Short Stories by Chekhov
anything worse. What further harm can you do a fish which has been
caught and fried and served up with sauce?"
A poplar covered with hoar frost looked in the bluish darkness like a
giant wrapt in a shroud. It looked at me sullenly and dejectedly, as
though like me it realized its loneliness. I stood a long while looking
at it.
"My youth is thrown away for nothing, like a useless cigarette end," I
went on musing. "My parents died when I was a little child; I was
expelled from the high school, I was born of a noble family, but I have
received neither education nor breeding, and I have no more knowledge
than the humblest mechanic. I have no refuge, no relations, no friends,
no work I like. I am not fitted for anything, and in the prime of my
powers I am good for nothing but to be stuffed into this little station;
I have known nothing but trouble and failure all my life. What can
happen worse?"
Red lights came into sight in the distance. A train was moving towards
me. The slumbering steppe listened to the sound of it. My thoughts were
so bitter that it seemed to me that I was thinking aloud and that the
moan of the telegraph wire and the rumble of the train were expressing
my thoughts.
"What can happen worse? The loss of my wife?" I wondered. "Even that is
not terrible. It's no good hiding it from my conscience: I don't love my
wife. I married her when I was only a wretched boy; now I am young and
vigorous, and she has gone off and grown older and sillier, stuffed from
her head to her heels with conventional ideas. What charm is there in
her maudlin love, in her hollow chest, in her lusterless eyes? I put up
with her, but I don't love her. What can happen? My youth is being
wasted, as the saying is, for a pinch of snuff. Women flit before my
eyes only in the carriage windows, like falling stars. Love I never had
and have not. My manhood, my courage, my power of feeling are going to
ruin.... Everything is being thrown away like dirt, and all my wealth
here in the steppe is not worth a farthing."
The train rushed past me with a roar and indifferently cast the glow of
its red lights upon me. I saw it stop by the green lights of the
station, stop for a minute and rumble off again. After walking a mile
and a half I went back. Melancholy thoughts haunted me still. Painful as
it was to me, yet I remember I tried as it were to make my thoughts
still gloomier and more melancholy. You know people who are vain and not
very clever have moments when the consciousness that they are miserable
affords them positive satisfaction, and they even coquet with their
misery for their own entertainment. There was a great deal of truth in
what I thought, but there was also a great deal that was absurd and
conceited, and there was something boyishly defiant in my question:
"What could happen worse?"
"And what is there to happen?" I asked myself. "I think I have endured
everything. I've been ill, I've lost money, I get reprimanded by my
superiors every day, and I go hungry, and a mad wolf has run into the
station yard. What more is there? I have been insulted, humiliated,...
and I have insulted others in my time. I have not been a criminal, it is
true, but I don't think I am capable of crime--I am not afraid of being
hauled up for it."
The two little clouds had moved away from the moon and stood at a little
distance, looking as though they were whispering about something which
the moon must not know. A light breeze was racing across the steppe,
bringing the faint rumble of the retreating train.
My wife met me at the doorway. Her eyes were laughing gaily and her
whole face was beaming with good-humor.
"There is news for you!" she whispered. "Make haste, go to your room and
put on your new coat; we have a visitor."
"What visitor?"
"Aunt Natalya Petrovna has just come by the train."
"What Natalya Petrovna?"
"The wife of my uncle Semyon Fyodoritch. You don't know her. She is a
very nice, good woman."
Probably I frowned, for my wife looked grave and whispered rapidly:
"Of course it is queer her having come, but don't be cross, Nikolay, and
don't be hard on her. She is unhappy, you know; Uncle Semyon Fyodoritch
really is ill-natured and tyrannical, it is difficult to live with him.
She says she will only stay three days with us, only till she gets a
letter from her brother."
My wife whispered a great deal more nonsense to me about her despotic
uncle; about the weakness of mankind in general and of young wives in
particular; about its being our duty to give shelter to all, even great
sinners, and so on. Unable to make head or tail of it, I put on my new
coat and went to make acquaintance with my "aunt."
A little woman with large black eyes was sitting at the table. My table,
the gray walls, my roughly-made sofa, everything to the tiniest grain of
dust seemed to have grown younger and more cheerful in the presence of
this new, young, beautiful, and dissolute creature, who had a most
subtle perfume about her. And that our visitor was a lady of easy virtue
I could see from her smile, from her scent, from the peculiar way in
which she glanced and made play with her eyelashes, from the tone in
which she talked with my wife--a respectable woman. There was no need to
tell me she had run away from her husband, that her husband was old and
despotic, that she was good-natured and lively; I took it all in at the
first glance. Indeed, it is doubtful whether there is a man in all
Europe who cannot spot at the first glance a woman of a certain
temperament.
"I did not know I had such a big nephew!" said my aunt, holding out her
hand to me and smiling.
"And I did not know I had such a pretty aunt," I answered.
Supper began over again. The cork flew with a bang out of the second
bottle, and my aunt swallowed half a glassful at a gulp, and when my
wife went out of the room for a moment my aunt did not scruple to drain
a full glass. I was drunk both with the wine and with the presence of a
woman. Do you remember the song?
"Eyes black as pitch, eyes full of passion, Eyes burning bright and
beautiful, How I love you, How I fear you!"
I don't remember what happened next. Anyone who wants to know how love
begins may read novels and long stories; I will put it shortly and in
the words of the same silly song:
"It was an evil hour When first I met you."
Everything went head over heels to the devil. I remember a fearful,
frantic whirlwind which sent me flying round like a feather. It lasted a
long while, and swept from the face of the earth my wife and my aunt
herself and my strength. From the little station in the steppe it has
flung me, as you see, into this dark street.
Now tell me what further evil can happen to me?
AFTER THE THEATRE
NADYA ZELENIN had just come back with her mamma from the theatre where
she had seen a performance of "Yevgeny Onyegin." As soon as she reached
her own room she threw off her dress, let down her hair, and in her
petticoat and white dressing-jacket hastily sat down to the table to
write a letter like Tatyana's.
"I love you," she wrote, "but you do not love me, do not love me!"
She wrote it and laughed.
She was only sixteen and did not yet love anyone. She knew that an
officer called Gorny and a student called Gruzdev loved her, but now
after the opera she wanted to be doubtful of their love. To be unloved
and unhappy--how interesting that was. There is something beautiful,
touching, and poetical about it when one loves and the other is
indifferent. Onyegin was interesting because he was not in love at all,
and Tatyana was fascinating because she was so much in love; but if they
had been equally in love with each other and had been happy, they would
perhaps have seemed dull.
"Leave off declaring that you love me," Nadya went on writing, thinking
of Gorny. "I cannot believe it. You are very clever, cultivated,
serious, you have immense talent, and perhaps a brilliant future awaits
you, while I am an uninteresting girl of no importance, and you know
very well that I should be only a hindrance in your life. It is true
that you were attracted by me and thought you had found your ideal in
me, but that was a mistake, and now you are asking yourself in despair:
'Why did I meet that girl?' And only your goodness of heart prevents you
from owning it to yourself...."
Nadya felt sorry for herself, she began to cry, and went on:
"It is hard for me to leave my mother and my brother, or I should take a
nun's veil and go whither chance may lead me. And you would be left free
and would love another. Oh, if I were dead!"
She could not make out what she had written through her tears; little
rainbows were quivering on the table, on the floor, on the ceiling, as
though she were looking through a prism. She could not write, she sank
back in her easy-chair and fell to thinking of Gorny.
My God! how interesting, how fascinating men were! Nadya recalled the
fine expression, ingratiating, guilty, and soft, which came into the
officer's face when one argued about music with him, and the effort he
made to prevent his voice from betraying his passion. In a society where
cold haughtiness and indifference are regarded as signs of good breeding
and gentlemanly bearing, one must conceal one's passions. And he did try
to conceal them, but he did not succeed, and everyone knew very well
that he had a passionate love of music. The endless discussions about
music and the bold criticisms of people who knew nothing about it kept
him always on the strain; he was frightened, timid, and silent. He
played the piano magnificently, like a professional pianist, and if he
had not been in the army he would certainly have been a famous musician.
The tears on her eyes dried. Nadya remembered that Gorny had declared
his love at a Symphony concert, and again downstairs by the hatstand
where there was a tremendous draught blowing in all directions.
"I am very glad that you have at last made the acquaintance of Gruzdev,
our student friend," she went on writing. "He is a very clever man, and
you will be sure to like him. He came to see us yesterday and stayed
till two o'clock. We were all delighted with him, and I regretted that
you had not come. He said a great deal that was remarkable."
Nadya laid her arms on the table and leaned her head on them, and her
hair covered the letter. She recalled that the student, too, loved her,
and that he had as much right to a letter from her as Gorny. Wouldn't it
be better after all to write to Gruzdev? There was a stir of joy in her
bosom for no reason whatever; at first the joy was small, and rolled in
her bosom like an india-rubber ball; then it became more massive,
bigger, and rushed like a wave. Nadya forgot Gorny and Gruzdev; her
thoughts were in a tangle and her joy grew and grew; from her bosom it
passed into her arms and legs, and it seemed as though a light, cool
breeze were breathing on her head and ruffling her hair. Her shoulders
quivered with subdued laughter, the table and the lamp chimney shook,
too, and tears from her eyes splashed on the letter. She could not stop
laughing, and to prove to herself that she was not laughing about
nothing she made haste to think of something funny.
"What a funny poodle," she said, feeling as though she would choke with
laughter. "What a funny poodle!"
She thought how, after tea the evening before, Gruzdev had played with
Maxim the poodle, and afterwards had told them about a very intelligent
poodle who had run after a crow in the yard, and the crow had looked
round at him and said: "Oh, you scamp!"
The poodle, not knowing he had to do with a learned crow, was fearfully
confused and retreated in perplexity, then began barking....
"No, I had better love Gruzdev," Nadya decided, and she tore up the