Short Stories by Chekhov
Nellie got him up and dragged him to the hall. Then there was an
agonizing to-do over his goloshes, his overcoat. . . . His cap was lost.
. . . But at last Nellie was in the carriage with the doctor. Now they
had only to drive thirty miles and her husband would have a doctor's
help. The earth was wrapped in darkness. One could not see one's hand
before one's face. . . . A cold winter wind was blowing. There were
frozen lumps under their wheels. The coachman was continually stopping
and wondering which road to take.
Nellie and the doctor sat silent all the way. It was fearfully jolting,
but they felt neither the cold nor the jolts.
"Get on, get on!" Nellie implored the driver.
At five in the morning the exhausted horses drove into the yard. Nellie
saw the familiar gates, the well with the crane, the long row of stables
and barns. At last she was at home.
"Wait a moment, I will be back directly," she said to Stepan Lukitch,
making him sit down on the sofa in the dining-room. "Sit still and wait
a little, and I'll see how he is going on."
On her return from her husband, Nellie found the doctor lying down. He
was lying on the sofa and muttering.
"Doctor, please! . . . doctor!"
"Eh? Ask Domna!" muttered Stepan Lukitch.
"What?"
"They said at the meeting . . . Vlassov said . . . Who? . . . what?"
And to her horror Nellie saw that the doctor was as delirious as her
husband. What was to be done?
"I must go for the Zemstvo doctor," she decided.
Then again there followed darkness, a cutting cold wind, lumps of frozen
earth. She was suffering in body and in soul, and delusive nature has no
arts, no deceptions to compensate these sufferings. . . .
Then she saw against the grey background how her husband every spring
was in straits for money to pay the interest for the mortgage to the
bank. He could not sleep, she could not sleep, and both racked their
brains till their heads ached, thinking how to avoid being visited by
the clerk of the Court.
She saw her children: the everlasting apprehension of colds, scarlet
fever, diphtheria, bad marks at school, separation. Out of a brood of
five or six one was sure to die.
The grey background was not untouched by death. That might well be. A
husband and wife cannot die simultaneously. Whatever happened one must
bury the other. And Nellie saw her husband dying. This terrible event
presented itself to her in every detail. She saw the coffin, the
candles, the deacon, and even the footmarks in the hall made by the
undertaker.
"Why is it, what is it for?" she asked, looking blankly at her husband's
face.
And all the previous life with her husband seemed to her a stupid
prelude to this.
Something fell from Nellie's hand and knocked on the floor. She started,
jumped up, and opened her eyes wide. One looking-glass she saw lying at
her feet. The other was standing as before on the table.
She looked into the looking-glass and saw a pale, tear-stained face.
There was no grey background now.
"I must have fallen asleep," she thought with a sigh of relief.
OLD AGE
UZELKOV, an architect with the rank of civil councillor, arrived in his
native town, to which he had been invited to restore the church in the
cemetery. He had been born in the town, had been at school, had grown up
and married in it. But when he got out of the train he scarcely
recognized it. Everything was changed. . . . Eighteen years ago when he
had moved to Petersburg the street-boys used to catch marmots, for
instance, on the spot where now the station was standing; now when one
drove into the chief street, a hotel of four storeys stood facing one;
in old days there was an ugly grey fence just there; but nothing--neither
fences nor houses--had changed as much as the people. From his enquiries
of the hotel waiter Uzelkov learned that more than half of the people he
remembered were dead, reduced to poverty, forgotten.
"And do you remember Uzelkov?" he asked the old waiter about himself.
"Uzelkov the architect who divorced his wife? He used to have a house in
Svirebeyevsky Street . . . you must remember."
"I don't remember, sir."
"How is it you don't remember? The case made a lot of noise, even the
cabmen all knew about it. Think, now! Shapkin the attorney managed my
divorce for me, the rascal . . . the notorious cardsharper, the fellow
who got a thrashing at the club. . . ."
"Ivan Nikolaitch?"
"Yes, yes. . . . Well, is he alive? Is he dead?"
"Alive, sir, thank God. He is a notary now and has an office. He is very
well off. He has two houses in Kirpitchny Street. . . . His daughter was
married the other day."
Uzelkov paced up and down the room, thought a bit, and in his boredom
made up his mind to go and see Shapkin at his office. When he walked out
of the hotel and sauntered slowly towards Kirpitchny Street it was
midday. He found Shapkin at his office and scarcely recognized him. From
the once well-made, adroit attorney with a mobile, insolent, and always
drunken face Shapkin had changed into a modest, grey-headed, decrepit
old man.
"You don't recognize me, you have forgotten me," began Uzelkov. "I am
your old client, Uzelkov."
"Uzelkov, what Uzelkov? Ah!" Shapkin remembered, recognized, and was
struck all of a heap. There followed a shower of exclamations,
questions, recollections.
"This is a surprise! This is unexpected!" cackled Shapkin. "What can I
offer you? Do you care for champagne? Perhaps you would like oysters? My
dear fellow, I have had so much from you in my time that I can't offer
you anything equal to the occasion. . . ."
"Please don't put yourself out . . ." said Uzelkov. "I have no time to
spare. I must go at once to the cemetery and examine the church; I have
undertaken the restoration of it."
"That's capital! We'll have a snack and a drink and drive together. I
have capital horses. I'll take you there and introduce you to the
church-warden; I will arrange it all. . . . But why is it, my angel, you
seem to be afraid of me and hold me at arm's length? Sit a little
nearer! There is no need for you to be afraid of me nowadays. He-he! . .
. At one time, it is true, I was a cunning blade, a dog of a fellow . .
. no one dared approach me; but now I am stiller than water and humbler
than the grass. I have grown old, I am a family man, I have children.
It's time I was dead."
The friends had lunch, had a drink, and with a pair of horses drove out
of the town to the cemetery.
"Yes, those were times!" Shapkin recalled as he sat in the sledge. "When
you remember them you simply can't believe in them. Do you remember how
you divorced your wife? It's nearly twenty years ago, and I dare say you
have forgotten it all; but I remember it as though I'd divorced you
yesterday. Good Lord, what a lot of worry I had over it! I was a sharp
fellow, tricky and cunning, a desperate character. . . . Sometimes I was
burning to tackle some ticklish business, especially if the fee were a
good one, as, for instance, in your case. What did you pay me then? Five
or six thousand! That was worth taking trouble for, wasn't it? You went
off to Petersburg and left the whole thing in my hands to do the best I
could, and, though Sofya Mihailovna, your wife, came only of a merchant
family, she was proud and dignified. To bribe her to take the guilt on
herself was difficult, awfully difficult! I would go to negotiate with
her, and as soon as she saw me she called to her maid: 'Masha, didn't I
tell you not to admit that scoundrel?' Well, I tried one thing and
another. . . . I wrote her letters and contrived to meet her
accidentally--it was no use! I had to act through a third person. I had a
lot of trouble with her for a long time, and she only gave in when you
agreed to give her ten thousand. . . . She couldn't resist ten thousand,
she couldn't hold out. . . . She cried, she spat in my face, but she
consented, she took the guilt on herself!"
"I thought it was fifteen thousand she had from me, not ten," said
Uzelkov.
"Yes, yes . . . fifteen--I made a mistake," said Shapkin in confusion.
"It's all over and done with, though, it's no use concealing it. I gave
her ten and the other five I collared for myself. I deceived you both. .
. . It's all over and done with, it's no use to be ashamed. And indeed,
judge for yourself, Boris Petrovitch, weren't you the very person for me
to get money out of? . . . You were a wealthy man and had everything you
wanted. . . . Your marriage was an idle whim, and so was your divorce.
You were making a lot of money. . . . I remember you made a scoop of
twenty thousand over one contract. Whom should I have fleeced if not
you? And I must own I envied you. If you grabbed anything they took off
their caps to you, while they would thrash me for a rouble and slap me
in the face at the club. . . . But there, why recall it? It is high time
to forget it."
"Tell me, please, how did Sofya Mihailovna get on afterwards?"
"With her ten thousand? Very badly. God knows what it was--she lost her
head, perhaps, or maybe her pride and her conscience tormented her at
having sold her honour, or perhaps she loved you; but, do you know, she
took to drink. . . . As soon as she got her money she was off driving
about with officers. It was drunkenness, dissipation, debauchery. . . .
When she went to a restaurant with officers she was not content with
port or anything light, she must have strong brandy, fiery stuff to
stupefy her."
"Yes, she was eccentric. . . . I had a lot to put up with from her . . .
sometimes she would take offence at something and begin being
hysterical. . . . And what happened afterwards?"
"One week passed and then another. . . . I was sitting at home, writing
something. All at once the door opened and she walked in . . . drunk.
'Take back your cursed money,' she said, and flung a roll of notes in my
face. . . . So she could not keep it up. I picked up the notes and
counted them. It was five hundred short of the ten thousand, so she had
only managed to get through five hundred."
"Where did you put the money?"
"It's all ancient history . . . there's no reason to conceal it now. . .
. In my pocket, of course. Why do you look at me like that? Wait a bit
for what will come later. . . . It's a regular novel, a pathological
study. A couple of months later I was going home one night in a nasty
drunken condition. . . . I lighted a candle, and lo and behold! Sofya
Mihailovna was sitting on my sofa, and she was drunk, too, and in a
frantic state--as wild as though she had run out of Bedlam. 'Give me back
my money,' she said, 'I have changed my mind; if I must go to ruin I
won't do it by halves, I'll have my fling! Be quick, you scoundrel, give
me my money!' A disgraceful scene!"
"And you . . . gave it her?"
"I gave her, I remember, ten roubles."
"Oh! How could you?" cried Uzelkov, frowning. "If you couldn't or
wouldn't have given it her, you might have written to me. . . . And I
didn't know! I didn't know!"
"My dear fellow, what use would it have been for me to write,
considering that she wrote to you herself when she was lying in the
hospital afterwards?"
"Yes, but I was so taken up then with my second marriage. I was in such
a whirl that I had no thoughts to spare for letters. . . . But you were
an outsider, you had no antipathy for Sofya. . . why didn't you give her
a helping hand? . . ."
"You can't judge by the standards of to-day, Boris Petrovitch; that's
how we look at it now, but at the time we thought very differently. . .
. Now maybe I'd give her a thousand roubles, but then even that ten-
rouble note I did not give her for nothing. It was a bad business! . . .
We must forget it. . . . But here we are. . . ."
The sledge stopped at the cemetery gates. Uzelkov and Shapkin got out of