The Horse Thieves

by Anton Chekhov

A hospital assistant, called Yergunov, an empty-headed man, known as a bighead and drunkard, was returning one winter evening from the hamlet of Ryepino, where he had been to buy some things for the hospital. The doctor had lent him his best horse so that he might not be late home.

At first, it had been a mild day but at eight o'clock a snow-storm had started and, when he was only about four miles from home, Yergunov completely lost his way.

He did not know the road or how to drive well and he went blindly on, hoping that the horse would find the way by itself. Two hours passed; the horse was exhausted, he was cold and already began to imagine that he was not heading home but back towards Ryepino. But, at last, above the noise of the storm, he heard the far-away barking of a dog and a red blur came in sight ahead of him. Little by little, a high gate came into view, then a long fence. The wind drove away the snow from his eyes and, where there had been a red blur, he now saw a low little house with a high roof. One of the three little windows, covered on the inside with something red, was lit up.

What sort of place was it? Yergunov remembered that to the right of the road, three and a half or four miles from the hospital, there was an inn. He remembered too that the landlord, who had recently been killed by some customers, had left a wife and a daughter called Lyubka, who had come to the hospital two years before as a patient. The inn had a bad reputation and to visit it late in the evening, and especially with someone else's horse, was risky. But there was no other option. Yergunov managed to find his pistol among all the other things in his bag and, coughing sternly, knocked at the window.

"Hey! Who's in there?" he called out. "Hey, Granny! Let me come in and get warm!"

Yergunov stood for a long while at the window, knocking. But at last a female figure appeared with a lamp in her hands.

"Let me in to get warm, Granny," said Yergunov. "I was driving to the hospital and I have lost my way. It's such terrible weather. Don't be afraid. We are your own people, Granny."

"All my own people are at home and we didn't invite strangers," said the figure grimly. "And what are you knocking for? The gate's not locked."

Yergunov drove in and stopped at the steps.

"Tell your worker to take my horse out, Granny," said he.

"I am not 'Granny'."

And she was not a granny at all. While she was putting out the lamp, the light fell on her face and Yergunov recognised Lyubka.

"There are no workers around here now," she said as she went into the house. "Some are drunk and asleep, and some have gone to Ryepino. It's a holiday..."

As he put his horse in the shed, Yergunov saw another horse in the darkness and felt a Cossack saddle on it. So there must be someone else in the house besides the woman and her daughter. For greater security, Yergunov took the saddle off his horse and, when he went into the house, took it with him.

The first room he went in was large and very hot and smelt of newly washed floors. A short, thin peasant of about forty, with a small, fair beard, wearing a dark blue shirt, was sitting at the table. It was Kalashnikov, a horse-stealer, whose father and uncle kept an inn in Bogalyovka and sold the stolen horses where they could. He too had been to the hospital more than once, not for medical treatment, but to see the doctor about horses - to ask whether he had one for sale and whether he would not like to swap his for another. Now a silver earring was in his ear and he had a holiday look. Another peasant lay on the floor near the stove; his head, his shoulders and his chest were covered with a sheepskin - he was probably asleep.

Kalashnikov welcomed him.

"Yes, it is terrible weather," said Yergunov. "The snow was up to my neck and I'm soaked to the skin, I can tell you. And I believe my pistol is, too..."

He took out his pistol, looked it all over and put it back in his bag. But the pistol made no impression.

"Yes, it's terrible weather... I lost my way and if it hadn't been for the dogs here, I believe it would have been my death. And where are the women?"

"The old woman has gone to Ryepino and the girl is getting supper ready..." answered Kalashnikov.

Silence followed. Yergunov, shivering, breathed on his hands and made a show of being very cold and exhausted. The angry dogs could be heard howling outside.

"You come from Bogalyovka, don't you?" he asked the peasant sternly.

"Yes, from Bogalyovka."

But at last there was the sound of footsteps. Lyubka, a girl of twenty, with bare feet and a red dress, came into the room... She looked sideways at Yergunov and walked twice from one end of the room to the other. She moved with tiny steps, pushing forward her chest. She clearly enjoyed walking about with her bare feet on the newly washed floor and had taken off her shoes on purpose.

Kalashnikov laughed at something and gestured to her with his finger. She went up to the table and put her elbow on it; her hair fell across her shoulder and it almost touched the floor. She, too, smiled.

The wind howled in the stove; there was a strange sound, as if a dog had bitten a rat.

"Ugh, the demons are busy!" said Lyubka.

"That's the wind," said Kalashnikov and, after a pause, he raised his eyes to Yergunov and asked:

"And what is your opinion, Yergunov, are there demons in this world or not?"

"What can I say, brother?" said Yergunov. "If one reasons from science, of course there are none. It's just superstition. But if one looks at it in everyday terms, as you and I do now, of course there are... I have seen a great deal in my life... When I finished my studies I served as a medical assistant in the army and I have been in the war, of course. I have a medal from the Red Cross, but later I began working for the hospital. And because I have seen the world, I may say I have seen more than many people have dreamt of. I have even seen demons; that is, not demons with horns and a tail - that is all nonsense - but just something of the sort."

"Where?" asked Kalashnikov.

"In different places. There's no need to go far. Last year I met him here - I don't usually speak of him at night - near this inn. I was driving, I remember, to vaccinate patients. Of course, as usual, I had the horse and, what's more, I had a watch and all the rest of it, so I was careful as I drove along. There are lots of tramps here. I came to the bridge and was just going down it when, suddenly, somebody came up to me! Black hair, black eyes and his whole face looked black...

He came straight up to the horse and took hold of it: 'Stop!' He looked at the horse, then at me, then said, 'Where are you going?' And he showed his teeth in a smile and his eyes were spiteful-looking.

"'Ah,' I thought, 'you are strange!'

'I am going to vaccinate for the smallpox,' said I. 'And what's that to you?'

'Well, if that's so,' says he, 'vaccinate me. He put his bare arm under my nose. Of course, I did not argue. I just vaccinated him to get rid of the man. Afterwards I looked at my needle and it had gone rusty."

The peasant who was asleep near the stove suddenly turned over and threw off the sheepskin. To his great surprise, Yergunov recognised the stranger he had met that day at the bridge. This peasant's hair, beard and eyes were black, his face was dark and, to add to the effect, there was a black spot on his right cheek. He looked mockingly at the hospital assistant and said:

"I did take hold of your horse. That was so; but about the smallpox you are lying, sir. There was not a word said about the smallpox between us.

Yergunov was disconcerted.

"I'm not talking about you," he said. "Lie down again."

The dark-skinned peasant had never been to the hospital and Yergunov did not know who he was or where he came from; and now, looking at him, he made up his mind that the man must be a gypsy. The peasant got up and, yawning loudly, went up to Lyubka and Kalashnikov and sat down beside them. His sleepy face softened.

Then Lyubka brought in a big piece of meat, salted cucumbers, then a frying-pan, in which there were sausages still cooking. A bottle of vodka, which gave off a smell of orange all over the room.

Yergunov was annoyed that Kalashnikov and the dark man, Merik, talked together and took no notice of him at all, behaving exactly as though he was not in the room. And he wanted to talk to them, to brag, to drink, to have a good meal and if possible to have a little fun with Lyubka, who sat down near him half a dozen times while they were at supper and, as though by accident, moved against him with her handsome shoulders. She was a healthy, active girl, always laughing and never still. She would sit down, then get up and, when she was sitting down, she would keep turning first her face and then her back to her neighbour and always touched him with her elbows or her knees.

And he was displeased too, that the peasants drank only a glass each and no more and it was awkward for him to drink alone. But he could not stop himself from taking a second glass all the same, then a third, and he ate all the sausage. He spoke politely to the peasants so that they might accept him as one of the party instead of keeping him at a distance.

"You are fine men in Bogalyovka!" he said.

"In what way 'fine men'?" asked Kalashnikov.

"Why, about horses, for instance. 'Fine men' at stealing!"

"H'm! 'Fine men', you call them. Nothing but thieves and drunkards."

"They've had a good time, but it's over," said Merik, after a pause. "Now they only have Filya and he's blind."

"Yes, there's no one but Filya," said Kalashnikov sadly.

"He must be seventy. The German settlers knocked out one of his eyes and he does not see well with the other. In the old days, the police officer would shout as soon as he saw him: 'Hey, you Shamil!' and all the peasants called him that - he was Shamil all over the place; and now his only name is One-eyed Filya. But he was a fine man! Lyuba's father and he stole nine of the soldiers' horses one night in Rozhnovo - the best of them. They weren't frightened and in the morning they sold all the horses for twenty roubles to the gypsy.

"Yes! But nowadays a man tries to carry off a horse whose rider is drunk or asleep and will even take his boots, and then he goes a hundred and fifty miles away with a horse and bargains at the market till the policeman catches him, the fool. There is no fun in it; it's simply a disgrace!"

"What about Merik?" asked Lyubka.

"Merik isn't one of us," said Kalashnikov. "He's a brave man, that's the truth; he's a fine man."

Lyubka looked cheerfully at Merik and said: "They put him in a hole in the ice."

"How was that?" asked Yergunov.

"It was like this..." said Merik and he laughed. "Filya stole three horses from some farmers and they thought it was me. There were thirty of them... So one of them says to me at the market: 'Come and have a look, Merik; we have bought some new horses.' I was interested, of course. I went up and the whole lot of them, thirty men, tied my hands behind me and led me to the river. One hole in the ice was there already; they cut another beside it two metres away. Then they put a rope under my armpits and put me into the first ice-hole just as I was, in my fur coat and my boots, while they stood and pushed me, one with his foot and another with his stick, then pulled me under the ice and out of the other hole.

"At first I was in a fever from the cold," Merik went on, "but when they pulled me out I was helpless and lay in the snow and they stood round and hit me with sticks on my knees and my elbows. It hurt very much. They went away... and everything on me was frozen, my clothes were covered with ice. I got up but I couldn't move. Thank God, a woman drove by and gave me a lift."

Meanwhile Yergunov had drunk five or six glasses of vodka; his heart felt lighter and he really wanted to tell some extraordinary, wonderful story too, and show that he, too, was a brave man and not afraid of anything.

"I'll tell you what happened to us in Penza..." he began.

Either because he had drunk a great deal and was a little tipsy or perhaps because he had been caught out twice with his lies, the peasants did not take any notice of him and even stopped answering his questions. What was worse, they made him feel uncomfortable and cold all over.

Kalashnikov had the polite manners of a quiet and sensible man; he spoke carefully and no-one could have supposed that he was a thief, a heartless thief who had robbed his poor victims of everything and had already been in prison twice. Merik looked on himself as a very fine man and put his hands across his chest.

After supper Kalashnikov shook hands with Merik. Lyubka cleared away the supper, put out some biscuits, dried nuts and two bottles of sweet wine. She went out but soon came back wearing a green scarf and beads.

"Look, Merik, what Kalashnikov brought me today," she said.

She looked at herself in the mirror and moved her head several times. And then she opened a casea nd began taking out, first, a cotton dress with red and blue flowers on it and then a red one and a new scarf, dark blue, patterned with many colours -she showed them all these clothes, laughing as if she were astonished that she had such beautiful things.

Kalashnikov began playing the balalaika, but Yergunov could not make out what sort of song he was singing, whether it was sad or sweet, because at one moment it was so mournful he wanted to cry and at the next it would be happy. Merik suddenly jumped up and began hitting his heels on the same spot, then, waving his arms, he moved on his heels from the table to the stove, from the stove to the cupboard. Then he ran, hit the heels of his boots together in the air and began going round and round in a kneeling position. Lyubka waved both her arms and followed him.

At first she moved sideways, like a snake, as though she wanted to hit him from behind. She hit her bare heels as Merik had done with the heels of his boots, then she turned round and round and her red dress was blown out like a bell. Merik, looking angrily at her but showing his teeth in a smile, flew towards her in the same position, while she jumped up, threw back her head and waving her arms as a big bird does its wings, moved across the room almost flying over the floor...

"What a girl!" thought Yergunov, sitting on seat and watching the dance from there. "What fire! I could give up everything for her and it would be too little..."

And he regretted that he was a hospital assistant and not a simple peasant, that he wore a coat, instead of a blue shirt with a rope tied round the waist. Then he could have sung, danced, thrown both arms round Lyubka, as Merik did...

The movement and the shouts made the flame of the candle dance.

Finally, Merik turned for the last time and stood still as though he was turned to stone. Exhausted and almost breathless, Lyubka fell on to his chest and he put his arms round her and, looking into her eyes, said tenderly, as though in joke:

"I'll find out where your old mother's money is hidden, I'll murder her and cut your little throat for you and after that I will set fire to the inn... People will think you died in the fire. I'll keep horses and sheep..."

He said nothing more but went to the seat, sat down and thought. Most likely he was dreaming of horses.

"It's time for me to go," said Kalashnikov, getting up. "Filya must be waiting for me. Goodbye, Lyuba."

Yergunov went out to see that Kalashnikov did not go off with his horse. The snowstorm still continued. And the wind, the wind!

"Wo!" said Kalashnikov sternly and he got on his horse; one half of the gate was open and high snow lay next to it. "Well, get on!" shouted Kalashnikov. His little horse set off and was up to its stomach in the snow at once. Kalashnikov was white all over and soon vanished with his horse.

When Yergunov went back into the room, Lyubka was creeping about the floor picking up her beads; Merik was not there.

"A wonderful girl!" thought Yergunov, as he lay down and put his coat under his head. "Oh, if only Merik were not here."

Lyubka excited him as she crept about the floor and he thought that if Merik had not been there he would certainly have got up and hugged her and then he would see what would happen. It was true she was only a girl but not likely to be innocent; and even if she were - this was only a thieves' inn.

Lyubka collected her beads and went out. The candle burnt down. Yergunov laid his pistol and matches beside him and put out the candle. Light still danced on the ceiling, on the floor and on the cupboard and among them he had visions of Lyubka: now she was turning round, now she was exhausted and breathless...

"Oh, if the demons would take that Merik away," he thought.

The little lamp went out.

Someone, it must have been Merik, came into the room and sat down. He smoked his pipe. Yergunov was irritated by the horrible tobacco smoke.

"What filthy tobacco you have got!" said Yergunov. "It makes me sick."

"I mix my tobacco with flowers," answered Merik after a pause. "It is better for the chest."

He smoked and went out again. Half an hour passed, and all at once there was a light in the hall. Merik appeared in a coat and cap, then Lyubka with a candle in her hand.

"Do stay, Merik," said Lyubka.

"No, Lyuba, don't keep me."

"Listen, Merik," said Lyubka, and her voice grew soft and tender. "I know you will find mother's money and will kill her and me and will go and love other girls. I only ask you one thing, sweetheart: do stay!"

"No, I want some fun..." said Merik.

"But you have nothing to ride... You came on foot; what are you going on?"

Merik bent down to Lyubka and whispered something in her ear; she looked towards the door and laughed through her tears.

"He is asleep..." she said.

Merik hugged her, kissed her and went out. Yergunov put his pistol in his pocket and ran after him.

"Get out of the way!" he said to Lyubka, who hurriedly locked the door and stood in front of it. "Let me pass! Why are you standing here?"

"What do you want to go out for?"

"To have a look at my horse."

Lyubka gazed up at him with a sly look.

"Why look at it? You had better look at me..." she said, then she bent down and touched his coat with her finger.

"Let me pass, or he'll go off on my horse," said Yergunov. "Let me go, you demon!" he shouted and, giving her an angry hit on the shoulder, he pushed his chest against her with all his strength to get her away from the door, but she held the lock like iron.

"Let me go!" he shouted, exhausted. "He'll go off with it, I tell you."

"Why should he? He won't." Breathing hard and holding her shoulder, which hurt, she looked up at him again and laughed.

"Don't go away," she said; "I'm bored alone."

Yergunov looked into her eyes, hesitated, and put his arms round her. She did not stop him.

"Come on, let me go," he asked her. She did not speak.

"I heard you just now," he said, "telling Merik that you love him."

"I suppose... my heart knows who it is I love."

She put her finger on his coat again.

She suddenly moved her neck and listened with a serious face and Yergunov thought she looked cold and cunning; he thought of his horse and now easily pushed her aside and ran out.

In the shed there was a sleepy cow. Yergunov lit a match and saw the cow and the dogs, which rushed at him from all sides, but there was no sign of the horse. Shouting and waving his arms at the dogs, falling over the snow, he ran out of the gate and gazed into the darkness. He saw only the snow flying in all sorts of shapes; at one moment the white, laughing face of a corpse would look out of the darkness, at the next a white horse would run by, at the next white swans were flying...

Shaking with anger and cold and not knowing what to do, Yergunov shot his revolver at the dogs but did not hit one of them. Then he rushed back to the house.

When he went in, he heard someone hurry out of the room and slam the door. It was dark in the room. Yergunov pushed against the door. It was locked. Then, lighting match after match, he rushed back into the hall, from there into the kitchen and from the kitchen into a little room where all the walls were covered with dresses, where there was a smell of flowers and a bed with a mountain of pillows, standing in the corner by the stove. This must have been the old mother's room. From there he passed into another little room and saw Lyubka. She was lying, covered with a coloured blanket, pretending to be asleep.

"Where's my horse?" Yergunov asked.

Lyubka did not move.

"Where is my horse, I am asking you?" Yergunov repeated still more sternly, and he pulled the blanket off her. "I am asking you!" he shouted.

She jumped up on her knees and, with one hand holding her dress and with the other trying to get the blanket, she looked at Yergunov with terror in her eyes and watched his smallest movement.

"Tell me where my horse is, or I'll knock the life out of you," shouted Yergunov.

"Get away, you dirty animal!"

Yergunov got her by her dress near the neck and tore it. And then he could not stop himself and, with all his strength, held the girl. But she slipped out of his arms and hit him with her fist.

His head was dizzy with the pain, there was a noise in his ears, he fell back and at that moment was hit again - this time on the face. He made his way to the room where his things were and lay down. Meanwhile the air began to turn blue outside but his head still ached, and there was a noise in his ears as though he were sitting under a railway bridge and hearing the trains passing over his head. He got into his coat and cap; the saddle he could not find, his bag was empty.

He went out, leaving the door open. The snow-storm had stopped and it was calm outside... When he went out the gate, the white fields looked dead and there was not a single bird in the morning sky. On both sides of the road and in the distance there were young leaves.

Yergunov began thinking how he would get to the hospital and what the doctor would say to him. It was absolutely necessary to think of that and to prepare beforehand to answer the questions he would be asked, but his thoughts grew confused.

He walked along thinking of nothing but Lyubka, of the peasants he had spent the night with. He remembered how, after Lyubka hit him the second time, she had bent down to the floor for the blanket, and how her hair had fallen on the floor. He wondered why there were in the world doctors, hospital assistants, clerks and peasants instead of simple free men? There are free birds, free animals, a free Merik and they are not afraid of anyone and don't need anyone!

And whose idea was it, who had decided that one must get up in the morning, eat at midday, go to bed in the evening; that a doctor is more important than a hospital assistant; that one must live in rooms and love only one's wife? And why not eat at night and sleep in the day? Ah, to jump on a horse without asking whose it is, to ride races with the wind like a devil, over fields and forests, to make love to girls, to laugh at everyone...

Yergunov pressed his forehead to a cold white tree and thought; and his grey, monotonous life, his salary, the everlasting medicine bottles were all sickening.

"Who says it's a sin to enjoy myself?" he asked himself. "Those who say that have never lived with freedom like Merik and Kalashnikov and have never loved Lyubka; they have been beggars all their lives, have lived without any pleasure and have only loved their wives."

And he thought he had not been a thief, simply because he could not, or had not had a suitable opportunity.

--------

A year and a half passed. In spring, Yergunov, who had long before been dismissed from the hospital and was hanging about unemployed, came out of the inn in Ryepino and walked aimlessly along the street.

He went out into the open country. Here there was the smell of spring and a warm wind was blowing. The calm, starry night looked down from the sky. The world is created well enough, only why do people divide others into the sober and the drunk, the employed and those without jobs, and so on. Why do the sober and well-fed sleep comfortably in their homes while the hungry must wander about the country? Why was it that if anyone had not got a job and did not get a salary he had to go hungry, without clothes and boots? Whose idea was it? Why didn't the birds and wild animals in the woods have jobs and get salaries?

Far away in the sky a beautiful crimson light lay wide over the horizon. Yergunov stopped and for a long time he gazed at it and kept wondering why it was a sin to steal and spend the money on drink?

Two carts drove by. In one of them there was a woman asleep, in the other sat an old man without a cap.

"Grandfather, where is that fire?" asked Yergunov.

"Andrey Tchirikov's inn," answered the old man.

And Yergunov recalled what had happened to him eighteen months before in the winter, in that very inn, and how Merik had boasted; and he imagined the old woman and Lyubka, with their throats cut, burning, and he envied Merik. And when he walked back to the inn, looking at the houses of the rich men, he thought how nice it would be to steal by night into some rich man's house!