The Clever Yardkeeper
Умный дворник
Headnote
"Умный дворник" ("The Clever Yardkeeper") appeared in 1883, in the first flush of the *Antosha Chekhonte* years, when Chekhov was filing short, fast comic sketches to the humor weeklies to support his family while still a medical student. It belongs to that early register entirely: a single situation, a single absurdity, played out and dropped in a page or two, with none of the doubled tenderness-and-irony of the mature work still a few years off.
The joke turns on a stock type of the period’s popular press – the self-satisfied moralizer who preaches enlightenment at everyone below him on the household ladder while practicing none of it himself. Filipp lectures the kitchen staff on the virtues of reading, produces his own dog-eared pamphlet on turnip cultivation as proof of his diligence, nods along to a sentence or two of it, and promptly falls asleep on watch – the one duty his "learning" was supposed to supplement, not replace. The dream that follows, in which Filipp imagines a Petersburg or Moscow populated entirely by book-reading Frenchmen, is the story’s real engine: even inside his own fantasy of a wiser world, Filipp cannot escape being caught out and dressed down by an authority figure, first in the dream and then, on waking, in the same posture with his own household.
The satire has a double edge that a first reading might miss. It mocks Filipp’s hollow, performative respect for "books" and "enlightenment" – he wants the prestige of learning without the labor of it – but it also glances sideways at a real anxiety of the 1880s: the flood of cheap improving literature (pamphlets on root vegetables, almanacs, moral tracts) marketed downward at servants and peasants as a substitute for actual schooling. Filipp’s book is exactly this kind of pamphlet, and his reverence for it is as misplaced as his son’s later punishment for daring to read one.
The title in the source, rendered literally, is "The Clever Yardkeeper" – *dvornik* being the household position (part porter, part groundskeeper, part general enforcer of order) that gave Filipp his small authority over the indoor staff in the first place.
In the middle of the kitchen stood Filipp the yardkeeper, delivering a lecture. Listening to him were the footmen, the coachman, two housemaids, the cook, the kitchen-maid, and two kitchen boys, his own sons. Every morning he preached about something or other; this morning the subject of his speech was enlightenment.
Посреди кухни стоял дворник Филипп и читал наставление. Его слушали лакеи, кучер, две горничные, повар, кухарка и два мальчика-поваренка, его родные дети. Каждое утро он что-нибудь да проповедовал, в это же утро предметом речи его было просвещение.
"And here you all live like some kind of swinish folk," he was saying, holding in his hands his badge-cap. "You just sit here on your backsides, and there’s nothing to see in you but ignorance – no civilization at all. Mishka plays checkers, Matryona cracks nuts, Nikifor grins his teeth. Is that intelligence? That’s not from intelligence, that’s from stupidity. Not a scrap of mental capacity in the lot of you! And why is that?"
– И живете вы все как какой-нибудь свинячий народ, – говорил он, держа в руках шапку с бляхой. – Сидите вы тут сиднем и кроме невежества не видать в вас никакой цивилизации. Мишка в шашки играет, Матрена орешки щелкает, Никифор зубы скалит. Нешто это ум? Это не от ума, а от глупости. Нисколько нет в вас умственных способностей! А почему?
"It’s true enough, Filipp Nikandrych," the cook remarked. "What kind of intelligence do we have, after all? A peasant’s. Do we understand anything?"
– Оно действительно, Филипп Никандрыч, – заметил повар. – Известно, какой в нас ум? Мужицкий. Нешто мы понимаем?
"And why is it you have no mental capacity?" the yardkeeper went on. "Because your sort has no real footing. And you don’t read books, and you’ve no sense at all about writings. You’d take up a little book, you’d sit yourselves down and read. You’re literate, aren’t you, you can make out print. Now you, Misha, you’d take up a little book and read here. Good for you, and pleasant for the others too. And in books there’s enlargement on every subject. There you’ll find about nature, and about divinity, and about the lands of the earth. What’s made from what, how the different peoples live in all the languages. And idol-worship too. You’ll find everything in books, if only you had the wish for it. But instead you sit by the stove, gorging and drinking. Pure unseemly cattle! Phoo!"
– А почему в вас нет умственных способностей? – продолжал дворник. – Потому что нет у вашего брата настоящей точки. И книжек вы не читаете, и насчет писаний нет у вас никакого смысла. Взяли бы книжечку, сели бы себе да почитали. Грамотны небось, разбираете печатное. Вот ты, Миша, взял бы книжечку да прочел бы тут. Тебе польза, да и другим приятность. А в книжках обо всех предметах распространение. Там и об естестве найдешь, и о божестве, о странах земных. Что из чего делается, как разный народ на всех языках. И идолопоклонство тоже. Обо всем в книжках найдешь, была бы охота. А то сидит себе около печи, жрет да пьет. Чисто как скоты неподобные! Тьфу!
"It’s time for your watch, Nikandrych," the kitchen-maid remarked.
– Вам, Никандрыч, на часы пора, – заметила кухарка.
"I know. It’s not your place to point that out to me. Now take me, for instance. What’s my occupation, at my age, an old man? What’s to satisfy my soul? There’s nothing better than a book or a newspaper. I’m going now to my watch. I’ll sit at the gate a good three hours. And you think I’ll be yawning, or chattering nonsense with the women? No indeed, not me! I’ll take a little book with me, sit down, and read to my heart’s content. That’s how it is."
– Знаю. Не твое дело мне указывать. Вот, к примеру скажем, хоть меня взять. Какое мое занятие при моем старческом возрасте? Чем душу свою удовлетворить? Лучше нет, как книжка или ведомости. Сейчас вот пойду на часы. Просижу у ворот часа три. И вы думаете, зевать буду или пустяки с бабами болтать? Не-ет, не таковский! Возьму с собой книжечку, сяду и буду читать себе в полное удовольствие. Так-то.
Filipp took a tattered little book out of the cupboard and tucked it inside his coat.
Филипп достал из шкапа истрепанную книжку и сунул ее за пазуху.
"There it is, my occupation. I’ve been used to it since I was small. Learning is light, ignorance is darkness – you’ve heard that, I dare say? So there..."
– Вот оно, мое занятие. Сызмальства привык. Ученье свет, неученье тьма – слыхали, чай? То-то...
Filipp put on his cap, grunted, and, muttering, went out of the kitchen. He went out through the gate, sat down on the bench, and scowled like a storm cloud.
Филипп надел шапку, крякнул и, бормоча, вышел из кухни. Он пошел за ворота, сел на скамью и нахмурился, как туча.
"They’re not people, they’re some kind of swinish chemists," he muttered, still thinking about the kitchen population.
– Это не народ, а какие-то химики свинячие, – пробормотал он, всё еще думая о кухонном населении.
Having calmed himself, he drew out the little book, sighed gravely, and set about reading.
Успокоившись, он вытащил книжку, степенно вздохнул и принялся за чтение.
"Now that’s written as well as could be," he thought, having read the first page and shaking his head. "The Lord does grant wisdom!"
"Так написано, что лучше и не надо, – подумал он, прочитав первую страницу и покрутив головой. – Умудрит же господь!"
The book was a good one, a Moscow edition: "The Cultivation of Root Vegetables. Do We Need the Turnip." Having read the first two pages, the yardkeeper shook his head significantly and coughed.
Книжка была хорошая, московского издания: "Разведение корнеплодов. Нужна ли нам брюква". Прочитав первые две страницы, дворник значительно покачал головой и кашлянул.
"Correctly written!"
– Правильно написано!
Having read the third little page, Filipp fell to thinking. He wanted to think about education, and, for some reason, about Frenchmen. His head sank onto his chest, his elbows rested on his knees. His eyes narrowed.
Прочитав третью страничку, Филипп задумался. Ему хотелось думать об образовании и почему-то о французах. Голова у него опустилась на грудь, локти уперлись в колена. Глаза прищурились.
And Filipp saw a dream. Everything, he saw, had changed: the earth was the same, the houses the same, the gates as before, but the people had become quite different. All the people were wise, there was not a single fool, and along the streets walked nothing but Frenchmen and Frenchmen. Even the water-carrier reasoned: "I confess I’m quite displeased with the climate, and I wish to have a look at the thermometer" – and in his own hands a thick book.
И видел Филипп сон. Всё, видел он, изменилось: земля та же самая, дома такие же, ворота прежние, но люди совсем не те стали. Все люди мудрые, нет ни одного дурака, и по улицам ходят всё французы и французы. Водовоз, и тот рассуждает: "Я, признаться, климатом очень недоволен и желаю на градусник поглядеть", а у самого в руках толстая книга.
"Well, you should read the almanac," Filipp says to him.
– А ты почитай календарь, – говорит ему Филипп.
The kitchen-maid is a fool, but even she joins in the clever conversations and puts in her own remarks. Filipp goes to the police station to register the lodgers – and, strange to say, even in this stern place they talk only of clever things, and everywhere on the tables lie little books. But then someone comes up to the footman Misha, gives him a shove, and shouts: "Are you asleep? I’m asking you: are you asleep?"
Кухарка глупа, но и она вмешивается в умные разговоры и вставляет свои замечания. Филипп идет в участок, чтобы прописать жильцов, – и странно, даже в этом суровом месте говорят только об умном и везде на столах лежат книжки. А вот кто-то подходит к лакею Мише, толкает его и кричит: "Ты спишь? Я тебя спрашиваю: ты спишь?"
"Sleeping on watch, blockhead?" Filipp hears someone’s thunderous voice. "Sleeping, you scoundrel, you brute?"
– На часах спишь, болван? – слышит Филипп чей-то громовый голос. – Спишь, негодяй, скотина?
Filipp jumped up and rubbed his eyes; before him stood the assistant police-superintendent.
Филипп вскочил и протер глаза; перед ним стоял помощник участкового пристава.
"Ah? Asleep? I’ll fine you, you beast! I’ll show you how to sleep on watch, you mug!"
– А? Спишь? Я оштрафую тебя, бестия! Я покажу тебе, как на часах спать, моррда!
Two hours later the yardkeeper was summoned to the police station. Afterward he was back in the kitchen. There, touched by his teachings, everyone was sitting around the table listening to Misha, who was reading something out, syllable by syllable.
Через два часа дворника потребовали в участок. Потом он опять был в кухне. Тут, тронутые его наставлениями, все сидели вокруг стола и слушали Мишу, который читал что-то по складам.
Filipp, scowling, red-faced, went up to Misha, struck the book with his mitten, and said grimly:
Филипп, нахмуренный, красный, подошел к Мише, ударил рукавицей по книге и сказал мрачно:
"Drop it!"
– Брось!