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

But at last there was the sound of voices.

“Yegory, are you asleep?” Panteley cried below. “Get down! Is he deaf, the silly little thing?⁠ ⁠…”

“Something like a storm!” said an unfamiliar bass voice, and the stranger cleared his throat as though he had just tossed off a good glass of vodka.

Yegorushka opened his eyes. Close to the wagon stood Panteley, Emelyan, looking like a triangle, and the giants. The latter were by now much shorter, and when Yegorushka looked more closely at them they turned out to be ordinary peasants, carrying on their shoulders not pikes but pitchforks. In the space between Panteley and the triangular figure, gleamed the window of a low-pitched hut. So the wagons were halting in the village. Yegorushka flung off the mat, took his bundle and made haste to get off the wagon. Now when close to him there were people talking and a lighted window he no longer felt afraid, though the thunder was crashing as before and the whole sky was streaked with lightning.

“It was a good storm, all right,⁠ ⁠…” Panteley was muttering. “Thank God,⁠ ⁠… my feet are a little softened by the rain. It was all right.⁠ ⁠… Have you got down, Yegory? Well, go into the hut; it is all right.⁠ ⁠…”

“Holy, holy, holy!” wheezed Emelyan, “it must have struck something.⁠ ⁠… Are you of these parts?” he asked the giants.

“No, from Glinovo. We belong to Glinovo. We are working at the Platers’.”

“Threshing?”

“All sorts. Just now we are getting in the wheat. The lightning, the lightning! It is long since we have had such a storm.⁠ ⁠…”

Yegorushka went into the hut. He was met by a lean hunchbacked old woman with a sharp chin. She stood holding a tallow candle in her hands, screwing up her eyes and heaving prolonged sighs.

“What a storm God has sent us!” she said. “And our lads are out for the night on the steppe; they’ll have a bad time, poor dears! Take off your things, little sir, take off your things.”

Shivering with cold and shrugging squeamishly, Yegorushka pulled off his drenched overcoat, then stretched out his arms and straddled his legs, and stood a long time without moving. The slightest movement caused an unpleasant sensation of cold and wetness. His sleeves and the back of his shirt were sopped, his trousers stuck to his legs, his head was dripping.

“What’s the use of standing there, with your legs apart, little lad?” said the old woman. “Come, sit down.”

Holding his legs wide apart, Yegorushka went up to the table and sat down on a bench near somebody’s head. The head moved, puffed a stream of air through its nose, made a chewing sound and subsided. A mound covered with a sheepskin stretched from the head along the bench; it was a peasant woman asleep.

The old woman went out sighing, and came back with a big watermelon and a little sweet melon.

“Have something to eat, my dear! I have nothing else to offer you,⁠ ⁠…” she said, yawning. She rummaged in the table and took out a long sharp knife, very much like the one with which the brigands killed the merchants in the inn. “Have some, my dear!”

Yegorushka, shivering as though he were in a fever, ate a slice of sweet melon with black bread and then a slice of watermelon, and that made him feel colder still.

“Our lads are out on the steppe for the night,⁠ ⁠…” sighed the old woman while he was eating. “The terror of the Lord! I’d light the candle under the icon, but I don’t know where Stepanida has put it. Have some more, little sir, have some more.⁠ ⁠…”

The old woman gave a yawn and, putting her right hand behind her, scratched her left shoulder.

“It must be two o’clock now,” she said; “it will soon be time to get up. Our lads are out on the steppe for the night; they are all wet through for sure.⁠ ⁠…”

“Granny,” said Yegorushka. “I am sleepy.”

“Lie down, my dear, lie down,” the old woman sighed, yawning. “Lord Jesus Christ! I was asleep, when I heard a noise as though someone were knocking. I woke up and looked, and it was the storm God had sent us.⁠ ⁠… I’d have lighted the candle, but I couldn’t find it.”

Talking to herself, she pulled some rags, probably her own bed, off the bench, took two sheepskins off a nail by the stove, and began laying them out for a bed for Yegorushka. “The storm doesn’t grow less,” she muttered. “If only nothing’s struck in an unlucky hour. Our lads are out on the steppe for the night. Lie down and sleep, my dear.⁠ ⁠… Christ be with you, my child.⁠ ⁠… I won’t take away the melon; maybe you’ll have a bit when you get up.”

The sighs and yawns of the old woman, the even breathing of the sleeping woman, the half-darkness of the hut, and the sound of the rain outside, made one sleepy. Yegorushka was shy of undressing before the old woman. He only took off his boots, lay down and covered himself with the sheepskin.

“Is the little lad lying down?” he heard Panteley whisper a little later.

“Yes,” answered the old woman in a whisper. “The terror of the Lord! It thunders and thunders, and there is no end to it.”

“It will soon be over,” wheezed Panteley, sitting down; “it’s getting quieter.⁠ ⁠… The lads have gone into the huts, and two have stayed with the horses. The lads have.⁠ ⁠… They can’t;⁠ ⁠… the horses would be taken away.⁠ ⁠… I’ll sit here a bit and then go and take my turn.⁠ ⁠… We can’t leave them; they would be taken.⁠ ⁠…”

Panteley and the old woman sat side by side at Yegorushka’s feet, talking in hissing whispers and interspersing their speech with sighs and yawns. And Yegorushka could not get warm. The warm heavy sheepskin lay on him, but he was trembling all over; his arms and legs were twitching, and his whole inside was shivering.⁠ ⁠… He undressed under the sheepskin, but that