanovna. Pavel Vassilitch and his son
abandon arithmetic and go in to tea. Pelageya Ivanovna is already sitting at
the table with an aunt who never speaks, another aunt who is deaf and
dumb, and Granny Markovna, a midwife who had helped Styopa into the
world. The samovar is hissing and puffing out steam which throws
flickering shadows on the ceiling. The cats come in from the entry sleepy
and melancholy with their tails in the air. . . .
“Have some jam with your tea, Markovna,” says Pelageya Ivanovna,
addressing the midwife. “To-morrow the great fast begins. Eat well to-day.”
Markovna takes a heaped spoonful of jam hesitatingly as though it were a
powder, raises it to her lips, and with a sidelong look at Pavel Vassilitch,
eats it; at once her face is overspread with a sweet smile, as sweet as the
jam itself.
“The jam is particularly good,” she says. “Did you make it yourself,
Pelageya Ivanovna, ma’am?”
“Yes. Who else is there to do it? I do everything myself. Styopotchka,
have I given you your tea too weak? Ah, you have drunk it already. Pass
your cup, my angel; let me give you some more.”

“So this Mamahin, my boy, could not bear the French master,” Pavel
Vassilitch goes on, addressing his son. “‘I am a nobleman,’ he used to shout,
‘and I won’t allow a Frenchman to lord it over me! We beat the French in
1812!’ Well, of course they used to thrash him for it . . . thrash him dre-ead-
fully, and sometimes when he saw they were meaning to thrash him, he
would jump out of window, and off he would go! Then for five or six days
afterwards he would not show himself at the school. His mother would
come to the head-master and beg him for God’s sake: ‘Be so kind, sir, as to
find my Mishka, and flog him, the rascal!’ And the head-master would say
to her: ‘Upon my word, madam, our five porters aren’t a match for him!’”
“Good heavens, to think of such ruffians being born,” whispers Pelageya
Ivanovna, looking at her husband in horror. “What a trial for the poor
mother!”
A silence follows. Styopa yawns loudly, and scrutinises the Chinaman on
the tea-caddy whom he has seen a thousand times already. Markovna and
the two aunts sip tea carefully out of their saucers. The air is still and
stifling from the stove. . . . Faces and gestures betray the sloth and repletion
that comes when the stomach is full, and yet one must go on eating. The
samovar, the cups, and the table-cloth are cleared away, but still the family
sits on at the table. . . . Pelageya Ivanovna is continually jumping up and,
with an expression of alarm on her face, running off into the kitchen, to talk
to the cook about the supper. The two aunts go on sitting in the same
position immovably, with their arms folded across their bosoms and doze,
staring with their pewtery little eyes at the lamp. Markovna hiccups every
minute and asks:
“Why is it I have the hiccups? I don’t think I have eaten anything to
account for it . . . nor drunk anything either. . . . Hic!”
Pavel Vassilitch and Styopa sit side by side, with their heads touching,
and, bending over the table, examine a volume of the “Neva” for 1878.
“‘The monument of Leonardo da Vinci, facing the gallery of Victor
Emmanuel at Milan.’ I say! . . . After the style of a triumphal arch. . . . A
cavalier with his lady. . . . And there are little men in the distance. . . .”

“That little man is like a schoolfellow of mine called Niskubin,” says
Styopa.
“Turn over. . . . ‘The proboscis of the common house-fly seen under the
microscope.’ So that’s a proboscis! I say—a fly. Whatever would a bug look
like under a microscope, my boy? Wouldn’t it be horrid!”
The old-fashioned clock in the drawing-room does not strike, but coughs
ten times huskily as though it had a cold. The cook, Anna, comes into the
dining-room, and plumps down at the master’s feet.
“Forgive me, for Christ’s sake, Pavel Vassilitch!” she says, getting up,
flushed all over.
“You forgive me, too, for Christ’s sake,” Pavel Vassilitch responds
unconcernedly.
In the same manner, Anna goes up to the other members of the family,
plumps down at their feet, and begs forgiveness. She only misses out
Markovna to whom, not being one of the gentry, she does not feel it
necessary to bow down.
Another half-hour passes in stillness and tranquillity. The “Neva” is by
now lying on the sofa, and Pavel Vassilitch, holding up his finger, repeats
by heart some Latin verses he has learned in his childhood. Styopa stares at
the finger with the wedding ring, listens to the unintelligible words, and
dozes; he rubs his eyelids with his fists, and they shut all the tighter.
“I am going to bed . . .” he says, stretching and yawning.
“What, to bed?” says Pelageya Ivanovna. “What about supper before the
fast?”
“I don’t want any.”
“Are you crazy?” says his mother in alarm. “How can you go without
your supper before the fast? You’ll have nothing but Lenten food all
through the fast!”
Pavel Vassilitch is scared too.

“Yes, yes, my boy,” he says. “For seven weeks mother will give you
nothing but Lenten food. You can’t miss the last supper before the fast.”
“Oh dear, I am sleepy,” says Styopa peevishly.
“Since that is how it is, lay the supper quickly,” Pavel Vassilitch cries in a
fluster. “Anna, why are you sitting there, silly? Make haste and lay the
table.”
Pelageya Ivanovna clasps her hands and runs into the kitchen with an
expression as though the house were on fire.
“Make haste, make haste,” is heard all over the house. “Styopotchka is
sleepy. Anna! Oh dear me, what is one to do? Make haste.”
Five minutes later the table is laid. Again the cats, arching their spines,
and stretching themselves with their tails in the air, come into the dining-
room. . . . The family begin supper. . . . No one is hungry, everyone’s
stomach is overfull, but yet they must eat.

THE OLD HOUSE
(A Story told by a Houseowner)

T
HE old house had to be pulled down that a new one might be built in
its place. I led the architect through the empty rooms, and between
our business talk told him various stories. The tattered wallpapers,
the dingy windows, the dark stoves, all bore the traces of recent habitation
and evoked memories. On that staircase, for instance, drunken men were
once carrying down a dead body when they stumbled and flew headlong
downstairs together with the coffin; the living were badly bruised, while the
dead man looked very serious, as though nothing had happened, and shook
his head when they lifted him up from the ground and put him back in the
coffin. You see those three doors in a row: in there lived young ladies who
were always receiving visitors, and so were better dressed than any other
lodgers, and could pay their rent regularly. The door at the end of the
corridor leads to the wash-house, where by day they washed clothes and at
night made an uproar and drank beer. And in that flat of three rooms
everything is saturated with bacteria and bacilli. It’s not nice there. Many
lodgers have died there, and I can positively assert that that flat was at some
time cursed by someone, and that together with its human lodgers there was
always another lodger, unseen, living in it. I remember particularly the fate
of one family. Picture to yourself an ordinary man, not remarkable in any
way, with a wife, a mother, and four children. His name was Putohin; he
was a copying clerk at a notary’s, and received thirty-five roubles a month.
He was a sober, religious, serious man. When he brought me his rent for the
flat he always apologised for being badly dressed; apologised for being five
days late, and when I gave him a receipt he would smile good-humouredly
and say: “Oh yes, there’s that too, I don’t like those receipts.” He lived
poorly but decently. In that middle room, the grandmother used to be with
the four children; there they used to cook, sleep, receive their visitors, and
even dance. This was Putohin’s own room; he had a table in it, at which he
used to work doing private jobs, copying parts for the theatre,
advertisements, and so on. This room on the right was let to his lodger,

Yegoritch, a locksmith—a steady fellow, but given to drink; he was always
too hot, and so used to go about in his waistcoat and barefoot. Yegoritch
used to mend locks, pistols, children’s bicycles, would not refuse to mend
cheap clocks and make skates for a quarter-rouble, but he despised that
work, and looked on himself as a specialist in musical instruments.
Amongst the litter of steel and iron on his table there was always to be seen
a concertina with a broken key, or a trumpet with its sides bent in. He paid
Putohin two and a half roubles for his room; he was always at his work-
table, and only came out to thrust some piece of iron into the stove.
On the rare occasions when I went into that flat in the evening, this was
always the picture I came upon: Putohin would be sitting at his little table,
copying something; his mother and his wife, a thin woman with an
exhausted-looking face, were sitting near the lamp, sewing; Yegoritch
would be making a rasping sound with his file. And the hot, still
smouldering embers in the stove filled the room with heat and fumes; the
heavy air smelt of cabbage soup, swaddling-clothes, and Yegoritch. It was
poor and stuffy, but the working-class faces, the children’s little drawers
hung up along by the stove, Yegoritch’s bits of iron had yet an air of peace,
friendliness, content. . . . In the corridor outside the children raced about
with well-combed heads, merry and profoundly convinced that everything
was satisfactory in this world, and would be so endlessly, that one had only
to say one’s prayers every morning and at bedtime.
Now imagine in the midst of that same room, two paces from the stove,
the coffin in which Putohin’s wife is lying. There is no husband whose wife
will live for ever, but there was something special about this death. When,
during the requiem service, I glanced at the husband’s grave face, at his
stern eyes, I thought: “Oho, brother!”
It seemed to me that he himself, his children, the grandmother and
Yegoritch, were already marked down by that unseen being which lived
with them in that flat. I am a thoroughly superstitious man, perhaps,
because I am a houseowner and for forty years have had to do with lodgers.
I believe if you don’t win at cards from the beginning you will go on losing
to the end; when fate wants to wipe you and your family off the face of the
earth, it remains inexorable in its persecution, and the first misfortune is
commonly only the first of a long series. . . . Misfortunes are like stones.

One stone has only to drop from a high cliff for others to be set rolling after
it. In short, as I came away from the requiem service at Putohin’s, I believed
that he and his family were in a bad way.
And, in fact, a week afterwards the notary quite unexpectedly dismissed
Putohin, and engaged a young lady in his place. And would you believe it,
Putohin was not so much put out at the loss of his job as at being
superseded by a young lady and not by a man. Why a young lady? He so
resented this that on his return home he thrashed his children, swore at his
mother, and got drunk. Yegoritch got drunk, too, to keep him company.
Putohin brought me the rent, but did not apologise this time, though it
was eighteen days overdue, and said nothing when he took the receipt from
me. The following month the rent was brought by his mother; she only
brought me half, and promised to bring the remainder a week later. The
third month, I did not get a farthing, and the porter complained to me that
the lodgers in No. 23 were “not behaving like gentlemen.”
These were ominous symptoms.
Picture this scene. A sombre Petersburg morning looks in at the dingy
windows. By the stove, the granny is pouring out the children’s tea. Only
the eldest, Vassya, drinks out of a glass, for the others the tea is poured out
into saucers. Yegoritch is squatting on his heels before the stove, thrusting a
bit of iron into the fire. His head is heavy and his eyes are lustreless from
yesterday’s drinking-bout; he sighs and groans, trembles and coughs.
“He has quite put me off the right way, the devil,” he grumbles; “he
drinks himself and leads others into sin.”
Putohin sits in his room, on the bedstead from which the bedclothes and
the pillows have long ago disappeared, and with his hands straying in his
hair looks blankly at the floor at his feet. He is tattered, unkempt, and ill.
“Drink it up, make haste or you will be late for school,” the old woman
urges on Vassya, “and it’s time for me, too, to go and scrub the floors for
the Jews. . . .”
The old woman is the only one in the flat who does not lose heart. She
thinks of old times, and goes out to hard dirty work. On Fridays she scrubs

the floors for the Jews at the crockery shop, on Saturdays she goes out
washing for shopkeepers, and on Sundays she is racing about the town from
morning to night, trying to find ladies who will help her. Every day she has
work of some sort; she washes and scrubs, and is by turns a midwife, a
matchmaker, or a beggar. It is true she, too, is not disinclined to drown her
sorrows, but even when she has had a drop she does not forget her duties. In
Russia there are many such tough old women, and how much of its welfare
rests upon them!
When he has finished his tea, Vassya packs up his books in a satchel and
goes behind the stove; his greatcoat ought to be hanging there beside his
granny’s clothes. A minute later he comes out from behind the stove and
asks:
“Where is my greatcoat?”
The grandmother and the other children look for the greatcoat together,
they waste a long time in looking for it, but the greatcoat has utterly
vanished. Where is it? The grandmother and Vassya are pale and frightened.
Even Yegoritch is surprised. Putohin is the only one who does not move.
Though he is quick to notice anything irregular or disorderly, this time he
makes a pretence of hearing and seeing nothing. That is suspicious.
“He’s sold it for drink,” Yegoritch declares.
Putohin says nothing, so it is the truth. Vassya is overcome with horror.
His greatcoat, his splendid greatcoat, made of his dead mother’s cloth dress,
with a splendid calico lining, gone for drink at the tavern! And with the
greatcoat is gone too, of course, the blue pencil that lay in the pocket, and
the note-book with “Nota bene” in gold letters on it! There’s another pencil
with india-rubber stuck into the note-book, and, besides that, there are
transfer pictures lying in it.
Vassya would like to cry, but to cry is impossible. If his father, who has a
headache, heard crying he would shout, stamp with his feet, and begin
fighting, and after drinking he fights horribly. Granny would stand up for
Vassya, and his father would strike granny too; it would end in Yegoritch
getting mixed up in it too, clutching at his father and falling on the floor
with him. The two would roll on the floor, struggling together and gasping

with drunken animal fury, and granny would cry, the children would
scream, the neighbours would send for the porter. No, better not cry.
Because he mustn’t cry, or give vent to his indignation aloud, Vassya
moans, wrings his hands and moves his legs convulsively, or biting his
sleeve shakes it with his teeth as a dog does a hare. His eyes are frantic, and
his face is distorted with despair. Looking at him, his granny all at once
takes the shawl off her head, and she too makes queer movements with her
arms and legs in silence, with her eyes fixed on a point in the distance. And
at that moment I believe there is a definite certainty in the minds of the boy
and the old woman that their life is ruined, that there is no hope. . . .
Putohin hears no crying, but he can see it all from his room. When, half
an hour later, Vassya sets off to school, wrapped in his grandmother’s
shawl, he goes out with a face I will not undertake to describe, and walks
after him. He longs to call the boy, to comfort him, to beg his forgiveness,
to promise him on his word of honour, to call his dead mother to witness,
but instead of words, sobs break from him. It is a grey, cold morning. When
he reaches the town school Vassya untwists his granny’s shawl, and goes
into the school with nothing over his jacket for fear the boys should say he
looks like a woman. And when he gets home Putohin sobs, mutters some
incoherent words, bows down to the ground before his mother and
Yegoritch, and the locksmith’s table. Then, recovering himself a little, he
runs to me and begs me breathlessly, for God’s sake, to find him some job. I
give him hopes, of course.
“At last I am myself again,” he said. “It’s high time, indeed, to come to
my senses. I’ve made a beast of myself, and now it’s over.”
He is delighted and thanks me, while I, who have studied these gentry
thoroughly during the years I have owned the house, look at him, and am
tempted to say:
“It’s too late, dear fellow! You are a dead man already.”
From me, Putohin runs to the town school. There he paces up and down,
waiting till his boy comes out.
“I say, Vassya,” he says joyfully, when the boy at last comes out, “I have
just been promised a job. Wait a bit, I will buy you a splendid fur-coat. . . .

I’ll send you to the high school! Do you understand? To the high school! I’ll
make a gentleman of you! And I won’t drink any more. On my honour I
won’t.”
And he has intense faith in the bright future. But the evening comes on.
The old woman, coming back from the Jews with twenty kopecks,
exhausted and aching all over, sets to work to wash the children’s clothes.
Vassya is sitting doing a sum. Yegoritch is not working. Thanks to Putohin
he has got into the way of drinking, and is feeling at the moment an
overwhelming desire for drink. It’s hot and stuffy in the room. Steam rises
in clouds from the tub where the old woman is washing.
“Are we going?” Yegoritch asks surlily.
My lodger does not answer. After his excitement he feels insufferably
dreary. He struggles with the desire to drink, with acute depression and . . .
and, of course, depression gets the best of it. It is a familiar story.
Towards night, Yegoritch and Putohin go out, and in the morning Vassya
cannot find granny’s shawl.
That is the drama that took place in that flat. After selling the shawl for
drink, Putohin did not come home again. Where he disappeared to I don’t
know. After he disappeared, the old woman first got drunk, then took to her
bed. She was taken to the hospital, the younger children were fetched by
relations of some sort, and Vassya went into the wash-house here. In the
day-time he handed the irons, and at night fetched the beer. When he was
turned out of the wash-house he went into the service of one of the young
ladies, used to run about at night on errands of some sort, and began to be
spoken of as “a dangerous customer.”
What has happened to him since I don’t know.
And in this room here a street musician lived for ten years. When he died
they found twenty thousand roubles in his feather bed.

IN PASSION WEEK

“G
o along, they are ringing already; and mind, don’t be naughty
in church or God will punish you.”
My mother thrusts a few copper coins upon me, and,
instantly forgetting about me, runs into the kitchen with an iron that needs
reheating. I know well that after confession I shall not be allowed to eat or
drink, and so, before leaving the house, I force myself to eat a crust of white
bread, and to drink two glasses of water. It is quite spring in the street. The
roads are all covered with brownish slush, in which future paths are already
beginning to show; the roofs and side-walks are dry; the fresh young green
is piercing through the rotting grass of last year, under the fences. In the
gutters there is the merry gurgling and foaming of dirty water, in which the
sunbeams do not disdain to bathe. Chips, straws, the husks of sunflower
seeds are carried rapidly along in the water, whirling round and sticking in
the dirty foam. Where, where are those chips swimming to? It may well be
that from the gutter they may pass into the river, from the river into the sea,
and from the sea into the ocean. I try to imagine to myself that long terrible
journey, but my fancy stops short before reaching the sea.
A cabman drives by. He clicks to his horse, tugs at the reins, and does not
see that two street urchins are hanging on the back of his cab. I should like
to join them, but think of confession, and the street urchins begin to seem to
me great sinners.
“They will be asked on the day of judgment: ‘Why did you play pranks
and deceive the poor cabman?’” I think. “They will begin to defend
themselves, but evil spirits will seize them, and drag them to fire
everlasting. But if they obey their parents, and give the beggars a kopeck
each, or a roll, God will have pity on them, and will let them into Paradise.”
The church porch is dry and bathed in sunshine. There is not a soul in it. I
open the door irresolutely and go into the church. Here, in the twilight
which seems to me thick and gloomy as at no other time, I am overcome by
the sense of sinfulness and insignificance. What strikes the eye first of all is

a huge crucifix, and on one side of it the Mother of God, and on the other,
St. John the Divine. The candelabra and the candlestands are draped in
black mourning covers, the lamps glimmer dimly and faintly, and the sun
seems intentionally to pass by the church windows. The Mother of God and
the beloved disciple of Jesus Christ, depicted in profile, gaze in silence at
the insufferable agony and do not observe my presence; I feel that to them I
am alien, superfluous, unnoticed, that I can be no help to them by word or
deed, that I am a loathsome, dishonest boy, only capable of mischief,
rudeness, and tale-bearing. I think of all the people I know, and they all
seem to me petty, stupid, and wicked, and incapable of bringing one drop of
relief to that intolerable sorrow which I now behold.
The twilight of the church grows darker and more gloomy. And the
Mother of God and St. John look lonely and forlorn to me.
Prokofy Ignatitch, a veteran soldier, the church verger’s assistant, is
standing behind the candle cupboard. Raising his eyebrows and stroking his
beard he explains in a half-whisper to an old woman: “Matins will be in the
evening to-day, directly after vespers. And they will ring for the ‘hours’ to-
morrow between seven and eight. Do you understand? Between seven and
eight.”
Between the two broad columns on the right, where the chapel of Varvara
the Martyr begins, those who are going to confess stand beside the screen,
awaiting their turn. And Mitka is there too— a ragged boy with his head
hideously cropped, with ears that jut out, and little spiteful eyes. He is the
son of Nastasya the charwoman, and is a bully and a ruffian who snatches
apples from the women’s baskets, and has more than once carried off my
knuckle-bones. He looks at me angrily, and I fancy takes a spiteful pleasure
in the fact that he, not I, will first go behind the screen. I feel boiling over
with resentment, I try not to look at him, and, at the bottom of my heart, I
am vexed that this wretched boy’s sins will soon be forgiven.
In front of him stands a grandly dressed, beautiful lady, wearing a hat
with a white feather. She is noticeably agitated, is waiting in strained
suspense, and one of her cheeks is flushed red with excitement.
I wait for five minutes, for ten. . . . A well-dressed young man with a long
thin neck, and rubber goloshes, comes out from behind the screen. I begin

dreaming how, when I am grown up, I will buy goloshes exactly like them.
I certainly will! The lady shudders and goes behind the screen. It is her turn.
In the crack, between the two panels of the screen, I can see the lady go
up to the lectern and bow down to the ground, then get up, and, without
looking at the priest, bow her head in anticipation. The priest stands with
his back to the screen, and so I can only see his grey curly head, the chain
of the cross on his chest, and his broad back. His face is not visible.
Heaving a sigh, and not looking at the lady, he begins speaking rapidly,
shaking his head, alternately raising and dropping his whispering voice. The
lady listens meekly as though conscious of guilt, answers meekly, and looks
at the floor.
“In what way can she be sinful?” I wonder, looking reverently at her
gentle, beautiful face. “God forgive her sins, God send her happiness.” But
now the priest covers her head with the stole. “And I, unworthy priest . . .” I
hear his voice, “. . . by His power given unto me, do forgive and absolve
thee from all thy sins. . . .”
The lady bows down to the ground, kisses the cross, and comes back.
Both her cheeks are flushed now, but her face is calm and serene and
cheerful.
“She is happy now,” I think to myself, looking first at her and then at the
priest who had forgiven her sins. “But how happy the man must be who has
the right to forgive sins!”
Now it is Mitka’s turn, but a feeling of hatred for that young ruffian
suddenly boils up in me. I want to go behind the screen before him, I want
to be the first. Noticing my movement he hits me on the head with his
candle, I respond by doing the same, and, for half a minute, there is a sound
of panting, and, as it were, of someone breaking candles. . . . We are
separated. My foe goes timidly up to the lectern, and bows down to the
floor without bending his knees, but I do not see what happens after that;
the thought that my turn is coming after Mitka’s makes everything grow
blurred and confused before my eyes; Mitka’s protruding ears grow large,
and melt into his dark head, the priest sways, the floor seems to be
undulating. . . .

The priest’s voice is audible: “And I, unworthy priest . . .”
Now I too move behind the screen. I do not feel the ground under my
feet, it is as though I were walking on air. . . . I go up to the lectern which is
taller than I am. For a minute I have a glimpse of the indifferent, exhausted
face of the priest. But after that I see nothing but his sleeve with its blue
lining, the cross, and the edge of the lectern. I am conscious of the close
proximity of the priest, the smell of his cassock; I hear his stern voice, and
my cheek turned towards him begins to burn. . . . I am so troubled that I
miss a great deal that he says, but I answer his questions sincerely in an
unnatural voice, not my own. I think of the forlorn figures of the Holy
Mother and St. John the Divine, the crucifix, my mother, and I want to cry
and beg forgiveness.
“What is your name?” the priest asks me, covering my head with the soft
stole.
How light-hearted I am now, with joy in my soul!
I have no sins now, I am holy, I have the right to enter Paradise! I fancy
that I already smell like the cassock. I go from behind the screen to the
deacon to enter my name, and sniff at my sleeves. The dusk of the church
no longer seems gloomy, and I look indifferently, without malice, at Mitka.
“What is your name?” the deacon asks.
“Fedya.”
“And your name from your father?”
“I don’t know.”
“What is your papa’s name?”
“Ivan Petrovitch.”
“And your surname?”
I make no answer.
“How old are you?”

“Nearly nine.”
When I get home I go to bed quickly, that I may not see them eating
supper; and, shutting my eyes, dream of how fine it would be to endure
martyrdom at the hands of some Herod or Dioskorus, to live in the desert,
and, like St. Serafim, feed the bears, live in a cell, and eat nothing but holy
bread, give my property to the poor, go on a pilgrimage to Kiev. I hear them
laying the table in the dining-room—they are going to have supper, they
will eat salad, cabbage pies, fried and baked fish. How hungry I am! I
would consent to endure any martyrdom, to live in the desert without my
mother, to feed bears out of my own hands, if only I might first eat just one
cabbage pie!
“Lord, purify me a sinner,” I pray, covering my head over. “Guardian
angel, save me from the unclean spirit.”
The next day, Thursday, I wake up with my heart as pure and clean as a
fine spring day. I go gaily and boldly into the church, feeling that I am a
communicant, that I have a splendid and expensive shirt on, made out of a
silk dress left by my grandmother. In the church everything has an air of
joy, happiness, and spring. The faces of the Mother of God and St. John the
Divine are not so sorrowful as yesterday. The faces of the communicants
are radiant with hope, and it seems as though all the past is forgotten, all is
forgiven. Mitka, too, has combed his hair, and is dressed in his best. I look
gaily at his protruding ears, and to show that I have nothing against him, I
say:
“You look nice to-day, and if your hair did not stand up so, and you
weren’t so poorly dressed, everybody would think that your mother was not
a washerwoman but a lady. Come to me at Easter, we will play knuckle-
bones.”
Mitka looks at me mistrustfully, and shakes his fist at me on the sly.
And the lady I saw yesterday looks lovely. She is wearing a light blue
dress, and a big sparkling brooch in the shape of a horse-shoe. I admire her,
and think that, when I am grown-up, I will certainly marry a woman like
that, but remembering that getting married is shameful, I leave off thinking

about it, and go into the choir where the deacon is already reading the
“hours.”

WHITEBROW

A
HUNGRY she-wolf got up to go hunting. Her cubs, all three of
them, were sound asleep, huddled in a heap and keeping each other
warm. She licked them and went off.
It was already March, a month of spring, but at night the trees snapped
with the cold, as they do in December, and one could hardly put one’s
tongue out without its being nipped. The wolf-mother was in delicate health
and nervous; she started at the slightest sound, and kept hoping that no one
would hurt the little ones at home while she was away. The smell of the
tracks of men and horses, logs, piles of faggots, and the dark road with
horse-dung on it frightened her; it seemed to her that men were standing
behind the trees in the darkness, and that dogs were howling somewhere
beyond the forest.
She was no longer young and her scent had grown feebler, so that it
sometimes happened that she took the track of a fox for that of a dog, and
even at times lost her way, a thing that had never been in her youth. Owing
to the weakness of her health she no longer hunted calves and big sheep as
she had in old days, and kept her distance now from mares with colts; she
fed on nothing but carrion; fresh meat she tasted very rarely, only in the
spring when she would come upon a hare and take away her young, or
make her way into a peasant’s stall where there were lambs.
Some three miles from her lair there stood a winter hut on the posting
road. There lived the keeper Ignat, an old man of seventy, who was always
coughing and talking to himself; at night he was usually asleep, and by day
he wandered about the forest with a single-barrelled gun, whistling to the
hares. He must have worked among machinery in early days, for before he
stood still he always shouted to himself: “Stop the machine!” and before
going on: “Full speed!” He had a huge black dog of indeterminate breed,
called Arapka. When it ran too far ahead he used to shout to it: “Reverse
action!” Sometimes he used to sing, and as he did so staggered violently,

and often fell down (the wolf thought the wind blew him over), and
shouted: “Run off the rails!”
The wolf remembered that, in the summer and autumn, a ram and two
ewes were pasturing near the winter hut, and when she had run by not so
long ago she fancied that she had heard bleating in the stall. And now, as
she got near the place, she reflected that it was already March, and, by that
time, there would certainly be lambs in the stall. She was tormented by
hunger, she thought with what greediness she would eat a lamb, and these
thoughts made her teeth snap, and her eyes glitter in the darkness like two
sparks of light.
Ignat’s hut, his barn, cattle-stall, and well were surrounded by high
snowdrifts. All was still. Arapka was, most likely, asleep in the barn.
The wolf clambered over a snowdrift on to the stall, and began scratching
away the thatched roof with her paws and her nose. The straw was rotten
and decaying, so that the wolf almost fell through; all at once a smell of
warm steam, of manure, and of sheep’s milk floated straight to her nostrils.
Down below, a lamb, feeling the cold, bleated softly. Leaping through the
hole, the wolf fell with her four paws and chest on something soft and
warm, probably a sheep, and at the same moment, something in the stall
suddenly began whining, barking, and going off into a shrill little yap; the
sheep huddled against the wall, and the wolf, frightened, snatched the first
thing her teeth fastened on, and dashed away. . . .
She ran at her utmost speed, while Arapka, who by now had scented the
wolf, howled furiously, the frightened hens cackled, and Ignat, coming out
into the porch, shouted: “Full speed! Blow the whistle!”
And he whistled like a steam-engine, and then shouted: “Ho-ho-ho-ho!”
and all this noise was repeated by the forest echo. When, little by little, it all
died away, the wolf somewhat recovered herself, and began to notice that
the prey she held in her teeth and dragged along the snow was heavier and,
as it were, harder than lambs usually were at that season; and it smelt
somehow different, and uttered strange sounds. . . . The wolf stopped and
laid her burden on the snow, to rest and begin eating it, then all at once she
leapt back in disgust. It was not a lamb, but a black puppy, with a big head
and long legs, of a large breed, with a white patch on his brow, like

Arapka’s. Judging from his manners he was a simple, ignorant, yard-dog.
He licked his crushed and wounded back, and, as though nothing was the
matter, wagged his tail and barked at the wolf. She growled like a dog, and
ran away from him. He ran after her. She looked round and snapped her
teeth. He stopped in perplexity, and, probably deciding that she was playing
with him, craned his head in the direction he had come from, and went off
into a shrill, gleeful bark, as though inviting his mother Arapka to play with
him and the wolf.
It was already getting light, and when the wolf reached her home in the
thick aspen wood, each aspen tree could be seen distinctly, and the
woodcocks were already awake, and the beautiful male birds often flew up,
disturbed by the incautious gambols and barking of the puppy.
“Why does he run after me?” thought the wolf with annoyance. “I
suppose he wants me to eat him.”
She lived with her cubs in a shallow hole; three years before, a tall old
pine tree had been torn up by the roots in a violent storm, and the hole had
been formed by it. Now there were dead leaves and moss at the bottom, and
around it lay bones and bullocks’ horns, with which the little ones played.
They were by now awake, and all three of them, very much alike, were
standing in a row at the edge of their hole, looking at their returning mother,
and wagging their tails. Seeing them, the puppy stopped a little way off, and
stared at them for a very long time; seeing that they, too, were looking very
attentively at him, he began barking angrily, as at strangers.
By now it was daylight and the sun had risen, the snow sparkled all
around, but still the puppy stood a little way off and barked. The cubs
sucked their mother, pressing her thin belly with their paws, while she
gnawed a horse’s bone, dry and white; she was tormented by hunger, her
head ached from the dog’s barking, and she felt inclined to fall on the
uninvited guest and tear him to pieces.
At last the puppy was hoarse and exhausted; seeing they were not afraid
of him, and not even attending to him, he began somewhat timidly
approaching the cubs, alternately squatting down and bounding a few steps
forward. Now, by daylight, it was easy to have a good look at him. . . . His
white forehead was big, and on it was a hump such as is only seen on very

stupid dogs; he had little, blue, dingy-looking eyes, and the expression of
his whole face was extremely stupid. When he reached the cubs he
stretched out his broad paws, laid his head upon them, and began:
“Mnya, myna . . . nga—nga—nga . . . !”
The cubs did not understand what he meant, but they wagged their tails.
Then the puppy gave one of the cubs a smack on its big head with his paw.
The cub, too, gave him a smack on the head. The puppy stood sideways to
him, and looked at him askance, wagging his tail, then dashed off, and ran
round several times on the frozen snow. The cubs ran after him, he fell on
his back and kicked up his legs, and all three of them fell upon him,
squealing with delight, and began biting him, not to hurt but in play. The
crows sat on the high pine tree, and looked down on their struggle, and
were much troubled by it. They grew noisy and merry. The sun was hot, as
though it were spring; and the woodcocks, continually flitting through the
pine tree that had been blown down by the storm, looked as though made of
emerald in the brilliant sunshine.
As a rule, wolf-mothers train their children to hunt by giving them prey
to play with; and now watching the cubs chasing the puppy over the frozen
snow and struggling with him, the mother thought:
“Let them learn.”
When they had played long enough, the cubs went into the hole and lay
down to sleep. The puppy howled a little from hunger, then he, too,
stretched out in the sunshine. And when they woke up they began playing
again.
All day long, and in the evening, the wolf-mother was thinking how the
lamb had bleated in the cattle-shed the night before, and how it had smelt of
sheep’s milk, and she kept snapping her teeth from hunger, and never left
off greedily gnawing the old bone, pretending to herself that it was the
lamb. The cubs sucked their mother, and the puppy, who was hungry, ran
round them and sniffed at the snow.
“I’ll eat him . . .” the mother-wolf decided.

She went up to him, and he licked her nose and yapped at her, thinking
that she wanted to play with him. In the past she had eaten dogs, but the dog
smelt very doggy, and in the delicate state of her health she could not
endure the smell; she felt disgusted and walked away. . . .
Towards night it grew cold. The puppy felt depressed and went home.
When the wolf-cubs were fast asleep, their mother went out hunting
again. As on the previous night she was alarmed at every sound, and she
was frightened by the stumps, the logs, the dark juniper bushes, which stood
out singly, and in the distance were like human beings. She ran on the ice-
covered snow, keeping away from the road. . . . All at once she caught a
glimpse of something dark, far away on the road. She strained her eyes and
ears: yes, something really was walking on in front, she could even hear the
regular thud of footsteps. Surely not a badger? Cautiously holding her
breath, and keeping always to one side, she overtook the dark patch, looked
round, and recognised it. It was the puppy with the white brow, going with a
slow, lingering step homewards.
“If only he doesn’t hinder me again,” thought the wolf, and ran quickly
on ahead.
But the homestead was by now near. Again she clambered on to the
cattle-shed by the snowdrift. The gap she had made yesterday had been
already mended with straw, and two new rafters stretched across the roof.
The wolf began rapidly working with her legs and nose, looking round to
see whether the puppy were coming, but the smell of the warm steam and
manure had hardly reached her nose before she heard a gleeful burst of
barking behind her. It was the puppy. He leapt up to the wolf on the roof,
then into the hole, and, feeling himself at home in the warmth, recognising
his sheep, he barked louder than ever. . . . Arapka woke up in the barn, and,
scenting a wolf, howled, the hens began cackling, and by the time Ignat
appeared in the porch with his single-barrelled gun the frightened wolf was
already far away.
“Fuite!” whistled Ignat. “Fuite! Full steam ahead!”
He pulled the trigger—the gun missed fire; he pulled the trigger again—
again it missed fire; he tried a third time—and a great blaze of flame flew

out of the barrel and there was a deafening boom, boom. It kicked him
violently on the shoulder, and, taking his gun in one hand and his axe in the
other, he went to see what the noise was about.
A little later he went back to the hut.
“What was it?” a pilgrim, who was staying the night at the hut and had
been awakened by the noise, asked in a husky voice.
“It’s all right,” answered Ignat. “Nothing of consequence. Our
Whitebrow has taken to sleeping with the sheep in the warm. Only he hasn’t
the sense to go in at the door, but always tries to wriggle in by the roof. The
other night he tore a hole in the roof and went off on the spree, the rascal,
and now he has come back and scratched away the roof again.”
“Stupid dog.”
“Yes, there is a spring snapped in his brain. I do detest fools,” sighed
Ignat, clambering on to the stove. “Come, man of God, it’s early yet to get
up. Let us sleep full steam! . . .”
In the morning he called Whitebrow, smacked him hard about the ears,
and then showing him a stick, kept repeating to him:
“Go in at the door! Go in at the door! Go in at the door!”

KASHTANKA
(A Story)

I

|Misbehaviour
A YOUNG dog, a reddish mongrel, between a dachshund and a “yard-
dog,” very like a fox in face, was running up and down the pavement
looking uneasily from side to side. From time to time she stopped and,
whining and lifting first one chilled paw and then another, tried to make up
her mind how it could have happened that she was lost.
She remembered very well how she had passed the day, and how, in the
end, she had found herself on this unfamiliar pavement.
The day had begun by her master Luka Alexandritch’s putting on his hat,
taking something wooden under his arm wrapped up in a red handkerchief,
and calling: “Kashtanka, come along!”
Hearing her name the mongrel had come out from under the work-table,
where she slept on the shavings, stretched herself voluptuously and run
after her master. The people Luka Alexandritch worked for lived a very
long way off, so that, before he could get to any one of them, the carpenter
had several times to step into a tavern to fortify himself. Kashtanka
remembered that on the way she had behaved extremely improperly. In her
delight that she was being taken for a walk she jumped about, dashed
barking after the trains, ran into yards, and chased other dogs. The carpenter
was continually losing sight of her, stopping, and angrily shouting at her.
Once he had even, with an expression of fury in his face, taken her fox-like
ear in his fist, smacked her, and said emphatically: “Pla-a-ague take you,
you pest!”
After having left the work where it had been bespoken, Luka
Alexandritch went into his sister’s and there had something to eat and drink;

from his sister’s he had gone to see a bookbinder he knew; from the
bookbinder’s to a tavern, from the tavern to another crony’s, and so on. In
short, by the time Kashtanka found herself on the unfamiliar pavement, it
was getting dusk, and the carpenter was as drunk as a cobbler. He was
waving his arms and, breathing heavily, muttered:
“In sin my mother bore me! Ah, sins, sins! Here now we are walking
along the street and looking at the street lamps, but when we die, we shall
burn in a fiery Gehenna. . . .”
Or he fell into a good-natured tone, called Kashtanka to him, and said to
her: “You, Kashtanka, are an insect of a creature, and nothing else. Beside a
man, you are much the same as a joiner beside a cabinet-maker. . . .”
While he talked to her in that way, there was suddenly a burst of music.
Kashtanka looked round and saw that a regiment of soldiers was coming
straight towards her. Unable to endure the music, which unhinged her
nerves, she turned round and round and wailed. To her great surprise, the
carpenter, instead of being frightened, whining and barking, gave a broad
grin, drew himself up to attention, and saluted with all his five fingers.
Seeing that her master did not protest, Kashtanka whined louder than ever,
and dashed across the road to the opposite pavement.
When she recovered herself, the band was not playing and the regiment
was no longer there. She ran across the road to the spot where she had left
her master, but alas, the carpenter was no longer there. She dashed forward,
then back again and ran across the road once more, but the carpenter
seemed to have vanished into the earth. Kashtanka began sniffing the
pavement, hoping to find her master by the scent of his tracks, but some
wretch had been that way just before in new rubber goloshes, and now all
delicate scents were mixed with an acute stench of india-rubber, so that it
was impossible to make out anything.
Kashtanka ran up and down and did not find her master, and meanwhile
it had got dark. The street lamps were lighted on both sides of the road, and
lights appeared in the windows. Big, fluffy snowflakes were falling and
painting white the pavement, the horses’ backs and the cabmen’s caps, and
the darker the evening grew the whiter were all these objects. Unknown
customers kept walking incessantly to and fro, obstructing her field of

vision and shoving against her with their feet. (All mankind Kashtanka
divided into two uneven parts: masters and customers; between them there
was an essential difference: the first had the right to beat her, and the second
she had the right to nip by the calves of their legs.) These customers were
hurrying off somewhere and paid no attention to her.
When it got quite dark, Kashtanka was overcome by despair and horror.
She huddled up in an entrance and began whining piteously. The long day’s
journeying with Luka Alexandritch had exhausted her, her ears and her
paws were freezing, and, what was more, she was terribly hungry. Only
twice in the whole day had she tasted a morsel: she had eaten a little paste
at the bookbinder’s, and in one of the taverns she had found a sausage skin
on the floor, near the counter —that was all. If she had been a human being
she would have certainly thought: “No, it is impossible to live like this! I
must shoot myself!”

II

|A Mysterious Stranger
But she thought of nothing, she simply whined. When her head and back
were entirely plastered over with the soft feathery snow, and she had sunk
into a painful doze of exhaustion, all at once the door of the entrance
clicked, creaked, and struck her on the side. She jumped up. A man
belonging to the class of customers came out. As Kashtanka whined and got
under his feet, he could not help noticing her. He bent down to her and
asked:
“Doggy, where do you come from? Have I hurt you? O, poor thing, poor
thing. . . . Come, don’t be cross, don’t be cross. . . . I am sorry.”
Kashtanka looked at the stranger through the snow-flakes that hung on
her eyelashes, and saw before her a short, fat little man, with a plump,
shaven face wearing a top hat and a fur coat that swung open.
“What are you whining for?” he went on, knocking the snow off her back
with his fingers. “Where is your master? I suppose you are lost? Ah, poor
doggy! What are we going to do now?”

Catching in the stranger’s voice a warm, cordial note, Kashtanka licked
his hand, and whined still more pitifully.
“Oh, you nice funny thing!” said the stranger. “A regular fox! Well,
there’s nothing for it, you must come along with me! Perhaps you will be of
use for something. . . . Well!”
He clicked with his lips, and made a sign to Kashtanka with his hand,
which could only mean one thing: “Come along!” Kashtanka went.
Not more than half an hour later she was sitting on the floor in a big, light
room, and, leaning her head against her side, was looking with tenderness
and curiosity at the stranger who was sitting at the table, dining. He ate and
threw pieces to her. . . . At first he gave her bread and the green rind of
cheese, then a piece of meat, half a pie and chicken bones, while through
hunger she ate so quickly that she had not time to distinguish the taste, and
the more she ate the more acute was the feeling of hunger.
“Your masters don’t feed you properly,” said the stranger, seeing with
what ferocious greediness she swallowed the morsels without munching
them. “And how thin you are! Nothing but skin and bones. . . .”
Kashtanka ate a great deal and yet did not satisfy her hunger, but was
simply stupefied with eating. After dinner she lay down in the middle of the
room, stretched her legs and, conscious of an agreeable weariness all over
her body, wagged her tail. While her new master, lounging in an easy-chair,
smoked a cigar, she wagged her tail and considered the question, whether it
was better at the stranger’s or at the carpenter’s. The stranger’s
surroundings were poor and ugly; besides the easy-chairs, the sofa, the
lamps and the rugs, there was nothing, and the room seemed empty. At the
carpenter’s the whole place was stuffed full of things: he had a table, a
bench, a heap of shavings, planes, chisels, saws, a cage with a goldfinch, a
basin. . . . The stranger’s room smelt of nothing, while there was always a
thick fog in the carpenter’s room, and a glorious smell of glue, varnish, and
shavings. On the other hand, the stranger had one great superiority—he
gave her a great deal to eat and, to do him full justice, when Kashtanka sat
facing the table and looking wistfully at him, he did not once hit or kick her,
and did not once shout: “Go away, damned brute!”

When he had finished his cigar her new master went out, and a minute
later came back holding a little mattress in his hands.
“Hey, you dog, come here!” he said, laying the mattress in the corner
near the dog. “Lie down here, go to sleep!”
Then he put out the lamp and went away. Kashtanka lay down on the
mattress and shut her eyes; the sound of a bark rose from the street, and she
would have liked to answer it, but all at once she was overcome with
unexpected melancholy. She thought of Luka Alexandritch, of his son
Fedyushka, and her snug little place under the bench. . . . She remembered
on the long winter evenings, when the carpenter was planing or reading the
paper aloud, Fedyushka usually played with her. . . . He used to pull her
from under the bench by her hind legs, and play such tricks with her, that
she saw green before her eyes, and ached in every joint. He would make her
walk on her hind legs, use her as a bell, that is, shake her violently by the
tail so that she squealed and barked, and give her tobacco to sniff . . . . The
following trick was particularly agonising: Fedyushka would tie a piece of
meat to a thread and give it to Kashtanka, and then, when she had
swallowed it he would, with a loud laugh, pull it back again from her
stomach, and the more lurid were her memories the more loudly and
miserably Kashtanka whined.
But soon exhaustion and warmth prevailed over melancholy. She began
to fall asleep. Dogs ran by in her imagination: among them a shaggy old
poodle, whom she had seen that day in the street with a white patch on his
eye and tufts of wool by his nose. Fedyushka ran after the poodle with a
chisel in his hand, then all at once he too was covered with shaggy wool,
and began merrily barking beside Kashtanka. Kashtanka and he
goodnaturedly sniffed each other’s noses and merrily ran down the street. . .
.

III

|New and Very Agreeable Acquaintances
When Kashtanka woke up it was already light, and a sound rose from the
street, such as only comes in the day-time. There was not a soul in the

room. Kashtanka stretched, yawned and, cross and ill-humoured, walked
about the room. She sniffed the corners and the furniture, looked into the
passage and found nothing of interest there. Besides the door that led into
the passage there was another door. After thinking a little Kashtanka
scratched on it with both paws, opened it, and went into the adjoining room.
Here on the bed, covered with a rug, a customer, in whom she recognised
the stranger of yesterday, lay asleep.
“Rrrrr . . .” she growled, but recollecting yesterday’s dinner, wagged her
tail, and began sniffing.
She sniffed the stranger’s clothes and boots and thought they smelt of
horses. In the bedroom was another door, also closed. Kashtanka scratched
at the door, leaned her chest against it, opened it, and was instantly aware of
a strange and very suspicious smell. Foreseeing an unpleasant encounter,
growling and looking about her, Kashtanka walked into a little room with a
dirty wall-paper and drew back in alarm. She saw something surprising and
terrible. A grey gander came straight towards her, hissing, with its neck
bowed down to the floor and its wings outspread. Not far from him, on a
little mattress, lay a white tom-cat; seeing Kashtanka, he jumped up, arched
his back, wagged his tail with his hair standing on end and he, too, hissed at
her. The dog was frightened in earnest, but not caring to betray her alarm,
began barking loudly and dashed at the cat . . . . The cat arched his back
more than ever, mewed and gave Kashtanka a smack on the head with his
paw. Kashtanka jumped back, squatted on all four paws, and craning her
nose towards the cat, went off into loud, shrill barks; meanwhile the gander
came up behind and gave her a painful peck in the back. Kashtanka leapt up
and dashed at the gander.
“What’s this?” They heard a loud angry voice, and the stranger came into
the room in his dressing-gown, with a cigar between his teeth. “What’s the
meaning of this? To your places!”
He went up to the cat, flicked him on his arched back, and said:
“Fyodor Timofeyitch, what’s the meaning of this? Have you got up a
fight? Ah, you old rascal! Lie down!”
And turning to the gander he shouted: “Ivan Ivanitch, go home!”

The cat obediently lay down on his mattress and closed his eyes. Judging
from the expression of his face and whiskers, he was displeased with
himself for having lost his temper and got into a fight.
Kashtanka began whining resentfully, while the gander craned his neck
and began saying something rapidly, excitedly, distinctly, but quite
unintelligibly.
“All right, all right,” said his master, yawning. “You must live in peace
and friendship.” He stroked Kashtanka and went on: “And you, redhair,
don’t be frightened. . . . They are capital company, they won’t annoy you.
Stay, what are we to call you? You can’t go on without a name, my dear.”
The stranger thought a moment and said: “I tell you what . . . you shall be
Auntie. . . . Do you understand? Auntie!”
And repeating the word “Auntie” several times he went out. Kashtanka
sat down and began watching. The cat sat motionless on his little mattress,
and pretended to be asleep. The gander, craning his neck and stamping,
went on talking rapidly and excitedly about something. Apparently it was a
very clever gander; after every long tirade, he always stepped back with an
air of wonder and made a show of being highly delighted with his own
speech. . . . Listening to him and answering “R-r-r-r,” Kashtanka fell to
sniffing the corners. In one of the corners she found a little trough in which
she saw some soaked peas and a sop of rye crusts. She tried the peas; they
were not nice; she tried the sopped bread and began eating it. The gander
was not at all offended that the strange dog was eating his food, but, on the
contrary, talked even more excitedly, and to show his confidence went to
the trough and ate a few peas himself.

IV

|Marvels on a Hurdle
A little while afterwards the stranger came in again, and brought a
strange thing with him like a hurdle, or like the figure II. On the crosspiece
on the top of this roughly made wooden frame hung a bell, and a pistol was
also tied to it; there were strings from the tongue of the bell, and the trigger
of the pistol. The stranger put the frame in the middle of the room, spent a

long time tying and untying something, then looked at the gander and said:
“Ivan Ivanitch, if you please!”
The gander went up to him and stood in an expectant attitude.
“Now then,” said the stranger, “let us begin at the very beginning. First of
all, bow and make a curtsey! Look sharp!”
Ivan Ivanitch craned his neck, nodded in all directions, and scraped with
his foot.
“Right. Bravo. . . . Now die!”
The gander lay on his back and stuck his legs in the air. After performing
a few more similar, unimportant tricks, the stranger suddenly clutched at his
head, and assuming an expression of horror, shouted: “Help! Fire! We are
burning!”
Ivan Ivanitch ran to the frame, took the string in his beak, and set the bell
ringing.
The stranger was very much pleased. He stroked the gander’s neck and
said:
“Bravo, Ivan Ivanitch! Now pretend that you are a jeweller selling gold
and diamonds. Imagine now that you go to your shop and find thieves there.
What would you do in that case?”
The gander took the other string in his beak and pulled it, and at once a
deafening report was heard. Kashtanka was highly delighted with the bell
ringing, and the shot threw her into so much ecstasy that she ran round the
frame barking.
“Auntie, lie down!” cried the stranger; “be quiet!”
Ivan Ivanitch’s task was not ended with the shooting. For a whole hour
afterwards the stranger drove the gander round him on a cord, cracking a
whip, and the gander had to jump over barriers and through hoops; he had
to rear, that is, sit on his tail and wave his legs in the air. Kashtanka could
not take her eyes off Ivan Ivanitch, wriggled with delight, and several times

fell to running after him with shrill barks. After exhausting the gander and
himself, the stranger wiped the sweat from his brow and cried:
“Marya, fetch Havronya Ivanovna here!”
A minute later there was the sound of grunting. Kashtanka growled,
assumed a very valiant air, and to be on the safe side, went nearer to the
stranger. The door opened, an old woman looked in, and, saying something,
led in a black and very ugly sow. Paying no attention to Kashtanka’s
growls, the sow lifted up her little hoof and grunted good-humouredly.
Apparently it was very agreeable to her to see her master, the cat, and Ivan
Ivanitch. When she went up to the cat and gave him a light tap on the
stomach with her hoof, and then made some remark to the gander, a great
deal of good-nature was expressed in her movements, and the quivering of
her tail. Kashtanka realised at once that to growl and bark at such a
character was useless.
The master took away the frame and cried. “Fyodor Timofeyitch, if you
please!”
The cat stretched lazily, and reluctantly, as though performing a duty,
went up to the sow.
“Come, let us begin with the Egyptian pyramid,” began the master.
He spent a long time explaining something, then gave the word of
command, “One . . . two . . . three!” At the word “three” Ivan Ivanitch
flapped his wings and jumped on to the sow’s back. . . . When, balancing
himself with his wings and his neck, he got a firm foothold on the bristly
back, Fyodor Timofeyitch listlessly and lazily, with manifest disdain, and
with an air of scorning his art and not caring a pin for it, climbed on to the
sow’s back, then reluctantly mounted on to the gander, and stood on his
hind legs. The result was what the stranger called the Egyptian pyramid.
Kashtanka yapped with delight, but at that moment the old cat yawned and,
losing his balance, rolled off the gander. Ivan Ivanitch lurched and fell off
too. The stranger shouted, waved his hands, and began explaining
something again. After spending an hour over the pyramid their
indefatigable master proceeded to teach Ivan Ivanitch to ride on the cat,
then began to teach the cat to smoke, and so on.

The lesson ended in the stranger’s wiping the sweat off his brow and
going away. Fyodor Timofeyitch gave a disdainful sniff, lay down on his
mattress, and closed his eyes; Ivan Ivanitch went to the trough, and the pig
was taken away by the old woman. Thanks to the number of her new
impressions, Kashranka hardly noticed how the day passed, and in the
evening she was installed with her mattress in the room with the dirty wall-
paper, and spent the night in the society of Fyodor Timofeyitch and the
gander.

V

|Talent! Talent!
A month passed.
Kashtanka had grown used to having a nice dinner every evening, and
being called Auntie. She had grown used to the stranger too, and to her new
companions. Life was comfortable and easy.
Every day began in the same way. As a rule, Ivan Ivanitch was the first to
wake up, and at once went up to Auntie or to the cat, twisting his neck, and
beginning to talk excitedly and persuasively, but, as before, unintelligibly.
Sometimes he would crane up his head in the air and utter a long
monologue. At first Kashtanka thought he talked so much because he was
very clever, but after a little time had passed, she lost all her respect for
him; when he went up to her with his long speeches she no longer wagged
her tail, but treated him as a tiresome chatterbox, who would not let anyone
sleep and, without the slightest ceremony, answered him with “R-r-r-r!”
Fyodor Timofeyitch was a gentleman of a very different sort. When he
woke he did not utter a sound, did not stir, and did not even open his eyes.
He would have been glad not to wake, for, as was evident, he was not
greatly in love with life. Nothing interested him, he showed an apathetic
and nonchalant attitude to everything, he disdained everything and, even
while eating his delicious dinner, sniffed contemptuously.
When she woke Kashtanka began walking about the room and sniffing
the corners. She and the cat were the only ones allowed to go all over the
flat; the gander had not the right to cross the threshold of the room with the

dirty wall-paper, and Hayronya Ivanovna lived somewhere in a little
outhouse in the yard and made her appearance only during the lessons.
Their master got up late, and immediately after drinking his tea began
teaching them their tricks. Every day the frame, the whip, and the hoop
were brought in, and every day almost the same performance took place.
The lesson lasted three or four hours, so that sometimes Fyodor
Timofeyitch was so tired that he staggered about like a drunken man, and
Ivan Ivanitch opened his beak and breathed heavily, while their master
became red in the face and could not mop the sweat from his brow fast
enough.
The lesson and the dinner made the day very interesting, but the evenings
were tedious. As a rule, their master went off somewhere in the evening and
took the cat and the gander with him. Left alone, Auntie lay down on her
little mattress and began to feel sad.
Melancholy crept on her imperceptibly and took possession of her by
degrees, as darkness does of a room. It began with the dog’s losing every
inclination to bark, to eat, to run about the rooms, and even to look at
things; then vague figures, half dogs, half human beings, with countenances
attractive, pleasant, but incomprehensible, would appear in her imagination;
when they came Auntie wagged her tail, and it seemed to her that she had
somewhere, at some time, seen them and loved them. And as she dropped
asleep, she always felt that those figures smelt of glue, shavings, and
varnish.
When she had grown quite used to her new life, and from a thin, long
mongrel, had changed into a sleek, well-groomed dog, her master looked at
her one day before the lesson and said:
“It’s high time, Auntie, to get to business. You have kicked up your heels
in idleness long enough. I want to make an artiste of you. . . . Do you want
to be an artiste?”
And he began teaching her various accomplishments. At the first lesson
he taught her to stand and walk on her hind legs, which she liked extremely.
At the second lesson she had to jump on her hind legs and catch some
sugar, which her teacher held high above her head. After that, in the
following lessons she danced, ran tied to a cord, howled to music, rang the

bell, and fired the pistol, and in a month could successfully replace Fyodor
Timofeyitch in the “Egyptian Pyramid.” She learned very eagerly and was
pleased with her own success; running with her tongue out on the cord,
leaping through the hoop, and riding on old Fyodor Timofeyitch, gave her
the greatest enjoyment. She accompanied every successful trick with a
shrill, delighted bark, while her teacher wondered, was also delighted, and
rubbed his hands.
“It’s talent! It’s talent!” he said. “Unquestionable talent! You will
certainly be successful!”
And Auntie grew so used to the word talent, that every time her master
pronounced it, she jumped up as if it had been her name.

VI

|An Uneasy Night
Auntie had a doggy dream that a porter ran after her with a broom, and
she woke up in a fright.
It was quite dark and very stuffy in the room. The fleas were biting.
Auntie had never been afraid of darkness before, but now, for some reason,
she felt frightened and inclined to bark.
Her master heaved a loud sigh in the next room, then soon afterwards the
sow grunted in her sty, and then all was still again. When one thinks about
eating one’s heart grows lighter, and Auntie began thinking how that day
she had stolen the leg of a chicken from Fyodor Timofeyitch, and had
hidden it in the drawing-room, between the cupboard and the wall, where
there were a great many spiders’ webs and a great deal of dust. Would it not
be as well to go now and look whether the chicken leg were still there or
not? It was very possible that her master had found it and eaten it. But she
must not go out of the room before morning, that was the rule. Auntie shut
her eyes to go to sleep as quickly as possible, for she knew by experience
that the sooner you go to sleep the sooner the morning comes. But all at
once there was a strange scream not far from her which made her start and
jump up on all four legs. It was Ivan Ivanitch, and his cry was not babbling
and persuasive as usual, but a wild, shrill, unnatural scream like the squeak

of a door opening. Unable to distinguish anything in the darkness, and not
understanding what was wrong, Auntie felt still more frightened and
growled: “R-r-r-r. . . .”
Some time passed, as long as it takes to eat a good bone; the scream was
not repeated. Little by little Auntie’s uneasiness passed off and she began to
doze. She dreamed of two big black dogs with tufts of last year’s coat left
on their haunches and sides; they were eating out of a big basin some swill,
from which there came a white steam and a most appetising smell; from
time to time they looked round at Auntie, showed their teeth and growled:
“We are not going to give you any!” But a peasant in a fur-coat ran out of
the house and drove them away with a whip; then Auntie went up to the
basin and began eating, but as soon as the peasant went out of the gate, the
two black dogs rushed at her growling, and all at once there was again a
shrill scream.
“K-gee! K-gee-gee!” cried Ivan Ivanitch.
Auntie woke, jumped up and, without leaving her mattress, went off into
a yelping bark. It seemed to her that it was not Ivan Ivanitch that was
screaming but someone else, and for some reason the sow again grunted in
her sty.
Then there was the sound of shuffling slippers, and the master came into
the room in his dressing-gown with a candle in his hand. The flickering
light danced over the dirty wall-paper and the ceiling, and chased away the
darkness. Auntie saw that there was no stranger in the room. Ivan Ivanitch
was sitting on the floor and was not asleep. His wings were spread out and
his beak was open, and altogether he looked as though he were very tired
and thirsty. Old Fyodor Timofeyitch was not asleep either. He, too, must
have been awakened by the scream.
“Ivan Ivanitch, what’s the matter with you?” the master asked the gander.
“Why are you screaming? Are you ill?”
The gander did not answer. The master touched him on the neck, stroked
his back, and said: “You are a queer chap. You don’t sleep yourself, and you
don’t let other people. . . .”

When the master went out, carrying the candle with him, there was
darkness again. Auntie felt frightened. The gander did not scream, but again
she fancied that there was some stranger in the room. What was most
dreadful was that this stranger could not be bitten, as he was unseen and had
no shape. And for some reason she thought that something very bad would
certainly happen that night. Fyodor Timofeyitch was uneasy too.
Auntie could hear him shifting on his mattress, yawning and shaking his
head.
Somewhere in the street there was a knocking at a gate and the sow
grunted in her sty. Auntie began to whine, stretched out her front-paws and
laid her head down upon them. She fancied that in the knocking at the gate,
in the grunting of the sow, who was for some reason awake, in the darkness
and the stillness, there was something as miserable and dreadful as in Ivan
Ivanitch’s scream. Everything was in agitation and anxiety, but why? Who
was the stranger who could not be seen? Then two dim flashes of green
gleamed for a minute near Auntie. It was Fyodor Timofeyitch, for the first
time of their whole acquaintance coming up to her. What did he want?
Auntie licked his paw, and not asking why he had come, howled softly and
on various notes.
“K-gee!” cried Ivan Ivanitch, “K-g-ee!”
The door opened again and the master came in with a candle.
The gander was sitting in the same attitude as before, with his beak open,
and his wings spread out, his eyes were closed.
“Ivan Ivanitch!” his master called him.
The gander did not stir. His master sat down before him on the floor,
looked at him in silence for a minute, and said:
“Ivan Ivanitch, what is it? Are you dying? Oh, I remember now, I
remember!” he cried out, and clutched at his head. “I know why it is! It’s
because the horse stepped on you to-day! My God! My God!”
Auntie did not understand what her master was saying, but she saw from
his face that he, too, was expecting something dreadful. She stretched out

her head towards the dark window, where it seemed to her some stranger
was looking in, and howled.
“He is dying, Auntie!” said her master, and wrung his hands. “Yes, yes,
he is dying! Death has come into your room. What are we to do?”
Pale and agitated, the master went back into his room, sighing and
shaking his head. Auntie was afraid to remain in the darkness, and followed
her master into his bedroom. He sat down on the bed and repeated several
times: “My God, what’s to be done?”
Auntie walked about round his feet, and not understanding why she was
wretched and why they were all so uneasy, and trying to understand,
watched every movement he made. Fyodor Timofeyitch, who rarely left his
little mattress, came into the master’s bedroom too, and began rubbing
himself against his feet. He shook his head as though he wanted to shake
painful thoughts out of it, and kept peeping suspiciously under the bed.
The master took a saucer, poured some water from his wash-stand into it,
and went to the gander again.
“Drink, Ivan Ivanitch!” he said tenderly, setting the saucer before him;
“drink, darling.”
But Ivan Ivanitch did not stir and did not open his eyes. His master bent
his head down to the saucer and dipped his beak into the water, but the
gander did not drink, he spread his wings wider than ever, and his head
remained lying in the saucer.
“No, there’s nothing to be done now,” sighed his master. “It’s all over.
Ivan Ivanitch is gone!”
And shining drops, such as one sees on the window-pane when it rains,
trickled down his cheeks. Not understanding what was the matter, Auntie
and Fyodor Timofeyitch snuggled up to him and looked with horror at the
gander.
“Poor Ivan Ivanitch!” said the master, sighing mournfully. “And I was
dreaming I would take you in the spring into the country, and would walk

with you on the green grass. Dear creature, my good comrade, you are no
more! How shall I do without you now?”
It seemed to Auntie that the same thing would happen to her, that is, that
she too, there was no knowing why, would close her eyes, stretch out her
paws, open her mouth, and everyone would look at her with horror.
Apparently the same reflections were passing through the brain of Fyodor
Timofeyitch. Never before had the old cat been so morose and gloomy.
It began to get light, and the unseen stranger who had so frightened
Auntie was no longer in the room. When it was quite daylight, the porter
came in, took the gander, and carried him away. And soon afterwards the
old woman came in and took away the trough.
Auntie went into the drawing-room and looked behind the cupboard: her
master had not eaten the chicken bone, it was lying in its place among the
dust and spiders’ webs. But Auntie felt sad and dreary and wanted to cry.
She did not even sniff at the bone, but went under the sofa, sat down there,
and began softly whining in a thin voice.

VII

|An Unsuccessful Début
One fine evening the master came into the room with the dirty wall-
paper, and, rubbing his hands, said:
“Well. . . .”
He meant to say something more, but went away without saying it.
Auntie, who during her lessons had thoroughly studied his face and
intonations, divined that he was agitated, anxious and, she fancied, angry.
Soon afterwards he came back and said:
“To-day I shall take with me Auntie and F’yodor Timofeyitch. To-day,
Auntie, you will take the place of poor Ivan Ivanitch in the ‘Egyptian
Pyramid.’ Goodness knows how it will be! Nothing is ready, nothing has
been thoroughly studied, there have been few rehearsals! We shall be
disgraced, we shall come to grief!”

Then he went out again, and a minute later, came back in his fur-coat and
top hat. Going up to the cat he took him by the fore-paws and put him
inside the front of his coat, while Fyodor Timofeyitch appeared completely
unconcerned, and did not even trouble to open his eyes. To him it was
apparently a matter of absolute indifference whether he remained lying
down, or were lifted up by his paws, whether he rested on his mattress or
under his master’s fur-coat.
“Come along, Auntie,” said her master.
Wagging her tail, and understanding nothing, Auntie followed him. A
minute later she was sitting in a sledge by her master’s feet and heard him,
shrinking with cold and anxiety, mutter to himself:
“We shall be disgraced! We shall come to grief!”
The sledge stopped at a big strange-looking house, like a soup-ladle
turned upside down. The long entrance to this house, with its three glass
doors, was lighted up with a dozen brilliant lamps. The doors opened with a
resounding noise and, like jaws, swallowed up the people who were moving
to and fro at the entrance. There were a great many people, horses, too,
often ran up to the entrance, but no dogs were to be seen.
The master took Auntie in his arms and thrust her in his coat, where
Fyodor Timofeyirch already was. It was dark and stuffy there, but warm.
For an instant two green sparks flashed at her; it was the cat, who opened
his eyes on being disturbed by his neighbour’s cold rough paws. Auntie
licked his ear, and, trying to settle herself as comfortably as possible, moved
uneasily, crushed him under her cold paws, and casually poked her head out
from under the coat, but at once growled angrily, and tucked it in again. It
seemed to her that she had seen a huge, badly lighted room, full of
monsters; from behind screens and gratings, which stretched on both sides
of the room, horrible faces looked out: faces of horses with horns, with long
ears, and one fat, huge countenance with a tail instead of a nose, and two
long gnawed bones sticking out of his mouth.
The cat mewed huskily under Auntie’s paws, but at that moment the coat
was flung open, the master said, “Hop!” and Fyodor Timofeyitch and
Auntie jumped to the floor. They were now in a little room with grey plank

walls; there was no other furniture in it but a little table with a looking-glass
on it, a stool, and some rags hung about the corners, and instead of a lamp
or candles, there was a bright fan-shaped light attached to a little pipe fixed
in the wall. Fyodor Timofeyitch licked his coat which had been ruffled by
Auntie, went under the stool, and lay down. Their master, still agitated and
rubbing his hands, began undressing. . . . He undressed as he usually did at
home when he was preparing to get under the rug, that is, took off
everything but his underlinen, then he sat down on the stool, and, looking in
the looking-glass, began playing the most surprising tricks with himself. . . .
First of all he put on his head a wig, with a parting and with two tufts of
hair standing up like horns, then he smeared his face thickly with something
white, and over the white colour painted his eyebrows, his moustaches, and
red on his cheeks. His antics did not end with that. After smearing his face
and neck, he began putting himself into an extraordinary and incongruous
costume, such as Auntie had never seen before, either in houses or in the
street. Imagine very full trousers, made of chintz covered with big flowers,
such as is used in working-class houses for curtains and covering furniture,
trousers which buttoned up just under his armpits. One trouser leg was
made of brown chintz, the other of bright yellow. Almost lost in these, he
then put on a short chintz jacket, with a big scalloped collar, and a gold star
on the back, stockings of different colours, and green slippers.
Everything seemed going round before Auntie’s eyes and in her soul. The
white-faced, sack-like figure smelt like her master, its voice, too, was the
familiar master’s voice, but there were moments when Auntie was tortured
by doubts, and then she was ready to run away from the parti-coloured
figure and to bark. The new place, the fan-shaped light, the smell, the
transformation that had taken place in her master—all this aroused in her a
vague dread and a foreboding that she would certainly meet with some
horror such as the big face with the tail instead of a nose. And then,
somewhere through the wall, some hateful band was playing, and from time
to time she heard an incomprehensible roar. Only one thing reassured her—
that was the imperturbability of Fyodor Timofeyitch. He dozed with the
utmost tranquillity under the stool, and did not open his eyes even when it
was moved.
A man in a dress coat and a white waistcoat peeped into the little room
and said:

“Miss Arabella has just gone on. After her—you.”
Their master made no answer. He drew a small box from under the table,
sat down, and waited. From his lips and his hands it could be seen that he
was agitated, and Auntie could hear how his breathing came in gasps.
“Monsieur George, come on!” someone shouted behind the door. Their
master got up and crossed himself three times, then took the cat from under
the stool and put him in the box.
“Come, Auntie,” he said softly.
Auntie, who could make nothing out of it, went up to his hands, he kissed
her on the head, and put her beside Fyodor Timofeyitch. Then followed
darkness. . . . Auntie trampled on the cat, scratched at the walls of the box,
and was so frightened that she could not utter a sound, while the box
swayed and quivered, as though it were on the waves. . . .
“Here we are again!” her master shouted aloud: “here we are again!”
Auntie felt that after that shout the box struck against something hard and
left off swaying. There was a loud deep roar, someone was being slapped,
and that someone, probably the monster with the tail instead of a nose,
roared and laughed so loud that the locks of the box trembled. In response
to the roar, there came a shrill, squeaky laugh from her master, such as he
never laughed at home.
“Ha!” he shouted, trying to shout above the roar. “Honoured friends! I
have only just come from the station! My granny’s kicked the bucket and
left me a fortune! There is something very heavy in the box, it must be gold,
ha! ha! I bet there’s a million here! We’ll open it and look. . . .”
The lock of the box clicked. The bright light dazzled Auntie’s eyes, she
jumped out of the box, and, deafened by the roar, ran quickly round her
master, and broke into a shrill bark.
“Ha!” exclaimed her master. “Uncle Fyodor Timofeyitch! Beloved Aunt,
dear relations! The devil take you!”
He fell on his stomach on the sand, seized the cat and Auntie, and fell to
embracing them. While he held Auntie tight in his arms, she glanced round

into the world into which fate had brought her and, impressed by its
immensity, was for a minute dumbfounded with amazement and delight,
then jumped out of her master’s arms, and to express the intensity of her
emotions, whirled round and round on one spot like a top. This new world
was big and full of bright light; wherever she looked, on all sides, from
floor to ceiling there were faces, faces, faces, and nothing else.
“Auntie, I beg you to sit down!” shouted her master. Remembering what
that meant, Auntie jumped on to a chair, and sat down. She looked at her
master. His eyes looked at her gravely and kindly as always, but his face,
especially his mouth and teeth, were made grotesque by a broad immovable
grin. He laughed, skipped about, twitched his shoulders, and made a show
of being very merry in the presence of the thousands of faces. Auntie
believed in his merriment, all at once felt all over her that those thousands
of faces were looking at her, lifted up her fox-like head, and howled
joyously.
“You sit there, Auntie,” her master said to her, “while Uncle and I will
dance the Kamarinsky.”
Fyodor Timofeyitch stood looking about him indifferently, waiting to be
made to do something silly. He danced listlessly, carelessly, sullenly, and
one could see from his movements, his tail and his ears, that he had a
profound contempt for the crowd, the bright light, his master and himself.
When he had performed his allotted task, he gave a yawn and sat down.
“Now, Auntie!” said her master, “we’ll have first a song, and then a
dance, shall we?”
He took a pipe out of his pocket, and began playing. Auntie, who could
not endure music, began moving uneasily in her chair and howled. A roar of
applause rose from all sides. Her master bowed, and when all was still
again, went on playing. . . . Just as he took one very high note, someone
high up among the audience uttered a loud exclamation:
“Auntie!” cried a child’s voice, “why it’s Kashtanka!”
“Kashtanka it is!” declared a cracked drunken tenor. “Kashtanka! Strike
me dead, Fedyushka, it is Kashtanka. Kashtanka! here!”

Someone in the gallery gave a whistle, and two voices, one a boy’s and
one a man’s, called loudly: “Kashtanka! Kashtanka!”
Auntie started, and looked where the shouting came from. Two faces, one
hairy, drunken and grinning, the other chubby, rosy-cheeked and frightened-
looking, dazed her eyes as the bright light had dazed them before. . . . She
remembered, fell off the chair, struggled on the sand, then jumped up, and
with a delighted yap dashed towards those faces. There was a deafening
roar, interspersed with whistles and a shrill childish shout: “Kashtanka!
Kashtanka!”
Auntie leaped over the barrier, then across someone’s shoulders. She
found herself in a box: to get into the next tier she had to leap over a high
wall. Auntie jumped, but did not jump high enough, and slipped back down
the wall. Then she was passed from hand to hand, licked hands and faces,
kept mounting higher and higher, and at last got into the gallery. . . .

——

Half an hour afterwards, Kashtanka was in the street, following the
people who smelt of glue and varnish. Luka Alexandritch staggered and
instinctively, taught by experience, tried to keep as far from the gutter as
possible.
“In sin my mother bore me,” he muttered. “And you, Kashtanka, are a
thing of little understanding. Beside a man, you are like a joiner beside a
cabinetmaker.”
Fedyushka walked beside him, wearing his father’s cap. Kashtanka
looked at their backs, and it seemed to her that she had been following them
for ages, and was glad that there had not been a break for a minute in her
life.
She remembered the little room with dirty wall-paper, the gander, Fyodor
Timofeyitch, the delicious dinners, the lessons, the circus, but all that
seemed to her now like a long, tangled, oppressive dream.

A CHAMELEON

T
HE police superintendent Otchumyelov is walking across the market
square wearing a new overcoat and carrying a parcel under his arm.
A red-haired policeman strides after him with a sieve full of
confiscated gooseberries in his hands. There is silence all around. Not a soul
in the square. . . . The open doors of the shops and taverns look out upon
God’s world disconsolately, like hungry mouths; there is not even a beggar
near them.
“So you bite, you damned brute?” Otchumyelov hears suddenly. “Lads,
don’t let him go! Biting is prohibited nowadays! Hold him! ah . . . ah!”
There is the sound of a dog yelping. Otchumyelov looks in the direction
of the sound and sees a dog, hopping on three legs and looking about her,
run out of Pitchugin’s timber-yard. A man in a starched cotton shirt, with his
waistcoat unbuttoned, is chasing her. He runs after her, and throwing his
body forward falls down and seizes the dog by her hind legs. Once more
there is a yelping and a shout of “Don’t let go!” Sleepy countenances are
protruded from the shops, and soon a crowd, which seems to have sprung
out of the earth, is gathered round the timber-yard.
“It looks like a row, your honour . . .” says the policeman.
Otchumyelov makes a half turn to the left and strides towards the crowd.
He sees the aforementioned man in the unbuttoned waistcoat standing
close by the gate of the timber-yard, holding his right hand in the air and
displaying a bleeding finger to the crowd. On his half-drunken face there is
plainly written: “I’ll pay you out, you rogue!” and indeed the very finger
has the look of a flag of victory. In this man Otchumyelov recognises
Hryukin, the goldsmith. The culprit who has caused the sensation, a white
borzoy puppy with a sharp muzzle and a yellow patch on her back, is sitting
on the ground with her fore-paws outstretched in the middle of the crowd,
trembling all over. There is an expression of misery and terror in her tearful
eyes.

“What’s it all about?” Otchumyelov inquires, pushing his way through
the crowd. “What are you here for? Why are you waving your finger . . . ?
Who was it shouted?”
“I was walking along here, not interfering with anyone, your honour,”
Hryukin begins, coughing into his fist. “I was talking about firewood to
Mitry Mitritch, when this low brute for no rhyme or reason bit my finger. . .
. You must excuse me, I am a working man. . . . Mine is fine work. I must
have damages, for I shan’t be able to use this finger for a week, may be. . . .
It’s not even the law, your honour, that one should put up with it from a
beast. . . . If everyone is going to be bitten, life won’t be worth living. . . .”
“H’m. Very good,” says Otchumyelov sternly, coughing and raising his
eyebrows. “Very good. Whose dog is it? I won’t let this pass! I’ll teach
them to let their dogs run all over the place! It’s time these gentry were
looked after, if they won’t obey the regulations! When he’s fined, the
blackguard, I’ll teach him what it means to keep dogs and such stray cattle!
I’ll give him a lesson! . . . Yeldyrin,” cries the superintendent, addressing
the policeman, “find out whose dog this is and draw up a report! And the
dog must be strangled. Without delay! It’s sure to be mad. . . . Whose dog is
it, I ask?”
“I fancy it’s General Zhigalov’s,” says someone in the crowd.
“General Zhigalov’s, h’m. . . . Help me off with my coat, Yeldyrin . . . it’s
frightfully hot! It must be a sign of rain. . . . There’s one thing I can’t make
out, how it came to bite you?” Otchumyelov turns to Hryukin. “Surely it
couldn’t reach your finger. It’s a little dog, and you are a great hulking
fellow! You must have scratched your finger with a nail, and then the idea
struck you to get damages for it. We all know . . . your sort! I know you
devils!”
“He put a cigarette in her face, your honour, for a joke, and she had the
sense to snap at him. . . . He is a nonsensical fellow, your honour!”
“That’s a lie, Squinteye! You didn’t see, so why tell lies about it? His
honour is a wise gentleman, and will see who is telling lies and who is
telling the truth, as in God’s sight. . . . And if I am lying let the court decide.

It’s written in the law. . . . We are all equal nowadays. My own brother is in
the gendarmes . . . let me tell you. . . .”
“Don’t argue!”
“No, that’s not the General’s dog,” says the policeman, with profound
conviction, “the General hasn’t got one like that. His are mostly setters.”
“Do you know that for a fact?”
“Yes, your honour.”
“I know it, too. The General has valuable dogs, thoroughbred, and this is
goodness knows what! No coat, no shape. . . . A low creature. And to keep a
dog like that! . . . where’s the sense of it. If a dog like that were to turn up in
Petersburg or Moscow, do you know what would happen? They would not
worry about the law, they would strangle it in a twinkling! You’ve been
injured, Hryukin, and we can’t let the matter drop. . . . We must give them a
lesson! It is high time . . . . !”
“Yet maybe it is the General’s,” says the policeman, thinking aloud. “It’s
not written on its face. . . . I saw one like it the other day in his yard.”
“It is the General’s, that’s certain!” says a voice in the crowd.
“H’m, help me on with my overcoat, Yeldyrin, my lad . . . the wind’s
getting up. . . . I am cold. . . . You take it to the General’s, and inquire there.
Say I found it and sent it. And tell them not to let it out into the street. . . . It
may be a valuable dog, and if every swine goes sticking a cigar in its
mouth, it will soon be ruined. A dog is a delicate animal. . . . And you put
your hand down, you blockhead. It’s no use your displaying your fool of a
finger. It’s your own fault. . . .”
“Here comes the General’s cook, ask him. . . Hi, Prohor! Come here, my
dear man! Look at this dog. . . . Is it one of yours?”
“What an idea! We have never had one like that!”
“There’s no need to waste time asking,” says Otchumyelov. “It’s a stray
dog! There’s no need to waste time talking about it. . . . Since he says it’s a
stray dog, a stray dog it is. . . . It must be destroyed, that’s all about it.”

“It is not our dog,” Prohor goes on. “It belongs to the General’s brother,
who arrived the other day. Our master does not care for hounds. But his
honour is fond of them. . . .”
“You don’t say his Excellency’s brother is here? Vladimir Ivanitch?”
inquires Otchumyelov, and his whole face beams with an ecstatic smile.
“‘Well, I never! And I didn’t know! Has he come on a visit?
“Yes.”
“Well, I never. . . . He couldn’t stay away from his brother. . . . And there
I didn’t know! So this is his honour’s dog? Delighted to hear it. . . . Take it.
It’s not a bad pup. . . . A lively creature. . . . Snapped at this fellow’s finger!
Ha-ha-ha. . . . Come, why are you shivering? Rrr . . . Rrrr. . . . The rogue’s
angry . . . a nice little pup.”
Prohor calls the dog, and walks away from the timber-yard with her. The
crowd laughs at Hryukin.
“I’ll make you smart yet!” Otchumyelov threatens him, and wrapping
himself in his greatcoat, goes on his way across the square.

THE DEPENDENTS

M
IHAIL PETROVITCH ZOTOV, a decrepit and solitary old man
of seventy, belonging to the artisan class, was awakened by the
cold and the aching in his old limbs. It was dark in his room, but
the little lamp before the ikon was no longer burning. Zotov raised the
curtain and looked out of the window. The clouds that shrouded the sky
were beginning to show white here and there, and the air was becoming
transparent, so it must have been nearly five, not more.
Zotov cleared his throat, coughed, and shrinking from the cold, got out of
bed. In accordance with years of habit, he stood for a long time before the
ikon, saying his prayers. He repeated “Our Father,” “Hail Mary,” the Creed,
and mentioned a long string of names. To whom those names belonged he
had forgotten years ago, and he only repeated them from habit. From habit,
too, he swept his room and entry, and set his fat little four-legged copper
samovar. If Zotov had not had these habits he would not have known how
to occupy his old age.
The little samovar slowly began to get hot, and all at once, unexpectedly,
broke into a tremulous bass hum.
“Oh, you’ve started humming!” grumbled Zotov. “Hum away then, and
bad luck to you!”
At that point the old man appropriately recalled that, in the preceding
night, he had dreamed of a stove, and to dream of a stove is a sign of
sorrow.
Dreams and omens were the only things left that could rouse him to
reflection; and on this occasion he plunged with a special zest into the
considerations of the questions: What the samovar was humming for? and
what sorrow was foretold by the stove? The dream seemed to come true
from the first. Zotov rinsed out his teapot and was about to make his tea,
when he found there was not one teaspoonful left in the box.

“What an existence!” he grumbled, rolling crumbs of black bread round
in his mouth. “It’s a dog’s life. No tea! And it isn’t as though I were a
simple peasant: I’m an artisan and a house-owner. The disgrace!”
Grumbling and talking to himself, Zotov put on his overcoat, which was
like a crinoline, and, thrusting his feet into huge clumsy golosh-boots (made
in the year 1867 by a bootmaker called Prohoritch), went out into the yard.
The air was grey, cold, and sullenly still. The big yard, full of tufts of
burdock and strewn with yellow leaves, was faintly silvered with autumn
frost. Not a breath of wind nor a sound. The old man sat down on the steps
of his slanting porch, and at once there happened what happened regularly
every morning: his dog Lyska, a big, mangy, decrepit-looking, white yard-
dog, with black patches, came up to him with its right eye shut. Lyska came
up timidly, wriggling in a frightened way, as though her paws were not
touching the earth but a hot stove, and the whole of her wretched figure was
expressive of abjectness. Zotov pretended not to notice her, but when she
faintly wagged her tail, and, wriggling as before, licked his golosh, he
stamped his foot angrily.
“Be off! The plague take you!” he cried. “Con-found-ed bea-east!”
Lyska moved aside, sat down, and fixed her solitary eye upon her master.
“You devils!” he went on. “You are the last straw on my back, you
Herods.”
And he looked with hatred at his shed with its crooked, overgrown roof;
there from the door of the shed a big horse’s head was looking out at him.
Probably flattered by its master’s attention, the head moved, pushed
forward, and there emerged from the shed the whole horse, as decrepit as
Lyska, as timid and as crushed, with spindly legs, grey hair, a pinched
stomach, and a bony spine. He came out of the shed and stood still,
hesitating as though overcome with embarrassment.
“Plague take you,” Zotov went on. “Shall I ever see the last of you, you
jail-bird Pharaohs! . . . I wager you want your breakfast!” he jeered,
twisting his angry face into a contemptuous smile. “By all means, this
minute! A priceless steed like you must have your fill of the best oats! Pray
begin! This minute! And I have something to give to the magnificent,

valuable dog! If a precious dog like you does not care for bread, you can
have meat.”
Zotov grumbled for half an hour, growing more and more irritated. In the
end, unable to control the anger that boiled up in him, he jumped up,
stamped with his goloshes, and growled out to be heard all over the yard:
“I am not obliged to feed you, you loafers! I am not some millionaire for
you to eat me out of house and home! I have nothing to eat myself, you
cursed carcases, the cholera take you! I get no pleasure or profit out of you;
nothing but trouble and ruin, Why don’t you give up the ghost? Are you
such personages that even death won’t take you? You can live, damn you!
but I don’t want to feed you! I have had enough of you! I don’t want to!”
Zotov grew wrathful and indignant, and the horse and the dog listened.
Whether these two dependents understood that they were being reproached
for living at his expense, I don’t know, but their stomachs looked more
pinched than ever, and their whole figures shrivelled up, grew gloomier and
more abject than before. . . . Their submissive air exasperated Zotov more
than ever.
“Get away!” he shouted, overcome by a sort of inspiration. “Out of my
house! Don’t let me set eyes on you again! I am not obliged to keep all sorts
of rubbish in my yard! Get away!”
The old man moved with little hurried steps to the gate, opened it, and
picking up a stick from the ground, began driving out his dependents. The
horse shook its head, moved its shoulder-blades, and limped to the gate; the
dog followed him. Both of them went out into the street, and, after walking
some twenty paces, stopped at the fence.
“I’ll give it you!” Zotov threatened them.
When he had driven out his dependents he felt calmer, and began
sweeping the yard. From time to time he peeped out into the street: the
horse and the dog were standing like posts by the fence, looking dejectedly
towards the gate.
“Try how you can do without me,” muttered the old man, feeling as
though a weight of anger were being lifted from his heart. “Let somebody

else look after you now! I am stingy and ill-tempered. . . . It’s nasty living
with me, so you try living with other people . . . . Yes. . . .”
After enjoying the crushed expression of his dependents, and grumbling
to his heart’s content, Zotov went out of the yard, and, assuming a ferocious
air, shouted:
“Well, why are you standing there? Whom are you waiting for? Standing
right across the middle of the road and preventing the public from passing!
Go into the yard!”
The horse and the dog with drooping heads and a guilty air turned
towards the gate. Lyska, probably feeling she did not deserve forgiveness,
whined piteously.
“Stay you can, but as for food, you’ll get nothing from me! You may die,
for all I care!”
Meanwhile the sun began to break through the morning mist; its slanting
rays gilded over the autumn frost. There was a sound of steps and voices.
Zotov put back the broom in its place, and went out of the yard to see his
crony and neighbour, Mark Ivanitch, who kept a little general shop. On
reaching his friend’s shop, he sat down on a folding-stool, sighed sedately,
stroked his beard, and began about the weather. From the weather the
friends passed to the new deacon, from the deacon to the choristers; and the
conversation lengthened out. They did not notice as they talked how time
was passing, and when the shop-boy brought in a big teapot of boiling
water, and the friends proceeded to drink tea, the time flew as quickly as a
bird. Zotov got warm and felt more cheerful.
“I have a favour to ask of you, Mark Ivanitch,” he began, after the sixth
glass, drumming on the counter with his fingers. “If you would just be so
kind as to give me a gallon of oats again to-day. . . .”
From behind the big tea-chest behind which Mark Ivanitch was sitting
came the sound of a deep sigh.
“Do be so good,” Zotov went on; “never mind tea—don’t give it me to-
day, but let me have some oats. . . . I am ashamed to ask you, I have
wearied you with my poverty, but the horse is hungry.”

“I can give it you,” sighed the friend—“why not? But why the devil do
you keep those carcases?—tfoo!—Tell me that, please. It would be all right
if it were a useful horse, but—tfoo!— one is ashamed to look at it. . . . And
the dog’s nothing but a skeleton! Why the devil do you keep them?”
“What am I to do with them?”
“You know. Take them to Ignat the slaughterer—that is all there is to do.
They ought to have been there long ago. It’s the proper place for them.”
“To be sure, that is so! . . . I dare say! . . .”
“You live like a beggar and keep animals,” the friend went on. “I don’t
grudge the oats. . . . God bless you. But as to the future, brother . . . I can’t
afford to give regularly every day! There is no end to your poverty! One
gives and gives, and one doesn’t know when there will be an end to it all.”
The friend sighed and stroked his red face.
“If you were dead that would settle it,” he said. “You go on living, and
you don’t know what for. . . . Yes, indeed! But if it is not the Lord’s will for
you to die, you had better go somewhere into an almshouse or a refuge.”
“What for? I have relations. I have a great-niece. . . .”
And Zotov began telling at great length of his great-niece Glasha,
daughter of his niece Katerina, who lived somewhere on a farm.
“She is bound to keep me!” he said. “My house will be left to her, so let
her keep me; I’ll go to her. It’s Glasha, you know . . . Katya’s daughter; and
Katya, you know, was my brother Panteley’s stepdaughter. . . . You
understand? The house will come to her . . . . Let her keep me!”
“To be sure; rather than live, as you do, a beggar, I should have gone to
her long ago.”
“I will go! As God’s above, I will go. It’s her duty.”
When an hour later the old friends were drinking a glass of vodka, Zotov
stood in the middle of the shop and said with enthusiasm:

“I have been meaning to go to her for a long time; I will go this very
day.”
“To be sure; rather than hanging about and dying of hunger, you ought to
have gone to the farm long ago.”
“I’ll go at once! When I get there, I shall say: Take my house, but keep
me and treat me with respect. It’s your duty! If you don’t care to, then there
is neither my house, nor my blessing for you! Good-bye, Ivanitch!”
Zotov drank another glass, and, inspired by the new idea, hurried home.
The vodka had upset him and his head was reeling, but instead of lying
down, he put all his clothes together in a bundle, said a prayer, took his
stick, and went out. Muttering and tapping on the stones with his stick, he
walked the whole length of the street without looking back, and found
himself in the open country. It was eight or nine miles to the farm. He
walked along the dry road, looked at the town herd lazily munching the
yellow grass, and pondered on the abrupt change in his life which he had
only just brought about so resolutely. He thought, too, about his dependents.
When he went out of the house, he had not locked the gate, and so had left
them free to go whither they would.
He had not gone a mile into the country when he heard steps behind him.
He looked round and angrily clasped his hands. The horse and Lyska, with
their heads drooping and their tails between their legs, were quietly walking
after him.
“Go back!” he waved to them.
They stopped, looked at one another, looked at him. He went on, they
followed him. Then he stopped and began ruminating. It was impossible to
go to his great-niece Glasha, whom he hardly knew, with these creatures; he
did not want to go back and shut them up, and, indeed, he could not shut
them up, because the gate was no use.
“To die of hunger in the shed,” thought Zotov. “Hadn’t I really better take
them to Ignat?”
Ignat’s hut stood on the town pasture-ground, a hundred paces from the
flagstaff. Though he had not quite made up his mind, and did not know

what to do, he turned towards it. His head was giddy and there was a
darkness before his eyes. . . .
He remembers little of what happened in the slaughterer’s yard. He has a
memory of a sickening, heavy smell of hides and the savoury steam of the
cabbage-soup Ignat was sipping when he went in to him. As in a dream he
saw Ignat, who made him wait two hours, slowly preparing something,
changing his clothes, talking to some women about corrosive sublimate; he
remembered the horse was put into a stand, after which there was the sound
of two dull thuds, one of a blow on the skull, the other of the fall of a heavy
body. When Lyska, seeing the death of her friend, flew at Ignat, barking
shrilly, there was the sound of a third blow that cut short the bark abruptly.
Further, Zotov remembers that in his drunken foolishness, seeing the two
corpses, he went up to the stand, and put his own forehead ready for a blow.
And all that day his eyes were dimmed by a haze, and he could not even
see his own fingers.

WHO WAS TO BLAME?

A
s my uncle Pyotr Demyanitch, a lean, bilious collegiate councillor,
exceedingly like a stale smoked fish with a stick through it, was
getting ready to go to the high school, where he taught Latin, he
noticed that the corner of his grammar was nibbled by mice.
“I say, Praskovya,” he said, going into the kitchen and addressing the
cook, “how is it we have got mice here? Upon my word! yesterday my top
hat was nibbled, to-day they have disfigured my Latin grammar . . . . At this
rate they will soon begin eating my clothes!
“What can I do? I did not bring them in!” answered Praskovya.
“We must do something! You had better get a cat, hadn’t you?”
“I’ve got a cat, but what good is it?”
And Praskovya pointed to the corner where a white kitten, thin as a
match, lay curled up asleep beside a broom.
“Why is it no good?” asked Pyotr Demyanitch.
“It’s young yet, and foolish. It’s not two months old yet.”
“H’m. . . . Then it must be trained. It had much better be learning instead
of lying there.”
Saying this, Pyotr Demyanitch sighed with a careworn air and went out
of the kitchen. The kitten raised his head, looked lazily after him, and shut
his eyes again.
The kitten lay awake thinking. Of what? Unacquainted with real life,
having no store of accumulated impressions, his mental processes could
only be instinctive, and he could but picture life in accordance with the
conceptions that he had inherited, together with his flesh and blood, from
his ancestors, the tigers (vide Darwin). His thoughts were of the nature of
day-dreams. His feline imagination pictured something like the Arabian

desert, over which flitted shadows closely resembling Praskovya, the stove,
the broom. In the midst of the shadows there suddenly appeared a saucer of
milk; the saucer began to grow paws, it began moving and displayed a
tendency to run; the kitten made a bound, and with a thrill of blood-thirsty
sensuality thrust his claws into it.
When the saucer had vanished into obscurity a piece of meat appeared,
dropped by Praskovya; the meat ran away with a cowardly squeak, but the
kitten made a bound and got his claws into it. . . . Everything that rose
before the imagination of the young dreamer had for its starting-point leaps,
claws, and teeth. . . The soul of another is darkness, and a cat’s soul more
than most, but how near the visions just described are to the truth may be
seen from the following fact: under the influence of his day-dreams the
kitten suddenly leaped up, looked with flashing eyes at Praskovya, ruffled
up his coat, and making one bound, thrust his claws into the cook’s skirt.
Obviously he was born a mouse catcher, a worthy son of his bloodthirsty
ancestors. Fate had destined him to be the terror of cellars, store-rooms and
cornbins, and had it not been for education . . . we will not anticipate,
however.
On his way home from the high school, Pyotr Demyanitch went into a
general shop and bought a mouse-trap for fifteen kopecks. At dinner he
fixed a little bit of his rissole on the hook, and set the trap under the sofa,
where there were heaps of the pupils’ old exercise-books, which Praskovya
used for various domestic purposes. At six o’clock in the evening, when the
worthy Latin master was sitting at the table correcting his pupils’ exercises,
there was a sudden “klop!” so loud that my uncle started and dropped his
pen. He went at once to the sofa and took out the trap. A neat little mouse,
the size of a thimble, was sniffing the wires and trembling with fear.
“Aha,” muttered Pyotr Demyanitch, and he looked at the mouse
malignantly, as though he were about to give him a bad mark. “You are cau
—aught, wretch! Wait a bit! I’ll teach you to eat my grammar!”
Having gloated over his victim, Poytr Demyanitch put the mouse-trap on
the floor and called:
“Praskovya, there’s a mouse caught! Bring the kitten here!

“I’m coming,” responded Praskovya, and a minute later she came in with
the descendant of tigers in her arms.
“Capital!” said Pyotr Demyanitch, rubbing his hands. “We will give him
a lesson. . . . Put him down opposite the mouse-trap . . . that’s it. . . . Let him
sniff it and look at it. . . . That’s it. . . .”
The kitten looked wonderingly at my uncle, at his arm-chair, sniffed the
mouse-trap in bewilderment, then, frightened probably by the glaring
lamplight and the attention directed to him, made a dash and ran in terror to
the door.
“Stop!” shouted my uncle, seizing him by the tail, “stop, you rascal! He’s
afraid of a mouse, the idiot! Look! It’s a mouse! Look! Well? Look, I tell
you!”
Pyotr Demyanitch took the kitten by the scruff of the neck and pushed
him with his nose against the mouse-trap.
“Look, you carrion! Take him and hold him, Praskovya. . . . Hold him
opposite the door of the trap. . . . When I let the mouse out, you let him go
instantly. . . . Do you hear? . . . Instantly let go! Now!”
My uncle assumed a mysterious expression and lifted the door of the
trap. . . . The mouse came out irresolutely, sniffed the air, and flew like an
arrow under the sofa. . . . The kitten on being released darted under the table
with his tail in the air.
“It has got away! got away!” cried Pyotr Demyanitch, looking ferocious.
“Where is he, the scoundrel? Under the table? You wait. . .”
My uncle dragged the kitten from under the table and shook him in the
air.
“Wretched little beast,” he muttered, smacking him on the ear. “Take that,
take that! Will you shirk it next time? Wr-r-r-etch. . . .”
Next day Praskovya heard again the summons.
“Praskovya, there is a mouse caught! Bring the kitten here!”

After the outrage of the previous day the kitten had taken refuge under
the stove and had not come out all night. When Praskovya pulled him out
and, carrying him by the scruff of the neck into the study, set him down
before the mouse-trap, he trembled all over and mewed piteously.
“Come, let him feel at home first,” Pyotr Demyanitch commanded. “Let
him look and sniff. Look and learn! Stop, plague take you!” he shouted,
noticing that the kitten was backing away from the mouse-trap. “I’ll thrash
you! Hold him by the ear! That’s it. . . . Well now, set him down before the
trap. . . .”
My uncle slowly lifted the door of the trap . . . the mouse whisked under
the very nose of the kitten, flung itself against Praskovya’s hand and fled
under the cupboard; the kitten, feeling himself free, took a desperate bound
and retreated under the sofa.
“He’s let another mouse go!” bawled Pyotr Demyanitch. “Do you call
that a cat? Nasty little beast! Thrash him! thrash him by the mousetrap!”
When the third mouse had been caught, the kitten shivered all over at the
sight of the mousetrap and its inmate, and scratched Praskovya’s hand. . . .
After the fourth mouse my uncle flew into a rage, kicked the kitten, and
said:
“Take the nasty thing away! Get rid of it! Chuck it away! It’s no earthly
use!”
A year passed, the thin, frail kitten had turned into a solid and sagacious
tom-cat. One day he was on his way by the back yards to an amatory
interview. He had just reached his destination when he suddenly heard a
rustle, and thereupon caught sight of a mouse which ran from a water-
trough towards a stable; my hero’s hair stood on end, he arched his back,
hissed, and trembling all over, took to ignominious flight.
Alas! sometimes I feel myself in the ludicrous position of the flying cat.
Like the kitten, I had in my day the honour of being taught Latin by my
uncle. Now, whenever I chance to see some work of classical antiquity,
instead of being moved to eager enthusiasm, I begin recalling, ut
consecutivum, the irregular verbs, the sallow grey face of my uncle, the

ablative absolute. . . . I turn pale, my hair stands up on my head, and, like
the cat, I take to ignominious flight.

THE BIRD MARKET

T
HERE is a small square near the monastery of the Holy Birth which
is called Trubnoy, or simply Truboy; there is a market there on
Sundays. Hundreds of sheepskins, wadded coats, fur caps, and
chimneypot hats swarm there, like crabs in a sieve. There is the sound of the
twitter of birds in all sorts of keys, recalling the spring. If the sun is shining,
and there are no clouds in the sky, the singing of the birds and the smell of
hay make a more vivid impression, and this reminder of spring sets one
thinking and carries one’s fancy far, far away. Along one side of the square
there stands a string of waggons. The waggons are loaded, not with hay, not
with cabbages, nor with beans, but with goldfinches, siskins, larks,
blackbirds and thrushes, bluetits, bullfinches. All of them are hopping about
in rough, home-made cages, twittering and looking with envy at the free
sparrows. The goldfinches cost five kopecks, the siskins are rather more
expensive, while the value of the other birds is quite indeterminate.
“How much is a lark?”
The seller himself does not know the value of a lark. He scratches his
head and asks whatever comes into it, a rouble, or three kopecks, according
to the purchaser. There are expensive birds too. A faded old blackbird, with
most of its feathers plucked out of its tail, sits on a dirty perch. He is
dignified, grave, and motionless as a retired general. He has waved his claw
in resignation to his captivity long ago, and looks at the blue sky with
indifference. Probably, owing to this indifference, he is considered a
sagacious bird. He is not to be bought for less than forty kopecks.
Schoolboys, workmen, young men in stylish greatcoats, and bird-fanciers in
incredibly shabby caps, in ragged trousers that are turned up at the ankles,
and look as though they had been gnawed by mice, crowd round the birds,
splashing through the mud. The young people and the workmen are sold
hens for cocks, young birds for old ones. . . . They know very little about
birds. But there is no deceiving the bird-fancier. He sees and understands
his bird from a distance.

“There is no relying on that bird,” a fancier will say, looking into a
siskin’s beak, and counting the feathers on its tail. “He sings now, it’s true,
but what of that? I sing in company too. No, my boy, shout, sing to me
without company; sing in solitude, if you can. . . . You give me that one
yonder that sits and holds its tongue! Give me the quiet one! That one says
nothing, so he thinks the more. . . .”
Among the waggons of birds there are some full of other live creatures.
Here you see hares, rabbits, hedgehogs, guinea-pigs, polecats. A hare sits
sorrowfully nibbling the straw. The guinea-pigs shiver with cold, while the
hedgehogs look out with curiosity from under their prickles at the public.
“I have read somewhere,” says a post-office official in a faded overcoat,
looking lovingly at the hare, and addressing no one in particular, “I have
read that some learned man had a cat and a mouse and a falcon and a
sparrow, who all ate out of one bowl.”
“That’s very possible, sir. The cat must have been beaten, and the falcon,
I dare say, had all its tail pulled out. There’s no great cleverness in that, sir.
A friend of mine had a cat who, saving your presence, used to eat his
cucumbers. He thrashed her with a big whip for a fortnight, till he taught
her not to. A hare can learn to light matches if you beat it. Does that surprise
you? It’s very simple! It takes the match in its mouth and strikes it. An
animal is like a man. A man’s made wiser by beating, and it’s the same with
a beast.”
Men in long, full-skirted coats move backwards and forwards in the
crowd with cocks and ducks under their arms. The fowls are all lean and
hungry. Chickens poke their ugly, mangy-looking heads out of their cages
and peck at something in the mud. Boys with pigeons stare into your face
and try to detect in you a pigeon-fancier.
“Yes, indeed! It’s no use talking to you,” someone shouts angrily. “You
should look before you speak! Do you call this a pigeon? It is an eagle, not
a pigeon!”
A tall thin man, with a shaven upper lip and side whiskers, who looks
like a sick and drunken footman, is selling a snow-white lap-dog. The old
lap-dog whines.

“She told me to sell the nasty thing,” says the footman, with a
contemptuous snigger. “She is bankrupt in her old age, has nothing to eat,
and here now is selling her dogs and cats. She cries, and kisses them on
their filthy snouts. And then she is so hard up that she sells them. ‘Pon my
soul, it is a fact! Buy it, gentlemen! The money is wanted for coffee.”
But no one laughs. A boy who is standing by screws up one eye and
looks at him gravely with compassion.
The most interesting of all is the fish section. Some dozen peasants are
sitting in a row. Before each of them is a pail, and in each pail there is a
veritable little hell. There, in the thick, greenish water are swarms of little
carp, eels, small fry, water-snails, frogs, and newts. Big water-beetles with
broken legs scurry over the small surface, clambering on the carp, and
jumping over the frogs. The creatures have a strong hold on life. The frogs
climb on the beetles, the newts on the frogs. The dark green tench, as more
expensive fish, enjoy an exceptional position; they are kept in a special jar
where they can’t swim, but still they are not so cramped. . . .
“The carp is a grand fish! The carp’s the fish to keep, your honour,
plague take him! You can keep him for a year in a pail and he’ll live! It’s a
week since I caught these very fish. I caught them, sir, in Pererva, and have
come from there on foot. The carp are two kopecks each, the eels are three,
and the minnows are ten kopecks the dozen, plague take them! Five
kopecks’ worth of minnows, sir? Won’t you take some worms?”
The seller thrusts his coarse rough fingers into the pail and pulls out of it
a soft minnow, or a little carp, the size of a nail. Fishing lines, hooks, and
tackle are laid out near the pails, and pond-worms glow with a crimson light
in the sun.
An old fancier in a fur cap, iron-rimmed spectacles, and goloshes that
look like two dread-noughts, walks about by the waggons of birds and pails
of fish. He is, as they call him here, “a type.” He hasn’t a farthing to bless
himself with, but in spite of that he haggles, gets excited, and pesters
purchasers with advice. He has thoroughly examined all the hares, pigeons,
and fish; examined them in every detail, fixed the kind, the age, and the
price of each one of them a good hour ago. He is as interested as a child in
the goldfinches, the carp, and the minnows. Talk to him, for instance, about

thrushes, and the queer old fellow will tell you things you could not find in
any book. He will tell you them with enthusiasm, with passion, and will
scold you too for your ignorance. Of goldfinches and bullfinches he is ready
to talk endlessly, opening his eyes wide and gesticulating violently with his
hands. He is only to be met here at the market in the cold weather; in the
summer he is somewhere in the country, catching quails with a bird-call and
angling for fish.
And here is another “type,” a very tall, very thin, close-shaven gentleman
in dark spectacles, wearing a cap with a cockade, and looking like a
scrivener of by-gone days. He is a fancier; he is a man of decent position, a
teacher in a high school, and that is well known to the habitués of the
market, and they treat him with respect, greet him with bows, and have
even invented for him a special title: “Your Scholarship.” At Suharev
market he rummages among the books, and at Trubnoy looks out for good
pigeons.
“Please, sir!” the pigeon-sellers shout to him, “Mr. Schoolmaster, your
Scholarship, take notice of my tumblers! your Scholarship!”
“Your Scholarship!” is shouted at him from every side.
“Your Scholarship!” an urchin repeats somewhere on the boulevard.
And his “Scholarship,” apparently quite accustomed to his title, grave
and severe, takes a pigeon in both hands, and lifting it above his head,
begins examining it, and as he does so frowns and looks graver than ever,
like a conspirator.
And Trubnoy Square, that little bit of Moscow where animals are so
tenderly loved, and where they are so tortured, lives its little life, grows
noisy and excited, and the business-like or pious people who pass by along
the boulevard cannot make out what has brought this crowd of people, this
medley of caps, fur hats, and chimneypots together; what they are talking
about there, what they are buying and selling.

AN ADVENTURE
(A Driver’s Story)

I
T was in that wood yonder, behind the creek, that it happened, sir. My
father, the kingdom of Heaven be his, was taking five hundred roubles
to the master; in those days our fellows and the Shepelevsky peasants
used to rent land from the master, so father was taking money for the half-
year. He was a God-fearing man, he used to read the scriptures, and as for
cheating or wronging anyone, or defrauding —God forbid, and the peasants
honoured him greatly, and when someone had to be sent to the town about
taxes or such-like, or with money, they used to send him. He was a man
above the ordinary, but, not that I’d speak ill of him, he had a weakness. He
was fond of a drop. There was no getting him past a tavern: he would go in,
drink a glass, and be completely done for! He was aware of this weakness
in himself, and when he was carrying public money, that he might not fall
asleep or lose it by some chance, he always took me or my sister Anyutka
with him.
To tell the truth, all our family have a great taste for vodka. I can read and
write, I served for six years at a tobacconist’s in the town, and I can talk to
any educated gentleman, and can use very fine language, but, it is perfectly
true, sir, as I read in a book, that vodka is the blood of Satan. Through
vodka my face has darkened. And there is nothing seemly about me, and
here, as you may see, sir, I am a cab-driver like an ignorant, uneducated
peasant.
And so, as I was telling you, father was taking the money to the master,
Anyutka was going with him, and at that time Anyutka was seven or maybe
eight—a silly chit, not that high. He got as far as Kalantchiko successfully,
he was sober, but when he reached Kalantchiko and went into Moiseika’s
tavern, this same weakness of his came upon him. He drank three glasses
and set to bragging before people:

“I am a plain humble man,” he says, “but I have five hundred roubles in
my pocket; if I like,” says he, “I could buy up the tavern and all the
crockery and Moiseika and his Jewess and his little Jews. I can buy it all out
and out,” he said. That was his way of joking, to be sure, but then he began
complaining: “It’s a worry, good Christian people,” said he, “to be a rich
man, a merchant, or anything of that kind. If you have no money you have
no care, if you have money you must watch over your pocket the whole
time that wicked men may not rob you. It’s a terror to live in the world for a
man who has a lot of money.”
The drunken people listened of course, took it in, and made a note of it.
And in those days they were making a railway line at Kalantchiko, and
there were swarms and swarms of tramps and vagabonds of all sorts like
locusts. Father pulled himself up afterwards, but it was too late. A word is
not a sparrow, if it flies out you can’t catch it. They drove, sir, by the wood,
and all at once there was someone galloping on horseback behind them.
Father was not of the chicken-hearted brigade—that I couldn’t say—but he
felt uneasy; there was no regular road through the wood, nothing went that
way but hay and timber, and there was no cause for anyone to be galloping
there, particularly in working hours. One wouldn’t be galloping after any
good.
“It seems as though they are after someone,” said father to Anyutka,
“they are galloping so furiously. I ought to have kept quiet in the tavern, a
plague on my tongue. Oy, little daughter, my heart misgives me, there is
something wrong!”
He did not spend long in hesitation about his dangerous position, and he
said to my sister Anyutka:
“Things don’t look very bright, they really are in pursuit. Anyway,
Anyutka dear, you take the money, put it away in your skirts, and go and
hide behind a bush. If by ill-luck they attack me, you run back to mother,
and give her the money. Let her take it to the village elder. Only mind you
don’t let anyone see you; keep to the wood and by the creek, that no one
may see you. Run your best and call on the merciful God. Christ be with
you!”

Father thrust the parcel of notes on Anyutka, and she looked out the
thickest of the bushes and hid herself. Soon after, three men on horseback
galloped up to father. One a stalwart, big-jawed fellow, in a crimson shirt
and high boots, and the other two, ragged, shabby fellows, navvies from the
line. As my father feared, so it really turned out, sir. The one in the crimson
shirt, the sturdy, strong fellow, a man above the ordinary, left his horse, and
all three made for my father.
“Halt you, so-and-so! Where’s the money!”
“What money? Go to the devil!”
“Oh, the money you are taking the master for the rent. Hand it over, you
bald devil, or we will throttle you, and you’ll die in your sins.”
And they began to practise their villainy on father, and, instead of
beseeching them, weeping, or anything of the sort, father got angry and
began to reprove them with the greatest severity.
“What are you pestering me for?” said he. “You are a dirty lot. There is
no fear of God in you, plague take you! It’s not money you want, but a
beating, to make your backs smart for three years after. Be off, blockheads,
or I shall defend myself. I have a revolver that takes six bullets, it’s in my
bosom!”
But his words did not deter the robbers, and they began beating him with
anything they could lay their hands on.
They looked through everything in the cart, searched my father
thoroughly, even taking off his boots; when they found that beating father
only made him swear at them the more, they began torturing him in all sorts
of ways. All the time Anyutka was sitting behind the bush, and she saw it
all, poor dear. When she saw father lying on the ground and gasping, she
started off and ran her hardest through the thicket and the creek towards
home. She was only a little girl, with no understanding; she did not know
the way, just ran on not knowing where she was going. It was some six
miles to our home. Anyone else might have run there in an hour, but a little
child, as we all know, takes two steps back for one forwards, and indeed it
is not everyone who can run barefoot through the prickly bushes; you want

to be used to it, too, and our girls used always to be crowding together on
the stove or in the yard, and were afraid to run in the forest.
Towards evening Anyutka somehow reached a habitation, she looked, it
was a hut. It was the forester’s hut, in the Crown forest; some merchants
were renting it at the time and burning charcoal. She knocked. A woman,
the forester’s wife, came out to her. Anyutka, first of all, burst out crying,
and told her everything just as it was, and even told her about the money.
The forester’s wife was full of pity for her.
“My poor little dear! Poor mite, God has preserved you, poor little one!
My precious! Come into the hut, and I will give you something to eat.”
She began to make up to Anyutka, gave her food and drink, and even
wept with her, and was so attentive to her that the girl, only think, gave her
the parcel of notes.
“I will put it away, darling, and to-morrow morning I will give it you
back and take you home, dearie.”
The woman took the money, and put Anyutka to sleep on the stove where
at the time the brooms were drying. And on the same stove, on the brooms,
the forester’s daughter, a girl as small as our Anyutka, was asleep. And
Anyutka used to tell us afterwards that there was such a scent from the
brooms, they smelt of honey! Anyutka lay down, but she could not get to
sleep, she kept crying quietly; she was sorry for father, and terrified. But,
sir, an hour or two passed, and she saw those very three robbers who had
tortured father walk into the hut; and the one in the crimson shirt, with big
jaws, their leader, went up to the woman and said:
“Well, wife, we have simply murdered a man for nothing. To-day we
killed a man at dinner-time, we killed him all right, but not a farthing did
we find.”
So this fellow in the crimson shirt turned out to be the forester, the
woman’s husband.
“The man’s dead for nothing,” said his ragged companions. “In vain we
have taken a sin on our souls.”

The forester’s wife looked at all three and laughed.
“What are you laughing at, silly?”
“I am laughing because I haven’t murdered anyone, and I have not taken
any sin on my soul, but I have found the money.”
“What money? What nonsense are you talking!”
“Here, look whether I am talking nonsense.”
The forester’s wife untied the parcel and, wicked woman, showed them
the money. Then she described how Anyutka had come, what she had said,
and so on. The murderers were delighted and began to divide the money
between them, they almost quarrelled, then they sat down to the table, you
know, to drink. And Anyutka lay there, poor child, hearing every word and
shaking like a Jew in a frying-pan. What was she to do? And from their
words she learned that father was dead and lying across the road, and she
fancied, in her foolishness, that the wolves and the dogs would eat father,
and that our horse had gone far away into the forest, and would be eaten by
wolves too, and that she, Anyutka herself, would be put in prison and
beaten, because she had not taken care of the money. The robbers got drunk
and sent the woman for vodka. They gave her five roubles for vodka and
sweet wine. They set to singing and drinking on other people’s money. They
drank and drank, the dogs, and sent the woman off again that they might
drink beyond all bounds.
“We will keep it up till morning,” they cried. “We have plenty of money
now, there is no need to spare! Drink, and don’t drink away your wits.”
And so at midnight, when they were all fairly fuddled, the woman ran off
for vodka the third time, and the forester strode twice up and down the
cottage, and he was staggering.
“Look here, lads,” he said, “we must make away with the girl, too! If we
leave her, she will be the first to bear witness against us.”
They talked it over and discussed it, and decided that Anyutka must not
be left alive, that she must be killed. Of course, to murder an innocent
child’s a fearful thing, even a man drunken or crazy would not take such a

job on himself. They were quarrelling for maybe an hour which was to kill
her, one tried to put it on the other, they almost fought again, and no one
would agree to do it; then they cast lots. It fell to the forester. He drank
another full glass, cleared his throat, and went to the outer room for an axe.
But Anyutka was a sharp wench. For all she was so simple, she thought
of something that, I must say, not many an educated man would have
thought of. Maybe the Lord had compassion on her, and gave her sense for
the moment, or perhaps it was the fright sharpened her wits, anyway when
it came to the test it turned out that she was cleverer than anyone. She got
up stealthily, prayed to God, took the little sheepskin, the one the forester’s
wife had put over her, and, you understand, the forester’s little daughter, a
girl of the same age as herself, was lying on the stove beside her. She
covered this girl with the sheepskin, and took the woman’s jacket off her
and threw it over herself. Disguised herself, in fact. She put it over her
head, and so walked across the hut by the drunken men, and they thought it
was the forester’s daughter, and did not even look at her. Luckily for her the
woman was not in the hut, she had gone for vodka, or maybe she would not
have escaped the axe, for a woman’s eyes are as far-seeing as a buzzard’s. A
woman’s eyes are sharp.
Anyutka came out of the hut, and ran as fast as her legs could carry her.
All night she was lost in the forest, but towards morning she came out to the
edge and ran along the road. By the mercy of God she met the clerk Yegor
Danilitch, the kingdom of Heaven be his. He was going along with his
hooks to catch fish. Anyutka told him all about it. He went back quicker
than he came—thought no more of the fish—gathered the peasants together
in the village, and off they went to the forester’s.
They got there, and all the murderers were lying side by side, dead drunk,
each where he had fallen; the woman, too, was drunk. First thing they
searched them; they took the money and then looked on the stove—the
Holy Cross be with us! The forester’s child was lying on the brooms, under
the sheepskin, and her head was in a pool of blood, chopped off by the axe.
They roused the peasants and the woman, tied their hands behind them, and
took them to the district court; the woman howled, but the forester only
shook his head and asked:

“You might give me a drop, lads! My head aches!”
Afterwards they were tried in the town in due course, and punished with
the utmost rigour of the law.
So that’s what happened, sir, beyond the forest there, that lies behind the
creek. Now you can scarcely see it, the sun is setting red behind it. I have
been talking to you, and the horses have stopped, as though they were
listening too. Hey there, my beauties! Move more briskly, the good
gentleman will give us something extra. Hey, you darlings!

THE FISH

A
SUMMER morning. The air is still; there is no sound but the
churring of a grasshopper on the river bank, and somewhere the
timid cooing of a turtle-dove. Feathery clouds stand motionless in
the sky, looking like snow scattered about. . . . Gerassim, the carpenter, a
tall gaunt peasant, with a curly red head and a face overgrown with hair, is
floundering about in the water under the green willow branches near an
unfinished bathing shed. . . . He puffs and pants and, blinking furiously, is
trying to get hold of something under the roots of the willows. His face is
covered with perspiration. A couple of yards from him, Lubim, the
carpenter, a young hunchback with a triangular face and narrow Chinese-
looking eyes, is standing up to his neck in water. Both Gerassim and Lubim
are in shirts and linen breeches. Both are blue with cold, for they have been
more than an hour already in the water.
“But why do you keep poking with your hand?” cries the hunchback
Lubim, shivering as though in a fever. “You blockhead! Hold him, hold
him, or else he’ll get away, the anathema! Hold him, I tell you!”
“He won’t get away. . . . Where can he get to? He’s under a root,” says
Gerassim in a hoarse, hollow bass, which seems to come not from his
throat, but from the depths of his stomach. “He’s slippery, the beggar, and
there’s nothing to catch hold of.”
“Get him by the gills, by the gills!”
“There’s no seeing his gills. . . . Stay, I’ve got hold of something . . . .
I’ve got him by the lip. . . He’s biting, the brute!”
“Don’t pull him out by the lip, don’t—or you’ll let him go! Take him by
the gills, take him by the gills. . . . You’ve begun poking with your hand
again! You are a senseless man, the Queen of Heaven forgive me! Catch
hold!”

“Catch hold!” Gerassim mimics him. “You’re a fine one to give orders . .
. . You’d better come and catch hold of him yourself, you hunchback devil. .
. . What are you standing there for?”
“I would catch hold of him if it were possible. But can I stand by the
bank, and me as short as I am? It’s deep there.”
“It doesn’t matter if it is deep. . . . You must swim.”
The hunchback waves his arms, swims up to Gerassim, and catches hold
of the twigs. At the first attempt to stand up, he goes into the water over his
head and begins blowing up bubbles.
“I told you it was deep,” he says, rolling his eyes angrily. “Am I to sit on
your neck or what?”
“Stand on a root . . . there are a lot of roots like a ladder.” The hunchback
gropes for a root with his heel, and tightly gripping several twigs, stands on
it. . . . Having got his balance, and established himself in his new position,
he bends down, and trying not to get the water into his mouth, begins
fumbling with his right hand among the roots. Getting entangled among the
weeds and slipping on the mossy roots he finds his hand in contact with the
sharp pincers of a crayfish.
“As though we wanted to see you, you demon!” says Lubim, and he
angrily flings the crayfish on the bank.
At last his hand feels Gerassim’ s arm, and groping its way along it
comes to something cold and slimy.
“Here he is!” says Lubim with a grin. “A fine fellow! Move your fingers,
I’ll get him directly . . . by the gills. Stop, don’t prod me with your elbow. . .
. I’ll have him in a minute, in a minute, only let me get hold of him. . . . The
beggar has got a long way under the roots, there is nothing to get hold of. . .
. One can’t get to the head . . . one can only feel its belly . . . . kill that gnat
on my neck—it’s stinging! I’ll get him by the gills, directly . . . . Come to
one side and give him a push! Poke him with your finger!”
The hunchback puffs out his cheeks, holds his breath, opens his eyes
wide, and apparently has already got his fingers in the gills, but at that

moment the twigs to which he is holding on with his left hand break, and
losing his balance he plops into the water! Eddies race away from the bank
as though frightened, and little bubbles come up from the spot where he has
fallen in. The hunchback swims out and, snorting, clutches at the twigs.
“You’ll be drowned next, you stupid, and I shall have to answer for you,”
wheezes Gerassim. “Clamber out, the devil take you! I’ll get him out
myself.”
High words follow. . . . The sun is baking hot. The shadows begin to
grow shorter and to draw in on themselves, like the horns of a snail. . . . The
high grass warmed by the sun begins to give out a strong, heavy smell of
honey. It will soon be midday, and Gerassim and Lubim are still floundering
under the willow tree. The husky bass and the shrill, frozen tenor
persistently disturb the stillness of the summer day.
“Pull him out by the gills, pull him out! Stay, I’ll push him out! Where
are you shoving your great ugly fist? Poke him with your finger—you pig’s
face! Get round by the side! get to the left, to the left, there’s a big hole on
the right! You’ll be a supper for the water-devil! Pull it by the lip!”
There is the sound of the flick of a whip. . . . A herd of cattle, driven by
Yefim, the shepherd, saunter lazily down the sloping bank to drink. The
shepherd, a decrepit old man, with one eye and a crooked mouth, walks
with his head bowed, looking at his feet. The first to reach the water are the
sheep, then come the horses, and last of all the cows.
“Push him from below!” he hears Lubim’s voice. “Stick your finger in!
Are you deaf, fellow, or what? Tfoo!”
“What are you after, lads?” shouts Yefim.
“An eel-pout! We can’t get him out! He’s hidden under the roots. Get
round to the side! To the side!”
For a minute Yefim screws up his eye at the fishermen, then he takes off
his bark shoes, throws his sack off his shoulders, and takes off his shirt. He
has not the patience to take off his breeches, but, making the sign of the
cross, he steps into the water, holding out his thin dark arms to balance

himself. . . . For fifty paces he walks along the slimy bottom, then he takes
to swimming.
“Wait a minute, lads!” he shouts. “Wait! Don’t be in a hurry to pull him
out, you’ll lose him. You must do it properly!”
Yefim joins the carpenters and all three, shoving each other with their
knees and their elbows, puffing and swearing at one another, bustle about
the same spot. Lubim, the hunchback, gets a mouthful of water, and the air
rings with his hard spasmodic coughing.
“Where’s the shepherd?” comes a shout from the bank. “Yefim!
Shepherd! Where are you? The cattle are in the garden! Drive them out,
drive them out of the garden! Where is he, the old brigand?”
First men’s voices are heard, then a woman’s. The master himself,
Andrey Andreitch, wearing a dressing-gown made of a Persian shawl and
carrying a newspaper in his hand, appears from behind the garden fence. He
looks inquiringly towards the shouts which come from the river, and then
trips rapidly towards the bathing shed.
“What’s this? Who’s shouting?” he asks sternly, seeing through the
branches of the willow the three wet heads of the fishermen. “What are you
so busy about there?”
“Catching a fish,” mutters Yefim, without raising his head.
“I’ll give it to you! The beasts are in the garden and he is fishing! . . .
When will that bathing shed be done, you devils? You’ve been at work two
days, and what is there to show for it?”
“It . . . will soon be done,” grunts Gerassim; summer is long, you’ll have
plenty of time to wash, your honour. . . . Pfrrr! . . . We can’t manage this
eel-pout here anyhow. . . . He’s got under a root and sits there as if he were
in a hole and won’t budge one way or another . . . .”
“An eel-pout?” says the master, and his eyes begin to glisten. “Get him
out quickly then.”
“You’ll give us half a rouble for it presently if we oblige you . . . . A huge
eel-pout, as fat as a merchant’s wife. . . . It’s worth half a rouble, your

honour, for the trouble. . . . Don’t squeeze him, Lubim, don’t squeeze him,
you’ll spoil him! Push him up from below! Pull the root upwards, my good
man . . . what’s your name? Upwards, not downwards, you brute! Don’t
swing your legs!”
Five minutes pass, ten. . . . The master loses all patience.
“Vassily!” he shouts, turning towards the garden. “Vaska! Call Vassily to
me!”
The coachman Vassily runs up. He is chewing something and breathing
hard.
“Go into the water,” the master orders him. “Help them to pull out that
eel-pout. They can’t get him out.”
Vassily rapidly undresses and gets into the water.
“In a minute. . . . I’ll get him in a minute,” he mutters. “Where’s the eel-
pout? We’ll have him out in a trice! You’d better go, Yefim. An old man like
you ought to be minding his own business instead of being here. Where’s
that eel-pout? I’ll have him in a minute . . . . Here he is! Let go.”
“What’s the good of saying that? We know all about that! You get it out!”
But there is no getting it out like this! One must get hold of it by the
head.”
“And the head is under the root! We know that, you fool!”
“Now then, don’t talk or you’ll catch it! You dirty cur!”
“Before the master to use such language,” mutters Yefim. “You won’t get
him out, lads! He’s fixed himself much too cleverly!”
“Wait a minute, I’ll come directly,” says the master, and he begins
hurriedly undressing. “Four fools, and can’t get an eel-pout!”
When he is undressed, Andrey Andreitch gives himself time to cool and
gets into the water. But even his interference leads to nothing.

“We must chop the root off,” Lubim decides at last. “Gerassim, go and
get an axe! Give me an axe!”
“Don’t chop your fingers off,” says the master, when the blows of the axe
on the root under water are heard. “Yefim, get out of this! Stay, I’ll get the
eel-pout. . . . You’ll never do it.”
The root is hacked a little. They partly break it off, and Andrey
Andreitch, to his immense satisfaction, feels his fingers under the gills of
the fish.
“I’m pulling him out, lads! Don’t crowd round . . . stand still . . . . I am
pulling him out!”
The head of a big eel-pout, and behind it its long black body, nearly a
yard long, appears on the surface of the water. The fish flaps its tail heavily
and tries to tear itself away.
“None of your nonsense, my boy! Fiddlesticks! I’ve got you! Aha!”
A honied smile overspreads all the faces. A minute passes in silent
contemplation.
“A famous eel-pout,” mutters Yefim, scratching under his shoulder-
blades. “I’ll be bound it weighs ten pounds.”
“Mm! . . . Yes,” the master assents. “The liver is fairly swollen! It seems
to stand out! A-ach!”
The fish makes a sudden, unexpected upward movement with its tail and
the fishermen hear a loud splash . . . they all put out their hands, but it is too
late; they have seen the last of the eel-pout.

ART
A GLOOMY winter morning.

O
n the smooth and glittering surface of the river Bystryanka,
sprinkled here and there with snow, stand two peasants, scrubby
little Seryozhka and the church beadle, Matvey. Seryozhka, a short-
legged, ragged, mangy-looking fellow of thirty, stares angrily at the ice.
Tufts of wool hang from his shaggy sheepskin like a mangy dog. In his
hands he holds a compass made of two pointed sticks. Matvey, a fine-
looking old man in a new sheepskin and high felt boots, looks with mild
blue eyes upwards where on the high sloping bank a village nestles
picturesquely. In his hands there is a heavy crowbar.
“Well, are we going to stand like this till evening with our arms folded?”
says Seryozhka, breaking the silence and turning his angry eyes on Matvey.
“Have you come here to stand about, old fool, or to work?”
“Well, you . . . er . . . show me . . .” Matvey mutters, blinking mildly.
“Show you. . . . It’s always me: me to show you, and me to do it. They
have no sense of their own! Mark it out with the compasses, that’s what’s
wanted! You can’t break the ice without marking it out. Mark it! Take the
compass.”
Matvey takes the compasses from Seryozhka’s hands, and, shuffling
heavily on the same spot and jerking with his elbows in all directions, he
begins awkwardly trying to describe a circle on the ice. Seryozhka screws
up his eyes contemptuously and obviously enjoys his awkwardness and
incompetence.
“Eh-eh-eh!” he mutters angrily. “Even that you can’t do! The fact is you
are a stupid peasant, a wooden-head! You ought to be grazing geese and not
making a Jordan! Give the compasses here! Give them here, I say!”

Seryozhka snatches the compasses out of the hands of the perspiring
Matvey, and in an instant, jauntily twirling round on one heel, he describes
a circle on the ice. The outline of the new Jordan is ready now, all that is
left to do is to break the ice. . .
But before proceeding to the work Seryozhka spends a long time in airs
and graces, whims and reproaches. . .
“I am not obliged to work for you! You are employed in the church, you
do it!”
He obviously enjoys the peculiar position in which he has been placed by
the fate that has bestowed on him the rare talent of surprising the whole
parish once a year by his art. Poor mild Matvey has to listen to many
venomous and contemptuous words from him. Seryozhka sets to work with
vexation, with anger. He is lazy. He has hardly described the circle when he
is already itching to go up to the village to drink tea, lounge about, and
babble. . .
“I’ll be back directly,” he says, lighting his cigarette, “and meanwhile
you had better bring something to sit on and sweep up, instead of standing
there counting the crows.”
Matvey is left alone. The air is grey and harsh but still. The white church
peeps out genially from behind the huts scattered on the river bank.
Jackdaws are incessantly circling round its golden crosses. On one side of
the village where the river bank breaks off and is steep a hobbled horse is
standing at the very edge, motionless as a stone, probably asleep or deep in
thought.
Matvey, too, stands motionless as a statue, waiting patiently. The
dreamily brooding look of the river, the circling of the jackdaws, and the
sight of the horse make him drowsy. One hour passes, a second, and still
Seryozhka does not come. The river has long been swept and a box brought
to sit on, but the drunken fellow does not appear. Matvey waits and merely
yawns. The feeling of boredom is one of which he knows nothing. If he
were told to stand on the river for a day, a month, or a year he would stand
there.

At last Seryozhka comes into sight from behind the huts. He walks with a
lurching gait, scarcely moving. He is too lazy to go the long way round, and
he comes not by the road, but prefers a short cut in a straight line down the
bank, and sticks in the snow, hangs on to the bushes, slides on his back as
he comes—and all this slowly, with pauses.
“What are you about?” he cries, falling on Matvey at once. “Why are you
standing there doing nothing! When are you going to break the ice?”
Matvey crosses himself, takes the crowbar in both hands, and begins
breaking the ice, carefully keeping to the circle that has been drawn.
Seryozhka sits down on the box and watches the heavy clumsy movements
of his assistant.
“Easy at the edges! Easy there!” he commands. “If you can’t do it
properly, you shouldn’t undertake it, once you have undertaken it you
should do it. You!”
A crowd collects on the top of the bank. At the sight of the spectators
Seryozhka becomes even more excited.
“I declare I am not going to do it . . .” he says, lighting a stinking
cigarette and spitting on the ground. “I should like to see how you get on
without me. Last year at Kostyukovo, Styopka Gulkov undertook to make a
Jordan as I do. And what did it amount to—it was a laughing-stock. The
Kostyukovo folks came to ours —crowds and crowds of them! The people
flocked from all the villages.”
“Because except for ours there is nowhere a proper Jordan . . .”
“Work, there is no time for talking. . . . Yes, old man . . . you won’t find
another Jordan like it in the whole province. The soldiers say you would
look in vain, they are not so good even in the towns. Easy, easy!”
Matvey puffs and groans. The work is not easy. The ice is firm and thick;
and he has to break it and at once take the pieces away that the open space
may not be blocked up.
But, hard as the work is and senseless as Seryozhka’s commands are, by
three o’clock there is a large circle of dark water in the Bystryanka.

“It was better last year,” says Seryozhka angrily. “You can’t do even that!
Ah, dummy! To keep such fools in the temple of God! Go and bring a board
to make the pegs! Bring the ring, you crow! And er . . . get some bread
somewhere . . . and some cucumbers, or something.”
Matvey goes off and soon afterwards comes back, carrying on his
shoulders an immense wooden ring which had been painted in previous
years in patterns of various colours. In the centre of the ring is a red cross,
at the circumference holes for the pegs. Seryozhka takes the ring and covers
the hole in the ice with it.
“Just right . . . it fits. . . . We have only to renew the paint and it will be
first-rate. . . . Come, why are you standing still? Make the lectern. Or—er—
go and get logs to make the cross . . .”
Matvey, who has not tasted food or drink all day, trudges up the hill
again. Lazy as Seryozhka is, he makes the pegs with his own hands. He
knows that those pegs have a miraculous power: whoever gets hold of a peg
after the blessing of the water will be lucky for the whole year. Such work
is really worth doing.
But the real work begins the following day. Then Seryozhka displays
himself before the ignorant Matvey in all the greatness of his talent. There
is no end to his babble, his fault-finding, his whims and fancies. If Matvey
nails two big pieces of wood to make a cross, he is dissatisfied and tells him
to do it again. If Matvey stands still, Seryozhka asks him angrily why he
does not go; if he moves, Seryozhka shouts to him not to go away but to do
his work. He is not satisfied with his tools, with the weather, or with his
own talent; nothing pleases him.
Matvey saws out a great piece of ice for a lectern.
“Why have you broken off the corner?” cries Seryozhka, and glares at
him furiously. “Why have you broken off the corner? I ask you.”
“Forgive me, for Christ’s sake.”
“Do it over again!”

Matvey saws again . . . and there is no end to his sufferings. A lectern is
to stand by the hole in the ice that is covered by the painted ring; on the
lectern is to be carved the cross and the open gospel. But that is not all.
Behind the lectern there is to be a high cross to be seen by all the crowd and
to glitter in the sun as though sprinkled with diamonds and rubies. On the
cross is to be a dove carved out of ice. The path from the church to the
Jordan is to be strewn with branches of fir and juniper. All this is their task.
First of all Seryozhka sets to work on the lectern. He works with a file, a
chisel, and an awl. He is perfectly successful in the cross on the lectern, the
gospel, and the drapery that hangs down from the lectern. Then he begins
on the dove. While he is trying to carve an expression of meekness and
humility on the face of the dove, Matvey, lumbering about like a bear, is
coating with ice the cross he has made of wood. He takes the cross and dips
it in the hole. Waiting till the water has frozen on the cross he dips it in a
second time, and so on till the cross is covered with a thick layer of ice. It is
a difficult job, calling for a great deal of strength and patience.
But now the delicate work is finished. Seryozhka races about the village
like one possessed. He swears and vows he will go at once to the river and
smash all his work. He is looking for suitable paints.
His pockets are full of ochre, dark blue, red lead, and verdigris; without
paying a farthing he rushes headlong from one shop to another. The shop is
next door to the tavern. Here he has a drink; with a wave of his hand he
darts off without paying. At one hut he gets beetroot leaves, at another an
onion skin, out of which he makes a yellow colour. He swears, shoves,
threatens, and not a soul murmurs! They all smile at him, they sympathise
with him, call him Sergey Nikititch; they all feel that his art is not his
personal affair but something that concerns them all, the whole people. One
creates, the others help him. Seryozhka in himself is a nonentity, a sluggard,
a drunkard, and a wastrel, but when he has his red lead or compasses in his
hand he is at once something higher, a servant of God.
Epiphany morning comes. The precincts of the church and both banks of
the river for a long distance are swarming with people. Everything that
makes up the Jordan is scrupulously concealed under new mats. Seryozhka
is meekly moving about near the mats, trying to control his emotion. He

sees thousands of people. There are many here from other parishes; these
people have come many a mile on foot through the frost and the snow
merely to see his celebrated Jordan. Matvey, who had finished his coarse,
rough work, is by now back in the church, there is no sight, no sound of
him; he is already forgotten . . . . The weather is lovely. . . . There is not a
cloud in the sky. The sunshine is dazzling.
The church bells ring out on the hill . . . Thousands of heads are bared,
thousands of hands are moving, there are thousands of signs of the cross!
And Seryozhka does not know what to do with himself for impatience.
But now they are ringing the bells for the Sacrament; then half an hour later
a certain agitation is perceptible in the belfry and among the people.
Banners are borne out of the church one after the other, while the bells peal
in joyous haste. Seryozhka, trembling, pulls away the mat . . . and the
people behold something extraordinary. The lectern, the wooden ring, the
pegs, and the cross in the ice are iridescent with thousands of colors. The
cross and the dove glitter so dazzlingly that it hurts the eyes to look at them.
Merciful God, how fine it is! A murmur of wonder and delight runs through
the crowd; the bells peal more loudly still, the day grows brighter; the
banners oscillate and move over the crowd as over the waves. The
procession, glittering with the settings of the ikons and the vestments of the
clergy, comes slowly down the road and turns towards the Jordan. Hands
are waved to the belfry for the ringing to cease, and the blessing of the
water begins. The priests conduct the service slowly, deliberately, evidently
trying to prolong the ceremony and the joy of praying all gathered together.
There is perfect stillness.
But now they plunge the cross in, and the air echoes with an
extraordinary din. Guns are fired, the bells peal furiously, loud exclamations
of delight, shouts, and a rush to get the pegs. Seryozhka listens to this
uproar, sees thousands of eyes fixed upon him, and the lazy fellow’s soul is
filled with a sense of glory and triumph.

THE SWEDISH MATCH
(The Story of a Crime)

I

O
N the morning of October 6, 1885, a well-dressed young man
presented himself at the office of the police superintendent of the
2nd division of the S. district, and announced that his employer, a
retired cornet of the guards, called Mark Ivanovitch Klyauzov, had been
murdered. The young man was pale and extremely agitated as he made this
announcement. His hands trembled and there was a look of horror in his
eyes.
“To whom have I the honour of speaking?” the superintendent asked him.
“Psyekov, Klyauzov’s steward. Agricultural and engineering expert.”
The police superintendent, on reaching the spot with Psyekov and the
necessary witnesses, found the position as follows.
Masses of people were crowding about the lodge in which Klyauzov
lived. The news of the event had flown round the neighbourhood with the
rapidity of lightning, and, thanks to its being a holiday, the people were
flocking to the lodge from all the neighbouring villages. There was a
regular hubbub of talk. Pale and tearful faces were to be seen here and
there. The door into Klyauzov’s bedroom was found to be locked. The key
was in the lock on the inside.
“Evidently the criminals made their way in by the window” Psyekov
observed, as they examined the door.
They went into the garden into which the bedroom window looked. The
window had a gloomy, ominous air. It was covered by a faded green
curtain. One corner of the curtain was slightly turned back, which made it
possible to peep into the bedroom.

“Has anyone of you looked in at the window?” inquired the
superintendent.
“No, your honour,” said Yefrem, the gardener, a little, grey-haired old
man with the face of a veteran non-commissioned officer. “No one feels
like looking when they are shaking in every limb!”
“Ech, Mark Ivanitch! Mark Ivanitch!” sighed the superintendent, as he
looked at the window. “I told you that you would come to a bad end! I told
you, poor dear—you wouldn’t listen! Dissipation leads to no good!”
“It’s thanks to Yefrem,” said Psyekov. “We should never have guessed it
but for him. It was he who first thought that something was wrong. He
came to me this morning and said: ‘Why is it our master hasn’t waked up
for so long? He hasn’t been out of his bedroom for a whole week! When he
said that to me I was struck all of a heap . . . . The thought flashed through
my mind at once. He hasn’t made an appearance since Saturday of last
week, and to-day’s Sunday. Seven days is no joke!”
“Yes, poor man,” the superintendent sighed again. “A clever fellow, well-
educated, and so good-hearted. There was no one like him, one may say, in
company. But a rake; the kingdom of heaven be his! I’m not surprised at
anything with him! Stepan,” he said, addressing one of the witnesses, “ride
off this minute to my house and send Andryushka to the police captain’s, let
him report to him. Say Mark Ivanitch has been murdered! Yes, and run to
the inspector—why should he sit in comfort doing nothing? Let him come
here. And you go yourself as fast as you can to the examining magistrate,
Nikolay Yermolaitch, and tell him to come here. Wait a bit, I will write him
a note.”
The police superintendent stationed watchmen round the lodge, and went
off to the steward’s to have tea. Ten minutes later he was sitting on a stool,
carefully nibbling lumps of sugar, and sipping tea as hot as a red-hot coal.
“There it is! . . .” he said to Psyekov, “there it is! . . . a gentleman, and a
well-to-do one, too . . . a favourite of the gods, one may say, to use
Pushkin’s expression, and what has he made of it? Nothing! He gave
himself up to drinking and debauchery, and . . . here now . . . he has been
murdered!”

Two hours later the examining magistrate drove up. Nikolay Yermolaitch
Tchubikov (that was the magistrate’s name), a tall, thick-set old man of
sixty, had been hard at work for a quarter of a century. He was known to the
whole district as an honest, intelligent, energetic man, devoted to his work.
His invariable companion, assistant, and secretary, a tall young man of six
and twenty, called Dyukovsky, arrived on the scene of action with him.
“Is it possible, gentlemen?” Tchubikov began, going into Psyekov’s room
and rapidly shaking hands with everyone. “Is it possible? Mark Ivanitch?
Murdered? No, it’s impossible! Imposs-i-ble!”
“There it is,” sighed the superintendent
“Merciful heavens! Why I saw him only last Friday. At the fair at
Tarabankovo! Saving your presence, I drank a glass of vodka with him!”
“There it is,” the superintendent sighed once more.
They heaved sighs, expressed their horror, drank a glass of tea each, and
went to the lodge.
“Make way!” the police inspector shouted to the crowd.
On going into the lodge the examining magistrate first of all set to work
to inspect the door into the bedroom. The door turned out to be made of
deal, painted yellow, and not to have been tampered with. No special traces
that might have served as evidence could be found. They proceeded to
break open the door.
“I beg you, gentlemen, who are not concerned, to retire,” said the
examining magistrate, when, after long banging and cracking, the door
yielded to the axe and the chisel. “I ask this in the interests of the
investigation. . . . Inspector, admit no one!”
Tchubikov, his assistant, and the police superintendent opened the door
and hesitatingly, one after the other, walked into the room. The following
spectacle met their eyes. In the solitary window stood a big wooden
bedstead with an immense feather bed on it. On the rumpled feather bed lay
a creased and crumpled quilt. A pillow, in a cotton pillow case—also much
creased, was on the floor. On a little table beside the bed lay a silver watch,

and silver coins to the value of twenty kopecks. Some sulphur matches lay
there too. Except the bed, the table, and a solitary chair, there was no
furniture in the room. Looking under the bed, the superintendent saw two
dozen empty bottles, an old straw hat, and a jar of vodka. Under the table
lay one boot, covered with dust. Taking a look round the room, Tchubikov
frowned and flushed crimson.
“The blackguards!” he muttered, clenching his fists.
“And where is Mark Ivanitch?” Dyukovsky asked quietly.
“I beg you not to put your spoke in,” Tchubikov answered roughly.
“Kindly examine the floor. This is the second case in my experience,
Yevgraf Kuzmitch,” he added to the police superintendent, dropping his
voice. “In 1870 I had a similar case. But no doubt you remember it. . . . The
murder of the merchant Portretov. It was just the same. The blackguards
murdered him, and dragged the dead body out of the window.”
Tchubikov went to the window, drew the curtain aside, and cautiously
pushed the window. The window opened.
“It opens, so it was not fastened. . . . H’m there are traces on the window-
sill. Do you see? Here is the trace of a knee. . . . Some one climbed out. . . .
We shall have to inspect the window thoroughly.”
“There is nothing special to be observed on the floor,” said Dyukovsky.
“No stains, nor scratches. The only thing I have found is a used Swedish
match. Here it is. As far as I remember, Mark Ivanitch didn’t smoke; in a
general way he used sulphur ones, never Swedish matches. This match may
serve as a clue. . . .”
“Oh, hold your tongue, please!” cried Tchubikov, with a wave of his
hand. “He keeps on about his match! I can’t stand these excitable people!
Instead of looking for matches, you had better examine the bed!”
On inspecting the bed, Dyukovsky reported:
“There are no stains of blood or of anything else. . . . Nor are there any
fresh rents. On the pillow there are traces of teeth. A liquid, having the
smell of beer and also the taste of it, has been spilt on the quilt. . . . The

general appearance of the bed gives grounds for supposing there has been a
struggle.”
“I know there was a struggle without your telling me! No one asked you
whether there was a struggle. Instead of looking out for a struggle you had
better be . . .”
“One boot is here, the other one is not on the scene.”
“Well, what of that?”
“Why, they must have strangled him while he was taking off his boots.
He hadn’t time to take the second boot off when . . . .”
“He’s off again! . . . And how do you know that he was strangled?”
“There are marks of teeth on the pillow. The pillow itself is very much
crumpled, and has been flung to a distance of six feet from the bed.”
“He argues, the chatterbox! We had better go into the garden. You had
better look in the garden instead of rummaging about here. . . . I can do that
without your help.”
When they went out into the garden their first task was the inspection of
the grass. The grass had been trampled down under the windows. The
clump of burdock against the wall under the window turned out to have
been trodden on too. Dyukovsky succeeded in finding on it some broken
shoots, and a little bit of wadding. On the topmost burrs, some fine threads
of dark blue wool were found.
“What was the colour of his last suit? Dyukovsky asked Psyekov.
“It was yellow, made of canvas.”
“Capital! Then it was they who were in dark blue. . . .”
Some of the burrs were cut off and carefully wrapped up in paper. At that
moment Artsybashev-Svistakovsky, the police captain, and Tyutyuev, the
doctor, arrived. The police captain greeted the others, and at once proceeded
to satisfy his curiosity; the doctor, a tall and extremely lean man with

sunken eyes, a long nose, and a sharp chin, greeting no one and asking no
questions, sat down on a stump, heaved a sigh and said:
“The Serbians are in a turmoil again! I can’t make out what they want!
Ah, Austria, Austria! It’s your doing!”
The inspection of the window from outside yielded absolutely no result;
the inspection of the grass and surrounding bushes furnished many valuable
clues. Dyukovsky succeeded, for instance, in detecting a long, dark streak
in the grass, consisting of stains, and stretching from the window for a good
many yards into the garden. The streak ended under one of the lilac bushes
in a big, brownish stain. Under the same bush was found a boot, which
turned out to be the fellow to the one found in the bedroom.
“This is an old stain of blood,” said Dyukovsky, examining the stain.
At the word “blood,” the doctor got up and lazily took a cursory glance at
the stain.
“Yes, it’s blood,” he muttered.
“Then he wasn’t strangled since there’s blood,” said Tchubikov, looking
malignantly at Dyukovsky.
“He was strangled in the bedroom, and here, afraid he would come to,
they stabbed him with something sharp. The stain under the bush shows that
he lay there for a comparatively long time, while they were trying to find
some way of carrying him, or something to carry him on out of the garden.”
“Well, and the boot?”
“That boot bears out my contention that he was murdered while he was
taking off his boots before going to bed. He had taken off one boot, the
other, that is, this boot he had only managed to get half off. While he was
being dragged and shaken the boot that was only half on came off of itself. .
. .”
“What powers of deduction! Just look at him!” Tchubikov jeered. “He
brings it all out so pat! And when will you learn not to put your theories
forward? You had better take a little of the grass for analysis instead of
arguing!”

After making the inspection and taking a plan of the locality they went
off to the steward’s to write a report and have lunch. At lunch they talked.
“Watch, money, and everything else . . . are untouched,” Tchubikov
began the conversation. “It is as clear as twice two makes four that the
murder was committed not for mercenary motives.”
“It was committed by a man of the educated class,” Dyukovsky put in.
“From what do you draw that conclusion?”
“I base it on the Swedish match which the peasants about here have not
learned to use yet. Such matches are only used by landowners and not by all
of them. He was murdered, by the way, not by one but by three, at least:
two held him while the third strangled him. Klyauzov was strong and the
murderers must have known that.”
“What use would his strength be to him, supposing he were asleep?”
“The murderers came upon him as he was taking off his boots. He was
taking off his boots, so he was not asleep.”
“It’s no good making things up! You had better eat your lunch!”
“To my thinking, your honour,” said Yefrem, the gardener, as he set the
samovar on the table, “this vile deed was the work of no other than
Nikolashka.”
“Quite possible,” said Psyekov.
“Who’s this Nikolashka?”
“The master’s valet, your honour,” answered Yefrem. “Who else should it
be if not he? He’s a ruffian, your honour! A drunkard, and such a dissipated
fellow! May the Queen of Heaven never bring the like again! He always
used to fetch vodka for the master, he always used to put the master to bed. .
. . Who should it be if not he? And what’s more, I venture to bring to your
notice, your honour, he boasted once in a tavern, the rascal, that he would
murder his master. It’s all on account of Akulka, on account of a woman. . .
. He had a soldier’s wife. . . . The master took a fancy to her and got
intimate with her, and he . . . was angered by it, to be sure. He’s lolling

about in the kitchen now, drunk. He’s crying . . . making out he is grieving
over the master . . . .”
“And anyone might be angry over Akulka, certainly,” said Psyekov. “She
is a soldier’s wife, a peasant woman, but . . . Mark Ivanitch might well call
her Nana. There is something in her that does suggest Nana . . . fascinating .
. .”
“I have seen her . . . I know . . .” said the examining magistrate, blowing
his nose in a red handkerchief.
Dyukovsky blushed and dropped his eyes. The police superintendent
drummed on his saucer with his fingers. The police captain coughed and
rummaged in his portfolio for something. On the doctor alone the mention
of Akulka and Nana appeared to produce no impression. Tchubikov ordered
Nikolashka to be fetched. Nikolashka, a lanky young man with a long pock-
marked nose and a hollow chest, wearing a reefer jacket that had been his
master’s, came into Psyekov’s room and bowed down to the ground before
Tchubikov. His face looked sleepy and showed traces of tears. He was
drunk and could hardly stand up.
“Where is your master?” Tchubikov asked him.
“He’s murdered, your honour.”
As he said this Nikolashka blinked and began to cry.
“We know that he is murdered. But where is he now? Where is his
body?”
“They say it was dragged out of window and buried in the garden.”
“H’m . . . the results of the investigation are already known in the kitchen
then. . . . That’s bad. My good fellow, where were you on the night when
your master was killed? On Saturday, that is?”
Nikolashka raised his head, craned his neck, and pondered.
“I can’t say, your honour,” he said. “I was drunk and I don’t remember.”
“An alibi!” whispered Dyukovsky, grinning and rubbing his hands.

“Ah! And why is it there’s blood under your master’s window!”
Nikolashka flung up his head and pondered.
“Think a little quicker,” said the police captain.
“In a minute. That blood’s from a trifling matter, your honour. I killed a
hen; I cut her throat very simply in the usual way, and she fluttered out of
my hands and took and ran off. . . .That’s what the blood’s from.”
Yefrem testified that Nikolashka really did kill a hen every evening and
killed it in all sorts of places, and no one had seen the half-killed hen
running about the garden, though of course it could not be positively denied
that it had done so.
“An alibi,” laughed Dyukovsky, “and what an idiotic alibi.”
“Have you had relations with Akulka?”
“Yes, I have sinned.”
“And your master carried her off from you?”
“No, not at all. It was this gentleman here, Mr. Psyekov, Ivan Mihalitch,
who enticed her from me, and the master took her from Ivan Mihalitch.
That’s how it was.”
Psyekov looked confused and began rubbing his left eye. Dyukovsky
fastened his eyes upon him, detected his confusion, and started. He saw on
the steward’s legs dark blue trousers which he had not previously noticed.
The trousers reminded him of the blue threads found on the burdock.
Tchubikov in his turn glanced suspiciously at Psyekov.
“You can go!” he said to Nikolashka. “And now allow me to put one
question to you, Mr. Psyekov. You were here, of course, on the Saturday of
last week?
“Yes, at ten o’clock I had supper with Mark Ivanitch.”
“And afterwards?”
Psyekov was confused, and got up from the table.

“Afterwards . . . afterwards . . . I really don’t remember,” he muttered. “I
had drunk a good deal on that occasion. . . . I can’t remember where and
when I went to bed. . . . Why do you all look at me like that? As though I
had murdered him!”
“Where did you wake up?”
“I woke up in the servants’ kitchen on the stove . . . . They can all
confirm that. How I got on to the stove I can’t say. . . .”
“Don’t disturb yourself . . . Do you know Akulina?”
“Oh well, not particularly.”
“Did she leave you for Klyauzov?”
“Yes. . . . Yefrem, bring some more mushrooms! Will you have some tea,
Yevgraf Kuzmitch?”
There followed an oppressive, painful silence that lasted for some five
minutes. Dyukovsky held his tongue, and kept his piercing eyes on
Psyekov’s face, which gradually turned pale. The silence was broken by
Tchubikov.
“We must go to the big house,” he said, “and speak to the deceased’s
sister, Marya Ivanovna. She may give us some evidence.”
Tchubikov and his assistant thanked Psyekov for the lunch, then went off
to the big house. They found Klyauzov’s sister, a maiden lady of five and
forty, on her knees before a high family shrine of ikons. When she saw
portfolios and caps adorned with cockades in her visitors’ hands, she turned
pale.
“First of all, I must offer an apology for disturbing your devotions, so to
say,” the gallant Tchubikov began with a scrape. “We have come to you
with a request. You have heard, of course, already. . . . There is a suspicion
that your brother has somehow been murdered. God’s will, you know. . . .
Death no one can escape, neither Tsar nor ploughman. Can you not assist us
with some fact, something that will throw light?”

“Oh, do not ask me!” said Marya Ivanovna, turning whiter still, and
hiding her face in her hands. “I can tell you nothing! Nothing! I implore
you! I can say nothing . . . What can I do? Oh, no, no . . . not a word . . . of
my brother! I would rather die than speak!”
Marya Ivanovna burst into tears and went away into another room. The
officials looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders, and beat a retreat.
“A devil of a woman!” said Dyukovsky, swearing as they went out of the
big house. “Apparently she knows something and is concealing it. And
there is something peculiar in the maid-servant’s expression too. . . . You
wait a bit, you devils! We will get to the bottom of it all!”
In the evening, Tchubikov and his assistant were driving home by the
light of a pale-faced moon; they sat in their waggonette, summing up in
their minds the incidents of the day. Both were exhausted and sat silent.
Tchubikov never liked talking on the road. In spite of his talkativeness,
Dyukovsky held his tongue in deference to the old man. Towards the end of
the journey, however, the young man could endure the silence no longer,
and began:
“That Nikolashka has had a hand in the business,” he said, “non
dubitandum est. One can see from his mug too what sort of a chap he is. . . .
His alibi gives him away hand and foot. There is no doubt either that he was
not the instigator of the crime. He was only the stupid hired tool. Do you
agree? The discreet Psyekov plays a not unimportant part in the affair too.
His blue trousers, his embarrassment, his lying on the stove from fright
after the murder, his alibi, and Akulka.”
“Keep it up, you’re in your glory! According to you, if a man knows
Akulka he is the murderer. Ah, you hot-head! You ought to be sucking your
bottle instead of investigating cases! You used to be running after Akulka
too, does that mean that you had a hand in this business?”
“Akulka was a cook in your house for a month, too, but . . . I don’t say
anything. On that Saturday night I was playing cards with you, I saw you,
or I should be after you too. The woman is not the point, my good sir. The
point is the nasty, disgusting, mean feeling. . . . The discreet young man did
not like to be cut out, do you see. Vanity, do you see. . . . He longed to be

revenged. Then . . . His thick lips are a strong indication of sensuality. Do
you remember how he smacked his lips when he compared Akulka to
Nana? That he is burning with passion, the scoundrel, is beyond doubt! And
so you have wounded vanity and unsatisfied passion. That’s enough to lead
to murder. Two of them are in our hands, but who is the third? Nikolashka
and Psyekov held him. Who was it smothered him? Psyekov is timid, easily
embarrassed, altogether a coward. People like Nikolashka are not equal to
smothering with a pillow, they set to work with an axe or a mallet. . . .
Some third person must have smothered him, but who?”
Dyukovsky pulled his cap over his eyes, and pondered. He was silent till
the waggonette had driven up to the examining magistrate’s house.
“Eureka!” he said, as he went into the house, and took off his overcoat.
“Eureka, Nikolay Yermolaitch! I can’t understand how it is it didn’t occur to
me before. Do you know who the third is?”
“Do leave off, please! There’s supper ready. Sit down to supper!”
Tchubikov and Dyukovsky sat down to supper. Dyukovsky poured
himself out a wine-glassful of vodka, got up, stretched, and with sparkling
eyes, said:
“Let me tell you then that the third person who collaborated with the
scoundrel Psyekov and smothered him was a woman! Yes! I am speaking of
the murdered man’s sister, Marya Ivanovna!”
Tchubikov coughed over his vodka and fastened his eyes on Dyukovsky.
“Are you . . . not quite right? Is your head . . . not quite right? Does it
ache?”
“I am quite well. Very good, suppose I have gone out of my mind, but
how do you explain her confusion on our arrival? How do you explain her
refusal to give information? Admitting that that is trivial—very good! All
right!—but think of the terms they were on! She detested her brother! She is
an Old Believer, he was a profligate, a godless fellow . . . that is what has
bred hatred between them! They say he succeeded in persuading her that he
was an angel of Satan! He used to practise spiritualism in her presence!”

“Well, what then?”
“Don’t you understand? She’s an Old Believer, she murdered him
through fanaticism! She has not merely slain a wicked man, a profligate,
she has freed the world from Antichrist—and that she fancies is her merit,
her religious achievement! Ah, you don’t know these old maids, these Old
Believers! You should read Dostoevsky! And what does Lyeskov say . . .
and Petchersky! It’s she, it’s she, I’ll stake my life on it. She smothered
him! Oh, the fiendish woman! Wasn’t she, perhaps, standing before the
ikons when we went in to put us off the scent? ‘I’ll stand up and say my
prayers,’ she said to herself, ‘they will think I am calm and don’t expect
them.’ That’s the method of all novices in crime. Dear Nikolay Yermolaitch!
My dear man! Do hand this case over to me! Let me go through with it to
the end! My dear fellow! I have begun it, and I will carry it through to the
end.”
Tchubikov shook his head and frowned.
“I am equal to sifting difficult cases myself,” he said. “And it’s your
place not to put yourself forward. Write what is dictated to you, that is your
business!”
Dyukovsky flushed crimson, walked out, and slammed the door.
“A clever fellow, the rogue,” Tchubikov muttered, looking after him.
“Ve-ery clever! Only inappropriately hasty. I shall have to buy him a cigar-
case at the fair for a present.”
Next morning a lad with a big head and a hare lip came from
Klyauzovka. He gave his name as the shepherd Danilko, and furnished a
very interesting piece of information.
“I had had a drop,” said he. “I stayed on till midnight at my crony’s. As I
was going home, being drunk, I got into the river for a bathe. I was bathing
and what do I see! Two men coming along the dam carrying something
black. ‘Tyoo!’ I shouted at them. They were scared, and cut along as fast as
they could go into the Makarev kitchen-gardens. Strike me dead, if it wasn’t
the master they were carrying!”

Towards evening of the same day Psyekov and Nikolashka were arrested
and taken under guard to the district town. In the town they were put in the
prison tower.

II

T
welve days passed.
It was morning. The examining magistrate, Nikolay Yermolaitch,
was sitting at a green table at home, looking through the papers,
relating to the “Klyauzov case”; Dyukovsky was pacing up and down the
room restlessly, like a wolf in a cage.
“You are convinced of the guilt of Nikolashka and Psyekov,” he said,
nervously pulling at his youthful beard. “Why is it you refuse to be
convinced of the guilt of Marya Ivanovna? Haven’t you evidence enough?”
“I don’t say that I don’t believe in it. I am convinced of it, but somehow I
can’t believe it. . . . There is no real evidence. It’s all theoretical, as it were. .
. . Fanaticism and one thing and another. . . .”
“And you must have an axe and bloodstained sheets! . . . You lawyers!
Well, I will prove it to you then! Do give up your slip-shod attitude to the
psychological aspect of the case. Your Marya Ivanovna ought to be in
Siberia! I’ll prove it. If theoretical proof is not enough for you, I have
something material. . . . It will show you how right my theory is! Only let
me go about a little!”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Swedish match! Have you forgotten? I haven’t forgotten it! I’ll find
out who struck it in the murdered man’s room! It was not struck by
Nikolashka, nor by Psyekov, neither of whom turned out to have matches
when searched, but a third person, that is Marya Ivanovna. And I will prove
it! . . . Only let me drive about the district, make some inquiries. . . .”
“Oh, very well, sit down. . . . Let us proceed to the examination.”
Dyukovsky sat down to the table, and thrust his long nose into the papers.

“Bring in Nikolay Tetchov!” cried the examining magistrate.
Nikolashka was brought in. He was pale and thin as a chip. He was
trembling.
“Tetchov!” began Tchubikov. “In 1879 you were convicted of theft and
condemned to a term of imprisonment. In 1882 you were condemned for
theft a second time, and a second time sent to prison . . . We know all about
it. . . .”
A look of surprise came up into Nikolashka’s face. The examining
magistrate’s omniscience amazed him, but soon wonder was replaced by an
expression of extreme distress. He broke into sobs, and asked leave to go to
wash, and calm himself. He was led out.
“Bring in Psyekov!” said the examining magistrate.
Psyekov was led in. The young man’s face had greatly changed during
those twelve days. He was thin, pale, and wasted. There was a look of
apathy in his eyes.
“Sit down, Psyekov,” said Tchubikov. “I hope that to-day you will be
sensible and not persist in lying as on other occasions. All this time you
have denied your participation in the murder of Klyauzov, in spite of the
mass of evidence against you. It is senseless. Confession is some mitigation
of guilt. To-day I am talking to you for the last time. If you don’t confess to-
day, to-morrow it will be too late. Come, tell us. . . .”
“I know nothing, and I don’t know your evidence,” whispered Psyekov.
“That’s useless! Well then, allow me to tell you how it happened. On
Saturday evening, you were sitting in Klyauzov’s bedroom drinking vodka
and beer with him.” (Dyukovsky riveted his eyes on Psyekov’s face, and
did not remove them during the whole monologue.) “Nikolay was waiting
upon you. Between twelve and one Mark Ivanitch told you he wanted to go
to bed. He always did go to bed at that time. While he was taking off his
boots and giving you some instructions regarding the estate, Nikolay and
you at a given signal seized your intoxicated master and flung him back
upon the bed. One of you sat on his feet, the other on his head. At that
moment the lady, you know who, in a black dress, who had arranged with

you beforehand the part she would take in the crime, came in from the
passage. She picked up the pillow, and proceeded to smother him with it.
During the struggle, the light went out. The woman took a box of Swedish
matches out of her pocket and lighted the candle. Isn’t that right? I see from
your face that what I say is true. Well, to proceed. . . . Having smothered
him, and being convinced that he had ceased to breathe, Nikolay and you
dragged him out of window and put him down near the burdocks. Afraid
that he might regain consciousness, you struck him with something sharp.
Then you carried him, and laid him for some time under a lilac bush. After
resting and considering a little, you carried him . . . lifted him over the
hurdle. . . . Then went along the road. . . Then comes the dam; near the dam
you were frightened by a peasant. But what is the matter with you?”
Psyekov, white as a sheet, got up, staggering.
“I am suffocating!” he said. “Very well. . . . So be it. . . . Only I must go. .
. . Please.”
Psyekov was led out.
“At last he has admitted it!” said Tchubikov, stretching at his ease. “He
has given himself away! How neatly I caught him there.”
“And he didn’t deny the woman in black!” said Dyukovsky, laughing. “I
am awfully worried over that Swedish match, though! I can’t endure it any
longer. Good-bye! I am going!”
Dyukovsky put on his cap and went off. Tchubikov began interrogating
Akulka.
Akulka declared that she knew nothing about it. . . .
“I have lived with you and with nobody else!” she said.
At six o’clock in the evening Dyukovsky returned. He was more excited
than ever. His hands trembled so much that he could not unbutton his
overcoat. His cheeks were burning. It was evident that he had not come
back without news.
“Veni, vidi, vici!” he cried, dashing into Tchubikov’s room and sinking
into an arm-chair. “I vow on my honour, I begin to believe in my own

genius. Listen, damnation take us! Listen and wonder, old friend! It’s comic
and it’s sad. You have three in your grasp already . . . haven’t you? I have
found a fourth murderer, or rather murderess, for it is a woman! And what a
woman! I would have given ten years of my life merely to touch her
shoulders. But . . . listen. I drove to Klyauzovka and proceeded to describe a
spiral round it. On the way I visited all the shopkeepers and innkeepers,
asking for Swedish matches. Everywhere I was told ‘No.’ I have been on
my round up to now. Twenty times I lost hope, and as many times regained
it. I have been on the go all day long, and only an hour ago came upon what
I was looking for. A couple of miles from here they gave me a packet of a
dozen boxes of matches. One box was missing . . . I asked at once: ‘Who
bought that box?’ ‘So-and-so. She took a fancy to them. . . They crackle.’
My dear fellow! Nikolay Yermolaitch! What can sometimes be done by a
man who has been expelled from a seminary and studied Gaboriau is
beyond all conception! From to-day I shall began to respect myself! . . .
Ough. . . . Well, let us go!”
“Go where?”
“To her, to the fourth. . . . We must make haste, or . . . I shall explode
with impatience! Do you know who she is? You will never guess. The
young wife of our old police superintendent, Yevgraf Kuzmitch, Olga
Petrovna; that’s who it is! She bought that box of matches!”
“You . . . you. . . . Are you out of your mind?”
“It’s very natural! In the first place she smokes, and in the second she
was head over ears in love with Klyauzov. He rejected her love for the sake
of an Akulka. Revenge. I remember now, I once came upon them behind the
screen in the kitchen. She was cursing him, while he was smoking her
cigarette and puffing the smoke into her face. But do come along; make
haste, for it is getting dark already . . . . Let us go!”
“I have not gone so completely crazy yet as to disturb a respectable,
honourable woman at night for the sake of a wretched boy!”
“Honourable, respectable. . . . You are a rag then, not an examining
magistrate! I have never ventured to abuse you, but now you force me to it!
You rag! you old fogey! Come, dear Nikolay Yermolaitch, I entreat you!”

The examining magistrate waved his hand in refusal and spat in disgust.
“I beg you! I beg you, not for my own sake, but in the interests of justice!
I beseech you, indeed! Do me a favour, if only for once in your life!”
Dyukovsky fell on his knees.
“Nikolay Yermolaitch, do be so good! Call me a scoundrel, a worthless
wretch if I am in error about that woman! It is such a case, you know! It is a
case! More like a novel than a case. The fame of it will be all over Russia.
They will make you examining magistrate for particularly important cases!
Do understand, you unreasonable old man!”
The examining magistrate frowned and irresolutely put out his hand
towards his hat.
“Well, the devil take you!” he said, “let us go.”
It was already dark when the examining magistrate’s waggonette rolled
up to the police superintendent’s door.
“What brutes we are!” said Tchubikov, as he reached for the bell. “We are
disturbing people.”
“Never mind, never mind, don’t be frightened. We will say that one of
the springs has broken.”
Tchubikov and Dyukovsky were met in the doorway by a tall, plump
woman of three and twenty, with eyebrows as black as pitch and full red
lips. It was Olga Petrovna herself.
“Ah, how very nice,” she said, smiling all over her face. “You are just in
time for supper. My Yevgraf Kuzmitch is not at home. . . . He is staying at
the priest’s. But we can get on without him. Sit down. Have you come from
an inquiry?”
“Yes. . . . We have broken one of our springs, you know,” began
Tchubikov, going into the drawing-room and sitting down in an easy-chair.
“Take her by surprise at once and overwhelm her,” Dyukovsky whispered
to him.

“A spring .. . er . . . yes. . . . We just drove up. . . .”
“Overwhelm her, I tell you! She will guess if you go drawing it out.”
“Oh, do as you like, but spare me,” muttered Tchubikov, getting up and
walking to the window. “I can’t! You cooked the mess, you eat it!”
“Yes, the spring,” Dyukovsky began, going up to the superintendent’s
wife and wrinkling his long nose. “We have not come in to . . . er-er-er . . .
supper, nor to see Yevgraf Kuzmitch. We have come to ask you, madam,
where is Mark Ivanovitch whom you have murdered?”
“What? What Mark Ivanovitch?” faltered the superintendent’s wife, and
her full face was suddenly in one instant suffused with crimson. “I . . . don’t
understand.”
“I ask you in the name of the law! Where is Klyauzov? We know all
about it!”
“Through whom?” the superintendent’s wife asked slowly, unable to face
Dyukovsky’s eyes.
“Kindly inform us where he is!”
“But how did you find out? Who told you?”
“We know all about it. I insist in the name of the law.”
The examining magistrate, encouraged by the lady’s confusion, went up
to her.
“Tell us and we will go away. Otherwise we . . .”
“What do you want with him?”
“What is the object of such questions, madam? We ask you for
information. You are trembling, confused. . . . Yes, he has been murdered,
and if you will have it, murdered by you! Your accomplices have betrayed
you!”
The police superintendent’s wife turned pale.

“Come along,” she said quietly, wringing her hands. “He is hidden in the
bath-house. Only for God’s sake, don’t tell my husband! I implore you! It
would be too much for him.”
The superintendent’s wife took a big key from the wall, and led her
visitors through the kitchen and the passage into the yard. It was dark in the
yard. There was a drizzle of fine rain. The superintendent’s wife went on
ahead. Tchubikov and Dyukovsky strode after her through the long grass,
breathing in the smell of wild hemp and slops, which made a squelching
sound under their feet. It was a big yard. Soon there were no more pools of
slops, and their feet felt ploughed land. In the darkness they saw the
silhouette of trees, and among the trees a little house with a crooked
chimney.
“This is the bath-house,” said the superintendent’s wife, “but, I implore
you, do not tell anyone.”
Going up to the bath-house, Tchubikov and Dyukovsky saw a large
padlock on the door.
“Get ready your candle-end and matches,” Tchubikov whispered to his
assistant.
The superintendent’s wife unlocked the padlock and let the visitors into
the bath-house. Dyukovsky struck a match and lighted up the entry. In the
middle of it stood a table. On the table, beside a podgy little samovar, was a
soup tureen with some cold cabbage-soup in it, and a dish with traces of
some sauce on it.
“Go on!”
They went into the next room, the bath-room. There, too, was a table. On
the table there stood a big dish of ham, a bottle of vodka, plates, knives and
forks.
“But where is he . . . where’s the murdered man?”
“He is on the top shelf,” whispered the superintendent’s wife, turning
paler than ever and trembling.

Dyukovsky took the candle-end in his hand and climbed up to the upper
shelf. There he saw a long, human body, lying motionless on a big feather
bed. The body emitted a faint snore. . . .
“They have made fools of us, damn it all!” Dyukovsky cried. “This is not
he! It is some living blockhead lying here. Hi! who are you, damnation take
you!”
The body drew in its breath with a whistling sound and moved.
Dyukovsky prodded it with his elbow. It lifted up its arms, stretched, and
raised its head.
“Who is that poking?” a hoarse, ponderous bass voice inquired. “What do
you want?”
Dyukovsky held the candle-end to the face of the unknown and uttered a
shriek. In the crimson nose, in the ruffled, uncombed hair, in the pitch-black
moustaches of which one was jauntily twisted and pointed insolently
towards the ceiling, he recognised Cornet Klyauzov.
“You. . . . Mark . . . Ivanitch! Impossible!”
The examining magistrate looked up and was dumbfoundered.
“It is I, yes. . . . And it’s you, Dyukovsky! What the devil do you want
here? And whose ugly mug is that down there? Holy Saints, it’s the
examining magistrate! How in the world did you come here?”
Klyauzov hurriedly got down and embraced Tchubikov. Olga Petrovna
whisked out of the door.
“However did you come? Let’s have a drink!—dash it all! Tra-ta-ti-to-
tom . . . . Let’s have a drink! Who brought you here, though? How did you
get to know I was here? It doesn’t matter, though! Have a drink!”
Klyauzov lighted the lamp and poured out three glasses of vodka.
“The fact is, I don’t understand you,” said the examining magistrate,
throwing out his hands. “Is it you, or not you?”

“Stop that. . . . Do you want to give me a sermon? Don’t trouble yourself!
Dyukovsky boy, drink up your vodka! Friends, let us pass the . . . What are
you staring at . . . ? Drink!”
“All the same, I can’t understand,” said the examining magistrate,
mechanically drinking his vodka. “Why are you here?”
“Why shouldn’t I be here, if I am comfortable here?”
Klyauzov sipped his vodka and ate some ham.
“I am staying with the superintendent’s wife, as you see. In the wilds
among the ruins, like some house goblin. Drink! I felt sorry for her, you
know, old man! I took pity on her, and, well, I am living here in the deserted
bath-house, like a hermit. . . . I am well fed. Next week I am thinking of
moving on. . . . I’ve had enough of it. . . .”
“Inconceivable!” said Dyukovsky.
“What is there inconceivable in it?”
“Inconceivable! For God’s sake, how did your boot get into the garden?”
“What boot?”
“We found one of your boots in the bedroom and the other in the
garden.”
“And what do you want to know that for? It is not your business. But do
drink, dash it all. Since you have waked me up, you may as well drink!
There’s an interesting tale about that boot, my boy. I didn’t want to come to
Olga’s. I didn’t feel inclined, you know, I’d had a drop too much. . . . She
came under the window and began scolding me. . . . You know how women
. . . as a rule. Being drunk, I up and flung my boot at her. Ha-ha! . . . ‘Don’t
scold,’ I said. She clambered in at the window, lighted the lamp, and gave
me a good drubbing, as I was drunk. I have plenty to eat here. . . . Love,
vodka, and good things! But where are you off to? Tchubikov, where are
you off to?”
The examining magistrate spat on the floor and walked out of the bath-
house. Dyukovsky followed him with his head hanging. Both got into the

waggonette in silence and drove off. Never had the road seemed so long and
dreary. Both were silent. Tchubikov was shaking with anger all the way.
Dyukovsky hid his face in his collar as though he were afraid the darkness
and the drizzling rain might read his shame on his face.
On getting home the examining magistrate found the doctor, Tyutyuev,
there. The doctor was sitting at the table and heaving deep sighs as he
turned over the pages of the Neva.
“The things that are going on in the world,” he said, greeting the
examining magistrate with a melancholy smile. “Austria is at it again . . .
and Gladstone, too, in a way. . . .”
Tchubikov flung his hat under the table and began to tremble.
“You devil of a skeleton! Don’t bother me! I’ve told you a thousand
times over, don’t bother me with your politics! It’s not the time for politics!
And as for you,” he turned upon Dyukovsky and shook his fist at him, “as
for you. . . . I’ll never forget it, as long as I live!”
“But the Swedish match, you know! How could I tell. . . .”
“Choke yourself with your match! Go away and don’t irritate me, or
goodness knows what I shall do to you. Don’t let me set eyes on you.”
Dyukovsky heaved a sigh, took his hat, and went out.
“I’ll go and get drunk!” he decided, as he went out of the gate, and he
sauntered dejectedly towards the tavern.
When the superintendent’s wife got home from the bath-house she found
her husband in the drawing-room.
“What did the examining magistrate come about?” asked her husband.
“He came to say that they had found Klyauzov. Only fancy, they found
him staying with another man’s wife.”
“Ah, Mark Ivanitch, Mark Ivanitch!” sighed the police superintendent,
turning up his eyes. “I told you that dissipation would lead to no good! I
told you so—you wouldn’t heed me!”

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COOK'S
WEDDING AND OTHER STORIES ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be
renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law
means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the
Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States
without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying
and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the
PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a
registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for an eBook,
except by following the terms of the trademark license, including paying
royalties for use of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge
anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is
very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project Gutenberg
eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may do
practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected by
U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license,
especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or any
other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project Gutenberg”), you
agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project Gutenberg License
available with this file or online at www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing
Project Gutenberg electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg electronic work,
you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to and accept all the
terms of this license and intellectual property (trademark/copyright)
agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all the terms of this agreement,
you must cease using and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg
electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy
of or access to a Project Gutenberg electronic work and you do not agree to
be bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be used on
or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who agree to be
bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few things that you can
do with most Project Gutenberg electronic works even without complying
with the full terms of this agreement. See paragraph 1.C below. There are a
lot of things you can do with Project Gutenberg electronic works if you
follow the terms of this agreement and help preserve free future access to
Project Gutenberg electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation”
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an individual
work is unprotected by copyright law in the United States and you are

located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works
based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are
removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg
mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely sharing
Project Gutenberg works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for
keeping the Project Gutenberg name associated with the work. You can
easily comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg License when you
share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in a
constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check the
laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement before
downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or creating
derivative works based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg work.
The Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright status
of any work in any country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg work (any work on which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, copied
or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the
United States and most other parts of the world at no
cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You
may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg™ License included with this
eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not
located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using
this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is derived from
texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not contain a notice
indicating that it is posted with permission of the copyright holder), the
work can be copied and distributed to anyone in the United States without
paying any fees or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a
work with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on
the work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs
1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is posted with the
permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution must comply
with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed
by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked to the Project
Gutenberg License for all works posted with the permission of the
copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg License
terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this work or any
other work associated with Project Gutenberg.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without prominently
displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with active links or
immediate access to the full terms of the Project Gutenberg License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg work in a format other than “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version posted on the
official Project Gutenberg website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no
additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a means of
exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work
in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format
must include the full Project Gutenberg License as specified in paragraph
1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, performing,
copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg works unless you comply
with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing access to
or distributing Project Gutenberg electronic works provided that:

• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the
use of Project Gutenberg works calculated using the method you
already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed to the
owner of the Project Gutenberg trademark, but he has agreed to donate
royalties under this paragraph to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid within 60 days
following each date on which you prepare (or are legally required to
prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly
marked as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information about
donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”

• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he does
not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ License. You
must require such a user to return or destroy all copies of the works
possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all
access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ works.

• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.

• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free distribution
of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set forth in
this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project

Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3
below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread works
not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project Gutenberg™
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and
the medium on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as,
but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription
errors, a copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or
damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that
damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except
for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to
you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE
THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT
EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE
THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY
DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE
TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL,
PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE
NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you
discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you
can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the
defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a refund.
If you received the work electronically, the person or entity providing it to

you may choose to give you a second opportunity to receive the work
electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy is also defective, you
may demand a refund in writing without further opportunities to fix the
problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in
paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR
FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied warranties or
the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. If any disclaimer or
limitation set forth in this agreement violates the law of the state applicable
to this agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum
disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity
or unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that
arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause
to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg work, (b)
alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg
work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project
Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is synonymous with the free distribution of electronic
works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers including
obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists because of the

efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from people in all walks of
life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the assistance
they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg’s goals and ensuring
that the Project Gutenberg collection will remain freely available for
generations to come. In 2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation was created to provide a secure and permanent future for
Project Gutenberg and future generations. To learn more about the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations
can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)
(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the state of
Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service.
The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification number is 64-6221541.
Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax
deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s
laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 41 Watchung Plaza #516,
Montclair NJ 07042, USA, +1 (862) 621-9288. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website and
official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of increasing the
number of public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
in machine-readable form accessible by the widest array of equipment

including outdated equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are
particularly important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United States.
Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a considerable effort,
much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up with these
requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations where we have not
received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or
determine the status of compliance for any particular state visit
www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we have
not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition against
accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who approach us
with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make any
statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from outside the
United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation methods
and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other ways including
checks, online payments and credit card donations. To donate, please visit:
www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg
electronic works

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared with
anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project Gutenberg
eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed editions,
all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in the U.S. unless a

copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily keep eBooks in
compliance with any particular paper edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search facility:
www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg, including how
to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation,
how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email
newsletter to hear about new eBooks.