The Greatest Novellas & Short Stories of Anton Chekhov. Anton Chekhov
kittens had eclipsed everything else and had taken their place as the one engrossing novelty and passion of the day. If Vania or Nina had been offered a ton of candy or a thousand pennies for each one of the kittens they would have refused the bargain without a moment's hesitation. They sat over the kittens in the kitchen until the very moment for dinner, in spite of the vigorous protests of their nurse and of the cook. The expression on their faces was serious, absorbed, and full of anxiety. They were worrying not only over the present, but also over the future of the kittens. They decided that one should stay at home with the old cat to console its mother, the second should go to the cottage in the country, and the third should live in the cellar where there were so many rats.
"But why don't they open their eyes?" Nina puzzled. "They are blind, like beggars!"
Vania, too, was perturbed by this phenomenon. He set to work to open the eyes of one of the kittens, and puffed and snuffled over his task for a long time, but the operation proved to be unsuccessful. The children were also not a little worried because the kittens obstinately refused all meat and milk set before them. Their grey mother ate everything that was put under their little noses.
"Come on, let's make some little houses for the kitties ! " Vania suggested. " Then they can live in their own separate homes and the old kitty can come and visit them."
They put hat-boxes in various corners of the kitchen, and the kittens were transferred to their new homes. But this family separation proved to be premature. With the same imploring, sentimental look on her face, the cat made the round of the boxes and carried her babies back to their former nest.
"Kitty is their mother," Vania reflected. "But who is their father?"
"Yes, who is their father.?" Nina repeated.
"They must have a father," both decided.
Vania and Nina debated for a long time as to who should be the father of the kittens. At last their choice fell upon a large dark-red horse with a broken tail who had been thrown into a cupboard under the stairs and there lay awaiting his end in company with other rubbish and broken toys. This horse they dragged forth and set up beside the box.
" Mind now ! " the children admonished him. " Stand there and see they behave themselves ! "
Shortly before dinner Vania was sitting at the table in his father's study dreamily watching a kitten that lay squirming on the blotting-paper under the lamp. His eyes were following each movement of the little creature and he was trying to force first a pencil and then a match into its mouth. Suddenly his father appeared beside the table as if he had sprung from the floor.
"What's that." Vania heard him ask in an angry voice.
"It's — it's a little kitty, papa."
"I'll show you a little kitty ! Look what you've done, you bad boy, you've messed up the whole blotter!"
To Vania's intense surprise, his papa did not share his affection for kittens. Instead of going into raptures and rejoicing over it with him, he pulled Vania's ear and shouted:
"Stepan ! Come and take this nasty thing away !"
At dinner, too, a scandal occurred. During the second course the family suddenly heard a faint squeaking. A search for the cause was made and a kitten was discovered under Nina's apron.
"Nina, leave the table at once!" cried her father angrily. "Stepan, throw the kittens into the slop-barrel this minute ! I won't have such filth in the house!"
Vania and Nina were horrified. Apart from its cruelty, death in the slop-barrel threatened to deprive the old cat and the wooden horse of their children, to leave the box deserted, and to upset all their plans for the future, that beautiful future in which one cat would take care of its old mother, one would live in the country, and the third would catch rats in the cellar. The children began to cry and to beg for the lives of the kittens. Their father consented to spare them on condition that the children should under no circumstances go into the kitchen or touch the kittens.
When dinner was over, Vania and Nina roamed disconsolately through the house, pining for their pets. The prohibition to enter the kitchen had plunged them in gloom. They refused candy when it was offered them and were cross and rude to their mother. When their Uncle Peter came in the evening they took him aside and complained to him of their father who wanted to throw the kittens into the slop-barrel.
"Uncle Peter," they begged. "Tell mamma to have the kittens brought into the nursery ! Do tell her!"
"All right, all right!" their uncle consented to get rid of them.
Uncle Peter seldom came alone. There generally appeared with him Nero, a big black Dane with flapping ears and a tail as hard as a stick. He was a silent and gloomy dog, full of the consciousness of his own dignity. He ignored the children and thumped them with his tail as he stalked by them as if they had been chairs. The children cordially hated him, but this time practical considerations triumphed over sentiment.
"Do you know what, Nina." said Vania, opening his eyes very wide. "Let's make Nero their father instead of the horse ! The horse is dead and he is alive."
They waited all the evening for the time to come when papa should sit down to his whist and Nero might be admitted into the kitchen. At last papa began playing. Mamma was busy over the samovar and was not noticing the children — the happy moment had come !
"Come on!" Vania whispered to his sister.
But just then Stepan came into the room and announced with a smile:
"Madame, Nero has eaten the kittens!"
Nina and Vania paled and looked at Stepan in horror.
"Indeed he has!" chuckled the butler. "He has found the box and eaten every one !"
The children imagined that every soul in the house would spring up in alarm and fling themselves upon that wicked Nero. But instead of this they all sat quietly in their places and only seemed surprised at the appetite of the great dog. Papa and mamma laughed. Nero walked round the table wagging his tail and licking his chops with great self-satisfaction. Only the cat was uneasy. With her tail in the air she roamed through the house, looking suspiciously at every one and mewing pitifully.
"Children, it's ten o'clock! Go to bed!" cried mamma.
Vania and Nina went to bed crying and lay for a long time thinking about the poor, abused kitty and that horrid, cruel, unpunished Nero.
AN INCIDENT
[trans. by Constance Garnett]
MORNING. Brilliant sunshine is piercing through the frozen lacework on the window-panes into the nursery. Vanya, a boy of six, with a cropped head and a nose like a button, and his sister Nina, a short, chubby, curly-headed girl of four, wake up and look crossly at each other through the bars of their cots.
“Oo-oo-oo! naughty children!” grumbles their nurse. “Good people have had their breakfast already, while you can’t get your eyes open.”
The sunbeams frolic over the rugs, the walls, and nurse’s skirts, and seem inviting the children to join in their play, but they take no notice. They have woken up in a bad humour. Nina pouts, makes a grimace, and begins to whine:
“Brea-eakfast, nurse, breakfast!”
Vanya knits his brows and ponders what to pitch upon to howl over. He has already begun screwing up his eyes and opening his mouth, but at that instant the voice of mamma reaches them from the drawing-room, saying: “Don’t forget to give the cat her milk, she has a family now!”
The children’s puckered countenances grow smooth again as they look at each other in astonishment. Then both at once begin shouting, jump out of their cots, and filling the air with piercing shrieks, run barefoot, in their nightgowns, to the kitchen.
“The cat has puppies!” they cry. “The