Short Stories by Chekhov
"What have you to tell me?" I ask, going out to him in the hall.
"Your Excellency!" he says, pressing his hand to his heart and looking
at me with the ecstasy of a lover--"your Excellency! God be my witness!
Strike me dead on the spot! Gaudeamus egitur juventus!"
And he greedily kisses me on the shoulder, on the sleeve, and on the
buttons.
"Is everything going well?" I ask him.
"Your Excellency! So help me God!..."
He persists in grovelling before me for no sort of reason, and soon
bores me, so I send him away to the kitchen, where they give him dinner.
Pyotr Ignatyevitch comes to see me on holidays, too, with the special
object of seeing me and sharing his thoughts with me. He usually sits
down near my table, modest, neat, and reasonable, and does not venture
to cross his legs or put his elbows on the table. All the time, in a
soft, even, little voice, in rounded bookish phrases, he tells me
various, to his mind, very interesting and piquant items of news which
he has read in the magazines and journals. They are all alike and may be
reduced to this type: "A Frenchman has made a discovery; some one else,
a German, has denounced him, proving that the discovery was made in 1870
by some American; while a third person, also a German, trumps them both
by proving they both had made fools of themselves, mistaking bubbles of
air for dark pigment under the microscope." Even when he wants to amuse
me, Pyotr Ignatyevitch tells me things in the same lengthy,
circumstantial manner as though he were defending a thesis, enumerating
in detail the literary sources from which he is deriving his narrative,
doing his utmost to be accurate as to the date and number of the
journals and the name of every one concerned, invariably mentioning it
in full--Jean Jacques Petit, never simply Petit. Sometimes he stays to
dinner with us, and then during the whole of dinner-time he goes on
telling me the same sort of piquant anecdotes, reducing every one at
table to a state of dejected boredom. If Gnekker and Liza begin talking
before him of fugues and counterpoint, Brahms and Bach, he drops his
eyes modestly, and is overcome with embarrassment; he is ashamed that
such trivial subjects should be discussed before such serious people as
him and me.
In my present state of mind five minutes of him is enough to sicken me
as though I had been seeing and hearing him for an eternity. I hate the
poor fellow. His soft, smooth voice and bookish language exhaust me, and
his stories stupefy me.... He cherishes the best of feelings for me, and
talks to me simply in order to give me pleasure, and I repay him by
looking at him as though I wanted to hypnotize him, and think, "Go, go,
go!..." But he is not amenable to thought-suggestion, and sits on and on
and on....
While he is with me I can never shake off the thought, "It's possible
when I die he will be appointed to succeed me," and my poor lecture-hall
presents itself to me as an oasis in which the spring is died up; and I
am ungracious, silent, and surly with Pyotr Ignatyevitch, as though he
were to blame for such thoughts, and not I myself. When he begins, as
usual, praising up the German savants, instead of making fun of him
good-humouredly, as I used to do, I mutter sullenly:
"Asses, your Germans!..."
That is like the late Professor Nikita Krylov, who once, when he was
bathing with Pirogov at Revel and vexed at the water's being very cold,
burst out with, "Scoundrels, these Germans!" I behave badly with Pyotr
Ignatyevitch, and only when he is going away, and from the window I
catch a glimpse of his grey hat behind the garden-fence, I want to call
out and say, "Forgive me, my dear fellow!"
Dinner is even drearier than in the winter. Gnekker, whom now I hate and
despise, dines with us almost every day. I used to endure his presence
in silence, now I aim biting remarks at him which make my wife and
daughter blush. Carried away by evil feeling, I often say things that
are simply stupid, and I don't know why I say them. So on one occasion
it happened that I stared a long time at Gnekker, and, a propos of
nothing, I fired off:
"An eagle may perchance swoop down below a cock, But never will the fowl
soar upwards to the clouds..."
And the most vexatious thing is that the fowl Gnekker shows himself much
cleverer than the eagle professor. Knowing that my wife and daughter are
on his side, he takes up the line of meeting my gibes with condescending
silence, as though to say:
"The old chap is in his dotage; what's the use of talking to him?"
Or he makes fun of me good-naturedly. It is wonderful how petty a man
may become! I am capable of dreaming all dinner-time of how Gnekker will
turn out to be an adventurer, how my wife and Liza will come to see
their mistake, and how I will taunt them--and such absurd thoughts at the
time when I am standing with one foot in the grave!
There are now, too, misunderstandings of which in the old days I had no
idea except from hearsay. Though I am ashamed of it, I will describe one
that occurred the other day after dinner.
I was sitting in my room smoking a pipe; my wife came in as usual, sat
down, and began saying what a good thing it would be for me to go to
Harkov now while it is warm and I have free time, and there find out
what sort of person our Gnekker is.
"Very good; I will go," I assented.
My wife, pleased with me, got up and was going to the door, but turned
back and said:
"By the way, I have another favour to ask of you. I know you will be
angry, but it is my duty to warn you.... Forgive my saying it, Nikolay
Stepanovitch, but all our neighbours and acquaintances have begun
talking about your being so often at Katya's. She is clever and well-
educated; I don't deny that her company may be agreeable; but at your
age and with your social position it seems strange that you should find
pleasure in her society.... Besides, she has such a reputation that..."
All the blood suddenly rushed to my brain, my eyes flashed fire, I
leaped up and, clutching at my head and stamping my feet, shouted in a
voice unlike my own:
"Let me alone! let me alone! let me alone!"
Probably my face was terrible, my voice was strange, for my wife
suddenly turned pale and began shrieking aloud in a despairing voice
that was utterly unlike her own. Liza, Gnekker, then Yegor, came running
in at our shouts....
"Let me alone!" I cried; "let me alone! Go away!"
My legs turned numb as though they had ceased to exist; I felt myself
falling into someone's arms; for a little while I still heard weeping,
then sank into a swoon which lasted two or three hours.
Now about Katya; she comes to see me every day towards evening, and of
course neither the neighbours nor our acquaintances can avoid noticing
it. She comes in for a minute and carries me off for a drive with her.
She has her own horse and a new chaise bought this summer. Altogether
she lives in an expensive style; she has taken a big detached villa with
a large garden, and has taken all her town retinue with her--two maids, a
coachman... I often ask her:
"Katya, what will you live on when you have spent your father's money?"
"Then we shall see," she answers.
"That money, my dear, deserves to be treated more seriously. It was
earned by a good man, by honest labour."
"You have told me that already. I know it."
At first we drive through the open country, then through the pine-wood
which is visible from my window. Nature seems to me as beautiful as it
always has been, though some evil spirit whispers to me that these pines
and fir trees, birds, and white clouds on the sky, will not notice my
absence when in three or four months I am dead. Katya loves driving, and
she is pleased that it is fine weather and that I am sitting beside her.
She is in good spirits and does not say harsh things.
"You are a very good man, Nikolay Stepanovitch," she says. "You are a
rare specimen, and there isn't an actor who would understand how to play
you. Me or Mihail Fyodorovitch, for instance, any poor actor could do,
but not you. And I envy you, I envy you horribly! Do you know what I
stand for? What?"
She ponders for a minute, and then asks me:
"Nikolay Stepanovitch, I am a negative phenomenon! Yes?"
"Yes," I answer.
"H'm! what am I to do?"
What answer was I to make her? It is easy to say "work," or "give your
possessions to the poor," or "know yourself," and because it is so easy
to say that, I don't know what to answer.
My colleagues when they teach therapeutics advise "the individual study
of each separate case." One has but to obey this advice to gain the
conviction that the methods recommended in the textbooks as the best and
as providing a safe basis for treatment turn out to be quite unsuitable
in individual cases. It is just the same in moral ailments.
But I must make some answer, and I say:
"You have too much free time, my dear; you absolutely must take up some
occupation. After all, why shouldn't you be an actress again if it is
your vocation?"
"I cannot!"
"Your tone and manner suggest that you are a victim. I don't like that,
my dear; it is your own fault. Remember, you began with falling out with
people and methods, but you have done nothing to make either better. You
did not struggle with evil, but were cast down by it, and you are not
the victim of the struggle, but of your own impotence. Well, of course
you were young and inexperienced then; now it may all be different. Yes,
really, go on the stage. You will work, you will serve a sacred art."
"Don't pretend, Nikolay Stepanovitch," Katya interrupts me. "Let us make
a compact once for all; we will talk about actors, actresses, and
authors, but we will let art alone. You are a splendid and rare person,
but you don't know enough about art sincerely to think it sacred. You
have no instinct or feeling for art. You have been hard at work all your
life, and have not had time to acquire that feeling. Altogether... I
don't like talk about art," she goes on nervously. "I don't like it!
And, my goodness, how they have vulgarized it!"
"Who has vulgarized it?"
"They have vulgarized it by drunkenness, the newspapers by their
familiar attitude, clever people by philosophy."
"Philosophy has nothing to do with it."
"Yes, it has. If any one philosophizes about it, it shows he does not
understand it."
To avoid bitterness I hasten to change the subject, and then sit a long
time silent. Only when we are driving out of the wood and turning
towards Katya's villa I go back to my former question, and say:
"You have still not answered me, why you don't want to go on the stage."
"Nikolay Stepanovitch, this is cruel!" she cries, and suddenly flushes
all over. "You want me to tell you the truth aloud? Very well, if... if
you like it! I have no talent! No talent and... and a great deal of
vanity! So there!"
After making this confession she turns her face away from me, and to
hide the trembling of her hands tugs violently at the reins.
As we are driving towards her villa we see Mihail Fyodorovitch walking
near the gate, impatiently awaiting us.
"That Mihail Fyodorovitch again!" says Katya with vexation. "Do rid me
of him, please! I am sick and tired of him... bother him!"
Mihail Fyodorovitch ought to have gone abroad long ago, but he puts off
going from week to week. Of late there have been certain changes in him.
He looks, as it were, sunken, has taken to drinking until he is tipsy, a
thing which never used to happen to him, and his black eyebrows are
beginning to turn grey. When our chaise stops at the gate he does not
conceal his joy and his impatience. He fussily helps me and Katya out,
hurriedly asks questions, laughs, rubs his hands, and that gentle,