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

It was a tiny, thin, pitiful little baby, and it was strange that it should cry and gaze about and be considered a human being, and even be called Nikifor. He lay in his swinging cradle, and Lipa would walk away towards the door and say, bowing to him:

“Good day, Nikifor Anisimitch!”

And she would rush at him and kiss him. Then she would walk away to the door, bow again, and say:

‘Good day, Nikifor Anisimitch!

And he kicked up his little red legs, and his crying was mixed with laughter like the carpenter Elizarov’s.

At last the day of the trial was fixed. Tsybukin went away five days before. Then they heard that the peasants called as witnesses had been fetched; their old workman who had received a notice to appear went too.

The trial was on a Thursday. But Sunday had passed, and Tsybukin was still not back, and there was no news. Towards the evening on Tuesday Varvara was sitting at the open window, listening for her husband to come. In the next room Lipa was playing with her baby. She was tossing him up in her arms and saying enthusiastically:

“You will grow up ever so big, ever so big. You will be a peasant, we shall go out to work together! We shall go out to work together!”

“Come, come,” said Varvara, offended. “Go out to work, what an idea, you silly girl! He will be a merchant⁠ ⁠… !”

Lipa sang softly, but a minute later she forgot and again:

“You will grow ever so big, ever so big. You will be a peasant, we’ll go out to work together.”

“There she is at it again!”

Lipa, with Nikifor in her arms, stood still in the doorway and asked:

“Why do I love him so much, mamma? Why do I feel so sorry for him?” she went on in a quivering voice, and her eyes glistened with tears. “Who is he? What is he like? As light as a little feather, as a little crumb, but I love him; I love him like a real person. Here he can do nothing, he can’t talk, and yet I know what he wants with his little eyes.”

Varvara was listening; the sound of the evening train coming in to the station reached her. Had her husband come? She did not hear and she did not heed what Lipa was saying, she had no idea how the time passed, but only trembled all over⁠—not from dread, but intense curiosity. She saw a cart full of peasants roll quickly by with a rattle. It was the witnesses coming back from the station. When the cart passed the shop the old workman jumped out and walked into the yard. She could hear him being greeted in the yard and being asked some questions.⁠ ⁠…

“Deprivation of rights and all his property,” he said loudly, “and six years’ penal servitude in Siberia.”

She could see Aksinya come out of the shop by the back way; she had just been selling kerosene, and in one hand held a bottle and in the other a can, and in her mouth she had some silver coins.

“Where is father?” she asked, lisping.

“At the station,” answered the labourer. “ ‘When it gets a little darker,’ he said, ‘then I shall come.’ ”

And when it became known all through the household that Anisim was sentenced to penal servitude, the cook in the kitchen suddenly broke into a wail as though at a funeral, imagining that this was demanded by the proprieties:

“There is no one to care for us now you have gone, Anisim Grigoritch, our bright falcon.⁠ ⁠…”

The dogs began barking in alarm. Varvara ran to the window, and rushing about in distress, shouted to the cook with all her might, straining her voice:

“Sto-op, Stepanida, sto-op! Don’t harrow us, for Christ’s sake!”

They forgot to set the samovar, they could think of nothing. Only Lipa could not make out what it was all about and went on playing with her baby.

When the old father arrived from the station they asked him no questions. He greeted them and walked through all the rooms in silence; he had no supper.

“There was no one to see about things⁠ ⁠…” Varvara began when they were alone. “I said you should have asked some of the gentry, you would not heed me at the time.⁠ ⁠… A petition would⁠ ⁠…”

“I saw to things,” said her husband with a wave of his hand. “When Anisim was condemned I went to the gentleman who was defending him. ‘It’s no use now,’ he said, ‘it’s too late’; and Anisim said the same; it’s too late. But all the same as I came out of the court I made an agreement with a lawyer, I paid him something in advance. I’ll wait a week and then I will go again. It is as God wills.”

Again the old man walked through all the rooms, and when he went back to Varvara he said:

“I must be ill. My head’s in a sort of⁠ ⁠… fog. My thoughts are in a maze.”

He closed the door that Lipa might not hear, and went on softly:

“I am unhappy about my money. Do you remember on Low Sunday before his wedding Anisim’s bringing me some new roubles and half-roubles? One parcel I put away at the time, but the others I mixed with my own money. When my uncle Dmitri Filatitch⁠—the kingdom of heaven be his⁠—was alive, he used constantly to go journeys to Moscow and to the Crimea to buy goods. He had a wife, and this same wife, when he was away buying goods, used to take up with other men. She had half a dozen children. And when uncle was in his cups he would laugh and say: ‘I never can make out,’ he used to say, ‘which are my children and which are other people’s.’ An easygoing disposition, to be sure; and so I now can’t distinguish which are genuine roubles and which are false ones. And it seems to me that they are all false.”

“Nonsense, God bless you.”

“I take a ticket