A Night in the Cemetery by Anton Chekhov

Author:Anton Chekhov
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus
Published: 2010-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

FIRE IN THE STEPPE: AN EVIL NIGHT

You can hear the dogs barking and howling in an alarming way, as dogs usually do when they sense an enemy but cannot understand who it is or where it is coming from. There are unclear, muffled sounds flying though the dark autumn air, disturbing the silence of the night: muttering of human voices from far off, the busy rush of footsteps, front gates squeaking, the clomping of horseshoes, and noises made by their riders.

Three dark figures stand motionless in the Dadkins’ estate garden, right in the middle of its main allée, in an empty flower bed. The first recognizable as the night guard on watch, Sam. A distinct figure in his bell-shaped sheepskin coat, tied with a rope instead of a belt, with pieces of fur hanging from it. A tall, thin-legged man in a jacket, with enormous ears, stands next to him. This is Gabriel the butler. The third is dressed in a vest over a loosely hanging shirt, a strongly built, but rather clumsy man, whose angular form brings to mind a wooden doll. He is also known as Gabriel the groom.

All three men grip the top of a short picket fence tightly and look off in the distance.

“Holy mother, save and protect us from this evil!” mumbles Sam in an excited voice. “Just look at that! God is furious at us. Oh, Holy Mother!”

“This is not far from us,” says Gabriel the butler in a bass voice. “Six miles, not more. I believe it is happening at the German farms.”

“No, the German farms are further to the left,” Gabriel the groom interrupts him. “The German farms should be behind this birch tree. No, it must be the Kreshensky village.”

“Yes, it is,” agrees Sam.

They hear someone with bare feet running across the terrace, stomping his feet on the floor and closing the door with a crash. The big house is immersed in sleep. The windows are as black as tar and look eerily gloomy, with only one window barely lit from the inside by a pink night lamp. The young landlady, Maria Sergeevna, sleeps in that room. Her husband, Nikolai Alexeevich, went out to play cards, and has not yet returned.

“Anastasia!” they hear someone crying.

“The landlady is awake,” says Gabriel the butler.

“Wait, brothers, I want to ask her to give me a few horses, and all the farmhands available on the estate, and we will head to the fire as fast as we can. People in that village are stupid, and they will need someone to tell them what to do.”

“Really? Just look at you! You’re going to tell them what to do. Look at yourself—your teeth are chattering from fear! There are enough people there without you. Policemen, chiefs, other landlords—they should all be there already.”

A glass door leading to the terrace opens with a clinking sound, and the landlady herself comes out.

“What is this? What is the meaning of all this noise?” she asks, as she comes closer to the three figures.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.