Peasants and Other Stories

by Anton Chekhov

  In Klavdia Abramovna’s room there was, as they say, not the space to turn around. There were a bed, a chest of drawers, a chair, and that was all—and yet it was somehow crowded. But the little room was tidily kept, and Klavdia Abramovna called it her boudoir. She was very much pleased with her furniture—especially with the things on the chest of drawers: a mirror, lip salve and powder, little bottles and little boxes, ceruse, [2] and every kind of luxury that she regarded as essential to her profession and on which she spent most of her earnings; and there were photographs in little frames that showed her in various guises. She had been taken with her husband, a postman, with whom she had lived only a year, after which she had left him, not feeling a vocation for family life. She had been photographed, as is common with women of that sort, with a bang on her forehead and frizzed like a sheep; in the uniform of a soldier, flourishing an unsheathed saber; and dressed as a page, astride a chair, so that her thighs, clad in tights, lay flat on the chair, like two fat boiled sausages. There were portraits of men, also—she was in the habit of calling them her visitors and did not always know their names; our friend Kiryak was even among them in his quality of family connection: he had had a full-length photograph taken of himself, wearing a pair of black trousers that he had somewhere or other acquired for a time.

  Formerly Klavdia Abramovna had frequented costume balls and Filippov’s [3] and spent whole evenings on the Tversky Boulevard; but with the years she had come gradually to stay at home, and now that she had reached forty-two, she rarely received visitors, and these were only a few left over from her earlier years, who came to her in memory of old times, and alas! had grown old themselves and visited her even more seldom, since they were dropping off every year. Among her new visitors there was only one who was very young, still beardless; he would come into the entrance hall, like a conspirator, noiselessly and sullenly, with the collar of his schoolboy coat pulled up around his ears in an attempt not to be seen from the parlor, and afterwards, when he went away, he would leave a ruble on the chest of drawers.

  For whole days now Klavdia Abramovna would sit at home doing nothing; occasionally, however, when the weather was fine, she would walk along the Tverskaya or the Little Bronnaya, holding her head up proudly and feeling herself a lady of solid position and dignity, and only when she dropped in at a druggist’s, to inquire in a whisper about ointment to get rid of red hands or wrinkles, did she show any sense of shame. In the evening, not lighting the light, she would sit in her little room and wait for someone to come; and about eleven o’clock—this now occurred only infrequently, once or twice a week—somebody would be heard walking softly, groping up and down the stairs, and then rustling behind the door, in an effort to find the bell. The door would then open, a muttering would be heard, and the visitor with hesitation would come into the entrance hall—he would usually be bald and obese, old and unattractive—and Klavdia Abramovna would hasten to bring him into her little room. She adored a “respectable visitor.” There was for her no higher or worthier being; to receive a respectable visitor, to conduct herself toward him with delicacy, to do him honor, to satisfy him, was her soul’s need, her duty, her happiness, her pride; to refuse such a visitor, to treat him in an inhospitable manner was something of which she was quite incapable, even in the period of fasting in preparation for her Easter devotions.

  When Olga had returned from the country, she had put Sasha to live with her sister-in-law, thinking that it would only be temporary and that the girl, while she was still so little, if she should see anything bad, would not understand it. But now Sasha was over thirteen, and really the time was approaching when she must look for some other place for her; yet Sasha and her aunt had by now become attached to one another, and it was difficult to separate them; nor was there anywhere for Sasha to go in view of the fact that Olga herself was taking shelter in the corridors of rooming houses and sleeping at night on chairs. The day was spent by Sasha with her mother, or on the street, or down below in the laundry; the nights she would spend at her aunt’s, on the floor, between the chest of drawers and the bed, and in the case of a visitor’s arriving, she would lie down in the entrance hall.

  She liked to go in the evening to the place where Ivan Makarich worked, and to watch the dancing from the kitchen. There the music was always playing, it was bright and noisy; the cook and the kitchenmaids had about them a savory smell of food, and Grandpa Ivan Makarich would give her some tea or some ice and would pass to her some morsels from the saucers and plates he had brought back into the kitchen. Once in autumn, late in the evening, coming back from Ivan Makarich’s, she had carried home, wrapped up in paper, a drumstick, a piece of sturgeon, and a piece of cake. . . . Her aunt was already in bed. . . .

  “Dear Auntie,” said Sasha sadly, “I’ve brought you something to eat.”

  They lit the light. Klavdia Abramovna began to eat, sitting up in bed. And Sasha regarded her curlpapers, which made her aunt seem quite dreadful, and her old withered shoulders; she regarded her sadly and long as if she were looking at a sick woman; then suddenly the tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “Dear Auntie,” she brought out in a shaky voice. “Dear Auntie, the girls in the laundry were saying this morning that you’d be begging in the streets in your old age, and that you’d die in the hospital. That’s not true, Auntie—it isn’t true,” Sasha went on, now sobbing. “I shan’t leave you, I’ll see that you’re fed . . . and I shan’t let you go to the hospital.”

  Klavdia Abramovna’s chin began to quiver and tears glistened in her eyes, but she kept herself under control and only said, glancing sternly at Sasha: “It’s not proper to listen to the washwomen.”

  11.

  In the furnished rooms of the Lisbon, little by little the lodgers grew silent; there was a smell of burning in the air from the lamps that had been put out, and the long-legged upstairs waiter had stretched himself out on chairs. Olga took off her apron and her white-ribboned cap, put a kerchief over her head, and went off to see her family by the Patriarch’s Ponds. Her work at the Lisbon kept her busy all day from morning till late at night; and she could only rarely get to see them, and then only at night; her work took up all her time, not leaving her a single free moment: she had not, since her return from the country, even once been to church.

  She was hurrying now to show Sasha a letter she had had from Marya in the country. This letter contained nothing but messages of greeting and complaints about wants and woes, about the fact that the old people were still alive, contributing nothing and eating up bread; yet somehow in these crooked lines, in which each letter looked like a cripple, there was for Olga a peculiar hidden charm, and, along with the complaints and the greetings, she read also that just now in the country the clear and warm days had come, that it was quiet in the evenings and that the air was fragrant, that the hours were striking in the church beyond the river; she could see the country churchyard, where her husband lay: from the green graves tranquility breathed, you were envious of the dead—and so much space out there, such freedom! And yet, what a strange thing: when you were actually living in the country, you were eager to get to Moscow, but now, on the contrary, you longed for the country.

  Olga awakened Sasha, and, nervously, in apprehension lest somebody might be disturbed by her whispering and the light, she read her the letter twice. After this, they descended together by the dark and stinking stairway and left the house. The windows were wide open, and they could see the women ironing; and two of them were standing behind the gate, smoking cigarettes. Quickly Olga and Sasha went out into the street and talked about how nice it would be to save up two rubles and send them to the country: one for Marya and the other to pay for a mass for the dead to be said over Nikolai’s grave.

  “Oh, I’ve just had the most awful scare!” Olga, clasping her hands, began to tell Sasha her tale. “We’d only just sat down to eat, darling, when suddenly, from goodness knows where, there was Kiryak just as drunk as drunk! ‘Give me some money, Olga!’
he says. And he shouts and stamps his feet—give him money and that’s all there is to it. And where am I going to get money? They don’t pay me any wages—I live on the alms the good gentlemen give me—that’s all the money I’ve got. . . . He won’t listen—‘Give me money!’ he says. The lodgers look out of their rooms, the landlord arrived on the scene—I thought I’d die of shame—what a scandal! I begged thirty kopecks from the students and gave them to him, and he went away. And all day I’ve been going around whispering, ‘O Lord, soften his heart!’ That’s what I’ve been whispering all day. . . .”

  It was quiet in the streets; from time to time the nocturnal cabs would pass, while from somewhere far away—it must have been in the amusement park—music was still heard playing and the muted burst of rockets.

  She knew all the rooming houses in Moscow.

  The old lackey from Omon’s. His son a compositor.

  The sixth day after Olga had left the rooming house and had not come back to sleep, her daughter became worried; in the evening she would feel depressed and weep, and that night she went out to get money.

  Sitting on the boulevard at night, Sasha would think about God, about the soul, but the thirst for life overcame these thoughts.

  K[lavdia] A[bramovna] wanted to take Sasha to a procuress, but Sasha did not want to go: “It won’t do for anyone to see.”

  The make-up man was always on the wing, dropping fragmentary phrases; he will say: “We are all brothers,” and go away without explaining.

  “The rich have taken everything for themselves—even the churches, the sole refuge of the poor.”

  When Sasha would tell about the country, even the make-up man, sitting in his room, would listen.

  Sasha worked in the laundry without grumbling: “We can’t be happy, because we’re simple people.”

  From Zhukovo many lackeys, thanks to the protection of Luke Ivanovich, an old man who had lived sometime a long while ago, a legendary character. From him this deterioration dated.

  Sasha drank a great deal of tea: she would drink six glasses at a time.

  Just as women of K[lavdia] A[bramovna]’s age want to see young girls get married, so she wanted to see young girls have a clientele of respectable visitors.

  Having so many people about him at the printer’s was wearing for the make-up man, so that at home he tried to be alone.

  On the boulevard, noisy students were walking arm in arm; one of them felt Sasha’s breasts.

  Kiryak came at night and made a rumpus. The monastery priest was in his drawers. The make-up man gave him money. The janitor threw him downstairs so that he spun around like a top, and it was surprising he was still alive.

  When Sasha was thirteen or fourteen, she considered herself more serious than her absent-minded mother, and she began to take care of Olga.

  K[lavdia] A[bramovna] was not a believer, but the decencies, as she thought, demanded of her that she cross herself and make her Easter devotions, and if the simple people didn’t believe, they’d all be killing one another in the street.

  Nothing drugs one and makes one drunk like money; when there’s a lot of it, the world seems better than it is.

  Ivan Makarich in every kind of weather went about with an umbrella and galoshes. [4]

  “The ladies and gentlemen are decent people; they talk about loving their neighbor, about freedom, about helping the poor, but just the same they’re all owners of serfs, so that they can’t get along without servants, whom they’re humiliating every minute. They’ve been hiding something, they’ve been lying to the Holy Ghost.”

  The lackey talks to himself aloud. He begs Sasha to tell him about the country. He is seventy-six now, but says he is only sixty.

  The lackey despises the merchants and their ladies.

  He likes to say clever things in conversation, and they respected him for this, though they did not always understand them.

  Sasha’s sensibilities were offended by the smell of washing, by the filth, by the stinking stairs; they were offended by life itself; but she was persuaded that, in her position, such a life as this was inescapable.

  Sasha: death is still a long way off, and while you’re alive, you need principles—and on that account she liked to listen to the phrases that the make-up man flung out.

  They didn’t teach the children to pray or to think about God, they didn’t instill into them any principles: they just forbade them to eat meat in Lent.

  Just as today we are astonished by the cruelties through which the Christian torturers distinguished themselves, so people will in time be astonished at the falsehood with which evil today is fought; for example, they talk about freedom while making general use of the services of slaves.

  —TRANSLATED BY EDMUND WILSON

  [1] A small park in Moscow.

  [2] A cosmetic made of white lead.

  [3] A popular patisserie in Moscow.

  [4] This trait was later assigned to the classics teacher Belikov in the story called “The Man in the Case.”

  THE NEW VILLA

  1.

  TWO MILES FROM the village of Obruchanovo a huge bridge was being built. From the village, which stood up high on the steep riverbank, its trellis-like skeleton could be seen, and in foggy weather and on still winter days, when its delicate iron girders and all the scaffolding around was covered with hoarfrost, it presented a picturesque and even fantastic spectacle. Kucherov, the engineer who was building the bridge, a stout, broad-shouldered, bearded man in a soft crumpled cap, drove through the village in his racing droshky or his open carriage. Now and then on holidays navvies working on the bridge would come to the village; they begged for alms, laughed at the women, and sometimes carried off something. But that was rare; as a rule the days passed quietly and peacefully as though no bridgebuilding were going on, and only in the evening, when campfires gleamed near the bridge, the wind faintly wafted the songs of the navvies. And by day there was sometimes the mournful clang of metal, don-don-don.

  It happened that the engineer’s wife came to see him. She was pleased with the riverbanks and the gorgeous view over the green valley with trees, churches, flocks, and she began begging her husband to buy a small piece of ground and to build them a cottage on it. Her husband agreed. They bought sixty acres of land, and on the high bank in a field, where in earlier days the cows of Obruchanovo used to wander, they built a pretty house of two stories with a terrace and a veranda, with a tower and a flagstaff on which a flag fluttered on Sundays. They built it in about three months, and then all the winter they were planting big trees, and when spring came and everything began to be green there were already avenues to the new house—a gardener and two laborers in white aprons were digging near it—there was a little fountain, and a globe of looking glass flashed so brilliantly that it was painful to look at. The house had already been named the New Villa.

  On a bright, warm morning at the end of May two horses were brought to Obruchanovo to the village blacksmith, Rodion Petrov. They came from the New Villa. The horses were sleek, graceful beasts, as white as snow, and strikingly alike.

  “Perfect swans!” said Rodion, gazing at them with reverent admiration.

  His wife Stepanida, his children, and grandchildren came out into the street to look at them. By degrees a crowd collected. The Lychkovs, father and son, both men with swollen faces and entirely beardless, came up bareheaded. Kozov, a tall, thin old man with a long, narrow beard, came up leaning on a stick with a crook handle: he kept winking with his crafty eyes and smiling ironically as though he knew something.

  “It’s only that they are white; what is there in them?” he said. “Put mine on oats, and they will be just as sleek. They ought to be in a plow and with a whip, too. . . .”

  The coachman simply looked at him with disdain but did not utter a word. And afterwards, while they were blowing up the fire at the forge, the coachman talked while he smoked cigarettes. The peasants learned from him various details: his employers were wealthy people; his mist
ress, Elena Ivanovna, had till her marriage lived in Moscow in a poor way as a governess; she was kindhearted, compassionate, and fond of helping the poor. On the new estate, he told them, they were not going to plow or to sow, but simply to live for their pleasure, live only to breathe the fresh air. When he had finished and led the horses back a crowd of boys followed him, the dogs barked, and Kozov, looking after him, winked sarcastically.

  “Landowners, too-oo!” he said. “They have built a house and set up horses, but I bet they are nobodies—landowners, too-oo.”

  Kozov for some reason took a dislike from the first to the new house, to the white horses, and to the handsome, well-fed coachman. Kozov was a solitary man, a widower; he had a dreary life (he was prevented from working by a disease which he sometimes called a rupture and sometimes worms); he was maintained by his son, who worked at a confectioner’s in Kharkov and sent him money; and from early morning till evening he sauntered at leisure about the river or about the village; if he saw, for instance, a peasant carting a log, or fishing, he would say: “That log’s dry wood—it is rotten,” or, “They won’t bite in weather like this.” In times of drought he would declare that there would not be a drop of rain till the frost came; and when the rains came he would say that everything would rot in the fields, that everything was ruined. And as he said these things he would wink as though he knew something.

  At the New Villa they burned Bengal lights and sent up fireworks in the evenings, and a sailing boat with red lanterns floated by Obruchanovo. One morning the engineer’s wife, Elena Ivanovna, and her little daughter drove to the village in a carriage with yellow wheels and a pair of dark bay ponies; both mother and daughter were wearing broad-brimmed straw hats, bent down over their ears.