Short Stories by Chekhov
looking down in terror and curiosity. A minute later there were shrieks
and laughter again: they had to drive under a huge overhanging rock.
"I don't know why the devil I'm coming with you," said Laevsky. "How
stupid and vulgar it is! I want to go to the North, to run away, to
escape; but here I am, for some reason, going to this stupid picnic."
"But look, what a view!" said Samoylenko as the horses turned to the
left, and the valley of the Yellow River came into sight and the stream
itself gleamed in the sunlight, yellow, turbid, frantic.
"I see nothing fine in that, Sasha," answered Laevsky. "To be in
continual ecstasies over nature shows poverty of imagination. In
comparison with what my imagination can give me, all these streams and
rocks are trash, and nothing else."
The carriages now were by the banks of the stream. The high mountain
banks gradually grew closer, the valley shrank together and ended in a
gorge; the rocky mountain round which they were driving had been piled
together by nature out of huge rocks, pressing upon each other with such
terrible weight, that Samoylenko could not help gasping every time he
looked at them. The dark and beautiful mountain was cleft in places by
narrow fissures and gorges from which came a breath of dewy moisture and
mystery; through the gorges could be seen other mountains, brown, pink,
lilac, smoky, or bathed in vivid sunlight. From time to time as they
passed a gorge they caught the sound of water falling from the heights
and splashing on the stones.
"Ach, the damned mountains!" sighed Laevsky. "How sick I am of them!"
At the place where the Black River falls into the Yellow, and the water
black as ink stains the yellow and struggles with it, stood the Tatar
Kerbalay's duhan, with the Russian flag on the roof and with an
inscription written in chalk: "The Pleasant duhan." Near it was a little
garden, enclosed in a hurdle fence, with tables and chairs set out in
it, and in the midst of a thicket of wretched thornbushes stood a single
solitary cypress, dark and beautiful.
Kerbalay, a nimble little Tatar in a blue shirt and a white apron, was
standing in the road, and, holding his stomach, he bowed low to welcome
the carriages, and smiled, showing his glistening white teeth.
"Good-evening, Kerbalay," shouted Samoylenko. "We are driving on a
little further, and you take along the samovar and chairs! Look sharp!"
Kerbalay nodded his shaven head and muttered something, and only those
sitting in the last carriage could hear: "We've got trout, your
Excellency."
"Bring them, bring them!" said Von Koren.
Five hundred paces from the duhan the carriages stopped. Samoylenko
selected a small meadow round which there were scattered stones
convenient for sitting on, and a fallen tree blown down by the storm
with roots overgrown by moss and dry yellow needles. Here there was a
fragile wooden bridge over the stream, and just opposite on the other
bank there was a little barn for drying maize, standing on four low
piles, and looking like the hut on hen's legs in the fairy tale; a
little ladder sloped from its door.
The first impression in all was a feeling that they would never get out
of that place again. On all sides wherever they looked, the mountains
rose up and towered above them, and the shadows of evening were stealing
rapidly, rapidly from the duhan and dark cypress, making the narrow
winding valley of the Black River narrower and the mountains higher.
They could hear the river murmuring and the unceasing chirrup of the
grasshoppers.
"Enchanting!" said Marya Konstantinovna, heaving deep sighs of ecstasy.
"Children, look how fine! What peace!"
"Yes, it really is fine," assented Laevsky, who liked the view, and for
some reason felt sad as he looked at the sky and then at the blue smoke
rising from the chimney of the duhan. "Yes, it is fine," he repeated.
"Ivan Andreitch, describe this view," Marya Konstantinovna said
tearfully.
"Why?" asked Laevsky. "The impression is better than any description.
The wealth of sights and sounds which every one receives from nature by
direct impression is ranted about by authors in a hideous and
unrecognisable way."
"Really?" Von Koren asked coldly, choosing the biggest stone by the side
of the water, and trying to clamber up and sit upon it. "Really?" he
repeated, looking directly at Laevsky. "What of 'Romeo and Juliet'? Or,
for instance, Pushkin's 'Night in the Ukraine'? Nature ought to come and
bow down at their feet."
"Perhaps," said Laevsky, who was too lazy to think and oppose him.
"Though what is 'Romeo and Juliet' after all?" he added after a short
pause. "The beauty of poetry and holiness of love are simply the roses
under which they try to hide its rottenness. Romeo is just the same sort
of animal as all the rest of us."
"Whatever one talks to you about, you always bring it round to . . ."
Von Koren glanced round at Katya and broke off.
"What do I bring it round to?" asked Laevsky.
"One tells you, for instance, how beautiful a bunch of grapes is, and
you answer: 'Yes, but how ugly it is when it is chewed and digested in
one's stomach!' Why say that? It's not new, and . . . altogether it is a
queer habit."
Laevsky knew that Von Koren did not like him, and so was afraid of him,
and felt in his presence as though every one were constrained and some
one were standing behind his back. He made no answer and walked away,
feeling sorry he had come.
"Gentlemen, quick march for brushwood for the fire!" commanded
Samoylenko.
They all wandered off in different directions, and no one was left but
Kirilin, Atchmianov, and Nikodim Alexandritch. Kerbalay brought chairs,
spread a rug on the ground, and set a few bottles of wine.
The police captain, Kirilin, a tall, good-looking man, who in all
weathers wore his great-coat over his tunic, with his haughty
deportment, stately carriage, and thick, rather hoarse voice, looked
like a young provincial chief of police; his expression was mournful and
sleepy, as though he had just been waked against his will.
"What have you brought this for, you brute?" he asked Kerbalay,
deliberately articulating each word. "I ordered you to give us kvarel,
and what have you brought, you ugly Tatar? Eh? What?"
"We have plenty of wine of our own, Yegor Alekseitch," Nikodim
Alexandritch observed, timidly and politely.
"What? But I want us to have my wine, too; I'm taking part in the picnic
and I imagine I have full right to contribute my share. I im-ma-gine so!
Bring ten bottles of kvarel."
"Why so many?" asked Nikodim Alexandritch, in wonder, knowing Kirilin
had no money.
"Twenty bottles! Thirty!" shouted Kirilin.
"Never mind, let him," Atchmianov whispered to Nikodim Alexandritch;
"I'll pay."
Nadyezhda Fyodorovna was in a light-hearted, mischievous mood; she
wanted to skip and jump, to laugh, to shout, to tease, to flirt. In her
cheap cotton dress with blue pansies on it, in her red shoes and the
same straw hat, she seemed to herself, little, simple, light, ethereal
as a butterfly. She ran over the rickety bridge and looked for a minute
into the water, in order to feel giddy; then, shrieking and laughing,
ran to the other side to the drying-shed, and she fancied that all the
men were admiring her, even Kerbalay. When in the rapidly falling
darkness the trees began to melt into the mountains and the horses into
the carriages, and a light gleamed in the windows of the duhan, she
climbed up the mountain by the little path which zigzagged between
stones and thorn-bushes and sat on a stone. Down below, the camp-fire
was burning. Near the fire, with his sleeves tucked up, the deacon was
moving to and fro, and his long black shadow kept describing a circle
round it; he put on wood, and with a spoon tied to a long stick he
stirred the cauldron. Samoylenko, with a copper-red face, was fussing
round the fire just as though he were in his own kitchen, shouting
furiously:
"Where's the salt, gentlemen? I bet you've forgotten it. Why are you all
sitting about like lords while I do the work?"
Laevsky and Nikodim Alexandritch were sitting side by side on the fallen
tree looking pensively at the fire. Marya Konstantinovna, Katya, and
Kostya were taking the cups, saucers, and plates out of the baskets. Von
Koren, with his arms folded and one foot on a stone, was standing on a
bank at the very edge of the water, thinking about something. Patches of
red light from the fire moved together with the shadows over the ground
near the dark human figures, and quivered on the mountain, on the trees,
on the bridge, on the drying-shed; on the other side the steep, scooped-
out bank was all lighted up and glimmering in the stream, and the
rushing turbid water broke its reflection into little bits.
The deacon went for the fish which Kerbalay was cleaning and washing on
the bank, but he stood still half-way and looked about him.
"My God, how nice it is!" he thought. "People, rocks, the fire, the
twilight, a monstrous tree--nothing more, and yet how fine it is!"
On the further bank some unknown persons made their appearance near the
drying-shed. The flickering light and the smoke from the camp-fire
puffing in that direction made it impossible to get a full view of them
all at once, but glimpses were caught now of a shaggy hat and a grey
beard, now of a blue shirt, now of a figure, ragged from shoulder to
knee, with a dagger across the body; then a swarthy young face with
black eyebrows, as thick and bold as though they had been drawn in
charcoal. Five of them sat in a circle on the ground, and the other five
went into the drying-shed. One was standing at the door with his back to
the fire, and with his hands behind his back was telling something,
which must have been very interesting, for when Samoylenko threw on
twigs and the fire flared up, and scattered sparks and threw a glaring
light on the shed, two calm countenances with an expression on them of
deep attention could be seen, looking out of the door, while those who
were sitting in a circle turned round and began listening to the
speaker. Soon after, those sitting in a circle began softly singing
something slow and melodious, that sounded like Lenten Church music. . .
. Listening to them, the deacon imagined how it would be with him in ten
years' time, when he would come back from the expedition: he would be a
young priest and monk, an author with a name and a splendid past; he
would be consecrated an archimandrite, then a bishop; and he would serve
mass in the cathedral; in a golden mitre he would come out into the body
of the church with the ikon on his breast, and blessing the mass of the
people with the triple and the double candelabra, would proclaim: "Look
down from Heaven, O God, behold and visit this vineyard which Thy Hand
has planted," and the children with their angel voices would sing in
response: "Holy God. . ."
"Deacon, where is that fish?" he heard Samoylenko's voice.
As he went back to the fire, the deacon imagined the Church procession
going along a dusty road on a hot July day; in front the peasants
carrying the banners and the women and children the ikons, then the boy
choristers and the sacristan with his face tied up and a straw in his
hair, then in due order himself, the deacon, and behind him the priest
wearing his calotte and carrying a cross, and behind them, tramping in
the dust, a crowd of peasants--men, women, and children; in the crowd his
wife and the priest's wife with kerchiefs on their heads. The choristers
sing, the babies cry, the corncrakes call, the lark carols. . . . Then
they make a stand and sprinkle the herd with holy water. . . . They go
on again, and then kneeling pray for rain. Then lunch and talk. . . .
"And that's nice too . . ." thought the deacon. VII