Fifty-Two Stories

And all the while he breathes heavily and wipes the sweat from his forehead.

He has much on his hands, but even so he has not left his post at the zemstvo; he is devoured by greed, he wants to keep it up both here and there. In Dyalizh and in town they now call him simply Ionych. “Where’s Ionych off to?” or “Shouldn’t we invite Ionych to the consultation?”

Probably because his throat is swollen with fat, his voice has changed and become high and shrill. His character has also changed: he has become difficult, irritable. When he receives patients, he is usually angry, raps his stick impatiently on the floor, and shouts in his unpleasant voice:

“Kindly just answer my questions! No talking!”

He is solitary. His life is dull, nothing interests him.

In all the time he has lived in Dyalizh, the love for Kotik was his only joy, and probably the last. In the evenings he plays whist at the club and then sits alone at a big table and eats supper. The servant Ivan, the oldest and most respected one, waits on him. He is served Lafite No. 17, and everybody—the staff of the club, the chef, and the waiter—already knows what he likes and what he does not like, they try their best to please him, or for all they know he will suddenly get angry and rap his stick on the floor.

While eating supper, he occasionally turns and interferes in some conversation:

“What’s that about? Eh? Who?”

And when it so happens that at some neighboring table there is talk of the Turkins, he asks:

“Which Turkins do you mean? The ones whose daughter plays the piano?”

That is all that can be said about him.

And the Turkins? Ivan Petrovich has not aged, has not changed at all, is still witty and tells jokes as before; Vera Iosifovna reads her novels to guests as eagerly as before, with heartfelt simplicity. And Kotik plays the piano for four hours every day. She has aged noticeably, is frequently unwell, and goes to the Crimea every autumn with her mother. Seeing them off at the station, Ivan Petrovich, as the train departs, wipes his tears and calls out:

“Goodbye if you please!”

And waves his handkerchief.

1898

THE NEW DACHA

I

Two miles from the village of Obruchanovo an enormous bridge was being built. From the village, which stood high on a steep bank, its latticed framework could be seen, and in foggy weather, and on quiet winter days, when its thin iron rafters and all the scaffolding around were covered with hoarfrost, it presented a picturesque and even fantastic sight. The engineer Kucherov, the builder of the bridge, a stout, broad-shouldered, bearded man in a soft, crumpled cap, sometimes drove through the village in a racing droshky or a carriage; sometimes on holidays vagabonds who worked on the bridge turned up; they begged for alms, laughed at the peasant women, and occasionally made off with things. But that happened rarely. Ordinarily the days passed quietly and peacefully, as if there were no building at all, and only in the evening, when bonfires were lit by the bridge, did the wind bring the faint sound of the tramps singing. And sometimes during the day a mournful metallic sound was heard: dong…dong…dong…

One day the engineer Kucherov’s wife came to visit. She liked the banks of the river and the magnificent view over the green valley with its hamlets, churches, flocks, and she started asking her husband to buy a small plot of land and build a dacha there. The husband obeyed. They bought fifty acres of land, and on the high bank, in a clearing, where the Obruchanovo cows used to graze, they built a beautiful two-story house with a terrace, balconies, a tower and a spire, on which a flag was raised on Sundays—built it in only three months, and then all winter planted big trees, and when spring came and everything around turned green, there were already allées in the new estate, a gardener and two workmen in white aprons were digging near the house, a little fountain spouted, and a mirror globe shone so brightly that it was painful to look at. And this estate already had a name: the New Dacha.

On a clear, warm morning at the end of May, two horses were brought to Rodion Petrov, the Obruchanovo blacksmith, to be re-shod. They were from the New Dacha. The horses were white as snow, sleek, well-fed, and strikingly resembled each other.

“Perfect swans!” Rodion exclaimed, looking at them in awe.

His wife Stepanida, his children and grandchildren came outside to look. A crowd gradually gathered. The Lychkovs came, father and son, both beardless from birth, with swollen faces and hatless. Kozov also came, a tall, skinny old man with a long, narrow beard and a stick with a crook; he kept winking his sly eyes and smiling mockingly, as if he knew something.

“It’s only that they’re white, otherwise what?” he said. “Feed mine oats and they’ll be just as smooth. Hitch ’em to a plow and whip ’em…”