Free Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated) by ANTON CHEKHOV Page A

you bane of my life! I pay for you, you good-for-nothing rubbish; I’ve bent my back toiling for you, I’m worried to death, and, I may say, I am unhappy, and what do you care? How do you work?”
    “I... I do work. All night.... You’ve seen it yourself.”
    “I prayed to God to take me, but He won’t take me, a sinful woman.... You torment! Other people have children like everyone else, and I’ve one only and no sense, no comfort out of him. Beat you? I’d beat you, but where am I to find the strength? Mother of God, where am I to find the strength?”
    The mamma hid her face in the folds of her blouse and broke into sobs. Vanya wriggled with anguish and pressed his forehead against the wall. The aunt came in.
    “So that’s how it is.... Just what I expected,” she said, at once guessing what was wrong, turning pale and clasping her hands. “I’ve been depressed all the morning.... There’s trouble coming, I thought... and here it’s come. . . .”
    “The villain, the torment!”
    “Why are you swearing at him?” cried the aunt, nervously pulling her coffee-coloured kerchief off her head and turning upon the mother. “It’s not his fault! It’s your fault! You are to blame! Why did you send him to that high school? You are a fine lady! You want to be a lady? A-a-ah! I dare say, as though you’ll turn into gentry! But if you had sent him, as I told you, into business... to an office, like my Kuzya... here is Kuzya getting five hundred a year.... Five hundred roubles is worth having, isn’t it? And you are wearing yourself out, and wearing the boy out with this studying, plague take it! He is thin, he coughs. . . just look at him! He’s thirteen, and he looks no more than ten.”
    “No, Nastenka, no, my dear! I haven’t thrashed him enough, the torment! He ought to have been thrashed, that’s what it is! Ugh... Jesuit, Mahomet, torment!” she shook her fist at her son. “You want a flogging, but I haven’t the strength. They told me years ago when he was little, ‘Whip him, whip him!’ I didn’t heed them, sinful woman as I am. And now I am suffering for it. You wait a bit! I’ll flay you! Wait a bit... .”
    The mamma shook her wet fist, and went weeping into her lodger’s room. The lodger, Yevtihy Kuzmitch Kuporossov, was sitting at his table, reading “Dancing Self-taught.” Yevtihy Kuzmitch was a man of intelligence and education. He spoke through his nose, washed with a soap the smell of which made everyone in the house sneeze, ate meat on fast days, and was on the look-out for a bride of refined education, and so was considered the cleverest of the lodgers. He sang tenor.
    “My good friend,” began the mamma, dissolving into tears. “If you would have the generosity -- thrash my boy for me.... Do me the favour! He’s failed in his examination, the nuisance of a boy! Would you believe it, he’s failed! I can’t punish him, through the weakness of my ill-health.... Thrash him for me, if you would be so obliging and considerate, Yevtihy Kuzmitch! Have regard for a sick woman!”
    Kuporossov frowned and heaved a deep sigh through his nose. He thought a little, drummed on the table with his fingers, and sighing once more, went to Vanya.
    “You are being taught, so to say,” he began, “being educated, being given a chance, you revolting young person! Why have you done it?”
    He talked for a long time, made a regular speech. He alluded to science, to light, and to darkness.
    “Yes, young person.”
    When he had finished his speech, he took off his belt and took Vanya by the hand.
    “It’s the only way to deal with you,” he said. Vanya knelt down submissively and thrust his head between the lodger’s knees. His prominent pink ears moved up and down against the lodger’s new serge trousers, with brown stripes on the outer seams.
    Vanya did not utter a single sound. At the family council in the evening, it was decided to send him into business.
     
     
    NOTES
     
    you Herod: