Kashtanka

  Anton Chekhov

  Anton Chekhov, who came from peasant stock and was born in Taganrog, on the Sea of Azov, in 1860, paid his way through medical school by writing short comic sketches for various popular publications. By the time he became a doctor, his gift had also made him one of the great masters of the short story, and he continued in both careers until literature finally took him over. He is also one of the major playwrights in the history of Russian and Western theater. For many years he suffered from tuberculosis, without admitting it to himself, and it finally took his life in 1904.

  Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

  Together, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have translated works by Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, Bulgakov, Leskov, and Pasternak. They were twice awarded the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize (for Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina). They are married and live in France.

  BOOKS TRANSLATED BY RICHARD PEVEAR AND LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY

  Mikhail Bulgakov

  The Master and Margarita

  Anton Chekhov

  Fifty-Two Stories

  The Complete Short Novels of Anton Chekhov

  Selected Stories

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  The Adolescent

  The Brothers Karamazov

  Crime and Punishment

  Demons

  The Double and The Gambler

  The Eternal Husband and Other Stories

  The Idiot

  Notes From a Dead House

  Notes From Underground

  Nikolai Gogol

  The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol

  Dead Souls

  Nikolai Leskov

  The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

  Boris Pasternak

  Doctor Zhivago

  Alexander Pushkin

  Novels, Tales, Journeys

  Leo Tolstoy

  Anna Karenina

  The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories

  War and Peace

  Kashtanka

  from Fifty-Two Stories

  by Anton Chekhov

  Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

  A Vintage Short

  Vintage Books

  A Division of Penguin Random House LLC

  New York

  Copyright © 2020 by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover as part of Fifty-Two Stories in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 2020.

  Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  The Cataloging-in-Publication Data for Fifty-Two Stories is available from the Library of Congress.

  Vintage eShort ISBN 9780593312155

  Cover design by Maddie Partner

  Cover image from Library of Congress, Music Division

  www.vintagebooks.com

  ep_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Authors

  Books translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Kashtanka

  CHAPTER ONE / MISBEHAVIOR

  A young, rusty-red dog, half dachshund and half mutt, her muzzle very much resembling a fox’s, was running up and down the sidewalk, looking anxiously in all directions. Every once in a while she stopped and whined, shifting from one frozen paw to the other, trying to figure out how she could have gotten lost.

  She remembered perfectly well the events of the day that had brought her to this unfamiliar sidewalk.

  The day had begun when her master, the cabinetmaker Luka Alexandrych, put on his hat, took some wooden thing wrapped in a red handkerchief under his arm, and hollered:

  “Kashtanka, let’s go!”

  Hearing her name, the half dachshund half mutt came out from under the workbench where she slept on the wood shavings, stretched sweetly, and ran after her master.

  Luka Alexandrych’s customers lived terribly far apart, so on his way from one to the other he had to stop several times at a tavern to fortify himself. Kashtanka remembered that on the way she had behaved very improperly. She was so overjoyed to be going for a walk that she jumped about, barked at trolley cars, dashed into backyards, and chased other dogs. The cabinetmaker kept losing sight of her and would stop and shout angrily at her. Once, with an avid expression on his face, he even grabbed her foxlike ear in his fist, tugged at it, and said slowly, “Drop…dead…you…pest!”

  Having seen his customers, Luka Alexandrych had stopped at his sister’s, where he had a bite to eat and a few more drinks. From his sister’s, he went to see a bookbinder he knew; from the bookbinder’s, he went to a tavern; from the tavern to a friend’s house, and so on. In short, by the time Kashtanka found herself on the unfamiliar sidewalk, it was getting dark and the cabinetmaker was as drunk as a fish. He waved his arms and, sighing deeply, moaned:

  “In sin did my mother conceive me in my womb! Oh, my sins, my sins! So now we’re going down the street and looking at the streetlights, but when we die, we’ll burn in the fiery hyena…”

  Or else he fell into a good-natured tone, called Kashtanka to him, and said:

  “You, Kashtanka, are an insect creature and nothing more. Compared to a man, you’re like a carpenter compared to a cabinetmaker…”

  While he was talking to her in that fashion, suddenly there had come a burst of music. Kashtanka looked around and saw a regiment of soldiers marching down the street straight at her. She couldn’t stand music, which upset her nerves, and she rushed around and howled. But to her great surprise, the cabinetmaker, instead of being frightened, yelping and barking, grinned broadly, stood at attention, and gave a salute. Seeing that her master did not protest, Kashtanka howled even louder, then lost her head and rushed to the other side of the street.

  When she came to her senses, the music had already stopped and the regiment was gone. She rushed back across the street to where she had left her master, but alas, the cabinetmaker was also gone. She rushed ahead, then back, ran across the street once more, but it was as if the cabinetmaker had vanished into thin air…Kashtanka began sniffing the sidewalk, hoping to find her master by the smell of his tracks, but some scoundrel had just walked past in new galoshes, and now all the delicate scents were mixed with the strong smell of rubber, so that it was impossible to tell one from the other.

  Kashtanka ran here and there but could not find her master, and meanwhile night was falling. The lamps were lit on both sides of the street, and lights appeared in the windows. Big, fluffy snowflakes were falling, painting the sidewalks, the horses’ backs, and the coachmen’s hats white, and the darker it grew, the whiter everything became. Unknown customers ceaselessly walked back and forth past Kashtanka, obstructing her field of vision and shoving her with their feet. (Kashtanka divided the whole of mankind into two very unequal parts: the masters and the customers; there was an essential difference between them: the first had the right to beat her, the second she herself had the right to nip on the calves.) The customers were hurrying somewhere and did not pay the slightest attention to her.

  When it was quite dark, Kashtanka was overcome by fear and despair. She huddled in some doorway and began to weep bitterly. She was tired from her long day’s travels with Luka Alexandrych, her ears and paws were cold, and besides s
he was terribly hungry.

  Only twice in the whole day had she had anything to eat: at the bookbinder’s she had lapped up some paste, and in one of the taverns she had found a sausage skin near the counter—that was all. If she had been a human being, she would probably have thought:

  “No, it’s impossible to live this way! I’ll shoot myself!”

  CHAPTER TWO / A MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

  But she did not think about anything and only wept. When soft, fluffy snow had completely covered Kashtanka’s back and head, and she had sunk into a deep slumber from exhaustion, suddenly the door clicked, creaked, and hit her on the side. She jumped up. A man came out, belonging to the category of customers. As Kashtanka squealed and got under his feet, he could not help noticing her. He leaned down and asked:

  “Where did you come from, pooch? Did I hurt you? Oh, poor thing, poor thing….Well, don’t be angry, don’t be angry…I’m sorry.”

  Kashtanka looked up at the stranger through the snowflakes that stuck to her eyelashes and saw before her a short, fat little man with a plump, clean-shaven face, wearing a top hat and an unbuttoned fur coat.

  “Why are you whining?” the man went on, brushing the snow from her back. “Where is your master? You must be lost. Oh, poor pooch! What shall we do now?”

  Catching a warm, friendly note in the stranger’s voice, Kashtanka licked his hand and whined even more pitifully.

  “You’re a nice, funny one!” said the stranger. “A real fox! Well, nothing to be done. Come with me, maybe I’ll find some use for you…Well, phweet!”

  He whistled and made a gesture to Kashtanka which could only mean: Let’s go! Kashtanka went.

  In less than half an hour she was sitting on the floor of a large, bright room, with her head cocked, looking tenderly and curiously at the stranger, who was sitting at the table eating supper. He ate and tossed her some scraps…At first he gave her bread and the green rind of cheese, then a small piece of meat, half of a dumpling, some chicken bones, and she was so hungry that she gobbled them up without tasting anything. And the more she ate, the hungrier she felt.

  “Your master doesn’t feed you very well,” said the stranger, seeing with what fierce greed she swallowed the unchewed pieces. “And what a scrawny one! Skin and bones…”

  Kashtanka ate a lot, yet she didn’t feel full, only groggy. After supper she sprawled in the middle of the room, stretched her legs and, feeling pleasantly weary all over, began wagging her tail. While her new master sat back in an armchair, smoking a cigar, she wagged her tail and kept trying to decide where she liked it better—at this stranger’s or at the cabinetmaker’s. At the stranger’s the furnishings were poor and ugly. Apart from the armchairs, the sofa, the lamp, and the rugs, he had nothing, and the room seemed empty. At the cabinetmaker’s, the whole place was chock-full of things: he had a table, a workbench, a pile of wood shavings, planes, chisels, saws, a basin, a goldfinch in a cage….The stranger’s room had no particular smell, while at the cabinetmaker’s there was always a fog and the wonderful smell of glue, varnish, and wood shavings. Still, being with the stranger had one great advantage: he gave her a lot to eat—one must give him full credit—and when she sat by the table with a sweet look on her face, he never once hit her or stamped his foot or shouted: “Get ou-u-ut, curse you!”

  When he finished his cigar, her new master went out and came back a moment later carrying a small mattress.

  “Hey, pooch, come here!” he said, putting the mattress in the corner near the sofa. “Lie down! Go to sleep!”

  Then he turned off the lamp and went out. Kashtanka lay down on the mattress and closed her eyes. She heard barking outside and wanted to answer it, but suddenly she became unexpectedly sad. She remembered Luka Alexandrych, his son Fedyushka, and her cozy place under the workbench…She remembered how on long winter evenings while the cabinetmaker was planing a board or reading the newspaper aloud, Fedyushka used to play with her…He would drag her from under the workbench by her hind legs and do such tricks with her that everything turned green in her eyes and all her joints hurt. He would make her walk on her hind legs, turn her into a bell by pulling her tail hard, until she squealed and barked, or give her tobacco to sniff. Especially tormenting was the following trick: Fedyushka would tie a piece of meat to a string and give it to Kashtanka; then, once she had swallowed it, with loud laughter he would pull it out of her stomach. And the more vivid her memories became, the more loudly and longingly Kashtanka whined.

  But weariness and warmth soon overcame her sadness…She began to fall asleep. In her mind’s eye dogs ran past, among them a shaggy old poodle she had seen that day in the street, sore-eyed, with tufts of fur around his nose. Fedyushka was chasing the poodle with a chisel in his hand; then all at once he too was covered with shaggy fur, and barked merrily beside Kashtanka. Kashtanka and he sniffed each other’s noses good-naturedly and ran off down the street…

  CHAPTER THREE / NEW AND VERY PLEASANT ACQUAINTANCES

  It was already light when Kashtanka woke up, and noise came from the street, as only happens in daytime. There was nobody in the room. Kashtanka stretched, yawned, and began nosing around in a grumpy mood. She sniffed the corners and the furniture, glanced into the entryway and found nothing interesting. Besides the door to the entryway, there was one other door. Kashtanka thought for a moment, then scratched at the door with both paws, opened it, and went into the next room. There on the bed, under a flannel blanket, a customer lay sleeping, whom she recognized as last night’s stranger.

  “Grrr…,” she growled. Then, remembering yesterday’s supper, she wagged her tail and began sniffing.

  She sniffed the stranger’s clothes and boots and found that they smelled strongly of horse. In the bedroom was another door, also closed. Kashtanka scratched at this door, too, then leaned her chest against it, opened it, and was immediately aware of a strange, very suspicious smell. Anticipating an unpleasant encounter, growling and glancing around, Kashtanka went into the small room with dirty wallpaper and drew back in fear. She saw something unexpected and frightening. A gray goose, with its head and neck low to the floor and its wings outstretched, was coming straight at her, hissing. Nearby, on a little mat, lay a white tomcat. Seeing Kashtanka, he jumped up, arched his back, stiffened his tail, and with his fur standing on end, also hissed. Frightened in earnest, but not wanting to show it, the dog barked loudly and rushed at the cat…The cat arched his back even more, hissed, and smacked the dog on the head with his paw. Kashtanka jumped back, crouched down on all fours and, stretching her muzzle toward the cat, let out a burst of shrill barking. The goose, meanwhile, came from behind and pecked her painfully on the back. Kashtanka jumped up and lunged at the goose…

  “What’s going on!” shouted an angry voice, and into the room came the stranger, wearing a robe, with a cigar between his teeth. “What’s the meaning of all this? Go to your places!”

  He went up to the cat, gave him a flick on his arched back, and said, “Fyodor Timofeyich, what’s the meaning of this? You started a fight, eh? You old rapscallion! Lie down!”

  And turning to the goose, he shouted, “Ivan Ivanych, to your place!”

  The cat obediently lay down on his mat and closed his eyes. From the expression on his face and whiskers, he himself seemed displeased at losing his temper and getting into a fight. Kashtanka whined, offended, and the goose stretched his neck and began explaining something quickly, ardently, distinctly, but quite incomprehensibly.

  “All right, all right,” said his master, yawning. “One must live in peace and friendship.” He patted Kashtanka and said, “Don’t be afraid, rusty…They’re nice folks, they won’t hurt you. What are we going to call you, anyway? You can’t go around without a name, brother.”

  The stranger thought for a moment, and then he said, “I’ve got it! We’ll call you Auntie! Understand…? Auntie!”

/>   And having repeated the word “Auntie” several times, he went out. Kashtanka sat down and kept her eyes open. The cat lay still on his mat, pretending to sleep. The goose, stretching his neck and stamping in place, went on talking about something quickly and ardently. Apparently he was a very smart goose. After each long harangue, he would step back with a look of amazement, as if he were delighted by his own speech. Kashtanka listened to him for a while, answered him with a “grrr,” and began sniffing around the corners of the room.

  In one corner stood a small trough in which she saw some soaked peas and rye crusts. She tried the peas—no good, tried the crusts—and began to eat. The goose was not offended in the least that a strange dog was eating his feed, and, on the contrary, started talking still more ardently, and, to show his confidence, went to the trough himself and ate a few peas.

  CHAPTER FOUR / FEATS OF WONDER

  After a while, the stranger came back in carrying an odd thing that looked like a sawhorse. A bell hung from the crosspiece of this wooden, crudely made sawhorse, and there was also a pistol tied to it. Strings were tied to the clapper of the bell and the trigger of the pistol. The stranger set the sawhorse down in the middle of the room, spent a long time tying and untying something, then turned to the goose and said:

  “Ivan Ivanych, you’re on!”

  The goose came up to him and stood with a look of anticipation.

  “All right,” said the stranger, “let’s begin from the very beginning. First, bow and make a curtsy. Quick, now!”