Short Stories by Chekhov
life pleased them very much. It was only an unpleasant shock to them
that I took no hand in stealing oil and did not go with them to ask for
tips from people on whose property we were working. Stealing oil and
paints from those who employed them was a house painter's custom, and
was not regarded as theft, and it was remarkable that even so upright a
man as Radish would always carry away a little white lead and oil as he
went home from work. And even the most respectable old fellows, who
owned the houses in which they lived in the suburb, were not ashamed to
ask for a tip, and it made me feel vexed and ashamed to see the men go
in a body to congratulate some nonentity on the commencement or the
completion of the job, and thank him with degrading servility when they
had received a few coppers.
With people on whose work they were engaged they behaved like wily
courtiers, and almost every day I was reminded of Shakespeare's
Polonius.
"I fancy it is going to rain," the man whose house was being painted
would say, looking at the sky.
"It is, there is not a doubt it is," the painters would agree.
"I don't think it is a rain-cloud, though. Perhaps it won't rain after
all."
"No, it won't, your honour! I am sure it won't."
But their attitude to their patrons behind their backs was usually one
of irony, and when they saw, for instance, a gentleman sitting in the
verandah reading a newspaper, they would observe:
"He reads the paper, but I daresay he has nothing to eat."
I never went home to see my own people. When I came back from work I
often found waiting for me little notes, brief and anxious, in which my
sister wrote to me about my father; that he had been particularly
preoccupied at dinner and had eaten nothing, or that he had been giddy
and staggering, or that he had locked himself in his room and had not
come out for a long time. Such items of news troubled me; I could not
sleep, and at times even walked up and down Great Dvoryansky Street at
night by our house, looking in at the dark windows and trying to guess
whether everything was well at home. On Sundays my sister came to see
me, but came in secret, as though it were not to see me but our nurse.
And if she came in to see me she was very pale, with tear-stained eyes,
and she began crying at once.
"Our father will never live through this," she would say. "If anything
should happen to him-God grant it may not-your conscience will torment
you all your life. It's awful, Misail; for our mother's sake I beseech
you: reform your ways."
"My darling sister," I would say, "how can I reform my ways if I am
convinced that I am acting in accordance with my conscience? Do
understand!"
"I know you are acting on your conscience, but perhaps it could be done
differently, somehow, so as not to wound anybody."
"Ah, holy Saints!" the old woman sighed through the door. "Your life is
ruined! There will be trouble, my dears, there will be trouble!" VI
One Sunday Dr. Blagovo turned up unexpectedly. He was wearing a military
tunic over a silk shirt and high boots of patent leather.
"I have come to see you," he began, shaking my hand heartily like a
student. "I am hearing about you every day, and I have been meaning to
come and have a heart-to-heart talk, as they say. The boredom in the
town is awful, there is not a living soul, no one to say a word to. It's
hot, Holy Mother," he went on, taking off his tunic and sitting in his
silk shirt. "My dear fellow, let me talk to you."
I was dull myself, and had for a long time been craving for the society
of someone not a house painter. I was genuinely glad to see him.
"I'll begin by saying," he said, sitting down on my bed, "that I
sympathize with you from the bottom of my heart, and deeply respect the
life you are leading. They don't understand you here in the town, and,
indeed, there is no one to understand, seeing that, as you know, they
are all, with very few exceptions, regular Gogolesque pig faces here.
But I saw what you were at once that time at the picnic. You are a noble
soul, an honest, high-minded man! I respect you, and feel it a great
honour to shake hands with you!" he went on enthusiastically. "To have
made such a complete and violent change of life as you have done, you
must have passed through a complicated spiritual crisis, and to continue
this manner of life now, and to keep up to the high standard of your
convictions continually, must be a strain on your mind and heart from
day to day. Now to begin our talk, tell me, don't you consider that if
you had spent your strength of will, this strained activity, all these
powers on something else, for instance, on gradually becoming a great
scientist, or artist, your life would have been broader and deeper and
would have been more productive?"
We talked, and when we got upon manual labour I expressed this idea:
that what is wanted is that the strong should not enslave the weak, that
the minority should not be a parasite on the majority, nor a vampire for
ever sucking its vital sap; that is, all, without exception, strong and
weak, rich and poor, should take part equally in the struggle for
existence, each one on his own account, and that there was no better
means for equalizing things in that way than manual labour, in the form
of universal service, compulsory for all.
"Then do you think everyone without exception ought to engage in manual
labour?" asked the doctor.
"Yes."
"And don't you think that if everyone, including the best men, the
thinkers and great scientists, taking part in the struggle for
existence, each on his own account, are going to waste their time
breaking stones and painting roofs, may not that threaten a grave danger
to progress?"
"Where is the danger?" I asked. "Why, progress is in deeds of love, in
fulfilling the moral law; if you don't enslave anyone, if you don't
oppress anyone, what further progress do you want?"
"But, excuse me," Blagovo suddenly fired up, rising to his feet. "But,
excuse me! If a snail in its shell busies itself over perfecting its own
personality and muddles about with the moral law, do you call that
progress?"
"Why muddles?" I said, offended. "If you don't force your neighbour to
feed and clothe you, to transport you from place to place and defend you
from your enemies, surely in the midst of a life entirely resting on
slavery, that is progress, isn't it? To my mind it is the most important
progress, and perhaps the only one possible and necessary for man."
"The limits of universal world progress are in infinity, and to talk of
some 'possible' progress limited by our needs and temporary theories is,
excuse my saying so, positively strange."
"If the limits of progress are in infinity as you say, it follows that
its aims are not definite," I said. "To live without knowing definitely
what you are living for!"
"So be it! But that 'not knowing' is not so dull as your 'knowing.' I am
going up a ladder which is called progress, civilization, culture; I go
on and up without knowing definitely where I am going, but really it is
worth living for the sake of that delightful ladder; while you know what
you are living for, you live for the sake of some people's not enslaving
others, that the artist and the man who rubs his paints may dine equally
well. But you know that's the petty, bourgeois, kitchen, grey side of
life, and surely it is revolting to live for that alone? If some insects
do enslave others, bother them, let them devour each other! We need not
think about them. You know they will die and decay just the same,
however zealously you rescue them from slavery. We must think of that
great millennium which awaits humanity in the remote future."
Blagovo argued warmly with me, but at the same time one could see he was
troubled by some irrelevant idea.
"I suppose your sister is not coming?" he said, looking at his watch.
"She was at our house yesterday, and said she would be seeing you to-
day. You keep saying slavery, slavery . . ." he went on. "But you know
that is a special question, and all such questions are solved by
humanity gradually."
We began talking of doing things gradually. I said that "the question of
doing good or evil every one settles for himself, without waiting till
humanity settles it by the way of gradual development. Moreover, this
gradual process has more than one aspect. Side by side with the gradual
development of human ideas the gradual growth of ideas of another order
is observed. Serfdom is no more, but the capitalist system is growing.
And in the very heyday of emancipating ideas, just as in the days of
Baty, the majority feeds, clothes, and defends the minority while
remaining hungry, inadequately clad, and defenceless. Such an order of
things can be made to fit in finely with any tendencies and currents of
thought you like, because the art of enslaving is also gradually being
cultivated. We no longer flog our servants in the stable, but we give to
slavery refined forms, at least, we succeed in finding a justification
for it in each particular case. Ideas are ideas with us, but if now, at
the end of the nineteenth century, it were possible to lay the burden of
the most unpleasant of our physiological functions upon the working
class, we should certainly do so, and afterwards, of course, justify
ourselves by saying that if the best people, the thinkers and great
scientists, were to waste their precious time on these functions,
progress might be menaced with great danger."
But at this point my sister arrived. Seeing the doctor she was fluttered
and troubled, and began saying immediately that it was time for her to
go home to her father.
"Kleopatra Alexyevna," said Blagovo earnestly, pressing both hands to
his heart, "what will happen to your father if you spend half an hour or
so with your brother and me?"
He was frank, and knew how to communicate his liveliness to others.
After a moment's thought, my sister laughed, and all at once became
suddenly gay as she had been at the picnic. We went out into the
country, and lying in the grass went on with our talk, and looked
towards the town where all the windows facing west were like glittering
gold because the sun was setting.
After that, whenever my sister was coming to see me Blagovo turned up
too, and they always greeted each other as though their meeting in my
room was accidental. My sister listened while the doctor and I argued,
and at such times her expression was joyfully enthusiastic, full of
tenderness and curiosity, and it seemed to me that a new world she had
never dreamed of before, and which she was now striving to fathom, was
gradually opening before her eyes. When the doctor was not there she was
quiet and sad, and now if she sometimes shed tears as she sat on my bed
it was for reasons of which she did not speak.
In August Radish ordered us to be ready to go to the railway-line. Two
days before we were "banished" from the town my father came to see me.
He sat down and in a leisurely way, without looking at me, wiped his red
face, then took out of his pocket our town Messenger, and deliberately,
with emphasis on each word, read out the news that the son of the branch
manager of the State Bank, a young man of my age, had been appointed
head of a Department in the Exchequer.
"And now look at you," he said, folding up the newspaper, "a beggar, in
rags, good for nothing! Even working-class people and peasants obtain
education in order to become men, while you, a Poloznev, with ancestors
of rank and distinction, aspire to the gutter! But I have not come here
to talk to you; I have washed my hands of you-" he added in a stifled
voice, getting up. "I have come to find out where your sister is, you
worthless fellow. She left home after dinner, and here it is nearly