Short Stories by Chekhov
up the needle, and handed it to Tatyana Ivanovna with a bow, and for the
first time in my life I learnt that there were people in the world more
refined than Pobyedimsky.
"Yes..." my uncle went on, "love, marry, do silly things. Foolishness is
a great deal more living and healthy than our straining and striving
after rational life."
My uncle talked a great deal, so much that he bored us; I sat on a box
listening to him and dropping to sleep. It distressed me that he did not
once all the evening pay attention to me. He left the lodge at two
o'clock, when, overcome with drowsiness, I was sound asleep.
From that time forth my uncle took to coming to the lodge every evening.
He sang with us, had supper with us, and always stayed on till two
o'clock in the morning, chatting incessantly, always about the same
subject. His evening and night work was given up, and by the end of
June, when the privy councillor had learned to eat mother's turkey and
compote, his work by day was abandoned too. My uncle tore himself away
from his table and plunged into "life." In the daytime he walked up and
down the garden, he whistled to the workmen and hindered them from
working, making them tell him their various histories. When his eye fell
on Tatyana Ivanovna he ran up to her, and, if she were carrying
anything, offered his assistance, which embarrassed her dreadfully.
As the summer advanced my uncle grew more and more frivolous, volatile,
and careless. Pobyedimsky was completely disillusioned in regard to him.
"He is too one-sided," he said. "There is nothing to show that he is in
the very foremost ranks of the service. And he doesn't even know how to
talk. At every word it's 'upon my soul.' No, I don't like him!"
From the time that my uncle began visiting the lodge there was a
noticeable change both in Fyodor and my tutor. Fyodor gave up going out
shooting, came home early, sat more taciturn than ever, and stared with
particular ill-humour at his wife. In my uncle's presence my tutor gave
up talking about epizootics, frowned, and even laughed sarcastically.
"Here comes our little bantam cock!" he growled on one occasion when my
uncle was coming into the lodge.
I put down this change in them both to their being offended with my
uncle. My absent-minded uncle mixed up their names, and to the very day
of his departure failed to distinguish which was my tutor and which was
Tatyana Ivanovna's husband. Tatyana Ivanovna herself he sometimes called
Nastasya, sometimes Pelagea, and sometimes Yevdokia. Touched and
delighted by us, he laughed and behaved exactly as though in the company
of small children.... All this, of course, might well offend young men.
It was not a case of offended pride, however, but, as I realize now,
subtler feelings.
I remember one evening I was sitting on the box struggling with sleep.
My eyelids felt glued together and my body, tired out by running about
all day, drooped sideways. But I struggled against sleep and tried to
look on. It was about midnight. Tatyana Ivanovna, rosy and unassuming as
always, was sitting at a little table sewing at her husband's shirt.
Fyodor, sullen and gloomy, was staring at her from one corner, and in
the other sat Pobyedimsky, snorting angrily and retreating into the high
collar of his shirt. My uncle was walking up and down the room thinking.
Silence reigned; nothing was to be heard but the rustling of the linen
in Tatyana Ivanovna's hands. Suddenly my uncle stood still before
Tatyana Ivanovna, and said:
"You are all so young, so fresh, so nice, you live so peacefully in this
quiet place, that I envy you. I have become attached to your way of life
here; my heart aches when I remember I have to go away.... You may
believe in my sincerity!"
Sleep closed my eyes and I lost myself. When some sound waked me, my
uncle was standing before Tatyana Ivanovna, looking at her with a
softened expression. His cheeks were flushed.
"My life has been wasted," he said. "I have not lived! Your young face
makes me think of my own lost youth, and I should be ready to sit here
watching you to the day of my death. It would be a pleasure to me to
take you with me to Petersburg."
"What for?" Fyodor asked in a husky voice.
"I should put her under a glass case on my work-table. I should admire
her and show her to other people. You know, Pelagea Ivanovna, we have no
women like you there. Among us there is wealth, distinction, sometimes
beauty, but we have not this true sort of life, this healthy
serenity...."
My uncle sat down facing Tatyana Ivanovna and took her by the hand.
"So you won't come with me to Petersburg?" he laughed. "In that case
give me your little hand.... A charming little hand!... You won't give
it? Come, you miser! let me kiss it, anyway...."
At that moment there was the scrape of a chair. Fyodor jumped up, and
with heavy, measured steps went up to his wife. His face was pale, grey,
and quivering. He brought his fist down on the table with a bang, and
said in a hollow voice:
"I won't allow it!"
At the same moment Pobyedimsky jumped up from his chair. He, too, pale
and angry, went up to Tatyana Ivanovna, and he, too, struck the table
with his fist.
"I... I won't allow it!" he said.
"What, what's the matter?" asked my uncle in surprise.
"I won't allow it!" repeated Fyodor, banging on the table.
My uncle jumped up and blinked nervously. He tried to speak, but in his
amazement and alarm could not utter a word; with an embarrassed smile,
he shuffled out of the lodge with the hurried step of an old man,
leaving his hat behind. When, a little later, my mother ran into the
lodge, Fyodor and Pobyedimsky were still hammering on the table like
blacksmiths and repeating, "I won't allow it!"
"What has happened here?" asked mother. "Why has my brother been taken
ill? What's the matter?"
Looking at Tatyana's pale, frightened face and at her infuriated
husband, mother probably guessed what was the matter. She sighed and
shook her head.
"Come! give over banging on the table!" she said. "Leave off, Fyodor!
And why are you thumping, Yegor Alexyevitch? What have you got to do
with it?"
Pobyedimsky was startled and confused. Fyodor looked intently at him,
then at his wife, and began walking about the room. When mother had gone
out of the lodge, I saw what for long afterwards I looked upon as a
dream. I saw Fyodor seize my tutor, lift him up in the air, and thrust
him out of the door.
When I woke up in the morning my tutor's bed was empty. To my question
where he was nurse told me in a whisper that he had been taken off early
in the morning to the hospital, as his arm was broken. Distressed at
this intelligence and remembering the scene of the previous evening, I
went out of doors. It was a grey day. The sky was covered with storm-
clouds and there was a wind blowing dust, bits of paper, and feathers
along the ground.... It felt as though rain were coming. There was a
look of boredom in the servants and in the animals. When I went into the
house I was told not to make such a noise with my feet, as mother was
ill and in bed with a migraine. What was I to do? I went outside the
gate, sat down on the little bench there, and fell to trying to discover
the meaning of what I had seen and heard the day before. From our gate
there was a road which, passing the forge and the pool which never dried
up, ran into the main road. I looked at the telegraph-posts, about which
clouds of dust were whirling, and at the sleepy birds sitting on the
wires, and I suddenly felt so dreary that I began to cry.
A dusty wagonette crammed full of townspeople, probably going to visit
the shrine, drove by along the main road. The wagonette was hardly out
of sight when a light chaise with a pair of horses came into view. In it
was Akim Nikititch, the police inspector, standing up and holding on to
the coachman's belt. To my great surprise, the chaise turned into our
road and flew by me in at the gate. While I was puzzling why the police
inspector had come to see us, I heard a noise, and a carriage with three
horses came into sight on the road. In the carriage stood the police
captain, directing his coachman towards our gate.
"And why is he coming?" I thought, looking at the dusty police captain.
"Most probably Pobyedimsky has complained of Fyodor to him, and they
have come to take him to prison."
But the mystery was not so easily solved. The police inspector and the
police captain were only the first instalment, for five minutes had
scarcely passed when a coach drove in at our gate. It dashed by me so
swiftly that I could only get a glimpse of a red beard.
Lost in conjecture and full of misgivings, I ran to the house. In the
passage first of all I saw mother; she was pale and looking with horror
towards the door, from which came the sounds of men's voices. The
visitors had taken her by surprise in the very throes of migraine.
"Who has come, mother?" I asked.
"Sister," I heard my uncle's voice, "will you send in something to eat
for the governor and me?"
"It is easy to say 'something to eat,'" whispered my mother, numb with
horror. "What have I time to get ready now? I am put to shame in my old
age!"
Mother clutched at her head and ran into the kitchen. The governor's
sudden visit stirred and overwhelmed the whole household. A ferocious
slaughter followed. A dozen fowls, five turkeys, eight ducks, were
killed, and in the fluster the old gander, the progenitor of our whole
flock of geese and a great favourite of mother's, was beheaded. The
coachmen and the cook seemed frenzied, and slaughtered birds at random,
without distinction of age or breed. For the sake of some wretched sauce
a pair of valuable pigeons, as dear to me as the gander was to mother,
were sacrificed. It was a long while before I could forgive the governor
their death.
In the evening, when the governor and his suite, after a sumptuous
dinner, had got into their carriages and driven away, I went into the
house to look at the remains of the feast. Glancing into the drawing-
room from the passage, I saw my uncle and my mother. My uncle, with his
hands behind his back, was walking nervously up and down close to the
wall, shrugging his shoulders. Mother, exhausted and looking much
thinner, was sitting on the sofa and watching his movements with heavy
eyes.
"Excuse me, sister, but this won't do at all," my uncle grumbled,
wrinkling up his face. "I introduced the governor to you, and you didn't
offer to shake hands. You covered him with confusion, poor fellow! No,
that won't do.... Simplicity is a very good thing, but there must be
limits to it.... Upon my soul! And then that dinner! How can one give
people such things? What was that mess, for instance, that they served
for the fourth course?"
"That was duck with sweet sauce..." mother answered softly.
"Duck! Forgive me, sister, but... but here I've got heartburn! I am
ill!"
My uncle made a sour, tearful face, and went on:
"It was the devil sent that governor! As though I wanted his visit!
Pff!... heartburn! I can't work or sleep... I am completely out of
sorts.... And I can't understand how you can live here without anything
to do... in this boredom! Here I've got a pain coming under my shoulder-
blade!..."
My uncle frowned, and walked about more rapidly than ever.
"Brother," my mother inquired softly, "what would it cost to go abroad?"
"At least three thousand..." my uncle answered in a tearful voice. "I
would go, but where am I to get it? I haven't a farthing. Pff!...
heartburn!"
My uncle stopped to look dejectedly at the grey, overcast prospect from
the window, and began pacing to and fro again.
A silence followed.... Mother looked a long while at the ikon, pondering
something, then she began crying, and said: