Short Stories by Chekhov
and to save from ruin if only one man, and to live without suffering if
only for one day.
The cutter arrived, and the overseer announced in a loud voice that
there would be no loading.
"Back!" he commanded. "Steady!"
They could hear the hoisting of the anchor chain on the steamer. A
strong piercing wind was blowing by now; somewhere on the steep cliff
overhead the trees were creaking. Most likely a storm was coming.
UPROOTED An Incident of My Travels
I WAS on my way back from evening service. The clock in the belfry of
the Svyatogorsky Monastery pealed out its soft melodious chimes by way
of prelude and then struck twelve. The great courtyard of the monastery
stretched out at the foot of the Holy Mountains on the banks of the
Donets, and, enclosed by the high hostel buildings as by a wall, seemed
now in the night, when it was lighted up only by dim lanterns, lights in
the windows, and the stars, a living hotch-potch full of movement,
sound, and the most original confusion. From end to end, so far as the
eye could see, it was all choked up with carts, old-fashioned coaches
and chaises, vans, tilt-carts, about which stood crowds of horses, dark
and white, and horned oxen, while people bustled about, and black long-
skirted lay brothers threaded their way in and out in all directions.
Shadows and streaks of light cast from the windows moved over the carts
and the heads of men and horses, and in the dense twilight this all
assumed the most monstrous capricious shapes: here the tilted shafts
stretched upwards to the sky, here eyes of fire appeared in the face of
a horse, there a lay brother grew a pair of black wings. . . . There was
the noise of talk, the snorting and munching of horses, the creaking of
carts, the whimpering of children. Fresh crowds kept walking in at the
gate and belated carts drove up.
The pines which were piled up on the overhanging mountain, one above
another, and leaned towards the roof of the hostel, gazed into the
courtyard as into a deep pit, and listened in wonder; in their dark
thicket the cuckoos and nightingales never ceased calling. . . . Looking
at the confusion, listening to the uproar, one fancied that in this
living hotch-potch no one understood anyone, that everyone was looking
for something and would not find it, and that this multitude of carts,
chaises and human beings could not ever succeed in getting off.
More than ten thousand people flocked to the Holy Mountains for the
festivals of St. John the Divine and St. Nikolay the wonder-worker. Not
only the hostel buildings, but even the bakehouse, the tailoring room,
the carpenter's shop, the carriage house, were filled to overflowing. .
. . Those who had arrived towards night clustered like flies in autumn,
by the walls, round the wells in the yard, or in the narrow passages of
the hostel, waiting to be shown a resting-place for the night. The lay
brothers, young and old, were in an incessant movement, with no rest or
hope of being relieved. By day or late at night they produced the same
impression of men hastening somewhere and agitated by something, yet, in
spite of their extreme exhaustion, their faces remained full of courage
and kindly welcome, their voices friendly, their movements rapid. . . .
For everyone who came they had to find a place to sleep, and to provide
food and drink; to those who were deaf, slow to understand, or profuse
in questions, they had to give long and wearisome explanations, to tell
them why there were no empty rooms, at what o'clock the service was to
be where holy bread was sold, and so on. They had to run, to carry, to
talk incessantly, but more than that, they had to be polite, too, to be
tactful, to try to arrange that the Greeks from Mariupol, accustomed to
live more comfortably than the Little Russians, should be put with other
Greeks, that some shopkeeper from Bahmut or Lisitchansk, dressed like a
lady, should not be offended by being put with peasants. There were
continual cries of: "Father, kindly give us some kvass! Kindly give us
some hay!" or "Father, may I drink water after confession?" And the lay
brother would have to give out kvass or hay or to answer: "Address
yourself to the priest, my good woman, we have not the authority to give
permission." Another question would follow, "Where is the priest then?"
and the lay brother would have to explain where was the priest's cell.
With all this bustling activity, he yet had to make time to go to
service in the church, to serve in the part devoted to the gentry, and
to give full answers to the mass of necessary and unnecessary questions
which pilgrims of the educated class are fond of showering about them.
Watching them during the course of twenty-four hours, I found it hard to
imagine when these black moving figures sat down and when they slept.
When, coming back from the evening service, I went to the hostel in
which a place had been assigned me, the monk in charge of the sleeping
quarters was standing in the doorway, and beside him, on the steps, was
a group of several men and women dressed like townsfolk.
"Sir," said the monk, stopping me, "will you be so good as to allow this
young man to pass the night in your room? If you would do us the favour!
There are so many people and no place left--it is really dreadful!"
And he indicated a short figure in a light overcoat and a straw hat. I
consented, and my chance companion followed me. Unlocking the little
padlock on my door, I was always, whether I wanted to or not, obliged to
look at the picture that hung on the doorpost on a level with my face.
This picture with the title, "A Meditation on Death," depicted a monk on
his knees, gazing at a coffin and at a skeleton laying in it. Behind the
man's back stood another skeleton, somewhat more solid and carrying a
scythe.
"There are no bones like that," said my companion, pointing to the place
in the skeleton where there ought to have been a pelvis. "Speaking
generally, you know, the spiritual fare provided for the people is not
of the first quality," he added, and heaved through his nose a long and
very melancholy sigh, meant to show me that I had to do with a man who
really knew something about spiritual fare.
While I was looking for the matches to light a candle he sighed once
more and said:
"When I was in Harkov I went several times to the anatomy theatre and
saw the bones there; I have even been in the mortuary. Am I not in your
way?"
My room was small and poky, with neither table nor chairs in it, but
quite filled up with a chest of drawers by the window, the stove and two
little wooden sofas which stood against the walls, facing one another,
leaving a narrow space to walk between them. Thin rusty-looking little
mattresses lay on the little sofas, as well as my belongings. There were
two sofas, so this room was evidently intended for two, and I pointed
out the fact to my companion.
"They will soon be ringing for mass, though," he said, "and I shan't
have to be in your way very long."
Still under the impression that he was in my way and feeling awkward, he
moved with a guilty step to his little sofa, sighed guiltily and sat
down. When the tallow candle with its dim, dilatory flame had left off
flickering and burned up sufficiently to make us both visible, I could
make out what he was like. He was a young man of two-and-twenty, with a
round and pleasing face, dark childlike eyes, dressed like a townsman in
grey cheap clothes, and as one could judge from his complexion and
narrow shoulders, not used to manual labour. He was of a very indefinite
type; one could take him neither for a student nor for a man in trade,
still less for a workman. But looking at his attractive face and
childlike friendly eyes, I was unwilling to believe he was one of those
vagabond impostors with whom every conventual establishment where they
give food and lodging is flooded, and who give themselves out as
divinity students, expelled for standing up for justice, or for church
singers who have lost their voice. . . . There was something
characteristic, typical, very familiar in his face, but what exactly, I
could not remember nor make out.
For a long time he sat silent, pondering. Probably because I had not
shown appreciation of his remarks about bones and the mortuary, he
thought that I was ill-humoured and displeased at his presence. Pulling
a sausage out of his pocket, he turned it about before his eyes and said
irresolutely:
"Excuse my troubling you, . . . have you a knife?"
I gave him a knife.
"The sausage is disgusting," he said, frowning and cutting himself off a
little bit. "In the shop here they sell you rubbish and fleece you
horribly. . . . I would offer you a piece, but you would scarcely care
to consume it. Will you have some?"
In his language, too, there was something typical that had a very great
deal in common with what was characteristic in his face, but what it was
exactly I still could not decide. To inspire confidence and to show that
I was not ill-humoured, I took some of the proffered sausage. It
certainly was horrible; one needed the teeth of a good house-dog to deal
with it. As we worked our jaws we got into conversation; we began
complaining to each other of the lengthiness of the service.
"The rule here approaches that of Mount Athos," I said; "but at Athos
the night services last ten hours, and on great feast-days --fourteen!
You should go there for prayers!"
"Yes," answered my companion, and he wagged his head, "I have been here
for three weeks. And you know, every day services, every day services.
On ordinary days at midnight they ring for matins, at five o'clock for
early mass, at nine o'clock for late mass. Sleep is utterly out of the
question. In the daytime there are hymns of praise, special prayers,
vespers. . . . And when I was preparing for the sacrament I was simply
dropping from exhaustion." He sighed and went on: "And it's awkward not
to go to church. . . . The monks give one a room, feed one, and, you
know, one is ashamed not to go. One wouldn't mind standing it for a day
or two, perhaps, but three weeks is too much--much too much! Are you here
for long?"
"I am going to-morrow evening."
"But I am staying another fortnight."
"But I thought it was not the rule to stay for so long here?" I said.
"Yes, that's true: if anyone stays too long, sponging on the monks, he
is asked to go. Judge for yourself, if the proletariat were allowed to
stay on here as long as they liked there would never be a room vacant,
and they would eat up the whole monastery. That's true. But the monks
make an exception for me, and I hope they won't turn me out for some
time. You know I am a convert."
"You mean?"
"I am a Jew baptized. . . . Only lately I have embraced orthodoxy."
Now I understood what I had before been utterly unable to understand
from his face: his thick lips, and his way of twitching up the right
corner of his mouth and his right eyebrow, when he was talking, and that
peculiar oily brilliance of his eyes which is only found in Jews. I
understood, too, his phraseology. . . . From further conversation I
learned that his name was Alexandr Ivanitch, and had in the past been
Isaac, that he was a native of the Mogilev province, and that he had
come to the Holy Mountains from Novotcherkassk, where he had adopted the
orthodox faith.
Having finished his sausage, Alexandr Ivanitch got up, and, raising his
right eyebrow, said his prayer before the ikon. The eyebrow remained up
when he sat down again on the little sofa and began giving me a brief
account of his long biography.
"From early childhood I cherished a love for learning," he began in a
tone which suggested he was not speaking of himself, but of some great