Selected Stories of Anton Chekov - By Anton Chekhov Page 0,136

same plaintive sounds pour from under his bow as in former times from his flute, but when he tries to repeat what Yakov had played as he sat on the step, what comes out is so dreary and mournful that his listeners weep, and he himself finally rolls up his eyes and says: “Weh-h-h! …” And this new song is liked so much in town that merchants and officials constantly send for Rothschild and make him play it dozens of times.

FEBRUARY 1894

THE STUDENT

At first the weather was fine, still. Blackbirds called, and in the nearby swamp something alive hooted plaintively, as if blowing into an empty bottle. A woodcock chirred by, and a shot rang out boomingly and merrily in the spring air. But when the forest grew dark, an unwelcome east wind blew up, cold and piercing, and everything fell silent. Needles of ice reached over the puddles, and the forest became inhospitable, forsaken, desolate. It felt like winter.

Ivan Velikopolsky, a seminary student, son of a verger, was coming home from fowling along a path that went all the way across a water meadow. His fingers were numb, and his face was burned by the wind. It seemed to him that this sudden onset of cold violated the order and harmony of everything, that nature herself felt dismayed, and therefore the evening darkness fell more quickly than it should. It was deserted around him and somehow especially gloomy. Only by the widows’ gardens near the river was there a light burning; but far around and where the village lay, some two miles off, everything was completely drowned in the cold evening darkness. The student remembered that, when he left the house, his mother was sitting on the floor in the front hall, barefoot, polishing the samovar, and his father was lying on the stove and coughing; because it was Good Friday there was no cooking in the house,1 and he was painfully hungry. And now, hunching up from the cold, the student thought how exactly the same wind had blown in the time of Rurik, and of Ioann the Terrible, and of Peter,2 and in their time there had been the same savage poverty and hunger; the same leaky thatched roofs, ignorance and anguish, the same surrounding emptiness and darkness, the sense of oppression—all these horrors had been, and were, and would be, and when another thousand years had passed, life would be no better. And he did not want to go home.

The gardens were called the widows’ because they were kept by two widows, a mother and daughter. The fire burned hotly, with a crackle, throwing light far around over the ploughed soil. The widow Vasilisa, a tall, plump old woman in a man’s coat, stood by and gazed pensively at the fire; her daughter Lukerya, small, pockmarked, with a slightly stupid face, was sitting on the ground washing the pot and spoons. Evidently they had only just finished supper. Male voices were heard; it was local laborers watering their horses at the river.

“Well, here’s winter back again,” said the student, approaching the fire. “Good evening!”

Vasilisa gave a start, but recognized him at once and smiled affably.

“I didn’t recognize you. God bless you,” she said, “you’ll be a rich man.”3

They talked. Vasilisa had been around, had once served gentlefolk as a wet nurse, then as a nanny, and her speech was delicate, and the gentle, dignified smile never left her face; her daughter Lukerya, a village woman, beaten down by her husband, only squinted at the student and kept silent, and her expression was strange, like that of a deaf-mute.

“In the same way the apostle Peter warmed himself by a fire on a cold night,” said the student, holding his hands out to the flames. “So it was cold then, too. Ah, what a dreadful night that was, granny! An exceedingly long, dreary night!”

He looked around at the darkness, shook his head convulsively, and asked:

“I expect you’ve been to the Twelve Gospels?”4

“I have,” replied Vasilisa.

“At the time of the Last Supper, you remember, Peter said to Jesus: ‘I am ready to go with you, both into prison and to death.’ And the Lord said to him: ‘I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day, before you deny three times that you know me.’ After the supper, Jesus was praying in the garden, sorrowful unto death, and poor Peter was worn out in his soul, he grew weak, his eyes were heavy, and he could not