Selected short stories -1888-1892- translated by Constance Garnett

'No. . . . Don't you mind what I say, dear,' whispered Varvara; 'I get so mad with the damned brutes, I don't know what I do say. Go to sleep, or it will be daylight directly. . . . Go to sleep.'

Both were quiet and soon they fell asleep.

Earlier than all woke the old woman. She waked up Sofya and they went together into the cowshed to milk the cows. The hunchback Alyoshka came in hopelessly drunk without his concertina; his breast and knees had been in the dust and straw -- he must have fallen down in the road. Staggering, he went into the cowshed, and without undressing he rolled into a sledge and began to snore at once. When first the crosses on the church and then the windows were flashing in the light of the rising sun, and shadows stretched across the yard over the dewy grass from the trees and the top of the well, Matvey Savitch jumped up and began hurrying about:

'Kuzka! get up!' he shouted. 'It's time to put in the horses! Look sharp!'

The bustle of morning was beginning. A young Jewess in a brown gown with flounces led a horse into the yard to drink. The pulley of the well creaked plaintively, the bucket knocked as it went down. . . .

Kuzka, sleepy, tired, covered with dew, sat up in the cart, lazily putting on his little overcoat, and listening to the drip of the water from the bucket into the well as he shivered with the cold.

'Auntie!' shouted Matvey Savitch to Sofya, 'tell my lad to hurry up and to harness the horses!'

And Dyudya at the same instant shouted from the window:

'Sofya, take a farthing from the Jewess for the horse's drink! They're always in here, the mangy creatures!

In the street sheep were running up and down, baaing; the peasant women were shouting at the shepherd, while he played his pipes, cracked his whip, or answered them in a thick sleepy bass. Three sheep strayed into the yard, and not finding the gate again, pushed at the fence.

Varvara was waked by the noise, and bundling her bedding up in her arms, she went into the house.

'You might at least drive the sheep out!' the old woman bawled after her, 'my lady!'

'I dare say! As if I were going to slave for you Herods!' muttered Varvara, going into the house.

Dyudya came out of the house with his accounts in his hands, sat down on the step, and began reckoning how much the traveller owed him for the night's lodging, oats, and watering his horses.

'You charge pretty heavily for the oats, my good man,' said Matvey Savitch.

'If it's too much, don't take them. There's no compulsion, merchant.'

When the travellers were ready to start, they were detained for a minute. Kuzka had lost his cap.

'Little swine, where did you put it?' Matvey Savitch roared angrily. 'Where is it?'

Kuzka's face was working with terror; he ran up and down near the cart, and not finding it there, ran to the gate and then to the shed. The old woman and Sofya helped him look.

'I'll pull your ears off!' yelled Matvey Savitch. 'Dirty brat!'

The cap was found at the bottom of the cart.

Kuzka brushed the hay off it with his sleeve, put it on, and timidly he crawled into the cart, still with an expression of terror on his face as though he were afraid of a blow from behind.

Matvey Savitch crossed himself. The driver gave a tug at the reins and the cart rolled out of the yard.

NOTES

Dyudya: or Dyoudya; 'hefty'

shaved his head: peasants drafted into the army had their foreheads shaved to make them easily identifiable if they ran away

Poland: Poland was then under Russia rule

one flesh: cf. Genesis 2:24

a watchman tapped: Russian watchmen would tap with a stick or rattle in order to warn thieves that they were on the job

* * *

The Duel

by Anton Chekhov

I

It was eight o'clock in the morning -- the time when the officers, the local officials, and the visitors usually took their morning dip in the sea after the hot, stifling night, and then went into the pavilion to drink tea or coffee. Ivan Andreitch Laevsky, a thin, fair young man of twenty-eight, wearing the cap of a clerk in the Ministry of Finance and with slippers on his feet, coming down to bathe, found a number of acquaintances on the beach, and among them his friend Samoylenko, the army doctor.

With his big cropped head, short neck, his red face, his big nose, his shaggy black eyebrows and grey whiskers, his stout puffy figure and his hoarse military bass, this Samoylenko made on every newcomer the unpleasant impression of a gruff bully; but two or three days after making his acquaintance, one began to think his face extraordinarily good-natured, kind, and even handsome. In spite of his clumsiness and rough manner, he was a peaceable man, of infinite kindliness and goodness of heart, always ready to be of use. He was on familiar terms with every one in the town, lent every one money, doctored every one, made matches, patched up quarrels, arranged picnics at which he cooked shashlik and an awfully good soup of grey mullets. He was always looking after other people's affairs and trying to interest some one on their behalf, and was always delighted about something. The general opinion about him was that he was without faults of character. He had only two weaknesses: he was ashamed of his own good nature, and tried to disguise it by a surly expression and an assumed gruffness; and he liked his assistants and his soldiers to call him 'Your Excellency,' although he was only a civil councillor.

'Answer one question for me, Alexandr Daviditch,' Laevsky began, when both he and Samoylenko were in the water up to their shoulders. 'Suppose you had loved a woman and had been living with her for two or three years, and then left off caring for her, as one does, and began to feel that you had nothing in common with her. How