The Collected Works of Anton Chekhov - Anton Chekhov

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A frog sitting in a shell, peeping out from it with big, glittering eyes, and moving its revolting jaws. I imagined this creature in a shell with claws, glittering eyes, and a slimy skin, being brought from the market…. The children would all hide while the cook, frowning with an air of disgust, would take the creature by its claw, put it on a plate, and carry it into the dining-room. The grownups would take it and eat it, eat it alive with its eyes, its teeth, its legs! While it squeaked and tried to bite their lips….

      I frowned, but… but why did my teeth move as though I were munching? The creature was loathsome, disgusting, terrible, but I ate it, ate it greedily, afraid of distinguishing its taste or smell. As soon as I had eaten one, I saw the glittering eyes of a second, a third… I ate them too…. At last I ate the table-napkin, the plate, my father’s goloshes, the white placard… I ate everything that caught my eye, because I felt that nothing but eating would take away my illness. The oysters had a terrible look in their eyes and were loathsome. I shuddered at the thought of them, but I wanted to eat! To eat!

      “Oysters! Give me some oysters!” was the cry that broke from me and I stretched out my hand.

      “Help us, gentlemen!” I heard at that moment my father say, in a hollow and shaking voice. “I am ashamed to ask but — my God! — I can bear no more!”

      “Oysters!” I cried, pulling my father by the skirts of his coat.

      “Do you mean to say you eat oysters? A little chap like you!” I heard laughter close to me.

      Two gentlemen in top hats were standing before us, looking into my face and laughing.

      “Do you really eat oysters, youngster? That’s interesting! How do you eat them?”

      I remember that a strong hand dragged me into the lighted restaurant. A minute later there was a crowd round me, watching me with curiosity and amusement. I sat at a table and ate something slimy, salt with a flavour of dampness and mouldiness. I ate greedily without chewing, without looking and trying to discover what I was eating. I fancied that if I opened my eyes I should see glittering eyes, claws, and sharp teeth.

      All at once I began biting something hard, there was a sound of a scrunching.

      “Ha, ha! He is eating the shells,” laughed the crowd. “Little silly, do you suppose you can eat that?”

      After that I remember a terrible thirst. I was lying in my bed, and could not sleep for heartburn and the strange taste in my parched mouth. My father was walking up and down, gesticulating with his hands.

      “I believe I have caught cold,” he was muttering. “I’ve a feeling in my head as though someone were sitting on it…. Perhaps it is because I have not… er… eaten anything to-day…. I really am a queer, stupid creature…. I saw those gentlemen pay ten roubles for the oysters. Why didn’t I go up to them and ask them… to lend me something? They would have given something.”

      Towards morning, I fell asleep and dreamt of a frog sitting in a shell, moving its eyes. At midday I was awakened by thirst, and looked for my father: he was still walking up and down and gesticulating.

      THE SWEDISH MATCH

       [trans. by Constance Garnett]

       Table of Contents

      (The Story of a Crime)

      I

      ON the morning of October 6, 1885, a well-dressed young man presented himself at the office of the police superintendent of the 2nd division of the S. district, and announced that his employer, a retired cornet of the guards, called Mark Ivanovitch Klyauzov, had been murdered. The young man was pale and extremely agitated as he made this announcement. His hands trembled and there was a look of horror in his eyes.

      “To whom have I the honour of speaking?” the superintendent asked him.

      “Psyekov, Klyauzov’s steward. Agricultural and engineering expert.”

      The police superintendent, on reaching the spot with Psyekov and the necessary witnesses, found the position as follows.

      Masses of people were crowding about the lodge in which Klyauzov lived. The news of the event had flown round the neighbourhood with the rapidity of lightning, and, thanks to its being a holiday, the people were flocking to the lodge from all the neighbouring villages. There was a regular hubbub of talk. Pale and tearful faces were to be seen here and there. The door into Klyauzov’s bedroom was found to be locked. The key was in the lock on the inside.

      “Evidently the criminals made their way in by the window” Psyekov observed, as they examined the door.

      They went into the garden into which the bedroom window looked. The window had a gloomy, ominous air. It was covered by a faded green curtain. One corner of the curtain was slightly turned back, which made it possible to peep into the bedroom.

      “Has anyone of you looked in at the window?” inquired the superintendent.

      “No, your honour,” said Yefrem, the gardener, a little, grey-haired old man with the face of a veteran non-commissioned officer. “No one feels like looking when they are shaking in every limb!”

      “Ech, Mark Ivanitch! Mark Ivanitch!” sighed the superintendent, as he looked at the window. “I told you that you would come to a bad end! I told you, poor dear — you wouldn’t listen! Dissipation leads to no good!”

      “It’s thanks to Yefrem,” said Psyekov. “We should never have guessed it but for him. It was he who first thought that something was wrong. He came to me this morning and said: ‘Why is it our master hasn’t waked up for so long? He hasn’t been out of his bedroom for a whole week! When he said that to me I was struck all of a heap…. The thought flashed through my mind at once. He hasn’t made an appearance since Saturday of last week, and to-day’s Sunday. Seven days is no joke!”

      “Yes, poor man,” the superintendent sighed again. “ A clever fellow, well-educated, and so good-hearted. There was no one like him, one may say, in company. But a rake; the kingdom of heaven be his! I’m not surprised at anything with him! Stepan,” he said, addressing one of the witnesses, “ride off this minute to my house and send Andryushka to the police captain’s, let him report to him. Say Mark Ivanitch has been murdered! Yes, and run to the inspector — why should he sit in comfort doing nothing? Let him come here. And you go yourself as fast as you can to the examining magistrate, Nikolay Yermolaitch, and tell him to come here. Wait a bit, I will write him a note.”

      The police superintendent stationed watchmen round the lodge, and went off to the steward’s to have tea. Ten minutes later he was sitting on a stool, carefully nibbling lumps of sugar, and sipping tea as hot as a red-hot coal.

      “There it is! …” he said to Psyekov, “there it is!… a gentleman, and a well-to-do one, too… a favourite of the gods, one may say, to use Pushkin’s expression, and what has he made of it? Nothing! He gave himself up to drinking and debauchery, and… here now… he has been murdered!”

      Two hours later the examining magistrate drove up. Nikolay Yermolaitch Tchubikov (that was the magistrate’s name), a tall, thick-set old man of sixty, had been hard at work for a quarter of a century. He was known to the whole district as an honest, intelligent, energetic man, devoted to his work. His invariable companion, assistant, and secretary, a tall young man of six and twenty, called Dyukovsky, arrived on the scene of action with him.

      “Is it possible, gentlemen?” Tchubikov began, going into Psyekov’s room and rapidly shaking hands with everyone. “Is it possible? Mark Ivanitch? Murdered? No, it’s impossible! Impossi-ble!”

      “There it is,” sighed the superintendent

      “Merciful heavens! Why I saw him only last Friday. At the fair at Tarabankovo! Saving your presence, I drank

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