Short Stories by Chekhov
horse for the day. . . ."
Kryukov looked searchingly at him and continued his writing with a
frown.
"You will, then?" asked the lieutenant.
Kryukov looked at him again, then deliberately drew out a drawer in the
table, and taking out a thick roll of notes, gave it to his cousin.
"Here's five thousand . . ." he said. "Though it's not my money, yet,
God bless you, it's all the same. I advise you to send for post-horses
at once and go away. Yes, really!"
The lieutenant in his turn looked searchingly at Kryukov and laughed.
"You've guessed right, Alyosha," he said, reddening. "It was to her I
meant to ride. Yesterday evening when the washerwoman gave me that
damned tunic, the one I was wearing then, and it smelt of jasmine, why .
. . I felt I must go!"
"You must go away."
"Yes, certainly. And my furlough's just over. I really will go to-day!
Yes, by Jove! However long one stays, one has to go in the end. . . .
I'm going!"
The post-horses were brought after dinner the same day; the lieutenant
said good-bye to the Kryukovs and set off, followed by their good
wishes.
Another week passed. It was a dull but hot and heavy day. From early
morning Kryukov walked aimlessly about the house, looking out of window,
or turning over the leaves of albums, though he was sick of the sight of
them already. When he came across his wife or children, he began
grumbling crossly. It seemed to him, for some reason that day, that his
children's manners were revolting, that his wife did not know how to
look after the servants, that their expenditure was quite
disproportionate to their income. All this meant that "the master" was
out of humour.
After dinner, Kryukov, feeling dissatisfied with the soup and the roast
meat he had eaten, ordered out his racing droshky. He drove slowly out
of the courtyard, drove at a walking pace for a quarter of a mile, and
stopped.
"Shall I . . . drive to her . . . that devil?" he thought, looking at
the leaden sky.
And Kryukov positively laughed, as though it were the first time that
day he had asked himself that question. At once the load of boredom was
lifted from his heart, and there rose a gleam of pleasure in his lazy
eyes. He lashed the horse. . . .
All the way his imagination was picturing how surprised the Jewess would
be to see him, how he would laugh and chat, and come home feeling
refreshed. . . .
"Once a month one needs something to brighten one up . . . something out
of the common round," he thought, "something that would give the
stagnant organism a good shaking up, a reaction . . . whether it's a
drinking bout, or . . . Susanna. One can't get on without it."
It was getting dark when he drove into the yard of the vodka distillery.
From the open windows of the owner's house came sounds of laughter and
singing:
"'Brighter than lightning, more burning than flame. . . .'"
sang a powerful, mellow, bass voice.
"Aha! she has visitors," thought Kryukov.
And he was annoyed that she had visitors.
"Shall I go back?" he thought with his hand on the bell, but he rang all
the same, and went up the familiar staircase. From the entry he glanced
into the reception hall. There were about five men there--all landowners
and officials of his acquaintance; one, a tall, thin gentleman, was
sitting at the piano, singing, and striking the keys with his long, thin
fingers. The others were listening and grinning with enjoyment. Kryukov
looked himself up and down in the looking-glass, and was about to go
into the hall, when Susanna Moiseyevna herself darted into the entry, in
high spirits and wearing the same black dress. . . . Seeing Kryukov, she
was petrified for an instant, then she uttered a little scream and
beamed with delight.
"Is it you?" she said, clutching his hand. "What a surprise!"
"Here she is!" smiled Kryukov, putting his arm round her waist. "Well!
Does the destiny of Europe still lie in the hands of the French and the
Russians?"
"I'm so glad," laughed the Jewess, cautiously removing his arm. "Come,
go into the hall; they're all friends there. . . . I'll go and tell them
to bring you some tea. Your name's Alexey, isn't it? Well, go in, I'll
come directly. . . ."
She blew him a kiss and ran out of the entry, leaving behind her the
same sickly smell of jasmine. Kryukov raised his head and walked into
the hall. He was on terms of friendly intimacy with all the men in the
room, but scarcely nodded to them; they, too, scarcely responded, as
though the places in which they met were not quite decent, and as though
they were in tacit agreement with one another that it was more suitable
for them not to recognise one another.
From the hall Kryukov walked into the drawing-room, and from it into a
second drawing-room. On the way he met three or four other guests, also
men whom he knew, though they barely recognised him. Their faces were
flushed with drink and merriment. Alexey Ivanovitch glanced furtively at
them and marvelled that these men, respectable heads of families, who
had known sorrow and privation, could demean themselves to such pitiful,
cheap gaiety! He shrugged his shoulders, smiled, and walked on.
"There are places," he reflected, "where a sober man feels sick, and a
drunken man rejoices. I remember I never could go to the operetta or the
gipsies when I was sober: wine makes a man more good-natured and
reconciles him with vice. . . ."
Suddenly he stood still, petrified, and caught hold of the door-post
with both hands. At the writing-table in Susanna's study was sitting
Lieutenant Alexandr Grigoryevitch. He was discussing something in an
undertone with a fat, flabby-looking Jew, and seeing his cousin, flushed
crimson and looked down at an album.
The sense of decency was stirred in Kryukov and the blood rushed to his
head. Overwhelmed with amazement, shame, and anger, he walked up to the
table without a word. Sokolsky's head sank lower than ever. His face
worked with an expression of agonising shame.
"Ah, it's you, Alyosha!" he articulated, making a desperate effort to
raise his eyes and to smile. "I called here to say good-bye, and, as you
see. . . . But to-morrow I am certainly going."
"What can I say to him? What?" thought Alexey Ivanovitch. "How can I
judge him since I'm here myself?"
And clearing his throat without uttering a word, he went out slowly.
"'Call her not heavenly, and leave her on earth. . . .'"
The bass was singing in the hall. A little while after, Kryukov's racing
droshky was bumping along the dusty road.
NEIGHBOURS
PYOTR MIHALITCH IVASHIN was very much out of humour: his sister, a young
girl, had gone away to live with Vlassitch, a married man. To shake off
the despondency and depression which pursued him at home and in the
fields, he called to his aid his sense of justice, his genuine and noble
ideas--he had always defended free-love! --but this was of no avail, and
he always came back to the same conclusion as their foolish old nurse,
that his sister had acted wrongly and that Vlassitch had abducted his
sister. And that was distressing.
His mother did not leave her room all day long; the old nurse kept
sighing and speaking in whispers; his aunt had been on the point of
taking her departure every day, and her trunks were continually being
brought down to the hall and carried up again to her room. In the house,
in the yard, and in the garden it was as still as though there were some
one dead in the house. His aunt, the servants, and even the peasants, so
it seemed to Pyotr Mihalitch, looked at him enigmatically and with
perplexity, as though they wanted to say "Your sister has been seduced;
why are you doing nothing?" And he reproached himself for inactivity,
though he did not know precisely what action he ought to have taken.
So passed six days. On the seventh--it was Sunday afternoon--a messenger
on horseback brought a letter. The address was in a familiar feminine
handwriting: "Her Excy. Anna Nikolaevna Ivashin." Pyotr Mihalitch
fancied that there was something defiant, provocative, in the
handwriting and in the abbreviation "Excy." And advanced ideas in women
are obstinate, ruthless, cruel.
"She'd rather die than make any concession to her unhappy mother, or beg
her forgiveness," thought Pyotr Mihalitch, as he went to his mother with
the letter.
His mother was lying on her bed, dressed. Seeing her son, she rose
impulsively, and straightening her grey hair, which had fallen from
under her cap, asked quickly:
"What is it? What is it?"
"This has come . . ." said her son, giving her the letter.
Zina's name, and even the pronoun "she" was not uttered in the house.
Zina was spoken of impersonally: "this has come," "Gone away," and so
on. . . . The mother recognised her daughter's handwriting, and her face
grew ugly and unpleasant, and her grey hair escaped again from her cap.
"No!" she said, with a motion of her hands, as though the letter
scorched her fingers. "No, no, never! Nothing would induce me!"
The mother broke into hysterical sobs of grief and shame; she evidently
longed to read the letter, but her pride prevented her. Pyotr Mihalitch
realised that he ought to open the letter himself and read it aloud, but
he was overcome by anger such as he had never felt before; he ran out
into the yard and shouted to the messenger:
"Say there will be no answer! There will be no answer! Tell them that,
you beast!"
And he tore up the letter; then tears came into his eyes, and feeling
that he was cruel, miserable, and to blame, he went out into the fields.
He was only twenty-seven, but he was already stout. He dressed like an
old man in loose, roomy clothes, and suffered from asthma. He already
seemed to be developing the characteristics of an elderly country
bachelor. He never fell in love, never thought of marriage, and loved no
one but his mother, his sister, his old nurse, and the gardener,
Vassilitch. He was fond of good fare, of his nap after dinner, and of
talking about politics and exalted subjects. He had in his day taken his
degree at the university, but he now looked upon his studies as though
in them he had discharged a duty incumbent upon young men between the
ages of eighteen and twenty-five; at any rate, the ideas which now
strayed every day through his mind had nothing in common with the
university or the subjects he had studied there.
In the fields it was hot and still, as though rain were coming. It was
steaming in the wood, and there was a heavy fragrant scent from the
pines and rotting leaves. Pyotr Mihalitch stopped several times and
wiped his wet brow. He looked at his winter corn and his spring oats,
walked round the clover-field, and twice drove away a partridge with its
chicks which had strayed in from the wood. And all the while he was
thinking that this insufferable state of things could not go on for
ever, and that he must end it one way or another. End it stupidly,
madly, but he must end it.
"But how? What can I do?" he asked himself, and looked imploringly at
the sky and at the trees, as though begging for their help.
But the sky and the trees were mute. His noble ideas were no help, and
his common sense whispered that the agonising question could have no
solution but a stupid one, and that to-day's scene with the messenger
was not the last one of its kind. It was terrible to think what was in
store for him!
As he returned home the sun was setting. By now it seemed to him that
the problem was incapable of solution. He could not accept the
accomplished fact, and he could not refuse to accept it, and there was
no intermediate course. When, taking off his hat and fanning himself
with his handkerchief, he was walking along the road, and had only
another mile and a half to go before he would reach home, he heard bells