Short Stories by Chekhov
"I'll give you the three thousand, brother...."
Three days later the majestic boxes went off to the station, and the
privy councillor drove off after them. As he said good-bye to mother he
shed tears, and it was a long time before he took his lips from her
hands, but when he got into his carriage his face beamed with childlike
pleasure.... Radiant and happy, he settled himself comfortably, kissed
his hand to my mother, who was crying, and all at once his eye was
caught by me. A look of the utmost astonishment came into his face.
"What boy is this?" he asked.
My mother, who had declared my uncle's coming was a piece of luck for
which I must thank God, was bitterly mortified at this question. I was
in no mood for questions. I looked at my uncle's happy face, and for
some reason I felt fearfully sorry for him. I could not resist jumping
up to the carriage and hugging that frivolous man, weak as all men are.
Looking into his face and wanting to say something pleasant, I asked:
"Uncle, have you ever been in a battle?"
"Ah, the dear boy..." laughed my uncle, kissing me. "A charming boy,
upon my soul! How natural, how living it all is, upon my soul!..."
The carriage set off.... I looked after him, and long afterwards that
farewell "upon my soul" was ringing in my ears.
THE MAN IN A CASE
AT the furthest end of the village of Mironositskoe some belated
sportsmen lodged for the night in the elder Prokofy's barn. There were
two of them, the veterinary surgeon Ivan Ivanovitch and the schoolmaster
Burkin. Ivan Ivanovitch had a rather strange double-barrelled
surname--Tchimsha-Himalaisky--which did not suit him at all, and he was
called simply Ivan Ivanovitch all over the province. He lived at a stud-
farm near the town, and had come out shooting now to get a breath of
fresh air. Burkin, the high-school teacher, stayed every summer at Count
P---'s, and had been thoroughly at home in this district for years.
They did not sleep. Ivan Ivanovitch, a tall, lean old fellow with long
moustaches, was sitting outside the door, smoking a pipe in the
moonlight. Burkin was lying within on the hay, and could not be seen in
the darkness.
They were telling each other all sorts of stories. Among other things,
they spoke of the fact that the elder's wife, Mavra, a healthy and by no
means stupid woman, had never been beyond her native village, had never
seen a town nor a railway in her life, and had spent the last ten years
sitting behind the stove, and only at night going out into the street.
"What is there wonderful in that!" said Burkin. "There are plenty of
people in the world, solitary by temperament, who try to retreat into
their shell like a hermit crab or a snail. Perhaps it is an instance of
atavism, a return to the period when the ancestor of man was not yet a
social animal and lived alone in his den, or perhaps it is only one of
the diversities of human character--who knows? I am not a natural science
man, and it is not my business to settle such questions; I only mean to
say that people like Mavra are not uncommon. There is no need to look
far; two months ago a man called Byelikov, a colleague of mine, the
Greek master, died in our town. You have heard of him, no doubt. He was
remarkable for always wearing goloshes and a warm wadded coat, and
carrying an umbrella even in the very finest weather. And his umbrella
was in a case, and his watch was in a case made of grey chamois leather,
and when he took out his penknife to sharpen his pencil, his penknife,
too, was in a little case; and his face seemed to be in a case too,
because he always hid it in his turned-up collar. He wore dark
spectacles and flannel vests, stuffed up his ears with cotton-wool, and
when he got into a cab always told the driver to put up the hood. In
short, the man displayed a constant and insurmountable impulse to wrap
himself in a covering, to make himself, so to speak, a case which would
isolate him and protect him from external influences. Reality irritated
him, frightened him, kept him in continual agitation, and, perhaps to
justify his timidity, his aversion for the actual, he always praised the
past and what had never existed; and even the classical languages which
he taught were in reality for him goloshes and umbrellas in which he
sheltered himself from real life.
"'Oh, how sonorous, how beautiful is the Greek language!' he would say,
with a sugary expression; and as though to prove his words he would
screw up his eyes and, raising his finger, would pronounce 'Anthropos!'
"And Byelikov tried to hide his thoughts also in a case. The only things
that were clear to his mind were government circulars and newspaper
articles in which something was forbidden. When some proclamation
prohibited the boys from going out in the streets after nine o'clock in
the evening, or some article declared carnal love unlawful, it was to
his mind clear and definite; it was forbidden, and that was enough. For
him there was always a doubtful element, something vague and not fully
expressed, in any sanction or permission. When a dramatic club or a
reading-room or a tea-shop was licensed in the town, he would shake his
head and say softly:
"It is all right, of course; it is all very nice, but I hope it won't
lead to anything!"
"Every sort of breach of order, deviation or departure from rule,
depressed him, though one would have thought it was no business of his.
If one of his colleagues was late for church or if rumours reached him
of some prank of the high-school boys, or one of the mistresses was seen
late in the evening in the company of an officer, he was much disturbed,
and said he hoped that nothing would come of it. At the teachers'
meetings he simply oppressed us with his caution, his circumspection,
and his characteristic reflection on the ill-behaviour of the young
people in both male and female high-schools, the uproar in the classes.
"Oh, he hoped it would not reach the ears of the authorities; oh, he
hoped nothing would come of it; and he thought it would be a very good
thing if Petrov were expelled from the second class and Yegorov from the
fourth. And, do you know, by his sighs, his despondency, his black
spectacles on his pale little face, a little face like a pole-cat's, you
know, he crushed us all, and we gave way, reduced Petrov's and Yegorov's
marks for conduct, kept them in, and in the end expelled them both. He
had a strange habit of visiting our lodgings. He would come to a
teacher's, would sit down, and remain silent, as though he were
carefully inspecting something. He would sit like this in silence for an
hour or two and then go away. This he called 'maintaining good relations
with his colleagues'; and it was obvious that coming to see us and
sitting there was tiresome to him, and that he came to see us simply
because he considered it his duty as our colleague. We teachers were
afraid of him. And even the headmaster was afraid of him. Would you
believe it, our teachers were all intellectual, right-minded people,
brought up on Turgenev and Shtchedrin, yet this little chap, who always
went about with goloshes and an umbrella, had the whole high-school
under his thumb for fifteen long years! High-school, indeed--he had the
whole town under his thumb! Our ladies did not get up private
theatricals on Saturdays for fear he should hear of it, and the clergy
dared not eat meat or play cards in his presence. Under the influence of
people like Byelikov we have got into the way of being afraid of
everything in our town for the last ten or fifteen years. They are
afraid to speak aloud, afraid to send letters, afraid to make
acquaintances, afraid to read books, afraid to help the poor, to teach
people to read and write...."
Ivan Ivanovitch cleared his throat, meaning to say something, but first
lighted his pipe, gazed at the moon, and then said, with pauses:
"Yes, intellectual, right minded people read Shtchedrin and Turgenev,
Buckle, and all the rest of them, yet they knocked under and put up with
it... that's just how it is."
"Byelikov lived in the same house as I did," Burkin went on, "on the
same storey, his door facing mine; we often saw each other, and I knew
how he lived when he was at home. And at home it was the same story:
dressing-gown, nightcap, blinds, bolts, a perfect succession of
prohibitions and restrictions of all sorts, and--'Oh, I hope nothing will
come of it!' Lenten fare was bad for him, yet he could not eat meat, as
people might perhaps say Byelikov did not keep the fasts, and he ate
freshwater fish with butter--not a Lenten dish, yet one could not say
that it was meat. He did not keep a female servant for fear people might
think evil of him, but had as cook an old man of sixty, called Afanasy,
half-witted and given to tippling, who had once been an officer's
servant and could cook after a fashion. This Afanasy was usually
standing at the door with his arms folded; with a deep sigh, he would
mutter always the same thing:
"'There are plenty of them about nowadays!'
"Byelikov had a little bedroom like a box; his bed had curtains. When he
went to bed he covered his head over; it was hot and stuffy; the wind
battered on the closed doors; there was a droning noise in the stove and
a sound of sighs from the kitchen--ominous sighs.... And he felt
frightened under the bed-clothes. He was afraid that something might
happen, that Afanasy might murder him, that thieves might break in, and
so he had troubled dreams all night, and in the morning, when we went
together to the high-school, he was depressed and pale, and it was
evident that the high-school full of people excited dread and aversion
in his whole being, and that to walk beside me was irksome to a man of
his solitary temperament.
"'They make a great noise in our classes,' he used to say, as though
trying to find an explanation for his depression. 'It's beyond
anything.'
"And the Greek master, this man in a case--would you believe it?--almost
got married."
Ivan Ivanovitch glanced quickly into the barn, and said:
"You are joking!"
"Yes, strange as it seems, he almost got married. A new teacher of
history and geography, Milhail Savvitch Kovalenko, a Little Russian, was
appointed. He came, not alone, but with his sister Varinka. He was a
tall, dark young man with huge hands, and one could see from his face
that he had a bass voice, and, in fact, he had a voice that seemed to
come out of a barrel--'boom, boom, boom!' And she was not so young, about
thirty, but she, too, was tall, well-made, with black eyebrows and red
cheeks--in fact, she was a regular sugar-plum, and so sprightly, so
noisy; she was always singing Little Russian songs and laughing. For the
least thing she would go off into a ringing laugh--'Ha-ha-ha!' We made
our first thorough acquaintance with the Kovalenkos at the headmaster's
name-day party. Among the glum and intensely bored teachers who came
even to the name-day party as a duty we suddenly saw a new Aphrodite
risen from the waves; she walked with her arms akimbo, laughed, sang,
danced.... She sang with feeling 'The Winds do Blow,' then another song,
and another, and she fascinated us all--all, even Byelikov. He sat down
by her and said with a honeyed smile:
"'The Little Russian reminds one of the ancient Greek in its softness
and agreeable resonance.'
"That flattered her, and she began telling him with feeling and
earnestness that they had a farm in the Gadyatchsky district, and that
her mamma lived at the farm, and that they had such pears, such melons,
such kabaks! The Little Russians call pumpkins kabaks (i.e., pothouses),
while their pothouses they call shinki, and they make a beetroot soup
with tomatoes and aubergines in it, 'which was so nice--awfully nice!'