Vanka

Nine-year-old Vanka Zhukov, who was apprenticed three months ago to the shoemaker Alyakhin, did not go to bed on Christmas Eve. He waited till the master and mistress and the more senior apprentices had gone to the early service, and then he took a bottle of ink and a pen with a rusty nib from his master’s cupboard, and began to write on a crumpled sheet of paper spread out in front of him. Before tracing the shape of the first letter, he looked several times fearfully in the direction of the doors and windows, and then he gazed up at the dark icon, flanked on either side by shelves filled with cobbler’s lasts, and then he heaved a broken sigh. With the paper spread over the bench, Vanka knelt on the floor beside it.

"Dear Grandfather Konstantin Makarich," he wrote. “I am writing a letter to you. I wish you a Merry Christmas and all good things from the Lord God. I have no father and mother, and you are all I have left."

Vanka raised his eyes to the dark windowpane, on which there gleamed the reflection of a candle flame, and in his vivid imagination he saw his grandfather Konstantin Makarich standing there. His grandfather was a night watchman on the estate of some gentlefolk called Zhivaryov, a small, thin, unusually lively and nimble old man of about sixty-five, his face always crinkling with laughter, and his eyes bleary from drink. In the daytime the old man slept in the servants” kitchen or cracked jokes with the cooks. At night, wrapped in an ample sheepskin coat, he made the rounds of the estate, shaking his clapper. Two dogs followed him with drooping heads “one was the old bitch Brownie, the other was called Eel because of his black coat and long weaselly body. Eel always seemed to be extraordinarily respectful and endearing, gazing with the same fond eyes on friends and strangers alike; yet no one trusted him. His deference and humility concealed a most jesuitical malice. No one knew better how to creep stealthily behind someone and take a nip at his leg, or how to crawl into the icehouse, or how to scamper off with a peasant’s chicken. More than once they just about broke his hind legs, twice a noose was put round his neck, and every week he was beaten until he was only half alive, yet he always managed to survive.

At this very moment Grandfather was probably standing by the gates, screwing up his eyes at the bright red windows of the village church, stamping about in his felt boots and cracking jokes with the servants. His clapper hung from his belt. He would be throwing out his arms and then hugging himself against the cold, and, hiccupping as old men do, he would be pinching one of the servant girls or one of the cooks.

"What about a pinch of snuff; eh?" he would say, holding out his snuffbox to the women. Then the women would take a pinch and sneeze, and the old man would be overcome with indescribable ecstasies, laughing joyously and exclaiming: “Fine for frozen noses, eh!"

The dogs, too, were given snuff. Brownie would sneeze, shake her head, and walk away looking offended, while Eel, too polite to sneeze, only wagged his tail. The weather was glorious. The air was still, transparently clear, and fresh. The night was very dark, but the whole white-roofed village with its snowdrifts and trees silvered with hoarfrost and smoke streaming from the chimneys could be seen clearly. The heavens were sprinkled with gay, glinting stars, and the Milky Way stood out as clearly as if it had been washed and scrubbed with snow for the holidays.

Vanka sighed, dipped his pen in the ink, and went on writing:

"Yesterday I was given a thrashing. The master dragged me by the hair into the yard and gave me a beating with a stirrup strap because when I was rocking the baby in the cradle, I misfortunately fell asleep. And then last week the mistress ordered me to gut a herring, and because I began with the tail, she took the head of the herring and rubbed it all over my face. The other apprentices made fun of me, sent me to the tavern for vodka, and made me steal the master’s cucumbers for them, and then the master beat me with the first thing that came to hand. And there’s nothing to eat. In the morning they give me bread, there is porridge for dinner, and in the evening only bread again. They never give me tea or cabbage soup “they gobble it all up themselves. They make me sleep in the passageway, and when their baby cries, I don’t get any sleep at all because I have to rock the cradle. Dear Grandfather, please for God's sake take me away from here, take me to the village, it’s more than I can bear ... I kneel down before you. I'll pray to God to keep you forever, but take me away from here, or I shall die."

Vanka grimaced, rubbed his eyes with his black fists, and sobbed.

"I'll grind your snuff for you," he went on. “I will pray to God to keep you, and if I ever do anything wrong, you can flog me all you like. If you think there’s no place for me, then I'll ask the manager for Christ’s sake to let me clean boots or take Fedya’s place as a shepherd boy. Dear Grandfather, it’s more than I can bear, it will be the death of me. I thought of running away to the village, but I haven’t any boots, and I am afraid of the ice. If you'll do this for me, I'll feed you when I grow up, and won’t let anyone harm you, and when you die, I'll pray for the repose of your soul, just like I do for my mother, Pelageya.

"Moscow is such a big city. There are so many houses belonging to the gentry, so many horses, but no sheep anywhere, and the dogs aren’t vicious. The boys don’t go about with the Star of Christmas, and they don’t let you sing in the choir, and once I saw fishhooks in the shopwindow with the fishing lines for every kind of fish, very fine ones, even one hook which would hold a skate fish weighing forty pounds. I’ve seen shops selling guns which are just like the master’s at home, and each one must cost a hundred rubles. In the butcher shops they have woodcocks and partridges and hares, but the people in the shop won’t tell you where they were shot.

"Dear Grandfather, when they put up the Christmas tree at the big house, please take down a golden walnut for me and hide it in the green chest. Ask the young mistress, Olga Ignatyevna, and say it is for Vanka."

Vanka heaved a convulsive sigh, and once more he gazed in the direction of the window. He remembered it was Grandfather who always went to the forest to cut down a Christmas tree for the gentry, taking his grandson with him. They had a wonderful time together. Grandfather chuckled, the frost crackled, and Vanka, not to be outdone, clucked away cheerfully. Before chopping down the fir tree, Grandfather would smoke a pipe, take a long pinch of snuff, and make fun of Vanka, who was shivering in the cold. The young fir trees, garlanded with hoarfrost, stood perfectly still, waiting to see which of them would die ... Suddenly out of nowhere a hare came springing across the snowdrifts, quick as an arrow, and Grandfather would be unable to prevent himself from shouting: “Hold him! Hold him! Hold that bobtailed devil, eh!"

When the tree had been chopped down, Grandfather would drag it to the big house and they would start decorating it. The young mistress, Olga Ignatyevna, Vanka’s favorite, was the busiest of all. While Vanka’s mother, Pelageya, was alive, serving as a chambermaid, Olga Ignatyevna used to stuff him with sugar candy, and it amused her to teach him to read and write, to count up to a hundred, and even to dance the quadrille. But when Pelageya died, they relegated the orphan Vanka to the servants” kitchen to be with his grandfather, and from there he went to Moscow to the shoemaker Alyakhin ...

"Come to me, dear Grandfather," Vanka went on. “I beseech you for Christ’s sake, take me away from here! Have pity on me, a poor orphan, they are always beating me, and I am terribly hungry, and so miserable I can’t tell you, and I’m always crying. The other day the master hit me on the head with a last, and I fell down and thought I would never get up again. It’s worse than a dog’s life, and so miserable. I send greetings to Alyona, to one-eyed Yegor, and to the coachman, and don’t give my harmonica away. I remain your grandson Ivan Zhukov, dear Grandfather, and come soon!"

Vanka twice folded the sheet of paper and then he put it in an envelope bought the previous day for a kopeck. He reflected for a while, dipped the pen in ink, and wrote the address: To Grandfather in the Village. Then he scratched his head and thought for a while, and added the words: Konstantin Makarich. Pleased because no one interrupted him when he was writing, he threw on his cap, and without troubling to put on a coat, he ran out into the street in his shirt sleeves.

When he talked to the clerks in the butcher shop the previous day, they told him that letters were dropped in boxes, and from these boxes they were carried all over the world on mail coaches drawn by three horses and driven by drunken drivers, while the bells jingled. Vanka ran to the nearest mailbox and thrust his precious letter into the slot. An hour later, lulled by sweetest hopes, he was fast asleep. He dreamed of a stove. His grandfather was sitting on the stove, bare feet dangling down, while he read the letter aloud to the cooks.

Eel was walking round the stove, wagging his tail.