Chekhov / Saltykov / Turgenev Five Russian Dog Stories

1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-1-78094-110-3
Verlag: Hesperus Press Ltd.
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 110 Seiten

Five Russian Dog Stories presents touching narratives from three giants in Russian literature. Some heart-warming, some tear jerking, none will easily be forgotten. Turgenev's Mumu is rescued from drowning by a mute serf, Gerasim, and quickly becomes his closest friend and comforter until Gerasim's mistress intervenes with tragic consequences. Shchedrin's Trezor is the perfect embodiment of canine fidelity, carrying out his duties to the letter, despite being chained up, badly treated and sometimes not even fed. Chekhov's Kashtanka, when lost, is taken in by a circus clown and trained for an act in the ring. However, she prefers to return to her former abusive master, sitting in the audience at her first performance, rather than remain with her new caring, thoughtful owner. These stories have long been held in high esteem, tugging at the readers' heartstrings. When Turgenev died in 1883 a wreath was sent to the grave of 'the author of Moomoo' by British Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Chekhov, Anton

Saltykov, Mikhail

Turgenev, Ivan

Weitere Mitwirkende

Briggs, Anthony

Leseproben

MUMU

by Ivan Turgenev

On one of Moscow’s outlying streets, in a grey house with white columns, a mansard frontage and a crooked balcony, there once lived a landowning widow surrounded by a whole crowd of domestics. Her sons worked as civil servants in St Petersburg, her daughters were married off, and she rarely went out visiting. She was living out the last solitary years of her miserly and tiresome old age. Her day, joyless and foul, had passed long ago, and now the evening of her life was blacker than night.

Among her domestic staff one person stood out, a yard-keeper by the name of Gerasim, a man of six foot six, built like a giant, deaf and mute from birth. The mistress had brought him in from the country where he used to live on his own in a small shack away from his brothers; he was famous among the peasants for being first with the payment of his taxes. Endowed with phenomenal strength, he could do the work of four men, and anything he undertook was done well. It was a pleasure to watch him, whether he was out in the field, with his huge hands bearing down on the plough and cutting through the spongy bosom of the soil as if he was doing it all by himself without any help from his scraggy little horse; or when he laid about himself with his scythe to such devastating effect that, come St Peter’s Day, you would swear he was stripping out a whole new birch wood, roots and all; or when he was threshing away with a seven-foot flail, flat-out, non-stop, and his solid-flexed shoulder muscles pounded up and down like pistons. His perpetual silence invested his unflagging work with a special gravity. He was a fine upstanding peasant, and but for his affliction any young girl would willingly have had him for a husband. Anyway, Gerasim was brought into Moscow; they fitted him out with boots and a specially made summer smock and winter coat, handed him a shovel and broom, and set him up as yard-keeper.

At first, he didn’t take to this new way of living at all. Man and boy he had been used to country life and working in the fields. Isolated by his affliction from other people’s company he grew up strong and silent, like a tree in good soil. Resettled in the city, he hadn’t the slightest idea what was going on – he was homesick and stunned, like a strapping young bullock hustled in from the meadow where he has been belly-deep in lush grass, and shoved into a railway wagon with smoke and sparks or gushing steam swirling around his well-fed body while he hurtles along – to God knows where – with a lot of banging and screeching.

Gerasim’s duties in his new job seemed like a joke after all that hard work as a peasant; he got everything done in half an hour, and he would either come to a halt half-way across the yard, goggling at the people who went by as if he might learn from them how to solve the mystery of his new situation, or take himself off into a corner, where he would hurl away his broom or shovel, throw himself down on the ground and lie there without moving for hours on end, face-down, like a wild beast in captivity. But a man can get used to anything, and eventually Gerasim did get used to living in the city. There wasn’t much for him to do; his work consisted of keeping the yard clean, fetching a barrel of water two or three times a day, bringing logs and chopping them to size for the kitchen or the main house, as well as keeping people out and guarding the place at night. And it must be said that he carried out his duties to the letter; you would never see as much as a sliver of wood in the yard, or any litter, and if the clapped-out old mare entrusted to him happened to get stuck in the mud while she was hauling a barrel in the rainy season, one shove with his shoulder would get it moving again, not just the barrel on the cart but the horse too. Once he had started chopping wood, the axe rang like glass in his hands, and splinters and sticks would fly about all over the place; and when it came to dealing with intruders, well, after that time when he caught a couple of thieves one night and banged their heads together with such a whack there was no point in handing them over to the police, everybody in the vicinity treated him with the greatest respect, and even when people walked past during the day, not criminals but unknown passers-by, they would take one look at the terrifying yard-man and wave him away, shouting across as if he could hear them. With the rest of the servants Gerasim was on not what you would call friendly terms – they were too scared of him – but they were close: he thought of them as ‘our people’. They communicated with him by gesturing; he could understand them, and he did everything they told him to do, though he also knew his own rights, and none of them dared sit in his place at the table. In a word or two, Gerasim was a stern and serious character, a stickler for good order. Even the cockerels didn’t dare have a scrap when he was around; they knew what was coming to them – the moment he saw them he would grab them by the feet, swing them round and round a dozen times and hurl them away in different directions. The mistress also kept geese in the yard, and everybody knows that your goose is a bird of quality who knows what he’s about. Gerasim paid them proper respect; he looked after them, and fed them, rather fancying himself as a sedate-looking gander. He had been given a little room over the kitchen; he fitted it out himself the way he liked things, knocking up a bed of oak planks on four blocks – a bed for Hercules! – you could have put a ton weight on it and it wouldn’t bend. There was a strongbox underneath it, and in one corner stood a small table as solid as the bed, with a three-legged stool so chunky and squat that Gerasim would pick it up and clump it down with a smug grin on his face. His little room was locked with a padlock the size of a loaf, only it was black, and Gerasim always kept the key on his belt. He didn’t like people coming up to see him.

A year went by like this, at the end of which Gerasim was involved in a little incident.

The old mistress whose yard he was keeping belonged to the old school in every way, which meant she had lots of servants: her household included not only laundry-maids and seamstresses, tailors and dressmakers, there was even a saddler who also served as a vet, though it was her own household doctor who took care of the staff, and finally there was a cobbler by the name of Kapiton Klimov, a terrible boozer. Klimov felt done down and undervalued; here he was, a man brought up in St Petersburg, the capital; Moscow was beneath him, he had no proper job, he was stuck in a backwater, and if he did take a drink, he drank only because of the grief he had to bear – he said it himself, slurring his speech and beating his breast. Then, one day, his name came up in a discussion between the mistress and her chief steward, Gavrilo, a man who, if his beady yellow eyes and his beaky nose were anything to go by, seemed to have been picked out by destiny itself to serve as a figure of authority. The mistress was sorry to hear about Kapiton’s depravity – he had been picked up out on the streets only the day before.

‘What about it, Gavrilo?’ she broke out suddenly. ‘Do you think we ought to get him married? It might bring him to his senses.’

‘Well, why not, ma’am? It might work,’ answered Gavrilo, ‘Do him a power of good, ma’am.’

‘Yes, but who would have him?’

‘There is that, ma’am. Still, it’s what you want that matters, ma’am. Anyway, he must be good for something. There are plenty worse.’

‘Do you think he might fancy Tatyana?’

Gavrilo was about to raise an objection, but he bit his lip.

‘Yes! Let him get married to Tatyana,’ the mistress decided, taking a most agreeable pinch of snuff. ‘Do you hear what I say?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Gavrilo stiffly, and he withdrew.

The first thing Gavrilo did when he was back in his room (which was in one of the outbuildings, crammed with iron-bound boxes), was to send his wife away; he then sat down by the window with a lot on his mind. The arrangement suddenly proposed by the mistress had clearly put him on the spot. After some time he got to his feet and sent for Kapiton. Kapiton arrived… But, before we tell our readers how their conversation went, we think it will not be out of place to say a word or two about who she was, this Tatyana, the marriage prospect set up for Kapiton, and why the mistress’ injunction had given the steward pause for thought.

Tatyana was one of the laundry-maids mentioned above (though she had had proper training in laundry-work so she was entrusted with the finest linen); a woman in her late twenties, small, thin and fair-haired, she had moles on her left cheek. Moles on the left cheek were considered a bad omen in good old Russia – the sign of an unhappy life. Tatyana had little to boast about. She had been badly treated since she was a young girl, having to do the work of two women and never being shown any affection; she was kept poorly dressed, and paid a pittance. She had no family to speak of, just an uncle who had once been in service but was now useless and left behind in the country, and one or two other uncles, common peasants, that was all. She had once been considered beautiful, but her good looks had soon slipped away. She was a submissive creature, you might say brow-beaten; she took no interest in herself and was mortally scared of everybody else. The only thing she thought about was how to get her work done in time; she never spoke, and she...