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Anton Chekhov - Kashtanka
I
II
III IV
V
VI VII
II
A Mysterious Stranger
But she thought of nothing, she simply whined. When her head and
back were entirely plastered over with the soft feathery snow,
and she had sunk into a painful doze of exhaustion, all at once
the door of the entrance clicked, creaked, and struck her on the
side. She jumped up. A man belonging to the class of customers
came out. As Kashtanka whined and got under his feet, he could
not help noticing her. He bent down to her and asked:
"Doggy, where do you come from? Have I hurt you? O, poor thing,
poor thing. . . . Come, don't be cross, don't be cross. . . . I
am sorry."
Kashtanka looked at the stranger through the snow-flakes that
hung on her eyelashes, and saw before her a short, fat little
man, with a plump, shaven face wearing a top hat and a fur coat
that swung open.
"What are you whining for?" he went on, knocking the snow off
her back with his fingers. "Where is your master? I suppose you
are lost? Ah, poor doggy! What are we going to do now?"
Catching in the stranger's voice a warm, cordial note, Kashtanka
licked his hand, and whined still more pitifully.
"Oh, you nice funny thing!" said the stranger. "A regular fox!
Well, there's nothing for it, you must come along with me!
Perhaps you will be of use for something. . . . Well!"
He clicked with his lips, and made a sign to Kashtanka with his
hand, which could only mean one thing: "Come along!" Kashtanka
went.
Not more than half an hour later she was sitting on the floor in
a big, light room, and, leaning her head against her side, was
looking with tenderness and curiosity at the stranger who was
sitting at the table, dining. He ate and threw pieces to her. .
. . At first he gave her bread and the green rind of cheese,
then a piece of meat, half a pie and chicken bones, while
through hunger she ate so quickly that she had not time to
distinguish the taste, and the more she ate the more acute was
the feeling of hunger.
"Your masters don't feed you properly," said the stranger,
seeing with what ferocious greediness she swallowed the morsels
without munching them. "And how thin you are! Nothing but skin
and bones. . . ."
Kashtanka ate a great deal and yet did not satisfy her hunger,
but was simply stupefied with eating. After dinner she lay down
in the middle of the room, stretched her legs and, conscious of
an agreeable weariness all over her body, wagged her tail. While
her new master, lounging in an easy-chair, smoked a cigar, she
wagged her tail and considered the question, whether it was
better at the stranger's or at the carpenter's. The stranger's
surroundings were poor and ugly; besides the easy-chairs, the
sofa, the lamps and the rugs, there was nothing, and the room
seemed empty. At the carpenter's the whole place was stuffed
full of things: he had a table, a bench, a heap of shavings,
planes, chisels, saws, a cage with a goldfinch, a basin. . . .
The stranger's room smelt of nothing, while there was always a
thick fog in the carpenter s room, and a glorious smell of glue,
varnish, and shavings. On the other hand, the stranger had one
great superiority -- he gave her a great deal to eat and, to do
him full justice, when Kashtanka sat facing the table and
looking wistfully at him, he did not once hit or kick her, and
did not once shout: "Go away, damned brute!"
When he had finished his cigar her new master went out, and a
minute later came back holding a little mattress in his hands.
"Hey, you dog, come here!" he said, laying the mattress in the
corner near the dog. "Lie down here, go to sleep!"
Then he put out the lamp and went away. Kashtanka lay down on
the mattress and shut her eyes; the sound of a bark rose from
the street, and she would have liked to answer it, but all at
once she was overcome with unexpected melancholy. She thought of
Luka Alexandritch, of his son Fedyushka, and her snug little
place under the bench. . . . She remembered on the long winter
evenings, when the carpenter was planing or reading the paper
aloud, Fedyushka usually played with her. . . . He used to pull
her from under the bench by her hind legs, and play such tricks
with her, that she saw green before her eyes, and ached in every
joint. He would make her walk on her hind legs, use her as a
bell, that is, shake her violently by the tail so that she
squealed and barked, and give her tobacco to sniff. . . . The
following trick was particularly agonising: Fedyushka would tie
a piece of meat to a thread and give it to Kashtanka, and then,
when she had swallowed it he would, with a loud laugh, pull it
back again from her stomach, and the more lurid were her
memories the more loudly and miserably Kashtanka whined.
But soon exhaustion and warmth prevailed over melancholy. She
began to fall asleep. Dogs ran by in her imagination: among them
a shaggy old poodle, whom she had seen that day in the street
with a white patch on his eye and tufts of wool by his nose.
Fedyushka ran after the poodle with a chisel in his hand, then
all at once he too was covered with shaggy wool, and began
merrily barking beside Kashtanka. Kashtanka and he goodnaturedly
sniffed each other's noses and merrily ran down the street. . .
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