Vanka's mouth trembled, he wiped his eyes with his grubby fist, and gave a sob.
'- I'll grind your snuff for you,' he continued, 'I'll pray to God for you, and if I do anything bad you can beat the hide off me. And if you're worried I won't have a job to do then I'll beg the steward to take Christian pity on me and let me clean boots or I'll take over from Fedka as shepherd-boy. Dear Grandpa, I can't stand it any longer its killing me. I was going to run away to the village, but I don't have any boots and I'm scared of the frost. And when I grow up l'll look after you in return and won't let anyone harm you and when you die I'll pray for your soul just as I do for Pelageya my mummy.
'\1oscow is a very big town. All the houses are gents' houses and there are lots of horses but no sheep and the dogs aren't fierce at all. The boys don't go about with the star here at Christmas and they won't let people go up and sing in the choir and once I saw some hooks for sale in a shop window with line on them and for all sorts of fish, very fine they weretoo and there was even one strong enough to hold a forty-pound wels. Also I've seen shops with all sons of guns like the master's at home they'd be about a hundred roubles each I reckon . . . Also in the butcher's shops there are black-cock and hazel grouse and hares but where they shoot them the butchers don't say.
'Dear Grandad, when they have the Christmas tree with presents on at the big house get one of the gold walnuts for me will you and put it away in the green chest. Ask Miss Olga lgnatyevna, say its for Vanka.'
Vanka let out a deep sigh and once more gazed at the window- pane. He remembered that it was always his grandfather who went into the forest to get the Christmas tree for the big house, taking Vanka with him. Oh what fun that was! Grandfather crackled, the frost crackled, and looking at them Vanka crackled too. Before felling the tree, his grandfather would smoke a pipe, take his time over a pinch of snuff, and laugh at little Vanka shivering there . . . The young fir-trees clothed in rime stood motionless, waiting to see which of them was to die. Then, goodness knows where from, a hare shoots across the snowdrifts like an arrow . . . Grandfather can never resist shouting:
'Catch him, catch him! Catch the bob-tailed rascal!'
After cutting down the fir-tree, grandfather would drag it off to the house. There they would set about decorating it ... Miss Olga lgnatyevna, Vanka's favourite, bustled about most. When Varika's mother Pelageya was still alive and worked for the Zhivaryovs as a housemaid, Olga Ignatyevna used to give Vanka sweets, and amused herself by teaching him to read, write, count to a hundred and even dance a quadrille. But when Pelageya died, the orphaned Vanka was packed off to his grandfather in the servants' kitchen, and thence to Moscow to Alyakhin the shoemaker . ,.
'Come and fetch me dear Grandad,' Vanka continued. 'I beg you in Christ's name to take me away from here. Have pity on me a poor orphan or they'll go on clouting me and I'm hungry all day long and I'm so miserable I can'ttell you I cry all the time. And once the master hit me on the head with a last and I fell down and nearly didn't wake up. My life's so awful worse than any dog's . . . Please give my love also to Alyona One-Eyed Yegorka and the coachmen and don't give my concertina away to anyone. I remain your grandson Ivan Zhukov. Dear Grandad come.'
Vanka folded the closely-written sheet in four and put it into an envelope that he had bought for a kopeck the previous day . . . He thought for a moment, dipped his pen, and wrotedown the address:
The Village. To Grandad.
Then he scratched his head, thought again, and added: ' - Kons- tantin Makarych.' Pleased not to have been disturbed while writing, he grabbed his cap and without bothering to put a coat on over his shirt, dashed out into the street . . .
The men at the butcher's shop, in answer to his questions the day before, had told him that letters are dropped into post-boxes, then carried from the post-boxes to all the ends of the earth on mail troikas with drunken drivers and tinkling bells. Vanka ran up to the nearest post-box and pushed his precious letter through the opening .. .
An hour later, lulled by fond hopes, he was fast asleep. He dreamt he saw the stove. On it was sitting his grandfather, dangling his bare feet and reading the letter to the cooks . .. Round the stove walked Loacher, wagging his tail . . .
Verochka
Ivan Alekseyevith Ognyov remembcrs how the glass door rang ashe opened it that August evening and stepped out onto the verandah. He was wearing a light cape and the same broad-brimmed straw h.at that is now gathering dust under his bed along with his Hessian boots. In one hand he was holding a large bundle of books and exercise-books, in the other a stout, knobbly walking-stick.
Standing in the doorway, guiding him with a lamp, was the owner of the house, Kuznetsov, a bald-headed old man with a long grey beard and a snow-white pique waistcoat. He was smiling and nod- ding benignly.
'Goodbye, old friend!' Ognyov shouted to him.
Kuznetsov put the lamp down on a table and came out onto the verandah. Two long thin shadows strode across the steps to the flower-beds, wobbled and bumped their heads against the trunks of the lime-trees.
'Goodbye and thank you again, old chap!' said Ivan Alekseich. 'Thank you for being so generous, so kind and so affectionate ... I shall never ever forget your hospitality. You're a fine person, your daughter's a fine person, and all of you here are so kind and cheerful and warm-hearted . .. You're such a marvellous crowd, I can't begin to tell you.'
Carried away by his emotions and by the effects of the home- brewed vodka he had just drunk, Ognyov intoned his words like a young priest, and was so overcome that he expressed his feelings more by blinking his eyes and twitching his shoulders than by words. Kuznetsov, who was also tipsy and emotionally overcome, leaned forward to the young man and exchanged kisses with him.
1887
'I've become like a faithful old gun-dog to you!' Ognyov con- tinued. 'Almost every day I've wandered over here, a dozen times I've stopped the night, and I shudder to think how much of your vodka I must have drunk. But what I'm most grateful to you for, Gavriil Petrovich, is your help and co-operation. Without you I should have been messing about here with my statistics until October. And that's what I'll say in my foreword: "I consider it my duty to express my gratitude to Chairman ofthe Rural Council of N., Kuznetsov,for hiskind co-operation." What a fan-tastic future statistics has! Give Vera Gavrilovna my humblest regards, and tell the doctors, the two magistrates and your secretary that I shall never forget the help they gave me! And now, old friend, let us embrace each other in a final, farewell kiss.'
Overwhelmed with sentiment, Ognyov exchanged kisses once more with the old man and began to descend the steps. On the last one he looked round and asked:
'Shall we ever meet again?'
'Heaven knows!' replied the old man. 'I doubt it.'
'So do I. Nothing on earth will tempt you to Petersburg, and I don't expect I'll ever come to this district again. Farewell, then!'
'You could have left your books here!' Kuznetsov shouted after him. 'What do you want to drag that load around for? I could have got one of the servants to bring them tomorrow.'
But Ognyov was walking briskly away and no longer listening. Primed by the liquor, he felt at once cheerful, warm, and melancholy . . . As he walked along, he thought how often in life one comes across fine people, and how sad it is that of these encounters nothing remains but memories. A flock of cranes appears suddenly on the horizon, a faint breeze brings you their mournfully exultant cry, but a minute later, however avidly you peer into the blue distance, not a speck is to be seen, not a sound heard; so too human beings, with their faces and voices, appear briefly in our lives and disappear into our past, leaving nothing but a few trivial scraps of memory. After living in the N. district since early spring and visiting the kind- hearted Kuznetsovs almost every day, Ivan Alekseich had come to think ofthe old man, his daughter and the servants as his own fgmily, had become familiar with every nook and cranny of the house, the cosy verandah, the twists in the paths, and the silhouettes ofthe trees above the kitchen and the bath-house; but as soon as he closed the garden gate behind him, all this would turn into a memory and lose its vital significance for ever, while in a year or two's time all these dear images would fade in his mind and be indistinguishable from the fruits and fancies of imagination.