The Cooks Wedding and Other Stories | Page 7

win, envy, and the
financial combinations of which his cropped head is full, will not let
him sit still and concentrate his mind. He fidgets as though he were
sitting on thorns. When he wins, he snatches up the money greedily,
and instantly puts it in his pocket. His sister, Anya, a girl of eight, with
a sharp chin and clever shining eyes, is also afraid that someone else
may win. She flushes and turns pale, and watches the players keenly.
The kopecks do not interest her. Success in the game is for her a
question of vanity. The other sister, Sonya, a child of six with a curly
head, and a complexion such as is seen only in very healthy children,
expensive dolls, and the faces on bonbon boxes, is playing loto for the
process of the game itself. There is bliss all over her face. Whoever
wins, she laughs and claps her hands. Alyosha, a chubby, spherical
little figure, gasps, breathes hard through his nose, and stares open-eyed
at the cards. He is moved neither by covetousness nor vanity. So long
as he is not driven out of the room, or sent to bed, he is thankful. He
looks phlegmatic, but at heart he is rather a little beast. He is not there
so much for the sake of the loto, as for the sake of the
misunderstandings which are inevitable in the game. He is greatly
delighted if one hits another, or calls him names. He ought to have run
off somewhere long ago, but he won't leave the table for a minute, for
fear they should steal his counters or his kopecks. As he can only count
the units and numbers which end in nought, Anya covers his numbers
for him. The fifth player, the cook's son, Andrey, a dark-skinned and
sickly looking boy in a cotton shirt, with a copper cross on his breast,
stands motionless, looking dreamily at the numbers. He takes no
interest in winning, or in the success of the others, because he is
entirely engrossed by the arithmetic of the game, and its far from
complex theory; "How many numbers there are in the world," he is
thinking, "and how is it they don't get mixed up?"
They all shout out the numbers in turn, except Sonya and Alyosha. To
vary the monotony, they have invented in the course of time a number

of synonyms and comic nicknames. Seven, for instance, is called the
"ovenrake," eleven the "sticks," seventy-seven "Semyon Semyonitch,"
ninety "grandfather," and so on. The game is going merrily.
"Thirty-two," cries Grisha, drawing the little yellow cylinders out of his
father's cap. "Seventeen! Ovenrake! Twenty-eight! Lay them
straight. . . ."
Anya sees that Andrey has let twenty-eight slip. At any other time she
would have pointed it out to him, but now when her vanity lies in the
saucer with the kopecks, she is triumphant.
"Twenty-three!" Grisha goes on, "Semyon Semyonitch! Nine!"
"A beetle, a beetle," cries Sonya, pointing to a beetle running across the
table. "Aie!"
"Don't kill it," says Alyosha, in his deep bass, "perhaps it's got
children . . . ."
Sonya follows the black beetle with her eyes and wonders about its
children: what tiny little beetles they must be!
"Forty-three! One!" Grisha goes on, unhappy at the thought that Anya
has already made two fours. "Six!"
"Game! I have got the game!" cries Sonya, rolling her eyes coquettishly
and giggling.
The players' countenances lengthen.
"Must make sure!" says Grisha, looking with hatred at Sonya.
Exercising his rights as a big boy, and the cleverest, Grisha takes upon
himself to decide. What he wants, that they do. Sonya's reckoning is
slowly and carefully verified, and to the great regret of her fellow
players, it appears that she has not cheated. Another game is begun.
"I did see something yesterday!" says Anya, as though to herself.
"Filipp Filippitch turned his eyelids inside out somehow and his eyes
looked red and dreadful, like an evil spirit's."
"I saw it too," says Grisha. "Eight! And a boy at our school can move
his ears. Twenty-seven!"
Andrey looks up at Grisha, meditates, and says:
"I can move my ears too. . . ."
"Well then, move them."
Andrey moves his eyes, his lips, and his fingers, and fancies that his
ears are moving too. Everyone laughs.
"He is a horrid man, that Filipp Filippitch," sighs Sonya. "He came into

our nursery yesterday, and I had nothing on but my chemise . . . And I
felt so improper!"
"Game!" Grisha cries suddenly, snatching the money from the saucer.
"I've got the game! You can look and see if you like."
The cook's son looks up and turns pale.
"Then I can't go on playing any more," he whispers.
"Why not?"