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Vanka


Бумага лежала на скамье, а сам он стоял перед скамьей на коленях.

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The paper lay on a bench, and he himself knelt on the floor before the bench.

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Where it stands

Дождавшись, когда хозяева и подмастерья ушли к заутрене, он достал из хозяйского шкапа пузырек с чернилами, ручку с заржавленным пером и, разложив перед собой измятый лист бумаги, стал писать. Having waited until the master's household and the journeymen had gone off to the midnight service, he took a little bottle of ink and a pen with a rusty nib out of his master's cupboard and, spreading a crumpled sheet of paper out before him, began to write.

Прежде чем вывести первую букву, он несколько раз пугливо оглянулся на двери и окна, покосился на темный образ, по обе стороны которого тянулись полки с колодками, и прерывисто вздохнул. Before tracing the first letter, he glanced timorously several times at the doors and windows, cast a sidelong look at the dark icon, on either side of which stretched shelves of shoe-lasts, and drew a broken sigh.

The words in this sentence

бума́га
paper (nom sg)
лежа́ла
lay (past f of лежать, to lie) — лежать
на
on, onto; at
скамье́
bench (dat/prep sg) — скамья
а
and, but (conjunction)
сам
himself (emphatic pronoun)
он
he
стоя́л
stood (past m of стоять) — стоять
пе́ред
before, in front of (+instr)
скамьёй
bench (instr sg) — скамья
коле́нях
knees (prep pl); на коленях: on one's knees — колено

А. П. Чехов, «Ванька», 1886 · sentence 4 of 68

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