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Updated: May 29, 2025
The porter won and was king; he assumed an attitude such as was in his opinion befitting a king, and blew his nose loudly on a red-checked handkerchief. "Now if I like I can chop off anybody's head," he said. Alyoshka, a boy of eight with a head of flaxen hair, left long uncut, who had only missed being king by two tricks, looked angrily and with envy at the porter. He pouted and frowned.
When Sofya was just dropping asleep, Varvara, coming close, whispered in her ear: "Let us get rid of Dyudya and Alyoshka!" Sofya started and said nothing. Then she opened her eyes and gazed a long while steadily at the sky. "People would find out," she said. "No, they wouldn't. Dyudya's an old man, it's time he did die; and they'd say Alyoshka died of drink."
Let us go, Mihailo, you'll open the gate for me." The fish-hawker and the porter went out. The coachman and Alyoshka went out too, so as not to be left in the coach-house. "The man was living and is dead!" said the coachman, looking towards the windows where shadows were still flitting to and fro. "Only this morning he was walking about the yard, and now he is lying dead."
Beside the newly dug grave stood four convict bearers ex officio; the treasury clerk and I, in the capacity of Hamlet and Horatio, wandering about the cemetery; the dead woman's lodger, a Circassian, who had come because he had nothing better to do; and a convict woman who had come out of pity and had brought the dead woman's two children, one a baby, and the other, Alyoshka, a boy of four, wearing a woman's jacket and blue breeches with bright-coloured patches on the knees.
"I shall give you the trick, grandfather," he said, pondering over his cards; "I know you have got the queen of diamonds." "Well, well, little silly, you have thought enough!" Alyoshka timidly played the knave of diamonds. At that moment a ring was heard from the yard. "Oh, hang you!" muttered the porter, getting up. "Go and open the gate, O king!"
The hunchback Alyoshka came into the yard from the street and ran out of breath into the house, not looking at any one. A minute later he ran out of the house with a concertina. Jingling some coppers in his pocket, and cracking sunflower seeds as he ran, he went out at the gate. "And who's that, pray?" asked Matvey Savitch. "My son Alexey," answered Dyudya. "He's off on a spree, the rascal.
"He is lying unconscious," the porter went on. "He is bound to die. Alyoshka, don't look at the cards, you little puppy, or I will pull your ears! Yes, I let the doctors out, and the father and mother in... They have only just arrived. Such crying and wailing, Lord preserve us! They say he is the only son.... It's a grief!"
When I was a girl, I hadn't bread to eat, or a shoe to my foot, and to get away from that wretchedness I was tempted by Alyoshka's money, and got caught like a fish in a net, and I'd rather have a viper for my bedfellow than that scurvy Alyoshka. And what's your life? It makes me sick to look at it. Your Fyodor sent you packing from the factory and he's taken up with another woman.
When he came back a little later, Alyoshka was already a prince, the fish-hawker a soldier, and the coachman a peasant. "It's a nasty business," said the porter, sitting down to the cards again. "I have just let the doctors out. They have not extracted it." "How could they? Just think, they would have to pick open the brains. If there is a bullet in the head, of what use are doctors?"
They said their prayers, and took off their boots. Stepan lay down in a corner on the floor, Alyoshka in a sledge. The doors of the coach house were shut, there was a horrible stench from the extinguished lantern. A little later Alyoshka sat up and looked about him; through the crack of the door he could still see a light from those lighted windows. "Grandfather, I am frightened!" he said.
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