Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
There is a small square near the monastery of the Holy Birth which is
called Trubnoy, or simply Truboy; there is a market there on Sundays. Hundreds
of sheepskins, wadded coats, fur caps, and chimneypot hats swarm there, like
crabs in a sieve. There is the sound of the twitter of birds in all sorts of
keys, recalling the spring. If the sun is shining, and there are no clouds in
the sky, the singing of the birds and the smell of hay make a more vivid
impression, and this reminder of spring sets one thinking and carries one's
fancy far, far away. Along one side of the square there stands a string of
waggons. The waggons are loaded, not with hay, not with cabbages, nor with
beans, but with goldfinches, siskins, larks, blackbirds and thrushes, bluetits,
bullfinches. All of them are hopping about in rough, home-made cages,
twittering and looking with envy at the free sparrows. The goldfinches cost
five kopecks, the siskins are rather more expensive, while the value of the
other birds is quite indeterminate.
"How much is a lark?"
The seller himself does not know the value of a lark. He scratches his head
and asks whatever comes into it, a rouble, or three kopecks, according to the
purchaser. There are expensive birds too. A faded old blackbird, with most of
its feathers plucked out of its tail, sits on a dirty perch. He is dignified,
grave, and motionless as a retired general. He has waved his claw in
resignation to his captivity long ago, and looks at the blue sky with
indifference. Probably, owing to this indifference, he is considered
a sagacious bird. He is not to be bought for less than forty kopecks.
Schoolboys, workmen, young men in stylish greatcoats, and bird-fanciers in
incredibly shabby caps, in ragged trousers that are turned up at the ankles,
and look as though they had been gnawed by mice, crowd round the birds,
splashing through the mud. The young people and the workmen are sold hens for
cocks, young birds for old ones... They know very little about birds. But there
is no deceiving the bird-fancier. He sees and understands his bird from
a distance.
"There is no relying on that bird," a fancier will say, looking into
a siskin's beak, and counting the feathers on its tail. "He sings now, it's
true, but what of that? I sing in company too. No, my boy, shout, sing to me
without company; sing in solitude, if you can... You give me that one yonder
that sits and holds its tongue! Give me the quiet one! That one says nothing,
so he thinks the more..."
Among the waggons of birds there are some full of other live creatures.
Here you see hares, rabbits, hedgehogs, guinea-pigs, polecats. A hare sits
sorrowfully nibbling the straw. The guinea-pigs shiver with cold, while the
hedgehogs look out with curiosity from under their prickles at the public.
"I have read somewhere," says a post-office official in a faded overcoat,
looking lovingly at the hare, and addressing no one in particular, "I have read
that some learned man had a cat and a mouse and a falcon and a sparrow, who all
ate out of one bowl."
"That's very possible, sir. The cat must have been beaten, and the falcon,
I dare say, had all its tail pulled out. There's no great cleverness in that,
sir. A friend of mine had a cat who, saving your presence, used to eat his
cucumbers. He thrashed her with a big whip for a fortnight, till he taught her
not to. A hare can learn to light matches if you beat it. Does that surprise
you? It's very simple! It takes the match in its mouth and strikes it. An
animal is like a man. A man's made wiser by beating, and it's the same with
a beast."
Men in long, full-skirted coats move backwards and forwards in the crowd
with cocks and ducks under their arms. The fowls are all lean and hungry.
Chickens poke their ugly, mangy-looking heads out of their cages and peck at
something in the mud. Boys with pigeons stare into your face and try to detect
in you a pigeon-fancier.
"Yes, indeed! It's no use talking to you," someone shouts angrily. "You
should look before you speak! Do you call this a pigeon? It is an eagle, not
a pigeon!"
A tall thin man, with a shaven upper lip and side whiskers, who looks like
a sick and drunken footman, is selling a snow-white lap-dog. The old lap-dog
whines.
"She told me to sell the nasty thing," says the footman, with
a contemptuous snigger. "She is bankrupt in her old age, has nothing to eat,
and here now is selling her dogs and cats. She cries, and kisses them on their
filthy snouts. And then she is so hard up that she sells them. 'Pon my soul, it
is a fact! Buy it, gentlemen! The money is wanted for coffee."
But no one laughs. A boy who is standing by screws up one eye and looks at
him gravely with compassion.
The most interesting of all is the fish section. Some dozen peasants are
sitting in a row. Before each of them is a pail, and in each pail there is
a veritable little hell. There, in the thick, greenish water are swarms of
little carp, eels, small fry, water-snails, frogs, and newts. Big water-beetles
with broken legs scurry over the small surface, clambering on the carp, and
jumping over the frogs. The creatures have a strong hold on life. The frogs
climb on the beetles, the newts on the frogs. The dark green tench, as more
expensive fish, enjoy an exceptional position; they are kept in a special jar
where they can't swim, but still they are not so cramped...
"The carp is a grand fish! The carp's the fish to keep, your honour, plague
take him! You can keep him for a year in a pail and he'll live! It's a week
since I caught these very fish. I caught them, sir, in Pererva, and have come
from there on foot. The carp are two kopecks each, the eels are three, and the
minnows are ten kopecks the dozen, plague take them! Five kopecks' worth of
minnows, sir? Won't you take some worms?"
The seller thrusts his coarse rough fingers into the pail and pulls out of
it a soft minnow, or a little carp, the size of a nail. Fishing lines, hooks,
and tackle are laid out near the pails, and pond-worms glow with a crimson
light in the sun.
An old fancier in a fur cap, iron-rimmed spectacles, and goloshes that look
like two dread-noughts, walks about by the waggons of birds and pails of fish.
He is, as they call him here, "a type." He hasn't a farthing to bless himself
with, but in spite of that he haggles, gets excited, and pesters purchasers
with advice. He has thoroughly examined all the hares, pigeons, and fish;
examined them in every detail, fixed the kind, the age, and the price of each
one of them a good hour ago. He is as interested as a child in the goldfinches,
the carp, and the minnows. Talk to him, for instance, about thrushes, and the
queer old fellow will tell you things you could not find in any book. He will
tell you them with enthusiasm, with passion, and will scold you too for your
ignorance. Of goldfinches and bullfinches he is ready to talk endlessly,
opening his eyes wide and gesticulating violently with his hands. He is only to
be met here at the market in the cold weather; in the summer he is somewhere in
the country, catching quails with a bird-call and angling for fish.
And here is another "type," a very tall, very thin, close-shaven gentleman
in dark spectacles, wearing a cap with a cockade, and looking like a scrivener
of by-gone days. He is a fancier; he is a man of decent position, a teacher in
a high school, and that is well known to the habitues of the market, and they
treat him with respect, greet him with bows, and have even invented for him
a special title: "Your Scholarship." At Suharev market he rummages among the
books, and at Trubnoy looks out for good pigeons.
"Please, sir!" the pigeon-sellers shout to him, "Mr. Schoolmaster, your
Scholarship, take notice of my tumblers! your Scholarship!"
"Your Scholarship!" is shouted at him from every side.
"Your Scholarship!" an urchin repeats somewhere on the boulevard.
And his "Scholarship," apparently quite accustomed to his title, grave and
severe, takes a pigeon in both hands, and lifting it above his head, begins
examining it, and as he does so frowns and looks graver than ever, like
a conspirator.
And Trubnoy Square, that little bit of Moscow where animals are so tenderly
loved, and where they are so tortured, lives its little life, grows noisy and
excited, and the business-like or pious people who pass by along the boulevard
cannot make out what has brought this crowd of people, this medley of caps, fur
hats, and chimneypots together; what they are talking about there, what they
are buying and selling.
1883
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Notes
The Bird Market: The Russian title translates as "In Moscow in Trubnaya
Square".
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