_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. . . .