Short Stories by Chekhov
turn up.
The idea occurred to me to invite the neighbouring landowners and
suggest to them to organize in my house something like a committee or a
centre to which all subscriptions could be forwarded, and from which
assistance and instructions could be distributed throughout the
district; such an organization, which would render possible frequent
consultations and free control on a big scale, would completely meet my
views. But I imagined the lunches, the dinners, the suppers and the
noise, the waste of time, the verbosity and the bad taste which that
mixed provincial company would inevitably bring into my house, and I
made haste to reject my idea.
As for the members of my own household, the last thing I could look for
was help or support from them. Of my father's household, of the
household of my childhood, once a big and noisy family, no one remained
but the governess Mademoiselle Marie, or, as she was now called, Marya
Gerasimovna, an absolutely insignificant person. She was a precise
little old lady of seventy, who wore a light grey dress and a cap with
white ribbons, and looked like a china doll. She always sat in the
drawing-room reading.
Whenever I passed by her, she would say, knowing the reason for my
brooding:
"What can you expect, Pasha? I told you how it would be before. You can
judge from our servants."
My wife, Natalya Gavrilovna, lived on the lower storey, all the rooms of
which she occupied. She slept, had her meals, and received her visitors
downstairs in her own rooms, and took not the slightest interest in how
I dined, or slept, or whom I saw. Our relations with one another were
simple and not strained, but cold, empty, and dreary as relations are
between people who have been so long estranged, that even living under
the same roof gives no semblance of nearness. There was no trace now of
the passionate and tormenting love--at one time sweet, at another bitter
as wormwood--which I had once felt for Natalya Gavrilovna. There was
nothing left, either, of the outbursts of the past--the loud
altercations, upbraidings, complaints, and gusts of hatred which had
usually ended in my wife's going abroad or to her own people, and in my
sending money in small but frequent instalments that I might sting her
pride oftener. (My proud and sensitive wife and her family live at my
expense, and much as she would have liked to do so, my wife could not
refuse my money: that afforded me satisfaction and was one comfort in my
sorrow.) Now when we chanced to meet in the corridor downstairs or in
the yard, I bowed, she smiled graciously. We spoke of the weather, said
that it seemed time to put in the double windows, and that some one with
bells on their harness had driven over the dam. And at such times I read
in her face: "I am faithful to you and am not disgracing your good name
which you think so much about; you are sensible and do not worry me; we
are quits."
I assured myself that my love had died long ago, that I was too much
absorbed in my work to think seriously of my relations with my wife.
But, alas! that was only what I imagined. When my wife talked aloud
downstairs I listened intently to her voice, though I could not
distinguish one word. When she played the piano downstairs I stood up
and listened. When her carriage or her saddlehorse was brought to the
door, I went to the window and waited to see her out of the house; then
I watched her get into her carriage or mount her horse and ride out of
the yard. I felt that there was something wrong with me, and was afraid
the expression of my eyes or my face might betray me. I looked after my
wife and then watched for her to come back that I might see again from
the window her face, her shoulders, her fur coat, her hat. I felt
dreary, sad, infinitely regretful, and felt inclined in her absence to
walk through her rooms, and longed that the problem that my wife and I
had not been able to solve because our characters were incompatible,
should solve itself in the natural way as soon as possible--that is, that
this beautiful woman of twenty-seven might make haste and grow old, and
that my head might be grey and bald.
One day at lunch my bailiff informed me that the Pestrovo peasants had
begun to pull the thatch off the roofs to feed their cattle. Marya
Gerasimovna looked at me in alarm and perplexity.
"What can I do?" I said to her. "One cannot fight single-handed, and I
have never experienced such loneliness as I do now. I would give a great
deal to find one man in the whole province on whom I could rely."
"Invite Ivan Ivanitch," said Marya Gerasimovna.
"To be sure!" I thought, delighted. "That is an idea! C'est raison," I
hummed, going to my study to write to Ivan Ivanitch. "C'est raison,
c'est raison."
II
Of all the mass of acquaintances who, in this house twenty-five to
thirty-five years ago, had eaten, drunk, masqueraded, fallen in love,
married, bored us with accounts of their splendid packs of hounds and
horses, the only one still living was Ivan Ivanitch Bragin. At one time
he had been very active, talkative, noisy, and given to falling in love,
and had been famous for his extreme views and for the peculiar charm of
his face, which fascinated men as well as women; now he was an old man,
had grown corpulent, and was living out his days with neither views nor
charm. He came the day after getting my letter, in the evening just as
the samovar was brought into the dining-room and little Marya
Gerasimovna had begun slicing the lemon.
"I am very glad to see you, my dear fellow," I said gaily, meeting him.
"Why, you are stouter than ever...."
"It isn't getting stout; it's swelling," he answered. "The bees must
have stung me."
With the familiarity of a man laughing at his own fatness, he put his
arms round my waist and laid on my breast his big soft head, with the
hair combed down on the forehead like a Little Russian's, and went off
into a thin, aged laugh.
"And you go on getting younger," he said through his laugh. "I wonder
what dye you use for your hair and beard; you might let me have some of
it." Sniffing and gasping, he embraced me and kissed me on the cheek.
"You might give me some of it," he repeated. "Why, you are not forty,
are you?"
"Alas, I am forty-six!" I said, laughing.
Ivan Ivanitch smelt of tallow candles and cooking, and that suited him.
His big, puffy, slow-moving body was swathed in a long frock-coat like a
coachman's full coat, with a high waist, and with hooks and eyes instead
of buttons, and it would have been strange if he had smelt of eau-de-
Cologne, for instance. In his long, unshaven, bluish double chin, which
looked like a thistle, his goggle eyes, his shortness of breath, and in
the whole of his clumsy, slovenly figure, in his voice, his laugh, and
his words, it was difficult to recognize the graceful, interesting
talker who used in old days to make the husbands of the district jealous
on account of their wives.
"I am in great need of your assistance, my friend," I said, when we were
sitting in the dining-room, drinking tea. "I want to organize relief for
the starving peasants, and I don't know how to set about it. So perhaps
you will be so kind as to advise me."
"Yes, yes, yes," said Ivan Ivanitch, sighing. "To be sure, to be sure,
to be sure...."
"I would not have worried you, my dear fellow, but really there is no
one here but you I can appeal to. You know what people are like about
here."
"To be sure, to be sure, to be sure.... Yes."
I thought that as we were going to have a serious, business consultation
in which any one might take part, regardless of their position or
personal relations, why should I not invite Natalya Gavrilovna.
"Tres faciunt collegium," I said gaily. "What if we were to ask Natalya
Gavrilovna? What do you think? Fenya," I said, turning to the maid, "ask
Natalya Gavrilovna to come upstairs to us, if possible at once. Tell her
it's a very important matter."
A little later Natalya Gavrilovna came in. I got up to meet her and
said:
"Excuse us for troubling you, Natalie. We are discussing a very
important matter, and we had the happy thought that we might take
advantage of your good advice, which you will not refuse to give us.
Please sit down."
Ivan Ivanitch kissed her hand while she kissed his forehead; then, when
we all sat down to the table, he, looking at her tearfully and
blissfully, craned forward to her and kissed her hand again. She was
dressed in black, her hair was carefully arranged, and she smelt of
fresh scent. She had evidently dressed to go out or was expecting
somebody. Coming into the dining-room, she held out her hand to me with
simple friendliness, and smiled to me as graciously as she did to Ivan
Ivanitch--that pleased me; but as she talked she moved her fingers, often
and abruptly leaned back in her chair and talked rapidly, and this
jerkiness in her words and movements irritated me and reminded me of her
native town--Odessa, where the society, men and women alike, had wearied
me by its bad taste.
"I want to do something for the famine-stricken peasants," I began, and
after a brief pause I went on: "Money, of course, is a great thing, but
to confine oneself to subscribing money, and with that to be satisfied,
would be evading the worst of the trouble. Help must take the form of
money, but the most important thing is a proper and sound organization.
Let us think it over, my friends, and do something."
Natalya Gavrilovna looked at me inquiringly and shrugged her shoulders
as though to say, "What do I know about it?"
"Yes, yes, famine..." muttered Ivan Ivanitch. "Certainly... yes."
"It's a serious position," I said, "and assistance is needed as soon as
possible. I imagine the first point among the principles which we must
work out ought to be promptitude. We must act on the military principles
of judgment, promptitude, and energy."
"Yes, promptitude..." repeated Ivan Ivanitch in a drowsy and listless
voice, as though he were dropping asleep. "Only one can't do anything.
The crops have failed, and so what's the use of all your judgment and
energy?... It's the elements.... You can't go against God and fate."
"Yes, but that's what man has a head for, to contend against the
elements."
"Eh? Yes... that's so, to be sure.... Yes."
Ivan Ivanitch sneezed into his handkerchief, brightened up, and as
though he had just woken up, looked round at my wife and me.
"My crops have failed, too." He laughed a thin little laugh and gave a
sly wink as though this were really funny. "No money, no corn, and a
yard full of labourers like Count Sheremetyev's. I want to kick them
out, but I haven't the heart to."
Natalya Gavrilovna laughed, and began questioning him about his private
affairs. Her presence gave me a pleasure such as I had not felt for a
long time, and I was afraid to look at her for fear my eyes would betray
my secret feeling. Our relations were such that that feeling might seem
surprising and ridiculous.
She laughed and talked with Ivan Ivanitch without being in the least
disturbed that she was in my room and that I was not laughing.
"And so, my friends, what are we to do?" I asked after waiting for a
pause. "I suppose before we do anything else we had better immediately
open a subscription-list. We will write to our friends in the capitals
and in Odessa, Natalie, and ask them to subscribe. When we have got
together a little sum we will begin buying corn and fodder for the
cattle; and you, Ivan Ivanitch, will you be so kind as to undertake
distributing the relief? Entirely relying on your characteristic tact
and efficiency, we will only venture to express a desire that before you
give any relief you make acquaintance with the details of the case on