Selected early short stories 1886

racked his brains over the question what to do with the present.

'It's a fine thing,' he mused, 'and it would be a pity to throw it away and improper to keep it. The very best thing would be to make a present of it to someone. . . . I know what! I'll take it this evening to Shashkin, the comedian. The rascal is fond of such things, and by the way it is his benefit tonight.'

No sooner said than done. In the evening the candelabra, carefully wrapped up, was duly carried to Shashkin's. The whole evening the comic actor's dressing-room was besieged by men coming to admire the present; the dressing-room was filled with the hum of enthusiasm and laughter like the neighing of horses. If one of the actresses approached the door and asked: 'May I come in?' the comedian's husky voice was heard at once: 'No, no, my dear, I am not dressed!'

After the performance the comedian shrugged his shoulders, flung up his hands and said: 'Well what am I to do with the horrid thing? Why, I live in a private flat! Actresses come and see me! It's not a photograph that you can put in a drawer!'

'You had better sell it, sir,' the hairdresser who was disrobing the actor advised him. 'There's an old woman living about here who buys antique bronzes. Go and enquire for Madame Smirnov . . . everyone knows her.'

The actor followed his advice. . . . Two days later the doctor was sitting in his consulting-room, and with his finger to his brow was meditating on the acids of the bile. All at once the door opened and Sasha Smirnov flew into the room. He was smiling, beaming, and his whole figure was radiant with happiness. In his hands he held something wrapped up in newspaper.

'Doctor!' he began breathlessly, 'imagine my delight! Happily for you we have succeeded in picking up the pair to your candelabra! Mamma is so happy. . . . I am the only son of my mother, you saved my life. . . .'

And Sasha, all of a tremor with gratitude, set the candelabra before the doctor. The doctor opened his mouth, tried to say something, but said nothing: he could not speak.

NOTES

No. 223: this number included an instalment of Zola's novel L'Oeuvre, which concerns a painter who transfers his affections from his wife to his paintings of the female nude

Financial News: more literally translated as 'Stock Exchange News'

in the costume of Eve: naked

* * *

WHO WAS TO BLAME?

by Anton Chekhov

As my uncle Pyotr Demyanitch, a lean, bilious collegiate councillor, exceedingly like a stale smoked fish with a stick through it, was getting ready to go to the high school, where he taught Latin, he noticed that the corner of his grammar was nibbled by mice.

'I say, Praskovya,' he said, going into the kitchen and addressing the cook, 'how is it we have got mice here? Upon my word! yesterday my top hat was nibbled, to-day they have disfigured my Latin grammar. . . . At this rate they will soon begin eating my clothes!

'What can I do? I did not bring them in!' answered Praskovya.

'We must do something! You had better get a cat, hadn't you?'

'I've got a cat, but what good is it?'

And Praskovya pointed to the corner where a white kitten, thin as a match, lay curled up asleep beside a broom.

'Why is it no good?' asked Pyotr Demyanitch.

'It's young yet, and foolish. It's not two months old yet.'

'H'm. . . . Then it must be trained. It had much better be learning instead of lying there.'

Saying this, Pyotr Demyanitch sighed with a careworn air and went out of the kitchen. The kitten raised his head, looked lazily after him, and shut his eyes again.

The kitten lay awake thinking. Of what? Unacquainted with real life, having no store of accumulated impressions, his mental processes could only be instinctive, and he could but picture life in accordance with the conceptions that he had inherited, together with his flesh and blood, from his ancestors, the tigers (vide Darwin). His thoughts were of the nature of day-dreams. His feline imagination pictured something like the Arabian desert, over which flitted shadows closely resembling Praskovya, the stove, the broom. In the midst of the shadows there suddenly appeared a saucer of milk; the saucer began to grow paws, it began moving and displayed a tendency to run; the kitten made a bound, and with a thrill of blood-thirsty sensuality thrust his claws into it.

When the saucer had vanished into obscurity a piece of meat appeared, dropped by Praskovya; the meat ran away with a cowardly squeak, but the kitten made a bound and got his claws into it. . . . Everything that rose before the imagination of the young dreamer had for its starting-point leaps, claws, and teeth. . . The soul of another is darkness, and a cat's soul more than most, but how near the visions just described are to the truth may be seen from the following fact: under the influence of his day-dreams the kitten suddenly leaped up, looked with flashing eyes at Praskovya, ruffled up his coat, and making one bound, thrust his claws into the cook's skirt. Obviously he was born a mouse catcher, a worthy son of his bloodthirsty ancestors. Fate had destined him to be the terror of cellars, store-rooms and cornbins, and had it not been for education . . . we will not anticipate, however.

On his way home from the high school, Pyotr Demyanitch went into a general shop and bought a mouse-trap for fifteen kopecks. At dinner he fixed a little bit of his rissole on the hook, and set the trap under the sofa, where there were heaps of the pupils' old exercise-books, which Praskovya used for various domestic purposes. At six o'clock in the evening, when the worthy Latin master was sitting at the table correcting his pupils' exercises, there was a sudden 'klop!' so loud that my uncle started and dropped his pen. He went at once to the sofa and took out the trap. A neat little mouse, the size of a thimble, was sniffing the wires and trembling with fear.

'Aha,' muttered Pyotr Demyanitch, and he looked at the mouse malignantly, as though he were about to give him a bad mark. 'You are cau--aught, wretch! Wait a bit! I'll teach you to eat my grammar!

Having gloated over his victim, Poytr Demyanitch put the mouse-trap on the floor and called:

'Praskovya, there's a mouse caught! Bring the kitten here!

'I'm coming,' responded Praskovya, and a minute later she came in with the descendant of tigers in her arms.

'Capital!' said Pyotr Demyanitch, rubbing his hands. 'We will give him a lesson. . . . Put him down opposite the mouse-trap . . . that's it. . . . Let him sniff it and look at it. . . . That's it. . . .'

The kitten looked wonderingly at my uncle, at his arm-chair, sniffed the mouse-trap in bewilderment, then, frightened probably by the glaring lamplight and the attention directed to him, made a dash and ran in terror to the door.

'Stop!' shouted my uncle, seizing him by the tail, 'stop, you rascal! He's afraid of a mouse, the idiot! Look! It's a mouse! Look! Well? Look, I tell you!'

Pyotr Demyanitch took the kitten by the scruff of the neck and pushed him with his nose against the mouse- trap.

'Look, you carrion! Take him and hold him, Praskovya. . . . Hold him opposite the door of the trap. . . . When I let the mouse out, you let him go instantly. . . . Do you hear? . . . Instantly let go! Now!'

My uncle assumed a mysterious expression and lifted the door of the trap. . . . The mouse came out irresolutely, sniffed the air, and flew like an arrow under the sofa. . . . The kitten on being released darted under the table with his tail in the air.

'It has got away! got away!' cried Pyotr Demyanitch, looking ferocious. 'Where is he, the scoundrel? Under the table? You wait. . .'

My uncle dragged the kitten from under the table and shook him in the air.

'Wretched little beast,' he muttered, smacking him on the ear. 'Take that, take that! Will you shirk it next time? Wr-r-r-etch. . . .'

Next day Praskovya heard again the summons.