вАНЬКА

VANKA

Vanka Zhukov, a nine year old boy who had been apprenticed three months previously to the boot maker Alyakina, did not go to bed on Christmas eve. Having waited until the master and mistress with the other workmen went off to the evening service, he took down from the master’s cupboard a bottle of ink, a pen with a rusty nib, spread a crumpled sheet of paper in front of himself, and then started to write. But before forming the first letter he looked several times anxiously at the door and the window, glanced slantwise at the darkened icon, on both sides of which were ranged shelves with bootmakers’ lasts, then heaved a trembling sigh. The sheet of paper was spread on a bench and he was on his knees in front of it.

‘Dear Grandpa, Konstantin Makarich’, he wrote. ‘I am writing to you a letter. Happy Christmas wishes and may God send you all that is best. I don’t have a mum or a dad, and you are the only one who is left to me.’

Vanka turned his eyes towards the dark window where the reflection of the candle flickered and he imagined clearly the figure of his granddad Konstantin Makarich who worked as a night watchman on the the Zhivarev estate. He was a small, frail, but extremely agile and lively old man of sixty five, with a perpetually smiling face and inebriated looking eyes. In the daytime he slept in the servant’s kitchen or joked with the cooks, but at night, wrapped up in his spacious sheepskin coat he went round the estate banging on his wooden board.  He was followed by old Kashtanka, her head hanging low, and the male dog Blackie, so called because of his black colour and his long body like a loach. This Blackie was unusually respectful and fawning, being equally ingratiating with friend or stranger alike, but he gained no trust as a result. Beneath this respectfulness and humility there lay hidden the most Jesuitical cunning. No dog was better than him at nipping in at the right time and biting a leg, or getting up into the ice house, or stealing a chicken from a peasant. More than once his back legs had been nearly broken, twice he had been strung up, every week he was thrashed half to death, but he always recovered.  

At this moment, probably, grandpa was standing at the gate, squinting his eyes at the bright red windows of the village church, stamping his felt boots as he joked with the servants. His wooden watchman’s board hung at his waist. He claps his hands, hunches up with the cold, stamps his felt boots and giggling as old men do he pinches first a maid, then the cook.

“What about a pinch of snuff?” he says, offering his snuff box to the women. They take some and sneeze. This affords grandpa inexpressible delight and he bursts into joyous laughter and shouts –

“Wipe it off! It’s frozen to you.”

They give some snuff to the dogs. Kashtanka sneezes and wrinkles his nose, and offended, he goes off to one side. But Blackie, out of respect, does not sneeze and wags his tail. The weather is superb. The air is still, transparent and fresh. The night is dark but all of the village is visible with its white roofs and streams of smoke from the chimneys, the trees covered with hoar frost, the snowdrifts. The entire sky is scattered with cheerfully twinkling stars and the milky way is so clear it seems as if it has been washed and rinsed with snow for some festival.

Vanka sighs, dips his pen in the ink, and continues writing.

“Yesterday they gave me a dressing down. The master dragged me into the yard by the hair and thrashed me with a strap because when I was rocking their baby in the cradle I accidentally fell asleep. A week ago the mistress told me to clean a herring and I started with the tail end, so she picked it up and started pushing its head into my face. The workmen make fun of me, they send me to the inn for vodka, and tell me to steal cucumbers from the master, and the master beats me with whatever comes to hand. There is nothing to eat. In the morning they give me bread, then gruel for dinner, and for supper bread again. But as for tea or cabbage soup the master and mistress guzzle it themselves. They make me sleep in the lobby, and when the baby cries I don’t sleep at all and have to rock the cradle. Dearest grandpa, please help me with God’s help, take me away from here to home, to the village, for I have nothing left that I can do. I bow down to you to the floor and I will forever pray for you, take me away from here, otherwise I will die.”

Vanka’s mouth twisted, he wiped his eyes with his grubby fist and sobbed.

“I’ll rub the tobacco into snuff for you,” he continued, “I’ll say my prayers, and if I do anything wrong then flog me to kingdom come. But if you think there will be no work for me then I’ll ask the manager for mercy’s sake to let me clean boots, or I can help watch the herd when Fyedka is away. Dearest grandpa, there is no other hope left for me, I can only die here. I wanted to run away to the village but I don’t have any boots and I was afraid of the frost. And when I grow up I’ll be so grateful for this and look after you, and I won’t let anyone do you any  harm. And if you die I’ll pray for your soul to rest in peace, just as I do for my mum Pelageya.

Moscow is a very big city. The houses here are all huge mansions, there are lots of horses, but no sheep, and the dogs are not fierce. Children don’t go carol singing here carrying the Christmas star, and they aren’t allowed into the choir stalls to sing. In one shop I saw on sale fish hooks and lines for any sort of fish, very useful, there was even one hook big enough to hold a forty pound carp. And I saw other shops where there were all sorts of guns, like the gentlemen have, and I am sure they must cost a hundred roubles each. In the butchers’ shops there are grouse and woodcock and hares, but where they have been shot the shop assistants won’t tell you.

Dearest grandpa, when they have the Christmas tree in the master’s house with presents on it, will you get for me the gilded walnut and hide it for me in the green chest. Ask for it from Lady Olga Ignatievna, say it is for Vanya.”

Vanya shivered and sighed, and he stared once again at the window. He remembered that each year grandpa would go into the woods to get the Christmas tree for the master’s house and take his grandson with him. What a happy time it was! Grandpa  crackled and grunted, the frost crackled, and looking at them both Vanka did the same. Usually, before grandpa cut down the tree, he would smoke a pipeful, linger over some snuff, laugh at the chilled Vanyushka. The young fir trees covered in hoar frost stand motionless and wait to see which one of them is to die. Coming from god knows where a hare flies over the snowdrifts  like an arrow. Grandpa cannot stop himself from shouting

“Hold him! Hold him! Hold him! Bob-tailed devil!”

Grandpa dragged the fallen tree to the master’s house and then they started to decorate it. More than any other it was Lady Olga Ignatievna, whom Vanya loved, who fussed over it. When Vanya’s mother Pelageya was still alive and served in the household Lady Olga used to treat him to sweets and, having nothing else to do with her time, she taught him to read, write, count to a hundred, and even dance a quadrille. When Pelageya died they sent him off to the kitchen with his grandfather, and after that to the bootmaker Alyakina in Moscow.

“Do come and fetch me, dearest Grandpa,” continued Vanka, “by Lord Christ I pray to you, take me away from here. Pity me, a poor unfortunate orphan, for here they beat me all the time and I’m desperately hungry, I can’t describe how boring it is, and I’m always crying. Just recently the master hit me on the head with a last so that I fell down and only just managed to recover. My life is done for, it’s worse than any dog’s life. Give my best wishes to Alyona, to one eyed Yegorka and to the coachman, and don’t give my harmonica away to anyone. Yours sincerely, your grandson Ivan Zhukov, dearest grandpa please do come.”

Vanya folded in four the scribbled paper and put it in the envelope which he had bought yesterday for a kopeck. Having thought for a bit he dipped the pen in the ink and wrote on the envelope

To Grandpa in the Village.

Then he scratched his head, thought it over and added “To Konstantin Makarich.” Feeling satisfied that no one had come and prevented him from writing, he put on his cap and without his coat, clad in his overshirt, he ran out into the street.

The assistants in the butcher’s shop, whom he had asked yesterday, told him that letters were put into post boxes and from there they were carried all over the world in troikas by drunken coachmen and with ringing bells. Vanka ran to the nearest post box and put the precious letter into the opening.

Then, lulled by sweet hopes, an hour later he was fast asleep. He dreamed of a stove. On the stove shelf grandpa was sitting with his bare feet dangling down and he was reading a letter to the cooks. Blackie was walking round the stove wagging his tale.

1886

Petersburg Gazette

 NOTES The dog's name Viyun, (Вьюн) is that of an eel like fish.