I. Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka

II. The Road

III. The Aunt

IV. Dinner

V. The Aunt’s New Scheme

The most ordinary life is filled with the most terrible mysteries.

He was a man who felt more comfortable when everything was exactly as it should be.

He did not like to think about anything that was not practical and tangible.

She was a woman of extraordinary character, whose energy was the envy of many men.

Ivan Fyodorovich, for all his simplicity, was tormented by a terrible, inexplicable dream.

I. Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka

Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka has been retired for four years and lives on his farm, Vytrebenki. When he was still Vanyusha, he attended the Gadyach district school, and it must be said that he was an exceptionally well-behaved and diligent boy. The teacher of Russian grammar, Nikifor Timofeyevich Participle, used to say that if everyone were as diligent as Shponka, he would not have to carry his maple ruler into the class, which, as he himself admitted, he grew tired of using to strike the hands of the lazy and mischievous. Ivan Fyodorovich’s notebook was always clean, neatly lined all around, without a single spot anywhere. He always sat quietly, his hands folded and his eyes fixed on the teacher, and never hung papers on the back of the student sitting in front of him, did not cut the benches, and did not play ‘tight woman’ before the teacher arrived. When anyone needed a penknife to sharpen a pen, they immediately turned to Ivan Fyodorovich, knowing that he always had one; and Ivan Fyodorovich, then still just Vanyusha, would take it out of a small leather case tied to the buttonhole of his grey serge coat, and would only ask them not to scrape the pen with the sharp edge of the knife, assuring them that the blunt side was for that purpose. Such good behavior soon drew the attention even of the Latin teacher himself, whose mere cough in the hallway, before his frieze overcoat and smallpox-marked face appeared in the doorway, struck fear into the entire class. This terrible teacher, who always had two bundles of birch rods on his desk and half the listeners kneeling, made Ivan Fyodorovich an auditor, despite there being many students in the class with much better abilities.

Here, one cannot omit an incident that influenced his whole life. One of the pupils entrusted to him, in order to persuade his auditor to write “scit” on his list, even though he hadn’t the slightest knowledge of his lesson, brought a pancake, wrapped in paper and soaked in butter, into the classroom. Although Ivan Fyodorovich generally maintained justice, he happened to be hungry at the time and could not resist the temptation: he took the pancake, placed a book in front of him, and began to eat. He was so absorbed in this that he did not even notice the sudden deathly silence that fell over the class. Only when a terrible hand, reaching out from the frieze overcoat, seized his ear and pulled him into the middle of the classroom did he awaken with horror. “Give me the pancake! Give it to me, I tell you, you villain!” the formidable teacher commanded, snatched the buttery pancake with his fingers, and threw it out the window, strictly forbidding the schoolboys running in the courtyard to pick it up. After this, he immediately gave Ivan Fyodorovich a severe whipping on his hands. And rightly so: his hands were to blame, for taking it, and not some other part of his body. Be that as it may, from that moment on, the timidity that was already inseparable from him increased even further. Perhaps this very incident was the reason he never desired to enter civil service, having learned from experience that it is not always possible to cover one’s tracks.

He was nearly fifteen when he transferred to the second class, where, instead of the abridged catechism and the four rules of arithmetic, he took up the unabridged, the book on the duties of man, and fractions. But, seeing that the deeper he went into the forest, the more firewood there was, and having received news that his father had passed away, he remained for two more years and, with his mother’s consent, then joined the P*** Infantry Regiment.

The P*** Infantry Regiment was not at all of the kind to which many infantry regiments belong; and despite the fact that it was mostly quartered in villages, it was maintained at such a level that it yielded to few, even among the cavalry. Most of the officers drank vymorozki (frozen wine) and knew how to pull Jews by their sidelocks no worse than hussars; several men even danced the mazurka, and the colonel of the P*** Regiment never missed an opportunity to point this out when talking to someone in company. “I have, sir,” he usually said, patting his belly after every word, “many who dance, sir, the mazurka; quite many, sir; very many, sir.” To show the readers the refinement of the P*** Infantry Regiment even more, we will add that two of the officers were terrible bank players and would lose their uniform, cap, greatcoat, sword-knot, and even their underclothes, which is not something one can find everywhere, even among the cavalry.

However, contact with such comrades did not diminish Ivan Fyodorovich’s timidity at all. And since he did not drink vymorozki, preferring a glass of vodka before dinner and supper, did not dance the mazurka, and did not play bank, he was naturally always left alone. Thus, when others were riding on billeted horses to visit minor landowners, he, sitting in his quarters, engaged in activities congenial only to a gentle and kind soul: he would polish buttons, read a fortune-telling book, set mousetraps in the corners of his room, or, finally, having taken off his uniform, would lie on his bed. On the other hand, there was no one more punctilious than Ivan Fyodorovich in the regiment. And he commanded his platoon so well that the company commander always held him up as an example. Therefore, in a short time, eleven years after receiving the rank of Praporshchik (Ensign), he was promoted to Podporuchik (Second Lieutenant).

During this time, he received news that his mother had died; and his aunt, his mother’s own sister, whom he knew only because she used to bring him, and even send to Gadyach, dried pears and very tasty gingerbread that she baked herself (she had been in a quarrel with his mother, and therefore Ivan Fyodorovich had not seen her afterwards)—this aunt, out of her good nature, undertook to manage his small estate, of which she informed him in a letter in due course. Ivan Fyodorovich, being completely confident in his aunt’s prudence, continued to perform his duty as before. Someone else in his place, having received such a rank, would have become proud; but pride was completely unknown to him, and having become a Second Lieutenant, he was the same Ivan Fyodorovich he had once been in the rank of Ensign. Having served for four years after this remarkable event for him, he was preparing to leave with the regiment from the Mogilev province for Great Russia, when he received a letter of the following content:

“Dear Nephew, Ivan Fyodorovich! I am sending you linen: five pairs of thread socks and four shirts of fine linen; and I also want to talk to you about business: since you already have a rank that is not insignificant, which I think you know, and have reached an age where it is time to take care of your estate, you have no need to serve in the military any longer. I am old now and cannot oversee everything on your farm; and indeed, I have much more to reveal to you in person. Come, Vanyusha; in expectation of the genuine pleasure of seeing you, I remain your loving aunt, Vasilisa Tsupchevskaya. A wonderful turnip has grown in our garden: it looks more like a potato than a turnip.”

A week after receiving this letter, Ivan Fyodorovich wrote the following reply:

“Gracious Madam, Aunt Vasilisa Kashporovna! Thank you very much for sending the linen. Especially the socks are very old, so much so that even the orderly darned them four times and they have become very narrow because of it. Regarding your opinion on my service, I completely agree with you and submitted my resignation three days ago. And as soon as I receive my discharge, I will hire a cabman. Your previous commission regarding the seeds of Siberian Arnaut wheat, I could not carry out: there is none in the whole Mogilev province. Pigs here are mostly fed with braga (home-brewed beer), mixing in a little stale beer. With perfect respect, gracious madam aunt, I remain your nephew, Ivan Shponka.”

Finally, Ivan Fyodorovich received his discharge with the rank of Poruchik (Lieutenant), hired a Jew for forty rubles to drive him from Mogilev to Gadyach, and got into the kibitka (a type of covered carriage) at the very moment when the trees were dressed in young, still sparse leaves, the whole earth brightly turned fresh green, and the whole field smelled of spring.