Forty Stories (18 page)

“What about a pinch of snuff, eh?” he would say, holding out his snuffbox to the women.

Then the women would take a pinch and sneeze, and the old man would be overcome with indescribable ecstasies, laughing joyously and exclaiming: “Fine for frozen noses, eh!”

The dogs, too, were given snuff. Brownie would sneeze, shake her head, and walk away looking offended, while Eel, too polite to sneeze, only wagged his tail. The weather was glorious. The air was still, transparently clear, and fresh. The night was very dark, but the whole white-roofed village with its snowdrifts and trees silvered with hoarfrost and smoke streaming from the chimneys could be seen clearly. The heavens were sprinkled with gay, glinting stars, and the Milky Way stood out as clearly as if
it had been washed and scrubbed with snow for the holidays.

Vanka sighed, dipped his pen in the ink, and went on writing:

“Yesterday I was given a thrashing. The master dragged me by the hair into the yard and gave me a beating with a stirrup strap because when I was rocking the baby in the cradle, I misfortunately fell asleep. And then last week the mistress ordered me to gut a herring, and because I began with the tail, she took the head of the herring and rubbed it all over my face. The other apprentices made fun of me, sent me to the tavern for vodka, and made me steal the master’s cucumbers for them, and then the master beat me with the first thing that came to hand. And there’s nothing to eat. In the morning they give me bread, there is porridge for dinner, and in the evening only bread again. They never give me tea or cabbage soup—they gobble it all up themselves. They make me sleep in the passageway, and when their baby cries, I don’t get any sleep at all because I have to rock the cradle. Dear Grandfather, please for God’s sake take me away from here, take me to the village, it’s more than I can bear.… I kneel down before you. I’ll pray to God to keep you forever, but take me away from here, or I shall die.”

Vanka grimaced, rubbed his eyes with his black fists, and sobbed.

“I’ll grind your snuff for you,” he went on. “I will pray to God to keep you, and if I ever do anything wrong, you can flog me all you like. If you think there’s no place for me, then I’ll ask the manager for Christ’s sake to let me clean boots or take Fedya’s place as a shepherd boy. Dear Grandfather, it’s more than I can bear, it will be the death of me. I thought of running away to the village, but I haven’t any boots, and I am afraid of the ice. If you’ll do this for me, I’ll feed you when I grow up, and won’t let anyone harm you, and when you die I’ll pray for the repose of your soul, just like I do for my mother, Pelageya.

“Moscow is such a big city. There are so many houses belonging to the gentry, so many horses, but no sheep anywhere, and
the dogs aren’t vicious. The boys don’t go about with the Star of Christmas, and they don’t let you sing in the choir, and once I saw fishhooks in the shopwindow with the fishing lines for every kind of fish, very fine ones, even one hook which would hold a skate fish weighing forty pounds. I’ve seen shops selling guns which are just like the master’s at home, and each one must cost a hundred rubles. In the butcher shops they have woodcocks and partridges and hares, but the people in the shop won’t tell you where they were shot.

“Dear Grandfather, when they put up the Christmas tree at the big house, please take down a golden walnut for me and hide it in the green chest. Ask the young mistress, Olga Ignatyevna, and say it is for Vanka.”

Vanka heaved a convulsive sigh, and once more he gazed in the direction of the window. He remembered it was Grandfather who always went to the forest to cut down a Christmas tree for the gentry, taking his grandson with him. They had a wonderful time together. Grandfather chuckled, the frost crackled, and Vanka, not to be outdone, clucked away cheerfully. Before chopping down the fir tree Grandfather would smoke a pipe, take a long pinch of snuff, and make fun of Vanka, who was shivering in the cold. The young fir trees, garlanded with hoarfrost, stood perfectly still, waiting to see which of them would die.… Suddenly out of nowhere a hare came springing across the snowdrifts, quick as an arrow, and Grandfather would be unable to prevent himself from shouting: “Hold him! Hold him! Hold that bobtailed devil, eh!”

When the tree had been chopped down, Grandfather would drag it to the big house and they would start decorating it. The young mistress, Olga Ignatyevna, Vanka’s favorite, was the busiest of all. While Vanka’s mother, Pelageya, was alive, serving as a chambermaid, Olga Ignatyevna used to stuff him with sugar candy, and it amused her to teach him to read and write, to count up to a hundred, and even to dance the quadrille. But when Pelageya died, they relegated the orphan Vanka to the servants’
kitchen to be with his Grandfather, and from there he went to Moscow to the shoemaker Alyakhin.…

“Come to me, dear Grandfather,” Vanka went on. “I beseech you for Christ’s sake, take me away from here! Have pity on me, a poor orphan, they are always beating me, and I am terribly hungry, and so miserable I can’t tell you, and I’m always crying. The other day the master hit me on the head with a last, and I fell down and thought I would never get up again. It’s worse than a dog’s life, and so miserable. I send greetings to Alyona, to one-eyed Yegor, and to the coachman, and don’t give my harmonica away. I remain your grandson Ivan Zhukov, dear Grandfather, and come soon!”

Vanka twice folded the sheet of paper and then he put it in an envelope bought the previous day for a kopeck. He reflected for a while, dipped the pen in ink, and wrote the address:

To Grandfather in the Village

Then he scratched his head and thought for a while, and added the words:
Konstantin Makarich
. Pleased because no one interrupted him when he was writing, he threw on his cap, and without troubling to put on a coat, he ran out into the street in his shirt sleeves.

When he talked to the clerks in the butcher shop the previous day, they told him that letters were dropped in boxes, and from these boxes they were carried all over the world on mail coaches drawn by three horses and driven by drunken drivers, while the bells jingled. Vanka ran to the nearest mailbox and thrust his precious letter into the slot.

An hour later, lulled by sweetest hopes, he was fast asleep. He dreamed of a stove. His grandfather was sitting on the stove, bare feet dangling down, while he read the letter aloud to the cooks. Eel was walking round the stove, wagging his tail.

December 1886

MY uncle Pyotr Demyanich, a lean and bilious collegiate councilor, who bore a close resemblance to a stale smoked catfish with a stick through it, was just about to leave for the high school where he taught Latin when he saw that the binding of his grammar book had been nibbled by mice.

“Good heavens,” he shouted, and ran to the kitchen, where he addressed his remarks to the cook. “Listen, Praskovya, how did the mice get in? God save my soul, yesterday they nibbled at my top hat, and today, if you please, they have begun to ruin my grammar book! Soon enough they will be having a feast on my clothes!”

“I did not bring them here,” Praskovya said. “What do you expect me to do?”

“Well, I expect you to do something. Why don’t you get a cat?”

“We already have a cat, but he is no good.”

Praskovya pointed to a corner in the kitchen where a white kitten, thin as a matchstick, lay curled up asleep beside a broom.

“Why isn’t he any good?” asked Pyotr Demyanich.

“Because he’s only a silly little baby. He’s less than two months old.”

“Hm … Then he must be trained. Training is better than doing nothing.”

Saying this, Pyotr Demyanich sighed with a preoccupied air and left the kitchen. The kitten looked up, surveyed the world with a lazy glance, and then closed his eyes again.

The kitten was not sleeping, but deep in thought. What was he thinking about? He knew absolutely nothing about real life and possessed no store of accumulated impressions: therefore he could only think instinctively and picture life according to concepts inherited, like his flesh and blood, from his ancestors, the tigers (
vide
Darwin). His thoughts possessed the character of daydreams. In his imagination he saw something resembling the Arabian desert, over which there hovered shadows resembling Praskovya, the stove, the broomstick. Among these shadows a saucer of milk would suddenly appear. This saucer would grow paws, it would move and display a tendency to run away, and the kitten would therefore leap up, give way to a bloodthirsty sensuality, and dig his paws into it. Then the saucer would vanish among the misty clouds, and suddenly there would appear a piece of meat dropped by Praskovya. The meat would give forth a timid little squeak before darting to one side, but the kitten would leap after it and dig his claws into it. Everything that rose up in the imagination of this young dreamer had its origin in sudden leaps, claws, and teeth.… The soul of another lies in darkness, and a cat’s soul more than most, but how near these visions I have just described are to the truth may be seen from the following circumstance: under the influence of his reveries the kitten suddenly jumped up, gazed at Praskovya with glittering eyes, fur bristling, and suddenly hurled himself at the cook, digging his claws into her skirt. Clearly he was born to be a hunter of mice, worthy of his bloodthirsty ancestors. Clearly he was destined by fate to be the terror of cellars, storerooms, and cornbins, and had it not been for education … But nothing is to be gained by anticipating.

When he returned from high school, Pyotr Demyanich went to a local store and bought a mousetrap for fifteen kopecks. After dinner he hung a small morsel of cutlet on the hook and set the
trap under the divan, where there was a litter of old exercise books which Praskovya would sometimes use for her own domestic purposes. Exactly at six o’clock that evening, when our worthy Latinist was sitting at table and correcting his students’ exercises, he heard a sudden
clop!
coming from under the divan—the sound was so loud that my uncle jumped up in the air and dropped his pen. Without any hesitation he marched over to the divan and drew out the mousetrap. In it he found a sleek and tiny mouse, about the size of a thimble, sniffing at the wire cage and shivering with fear.

“Aha!” muttered Pyotr Demyanich, and he gazed at the mouse with the expression of a man about to give it a bad mark. “I’ve caught you now, you little devil! Just you wait! I’ll teach you to eat my grammar book!”

For a while Pyotr Demyanich continued to feast his eyes on the spectacle of his little victim, then he put the mousetrap on the floor and shouted: “Praskovya, the mouse hasn’t got away! Bring the kitten in here!”

“Coming at once!” Praskovya answered, and a few moments later she walked in, carrying in her arms the descendant of tigers.

“Very good,” Pyotr Demyanich murmured, rubbing his hands together. “Now we’ll teach him a lesson. Put him down facing the mousetrap.… That’s right. Let him sniff at it, and have a good look. That’s right.”

The kitten looked wonderingly at my uncle and then at the armchair, and then he sniffed the mousetrap with a look of complete bewilderment. Perhaps it was because he was frightened by the glare of the lamp and the attention he was receiving: suddenly he was off to the door, scampering away in fear and trembling.

“Stop!” shouted my uncle, seizing him by the tail. “Stop, you little idiot! Fool, he’s afraid of the mouse! Look at the mouse! Look hard! I told you to look, didn’t I?”

Pyotr Demyanich lifted the kitten by the scruff of the neck and pushed his nose against the mousetrap.

“Vile, stupid creature!… Praskovya, take him and hold him. Hold him opposite the door of the trap! When I let the mouse out, let the kitten go after him at once. Are you listening? Let him go at once!”

My uncle assumed a mysterious expression and lifted the door. The mouse emerged, uncertain and frightened; it sniffed the air, and then flew quick as an arrow under the divan. When the kitten was let go, he lifted his tail and ran under the table.

“He’s got away! He’s got away!” Pyotr Demyanich shouted, assuming a ferocious expression. “Where is the kitten, the little horror? Under the table, eh? Just you wait!”

My uncle dragged the kitten from under the table and gave him a good shaking.

“What a rascal you are, eh?” he muttered, smacking the kitten across the ear. “Take that! Take that! Will you just stand there gawking the next time? You r-r-r-rascal, you!”

The following day Praskovya heard him shouting for the second time: “Praskovya, we’ve caught a mouse! Bring the kitten here!”

After the abuse he had received the previous day the kitten had taken to hiding under the stove, where he remained throughout the night. When Praskovya pulled him out and carried him by the scruff of the neck to the study, he was trembling all over and mewing pathetically. He was put in front of the mousetrap.

“You see, he has to feel at home,” Pyotr Demyanich said. “Let him look and sniff a bit. Look and learn!” And when he saw the kitten backing away from the trap, he shouted: “Stop, dammit! I’ll tear you to pieces! Hold him by the ear!… That’s right, and now set him down opposite the door.”

My uncle slowly lifted the door. The mouse dived under the kitten’s nose, threw itself against Praskovya’s hand, and then
dived under a cupboard, while the kitten, feeling relieved, decided upon a sudden desperate leap in the air and scuttled under the divan.

“That’s the second mouse he has let go!” Pyotr Demyanich roared at the top of his voice. “Do you call that a cat? It’s a silly idiot, that’s what it is, and deserves a thrashing. That’s right—give him a thrashing in front of the mousetrap.”

When the third mouse was caught, the kitten shivered uncontrollably in full view of the mousetrap and its occupant, and dug his claws into Praskovya’s hand.… After the fourth mouse my uncle was beside himself with rage, kicked out at the kitten, and shouted: “Take the filthy thing away! Get it out of the house! Throw it out! The hell with it!”