The Kiss and Other Stories

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 edition. Excerpt: ... THE MUZHIKS i NIKOLAI TCHIKILDEYEFF, waiter, of the Slaviansky Bazaar Hotel at Moscow, lost his health. His numbed legs betrayed him, and once in a corridor he stumbled and fell with a tray-load of ham and peas. He had to throw up his work. What money he had, his own and his wife's, soon went on treatment; nothing remained to live on; he was tired of idleness; and he saw that nothing remained but to return to his native village. It was cheaper to live at home, after all, and the best place for invalids; and there is some truth in the proverb, "At home even the walls help." He arrived at Zhukovo towards evening. When he recalled his childhood he pictured his birthplace as bright, cosy, and comfortable; but now when he entered the hut he felt something like fright, so dark, so close, so dirty was it inside. And his wife Olga and little daughter Sasha looked questioningly at the big, untidy stove, black from smoke and flies, which took up half the hut. What flies! The stove was crooked, the logs in the walls sloped, and it seemed that every minute the hut would tumble to pieces. The ikon-corner, instead of pictures, was hung with bottle-labels and newspaper-cuttings. Poverty, poverty! Of the grown-ups no one was at home--they reaped in the fields; and alone on the stove sat an eight-year-old girl, fair-haired, unwashed, and so indifferent that she did not even look at the strangers. Beneath, a white cat rubbed herself against the pothanger. "Puss, puss !" cried Sasha. "Pussy!" "She can't hear," said the girl on the stove. "She's deaf!" "How deaf?" "Deaf. . . . From beating.'" The first glance told Nikolai and Olga the life awaiting them; but they said nothing, silently laid down their bundles, and went into the street. The hut was the third...