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
THE 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
MIHAIL 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?
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.