Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated) (86 page)

WHO WAS TO BLAME?

Translated by Constance Garnett 1886

As 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.

NOTES

collegiate councillor: Rank 6 in the Russian civil service scale

vide
Darwin: see Charles Darwin, the 19th century English biologist best know for his theory of evolution

ut consecutivum
: in order

ablative absolute: a part of Latin grammar

VANKA

Translated by Constance Garnett 1886

VANKA 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.

NOTES

Vanka: a dimutive of the name Ivan

mallet: a Russian night watchman used a wooden noisemaker to signal his presence, thus alerting his employer that he was on duty and also warning potential troublemakers that the grounds were patrolled

Kashtanka: a common name for a dog in Russian

wigging: scolding

star: it was a common Christmas custom in rural Russia to go in procession from house to house carrying a star symbol while telling stories and singing religious songs

get me a gilt walnut: a nut wrapped in gold foil as a Christmas treat