Fifty-Two Stories

And to persuade Volodya, Lentilkin praised America, roared like a tiger, imitated a steamboat, cursed, promised to give Volodya all the ivory and all the lion and tiger skins.

And to the girls this thin, swarthy boy with bristly hair and freckles seemed extraordinary, remarkable. He was a hero, a resolute, fearless man, and by the way he roared you might have thought, standing outside the door, that it was a real tiger or lion.

When the girls went back to their room and were getting dressed, Katya, her eyes filled with tears, said:

“Ah, I’m so frightened!”

Until two o’clock, when they sat down to dinner, everything was quiet, but at dinner it suddenly turned out that the boys were not at home. They were sent for to the servants’ quarters, the stables, the steward’s office—they were not there. They were sent for to the village—they were not found there either. The family had tea without the boys, and when they sat down to supper, Mama was very worried and even wept. During the night they went again to the village, searched, went with lanterns to the river. God, what turmoil arose!

The next day a policeman came; some sort of paper was written out in the dining room. Mama wept.

But then a wide sledge stopped at the porch, and steam billowed up from the troika of white horses.

“Volodya’s here!” someone shouted outside.

“Volodechka’s here!” hollered Natalya, running into the dining room.

And Milord barked “Bow-wow!” in his bass voice. It turned out that the boys had been detained in town, in the Shopping Arcade (where they had gone around asking everyone where to buy gunpowder). As soon as Volodya entered the front hall, he burst into tears and threw himself on his mother’s neck. The girls, trembling, thought with horror of what would happen now, listening as Papa took Volodya and Lentilkin to his study and talked with them for a long time; and Mama also talked and wept.

“How is it possible?” Papa admonished. “God help us, if they find out at school, you’ll be expelled. And shame on you, Mr. Lentilkin! It’s bad, sir! You’re the instigator, and I hope your parents will punish you. How is it possible? Where did you spend the night?”

“At the train station!” Lentilkin proudly replied.

Then Volodya lay down, and they put a towel soaked in vinegar to his head. A telegram was sent somewhere, and the next day a lady came, Lentilkin’s mother, and took her son away.

As Lentilkin was leaving, his face was stern, haughty, and, in parting with the girls, he did not say a single word; he only took Katya’s notebook and wrote as a memento:

“Montigomo Hawk’s Claw.”

1887

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…”¹

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…”