Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [63]
When the third mouse was caught, the kitten shivered uncontrollably in full view of the mousetrap and its occupant, and dug his claws into Praskovya’s hand.… After the fourth mouse my uncle was beside himself with rage, kicked out at the kitten, and shouted: “Take the filthy thing away! Get it out of the house! Throw it out! The hell with it!”
A year passed. The lean and frail kitten became a wise and sedate tomcat. One day he was making his way through the back yard in search of amatory adventure and was very close to finding what he wanted to find when he suddenly heard a rustling sound and saw a mouse running between the water trough and the stables. My hero’s fur bristled, he arched his back, he hissed, he trembled all over, and ignominiously ran away.
Alas, I sometimes feel I am in the same ludicrous position as this cowardly cat. Long ago, like the kitten, I had the honor of receiving lessons in Latin from my uncle. Now, whenever someone mentions an ancient classic, instead of being moved with eager enthusiasm, I remember my uncle’s gray and sallow face, irregular verbs, ut consecutivum, ablativus absolutus.… I grow pale, my hair stands on end, and like the kitten I take refuge in ignominious flight.
December 1886
Typhus
YOUNG Lieutenant Klimov sat in a smoking compartment on the mail train from Petersburg to Moscow. Opposite him was an elderly man with the clean-shaven face of a ship’s skipper, to all appearances a well-to-do Finn or Swede; he kept sucking at his pipe and spoke in broken Russian. He had only one subject of conversation throughout the entire journey.
“Ha! So you are an officer, eh? Well, my brother is also an officer, but he is in the Navy. He’s a sailor serving at Kronstadt. Why are you going to Moscow?”
“I’m stationed there.”
“Ha! Are you married?”
“No, I am living with my aunt and sister.”
“My brother is also an officer, but he’s in the Navy, and he’s married and has a wife and three children. Ha!”
The Finn seemed puzzled by something, but smiled broadly and idiotically whenever he said “Ha!” Every now and then he blew through his evil-smelling pipe. Klimov was feeling unwell, had no desire to answer questions, and hated the skipper with all his heart. He was thinking how good it would be to snatch that noisy, grumbling pipe out of the man’s hands and hurl it under the seat, and then to order him into another car.
“Those Finns … and Greeks,” he thought. “They’re all loathsome. They’re completely useless, good-for-nothing, rotten people. They only fill up the earth’s space. What good do they do?”
The thought of Finns and Greeks overwhelmed him with a kind of nausea. He tried to compare them with the French and Italians, but for some reason he could only conjure up images of organ-grinders, naked women, and the foreign oleographs which hung over the chest of drawers in his aunt’s house.
The officer was beginning to feel some abnormal symptoms. There seemed to be no room at all for his arms and legs on the seat, although he had the whole seat for himself. His mouth was dry and sticky; a heavy fog weighed down his brain; his thoughts seemed to be straying not only within but also outside his skull, among the seats and the people muffled up in the misty darkness of the night. Through the turmoil of his brain, as through a dream, he heard the murmur of voices, the clattering of wheels, the slamming of doors. The clanging of bells, the guards’ whistles, people running up and down the platform—these sounds seemed more frequent than usual. Time flew by quickly, imperceptibly, and it seemed that never a minute passed but the train stopped at a station, and at each stop there could be heard metallic voices saying:
“Is the mail ready?”
“Ready!”
It seemed to him that the man in charge of the heating was continually coming in to look at the thermometer, and the roar of approaching trains and the rumbling of the