THE BEGGAR
by Anto n Chek ho v
I remember, when I was a high school boy in the fifth or sixth
class, I was driving with my grandfather from the village of Bol-
shoe Kryepkoe in the Don region to Rostov-on-the-Don. It was a
sultry, languidly dreary day of August. Our eyes were glued to-
gether, and our mouths were parched from the heat and the dry
burning wind which drove clouds of dust to meet us; one did
not want to look or speak or think, and when our drowsy driver,
a Little Russian called Karpo, swung his whip at the horses and
lashed me on my cap, I did not protest or utter a sound, but on-
ly, rousing myself from half-slumber, gazed mildly and deject-
edly into the distance to see whether there was a village visible
through the dust. We stopped to feed the horses in a big Armeni-
an village at a rich Armenian's whom my grandfather knew.
Never in my life have I seen a greater caricature than that Arme-
nian. Imagine a little shaven head with thick overhanging eye-
brows, a beak of a nose, long gray mustaches, and a wide mouth
with a long cherry-wood chibouk sticking out of it. This little
head was clumsily attached to a lean hunch-back carcass attired
in a fantastic garb, a short red jacket, and full bright blue trou-
sers. This figure walked straddling its legs and shuffling with its
slippers, spoke without taking the chibouk out of its mouth, and
behaved with truly Armenian dignity, not smiling, but staring
with wide-open eyes and trying to take as little notice as possible
of its guests.
There was neither wind nor dust in the Armenian's rooms,
but it was just as unpleasant, stifling, and dreary as in the steppe
and on the road. I remember, dusty and exhausted by the heat, I
sat in the corner on a green box. The unpainted wooden walls,
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