by Anton Chekhov
“Excuse me, sir! Pay attention to this unhappy and hungry man. For three days I haven’t eaten… I don’t even have money to stay at a shelter… I swear! For eight years I was a teacher in a small town and I got laid off when the government cut back teaching jobs. And now a year later, I still can’t find a job.”
The restaurant owner Smith looked at the man, wearing a coat torn into rags, who had the drooping eyes and red cheeks of a drunk. He seemed to recognize the man, but he couldn’t place from where.
“They told me to go get a job in another town,” continued the beggar. “But I don’t have any money to get there. Help me, please! It’s embarrassing to ask, but poverty has compelled me.”
Smith looked at the petitioner and suddenly remembered. “A few days ago, I think, I met you on the street,” he said, “but then you told me, not that you were a teacher from a small town, but that you were a student who was expelled from university. Remember?”
“No… no, not at all!” muttered the petitioner. “I am a teacher from a small town and, if you’d want, I can show you proof.”
“Don’t lie to me! You called yourself a student before and told me that you had dropped out. Remember?” Smith reddened with anger and with aversion he turned away from the beggar. “Prick!” he cried angrily. “You are poor and hungry, but that’s no reason to shamelessly tell lies.”
The beggar took hold of the door handle and confusedly, like an unscrupulous thief, looked around. “I’m… I’m not lying…” he mumbled. “I can prove it.”
“Who can believe you?” continued the irate Smith. “Exploiting the sympathies society has for teachers and students – that’s revolting!” Smith brushed off the petitioner. The beggar stirred up Smith’s revulsion with his lies.
The beggar kept swearing that he wasn’t lying, but then he became silent and lowered his head. “Really, I lied!” he said. “I’m not a student and not a small town teacher. Everything is made up! I worked in a choir and I was tossed out for being a drunk. But what am I to do? I swear to you, I can’t go without lying! When I tell the truth, no one gives me anything. If I tell the truth, then probably I’d die of hunger or freeze to death without a place to stay! You’re right, I understand, but… what should I do?”
“What to do? You ask me what you should do?” cried Smith. “Work, that’s what you can do! You should go to work!”
“Work… I understand this, but where am I going to find work?”
“Don’t be an idiot. You’re young, healthy, strong and you can always find work, if you want. But, of course, you’re a lazy, spoiled drunk! And you smell like cheap liquor. You only work somewhere like the choir or as a concierge because you can do nothing and still get paid! You don’t want to take some manual labor? Probably you wouldn’t want to do yard work or even day jobs!”
“What are you saying…” said the petitioner and he grimaced bitterly. “Where could I find manual labor? Nobody would take me to do yard work, and anyways I can’t stand to be disrespected. And I can’t work at a factory because you have to know technical things, and I don’t know anything.”
“You always have an answer! But would you chop some wood?”
“I don’t refuse, but now really I have nothing to eat.”
“All good-for-nothings talk like that. And if someone offered you something, you’d refuse it. Do you want a job chopping wood for me?”
“Please…”
“Good, let’s see… great!” Smith called into the kitchen of his restaurant of his café. “Here, Diana,” he went up to her, “show this gentleman into the back alley and let him chop some wood.”
The beggar shrugged his shoulders and half-heartedly went into the kitchen. It was obvious that he had only agreed to chop wood, not because he was hungry and wanted to work, but simply because of pride and shame. It was noticeable too, that he was very weak and unhealthy and didn’t have the slightest will to work.
Smith went into the dining room. There from the window he could see into the back alley and could see everything that happened there. Smith stood at the window and watched, how the beggar went from the kitchen into the alley yard. Diana angrily watched her new worker. She unlocked the yard gate and viciously swung the door open.
“Likely, we just disturbed her while she was drinking her coffee,” thought Smith. “There’s an evil woman!”
Then he saw how the beggar sat, propped his head up with his fists under his red cheeks and fell to thought. The woman threw at his feet a hatchet, and she angrily spat and started to yell at him. The beggar indecisively took one log, put it down and chopped it in half with the hatchet. The log split and fell. The beggar turned the log, blew his freezing hands and again split the log with the hatchet with such a care, as he was afraid of hitting his legs. The log again split.
Smith’s anger had already passed and he became a little ashamed about how he had called the man spoiled and drunk and maybe, he was too sick to work in the cold.
“Nevermind,” he thought, when he went to the dining room and into the office. “It was for his own good.”
After an hour, Diana came and said that all the wood had been chopped.
“Give him twenty dollars,” Smith said. “If he wants, then he can come chop wood at the first of every month. He can always find work here.”
On the first day of the next month the beggar came and again worked for twenty dollars, although he could hardly stand on his feet. After this, he often came and every time Smith found him something to do: he would shovel snow off the walk, clean up the yard, carry out carpets and mattresses. Every time he received for his work twenty dollars and, one time, even an old pair of pants.
When Smith moved to a new apartment, he took his help to move boxes and furniture. This time, the beggar came completely sober, gloomy and silent. He could hardly lift any of the furniture though he showed signs of activity. He shook from the cold and was embarrassed when the movers laughed at his idleness, weakness and dirty coat. After the move, Smith called out to him to come over.
“I see, that you’ve taken my words to heart,” he said as he gave him forty dollars. “This is for your work. I see that you are sober and want to work. What’s your last name?”
“Lushkov.”
“I, Lushkov, can now lead you to some other work. Take this letter and tomorrow go to my friends and receive work from them. Work, don’t be drunk, and always remember what I said to you. Good luck!”
Smith, happy for himself that he set this man in the right direction, gently patted Lushkov on the shoulder and gave him a firm handshake. Lushkov took the letter, left and didn’t come again for work.
A year passed. One day, Smith was standing at the theater cashier buying tickets. He saw next to him, standing with a small boy, a man in a coat with many holes and a worn out hat. The man asked the cashier for a ticket into the cinema. Smith recognized him as his past worker. “Lushkov, is that you?” he asked. “What are you doing? Are you living well?”
“Not bad… I work now at the Notary Office and get fifteen dollars an hour.”
“That’s great. I’m glad for you. Very, very glad, Lushkov. Really, I set you on the right path. Remember how I blew up at you? You almost wished you could have just sat down and died. Thanks that you took my words to heart.”
“And thanks to you,” Lushkov said. “If I would never have come to you, then up to now I would still be calling myself a teacher or a student. Yeah, you were an escape, you gave me a jumpstart.”
“I’m very, very glad.”
“Thanks to your good words and deeds. You spoke great there. I thank you, and your café, and that wonderful and precious woman. You spoke well there, but really who saved me was your assistant Diana.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, when I came to chop the wood, she was sitting across from me, watching me and she cried out to me, ‘Oh you drunk! You worthless bum! There’s nothing good for you in this world or the next, drunk, and you will burn! Worthless!’ She was shedding so many tears for me, I can’t tell you how many. But the main thing is that she chopped the wood for me! I didn’t even chop one piece of wood, it was all her! Why she saved me – why I changed and stopped drinking, I can’t explain it to you. I know only this, that from her words and the kindness she showed from her heart I came out better. She set me on the right path, and I never forgot this. Well, it’s time, already the show’s about to begin.”
Lushkov said goodbye and went into the cinema.
