The Lottery Ticket

Anton Chekhov

IVAN DMITRITCH, a middle-class man who lived with his family on an income of twelve

hundred a year and was very well satisfied with his lot, sat down on the sofa after supper

and began reading the newspaper.

"I forgot to look at the newspaper today," his wife said to him as she cleared the table.

"Look and see whether the list of drawings is there."

"Yes, it is," said Ivan Dmitritch; "but hasn't your ticket lapsed?"

"No; I took the interest on Tuesday."

"What is the number?"

the top, his eye was caught by the figure 9,499! Unable to believe his eyes, he hurriedly

dropped the paper on his knees without looking to see the number of the ticket, and, just as

though some one had given him a douche of cold water, he felt an agreeable chill in the pit

of the stomach; tingling and terrible and sweet!

"Masha, 9,499 is there!" he said in a hollow voice.

His wife looked at his astonished and panic-stricken face, and realized that he was not

joking.

"9,499?" she asked, turning pale and dropping the folded tablecloth on the table.

"Yes, yes . . . it really is there!"

"And the number of the ticket?"

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top, so the prize is seventy-five thousand. That's not money, but power, capital! And in a

minute I shall look at the list, and there -- 26! Eh? I say, what if we really have won?"

The husband and wife began laughing and staring at one another in silence. The possibility

of winning bewildered them; they could not have said, could not have dreamed, what they

both needed that seventy-five thousand for, what they would buy, where they would go.

They thought only of the figures 9,499 and 75,000 and pictured them in their imagination,

while somehow they could not think of the happiness itself which was so possible.

Ivan Dmitritch, holding the paper in his hand, walked several times from corner to corner,

and only when he had recovered from the first impression began dreaming a little.

"And if we have won," he said -- "why, it will be a new life, it will be a transformation! The

"Somewhere in the Tula or Oryol provinces. . . . In the first place we shouldn't need a

summer villa, and besides, it would always bring in an income."

And pictures came crowding on his imagination, each more gracious and poetical than the

last. And in all these pictures he saw himself well-fed, serene, healthy, felt warm, even hot!

Here, after eating a summer soup, cold as ice, he lay on his back on the burning sand close

to a stream or in the garden under a lime-tree. . . . It is hot. . . . His little boy and girl are

crawling about near him, digging in the sand or catching ladybirds in the grass. He dozes

sweetly, thinking of nothing, and feeling all over that he need not go to the office today,

tomorrow, or the day after. Or, tired of lying still, he goes to the hayfield, or to the forest for

mushrooms, or watches the peasants catching fish with a net. When the sun sets he takes a

was evident that she was enchanted by her thoughts.

Ivan Dmitritch pictured to himself autumn with its rains, its cold evenings, and its St.

Martin's summer. At that season he would have to take longer walks about the garden and

come running from the kitchen-garden, bringing a carrot and a radish smelling of fresh

turn over the pages of some illustrated magazine, or, covering his face with it and

The St. Martin's summer is followed by cloudy, gloomy weather. It rains day and night, the

bare trees weep, the wind is damp and cold. The dogs, the horses, the fowls -- all are wet,

depressed, downcast. There is nowhere to walk; one can't go out for days together; one has

to pace up and down the room, looking despondently at the grey window. It is dreary!

Ivan Dmitritch stopped and looked at his wife.

"I should go abroad, you know, Masha," he said.

And he began thinking how nice it would be in late autumn to go abroad somewhere to the

South of France . . . to Italy . . . . to India!

He walked about the room and went on thinking. It occurred to him: what if his wife really

children, sigh, and tremble with dismay over every farthing. Ivan Dmitritch imagined his

wife in the train with a multitude of parcels, baskets, and bags; she would be sighing over

something, complaining that the train made her head ache, that she had spent so much

and butter. . . . She wouldn't have dinner because of its being too dear. . . .

"She would begrudge me every farthing," he thought, with a glance at his wife. "The lottery

ticket is hers, not mine! Besides, what is the use of her going abroad? What does she want

there? She would shut herself up in the hotel, and not let me out of her sight. . . . I know!"

And for the first time in his life his mind dwelt on the fact that his wife had grown elderly

and plain, and that she was saturated through and through with the smell of cooking, while

grudge me every farthing."

Ivan Dmitritch thought of her relations. All those wretched brothers and sisters and aunts

and uncles would come crawling about as soon as they heard of the winning ticket, would

they were refused, they would swear at them, slander them, and wish them every kind of

impartially in the past, struck him now as repulsive and hateful.

"They are such reptiles!" he thought.

And his wife's face, too, struck him as repulsive and hateful. Anger surged up in his heart

against her, and he thought malignantly:

"She knows nothing about money, and so she is stingy. If she won it she would give me a

hundred roubles, and put the rest away under lock and key."

And he looked at his wife, not with a smile now, but with hatred. She glanced at him too,

and also with hatred and anger. She had her own daydreams, her own plans, her own

reflections; she understood perfectly well what her husband's dreams were. She knew who

out triumphantly:

"Series 9,499, number 46! Not 26!"

Hatred and hope both disappeared at once, and it began immediately to seem to Ivan

Dmitritch and his wife that their rooms were dark and small and low-pitched, that the

supper they had been eating was not doing them good, but lying heavy on their stomachs,

that the evenings were long and wearisome. . . .

"What the devil's the meaning of it?" said Ivan Dmitritch, beginning to be ill-humoured.

"Wherever one steps there are bits of paper under one's feet, crumbs, husks. The rooms are

never swept! One is simply forced to go out. Damnation take my soul entirely! I shall go