Short Stories by Chekhov
the spot, and also, which is very important, you should be careful that
corn should be distributed only to those who are in genuine need, and
not to the drunken, the idle, or the dishonest."
"Yes, yes, yes..." muttered Ivan Ivanitch. "To be sure, to be sure."
"Well, one won't get much done with that slobbering wreck," I thought,
and I felt irritated.
"I am sick of these famine-stricken peasants, bother them! It's nothing
but grievances with them!" Ivan Ivanitch went on, sucking the rind of
the lemon. "The hungry have a grievance against those who have enough,
and those who have enough have a grievance against the hungry. Yes...
hunger stupefies and maddens a man and makes him savage; hunger is not a
potato. When a man is starving he uses bad language, and steals, and may
do worse.... One must realize that."
Ivan Ivanitch choked over his tea, coughed, and shook all over with a
squeaky, smothered laughter.
"'There was a battle at Pol... Poltava,'" he brought out, gesticulating
with both hands in protest against the laughter and coughing which
prevented him from speaking. "'There was a battle at Poltava!' When
three years after the Emancipation we had famine in two districts here,
Fyodor Fyodoritch came and invited me to go to him. 'Come along, come
along,' he persisted, and nothing else would satisfy him. 'Very well,
let us go,' I said. And, so we set off. It was in the evening; there was
snow falling. Towards night we were getting near his place, and suddenly
from the wood came 'bang!' and another time 'bang!' 'Oh, damn it
all!'... I jumped out of the sledge, and I saw in the darkness a man
running up to me, knee-deep in the snow. I put my arm round his
shoulder, like this, and knocked the gun out of his hand. Then another
one turned up; I fetched him a knock on the back of his head so that he
grunted and flopped with his nose in the snow. I was a sturdy chap then,
my fist was heavy; I disposed of two of them, and when I turned round
Fyodor was sitting astride of a third. We did not let our three fine
fellows go; we tied their hands behind their backs so that they might
not do us or themselves any harm, and took the fools into the kitchen.
We were angry with them and at the same time ashamed to look at them;
they were peasants we knew, and were good fellows; we were sorry for
them. They were quite stupid with terror. One was crying and begging our
pardon, the second looked like a wild beast and kept swearing, the third
knelt down and began to pray. I said to Fedya: 'Don't bear them a
grudge; let them go, the rascals!' He fed them, gave them a bushel of
flour each, and let them go: 'Get along with you,' he said. So that's
what he did.... The Kingdom of Heaven be his and everlasting peace! He
understood and did not bear them a grudge; but there were some who did,
and how many people they ruined! Yes... Why, over the affair at the
Klotchkovs' tavern eleven men were sent to the disciplinary battalion.
Yes.... And now, look, it's the same thing. Anisyin, the investigating
magistrate, stayed the night with me last Thursday, and he told me about
some landowner.... Yes.... They took the wall of his barn to pieces at
night and carried off twenty sacks of rye. When the gentleman heard that
such a crime had been committed, he sent a telegram to the Governor and
another to the police captain, another to the investigating
magistrate!... Of course, every one is afraid of a man who is fond of
litigation. The authorities were in a flutter and there was a general
hubbub. Two villages were searched."
"Excuse me, Ivan Ivanitch," I said. "Twenty sacks of rye were stolen
from me, and it was I who telegraphed to the Governor. I telegraphed to
Petersburg, too. But it was by no means out of love for litigation, as
you are pleased to express it, and not because I bore them a grudge. I
look at every subject from the point of view of principle. From the
point of view of the law, theft is the same whether a man is hungry or
not."
"Yes, yes..." muttered Ivan Ivanitch in confusion. "Of course... To be
sure, yes."
Natalya Gavrilovna blushed.
"There are people..." she said and stopped; she made an effort to seem
indifferent, but she could not keep it up, and looked into my eyes with
the hatred that I know so well. "There are people," she said, "for whom
famine and human suffering exist simply that they may vent their hateful
and despicable temperaments upon them."
I was confused and shrugged my shoulders.
"I meant to say generally," she went on, "that there are people who are
quite indifferent and completely devoid of all feeling of sympathy, yet
who do not pass human suffering by, but insist on meddling for fear
people should be able to do without them. Nothing is sacred for their
vanity."
"There are people," I said softly, "who have an angelic character, but
who express their glorious ideas in such a form that it is difficult to
distinguish the angel from an Odessa market-woman."
I must confess it was not happily expressed.
My wife looked at me as though it cost her a great effort to hold her
tongue. Her sudden outburst, and then her inappropriate eloquence on the
subject of my desire to help the famine-stricken peasants, were, to say
the least, out of place; when I had invited her to come upstairs I had
expected quite a different attitude to me and my intentions. I cannot
say definitely what I had expected, but I had been agreeably agitated by
the expectation. Now I saw that to go on speaking about the famine would
be difficult and perhaps stupid.
"Yes..." Ivan Ivanitch muttered inappropriately. "Burov, the merchant,
must have four hundred thousand at least. I said to him: 'Hand over one
or two thousand to the famine. You can't take it with you when you die,
anyway.' He was offended. But we all have to die, you know. Death is not
a potato."
A silence followed again.
"So there's nothing left for me but to reconcile myself to loneliness,"
I sighed. "One cannot fight single-handed. Well, I will try single-
handed. Let us hope that my campaign against the famine will be more
successful than my campaign against indifference."
"I am expected downstairs," said Natalya Gavrilovna.
She got up from the table and turned to Ivan Ivanitch.
"So you will look in upon me downstairs for a minute? I won't say good-
bye to you."
And she went away.
Ivan Ivanitch was now drinking his seventh glass of tea, choking,
smacking his lips, and sucking sometimes his moustache, sometimes the
lemon. He was muttering something drowsily and listlessly, and I did not
listen but waited for him to go. At last, with an expression that
suggested that he had only come to me to take a cup of tea, he got up
and began to take leave. As I saw him out I said:
"And so you have given me no advice."
"Eh? I am a feeble, stupid old man," he answered. "What use would my
advice be? You shouldn't worry yourself.... I really don't know why you
worry yourself. Don't disturb yourself, my dear fellow! Upon my word,
there's no need," he whispered genuinely and affectionately, soothing me
as though I were a child. "Upon my word, there's no need."
"No need? Why, the peasants are pulling the thatch off their huts, and
they say there is typhus somewhere already."
"Well, what of it? If there are good crops next year, they'll thatch
them again, and if we die of typhus others will live after us. Anyway,
we have to die--if not now, later. Don't worry yourself, my dear."
"I can't help worrying myself," I said irritably.
We were standing in the dimly lighted vestibule. Ivan Ivanitch suddenly
took me by the elbow, and, preparing to say something evidently very
important, looked at me in silence for a couple of minutes.
"Pavel Andreitch!" he said softly, and suddenly in his puffy, set face
and dark eyes there was a gleam of the expression for which he had once
been famous and which was truly charming. "Pavel Andreitch, I speak to
you as a friend: try to be different! One is ill at ease with you, my
dear fellow, one really is!"
He looked intently into my face; the charming expression faded away, his
eyes grew dim again, and he sniffed and muttered feebly:
"Yes, yes.... Excuse an old man.... It's all nonsense... yes."
As he slowly descended the staircase, spreading out his hands to balance
himself and showing me his huge, bulky back and red neck, he gave me the
unpleasant impression of a sort of crab.
"You ought to go away, your Excellency," he muttered. "To Petersburg or
abroad.... Why should you live here and waste your golden days? You are
young, wealthy, and healthy.... Yes.... Ah, if I were younger I would
whisk away like a hare, and snap my fingers at everything."
III
My wife's outburst reminded me of our married life together. In old days
after every such outburst we felt irresistibly drawn to each other; we
would meet and let off all the dynamite that had accumulated in our
souls. And now after Ivan Ivanitch had gone away I had a strong impulse
to go to my wife. I wanted to go downstairs and tell her that her
behaviour at tea had been an insult to me, that she was cruel, petty,
and that her plebeian mind had never risen to a comprehension of what I
was saying and of what I was doing. I walked about the rooms a long time
thinking of what I would say to her and trying to guess what she would
say to me.
That evening, after Ivan Ivanitch went away, I felt in a peculiarly
irritating form the uneasiness which had worried me of late. I could not
sit down or sit still, but kept walking about in the rooms that were
lighted up and keeping near to the one in which Marya Gerasimovna was
sitting. I had a feeling very much like that which I had on the North
Sea during a storm when every one thought that our ship, which had no
freight nor ballast, would overturn. And that evening I understood that
my uneasiness was not disappointment, as I had supposed, but a different
feeling, though what exactly I could not say, and that irritated me more
than ever.
"I will go to her," I decided. "I can think of a pretext. I shall say
that I want to see Ivan Ivanitch; that will be all."
I went downstairs and walked without haste over the carpeted floor
through the vestibule and the hall. Ivan Ivanitch was sitting on the
sofa in the drawing-room; he was drinking tea again and muttering
something. My wife was standing opposite to him and holding on to the
back of a chair. There was a gentle, sweet, and docile expression on her
face, such as one sees on the faces of people listening to crazy saints
or holy men when a peculiar hidden significance is imagined in their
vague words and mutterings. There was something morbid, something of a
nun's exaltation, in my wife's expression and attitude; and her low-
pitched, half-dark rooms with their old-fashioned furniture, with her
birds asleep in their cages, and with a smell of geranium, reminded me
of the rooms of some abbess or pious old lady.
I went into the drawing-room. My wife showed neither surprise nor
confusion, and looked at me calmly and serenely, as though she had known
I should come.
"I beg your pardon," I said softly. "I am so glad you have not gone yet,
Ivan Ivanitch. I forgot to ask you, do you know the Christian name of
the president of our Zemstvo?"
"Andrey Stanislavovitch. Yes...."
"Merci," I said, took out my notebook, and wrote it down.
There followed a silence during which my wife and Ivan Ivanitch were
probably waiting for me to go; my wife did not believe that I wanted to
know the president's name--I saw that from her eyes.
"Well, I must be going, my beauty," muttered Ivan Ivanitch, after I had
walked once or twice across the drawing-room and sat down by the
fireplace.
"No," said Natalya Gavrilovna quickly, touching his hand. "Stay another