CHILDREN SHORT STORY

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The Student
by Anton Chekhov

At first the weather was fine and still. The thrushes were calling, and in the

swamps close by something alive droned pitifully with a sound like blowing

into an empty bottle. A snipe flew by, and the shot aimed at it rang out with a

gay, resounding note in the spring air. But when it began to get dark in the

forest a cold, penetrating wind blew inappropriately from the east, and

everything sank into silence. Needles of ice stretched across the pools, and it

felt cheerless, remote, and lonely in the forest. There was a whiff of winter.

Ivan Velikopolsky, the son of a sacristan, and a student of the clerical academy,

returning home from shooting, kept walking on the path by the water-logged

meadows. His fingers were numb and his face was burning with the wind. It

seemed to him that the cold that had suddenly come on had destroyed the

order and harmony of things, that nature itself felt ill at ease, and that was why

the evening darkness was falling more rapidly than usual. All around it was

deserted and peculiarly gloomy. The only light was one gleaming in the

widows' gardens near the river; the village, over three miles away, and

everything in the distance all round was plunged in the cold evening mist. The

student remembered that, as he had left the house, his mother was sitting
The Student
barefoot on the floor in the entryway, cleaning the samovar, while his father

lay on the stove coughing; as it was Good Friday nothing had been cooked, and

the student was terribly hungry. And now, shrinking from the cold, he thought

that just such a wind had blown in the days of Rurik and in the time of Ivan the

Terrible and Peter, and in their time there had been just the same desperate

poverty and hunger, the same thatched roofs with holes in them, ignorance,

misery, the same desolation around, the same darkness, the same feeling of

oppression -- all these had existed, did exist, and would exist, and the lapse of

a thousand years would make life no better. And he did not want to go home.

The gardens were called the widows' because they were kept by two widows,

mother and daughter. A campfire was burning brightly with a crackling sound,

throwing out light far around on the ploughed earth. The widow Vasilisa, a tall,

fat old woman in a man's coat, was standing by and looking thoughtfully into

the fire; her daughter Lukerya, a little pockmarked woman with a stupid-

looking face, was sitting on the ground, washing a cauldron and spoons.

Apparently they had just had supper. There was a sound of men's voices; it was

the laborers watering their horses at the river.

"Here you have winter back again," said the student, going up to the campfire.

"Good evening."
ANTON CHEKHOV
Vasilisa started, but at once recognized him and smiled cordially.

"I did not know you; God bless you," she said. "You'll be rich."

They talked. Vasilisa, a woman of experience who had been in service with the

gentry, first as a wet-nurse, afterwards as a children's nurse expressed herself

with refinement, and a soft, sedate smile never left her face; her daughter

Lukerya, a village peasant woman who had been beaten by her husband,

simply screwed up her eyes at the student and said nothing, and she had a

strange expression like that of a deaf-mute.

"At just such a fire the Apostle Peter warmed himself," said the student,

stretching out his hands to the fire, "so it must have been cold then, too. Ah,

what a terrible night it must have been, granny! An utterly dismal long night!"

He looked round at the darkness, shook his head abruptly and asked:

"No doubt you have heard the reading of the Twelve Apostles?"

"Yes, I have," answered Vasilisa.

Thee into darkness and unto death.' And our Lord answered him thus: 'I say

unto thee, Peter, before the cock croweth thou wilt have denied Me thrice.'

After the supper Jesus went through the agony of death in the garden and

prayed, and poor Peter was weary in spirit and faint, his eyelids were heavy

and he could not struggle against sleep. He fell asleep. Then you heard how

Judas the same night kissed Jesus and betrayed Him to His tormentors. They

took Him bound to the high priest and beat Him, while Peter, exhausted, worn

out with misery and alarm, hardly awake, you know, feeling that something

awful was just going to happen on earth, followed behind. . . . He loved Jesus

passionately, intensely, and now he saw from far off how He was beaten. . . . "

Lukerya left the spoons and fixed an immovable stare upon the student.

"They came to the high priest's," he went on; "they began to question Jesus,

and meantime the laborers made a fire in the yard as it was cold, and warmed

themselves. Peter, too, stood with them near the fire and warmed himself as I

am doing. A woman, seeing him, said: 'He was with Jesus, too' -- that is as

much as to say that he, too, should be taken to be questioned. And all the

laborers that were standing near the fire must have looked sourly and

suspiciously at him, because he was confused and said: 'I don't know Him.' A
ANTON CHEKHOV
little while after again someone recognized him as one of Jesus' disciples and

said: 'Thou, too, art one of them,' but again he denied it. And for the third time

someone turned to him: 'Why, did I not see thee with Him in the garden

today?' For the third time he denied it. And immediately after that time the

cock crowed, and Peter, looking from afar off at Jesus, remembered the words

He had said to him in the evening. . . . He remembered, he came to himself,

went out of the yard and wept bitterly -- bitterly. In the Gospel it is written: 'He

went out and wept bitterly.' I imagine it: the still, still, dark, dark garden, and in

the stillness, faintly audible, smothered sobbing.. . . ."

The student sighed and sank into thought. Still smiling, Vasilisa suddenly gave a

gulp, big tears flowed freely down her cheeks, and she screened her face from

the fire with her sleeve as though ashamed of her tears, and Lukerya, staring

immovably at the student, flushed crimson, and her expression became

strained and heavy like that of someone enduring intense pain.

The laborers came back from the river, and one of them riding a horse was

quite near, and the light from the fire quivered upon him. The student said

good-night to the widows and went on. And again the darkness was about him

and his fingers began to be numb. A cruel wind was blowing, winter really had
The Student
come back and it did not feel as though Easter would be the day after

tomorrow.

Now the student was thinking about Vasilisa: since she had shed tears all that

had happened to Peter the night before the Crucifixion must have some

relation to her. . . .

He looked round. The solitary light was still gleaming in the darkness and no

figures could be seen near it now. The student thought again that if Vasilisa

had shed tears, and her daughter had been troubled, it was evident that what

he had just been telling them about, which had happened nineteen centuries

ago, had a relation to the present -- to both women, to the desolate village, to

himself, to all people. The old woman had wept, not because he could tell the

story touchingly, but because Peter was near to her, because her whole being

was interested in what was passing in Peter's soul.

And joy suddenly stirred in his soul, and he even stopped for a minute to take

breath. "The past," he thought, "is linked with the present by an unbroken

chain of events flowing one out of another." And it seemed to him that he had

just seen both ends of that chain; that when he touched one end the other

quivered.
ANTON CHEKHOV
When he crossed the river by the ferryboat and afterwards, mounting the hill,

looked at his village and towards the west where the cold crimson sunset lay a

narrow streak of light, he thought that truth and beauty which had guided

human life there in the garden and in the yard of the high priest had continued

without interruption to this day, and had evidently always been the chief thing

in human life and in all earthly life, indeed; and the feeling of youth, health,

vigor -- he was only twenty-two -- and the inexpressible sweet expectation of

happiness, of unknown mysterious happiness, took possession of him little by

little, and life seemed to him enchanting, marvellous, and full of lofty meaning.

the joys of a new year.

The Little Match Girl

Most terribly cold it was; it snowed, and was nearly quite dark, and evening--

the last evening of the year. In this cold and darkness there went along the

street a poor little girl, bareheaded, and with naked feet. When she left home

she had slippers on, it is true; but what was the good of that? They were very

large slippers, which her mother had hitherto worn; so large were they; and

the poor little thing lost them as she scuffled away across the street, because

of two carriages that rolled by dreadfully fast.

One slipper was nowhere to be found; the other had been laid hold of by an

urchin, and off he ran with it; he thought it would do capitally for a cradle

when he some day or other should have children himself. So the little maiden

walked on with her tiny naked feet, that were quite red and blue from cold.

She carried a quantity of matches in an old apron, and she held a bundle of

them in her hand. Nobody had bought anything of her the whole livelong day;

no one had given her a single farthing.

She crept along trembling with cold and hunger--a very picture of sorrow, the

poor little thing!

around her neck; but of that, of course, she never once now thought. From all

the windows the candles were gleaming, and it smelt so deliciously of roast

goose, for you know it was New Year's Eve; yes, of that she thought.

In a corner formed by two houses, of which one advanced more than the

other, she seated herself down and cowered together. Her little feet she had

drawn close up to her, but she grew colder and colder, and to go home she did

not venture, for she had not sold any matches and could not bring a farthing of

money: from her father she would certainly get blows, and at home it was cold

too, for above her she had only the roof, through which the wind whistled,

even though the largest cracks were stopped up with straw and rags.

Her little hands were almost numbed with cold. Oh! a match might afford her a

world of comfort, if she only dared take a single one out of the bundle, draw it

against the wall, and warm her fingers by it. She drew one out. "Rischt!" how it

blazed, how it burnt! It was a warm, bright flame, like a candle, as she held her

hands over it: it was a wonderful light. It seemed really to the little maiden as

though she were sitting before a large iron stove, with burnished brass feet

and a brass ornament at top. The fire burned with such blessed influence; it

warmed so delightfully. The little girl had already stretched out her feet to
The Little Match Girl
warm them too; but--the small flame went out, the stove vanished: she had

only the remains of the burnt-out match in her hand.

She rubbed another against the wall: it burned brightly, and where the light fell

on the wall, there the wall became transparent like a veil, so that she could see

into the room. On the table was spread a snow-white tablecloth; upon it was a

splendid porcelain service, and the roast goose was steaming famously with its

stuffing of apple and dried plums. And what was still more capital to behold

was, the goose hopped down from the dish, reeled about on the floor with

knife and fork in its breast, till it came up to the poor little girl; when--the

match went out and nothing but the thick, cold, damp wall was left behind.

She lighted another match. Now there she was sitting under the most

magnificent Christmas tree: it was still larger, and more decorated than the

one which she had seen through the glass door in the rich merchant's house.

Thousands of lights were burning on the green branches, and gaily-colored

pictures, such as she had seen in the shop-windows, looked down upon her.

The little maiden stretched out her hands towards them when--the match

went out. The lights of the Christmas tree rose higher and higher, she saw

them now as stars in heaven; one fell down and formed a long trail of fire.
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
"Someone is just dead!" said the little girl; for her old grandmother, the only

person who had loved her, and who was now no more, had told her, that when

a star falls, a soul ascends to God.

She drew another match against the wall: it was again light, and in the lustre

there stood the old grandmother, so bright and radiant, so mild, and with such

an expression of love.

"Grandmother!" cried the little one. "Oh, take me with you! You go away when

the match burns out; you vanish like the warm stove, like the delicious roast

goose, and like the magnificent Christmas tree!" And she rubbed the whole

bundle of matches quickly against the wall, for she wanted to be quite sure of

keeping her grandmother near her. And the matches gave such a brilliant light

that it was brighter than at noon-day: never formerly had the grandmother

been so beautiful and so tall. She took the little maiden, on her arm, and both

flew in brightness and in joy so high, so very high, and then above was neither

cold, nor hunger, nor anxiety--they were with God.

But in the corner, at the cold hour of dawn, sat the poor girl, with rosy cheeks

and with a smiling mouth, leaning against the wall--frozen to death on the last

evening of the old year. Stiff and stark sat the child there with her matches, of

which one bundle had been burnt. "She wanted to warm herself," people said.
The Little Match Girl
No one had the slightest suspicion of what beautiful things she had seen; no

one even dreamed of the splendor in which, with her grandmother she had

entered on the joys of a new year.