"Perhaps Vera Stepanovna is asleep," says Laev.
"She isn't asleep! I bet she wants me to make an outcry and wake up the whole neighbourhood. I'm beginning to get cross, Vera! Ach, damn it all! Give me a leg up, Alyosha; I'll get in. You are a naughty girl, nothing but a regular schoolgirl. . . Give me a hoist."
Puffing and panting, Laev gives him a leg up, and Kozyavkin climbs in at the window and vanishes into the darkness within.
"Vera!" Laev hears a minute later, "where are you? . . . D--damnation! Tphoo! I've put my hand into something! Tphoo!"
There is a rustling sound, a flapping of wings, and the desperate cackling of a fowl.
"A nice state of things," Laev hears. "Vera, where on earth did these chickens come from? Why, the devil, there's no end of them! There's a basket with a turkey in it. . . . It pecks, the nasty creature."
Two hens fly out of the window, and cackling at the top of their voices, flutter down the village street.
"Alyosha, we've made a mistake!" says Kozyavkin in a lachrymose voice. "There are a lot of hens here. . . . I must have mistaken the house. Confound you, you are all over the place, you cursed brutes!"
"Well, then, make haste and come down. Do you hear? I am dying of thirst!"
"In a minute. . . . I am looking for my cape and portfolio."
"Light a match."
"The matches are in the cape. . . . I was a crazy idiot to get into this place. The cottages are exactly alike; the devil himself couldn't tell them apart in the dark. Aie, the turkey's pecked my cheek, nasty creature!"
"Make haste and get out or they'll think we are stealing the chickens."
"In a minute. . . . I can't find my cape anywhere. . . . There are lots of old rags here, and I can't tell where the cape is. Throw me a match."
"I haven't any."
"We are in a hole, I must say! What am I to do? I can't go without my cape and my portfolio. I must find them."
"I can't understand a man's not knowing his own cottage," says Laev indignantly. " Drunken beast. . . . If I'd known I was in for this sort of thing I would never have come with you. I should have been at home and fast asleep by now, and a nice fix I'm in here. . . . I'm fearfully done up and thirsty, and my head is going round."
"In a minute, in a minute. . . . You won't expire."
A big cock flies crowing over Laev's head. Laev heaves a deep sigh, and with a hopeless gesture sits down on a stone. He is beset with a burning thirst, his eyes are closing, his head drops forward. . . . Five minutes pass, ten, twenty, and Kozyavkin is still busy among the hens.
"Petya, will you be long?"
"A minute. I found the portfolio, but I have lost it again."
Laev lays his head on his fists, and closes his eyes. The cackling of the fowls grows louder and louder. The inhabitants of the empty cottage fly out of the window and flutter round in circles, he fancies, like owls over his head. His ears ring with their cackle, he is overwhelmed with terror.
"The beast!" he thinks. "He invited me to stay, promising me wine and junket, and then he makes me walk from the station and listen to these hens. . . ."
In the midst of his indignation his chin sinks into his collar, he lays his head on his portfolio, and gradually subsides. Weariness gets the upper hand and he begins to doze.
"I've found the portfolio!" he hears Kozyavkin cry triumphantly. "I shall find the cape in a minute and then off we go!"
Then through his sleep he hears the barking of dogs. First one dog barks, then a second, and a third. . . . And the barking of the dogs blends with the cackling of the fowls into a sort of savage music. Someone comes up to Laev and asks him something. Then he hears someone climb over his head into the window, then a knocking and a shouting. . . . A woman in a red apron stands beside him with a lantern in her hand and asks him something.
"You've no right to say so," he hears Kozyavkin's voice. "I am a lawyer, a bachelor of laws -- Kozyavkin -- here's my visiting card."
"What do I want with your card?" says someone in a husky bass. "You've disturbed all my fowls, you've smashed the eggs! Look what you've done. The turkey poults were to have come out to-day or to-morrow, and you've smashed them. What's the use of your giving me your card, sir?"
"How dare you interfere with me! No! I won't have it!"
"I am thirsty," thinks Laev, trying to open his eyes, and he feels somebody climb down from the window over his head.
"My name is Kozyavkin! I have a cottage here. Everyone knows me."
"We don't know anyone called Kozyavkin."
"What are you saying? Call the elder. He knows me."
"Don't get excited, the constable will be here directly. . . . We know all the summer visitors here, but I've never seen you in my life."
"I've had a cottage in Rottendale for five years."
"Whew! Do you take this for the Dale? This is Sicklystead, but Rottendale is farther to the right, beyond the match factory. It's three miles from here."
"Bless my soul! Then I've taken the wrong turning!"
The cries of men and fowls mingle with the barking of dogs, and the voice of Kozyavkin rises above the chaos of confused sounds:
"You shut up! I'll pay. I'll show you whom you have to deal with!"
Little by little the voices die down. Laev feels himself being shaken by the shoulder. . . .
NOTES
fly: a horse and carriage that could be rented, usually by the day
* * *
THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY
by Anton Chekhov
IT is, as a rule, after losing heavily at cards or after a drinking-bout when an attack of dyspepsia is setting in that Stepan Stepanitch Zhilin wakes up in an exceptionally gloomy frame of mind. He looks sour, rumpled, and dishevelled; there is an expression of displeasure on his grey face, as though he were offended or disgusted by something. He dresses slowly, sips his Vichy water deliberately, and begins walking about the rooms.
"I should like to know what b-b-beast comes in here and does not shut the door!" he grumbles angrily, wrapping his dressing-gown about him and spitting loudly. "Take away that paper! Why is it lying about here? We keep twenty servants, and the place is more untidy than a pot-house. Who was that ringing? Who the devil is that?"
"That's Anfissa, the midwife who brought our Fedya into the world," answers his wife.
"Always hanging about . . . these cadging toadies!"
"There's no making you out, Stepan Stepanitch. You asked her yourself, and now you scold."
"I am not scolding; I am speaking. You might find something to do, my dear, instead of sitting with your hands in your lap trying to pick a quarrel. Upon my word, women are beyond my comprehension! Beyond my comprehension! How can they waste whole days doing nothing? A man works like an ox, like a b-beast, while his wife, the partner of his life, sits like a pretty doll, sits and does nothing but watch for an opportunity to quarrel with her husband by way of diversion. It's time to drop these schoolgirlish ways, my dear. You are not a schoolgirl, not a young lady; you are a wife and mother! You turn away? Aha! It's not agreeable to listen to the bitter truth!
"It's strange that you only speak the bitter truth when your liver is out of order."