Fifty-Two Stories

CHAPTER TWO / A MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

But she did not think about anything and only wept. When soft, fluffy snow had completely covered Kashtanka’s back and head, and she had sunk into a deep slumber from exhaustion, suddenly the door clicked, creaked, and hit her on the side. She jumped up. A man came out, belonging to the category of customers. As Kashtanka squealed and got under his feet, he could not help noticing her. He leaned down and asked:

“Where did you come from, pooch? Did I hurt you? Oh, poor thing, poor thing….Well, don’t be angry, don’t be angry…I’m sorry.”

Kashtanka looked up at the stranger through the snowflakes that stuck to her eyelashes and saw before her a short, fat little man with a plump, clean-shaven face, wearing a top hat and an unbuttoned fur coat.

“Why are you whining?” the man went on, brushing the snow from her back. “Where is your master? You must be lost. Oh, poor pooch! What shall we do now?”

Catching a warm, friendly note in the stranger’s voice, Kashtanka licked his hand and whined even more pitifully.

“You’re a nice, funny one!” said the stranger. “A real fox! Well, nothing to be done. Come with me, maybe I’ll find some use for you…Well, phweet!”

He whistled and made a gesture to Kashtanka which could only mean: Let’s go! Kashtanka went.

In less than half an hour she was sitting on the floor of a large, bright room, with her head cocked, looking tenderly and curiously at the stranger, who was sitting at the table eating supper. He ate and tossed her some scraps…At first he gave her bread and the green rind of cheese, then a small piece of meat, half of a dumpling, some chicken bones, and she was so hungry that she gobbled them up without tasting anything. And the more she ate, the hungrier she felt.

“Your master doesn’t feed you very well,” said the stranger, seeing with what fierce greed she swallowed the unchewed pieces. “And what a scrawny one! Skin and bones…”

Kashtanka ate a lot, yet she didn’t feel full, only groggy. After supper she sprawled in the middle of the room, stretched her legs and, feeling pleasantly weary all over, began wagging her tail. While her new master sat back in an armchair, smoking a cigar, she wagged her tail and kept trying to decide where she liked it better—at this stranger’s or at the cabinetmaker’s. At the stranger’s the furnishings were poor and ugly. Apart from the armchairs, the sofa, the lamp, and the rugs, he had nothing, and the room seemed empty. At the cabinetmaker’s, the whole place was chock-full of things: he had a table, a workbench, a pile of wood shavings, planes, chisels, saws, a basin, a goldfinch in a cage….The stranger’s room had no particular smell, while at the cabinetmaker’s there was always a fog and the wonderful smell of glue, varnish, and wood shavings. Still, being with the stranger had one great advantage: he gave her a lot to eat—one must give him full credit—and when she sat by the table with a sweet look on her face, he never once hit her or stamped his foot or shouted: “Get ou-u-ut, curse you!”

When he finished his cigar, her new master went out and came back a moment later carrying a small mattress.

“Hey, pooch, come here!” he said, putting the mattress in the corner near the sofa. “Lie down! Go to sleep!”

Then he turned off the lamp and went out. Kashtanka lay down on the mattress and closed her eyes. She heard barking outside and wanted to answer it, but suddenly she became unexpectedly sad. She remembered Luka Alexandrych, his son Fedyushka, and her cozy place under the workbench…She remembered how on long winter evenings while the cabinetmaker was planing a board or reading the newspaper aloud, Fedyushka used to play with her…He would drag her from under the workbench by her hind legs and do such tricks with her that everything turned green in her eyes and all her joints hurt. He would make her walk on her hind legs, turn her into a bell by pulling her tail hard, until she squealed and barked, or give her tobacco to sniff. Especially tormenting was the following trick: Fedyushka would tie a piece of meat to a string and give it to Kashtanka; then, once she had swallowed it, with loud laughter he would pull it out of her stomach. And the more vivid her memories became, the more loudly and longingly Kashtanka whined.

But weariness and warmth soon overcame her sadness…She began to fall asleep. In her mind’s eye dogs ran past, among them a shaggy old poodle she had seen that day in the street, sore-eyed, with tufts of fur around his nose. Fedyushka was chasing the poodle with a chisel in his hand; then all at once he too was covered with shaggy fur, and barked merrily beside Kashtanka. Kashtanka and he sniffed each other’s noses good-naturedly and ran off down the street…