Short Stories by Chekhov
grows husky, my head begins to go round.... To conceal my condition from
my audience I continually drink water, cough, often blow my nose as
though I were hindered by a cold, make puns inappropriately, and in the
end break off earlier than I ought to. But above all I am ashamed.
My conscience and my intelligence tell me that the very best thing I
could do now would be to deliver a farewell lecture to the boys, to say
my last word to them, to bless them, and give up my post to a man
younger and stronger than me. But, God, be my judge, I have not manly
courage enough to act according to my conscience.
Unfortunately, I am not a philosopher and not a theologian. I know
perfectly well that I cannot live more than another six months; it might
be supposed that I ought now to be chiefly concerned with the question
of the shadowy life beyond the grave, and the visions that will visit my
slumbers in the tomb. But for some reason my soul refuses to recognize
these questions, though my mind is fully alive to their importance. Just
as twenty, thirty years ago, so now, on the threshold of death, I am
interested in nothing but science. As I yield up my last breath I shall
still believe that science is the most important, the most splendid, the
most essential thing in the life of man; that it always has been and
will be the highest manifestation of love, and that only by means of it
will man conquer himself and nature. This faith is perhaps naive and may
rest on false assumptions, but it is not my fault that I believe that
and nothing else; I cannot overcome in myself this belief.
But that is not the point. I only ask people to be indulgent to my
weakness, and to realize that to tear from the lecture-theatre and his
pupils a man who is more interested in the history of the development of
the bone medulla than in the final object of creation would be
equivalent to taking him and nailing him up in his coffin without
waiting for him to be dead.
Sleeplessness and the consequent strain of combating increasing weakness
leads to something strange in me. In the middle of my lecture tears
suddenly rise in my throat, my eyes begin to smart, and I feel a
passionate, hysterical desire to stretch out my hands before me and
break into loud lamentation. I want to cry out in a loud voice that I, a
famous man, have been sentenced by fate to the death penalty, that
within some six months another man will be in control here in the
lecture-theatre. I want to shriek that I am poisoned; new ideas such as
I have not known before have poisoned the last days of my life, and are
still stinging my brain like mosquitoes. And at that moment my position
seems to me so awful that I want all my listeners to be horrified, to
leap up from their seats and to rush in panic terror, with desperate
screams, to the exit.
It is not easy to get through such moments.
II
After my lecture I sit at home and work. I read journals and monographs,
or prepare my next lecture; sometimes I write something. I work with
interruptions, as I have from time to time to see visitors.
There is a ring at the bell. It is a colleague come to discuss some
business matter with me. He comes in to me with his hat and his stick,
and, holding out both these objects to me, says:
"Only for a minute! Only for a minute! Sit down, collega! Only a couple
of words."
To begin with, we both try to show each other that we are
extraordinarily polite and highly delighted to see each other. I make
him sit down in an easy-chair, and he makes me sit down; as we do so, we
cautiously pat each other on the back, touch each other's buttons, and
it looks as though we were feeling each other and afraid of scorching
our fingers. Both of us laugh, though we say nothing amusing. When we
are seated we bow our heads towards each other and begin talking in
subdued voices. However affectionately disposed we may be to one
another, we cannot help adorning our conversation with all sorts of
Chinese mannerisms, such as "As you so justly observed," or "I have
already had the honour to inform you"; we cannot help laughing if one of
us makes a joke, however unsuccessfully. When we have finished with
business my colleague gets up impulsively and, waving his hat in the
direction of my work, begins to say good-bye. Again we paw one another
and laugh. I see him into the hall; when I assist my colleague to put on
his coat, while he does all he can to decline this high honour. Then
when Yegor opens the door my colleague declares that I shall catch cold,
while I make a show of being ready to go even into the street with him.
And when at last I go back into my study my face still goes on smiling,
I suppose from inertia.
A little later another ring at the bell. Somebody comes into the hall,
and is a long time coughing and taking off his things. Yegor announces a
student. I tell him to ask him in. A minute later a young man of
agreeable appearance comes in. For the last year he and I have been on
strained relations; he answers me disgracefully at the examinations, and
I mark him one. Every year I have some seven such hopefuls whom, to
express it in the students' slang, I "chivy" or "floor." Those of them
who fail in their examination through incapacity or illness usually bear
their cross patiently and do not haggle with me; those who come to the
house and haggle with me are always youths of sanguine temperament,
broad natures, whose failure at examinations spoils their appetites and
hinders them from visiting the opera with their usual regularity. I let
the first class off easily, but the second I chivy through a whole year.
"Sit down," I say to my visitor; "what have you to tell me?"
"Excuse me, professor, for troubling you," he begins, hesitating, and
not looking me in the face. "I would not have ventured to trouble you if
it had not been... I have been up for your examination five times, and
have been ploughed.... I beg you, be so good as to mark me for a pass,
because..."
The argument which all the sluggards bring forward on their own behalf
is always the same; they have passed well in all their subjects and have
only come to grief in mine, and that is the more surprising because they
have always been particularly interested in my subject and knew it so
well; their failure has always been entirely owing to some
incomprehensible misunderstanding.
"Excuse me, my friend," I say to the visitor; "I cannot mark you for a
pass. Go and read up the lectures and come to me again. Then we shall
see."
A pause. I feel an impulse to torment the student a little for liking
beer and the opera better than science, and I say, with a sigh:
"To my mind, the best thing you can do now is to give up medicine
altogether. If, with your abilities, you cannot succeed in passing the
examination, it's evident that you have neither the desire nor the
vocation for a doctor's calling."
The sanguine youth's face lengthens.
"Excuse me, professor," he laughs, "but that would be odd of me, to say
the least of it. After studying for five years, all at once to give it
up."
"Oh, well! Better to have lost your five years than have to spend the
rest of your life in doing work you do not care for."
But at once I feel sorry for him, and I hasten to add:
"However, as you think best. And so read a little more and come again."
"When?" the idle youth asks in a hollow voice.
"When you like. Tomorrow if you like."
And in his good-natured eyes I read:
"I can come all right, but of course you will plough me again, you
beast!"
"Of course," I say, "you won't know more science for going in for my
examination another fifteen times, but it is training your character,
and you must be thankful for that."
Silence follows. I get up and wait for my visitor to go, but he stands
and looks towards the window, fingers his beard, and thinks. It grows
boring.
The sanguine youth's voice is pleasant and mellow, his eyes are clever
and ironical, his face is genial, though a little bloated from frequent
indulgence in beer and overlong lying on the sofa; he looks as though he
could tell me a lot of interesting things about the opera, about his
affairs of the heart, and about comrades whom he likes. Unluckily, it is
not the thing to discuss these subjects, or else I should have been glad
to listen to him.
"Professor, I give you my word of honour that if you mark me for a pass
I... I'll..."
As soon as we reach the "word of honour" I wave my hands and sit down to
the table. The student ponders a minute longer, and says dejectedly:
"In that case, good-bye... I beg your pardon."
"Good-bye, my friend. Good luck to you."
He goes irresolutely into the hall, slowly puts on his outdoor things,
and, going out into the street, probably ponders for some time longer;
unable to think of anything, except "old devil," inwardly addressed to
me, he goes into a wretched restaurant to dine and drink beer, and then
home to bed. "Peace be to thy ashes, honest toiler."
A third ring at the bell. A young doctor, in a pair of new black
trousers, gold spectacles, and of course a white tie, walks in. He
introduces himself. I beg him to be seated, and ask what I can do for
him. Not without emotion, the young devotee of science begins telling me
that he has passed his examination as a doctor of medicine, and that he
has now only to write his dissertation. He would like to work with me
under my guidance, and he would be greatly obliged to me if I would give
him a subject for his dissertation.
"Very glad to be of use to you, colleague," I say, "but just let us come
to an understanding as to the meaning of a dissertation. That word is
taken to mean a composition which is a product of independent creative
effort. Is that not so? A work written on another man's subject and
under another man's guidance is called something different...."
The doctor says nothing. I fly into a rage and jump up from my seat.
"Why is it you all come to me?" I cry angrily. "Do I keep a shop? I
don't deal in subjects. For the thousand and oneth time I ask you all to
leave me in peace! Excuse my brutality, but I am quite sick of it!"
The doctor remains silent, but a faint flush is apparent on his cheek-
bones. His face expresses a profound reverence for my fame and my
learning, but from his eyes I can see he feels a contempt for my voice,
my pitiful figure, and my nervous gesticulation. I impress him in my
anger as a queer fish.
"I don't keep a shop," I go on angrily. "And it is a strange thing! Why
don't you want to be independent? Why have you such a distaste for
independence?"
I say a great deal, but he still remains silent. By degrees I calm down,
and of course give in. The doctor gets a subject from me for his theme
not worth a halfpenny, writes under my supervision a dissertation of no
use to any one, with dignity defends it in a dreary discussion, and
receives a degree of no use to him.
The rings at the bell may follow one another endlessly, but I will
confine my description here to four of them. The bell rings for the
fourth time, and I hear familiar footsteps, the rustle of a dress, a
dear voice....
Eighteen years ago a colleague of mine, an oculist, died leaving a
little daughter Katya, a child of seven, and sixty thousand roubles. In
his will he made me the child's guardian. Till she was ten years old
Katya lived with us as one of the family, then she was sent to a
boarding-school, and only spent the summer holidays with us. I never had
time to look after her education. I only superintended it at leisure
moments, and so I can say very little about her childhood.
The first thing I remember, and like so much in remembrance, is the
extraordinary trustfulness with which she came into our house and let