Van’ka Zhukov, a boy of nine who had been sent three months earlier as apprentice to Alyakhin the cobbler, did not go to bed on Christmas Eve. Having waited until the masters and the journeymen had gone off to matins, he took from his master’s cupboard a small bottle of ink, a penholder with a rusty nib, and, spreading out a crumpled sheet of paper in front of him, began to write. Before tracing out the first letter, he glanced fearfully at the doors and windows several times, threw a sidelong look at the dark icon, on either side of which stretched shelves of cobbler’s lasts, and let out a broken sigh. The paper lay on a bench, and he himself knelt before the bench.
“Dear Grandad, Konstantin Makarovich!” he wrote. “And I am writing thee a letter. I wish thee a merry Christmas, and may the Lord grant thee everything. I have got no father nor mum, only thee alone left to me.”
Van’ka turned his eyes to the dark window, in which the reflection of his candle flickered, and vividly imagined his grandad Konstantin Makarovich, who served as night-watchman for the Zhivarev household. He is a small, scrawny but uncommonly nimble and lively little old man of about sixty-five, with a perpetually laughing face and drunken eyes. By day he sleeps in the servants’ kitchen or chaffs the cook-maids; by night, wrapped in a roomy sheepskin coat, he walks round the estate beating his rattle. Behind him, heads lowered, walk old Kashtanka and the male dog Vyun1. Vyun is a small, sinuous freshwater fish. The word is also used as a name for any slippery, snakey creature, so named for his black colour and his body, long as a weasel’s. This Vyun is uncommonly respectful and affectionate, gazing with the same touching tenderness on his own people and on strangers; but no one is fooled. Beneath his respectfulness and meekness lies the most Jesuitical malice. No one is better than he at sneaking up at just the right moment and snapping at a leg, getting into the ice-cellar, or stealing a peasant’s chicken. More than once his hind legs were beaten lame, a couple of times he was hanged, every week he was flogged half to death, but he always revived.