Short Stories by Chekhov
"A woman . . ." smiled Susanna. "It's not my fault that God has cast me
into this mould, is it? I'm no more to blame for it than you are for
having moustaches. The violin is not responsible for the choice of its
case. I am very fond of myself, but when any one reminds me that I am a
woman, I begin to hate myself. Well, you can go away, and I'll dress.
Wait for me in the drawing-room."
The lieutenant went out, and the first thing he did was to draw a deep
breath, to get rid of the heavy scent of jasmine, which had begun to
irritate his throat and to make him feel giddy.
"What a strange woman!" he thought, looking about him. "She talks
fluently, but . . . far too much, and too freely. She must be neurotic."
The drawing-room, in which he was standing now, was richly furnished,
and had pretensions to luxury and style. There were dark bronze dishes
with patterns in relief, views of Nice and the Rhine on the tables, old-
fashioned sconces, Japanese statuettes, but all this striving after
luxury and style only emphasised the lack of taste which was glaringly
apparent in the gilt cornices, the gaudy wall-paper, the bright velvet
table-cloths, the common oleographs in heavy frames. The bad taste of
the general effect was the more complete from the lack of finish and the
overcrowding of the room, which gave one a feeling that something was
lacking, and that a great deal should have been thrown away. It was
evident that the furniture had not been bought all at once, but had been
picked up at auctions and other favourable opportunities.
Heaven knows what taste the lieutenant could boast of, but even he
noticed one characteristic peculiarity about the whole place, which no
luxury or style could efface--a complete absence of all trace of womanly,
careful hands, which, as we all know, give a warmth, poetry, and
snugness to the furnishing of a room. There was a chilliness about it
such as one finds in waiting-rooms at stations, in clubs, and foyers at
the theatres.
There was scarcely anything in the room definitely Jewish, except,
perhaps, a big picture of the meeting of Jacob and Esau. The lieutenant
looked round about him, and, shrugging his shoulders, thought of his
strange, new acquaintance, of her free-and-easy manners, and her way of
talking. But then the door opened, and in the doorway appeared the lady
herself, in a long black dress, so slim and tightly laced that her
figure looked as though it had been turned in a lathe. Now the
lieutenant saw not only the nose and eyes, but also a thin white face, a
head black and as curly as lamb's-wool. She did not attract him, though
she did not strike him as ugly. He had a prejudice against un-Russian
faces in general, and he considered, too, that the lady's white face,
the whiteness of which for some reason suggested the cloying scent of
jasmine, did not go well with her little black curls and thick eyebrows;
that her nose and ears were astoundingly white, as though they belonged
to a corpse, or had been moulded out of transparent wax. When she smiled
she showed pale gums as well as her teeth, and he did not like that
either.
"Anæmic debility . . ." he thought; "she's probably as nervous as a
turkey."
"Here I am! Come along!" she said, going on rapidly ahead of him and
pulling off the yellow leaves from the plants as she passed.
"I'll give you the money directly, and if you like I'll give you some
lunch. Two thousand three hundred roubles! After such a good stroke of
business you'll have an appetite for your lunch. Do you like my rooms?
The ladies about here declare that my rooms always smell of garlic. With
that culinary gibe their stock of wit is exhausted. I hasten to assure
you that I've no garlic even in the cellar. And one day when a doctor
came to see me who smelt of garlic, I asked him to take his hat and go
and spread his fragrance elsewhere. There is no smell of garlic here,
but the place does smell of drugs. My father lay paralyzed for a year
and a half, and the whole house smelt of medicine. A year and a half! I
was sorry to lose him, but I'm glad he's dead: he suffered so!"
She led the officer through two rooms similar to the drawing-room,
through a large reception hall, and came to a stop in her study, where
there was a lady's writing-table covered with little knick-knacks. On
the carpet near it several books lay strewn about, opened and folded
back. Through a small door leading from the study he saw a table laid
for lunch.
Still chatting, Susanna took out of her pocket a bunch of little keys
and unlocked an ingeniously made cupboard with a curved, sloping lid.
When the lid was raised the cupboard emitted a plaintive note which made
the lieutenant think of an ?+olian harp. Susanna picked out another key
and clicked another lock.
"I have underground passages here and secret doors," she said, taking
out a small morocco portfolio. "It's a funny cupboard, isn't it? And in
this portfolio I have a quarter of my fortune. Look how podgy it is! You
won't strangle me, will you?"
Susanna raised her eyes to the lieutenant and laughed good-naturedly.
The lieutenant laughed too.
"She's rather jolly," he thought, watching the keys flashing between her
fingers.
"Here it is," she said, picking out the key of the portfolio. "Now, Mr.
Creditor, trot out the IOU. What a silly thing money is really! How
paltry it is, and yet how women love it! I am a Jewess, you know, to the
marrow of my bones. I am passionately fond of Shmuls and Yankels, but
how I loathe that passion for gain in our Semitic blood. They hoard and
they don't know what they are hoarding for. One ought to live and enjoy
oneself, but they're afraid of spending an extra farthing. In that way I
am more like an hussar than a Shmul. I don't like money to be kept long
in one place. And altogether I fancy I'm not much like a Jewess. Does my
accent give me away much, eh?"
"What shall I say?" mumbled the lieutenant. "You speak good Russian, but
you do roll your r's."
Susanna laughed and put the little key in the lock of the portfolio. The
lieutenant took out of his pocket a little roll of IOUs and laid them
with a notebook on the table.
"Nothing betrays a Jew as much as his accent," Susanna went on, looking
gaily at the lieutenant. "However much he twists himself into a Russian
or a Frenchman, ask him to say 'feather' and he will say 'fedder' . . .
but I pronounce it correctly: 'Feather! feather! feather!'"
Both laughed.
"By Jove, she's very jolly!" thought Sokolsky.
Susanna put the portfolio on a chair, took a step towards the
lieutenant, and bringing her face close to his, went on gaily:
"Next to the Jews I love no people so much as the Russian and the
French. I did not do much at school and I know no history, but it seems
to me that the fate of the world lies in the hands of those two nations.
I lived a long time abroad. . . . I spent six months in Madrid. . . .
I've gazed my fill at the public, and the conclusion I've come to is
that there are no decent peoples except the Russian and the French. Take
the languages, for instance. . . . The German language is like the
neighing of horses; as for the English . . . you can't imagine anything
stupider. Fight--feet--foot! Italian is only pleasant when they speak it
slowly. If you listen to Italians gabbling, you get the effect of the
Jewish jargon. And the Poles? Mercy on us! There's no language so
disgusting! 'Nie pieprz, Pietrze, pieprzem wieprza bo mozeoz
przepieprzyé wieprza pieprzem.' That means: 'Don't pepper a sucking pig
with pepper, Pyotr, or perhaps you'll over-pepper the sucking pig with
pepper.' Ha, ha, ha!"
Susanna Moiseyevna rolled her eyes and broke into such a pleasant,
infectious laugh that the lieutenant, looking at her, went off into a
loud and merry peal of laughter. She took the visitor by the button, and
went on:
"You don't like Jews, of course . . . they've many faults, like all
nations. I don't dispute that. But are the Jews to blame for it? No,
it's not the Jews who are to blame, but the Jewish women! They are
narrow-minded, greedy; there's no sort of poetry about them, they're
dull. . . . You have never lived with a Jewess, so you don't know how
charming it is!" Susanna Moiseyevna pronounced the last words with
deliberate emphasis and with no eagerness or laughter. She paused as
though frightened at her own openness, and her face was suddenly
distorted in a strange, unaccountable way. Her eyes stared at the
lieutenant without blinking, her lips parted and showed clenched teeth.
Her whole face, her throat, and even her bosom, seemed quivering with a
spiteful, catlike expression. Still keeping her eyes fixed on her
visitor, she rapidly bent to one side, and swiftly, like a cat, snatched
something from the table. All this was the work of a few seconds.
Watching her movements, the lieutenant saw five fingers crumple up his
IOUs and caught a glimpse of the white rustling paper as it disappeared
in her clenched fist. Such an extraordinary transition from good-natured
laughter to crime so appalled him that he turned pale and stepped back.
. . .
And she, still keeping her frightened, searching eyes upon him, felt
along her hip with her clenched fist for her pocket. Her fist struggled
convulsively for the pocket, like a fish in the net, and could not find
the opening. In another moment the IOUs would have vanished in the
recesses of her feminine garments, but at that point the lieutenant
uttered a faint cry, and, moved more by instinct than reflection, seized
the Jewess by her arm above the clenched fist. Showing her teeth more
than ever, she struggled with all her might and pulled her hand away.
Then Sokolsky put his right arm firmly round her waist, and the other
round her chest and a struggle followed. Afraid of outraging her sex or
hurting her, he tried only to prevent her moving, and to get hold of the
fist with the IOUs; but she wriggled like an eel in his arms with her
supple, flexible body, struck him in the chest with her elbows, and
scratched him, so that he could not help touching her all over, and was
forced to hurt her and disregard her modesty.
"How unusual this is! How strange!" he thought, utterly amazed, hardly
able to believe his senses, and feeling rather sick from the scent of
jasmine.
In silence, breathing heavily, stumbling against the furniture, they
moved about the room. Susanna was carried away by the struggle. She
flushed, closed her eyes, and forgetting herself, once even pressed her
face against the face of the lieutenant, so that there was a sweetish
taste left on his lips. At last he caught hold of her clenched hand. . .
. Forcing it open, and not finding the papers in it, he let go the
Jewess. With flushed faces and dishevelled hair, they looked at one
another, breathing hard. The spiteful, catlike expression on the
Jewess's face was gradually replaced by a good-natured smile. She burst
out laughing, and turning on one foot, went towards the room where lunch
was ready. The lieutenant moved slowly after her. She sat down to the
table, and, still flushed and breathing hard, tossed off half a glass of
port.
"Listen"--the lieutenant broke the silence--"I hope you are joking?"
"Not a bit of it," she answered, thrusting a piece of bread into her
mouth.
"H'm! . . . How do you wish me to take all this?"
"As you choose. Sit down and have lunch!"
"But . . . it's dishonest!"
"Perhaps. But don't trouble to give me a sermon; I have my own way of
looking at things."
"Won't you give them back?"
"Of course not! If you were a poor unfortunate man, with nothing to eat,
then it would be a different matter. But--he wants to get married!"
"It's not my money, you know; it's my cousin's!"
"And what does your cousin want with money? To get fashionable clothes