Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [67]
The baby was crying. For a long time he had been hoarse and weak from crying, but nevertheless he continued to cry and showed no sign of stopping. Varka wanted to sleep. Her eyelids were glued together, her head ached, her neck throbbed. She could scarcely move her eyes or her lips; her face felt stiff and dry, and her head seemed to have shriveled to the size of a pinhead.
“Hush-a-bye, baby,” she sang softly. “You shall be fed bye and bye.”
A cricket chirped in the stove. Behind the door, in the next room, Varka’s master and the journeyman Afanasy were snoring. The cradle creaked plaintively and Varka sang her songs; and these two noises mingled together in a soft, lulling night music sweet to the ears of those who lie in bed. But now this music only irritated and depressed her, for it made her sleepy and sleep had become impossible. God forbid that Varka should fall asleep, for if she did her master and mistress would beat her unmercifully.
The lamp flickered. The green stain and the shadows wandered about the room, falling upon the half-open motionless eyes of Varka, creating images in her drowsy, half-awakened brain. She saw dark clouds chasing each other across the sky and crying like the child. When the wind rose, the clouds vanished, and then she saw a wide highway covered with liquid mud: along this highway she saw baggage trains stretching into the distance, and men crawled after them with knapsacks on their backs, and the shadows hovered over them. On both sides of the highway were forests, which could be seen emerging out of the raw and chilling mists. Suddenly the men with the knapsacks and the shadows fell in the liquid mud. “Why did this happen?” Varka asked, and the reply came: “Go to sleep! Go to sleep!” So they slept sweetly and soundlessly. Crows and magpies perched on the telegraph wires, and they were weeping like children, trying to awaken those who had fallen by the wayside.
“Hush-a-bye, hush-a-bye,” Varka sang softly. “I’ll sing you a song.” And then she found herself in a dark and suffocating hut.
Her dead father, Yefim Stepanov, was sprawled over the floor. She could not see him, but heard him tossing about and moaning. He used to say: “My hernia is acting up!” and so it was. The pain was so fierce that he was unable to speak a single word. He just sucked in the air and expelled it from his mouth with a sound like the rolling of drums.
“Bu, bu, bu, bu …”
Her mother, Pelageya, ran off to the farmhouse to tell the master that Yefim was dying. She had been gone for a long while, and Varka wondered whether she would ever return. She lay on the stove, unable to sleep, growing accustomed to her father’s voice, the interminable “Bu-bu-bu-bu …” She heard someone coming up to the hut. The master had sent the young doctor: he was a guest from a neighboring town and was staying at the master’s house. The doctor came into the hut. The shadows were so thick that he remained invisible, but she heard his cough and the creaking of the door.
“Let me have a light!” the doctor said.
“Bu-bu-bu-bu …” Yefim muttered.
At that moment Pelageya sprang to the stove and began to search for the crock with the matches. A whole minute passed in silence. The doctor, diving into his pocket, produced a match and struck it.
“I’m coming straight away, batyushka!” Pelageya said, running out of the hut and returning a moment later with a candle end.
Yefim’s cheeks were flushed, his eyes glittered, and his gaze was very penetrating, as though he could see right through the hut and right through the doctor.
“How do you feel?” the doctor said. “Has it been going on a long time?”
“Eh, what’s that? My time’s up, Your Honor. I’m on my way out.…”
“Fiddlesticks! We’ll have you cured in no time!”
“Just as you say,