Vanka (Story of the Month)

Vanka Zhukov, a boy of nine, had spent three months working as an apprentice to the shoemaker Master Alyakhin in Moscow. On Christmas Eve the boy tossed on his bed, anxious and troubled, begging for sleep that would not come.

And when dawn broke, and his master went with his family to church to say their prayers, Vanka hurried to the cupboard and took out an inkwell and a holder gripping a rust-crowned pen; he set them on a wooden bench, knelt on his knees beside the bench, then spread a worn sheet of paper upon it and made ready to write.

Before tracing the first word he glanced fearfully at the door and the window, then eyed the saint's image out of the corner of his eye, and ran his gaze over the shelves piled high with boot lasts, drawing his breath in broken gasps.

He began to write: My dear grandfather... Konstantin Makarych. Here I am writing you a letter in which I send you Christmas greetings. I ask God to grant you abundant good and to prolong your life, for no one is left to me but you, now that I have lost my father and my mother.

Vanka turned his gaze to the window, on which the candlelight glimmered, and imagined his grandfather, who works as a night watchman at the house of Mr. Zhivarov, standing before him. This grandfather of his was a short, thin-bodied man of sixty-five, yet still nimble and lively, a smile never leaving his lips. By day he sleeps in the kitchen or teases the cooks, and by night he wraps himself in his tattered sheepskin and makes the rounds of his master's house, striking the ground with his stick, followed by his two dogs, Kashtanka and Vyun — this last one black, long of body, closely resembling a weasel, sharp-eyed, pampered and well loved, enjoying a good reputation among his masters and strangers alike, though beneath his gentleness and humility he concealed a strange spite and cunning. None was more skilled than he at slipping in wherever his sense of smell led him, and he was very clever at fastening onto people's legs and stealing chickens from the peasants... How often he was kicked and whipped in punishment for his insolence — some even hanged him by the neck twice — and yet, for all that, Vyun would get up as though nothing had happened to him!

Vanka pictured his grandfather standing, as was his habit, at the gate of the house, directing his gaze at the red-hued windows of the church, hunched into himself from the bitter cold, stamping the ground with his thick boots, rubbing his hands, coughing, joking with the cooks and the maids, pinching their hands in playful mischief; then he takes his snuffbox from his pocket and offers it to them, asking: Would you care for a pinch? The women take a little of the snuff and inhale it, and are soon busy sneezing, while Vanka's grandfather laughs with delight and cries: I'm perishing of frost!

Then he holds the snuff to the nose of the dog Kashtanka, who sneezes, indignant and offended; and he holds it to the nose of the dog Vyun, who deems it courtesy and humility not to sneeze, and contents himself with wagging his tail. The weather just then was beautiful, the air still and moist. And when night comes on and the village sinks into its depths, the houses show with their white roofs, the chimneys sending up smoke in columns... the trees cloaked in a silver mantle, their boughs drooping, bearing grains of frost; the sky teems with stars winking at one another in glad delight, and the Milky Way stands out plain and clear, as if it had been washed on the eve of the feast and scrubbed with snow!...

Vanka took a small breath, and went on writing his letter to his grandfather:

"Yesterday my master dragged me by the hair into the yard and rained blows on me with the strap, because I was rocking his baby and inadvertently dozed off. And last Sunday it happened that my mistress told me to clean a fish for her; I began cleaning it from the tail, so she flew into a rage at me, snatched it from my hand, and thrust its head into my mouth...

"My food in this house consists of bread in the morning, burghul at noon, and bread in the evening; of tea and soup I know no taste. As for my sleep, it is in the passage, where I lie exposed to the piercing cold.

"And I tell you, grandfather, that my master's journeymen mock me, and send me to the quarter to fetch them vodka, and ask me to steal cucumbers for them from my master's house; and he beats me with anything that falls into his hand, for the least slip I make.

"O my dear grandfather... have mercy on me, for God's sake, and take me from this house to you, for I have no way at all of escape. Take me from this place; I kiss your feet and pray for you always; and if you do not, then I shall surely perish."

Vanka twisted his mouth, wiped his eyes with his dirty fist, choked with weeping, then went on writing:

"And I will rub your tobacco for you, grandfather, and seek your good pleasure; and if I go against your word in anything, then beat me. And if it appears to you that I shall find no work with you, then give me leave to polish the boots of the village contractor, or to tend the goats in Fedka's place.

"Yes, my dear grandfather! I have no rescuer but you. I tried once to run away to your village, but I gave it up, because I own no boots to shield me from the frost... Take me, grandfather, and be assured that when I come of age I will repay your kindness in kind; I will work to keep you, and let no one do you wrong; and if God takes you, I shall pray for your soul as I pray for my mother's soul.

"Moscow is a big city; its houses are grand and its horses many, but I find no sheep in it, and its dogs are not vicious; its children do not go about the quarters on the nights of the feasts, and they are not allowed to join in the church chants.

"Once I saw in a shop window fishhooks with their rods, with which a man could catch any fish whatever, even one weighing a ratl. And I saw in some stores weapons of various shapes, wonderfully made and beautiful to look upon — God knows how many hundreds of rubles they are worth... And I saw in some butchers' shops great numbers of partridge, and hares, and woodland fowl; and the strange thing is that people never once ask about the shooting of these birds!

"My dear grandfather. I beg you to remember me when the masters set up the Christmas tree, and pick me a gilded walnut from it, and keep it in the green box. Mrs. Olga Ignatyevna will not gainsay you if she knows the walnut is for me."

★

The child turned his gaze once more toward the window, and the memories came back to him of the times when he used to go with his grandfather to fetch the Christmas tree. What good days those were! They would go together to the forest amid the snows; his grandfather would light his pipe and draw in the smoke at length, and laugh at his grandson shivering with the cold, while the young saplings, clad in frost, stood motionless, not knowing which among them would have death for its portion... And when a hare shot past them like an arrow, his grandfather would shout at the top of his voice: Catch him, catch him... ah, you devil's tail!

And after the grandfather cut down the tree, he would drag it to his masters' house, and there everyone would set about trimming and arranging it, and the most attentive of them all was Mrs. Olga Ignatyevna, Vanka's darling.

Vanka's mother used to serve in that house, and Mrs. Olga would give her servant's child milk, and taught him reading and writing and counting up to a hundred, and dancing too. And when his mother's appointed hour came, Mrs. Olga sent the orphan child to work with his grandfather in the kitchen, and from there he was sent on to Moscow to work for the shoemaker, "Master Alyakhin."

Vanka went on with the writing of his letter to his grandfather, saying:

"Come to Moscow, my dear grandfather. I beseech you for Christ's sake to take me away from this place. Have pity on this wretched orphan. Everyone in this house beats me; I crave food, and I am nearly perishing of misery, and I never leave off wailing and shedding tears. It happened lately that my master struck me on the head with a boot last, so that I fell to the ground and could not get up except with the greatest difficulty. Ah... I have lost my life! It is worse than the life of dogs!...

"My greetings to Helen, and to one-armed Yegor, and the driver Sasha; and I beg you not to give my harmonica to anyone... Come, grandfather, and remain, for your obedient grandson, Ivan Zhukov."

Vanka folded the letter and put it in an envelope he had bought for a single kopeck... After turning it over in his mind a little, he dipped the pen in the inkwell and wrote on the envelope:

"To my grandfather's village!"

Then he scratched his head with the tip of the pen, and added to the address:

"Konstantin Makarych"

Vanka's joy was great, because no one had disturbed him while he was writing this letter of his. He sprang from his place, snatched up his cap, set it on his head, and dashed into the street in his shirt, forgetting to put on his coat.

The patrons of the butcher's shop whom Vanka had met the day before had informed him that letters are usually dropped into post boxes, then gathered from them and distributed to every part of the world on sledges drawn by splendid horses with bells ringing at their necks (and driven by drunken drivers). And so Vanka came up to the first post box and slipped his precious letter into its slit...

The boy returned to the house and lay down on his bed, lulled by sweet hopes; and after an hour of time he closed his eyelids and surrendered to the dominion of slumber. In his sleep he saw his grandfather sitting on top of the stove, his feet dangling, holding Vanka's letter in his hand and reading it to the household's cooks and maids... while the dog Vyun walked beside the stove, wagging his tail...