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

Trying to open her purse, the catch of which had gone wrong, Anna Akimovna was confused and turned red. She felt ashamed that people should be standing before her, looking at her hands and waiting, and most likely at the bottom of their hearts laughing at her. At that instant someone came into the kitchen and stamped his feet, knocking the snow off.

“The lodger has come in,” said Madame Tchalikov.

Anna Akimovna grew even more confused. She did not want anyone from the factory to find her in this ridiculous position. As ill-luck would have it, the lodger came in at the very moment when, having broken the catch at last, she was giving Tchalikov some notes, and Tchalikov, grunting as though he were paraylzed, was feeling about with his lips where he could kiss her. In the lodger she recognized the workman who had once clanked the sheet-iron before her in the forge, and had explained things to her. Evidently he had come in straight from the factory; his face looked dark and grimy, and on one cheek near his nose was a smudge of soot. His hands were perfectly black, and his unbelted shirt shone with oil and grease. He was a man of thirty, of medium height, with black hair and broad shoulders, and a look of great physical strength. At the first glance Anna Akimovna perceived that he must be a foreman, who must be receiving at least thirty-five roubles a month, and a stern, loud-voiced man who struck the workmen in the face; all this was evident from his manner of standing, from the attitude he involuntarily assumed at once on seeing a lady in his room, and most of all from the fact that he did not wear top-boots, that he had breast pockets, and a pointed, picturesquely clipped beard. Her father, Akim Ivanovitch, had been the brother of the factory owner, and yet he had been afraid of foremen like this lodger and had tried to win their favour.

“Excuse me for having come in here in your absence,” said Anna Akimovna.

The workman looked at her in surprise, smiled in confusion and did not speak.

“You must speak a little louder, madam.⁠ ⁠…” said Tchalikov softly. “When Mr. Pimenov comes home from the factory in the evenings he is a little hard of hearing.”

But Anna Akimovna was by now relieved that there was nothing more for her to do here; she nodded to them and went rapidly out of the room. Pimenov went to see her out.

“Have you been long in our employment?” she asked in a loud voice, without turning to him.

“From nine years old. I entered the factory in your uncle’s time.”

“That’s a long while! My uncle and my father knew all the workpeople, and I know hardly any of them. I had seen you before, but I did not know your name was Pimenov.”

Anna Akimovna felt a desire to justify herself before him, to pretend that she had just given the money not seriously, but as a joke.

“Oh, this poverty,” she sighed. “We give charity on holidays and working days, and still there is no sense in it. I believe it is useless to help such people as this Tchalikov.”

“Of course it is useless,” he agreed. “However much you give him, he will drink it all away. And now the husband and wife will be snatching it from one another and fighting all night,” he added with a laugh.

“Yes, one must admit that our philanthropy is useless, boring, and absurd. But still, you must agree, one can’t sit with one’s hand in one’s lap; one must do something. What’s to be done with the Tchalikovs, for instance?”

She turned to Pimenov and stopped, expecting an answer from him; he, too, stopped and slowly, without speaking, shrugged his shoulders. Obviously he knew what to do with the Tchalikovs, but the treatment would have been so coarse and inhuman that he did not venture to put it into words. And the Tchalikovs were to him so utterly uninteresting and worthless, that a moment later he had forgotten them; looking into Anna Akimovna’s eyes, he smiled with pleasure, and his face wore an expression as though he were dreaming about something very pleasant. Only, now standing close to him, Anna Akimovna saw from his face, and especially from his eyes, how exhausted and sleepy he was.

“Here, I ought to give him the fifteen hundred roubles!” she thought, but for some reason this idea seemed to her incongruous and insulting to Pimenov.

“I am sure you are aching all over after your work, and you come to the door with me,” she said as they went down the stairs. “Go home.”

But he did not catch her words. When they came out into the street, he ran on ahead, unfastened the cover of the sledge, and helping Anna Akimovna in, said:

“I wish you a happy Christmas!”

“They have left off ringing ever so long! It’s dreadful; you won’t be there before the service is over! Get up!”

“Two horses are racing, racing⁠ ⁠…” said Anna Akimovna, and she woke up; before her, candle in hand, stood her maid, red-haired Masha. “Well, what is it?”

“Service is over already,” said Masha with despair. “I have called you three times! Sleep till evening for me, but you told me yourself to call you!”

Anna Akimovna raised herself on her elbow and glanced towards the window. It was still quite dark outside, and only the lower edge of the window-frame was white with snow. She could hear a low, mellow chime of bells; it was not the parish church, but somewhere further away. The watch on the little table showed three minutes past six.

“Very well, Masha.⁠ ⁠… In three minutes⁠ ⁠…” said Anna Akimovna in an imploring voice, and she snuggled under the bedclothes.

She imagined the snow at the front door, the sledge, the dark sky, the crowd in the church, and the smell of juniper, and she felt dread at the thought; but