Short Stories by Chekhov
Then a visit of inspection was arranged at the aunt's, with lunch and
wine all in due order, and Lipa wore a new pink dress made on purpose
for this occasion, and a crimson ribbon like a flame gleamed in her
hair. She was pale-faced, thin, and frail, with soft, delicate features
sunburnt from working in the open air; a shy, mournful smile always
hovered about her face, and there was a childlike look in her eyes,
trustful and curious.
She was young, quite a little girl, her bosom still scarcely
perceptible, but she could be married because she had reached the legal
age. She really was beautiful, and the only thing that might be thought
unattractive was her big masculine hands which hung idle now like two
big claws.
"There is no dowry--and we don't think much of that," said Tsybukin to
the aunt. "We took a wife from a poor family for our son Stepan, too,
and now we can't say too much for her. In house and in business alike
she has hands of gold."
Lipa stood in the doorway and looked as though she would say: "Do with
me as you will, I trust you," while her mother Praskovya the work-woman
hid herself in the kitchen numb with shyness. At one time in her youth a
merchant whose floors she was scrubbing stamped at her in a rage; she
went chill with terror and there always was a feeling of fear at the
bottom of her heart. When she was frightened her arms and legs trembled
and her cheeks twitched. Sitting in the kitchen she tried to hear what
the visitors were saying, and she kept crossing herself, pressing her
fingers to her forehead, and gazing at the ikons. Anisim, slightly
drunk, opened the door into the kitchen and said in a free-and-easy way:
"Why are you sitting in here, precious mamma? We are dull without you."
And Praskovya, overcome with timidity, pressing her hands to her lean,
wasted bosom, said:
"Oh, not at all.... It's very kind of you."
After the visit of inspection the wedding day was fixed. Then Anisim
walked about the rooms at home whistling, or suddenly thinking of
something, would fall to brooding and would look at the floor fixedly,
silently, as though he would probe to the depths of the earth. He
expressed neither pleasure that he was to be married, married so soon,
on Low Sunday, nor a desire to see his bride, but simply went on
whistling. And it was evident he was only getting married because his
father and stepmother wished him to, and because it was the custom in
the village to marry the son in order to have a woman to help in the
house. When he went away he seemed in no haste, and behaved altogether
not as he had done on previous visits--was particularly free and easy,
and talked inappropriately.
III
In the village Shikalovo lived two dressmakers, sisters, belonging to
the Flagellant sect. The new clothes for the wedding were ordered from
them, and they often came to try them on, and stayed a long while
drinking tea. They were making Varvara a brown dress with black lace and
bugles on it, and Aksinya a light green dress with a yellow front, with
a train. When the dressmakers had finished their work Tsybukin paid them
not in money but in goods from the shop, and they went away depressed,
carrying parcels of tallow candles and tins of sardines which they did
not in the least need, and when they got out of the village into the
open country they sat down on a hillock and cried.
Anisim arrived three days before the wedding, rigged out in new clothes
from top to toe. He had dazzling india-rubber goloshes, and instead of a
cravat wore a red cord with little balls on it, and over his shoulder he
had hung an overcoat, also new, without putting his arms into the
sleeves.
After crossing himself sedately before the ikon, he greeted his father
and gave him ten silver roubles and ten half-roubles; to Varvara he gave
as much, and to Aksinya twenty quarter-roubles. The chief charm of the
present lay in the fact that all the coins, as though carefully matched,
were new and glittered in the sun. Trying to seem grave and sedate he
pursed up his face and puffed out his cheeks, and he smelt of spirits.
Probably he had visited the refreshment bar at every station. And again
there was a free-and-easiness about the man--something superfluous and
out of place. Then Anisim had lunch and drank tea with the old man, and
Varvara turned the new coins over in her hand and inquired about
villagers who had gone to live in the town.
"They are all right, thank God, they get on quite well," said Anisim.
"Only something has happened to Ivan Yegorov: his old wife Sofya
Nikiforovna is dead. From consumption. They ordered the memorial dinner
for the peace of her soul at the confectioner's at two and a half
roubles a head. And there was real wine. Those who were peasants from
our village--they paid two and a half roubles for them, too. They ate
nothing, as though a peasant would understand sauce!"
"Two and a half," said his father, shaking his head.
"Well, it's not like the country there, you go into a restaurant to have
a snack of something, you ask for one thing and another, others join
till there is a party of us, one has a drink--and before you know where
you are it is daylight and you've three or four roubles each to pay. And
when one is with Samorodov he likes to have coffee with brandy in it
after everything, and brandy is sixty kopecks for a little glass."
"And he is making it all up," said the old man enthusiastically; "he is
making it all up, lying!"
"I am always with Samorodov now. It is Samorodov who writes my letters
to you. He writes splendidly. And if I were to tell you, mamma," Anisim
went on gaily, addressing Varvara, "the sort of fellow that Samorodov
is, you would not believe me. We call him Muhtar, because he is black
like an Armenian. I can see through him, I know all his affairs like the
five fingers of my hand, and he feels that, and he always follows me
about, we are regular inseparables. He seems not to like it in a way,
but he can't get on without me. Where I go he goes. I have a correct,
trustworthy eye, mamma. One sees a peasant selling a shirt in the market
place. 'Stay, that shirt's stolen.' And really it turns out it is so:
the shirt was a stolen one."
"What do you tell from?" asked Varvara.
"Not from anything, I have just an eye for it. I know nothing about the
shirt, only for some reason I seem drawn to it: it's stolen, and that's
all I can say. Among us detectives it's come to their saying, 'Oh,
Anisim has gone to shoot snipe!' That means looking for stolen goods.
Yes.... Anybody can steal, but it is another thing to keep! The earth is
wide, but there is nowhere to hide stolen goods."
"In our village a ram and two ewes were carried off last week," said
Varvara, and she heaved a sigh, and there is no one to try and find
them.... Oh, tut, tut.."
"Well, I might have a try. I don't mind."
The day of the wedding arrived. It was a cool but bright, cheerful April
day. People were driving about Ukleevo from early morning with pairs or
teams of three horses decked with many-coloured ribbons on their yokes
and manes, with a jingle of bells. The rooks, disturbed by this
activity, were cawing noisily in the willows, and the starlings sang
their loudest unceasingly as though rejoicing that there was a wedding
at the Tsybukins'.
Indoors the tables were already covered with long fish, smoked hams,
stuffed fowls, boxes of sprats, pickled savouries of various sorts, and
a number of bottles of vodka and wine; there was a smell of smoked
sausage and of sour tinned lobster. Old Tsybukin walked about near the
tables, tapping with his heels and sharpening the knives against each
other. They kept calling Varvara and asking for things, and she was
constantly with a distracted face running breathlessly into the kitchen,
where the man cook from Kostukov's and the woman cook from Hrymin
Juniors' had been at work since early morning. Aksinya, with her hair
curled, in her stays without her dress on, in new creaky boots, flew
about the yard like a whirlwind showing glimpses of her bare knees and
bosom.
It was noisy, there was a sound of scolding and oaths; passers-by
stopped at the wide-open gates, and in everything there was a feeling
that something extraordinary was happening.
"They have gone for the bride!"
The bells began jingling and died away far beyond the village....
Between two and three o'clock people ran up: again there was a jingling
of bells: they were bringing the bride! The church was full, the
candelabra were lighted, the choir were singing from music books as old
Tsybukin had wished it. The glare of the lights and the bright coloured
dresses dazzled Lipa; she felt as though the singers with their loud
voices were hitting her on the head with a hammer. Her boots and the
stays, which she had put on for the first time in her life, pinched her,
and her face looked as though she had only just come to herself after
fainting; she gazed about without understanding. Anisim, in his black
coat with a red cord instead of a tie, stared at the same spot lost in
thought, and when the singers shouted loudly he hurriedly crossed
himself. He felt touched and disposed to weep. This church was familiar
to him from earliest childhood; at one time his dead mother used to
bring him here to take the sacrament; at one time he used to sing in the
choir; every ikon he remembered so well, every corner. Here he was being
married, he had to take a wife for the sake of doing the proper thing,
but he was not thinking of that now, he had forgotten his wedding
completely. Tears dimmed his eyes so that he could not see the ikons, he
felt heavy at heart; he prayed and besought God that the misfortunes
that threatened him, that were ready to burst upon him to-morrow, if not
to-day, might somehow pass him by as storm-clouds in time of drought
pass over the village without yielding one drop of rain. And so many
sins were heaped up in the past, so many sins, all getting away from
them or setting them right was so beyond hope that it seemed incongruous
even to ask forgiveness. But he did ask forgiveness, and even gave a
loud sob, but no one took any notice of that, since they all supposed he
had had a drop too much.
There was a sound of a fretful childish wail:
"Take me away, mamma darling!"
"Quiet there!" cried the priest.
When they returned from the church people ran after them; there were
crowds, too, round the shop, round the gates, and in the yard under the
windows. The peasant women came in to sing songs of congratulation to
them. The young couple had scarcely crossed the threshold when the
singers, who were already standing in the outer room with their music
books, broke into a loud chant at the top of their voices; a band
ordered expressly from the town began playing. Foaming Don wine was
brought in tall wine-glasses, and Elizarov, a carpenter who did jobs by
contract, a tall, gaunt old man with eyebrows so bushy that his eyes
could scarcely be seen, said, addressing the happy pair:
"Anisim and you, my child, love one another, live in God's way, little
children, and the Heavenly Mother will not abandon you."
He leaned his face on the old father's shoulder and gave a sob.
"Grigory Petrovitch, let us weep, let us weep with joy!" he said in a
thin voice, and then at once burst out laughing in a loud bass guffaw.
"Ho-ho-ho! This is a fine daughter-in-law for you too! Everything is in
its place in her; all runs smoothly, no creaking, the mechanism works
well, lots of screws in it."
He was a native of the Yegoryevsky district, but had worked in the
factories in Ukleevo and the neighborhood from his youth up, and had
made it his home. He had been a familiar figure for years as old and
gaunt and lanky as now, and for years he had been nicknamed "Crutch."