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