Forty Stories by ANTON CHEKHOV Read Free Book Online

perfectly beautiful morning at the end of summer Trifon Semyonovich found himself walking down a long and narrow pathway in his magnificent orchard. Whatever it is that inspires their excellencies the poets was here generously strewn around in great profusion, seeming to say: “Pluck me! Pluck me! Enjoy yourselves, for the autumn will soon come!” But Trifon Semyonovich was not enjoying himself that morning, partly because he was far from being a poet, but also because his soul had suffered a particularly uncomfortable night, as always happened whenever the soul’s owner lost heavily at cards. Behind Trifon Semyonovich marched his faithful servant Karpushka, who was about sixty years old and who kept looking suspiciously fromside to side. The virtues of this Karpushka almost surpassed those of Trifon Semyonovich. He had a wonderful talent for shining boots, a still greater talent for hanging unwanted dogs; he stole everything he could lay his hands on, and as a spy he was incomparable. The clerks in the village call him “a bloody dragoon.” Hardly a day passes but some peasants or landowning neighbors of Trifon Semyonovich lodge a complaint about the atrocious behavior of Karpushka, but nothing is ever done, for the good reason that Karpushka is irreplaceable. When Trifon Semyonovich goes for a walk, the trusty Karpushka always accompanies him: this way it is safer and more pleasant. Karpushka possesses an inexhaustible treasure of anecdotes of varying vintages, tall stories, quaint sayings, and fairy tales, and he never stops telling them. The flow of his conversation is never dammed, at least until the time comes when he hears something of interest to himself. On this particular morning he was walking behind his master, telling a long story about two schoolboys wearing white caps who had made their way into the orchard with weapons in their hands, and they had implored him, Karpushka, to let them go hunting, and even tried to bribe him with fifty kopecks, but he, knowing his true master, had rejected their proffered bribes with ignominy and contempt, and set the two dogs Chestnut and Gray on them. And having finished this story, he began to paint in bold colors a picture of the revolting behavior of the local medical orderly, but the picture was never finished, for at that moment there came to his ears a suspicious rustling in a nearby clump of apple and pear trees. So he stopped talking, pricked up his ears, and listened intently. And having convinced himself that he recognized the sound and that it had a suspicious origin, he tugged at his master’s coat and then hurried off quick as a shot in the direction of the rustling sound. Trifon Semyonovich, anticipating some pleasant excitement, went hurrying after Karpushka with an old man’s slow mincing steps.
    On the edge of the orchard, under an old spreading appletree, stood a peasant girl slowly chewing on an apple, while not far from her a broad-shouldered peasant boy crawled on his hands and knees, picking up windfalls. He tossed the unripe apples into the bushes, but the ripe ones were tenderly presented to his Dulcinea in his broad and dirty hands. Dulcinea showed not the slightest alarm over the condition of her stomach, but kept on chewing the apples with a fierce appetite, while the boy continued to collect them, crawling over the ground, taking no thought for himself, concentrating his entire attention on his Dulcinea, and no one else.
    “Take one off a tree,” the girl whispered, deliberately provoking him.
    “I wouldn’t dare.”
    “What are you frightened of? The bloody dragoon? Most likely he’s tippling in the pothouse.…”
    The boy jumped up, sprang into the air, plucked a single apple from the tree, and handed it to the girl. But like Adam and Eve in ancient days, the boy and girl suffered disastrously with their apple. No sooner had she bitten off a small piece of it, and given this piece to the boy, no sooner had they both tasted the sharp