By Anton Chekhov
Level 5-6
VANKA ZHUKOV, a boy of nine, who had been for three months apprenticed to Alyahin the shoemaker, was sitting up on Christmas Eve. Waiting till his master & mistress & their workmen had gone to the midnight service, he took out of his master’s cupboard a bottle of ink & a pen with a rusty nib & spreading out a crumpled sheet of paper in front of him, began writing. Before forming the first letter he several times looked round fearfully at the door & the windows, stole a glance at the dark ikon, on both sides of which stretched shelves full of lasts & heaved a broken sigh. The paper lay on the bench while he knelt before it.
“Dear grandfather, Konstantin Makaritch,” he wrote, “I’m writing you a letter. I wish you a happy Christmas & all blessings from God Almighty. I have neither father nor mother, you are the only one left me”
Vanka raised his eyes to the dark ikon on which the light of his candle was reflected & vividly recalled his grandfather, Konstantin Makaritch, who was night watchman to a family called Zhivarev. He was a thin but extraordinarily nimble & lively little old man of sixty-five, with an everlastingly laughing face & drunken eyes. By day he slept in the servants’ kitchen, or made jokes with the cooks; at night, wrapped in an ample sheepskin, he walked round the grounds & tapped with his little mallet. Old Kashtanka & Eel, so-called on account of his dark colour & his long body like a weasel’s, followed him with hanging heads. This Eel was exceptionally polite & affectionate & looked with equal kindness on strangers & his own masters, but had not a very good reputation. Under his politeness & meekness was hidden the most Jesuitical cunning. No one knew better how to creep up on occasion & snap at one’s legs, to slip into the store-room, or steal a hen from a peasant. His hind legs had been nearly pulled off more than once, twice he had been hanged, every week he was thrashed till he was half dead, but he always revived.
At this moment grandfather was, no doubt, standing at the gate, screwing up his eyes at the red windows of the church, stamping with his high felt boots & joking with the servants. His little mallet was hanging on his belt. He was clasping his hands, shrugging with the cold & with an aged chuckle, pinching first the housemaid, then the cook.
“How about a pinch of snuff?” he was saying, offering the women his snuff-box.
The women would take a sniff & sneeze. Grandfather would be indescribably delighted, go off into a merry chuckle & cry: “Tear it off, it has frozen on!”
They give the dogs a sniff of snuff too. Kashtanka sneezes, wriggles her head & walks away offended. Eel does not sneeze, from politeness, but wags his tail. & the weather is glorious. The air is still, fresh & transparent. The night is dark, but one can see the whole village with its white roofs & coils of smoke coming from the chimneys, the trees silvered with hoar frost, the snowdrifts. The whole sky spangled with gay twinkling stars & the Milky Way is as distinct as though it had been washed & rubbed with snow for a holiday … Vanka sighed, dipped his pen & went on writing:
“And yesterday I had a wigging. The master pulled me out into the yard by my hair & whacked me with a boot-stretcher because I accidentally fell asleep while I was rocking their brat in the cradle. & a week ago the mistress told me to clean a herring & I began from the tail end & she took the herring & thrust its head in my face. The workmen laugh at me & send me to the tavern for vodka & tell me to steal the master’s cucumbers for them & the master beats me with anything that comes to hand. & there is nothing to eat. In the morning they give me bread, for dinner, porridge & in the evening, bread again; but as for tea, or soup, the master & mistress gobble it all up themselves. & I am put to sleep in the passage & when their wretched brat cries I get no sleep at all, but have to rock the cradle. Dear grandfather, show the divine mercy, take me away from here, home to the village. It’s more than I can bear. I bow down to your feet & will pray to God for you for ever, take me away from here or I shall die.”
Vanka’s mouth worked, he rubbed his eyes with his black fist & gave a sob.
“I will powder your snuff for you,” he went on. “I will pray for you & if I do anything you can thrash me like Sidor’s goat. & if you think I’ve no job, then I will beg the steward for Christ’s sake to let me clean his boots, or I’ll go for a shepherd- boy instead of Fedka. Dear grandfather, it is more than I can bear, it’s simply no life at all. I wanted to run away to the village, but I have no boots & I am afraid of the frost. When I grow up big I will take care of you for this & not let anyone annoy you & when you die I will pray for the rest of your soul, just as for my mammy’s.
Moscow is a big town. It’s all gentlemen’s houses & there are lots of horses, but there are no sheep & the dogs are not spiteful. The lads here don’t go out with the star & they don’t let anyone go into the choir & once I saw in a shop window fishing-hooks for sale, fitted ready with the line & for all sorts of fish, awfully good ones, there was even one hook that would hold a forty-pound sheat-fish. & I have seen shops where there are guns of all sorts, after the pattern of the master’s guns at home, so that I shouldn’t wonder if they are a hundred roubles each … & in the butchers’ shops there are grouse & woodcocks & fish & hares, but the shopmen don’t say where they shoot them.
“Dear grandfather, when they have the Christmas tree at the big house, get me a gilt walnut & put it away in the green trunk. Ask the young lady Olga Ignatyevna, say it’s for Vanka.”
Vanka gave a tremulous sigh & again stared at the window. He remembered how his grandfather always went into the forest to get the Christmas tree for his master’s family & took his grandson with him. It was a merry time! Grandfather made a noise in his throat, the forest crackled with the frost & looking at them Vanka chortled too. Before chopping down the Christmas tree, grandfather would smoke a pipe, slowly take a pinch of snuff & laugh at frozen Vanka … The young fir trees, covered with hoar frost, stood motionless, waiting to see which of them was to die. Wherever one looked, a hare flew like an arrow over the snowdrifts … Grandfather could not refrain from shouting: “Hold him, hold him … hold him! Ah, the bob-tailed devil!”
When he had cut down the Christmas tree, grandfather used to drag it to the big house & there set to work to decorate it … The young lady, who was Vanka’s favourite, Olga Ignatyevna, was the busiest of all. When Vanka’s mother Pelageya was alive & a servant in the big house, Olga Ignatyevna used to give him goodies & having nothing better to do, taught him to read & write, to count up to a hundred & even to dance a quadrille. When Pelageya died, Vanka had been transferred to the servants’ kitchen to be with his grandfather & from the kitchen to the shoemaker’s in Moscow.
“Do come, dear grandfather,” Vanka went on with his letter. “For Christ’s sake, I beg you, take me away. Have pity on an unhappy orphan like me; here everyone knocks me about & I am fearfully hungry; I can’t tell you what misery it is, I am always crying. & the other day the master hit me on the head with a last, so that I fell down. My life is wretched, worse than any dog’s … I send greetings to Alyona, one-eyed Yegorka & the coachman & don’t give my concertina to anyone. I remain, your grandson, Ivan Zhukov. Dear grandfather, do come.”
Vanka folded the sheet of writing-paper twice & put it into an envelope he had bought the day before for a kopeck … After thinking a little, he dipped the pen & wrote the address: To grandfather in the village.
Then he scratched his head, thought a little & added: Konstantin Makaritch. Glad that he had not been prevented from writing, he put on his cap & without putting on his little greatcoat, ran out into the street as he was in his shirt …
The shopmen at the butcher’s, whom he had questioned the day before, told him that letters were put in post-boxes & from the boxes were carried about all over the earth in mailcarts with drunken drivers & ringing bells. Vanka ran to the nearest post-box & thrust the precious letter in the slit …
An hour later, lulled by sweet hopes, he was sound asleep … He dreamed of the stove. On the stove was sitting his grandfather, swinging his bare legs & reading the letter to the cooks … By the stove was Eel, wagging his tail.
— The end —