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

“God be my judge, I have reckoned it and even jotted it down in a notebook; we have wasted thirty-four hours standing still on the journey. If you go on like this, either the cattle will die, or they won’t pay me two roubles for the meat when I do get there. It’s not traveling, but ruination.”

The guard raises his eyebrows and sighs with an air that seems to say: “All that is unhappily true!” The engine-driver sits silent, dreamily looking at the cap. From their faces one can see that they have a secret thought in common, which they do not utter, not because they want to conceal it, but because such thoughts are much better expressed by signs than by words. And the old man understands. He feels in his pocket, takes out a ten-rouble note, and without preliminary words, without any change in the tone of his voice or the expression of his face, but with the confidence and directness with which probably only Russians give and take bribes, he gives the guard the note. The latter takes it, folds it in four, and without undue haste puts it in his pocket. After that all three go out of the room, and waking the sleeping guard on the way, go on to the platform.

“What weather!” grumbles the head guard, shrugging his shoulders. “You can’t see your hand before your face.”

“Yes, it’s vile weather.”

From the window they can see the flaxen head of the telegraph clerk appear beside the green lamp and the telegraphic apparatus; soon after another head, bearded and wearing a red cap, appears beside it⁠—no doubt that of the stationmaster. The stationmaster bends down to the table, reads something on a blue form, rapidly passing his cigarette along the lines.⁠ ⁠… Malahin goes to his van.

The young man, his companion, is still half reclining and hardly audibly strumming on the accordion. He is little more than a boy, with no trace of a mustache; his full white face with its broad cheekbones is childishly dreamy; his eyes have a melancholy and tranquil look unlike that of a grown-up person, but he is broad, strong, heavy and rough like the old man; he does not stir nor shift his position, as though he is not equal to moving his big body. It seems as though any movement he made would tear his clothes and be so noisy as to frighten both him and the cattle. From under his big fat fingers that clumsily pick out the stops and keys of the accordion comes a steady flow of thin, tinkling sounds which blend into a simple, monotonous little tune; he listens to it, and is evidently much pleased with his performance.

A bell rings, but with such a muffled note that it seems to come from far away. A hurried second bell soon follows, then a third and the guard’s whistle. A minute passes in profound silence; the van does not move, it stands still, but vague sounds begin to come from beneath it, like the crunch of snow under sledge-runners; the van begins to shake and the sounds cease. Silence reigns again. But now comes the clank of buffers, the violent shock makes the van start and, as it were, give a lurch forward, and all the cattle fall against one another.

“May you be served the same in the world to come,” grumbles the old man, setting straight his cap, which had slipped on the back of his head from the jolt. “He’ll maim all my cattle like this!”

Yasha gets up without a word and, taking one of the fallen beasts by the horns, helps it to get on to its legs.⁠ ⁠… The jolt is followed by a stillness again. The sounds of crunching snow come from under the van again, and it seems as though the train had moved back a little.

“There will be another jolt in a minute,” says the old man. And the convulsive quiver does, in fact, run along the train, there is a crashing sound and the bullocks fall on one another again.

“It’s a job!” says Yasha, listening. “The train must be heavy. It seems it won’t move.”

“It was not heavy before, but now it has suddenly got heavy. No, my lad, the guard has not gone shares with him, I expect. Go and take him something, or he will be jolting us till morning.”

Yasha takes a three-rouble note from the old man and jumps out of the van. The dull thud of his heavy footsteps resounds outside the van and gradually dies away. Stillness.⁠ ⁠… In the next van a bullock utters a prolonged subdued “moo,” as though it were singing.

Yasha comes back. A cold damp wind darts into the van.

“Shut the door, Yasha, and we will go to bed,” says the old man. “Why burn a candle for nothing?”

Yasha moves the heavy door; there is a sound of a whistle, the engine and the train set off.

“It’s cold,” mutters the old man, stretching himself on the cape and laying his head on a bundle. “It is very different at home! It’s warm and clean and soft, and there is room to say your prayers, but here we are worse off than any pigs. It’s four days and nights since I have taken off my boots.”

Yasha, staggering from the jolting of the train, opens the lantern and snuffs out the wick with his wet fingers. The light flares up, hisses like a frying pan and goes out.

“Yes, my lad,” Malahin goes on, as he feels Yasha lie down beside him and the young man’s huge back huddle against his own, “it’s cold. There is a draught from every crack. If your mother or your sister were to sleep here for one night they would be dead by morning. There it is, my lad, you wouldn’t study and go to the high school like your brothers, so you must take the cattle with your