Vanka sighed, dipped his pen, and went on writing:
“And yesterday they gave me what-for. The master dragged me out to the yard by the hair and thrashed me with a belt, because I was rocking their baby in the cradle and accidentally fell asleep. And last week the mistress told me to clean a herring, and I started with the tail, so she took the herring and began shoving its head into my mug. The apprentices poke fun at me, send me to the pothouse for vodka, and tell me to steal pickles from the master, and the master beats me with whatever he can find. And there’s nothing to eat. They give me bread in the morning, kasha for dinner, and bread again in the evening, and as for tea or cabbage soup, that the masters grub up themselves. And they make me sleep in the front hall, and when their baby cries I don’t sleep at all, I rock the cradle. Dear grandpa, do me this mercy, take me home to the village, I just can’t stand it … I go down on my knees to you, and I’ll pray to God eternally for you, take me away from here or I’ll die …”
Vanka twisted his lips, rubbed his eyes with his black fist, and gave a sob.
“I’ll rub your tobacco for you,” he went on, “pray to God for you, and if there’s ever any reason, you can whip me like a farmer’s goat. And if you think there’ll be no work for me, I’ll ask the steward for Christ’s sake to let me polish the boots or go instead of Fedka to help the shepherd. Dear grandpa, I can’t stand it, it’s simply killing me. I thought of running away on foot to the village, but I have no boots, I’m afraid of freezing. And when I grow up, I’ll feed you for it, and I won’t let anybody harm you, and when you die, I’ll pray for the repose of your soul, as I do for my mama Pelageya.
“And Moscow is a big city. All the houses are manors, there are lots of horses, but no sheep, and the dogs aren’t fierce. There’s no children’s procession with the star2 here, and they don’t let anybody sing in the choir,3 and once in the window of a shop I saw hooks for sale with lines for all kinds of fish, really worth it, there was even one hook that would hold a thirty-pound sheatfish. And I saw shops selling all kind of guns like our squire’s, worth maybe a hundred roubles each … And in the butcher shops there are blackcock, and hazel grouse, and hares, but where they go to hunt them the shop clerks won’t tell.
“Dear grandpa, when the masters have a Christmas tree party with treats, take a gilded nut for me and hide it in the green chest. Ask the young miss, Olga Ignatievna, and tell her it’s for Vanka.”
Vanka sighed spasmodically and again stared at the window. He remembered how his grandfather always went to the forest to fetch a Christmas tree for the masters and took his grandson with him. They had a merry time! His grandfather grunted, and the frost grunted, and, looking at them, Vanka also grunted. Usually, before cutting down the tree, his grandfather smoked his pipe or took a long pinch of snuff, while he chuckled at the freezing Vaniushka … The young fir trees, shrouded in hoarfrost, stand motionless, waiting to see which of them is to die. Out of nowhere, a hare shoots like an arrow across the snowdrifts … His grandfather cannot help shouting:
“Catch him, catch him … catch him! Ah, the short-tailed devil!”
The cut-down tree would be lugged to the master’s house, and there they would start decorating it … The young miss, Olga Ignatievna, Vanka’s favorite, was the busiest of all. When Vanka’s mother Pelageya was still alive and worked in the master’s house as a maid, Olga Ignatievna used to give Vanka fruit drops and, having nothing to do, taught him to read, to write, to count to a hundred, and even to dance the quadrille. But when Pelageya died, the orphaned Vanka was packed off to his grandfather in the servants’ kitchen, and from the kitchen to Moscow, to the shoemaker Aliakhin …
“Come, dear grandpa,” Vanka went on, “by Christ God I beg you, take me away from here. Have pity on me, a wretched orphan, because everybody beats me, and I’m so hungry, and it’s so dreary I can’t tell you, I just cry all the time. And the other day the master hit me on the head with a last, so that I fell down and barely recovered. My life is going bad, worse than any dog’s … And I also send greetings to Alyona, to one-eyed Yegorka, and to the coachman, and don’t give my harmonica away to anybody. I remain your grandson, Ivan Zhukov, dear grandpa, come.”
Vanka folded the written sheet in four and put it into an envelope he had bought the day before for a kopeck … After thinking a little, he dipped his pen and wrote the address:
Then he scratched his head, reflected, and added: “Konstantin Makarych.” Pleased that he had not been disturbed at his writing, he put on his hat and, without getting into his coat, ran outside in just his shirt …
The clerks at the butcher shop, whom he had asked the day before, had told him that letters are put in mailboxes, and from the mailboxes are carried all over the world on troikas of post-horses with drunken drivers and jingling bells. Vanka ran over to the nearest mailbox and put the precious letter into the slot …
Lulled by sweet hopes, an hour later he was fast asleep … He dreamed of a stove. On the stove sits his grandfather, his bare feet hanging down. He is reading Vanka’s letter to the kitchen maids … Eel walks around the stove, wagging his tail …
DECEMBER 1886
SLEEPY
Night. The nanny Varka, a girl of about thirteen, is rocking a cradle in which a baby lies, and murmuring barely audibly:
Hush-a-bye, baby,
I’ll sing you a song …
A green oil lamp is burning before an icon; a rope is stretched across the whole room from corner to corner, with swaddling clothes and large black trousers hanging on it. A big green spot from the icon lamp falls on the ceiling, and the swaddling clothes and trousers cast long shadows on the stove, the cradle, and Varka … When the icon lamp begins to flicker, the spot and the shadows come alive and start moving as if in the wind. It is stuffy. There is a smell of cabbage soup and shoemaker’s supplies.
The baby is crying. He became hoarse and exhausted from crying long ago, but he goes on howling, and no one knows when he will quiet down. And Varka is sleepy. Her eyes close, her head droops down, her neck aches. She cannot move her eyelids or her lips, and it seems to her that her face has become dry and stiff and her head is as small as the head of a pin.
“Hush-a-bye, baby,” she murmurs, “I’ll feed you by and by …”
A cricket chirps from the stove. In the next room, behind the door, the master and his apprentice Afanasy are snoring … The cradle creaks pitifully, Varka herself is murmuring—and all this merges into the lulling night music that is so sweet to hear when you are going to bed. But now this music is only vexing and oppressive, because it makes her drowsy, yet she cannot sleep. God forbid that Varka should fall asleep, or the masters will give her a
