ROTHSCHILD’S

FIDDLE

Anton Chekhov

Stanitsa Popular Classics

stanitsa-kiev

Translated by

E. Lennon & Y. Goroulko-Shestopalov

Cover and book artwork by

Kateryna Shevchenko

STANITSA-KIEV Ltd

160-a/87, Kharkovskoye shosse

Kiev, Ukraine 02091

e-mail: spt2109@gmail.com

www.stanitsa-kiev.com

ISBN 978-5-8218-0039-0 © Stanitsa-Kiev Ltd, 2025

The town itself was smaller than a decent-sized village, and was inhabited by scarcely anyone but old people who died so rarely that it was almost annoying. The town hospital and the local prison required very few coffins. In short, business was bad. If Yakov Ivanov had been an undertaker in the main provincial city, he probably would have had his own house and would have been called Yakov Matveich; but in this desolate little town, they just called him Yakov. For some reason, his nickname among the townsfolk was Bronze, and he lived poorly, like a common peasant, in a small old hut with only one room where he, Marfa, an oven, a double bed, some coffins, a carpenter’s bench and the whole household dwelled.

Yakov made fine and durable coffins. For peasants and townsmen he made them to fit his own height and never once made a mistake, for, though he was seventy, there was nobody taller and stronger than he, not even in the local jail. For noble people and for women, he made coffins to measure and used an iron yard-stick for the task. He accepted orders for children’s coffins with great reluctance and made them with contempt without any measurement at all, and every time, on receiving money for the work, he grumbled, “Honestly don’t like to deal with nonsense.”

In addition to making coffins, playing the fiddle also brought him a small income. In the town, a Jewish orchestra usually played at weddings. It was led by the tinsmith, Moisei Ilyich Shakhkes, who took more than half of the income for himself. Since Yakov played the fiddle very well, especially Russian songs, Shakhkes sometimes invited him to join the orchestra for which he could make fifty kopecks a day, not counting tips from guests. When Bronze sat in the orchestra his face became sweaty and purple; it was hot, there was an overpowering smell of garlic, the fiddle shrieked, a double bass croaked at his right ear, and at his left wept a flute played by a gaunt red-haired Jew with a whole network of red and blue veins on his face who bore the name of a famous rich man, Rothschild. And this accursed Jew managed to play even the merriest of pieces dolefully. For no apparent reason, Yakov gradually became imbued with hatred and contempt for the Jews, and especially for Rothschild; he began to find fault with him, scold him with bad words, and once he was even going to beat him, and Rothschild had been offended and, looking at him fiercely, had said:

“If I didn’t respect you for your talent, I would’ve sent you flying through t’ window a long time ago.”

Then he cried. For this reason Bronze was not invited to the orchestra often, only in the event of an emergency when one of the Jews was absent.

Yakov was never in a good frame of mind as he constantly had to endure terrible losses. For example, it was sinful to work on Sundays and holidays, Monday was a hard day, and so there were about two hundred days a year when one involuntarily had to sit idly by. It was scary to think what a loss it was! If someone in the town had a wedding without music or Shakhkes did not invite Yakov, that was another loss. The police overseer was ill and had been wasting away for two years, and Yakov had been waiting impatiently for him to die, but the overseer went to the province’s main town for treatment and died there suddenly. There was another loss of at least about ten roubles since it would have been an expensive coffin with silk brocade. Thoughts of these losses plagued Yakov, especially at night; he put the fiddle next to him on the bed and when all sorts of nonsense appeared in his head, he touched the strings, the fiddle made a sound in the dark of the night, and he felt better.

On 6th May last year, Marfa fell ill. She was thirsty, short of breath, unsteady on her feet, but still heated the stove and fetched water. By the evening she had taken to her bed. Yakov had been playing the fiddle all day; when it got dark, he took the book in which he used to write down his daily losses and, out of boredom, began to sum up the annual total. It turned out to be more than a thousand roubles. This shocked him so that he hit the floor with the abacus and stamped his feet. Then he raised the abacus and clicked its beads again for a long time, sighing deeply and dramatically. His face was purple and damp with sweat. If he had put that cursed thousand in the bank, he thought, the annual amount of income would have been at least forty roubles. So those forty roubles were a loss as well. In short, wherever he turned there were just losses and nothing more.

“Yakov!” Marfa called unexpectedly. “I am dying.”

He turned around to have a look at his wife. Her face was flushed with fever but unusually bright and joyful. Accustomed as he was to always seeing her face pale, timid and unhappy, Bronze was quite confused.