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

his eyes and saw before him something dark like a hut or a haystack.⁠ ⁠…

He would have got out of the sledge and found out what it was, but he felt overcome by such inertia that it seemed better to freeze than move, and he sank into a peaceful sleep.

He woke up in a big room with painted walls. Bright sunlight was streaming in at the windows. The turner saw people facing him, and his first feeling was a desire to show himself a respectable man who knew how things should be done.

“A requiem, brothers, for my old woman,” he said. “The priest should be told.⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh, all right, all right; lie down,” a voice cut him short.

“Pavel Ivanitch!” the turner cried in surprise, seeing the doctor before him. “Your honor, benefactor!”

He wanted to leap up and fall on his knees before the doctor, but felt that his arms and legs would not obey him.

“Your honor, where are my legs, where are my arms!”

“Say goodbye to your arms and legs.⁠ ⁠… They’ve been frozen off. Come, come!⁠ ⁠… What are you crying for? You’ve lived your life, and thank God for it! I suppose you have had sixty years of it⁠—that’s enough for you!⁠ ⁠…”

“I am grieving.⁠ ⁠… Graciously forgive me! If I could have another five or six years!⁠ ⁠…”

“What for?”

“The horse isn’t mine, I must give it back.⁠ ⁠… I must bury my old woman.⁠ ⁠… How quickly it is all ended in this world! Your honor, Pavel Ivanitch! A cigarette-case of birchwood of the best! I’ll turn you croquet balls.⁠ ⁠…”

The doctor went out of the ward with a wave of his hand. It was all over with the turner.

Oh! The Public

“Here goes, I’ve done with drinking! Nothing⁠ ⁠… n-o-thing shall tempt me to it. It’s time to take myself in hand; I must buck up and work⁠ ⁠… You’re glad to get your salary, so you must do your work honestly, heartily, conscientiously, regardless of sleep and comfort. Chuck taking it easy. You’ve got into the way of taking a salary for nothing, my boy⁠—that’s not the right thing⁠ ⁠… not the right thing at all.⁠ ⁠…”

After administering to himself several such lectures Podtyagin, the head ticket collector, begins to feel an irresistible impulse to get to work. It is past one o’clock at night, but in spite of that he wakes the ticket collectors and with them goes up and down the railway carriages, inspecting the tickets.

“T-t-t-ickets⁠ ⁠… P-p-p-please!” he keeps shouting, briskly snapping the clippers.

Sleepy figures, shrouded in the twilight of the railway carriages, start, shake their heads, and produce their tickets.

“T-t-t-tickets, please!” Podtyagin addresses a second-class passenger, a lean, scraggy-looking man, wrapped up in a fur coat and a rug and surrounded with pillows. “Tickets, please!”

The scraggy-looking man makes no reply. He is buried in sleep. The head ticket-collector touches him on the shoulder and repeats impatiently: “T-t-tickets, p-p-please!”

The passenger starts, opens his eyes, and gazes in alarm at Podtyagin.

“What?⁠ ⁠… Who?⁠ ⁠… Eh?”

“You’re asked in plain language: t-t-tickets, p-p-please! If you please!”

“My God!” moans the scraggy-looking man, pulling a woebegone face. “Good Heavens! I’m suffering from rheumatism.⁠ ⁠… I haven’t slept for three nights! I’ve just taken morphia on purpose to get to sleep, and you⁠ ⁠… with your tickets! It’s merciless, it’s inhuman! If you knew how hard it is for me to sleep you wouldn’t disturb me for such nonsense.⁠ ⁠… It’s cruel, it’s absurd! And what do you want with my ticket! It’s positively stupid!”

Podtyagin considers whether to take offence or not⁠—and decides to take offence.

“Don’t shout here! This is not a tavern!”

“No, in a tavern people are more humane⁠ ⁠…” coughs the passenger. “Perhaps you’ll let me go to sleep another time! It’s extraordinary: I’ve travelled abroad, all over the place, and no one asked for my ticket there, but here you’re at it again and again, as though the devil were after you.⁠ ⁠…”

“Well, you’d better go abroad again since you like it so much.”

“It’s stupid, sir! Yes! As though it’s not enough killing the passengers with fumes and stuffiness and draughts, they want to strangle us with red tape, too, damn it all! He must have the ticket! My goodness, what zeal! If it were of any use to the company⁠—but half the passengers are travelling without a ticket!”

“Listen, sir!” cries Podtyagin, flaring up. “If you don’t leave off shouting and disturbing the public, I shall be obliged to put you out at the next station and to draw up a report on the incident!”

“This is revolting!” exclaims “the public,” growing indignant. “Persecuting an invalid! Listen, and have some consideration!”

“But the gentleman himself was abusive!” says Podtyagin, a little scared. “Very well.⁠ ⁠… I won’t take the ticket⁠ ⁠… as you like.⁠ ⁠… Only, of course, as you know very well, it’s my duty to do so.⁠ ⁠… If it were not my duty, then, of course⁠ ⁠… You can ask the stationmaster⁠ ⁠… ask anyone you like.⁠ ⁠…”

Podtyagin shrugs his shoulders and walks away from the invalid. At first he feels aggrieved and somewhat injured, then, after passing through two or three carriages, he begins to feel a certain uneasiness not unlike the pricking of conscience in his ticket-collector’s bosom.

“There certainly was no need to wake the invalid,” he thinks, “though it was not my fault.⁠ ⁠… They imagine I did it wantonly, idly. They don’t know that I’m bound in duty⁠ ⁠… if they don’t believe it, I can bring the stationmaster to them.” A station. The train stops five minutes. Before the third bell, Podtyagin enters the same second-class carriage. Behind him stalks the stationmaster in a red cap.

“This gentleman here,” Podtyagin begins, “declares that I have no right to ask for his ticket and⁠ ⁠… and is offended at it. I ask you, Mr. Stationmaster, to explain to him.⁠ ⁠… Do I ask for tickets according to regulation or to please myself? Sir,” Podtyagin addresses the scraggy-looking man, “sir! you can ask the stationmaster here if you don’t believe me.”

The invalid starts as though he had been stung, opens his eyes, and with a woebegone face sinks back in his seat.

“My