Short Stories by Chekhov
"Killing types one meets with," says Mihail Fyodorovitch. "I went
yesterday to our friend Yegor Petrovitch's, and there I found a studious
gentleman, one of your medicals in his third year, I believe. Such a
face!... in the Dobrolubov style, the imprint of profound thought on his
brow; we got into talk. 'Such doings, young man,' said I. 'I've read,'
said I, 'that some German--I've forgotten his name--has created from the
human brain a new kind of alkaloid, idiotine.' What do you think? He
believed it, and there was positively an expression of respect on his
face, as though to say, 'See what we fellows can do!' And the other day
I went to the theatre. I took my seat. In the next row directly in front
of me were sitting two men: one of 'us fellows' and apparently a law
student, the other a shaggy-looking figure, a medical student. The
latter was as drunk as a cobbler. He did not look at the stage at all.
He was dozing with his nose on his shirt-front. But as soon as an actor
begins loudly reciting a monologue, or simply raises his voice, our
friend starts, pokes his neighbour in the ribs, and asks, 'What is he
saying? Is it elevating?' 'Yes,' answers one of our fellows. 'B-r-r-
ravo!' roars the medical student. 'Elevating! Bravo!' He had gone to the
theatre, you see, the drunken blockhead, not for the sake of art, the
play, but for elevation! He wanted noble sentiments."
Katya listens and laughs. She has a strange laugh; she catches her
breath in rhythmically regular gasps, very much as though she were
playing the accordion, and nothing in her face is laughing but her
nostrils. I grow depressed and don't know what to say. Beside myself, I
fire up, leap up from my seat, and cry:
"Do leave off! Why are you sitting here like two toads, poisoning the
air with your breath? Give over!"
And without waiting for them to finish their gossip I prepare to go
home. And, indeed, it is high time: it is past ten.
"I will stay a little longer," says Mihail Fyodorovitch. "Will you allow
me, Ekaterina Vladimirovna?"
"I will," answers Katya.
"Bene! In that case have up another little bottle."
They both accompany me with candles to the hall, and while I put on my
fur coat, Mihail Fyodorovitch says:
"You have grown dreadfully thin and older looking, Nikolay Stepanovitch.
What's the matter with you? Are you ill?"
"Yes; I am not very well."
"And you are not doing anything for it..." Katya puts in grimly.
"Why don't you? You can't go on like that! God helps those who help
themselves, my dear fellow. Remember me to your wife and daughter, and
make my apologies for not having been to see them. In a day or two,
before I go abroad, I shall come to say good-bye. I shall be sure to. I
am going away next week."
I come away from Katya, irritated and alarmed by what has been said
about my being ill, and dissatisfied with myself. I ask myself whether I
really ought not to consult one of my colleagues. And at once I imagine
how my colleague, after listening to me, would walk away to the window
without speaking, would think a moment, then would turn round to me and,
trying to prevent my reading the truth in his face, would say in a
careless tone: "So far I see nothing serious, but at the same time,
collega, I advise you to lay aside your work...." And that would deprive
me of my last hope.
Who is without hope? Now that I am diagnosing my illness and prescribing
for myself, from time to time I hope that I am deceived by my own
illness, that I am mistaken in regard to the albumen and the sugar I
find, and in regard to my heart, and in regard to the swellings I have
twice noticed in the mornings; when with the fervour of the
hypochondriac I look through the textbooks of therapeutics and take a
different medicine every day, I keep fancying that I shall hit upon
something comforting. All that is petty.
Whether the sky is covered with clouds or the moon and the stars are
shining, I turn my eyes towards it every evening and think that death is
taking me soon. One would think that my thoughts at such times ought to
be deep as the sky, brilliant, striking.... But no! I think about
myself, about my wife, about Liza, Gnekker, the students, people in
general; my thoughts are evil, petty, I am insincere with myself, and at
such times my theory of life may be expressed in the words the
celebrated Araktcheev said in one of his intimate letters: "Nothing good
can exist in the world without evil, and there is more evil than good."
That is, everything is disgusting; there is nothing to live for, and the
sixty-two years I have already lived must be reckoned as wasted. I catch
myself in these thoughts, and try to persuade myself that they are
accidental, temporary, and not deeply rooted in me, but at once I think:
"If so, what drives me every evening to those two toads?"
And I vow to myself that I will never go to Katya's again, though I know
I shall go next evening.
Ringing the bell at the door and going upstairs, I feel that I have no
family now and no desire to bring it back again. It is clear that the
new Araktcheev thoughts are not casual, temporary visitors, but have
possession of my whole being. With my conscience ill at ease, dejected,
languid, hardly able to move my limbs, feeling as though tons were added
to my weight, I get into bed and quickly drop asleep.
And then--insomnia!
IV
Summer comes on and life is changed.
One fine morning Liza comes in to me and says in a jesting tone:
"Come, your Excellency! We are ready."
My Excellency is conducted into the street, and seated in a cab. As I go
along, having nothing to do, I read the signboards from right to left.
The word "Traktir" reads "Ritkart"; that would just suit some baron's
family: Baroness Ritkart. Farther on I drive through fields, by the
graveyard, which makes absolutely no impression on me, though I shall
soon lie in it; then I drive by forests and again by fields. There is
nothing of interest. After two hours of driving, my Excellency is
conducted into the lower storey of a summer villa and installed in a
small, very cheerful little room with light blue hangings.
At night there is sleeplessness as before, but in the morning I do not
put a good face upon it and listen to my wife, but lie in bed. I do not
sleep, but lie in the drowsy, half-conscious condition in which you know
you are not asleep, but dreaming. At midday I get up and from habit sit
down at my table, but I do not work now; I amuse myself with French
books in yellow covers, sent me by Katya. Of course, it would be more
patriotic to read Russian authors, but I must confess I cherish no
particular liking for them. With the exception of two or three of the
older writers, all our literature of today strikes me as not being
literature, but a special sort of home industry, which exists simply in
order to be encouraged, though people do not readily make use of its
products. The very best of these home products cannot be called
remarkable and cannot be sincerely praised without qualification. I must
say the same of all the literary novelties I have read during the last
ten or fifteen years; not one of them is remarkable, and not one of them
can be praised without a "but." Cleverness, a good tone, but no talent;
talent, a good tone, but no cleverness; or talent, cleverness, but not a
good tone.
I don't say the French books have talent, cleverness, and a good tone.
They don't satisfy me, either. But they are not so tedious as the
Russian, and it is not unusual to find in them the chief element of
artistic creation--the feeling of personal freedom which is lacking in
the Russian authors. I don't remember one new book in which the author
does not try from the first page to entangle himself in all sorts of
conditions and contracts with his conscience. One is afraid to speak of
the naked body; another ties himself up hand and foot in psychological
analysis; a third must have a "warm attitude to man"; a fourth purposely
scrawls whole descriptions of nature that he may not be suspected of
writing with a purpose.... One is bent upon being middle-class in his
work, another must be a nobleman, and so on. There is intentionalness,
circumspection, and self-will, but they have neither the independence
nor the manliness to write as they like, and therefore there is no
creativeness.
All this applies to what is called belles-lettres.
As for serious treatises in Russian on sociology, for instance, on art,
and so on, I do not read them simply from timidity. In my childhood and
early youth I had for some reason a terror of doorkeepers and attendants
at the theatre, and that terror has remained with me to this day. I am
afraid of them even now. It is said that we are only afraid of what we
do not understand. And, indeed, it is very difficult to understand why
doorkeepers and theatre attendants are so dignified, haughty, and
majestically rude. I feel exactly the same terror when I read serious
articles. Their extraordinary dignity, their bantering lordly tone,
their familiar manner to foreign authors, their ability to split straws
with dignity--all that is beyond my understanding; it is intimidating and
utterly unlike the quiet, gentlemanly tone to which I am accustomed when
I read the works of our medical and scientific writers. It oppresses me
to read not only the articles written by serious Russians, but even
works translated or edited by them. The pretentious, edifying tone of
the preface; the redundancy of remarks made by the translator, which
prevent me from concentrating my attention; the question marks and "sic"
in parenthesis scattered all over the book or article by the liberal
translator, are to my mind an outrage on the author and on my
independence as a reader.
Once I was summoned as an expert to a circuit court; in an interval one
of my fellow-experts drew my attention to the rudeness of the public
prosecutor to the defendants, among whom there were two ladies of good
education. I believe I did not exaggerate at all when I told him that
the prosecutor's manner was no ruder than that of the authors of serious
articles to one another. Their manners are, indeed, so rude that I
cannot speak of them without distaste. They treat one another and the
writers they criticize either with superfluous respect, at the sacrifice
of their own dignity, or, on the contrary, with far more ruthlessness
than I have shown in my notes and my thoughts in regard to my future
son-in-law Gnekker. Accusations of irrationality, of evil intentions,
and, indeed, of every sort of crime, form an habitual ornament of
serious articles. And that, as young medical men are fond of saying in
their monographs, is the ultima ratio! Such ways must infallibly have an
effect on the morals of the younger generation of writers, and so I am
not at all surprised that in the new works with which our literature has
been enriched during the last ten or fifteen years the heroes drink too
much vodka and the heroines are not over-chaste.
I read French books, and I look out of the window which is open; I can
see the spikes of my garden-fence, two or three scraggy trees, and
beyond the fence the road, the fields, and beyond them a broad stretch
of pine-wood. Often I admire a boy and girl, both flaxen-headed and
ragged, who clamber on the fence and laugh at my baldness. In their
shining little eyes I read, "Go up, go up, thou baldhead!" They are
almost the only people who care nothing for my celebrity or my rank.
Visitors do not come to me every day now. I will only mention the visits
of Nikolay and Pyotr Ignatyevitch. Nikolay usually comes to me on
holidays, with some pretext of business, though really to see me. He
arrives very much exhilarated, a thing which never occurs to him in the
winter.