The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky Read online

  “Well, sir, one fine day I did move. My old master, Alexander Filimonovich (he’s dead now, God rest his soul!), said to me at the time, ‘I’m very satisfied with you, Astafy,’ he said. ‘We shan’t forget you, and when we come back from the country we’ll take you on again.’ I had been his butler, oh, for many years—a grand man he was, too, but he died a few months later. Well, so after seeing them off, I collected my belongings, what little money I had, thinking to take it easy for a bit, and went to live with an old lady I knew. Took a small room in her flat. She had only that small room to spare. She used to be in service herself, a nursemaid she was but now she lived by herself on her pension. ‘Well,’ I says to myself, ‘it’s goodbye for good, Yemelyan, old fellow. You’ll never find me now!’

  “Well, sir, what do you think? I came back in the evening (I had gone out to see a man I knew), and there was Yemelyan sitting quietly on my chest in his tattered old coat and with his bundle beside him, and to while away the time he had borrowed a book from my landlady (a prayer book it was), and he was holding it in his hands—upside-down! So he had found me after all! I gave up. ‘It’s no use,’ I thought to myself. ‘It can’t be helped. Why didn’t you get rid of him at first?’ So knowing very well that he had come to stay, I just said to him, ‘You haven’t forgotten your passport, Yemelyan, have you?’

  “Well, sir, so I sat down and began to consider what to do next. ‘After all,’ thought I, ‘what harm can a homeless old tramp do you?’ And on thinking it over, I decided that the harm he’d do me wouldn’t amount to much. ‘He’ll have to have something to eat of course,’ I thought. ‘Well, I’ll give him a piece of bread in the morning, and to make the meal more tasty like, buy an onion or two. At midday I’ll give him another bit of bread and onion, and for supper some more onion with kvas, and bread, too, if he asks for it. And should some cabbage soup come our way, we’ll have a real feast, the two of us.’ I’m no great eater myself, and it’s a well-known fact, sir, that a drinking man never eats: all he wants is vodka and a drop of brandy. ‘He’ll ruin me with his drinking,’ thought I, and as I was thinking of that something else occurred to me, something I couldn’t get out of my head. For I suddenly realised, sir, that if Yemelyan was to go, there’d be nothing left for me to live for. So I made up my mind there and then to be his only provider and benefactor. ‘I must get him to give up drinking,’ I thought, ‘I must save him from utter ruin.’ ‘All right, Yemelyan, old fellow,’ I says to myself, ‘you can stay if you like, but, mind, behave yourself—orders is orders!’

  “The first thing I decided to do, sir, was to teach Yemelyan some trade, find a job of work for him to do. Naturally, it couldn’t be done all at once. ‘Let him enjoy himself a little first,’ I says to myself, ‘and in the meantime I’ll think of something, find out what special abilities you possess, Yemelyan, what kind of work you’re good at.’ For every job, sir, first of all requires that the man engaged in it should have the right kind of ability. Well, sir, so I starts observing him on the quiet, and it didn’t take me long to find out that poor old Yemelyan was a desperate case. Aye, there was nothing at all he was good for. So I first of all gives him a piece of good advice. ‘Why, Yemelyan,’ I says to him, ‘take a look at yourself, and do,’ I says, ‘try to make yourself a bit more respectable like. Look at the rags you go about in. Look at that disgraceful old coat of yours! Why, God forgive me, all it’s good for is to make a sieve out of. Fie, for shame, Yemelyan,’ I says. ‘It’s about time you turned over a new leaf and became a changed man!’

  “Well, sir, poor old Yemelyan just sits listening to me with his head hanging down. There was nothing you could do with him. Why, drink had robbed him even of speech. Couldn’t say a sensible word, he couldn’t. Talk to him about cucumbers and he talks back to you about kidney-beans! He listened to me a long time, then he just heaved a sigh.

  “ ‘What are you sighing for, Yemelyan?’

  “ ‘Oh, nothing,’ he says, ‘don’t take any notice of me, Astafy. Do you know,’ he says, ‘do you know, Astafy, I saw two women fighting in the street today. One upset the other’s basket of cranberries on purpose.’

  “ ‘Well, what about it?’

  “ ‘Well, you see, Astafy, so the second woman upsets the first woman’s cranberries on purpose and starts stamping on them!’

  “ ‘Well, so what about it, Yemelyan?’

  “ ‘Oh, nothing, Astafy. I just thought I’d tell you, that’s all.’

  “ ‘That’s all! Oh, Yemelyan, Yemelyan,’ thought I, ‘drink has been your undoing, and no mistake!’

  “ ‘And you know, Astafy, a gentleman dropped a note on the pavement in Gorokhovaya Street—no, not in Gorokhovaya Street, in Sadovaya Street it was—and a peasant saw it and said, My lucky day! But another peasant also saw it and said, No, sir, it’s my lucky day! I saw it first!…’

  “ ‘Well, Yemelyan?’

  “ ‘Well, so the two peasants had a fight, and a policeman came up, picked up the note, gave it back to the gentleman, and threatened to take the two peasants to the police station!’

  “ ‘Well, so what about it, Yemelyan? I mean what is there specially instructive about it?’

  “ ‘Why, I didn’t mean anything, Astafy. Only the people in the street did laugh a lot.’

  “ ‘Oh, Yemelyan, Yemelyan, what does it matter what the people in the street do? Think of yourself, Yemelyan, think of your immortal soul which you’ve sold for a few coppers. You know what, Yemelyan?’

  “ ‘What, Astafy?’

  “ ‘Why don’t you get yourself some work? You really ought to, you know. For the hundredth time I’m telling you, Yemelyan—have pity on yourself!’

  “ ‘But what work do you want me to get, Astafy? I really don’t know what work I can do, and besides, I don’t think anyone will give me any work.’

  “ ‘Of course they won’t give you any work, you drunkard! Why else do you think they chucked you out of the civil service?’

  “ ‘You know, Astafy, Vlas, the potboy, was summoned to the office today.’

  “ ‘And why did they summon him to the office?’

  “ ‘I really don’t know, Astafy. I suppose they must have wanted him, so they sent for him.’

  “ ‘Ah well,’ thought I, ‘there’s no hope, it seems, for either of us, Yemelyan, old fellow. The good Lord must be punishing us for our sins!’ And what indeed can you do with a man like that, I ask you, sir!

  “But he was devilishly cunning, Yemelyan was. He’d listen quietly to me a long time, but sooner or later he’d get bored, and the minute he noticed that I was beginning to lose my temper, he’d pick up his old coat and sheer off. He’d loaf about all day and come back dead drunk in the evening. I don’t know who paid for his drinks or where he got the money to pay for them himself. I had nothing to do with it!

  “ ‘Now look here, Yemelyan,’ I says to him at last, ‘if you go on like this very much longer, you’re sure to come to a bad end. Stop drinking, do you hear? Give it up! Next time you come home drunk,’ I says, ‘you’ll jolly well have to spend the night on the stairs. I’m damned if I’ll let you in!’

  “Well, sir, he saw of course that I really meant it this time, so for the next two days he didn’t go out, but on the third day he cleared off again. I sat up waiting for him, but he didn’t come back. To tell you the truth, sir, I was beginning to feel a bit uneasy, and, besides, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. ‘What have I done to him?’ I thought. ‘I’ve gone and scared him away good and proper now! Where could he have got to, the poor wretch? Pray God, nothing happens to him!’ Well, night came and he wasn’t back. In the morning I went out on the landing and there he was, sir! Spent the night on the landing, he had. Puts his head on the top step and falls asleep like that. Chilled to the marrow he was.

  “ ‘What made you do it, Yemelyan? What a place to spend the night in!’

  “ ‘Well, you were so angry with me the other night, Astafy. You were so terribly vexed and�
�er—promised to make me spend the night on the landing, so I—well—I didn’t dare to come in, Astafy, and went to sleep here.’

  “I felt mad at him and sorry for him, too, at the same time.

  “ ‘Why, surely, Yemelyan,’ I says, ‘you might have got yourself a different kind of job. What’s the use of guarding a flight of stairs?’

  “ ‘But what different kind of job do you mean, Astafy?’

  “ ‘Why, you good-for-nothing loafer,’ I says (fair mad I was at him, sir!), ‘you could at least have tried to learn the tailor’s trade! Look at that coat of yours! You’re not satisfied, it seems, to have it all in holes, you have to sweep the stairs with it, too! Why don’t you take a needle and thread and patch it up? You would have done it long ago, if you had had any sense of decency left. Oh,’ I says, ‘you drunkard!’

  “Well, would you believe it, sir? He did take a needle and thread! I had meant it as a joke, but he got properly scared, so he took off his coat and sat down to patch it up. I looked at him: his eyes were red and bleary, and his hands shook something terrible! He shoved and shoved, but the thread just wouldn’t go through the eye of the needle. How he tried, sir! Screwed up his eyes, wetted the thread, twisted it in his fingers, but it was no use. So he gave it up and looked at me.

  “ ‘Well, Yemelyan,’ I says, ‘you’ve certainly made me proud of you! If there’d been anybody about,’ I says, ‘I’d have sunk through the floor for shame. Why, you poor fool, don’t you realise that I was joking, that I just meant it as a reproach? Now, leave it alone,’ I says, ‘and don’t attempt to do anything you can’t, and for goodness sake don’t sleep on the stairs! Don’t disgrace me by doing such a disreputable thing ever again!’

  “ ‘But what am I to do, Astafy? I know very well that I’m always drunk and that I’m not good for anything. It seems to me all I am good for is to cause you, my be-ne-factor, unnecessary trouble.…’

  “And, sir, as he said it his blue lips started quivering all of a sudden, and a tear rolled down his pale cheek and trembled on his stubby chin, and in another minute the poor fellow burst into a regular flood of tears.

  “ ‘Well, Yemelyan,’ I says to myself, ‘I never thought you had it in you. Who could have guessed you had such tender feelings?’ No, I says to myself, ‘no, it’s no use deceiving myself. I ought to give up having anything to do with you. Go to the devil for all I care!’

  “Well, sir, why make a long story of it? And, besides, it was such a sorry, miserable business that it is hardly worth wasting words on. I mean, sir, you wouldn’t, so to speak, give a brass farthing for the whole thing, though I would gladly have given a fortune, if I had had a fortune to give, that it should never have happened to me. You see, sir, I had a pair of riding breeches (the devil take ’em!), lovely breeches they were, too, blue ones with a check pattern. They were ordered by a country gentleman who was on a visit to town, but he wouldn’t take ’em, after all: they were too narrow for him, he said. Well, so they were left on my hands. ‘It’s a valuable article,’ I thought. ‘I might get fifteen roubles or more for them in the second-hand market, and even if I didn’t, I might manage to get two pairs of trousers for our Petersburg gentleman out of them, and have a piece over for a waistcoat for myself.’ To poor folk like us, sir, every little counts. Well, as it happened Yemelyan was having a very poor time just then. I had noticed that he had not had a drop of liquor for some days. He lost heart and looked down in the mouth. Aye, very miserable he looked, and that’s the truth. I couldn’t help feeling sorry to see him in such a sad state. ‘Well,’ I says to myself, ‘either you’ve got no money, my lad, or you’ve turned over a new leaf in good earnest, listened to reason at last, and given up drink for good.’ That’s how things stood just then, sir. As it happened, we had a church holiday at the time, and I went to evening service. When I came back, I found Yemelyan sitting on the windowsill blind drunk, rocking to and fro. Aha, thought I, so you’ve gone and done it again, my lad! And I went to fetch something from my chest. I opened it and the first thing I noticed was that my breeches were no longer there. Looked for them everywhere I could think of, but couldn’t find them. Well, after I’d turned the place upside down and all to no purpose, something seemed to stab me to the heart. I rushed off to my landlady and at first accused her of the theft. Aye, acted like a real madman, I did. Hardly knew what I was doing. You see, sir, it hadn’t entered my head that Yemelyan was the real culprit, though the evidence was staring me in the face, as you might say, for the man was blind drunk! ‘No, sir,’ says my landlady, ‘I never seen your breeches, and, anyway, what would I want with your breeches? I couldn’t wear them, could I? Why,’ she says, ‘I missed a skirt of mine myself the other day, and I shouldn’t wonder,’ she says, ‘if it wasn’t one of those nice friends of yours who took it. As for your breeches,’ she says, ‘I know nothing about ’em.’ ‘But who was here while I was out,’ I asked. ‘Did anyone call?’ ‘No, sir,’ she says, ‘no one called. I’ve been here all the time and I ought to know. Yemelyan went out and came back. There he is. Why don’t you ask him?’ So I asked Yemelyan. ‘Tell me, Yemelyan,’ I says, ‘you haven’t by any chance taken them breeches of mine, have you? The new riding breeches,’ I says, ‘I made specially for the country gentleman. You remember them, don’t you?’

  “ ‘No, Astafy,’ he says, ‘I’m sure I—er—never took ’em.’

  “Well, of all things! I started searching for them again, looked everywhere, but it was no use. And Yemelyan, sir, was sitting there all the time, rocking to and fro. I squats down over the chest on my heels in front of him, and all of a sudden I looks at him out of the corner of my eye. ‘Ah well,’ thought I, and fairly mad at him I was I can tell you. Got red in the face even. Then, quite unexpectedly, Yemelyan, too, looks at me.

  “ ‘No, Astafy,’ he says, ‘I never took your breeches. You’re—er—perhaps thinking I did, but I never touched them!’

  “ ‘But where could they have got to, Yemelyan?’

  “ ‘Haven’t the faintest idea, Astafy,’ he says. ‘I’ve never seen them.’

  “ ‘Well, in that case, Yemelyan,’ I says, ‘it seems they must have walked off by themselves, don’t it?’

  “ ‘Maybe they have, Astafy,’ he says. ‘Maybe they have.’

  “Well, sir, having heard what Yemelyan had to say for himself, I got up without another word, went over to the window, lighted my lamp, and set down to work. Altering a waistcoat for a civil servant on the floor below, I was just then. I was boiling with rage. I mean, sir, I’d have felt much happier if I’d taken all my clothes and lighted the stove with them. Well, Yemelyan must have guessed how bitter I felt. For a man given to wickedness, sir, scents trouble far off, like a bird before a storm.

  “ ‘You know, Astafy,’ began Yemelyan, and his weak voice shook as he spoke, ‘the male nurse Antip Prokhorovich got married this morning to the wife of the coachman who died the other day.…’

  “Well, sir, I just gave him a look, and I suppose it must have been a very nasty look, too, for Yemelyan saw what I meant all right. So he gets up at once, goes over to the bed and starts searching for something on the floor there. I waited. He goes on rummaging a long time, muttering to himself, ‘No, not here—not here. Where can the blessed thing have got to?’ I waited to see what would happen. Then, believe it or not, sir, he crawled under the bed on all fours! Well, when I saw him do that, I couldn’t hold out any longer.

  “ ‘What are you crawling about under the bed for, Yemelyan?’ I says.

  “ ‘Why, Astafy,’ he says, ‘I’m looking for your breeches, of course. Maybe they’ve dropped down there somewhere.’

  “ ‘But why, sir,’ I says (called him ‘sir’ out of sheer spite, I did), ‘why, sir, should you go to so much trouble for a poor ignorant man like me? Why crawl on your knees for nothing?’

  “ ‘Why, Astafy,’ he says, ‘I don’t mind. Who knows, they might turn up if we go on looking for them long enough.’

  �
�� ‘Indeed?’ I says. ‘Look here, Yemelyan.…’

  “ ‘Yes, Astafy?’

  “ ‘Are you sure,’ I says, ‘you haven’t simply stolen them, like a common thief, in return for everything I done for you?’

  “You see, sir, it made me mad to see him crawling on his knees before me—the last straw, that was!

  “ ‘No, I haven’t … Astafy.’

  “But he didn’t come out from under the bed. No, sir. Lay there a long time on his face, and when at last he did crawl out, he was as white as a sheet. He stood up, sat down beside me on the windowsill, and stayed sitting there for ten minutes, I reckon.

  “ ‘No, Astafy,’ he says all of a sudden, standing up and advancing towards me, looking (I can see him still) ghastly, ‘no, Astafy,’ he says, ‘I’ve never—er—touched your breeches.’

  “He was shaking all over, pointing a quivering finger at his breast, and his voice shaking so dreadfully it gave me an awful turn and I just sat there as though I was stuck to the window.

  “ ‘Well, Yemelyan,’ I says, ‘I’m sorry if, fool that I am, I’ve accused you unjustly. As for the breeches,’ I says, ‘I don’t care if they are lost. We can get along without them. We’ve still got our hands, thank God, and there’s no need for us to go thieving or … begging from some poor devil, either. We can always earn our bread.…’

  “Yemelyan listened to me in silence, and after a while he sat down on the windowsill again. He stayed there all the evening, never stirring from his place. He was still there when I went to bed, and when I got up the next morning I found him curled up in his old coat on the bare floor. He was too humiliated, you see, to come to bed. Well, sir, since that day I conceived a violent dislike for him, and to tell you the truth, sir, during the first few days I simply hated the sight of him. It was as though my own son, so to speak, had robbed me or done me some mortal injury.