Short Fiction, Anton Chekhov [websites to read books for free .TXT] 📗

blue trousers stretches with relish, and husks of sunflower seeds fall in showers from all over him on to the ground. At that moment from the gate opposite appears another native with a long beard, wearing a crumpled yellowish-grey cotton coat. He screws up his eyes affectionately at the blue trousers and shouts:

“Good morning, Semyon Nikolaitch, I have the honour to congratulate you on the Thursday.”

“And the same to you, Kapiton Petrovitch!”

“Come to my seat! It’s cool here!”

The blue trousers, with much sighing and groaning and waddling from side to side like a duck, cross the street.

“Tierce major⁠ ⁠…” mutters Lyashkevsky, “from the queen.⁠ ⁠… Five and fifteen.⁠ ⁠… The rascals are talking of politics.⁠ ⁠… Do you hear? They have begun about England. I have six hearts.”

“I have the seven spades. My point.”

“Yes, it’s yours. Do you hear? They are abusing Beaconsfield. They don’t know, the swine, that Beaconsfield has been dead for ever so long. So I have twenty-nine.⁠ ⁠… Your lead.”

“Eight⁠ ⁠… nine⁠ ⁠… ten.⁠ ⁠… Yes, amazing people, these Russians! Eleven⁠ ⁠… twelve.⁠ ⁠… The Russian inertia is unique on the terrestrial globe.”

“Thirty⁠ ⁠… Thirty-one.⁠ ⁠… One ought to take a good whip, you know. Go out and give them Beaconsfield. I say, how their tongues are wagging! It’s easier to babble than to work. I suppose you threw away the queen of clubs and I didn’t realise it.”

“Thirteen⁠ ⁠… Fourteen.⁠ ⁠… It’s unbearably hot! One must be made of iron to sit in such heat on a seat in the full sun! Fifteen.”

The first game is followed by a second, the second by a third.⁠ ⁠… Finks loses, and by degrees works himself up into a gambling fever and forgets all about the cracking walls of the high school cellar. As Lyashkevsky plays he keeps looking at the aborigines. He sees them, entertaining each other with conversation, go to the open gate, cross the filthy yard and sit down on a scanty patch of shade under an aspen tree. Between twelve and one o’clock the fat cook with brown legs spreads before them something like a baby’s sheet with brown stains upon it, and gives them their dinner. They eat with wooden spoons, keep brushing away the flies, and go on talking.

“The devil, it is beyond everything,” cries Lyashkevsky, revolted. “I am very glad I have not a gun or a revolver or I should have a shot at those cattle. I have four knaves⁠—fourteen.⁠ ⁠… Your point.⁠ ⁠… It really gives me a twitching in my legs. I can’t see those ruffians without being upset.”

“Don’t excite yourself, it is bad for you.”

“But upon my word, it is enough to try the patience of a stone!”

When he has finished dinner the native in blue trousers, worn out and exhausted, staggering with laziness and repletion, crosses the street to his own house and sinks feebly on to his bench. He is struggling with drowsiness and the gnats, and is looking about him as dejectedly as though he were every minute expecting his end. His helpless air drives Lyashkevsky out of all patience. The Pole pokes his head out of the window and shouts at him, spluttering:

“Been gorging? Ah, the old woman! The sweet darling. He has been stuffing himself, and now he doesn’t know what to do with his tummy! Get out of my sight, you confounded fellow! Plague take you!”

The native looks sourly at him, and merely twiddles his fingers instead of answering. A schoolboy of his acquaintance passes by him with his satchel on his back. Stopping him the native ponders a long time what to say to him, and asks:

“Well, what now?”

“Nothing.”

“How, nothing?”

“Why, just nothing.”

“H’m.⁠ ⁠… And which subject is the hardest?”

“That’s according.” The schoolboy shrugs his shoulders.

“I see⁠—er⁠ ⁠… What is the Latin for tree?”

“Arbor.”

“Aha.⁠ ⁠… And so one has to know all that,” sighs the blue trousers. “You have to go into it all.⁠ ⁠… It’s hard work, hard work.⁠ ⁠… Is your dear Mamma well?”

“She is all right, thank you.”

“Ah.⁠ ⁠… Well, run along.”

After losing two roubles Finks remembers the high school and is horrified.

“Holy Saints, why it’s three o’clock already. How I have been staying on. Goodbye, I must run.⁠ ⁠…”

“Have dinner with me, and then go,” says Lyashkevsky. “You have plenty of time.”

Finks stays, but only on condition that dinner shall last no more than ten minutes. After dining he sits for some five minutes on the sofa and thinks of the cracked wall, then resolutely lays his head on the cushion and fills the room with a shrill whistling through his nose. While he is asleep, Lyashkevsky, who does not approve of an afternoon nap, sits at the window, stares at the dozing native, and grumbles:

“Race of curs! I wonder you don’t choke with laziness. No work, no intellectual or moral interests, nothing but vegetating⁠ ⁠… disgusting. Tfoo!”

At six o’clock Finks wakes up.

“It’s too late to go to the high school now,” he says, stretching. “I shall have to go tomorrow, and now.⁠ ⁠… How about my revenge? Let’s have one more game.⁠ ⁠…”

After seeing his visitor off, between nine and ten, Lyashkevsky looks after him for some time, and says:

“Damn the fellow, staying here the whole day and doing absolutely nothing.⁠ ⁠… Simply get their salary and do no work; the devil take them!⁠ ⁠… The German pig.⁠ ⁠…”

He looks out of the window, but the native is no longer there. He has gone to bed. There is no one to grumble at, and for the first time in the day he keeps his mouth shut, but ten minutes passes and he cannot restrain the depression that overpowers him, and begins to grumble, shoving the old shabby armchair:

“You only take up room, rubbishly old thing! You ought to have been burnt long ago, but I keep forgetting to tell them to chop you up. It’s a disgrace!”

And as he gets into bed he presses his hand on a spring of the mattress, frowns and says peevishly:

“The con⁠—found⁠—ed spring! It will cut my side all night. I will tell them to rip up the mattress tomorrow and get you out, you useless thing.”

He falls asleep