Short Fiction, Leo Tolstoy [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

“I want to ask him for his boots; I’ve worn mine into holes,” answered the young fellow, tossing back his hair and straightening the gloves in his belt. “Is he asleep? Hey, Uncle Fyodor?” he repeated, going up to the stove.

“What?” a weak voice was heard in reply, and a thin face with a red beard bent over from the stove. A big, wasted, white hand, covered with hair, pulled up a coat on the bony shoulder in the dirty shirt. “Give me a drink, brother; what do you want?”

The young man handed him a dipper of water.

“Well, Fedya,” he said, hesitating, “you won’t be wanting your new boots now; give them to me; you won’t be going out, you know.”

Pressing his weary head to the shining dipper, and wetting his scanty, hanging moustaches in the dingy water, the sick man drank feebly and eagerly. His tangled beard was not clean, his sunken, lustreless eyes were lifted with an effort to the young man’s face. When he had finished drinking he tried to lift his hand to wipe his wet lips, but he could not, and he wiped them on the sleeve of the coat. Without uttering a sound, but breathing heavily through his nose, he looked straight into the young man’s eyes, trying to rally his strength.

“Maybe you’ve promised them to someone already?” said the young man; “if so, never mind. The thing is, it’s soaking wet outside, and I’ve to go out on a job; and I said to myself, why, I’ll ask Fedya for his boots, he’ll not need them, for sure. If you are likely to need them yourself, say so.”

There was a gurgle and a grumble in the sick man’s throat; he bent over and was choked by a deep, stifling cough.

“He need them!” the cook cried out in sudden anger, filling the whole hut with her voice; “he’s not got off the stove these two months! Why, he coughs fit to split himself; it makes me ache inside simply to hear him. How could he want boots? He won’t wear new boots to be buried! And time he was, too, long ago⁠—God forgive me the sin! Why, he coughs fit to split himself. He ought to be moved into another hut, or somewhere! There are hospitals, I’ve heard say, for such in the town; he takes up the whole place, and what’s one to do? One hasn’t room to turn round. And then they expect me to keep the place clean!”

“Hi, Seryoga! go and take your seat; the gentry are waiting,” the overseer of the posting-station shouted at the door.

Seryoga would have gone away without waiting for an answer, but the sick man’s eyes, while he was coughing, had told him he wanted to answer.

“You take the boots, Seryoga,” said he, stifling the cough and taking breath a minute. “Only buy me a stone when I die, do you hear?” he added huskily.

“Thanks, uncle, so I’ll take them; and as to the stone, ay, ay, I’ll buy it.”

“There, lads, you hear?” the sick man managed to articulate, and again he bent over and began choking.

“All right, we heard,” said one of the drivers. “Go along, Seryoga, or the overseer will be running after you again. The lady from Shirkin is ill.”

Seryoga quickly pulled off his torn and enormously too large boots, and thrust them under a locker. Uncle Fyodor’s new boots fitted his feet precisely, and Seryoga went out to the carriage looking at them.

“What grand boots! let me grease them for you,” said a driver with the greasepot in his hand, as Seryoga got on the box and picked up the reins. “Did he give them you for nothing?”

“Why, are you jealous?” answered Seryoga, getting up and shaking down the skirts of his coat about his legs. “Hi, get up, my darlings!” he shouted to the horses, brandishing the whip, and the two carriages, with their occupants, boxes, and baggage, rolled swiftly along the wet road, and vanished into the grey autumn mist.

The sick driver remained lying on the stove in the stifling hut. Unrelieved by coughing, he turned over on the other side with an effort, and was quiet. All day till evening, men were coming and going and dining in the hut; there was no sound from the sick man. At nightfall, the cook clambered up into the stove and reached across his legs to get a sheepskin. “Don’t you be angry with me, Nastasya,” said the sick man; “I shall soon clear out of your place.”

“That’s all right, that’s all right; why, I didn’t mean it,” muttered Nastasya. “But what is it that’s wrong with you, uncle? Tell me about it.”

“All my inside’s wasted away. God knows what it is.”

“My word! and does your throat hurt when you cough!”

“It hurts me all over. My death is at hand⁠—that’s what it is. Oh, oh, oh!” moaned the sick man.

“Cover your legs up like this,” said Nastasya, pulling a coat over him as she crept off the stove.

A night-light glimmered dimly all night in the hut. Nastasya and some ten drivers lay on the floor and the lockers asleep, and snoring loudly. The sick man alone moaned faintly, coughed, and turned over on the stove. Towards morning he became quite still.

“A queer dream I had in the night,” said the cook, stretching next morning in the half-light. “I dreamed that Uncle Fyodor got down from the stove and went out to chop wood. ‘Nastasya,’ says he, ‘I’ll split you some’; and I says to him, ‘How can you chop the wood?’ and he snatched up the axe and starts chopping so fast, so fast that the chips were flying. ‘Why,’ says I, ‘you were ill, weren’t you?’ ‘No,’ says he, ‘I’m all right,’ and he swings the axe, so that it gave me quite a fright. I screamed out and waked up. Isn’t he dead, perhaps? Uncle Fyodor! Hey, uncle!”

Fyodor made no sound in reply.

“Maybe he is