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

Yegorushka looked into the speaker’s mottled face and remembered that this was Deniska.

“Your uncle and Father Christopher are in the inn now, drinking tea; come along!”

And he led Yegorushka to a big two-storied building, dark and gloomy like the almshouse at N⁠⸺. After going across the entry, up a dark staircase and through a narrow corridor, Yegorushka and Deniska reached a little room in which Ivan Ivanitch and Father Christopher were sitting at the tea-table. Seeing the boy, both the old men showed surprise and pleasure.

“Aha! Yegor Ni-ko-la-aitch!” chanted Father Christopher. “Mr. Lomonosov!”

“Ah, our gentleman that is to be,” said Kuzmitchov, “pleased to see you!”

Yegorushka took off his greatcoat, kissed his uncle’s hand and Father Christopher’s, and sat down to the table.

“Well, how did you like the journey, puer bone?” Father Christopher pelted him with questions as he poured him out some tea, with his radiant smile. “Sick of it, I’ve no doubt? God save us all from having to travel by wagon or with oxen. You go on and on, God forgive us; you look ahead and the steppe is always lying stretched out the same as it was⁠—you can’t see the end of it! It’s not travelling but regular torture. Why don’t you drink your tea? Drink it up; and in your absence, while you have been trailing along with the wagons, we have settled all our business capitally. Thank God we have sold our wool to Tcherepahin, and no one could wish to have done better.⁠ ⁠… We have made a good bargain.”

At the first sight of his own people Yegorushka felt an overwhelming desire to complain. He did not listen to Father Christopher, but thought how to begin and what exactly to complain of. But Father Christopher’s voice, which seemed to him harsh and unpleasant, prevented him from concentrating his attention and confused his thoughts. He had not sat at the table five minutes before he got up, went to the sofa and lay down.

“Well, well,” said Father Christopher in surprise. “What about your tea?”

Still thinking what to complain of, Yegorushka leaned his head against the wall and broke into sobs.

“Well, well!” repeated Father Christopher, getting up and going to the sofa. “Yegory, what is the matter with you? Why are you crying?”

“I’m⁠ ⁠… I’m ill,” Yegorushka brought out.

“Ill?” said Father Christopher in amazement. “That’s not the right thing, my boy.⁠ ⁠… One mustn’t be ill on a journey. Aie, aie, what are you thinking about, boy⁠ ⁠… eh?”

He put his hand to Yegorushka’s head, touched his cheek and said:

“Yes, your head’s feverish.⁠ ⁠… You must have caught cold or else have eaten something.⁠ ⁠… Pray to God.”

“Should we give him quinine?⁠ ⁠…” said Ivan Ivanitch, troubled.

“No; he ought to have something hot.⁠ ⁠… Yegory, have a little drop of soup? Eh?”

“I⁠ ⁠… don’t want any,” said Yegorushka.

“Are you feeling chilly?”

“I was chilly before, but now⁠ ⁠… now I am hot. And I ache all over.⁠ ⁠…”

Ivan Ivanitch went up to the sofa, touched Yegorushka on the head, cleared his throat with a perplexed air, and went back to the table.

“I tell you what, you undress and go to bed,” said Father Christopher. “What you want is sleep now.”

He helped Yegorushka to undress, gave him a pillow and covered him with a quilt, and over that Ivan Ivanitch’s greatcoat. Then he walked away on tiptoe and sat down to the table. Yegorushka shut his eyes, and at once it seemed to him that he was not in the hotel room, but on the highroad beside the camp fire. Emelyan waved his hands, and Dymov with red eyes lay on his stomach and looked mockingly at Yegorushka.

“Beat him, beat him!” shouted Yegorushka.

“He is delirious,” said Father Christopher in an undertone.

“It’s a nuisance!” sighed Ivan Ivanitch.

“He must be rubbed with oil and vinegar. Please God, he will be better tomorrow.”

To be rid of bad dreams, Yegorushka opened his eyes and began looking towards the fire. Father Christopher and Ivan Ivanitch had now finished their tea and were talking in a whisper. The first was smiling with delight, and evidently could not forget that he had made a good bargain over his wool; what delighted him was not so much the actual profit he had made as the thought that on getting home he would gather round him his big family, wink slyly and go off into a chuckle; at first he would deceive them all, and say that he had sold the wool at a price below its value, then he would give his son-in-law, Mihail, a fat pocketbook and say: “Well, take it! that’s the way to do business!” Kuzmitchov did not seem pleased; his face expressed, as before, a businesslike reserve and anxiety.

“If I could have known that Tcherepahin would give such a price,” he said in a low voice, “I wouldn’t have sold Makarov those five tons at home. It is vexatious! But who could have told that the price had gone up here?”

A man in a white shirt cleared away the samovar and lighted the little lamp before the icon in the corner. Father Christopher whispered something in his ear; the man looked, made a serious face like a conspirator, as though to say, “I understand,” went out, and returned a little while afterwards and put something under the sofa. Ivan Ivanitch made himself a bed on the floor, yawned several times, said his prayers lazily, and lay down.

“I think of going to the cathedral tomorrow,” said Father Christopher. “I know the sacristan there. I ought to go and see the bishop after mass, but they say he is ill.”

He yawned and put out the lamp. Now there was no light in the room but the little lamp before the icon.

“They say he can’t receive visitors,” Father Christopher went on, undressing. “So I shall go away without seeing him.”

He took off his full coat, and Yegorushka saw Robinson Crusoe reappear. Robinson stirred something in a saucer, went up to Yegorushka and whispered:

“Lomonosov, are you