Short Stories by Chekhov
four whole months--I was an under-officer at that time--something queer
happened, quite in the style of a novel. Just on the banks of that
river, you know, where our division was encamped, a wretched prince whom
we had killed not long before was buried. And at night, you know, the
princess used to come to his grave and weep. She would wail and wail,
and moan and moan, and make us so depressed we couldn't sleep, and
that's the fact. We couldn't sleep one night, we couldn't sleep a
second; well, we got sick of it. And from a common-sense point of view
you really can't go without your sleep for the devil knows what (excuse
the expression). We took that princess and gave her a good thrashing,
and she gave up coming. There's an instance for you. Nowadays, of
course, there is not the same class of people, and they are not given to
thrashing and they live in cleaner style, and there is more learning,
but, you know, the soul is just the same: there is no change. Now, look
here, there's a landowner living here among us; he has mines, you know;
all sorts of tramps without passports who don't know where to go work
for him. On Saturdays he has to settle up with the workmen, but he
doesn't care to pay them, you know, he grudges the money. So he's got
hold of a foreman who is a tramp too, though he does wear a hat. 'Don't
you pay them anything,' he says, 'not a kopeck; they'll beat you, and
let them beat you,' says he, 'but you put up with it, and I'll pay you
ten roubles every Saturday for it.' So on the Saturday evening the
workmen come to settle up in the usual way; the foreman says to them:
'Nothing!' Well, word for word, as the master said, they begin swearing
and using their fists. . . . They beat him and they kick him . . . you
know, they are a set of men brutalized by hunger--they beat him till he
is senseless, and then they go each on his way. The master gives orders
for cold water to be poured on the foreman, then flings ten roubles in
his face. And he takes it and is pleased too, for indeed he'd be ready
to be hanged for three roubles, let alone ten. Yes . . . and on Monday a
new gang of workmen arrive; they work, for they have nowhere to go . . .
. On Saturday it is the same story over again."
The visitor turned over on the other side with his face to the back of
the sofa and muttered something.
"And here's another instance," Zhmuhin went on. "We had the Siberian
plague here, you know--the cattle die off like flies, I can tell you--and
the veterinary surgeons came here, and strict orders were given that the
dead cattle were to be buried at a distance deep in the earth, that lime
was to be thrown over them, and so on, you know, on scientific
principles. My horse died too. I buried it with every precaution, and
threw over three hundredweight of lime over it. And what do you think?
My fine fellows--my precious sons, I mean--dug it up, skinned it, and sold
the hide for three roubles; there's an instance for you. So people have
grown no better, and however you feed a wolf he will always look towards
the forest; there it is. It gives one something to think about, eh? How
do you look at it?"
On one side a flash of lightning gleamed through a chink in the window-
blinds. There was the stifling feeling of a storm coming, the gnats were
biting, and Zhmuhin, as he lay in his bedroom meditating, sighed and
groaned and said to himself: "Yes, to be sure ----" and there was no
possibility of getting to sleep. Somewhere far, far away there was a
growl of thunder.
"Are you asleep?"
"No," answered the visitor.
Zhmuhin got up, and thudding with his heels walked through the parlour
and the entry to the kitchen to get a drink of water.
"The worst thing in the world, you know, is stupidity," he said a little
later, coming back with a dipper. "My Lyubov Osipovna is on her knees
saying her prayers. She prays every night, you know, and bows down to
the ground, first that her children may be sent to school; she is afraid
her boys will go into the army as simple Cossacks, and that they will be
whacked across their backs with sabres. But for teaching one must have
money, and where is one to get it? You may break the floor beating your
head against it, but if you haven't got it you haven't. And the other
reason she prays is because, you know, every woman imagines there is no
one in the world as unhappy as she is. I am a plain-spoken man, and I
don't want to conceal anything from you. She comes of a poor family, a
village priest's daughter. I married her when she was seventeen, and
they accepted my offer chiefly because they hadn't enough to eat; it was
nothing but poverty and misery, while I have anyway land, you see--a
farm--and after all I am an officer; it was a step up for her to marry
me, you know. On the very first day when she was married she cried, and
she has been crying ever since, all these twenty years; she has got a
watery eye. And she's always sitting and thinking, and what do you
suppose she is thinking about? What can a woman think about? Why,
nothing. I must own I don't consider a woman a human being."
The visitor got up abruptly and sat on the bed.
"Excuse me, I feel stifled," he said; "I will go outside."
Zhmuhin, still talking about women, drew the bolt in the entry and they
both went out. A full moon was floating in the sky just over the yard,
and in the moonlight the house and barn looked whiter than by day; and
on the grass brilliant streaks of moonlight, white too, stretched
between the black shadows. Far away on the right could be seen the
steppe, above it the stars were softly glowing--and it was all
mysterious, infinitely far away, as though one were gazing into a deep
abyss; while on the left heavy storm-clouds, black as soot, were piling
up one upon another above the steppe; their edges were lighted up by the
moon, and it looked as though there were mountains there with white snow
on their peaks, dark forests, the sea. There was a flash of lightning, a
faint rumble of thunder, and it seemed as though a battle were being
fought in the mountains.
Quite close to the house a little night-owl screeched monotonously:
"Asleep! asleep!"
"What time is it now?" asked the visitor.
"Just after one."
"How long it is still to dawn!"
They went back to the house and lay down again. It was time to sleep,
and one can usually sleep so splendidly before rain; but the old man had
a hankering after serious, weighty thoughts; he wanted not simply to
think but to meditate, and he meditated how good it would be, as death
was near at hand, for the sake of his soul to give up the idleness which
so imperceptibly swallowed up day after day, year after year, leaving no
trace; to think out for himself some great exploit--for instance, to walk
on foot far, far away, or to give up meat like this young man. And again
he pictured to himself the time when animals would not be killed,
pictured it clearly and distinctly as though he were living through that
time himself; but suddenly it was all in a tangle again in his head and
all was muddled.
The thunderstorm had passed over, but from the edges of the storm-clouds
came rain softly pattering on the roof. Zhmuhin got up, stretching and
groaning with old age, and looked into the parlour. Noticing that his
visitor was not asleep, he said:
"When we were in the Caucasus, you know, there was a colonel there who
was a vegetarian, too; he didn't eat meat, never went shooting, and
would not let his servants catch fish. Of course, I understand that
every animal ought to live in freedom and enjoy its life; only I don't
understand how a pig can go about where it likes without being looked
after. . . ."
The visitor got up and sat down. His pale, haggard face expressed
weariness and vexation; it was evident that he was exhausted, and only
his gentleness and the delicacy of his soul prevented him from
expressing his vexation in words.
"It's getting light," he said mildly. "Please have the horse brought
round for me."
"Why so? Wait a little and the rain will be over."
"No, I entreat you," said the visitor in horror, with a supplicating
voice; "it is essential for me to go at once."
And he began hurriedly dressing.
By the time the horse was harnessed the sun was rising. It had just left
off raining, the clouds were racing swiftly by, and the patches of blue
were growing bigger and bigger in the sky. The first rays of the sun
were timidly reflected below in the big puddles. The visitor walked
through the entry with his portfolio to get into the trap, and at that
moment Zhmuhin's wife, pale, and it seemed paler than the day before,
with tear-stained eyes, looked at him intently without blinking, with
the naïve expression of a little girl, and it was evident from her
dejected face that she was envying him his freedom--oh, with what joy she
would have gone away from there!--and she wanted to say something to him,
most likely to ask advice about her children. And what a pitiable figure
she was! This was not a wife, not the head of a house, not even a
servant, but more like a dependent, a poor relation not wanted by
anyone, a nonentity . . . . Her husband, fussing about, talking
unceasingly, was seeing his visitor off, continually running in front of
him, while she huddled up to the wall with a timid, guilty air, waiting
for a convenient minute to speak.
"Please come again another time," the old man kept repeating
incessantly; "what we have we are glad to offer, you know."
The visitor hurriedly got into the trap, evidently with relief, as
though he were afraid every minute that they would detain him. The trap
lurched about as it had the day before, squeaked, and furiously rattled
the pail that was tied on at the back. He glanced round at Zhmuhin with
a peculiar expression; it looked as though he wanted to call him a
Petchenyeg, as the surveyor had once done, or some such name, but his
gentleness got the upper hand. He controlled himself and said nothing.
But in the gateway he suddenly could not restrain himself; he got up and
shouted loudly and angrily:
"You have bored me to death."
And he disappeared through the gate.
Near the barn Zhmuhin's sons were standing; the elder held a gun, while
the younger had in his hands a grey cockerel with a bright red comb. The
younger flung up the cockerel with all his might; the bird flew upwards
higher than the house and turned over in the air like a pigeon. The
elder boy fired and the cockerel fell like a stone.
The old man, overcome with confusion, not knowing how to explain the
visitor's strange, unexpected shout, went slowly back into the house.
And sitting down at the table he spent a long while meditating on the
intellectual tendencies of the day, on the universal immorality, on the
telegraph, on the telephone, on velocipedes, on how unnecessary it all
was; little by little he regained his composure, then slowly had a meal,
drank five glasses of tea, and lay down for a nap.
A DEAD BODY
A STILL August night. A mist is rising slowly from the fields and
casting an opaque veil over everything within eyesight. Lighted up by
the moon, the mist gives the impression at one moment of a calm,
boundless sea, at the next of an immense white wall. The air is damp and
chilly. Morning is still far off. A step from the bye-road which runs
along the edge of the forest a little fire is gleaming. A dead body,
covered from head to foot with new white linen, is lying under a young
oak-tree. A wooden ikon is lying on its breast. Beside the corpse almost
on the road sits the "watch"--two peasants performing one of the most
disagreeable and uninviting of peasants' duties. One, a tall young
fellow with a scarcely perceptible moustache and thick black eyebrows,