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

“What’s one to say, brother?” said Yergunov, and he shrugged one shoulder. “If one reasons from science, of course there are no devils, for it’s a superstition; but if one looks at it simply, as you and I do now, there are devils, to put it shortly.⁠ ⁠… I have seen a great deal in my life.⁠ ⁠… When I finished my studies I served as medical assistant in the army in a regiment of the dragoons, and I have been in the war, of course. I have a medal and a decoration from the Red Cross, but after the treaty of San Stefano I returned to Russia and went into the service of the Zemstvo. And in consequence of my enormous circulation about the world, I may say I have seen more than many another has dreamed of. It has happened to me to see devils, too; that is, not devils with horns and a tail⁠—that is all nonsense⁠—but just, to speak precisely, something of the sort.”

“Where?” asked Kalashnikov.

“In various places. There is no need to go far. Last year I met him here⁠—speak of him not at night⁠—near this very inn. I was driving, I remember, to Golyshino; I was going there to vaccinate. Of course, as usual, I had the racing droshky and a horse, and all the necessary paraphernalia, and, what’s more, I had a watch and all the rest of it, so I was on my guard as I drove along, for fear of some mischance. There are lots of tramps of all sorts. I came up to the Zmeinoy Ravine⁠—damnation take it⁠—and was just going down it, when all at once somebody comes up to me⁠—such a fellow! Black hair, black eyes, and his whole face looked smutted with soot.⁠ ⁠… He comes straight up to the horse and takes hold of the left rein: ‘Stop!’ He looked at the horse, then at me, then dropped the reins, and without saying a bad word, ‘Where are you going?’ says he. And he showed his teeth in a grin, and his eyes were spiteful-looking.

“ ‘Ah,’ thought I, ‘you are a queer customer!’ ‘I am going to vaccinate for the smallpox,’ said I. ‘And what is that to you?’ ‘Well, if that’s so,’ says he, ‘vaccinate me.’ He bared his arm and thrust it under my nose. Of course, I did not bandy words with him; I just vaccinated him to get rid of him. Afterwards I looked at my lancet and it had gone rusty.”

The peasant who was asleep near the stove suddenly turned over and flung off the sheepskin; to his great surprise, Yergunov recognized the stranger he had met that day at Zmeinoy Ravine. This peasant’s hair, beard, and eyes were black as soot; his face was swarthy; and, to add to the effect, there was a black spot the size of a lentil on his right cheek. He looked mockingly at the hospital assistant and said:

“I did take hold of the left rein⁠—that was so; but about the smallpox you are lying, sir. And there was not a word said about the smallpox between us.”

Yergunov was disconcerted.

“I’m not talking about you,” he said. “Lie down, since you are lying down.”

The dark-skinned peasant had never been to the hospital, and Yergunov did not know who he was or where he came from; and now, looking at him, he made up his mind that the man must be a gypsy. The peasant got up and, stretching and yawning loudly, went up to Lyubka and Kalashnikov, and sat down beside them, and he, too, began looking at the book. His sleepy face softened and a look of envy came into it.

“Look, Merik,” Lyubka said to him; “get me such horses and I will drive to heaven.”

“Sinners can’t drive to heaven,” said Kalashnikov. “That’s for holiness.”

Then Lyubka laid the table and brought in a big piece of fat bacon, salted cucumbers, a wooden platter of boiled meat cut up into little pieces, then a frying pan, in which there were sausages and cabbage spluttering. A cut-glass decanter of vodka, which diffused a smell of orange-peel all over the room when it was poured out, was put on the table also.

Yergunov was annoyed that Kalashnikov and the dark fellow Merik talked together and took no notice of him at all, behaving exactly as though he were not in the room. And he wanted to talk to them, to brag, to drink, to have a good meal, and if possible to have a little fun with Lyubka, who sat down near him half a dozen times while they were at supper, and, as though by accident, brushed against him with her handsome shoulders and passed her hands over her broad hips. She was a healthy, active girl, always laughing and never still: she would sit down, then get up, and when she was sitting down she would keep turning first her face and then her back to her neighbour, like a fidgety child, and never failed to brush against him with her elbows or her knees.

And he was displeased, too, that the peasants drank only a glass each and no more, and it was awkward for him to drink alone. But he could not refrain from taking a second glass, all the same, then a third, and he ate all the sausage. He brought himself to flatter the peasants, that they might accept him as one of the party instead of holding him at arm’s length.

“You are a fine set of fellows in Bogalyovka!” he said, and wagged his head.

“In what way fine fellows?” enquired Kalashnikov.

“Why, about horses, for instance. Fine fellows at stealing!”

“H’m! fine fellows, you call them. Nothing but thieves and drunkards.”

“They have had their day, but it is over,” said Merik, after a pause. “But now they have only Filya left, and he is blind.”

“Yes, there is no one but Filya,” said Kalashnikov, with a sigh. “Reckon it up, he