Vanka

Anton Chekhov

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 and mistress and

their workmen had gone to the midnight service, he took out of his master's cupboard a

bottle of ink and a pen with a rusty nib, and, 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 and the windows, stole a glance at the dark ikon, on both sides of

which stretched shelves full of lasts, and heaved a broken sigh. The paper lay on the bench

while he knelt before it.

sixty-five, with an everlastingly laughing face and 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 and tapped with his little mallet. Old Kashtanka and Eel, so-

called on account of his dark colour and his long body like a weasel's, followed him with

hanging heads. This Eel was exceptionally polite and affectionate, and looked with equal

kindness on strangers and his own masters, but had not a very good reputation. Under his

politeness and meekness was hidden the most Jesuitical cunning. No one knew better how

to creep up on occasion and 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.

go off into a merry chuckle, and cry:

"Tear it off, it has frozen on!"

They give the dogs a sniff of snuff too. Kashtanka sneezes, wriggles her head, and walks

away offended. Eel does not sneeze, from politeness, but wags his tail. And the weather is

glorious. The air is still, fresh, and transparent. The night is dark, but one can see the whole

village with its white roofs and coils of smoke coming from the chimneys, the trees silvered

with hoar frost, the snowdrifts. The whole sky spangled with gay twinkling stars, and the

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Milky Way is as distinct as though it had been washed and rubbed with snow for a

holiday. . . .

Vanka sighed, dipped his pen, and went on writing:

"And yesterday I had a wigging. The master pulled me out into the yard by my hair, and

whacked me with a boot-stretcher because I accidentally fell asleep while I was rocking

their brat in the cradle. And a week ago the mistress told me to clean a herring, and I began

from the tail end, and she took the herring and thrust its head in my face. The workmen

to the village. It's more than I can bear. I bow down to your feet, and 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, and gave a sob.

"I will powder your snuff for you," he went on. "I will pray for you, and if I do anything you

can thrash me like Sidor's goat. And 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, and I am afraid of the frost. When I grow up big I will take care

of you for this, and not let anyone annoy you, and when you die I will pray for the rest of

your soul, just as for my mammy's.

are a hundred roubles each. . . . And in the butchers' shops there are grouse and woodcocks

and fish and 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,

and put it away in the green trunk. Ask the young lady Olga Ignatyevna, say it's for Vanka."

Vanka gave a tremulous sigh, and 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, and

took his grandson with him. It was a merry time! Grandfather made a noise in his throat, the

forest crackled with the frost, and looking at them Vanka chortled too. Before chopping

down the Christmas tree, grandfather would smoke a pipe, slowly take a pinch of snuff, and

laugh at frozen Vanka. . . . The young fir trees, covered with hoar frost, stood motionless,

When he had cut down the Christmas tree, grandfather used to drag it to the big house, and

Ignatyevna, was the busiest of all. When Vanka's mother Pelageya was alive, and a servant

do, taught him to read and write, to count up to a hundred, and even to dance a quadrille.

When Pelageya died, Vanka had been transferred to the servants' kitchen to be with his

grandfather, and from the kitchen to the shoemaker's in Moscow.

grandfather, do come."

the day before for a kopeck. . . . After thinking a little, he dipped the pen and wrote the

address:

To grandfather in the village.

Then he scratched his head, thought a little, and added: Konstantin Makaritch. Glad that he

had not been prevented from writing, he put on his cap and, 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

cooks. . . .

By the stove was Eel, wagging his tail.

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