Short Stories by Chekhov
sledges, some empty, some loaded up with meat. Men were walking about
with lanterns, swearing in a disgusting way. Prokofy and Nikolka swore
just as revoltingly, and the air was in a continual uproar with
swearing, coughing, and the neighing of horses.
There was a smell of dead bodies and of dung. It was thawing, the snow
was changing into mud; and in the darkness it seemed to me that I was
walking through pools of blood.
Having piled up the sledges full of meat we set off to the butcher's
shop in the market. It began to get light. Cooks with baskets and
elderly ladies in mantles came along one after another. Prokofy, with a
chopper in his hand, in a white apron spattered with blood, swore
fearful oaths, crossed himself at the church, shouted aloud for the
whole market to hear, that he was giving away the meat at cost price and
even at a loss to himself. He gave short weight and short change, the
cooks saw that, but, deafened by his shouts, did not protest, and only
called him a hangman. Brandishing and bringing down his terrible chopper
he threw himself into picturesque attitudes, and each time uttered the
sound "Geck" with a ferocious expression, and I was afraid he really
would chop off somebody's head or hand.
I spent all the morning in the butcher's shop, and when at last I went
to the Governor's, my overcoat smelt of meat and blood. My state of mind
was as though I were being sent spear in hand to meet a bear. I remember
the tall staircase with a striped carpet on it, and the young official,
with shiny buttons, who mutely motioned me to the door with both hands,
and ran to announce me. I went into a hall luxuriously but frigidly and
tastelessly furnished, and the high, narrow mirrors in the spaces
between the walls, and the bright yellow window curtains, struck the eye
particularly unpleasantly. One could see that the governors were
changed, but the furniture remained the same. Again the young official
motioned me with both hands to the door, and I went up to a big green
table at which a military general, with the Order of Vladimir on his
breast, was standing.
"Mr. Poloznev, I have asked you to come," he began, holding a letter in
his hand, and opening his mouth like a round "o," "I have asked you to
come here to inform you of this. Your highly respected father has
appealed by letter and by word of mouth to the Marshal of the Nobility
begging him to summon you, and to lay before you the inconsistency of
your behaviour with the rank of the nobility to which you have the
honour to belong. His Excellency Alexandr Pavlovitch, justly supposing
that your conduct might serve as a bad example, and considering that
mere persuasion on his part would not be sufficient, but that official
intervention in earnest was essential, presents me here in this letter
with his views in regard to you, which I share."
He said this, quietly, respectfully, standing erect, as though I were
his superior officer and looking at me with no trace of severity. His
face looked worn and wizened, and was all wrinkles; there were bags
under his eyes; his hair was dyed; and it was impossible to tell from
his appearance how old he was-forty or sixty.
"I trust," he went on, "that you appreciate the delicacy of our honoured
Alexandr Pavlovitch, who has addressed himself to me not officially, but
privately. I, too, have asked you to come here unofficially, and I am
speaking to you, not as a Governor, but from a sincere regard for your
father. And so I beg you either to alter your line of conduct and return
to duties in keeping with your rank, or to avoid setting a bad example,
remove to another district where you are not known, and where you can
follow any occupation you please. In the other case, I shall be forced
to take extreme measures."
He stood for half a minute in silence, looking at me with his mouth
open.
"Are you a vegetarian?" he asked.
"No, your Excellency, I eat meat."
He sat down and drew some papers towards him. I bowed and went out.
It was not worth while now to go to work before dinner. I went home to
sleep, but could not sleep from an unpleasant, sickly feeling, induced
by the slaughter house and my conversation with the Governor, and when
the evening came I went, gloomy and out of sorts, to Mariya Viktorovna.
I told her how I had been at the Governor's, while she stared at me in
perplexity as though she did not believe it, then suddenly began
laughing gaily, loudly, irrepressibly, as only good-natured laughter-
loving people can.
"If only one could tell that in Petersburg!" she brought out, almost
falling over with laughter, and propping herself against the table. "If
one could tell that in Petersburg!" IX
Now we used to see each other often, sometimes twice a day. She used to
come to the cemetery almost every day after dinner, and read the
epitaphs on the crosses and tombstones while she waited for me.
Sometimes she would come into the church, and, standing by me, would
look on while I worked. The stillness, the naïve work of the painters
and gilders, Radish's sage reflections, and the fact that I did not
differ externally from the other workmen, and worked just as they did in
my waistcoat with no socks on, and that I was addressed familiarly by
them-all this was new to her and touched her. One day a workman, who was
painting a dove on the ceiling, called out to me in her presence:
"Misail, hand me up the white paint."
I took him the white paint, and afterwards, when I let myself down by
the frail scaffolding, she looked at me, touched to tears and smiling.
"What a dear you are!" she said.
I remembered from my childhood how a green parrot, belonging to one of
the rich men of the town, had escaped from its cage, and how for quite a
month afterwards the beautiful bird had haunted the town, flying from
garden to garden, homeless and solitary. Mariya Viktorovna reminded me
of that bird.
"There is positively nowhere for me to go now but the cemetery," she
said to me with a laugh. "The town has become disgustingly dull. At the
Azhogins' they are still reciting, singing, lisping. I have grown to
detest them of late; your sister is an unsociable creature; Mademoiselle
Blagovo hates me for some reason. I don't care for the theatre. Tell me
where am I to go?"
When I went to see her I smelt of paint and turpentine, and my hands
were stained-and she liked that; she wanted me to come to her in my
ordinary working clothes; but in her drawing-room those clothes made me
feel awkward. I felt embarrassed, as though I were in uniform, so I
always put on my new serge trousers when I went to her. And she did not
like that.
"You must own you are not quite at home in your new character," she said
to me one day. "Your workman's dress does not feel natural to you; you
are awkward in it. Tell me, isn't that because you haven't a firm
conviction, and are not satisfied? The very kind of work you have
chosen-your painting-surely it does not satisfy you, does it?" she
asked, laughing. "I know paint makes things look nicer and last longer,
but those things belong to rich people who live in towns, and after all
they are luxuries. Besides, you have often said yourself that everybody
ought to get his bread by the work of his own hands, yet you get money
and not bread. Why shouldn't you keep to the literal sense of your
words? You ought to be getting bread, that is, you ought to be
ploughing, sowing, reaping, threshing, or doing something which has a
direct connection with agriculture, for instance, looking after cows,
digging, building huts of logs. . . ."
She opened a pretty cupboard that stood near her writing-table, and
said:
"I am saying all this to you because I want to let you into my secret.
Voil? ! This is my agricultural library. Here I have fields, kitchen
garden and orchard, and cattleyard and beehives. I read them greedily,
and have already learnt all the theory to the tiniest detail. My dream,
my darling wish, is to go to our Dubetchnya as soon as March is here.
It's marvellous there, exquisite, isn't it? The first year I shall have
a look round and get into things, and the year after I shall begin to
work properly myself, putting my back into it as they say. My father has
promised to give me Dubetchnya and I shall do exactly what I like with
it."
Flushed, excited to tears, and laughing, she dreamed aloud how she would
live at Dubetchnya, and what an interesting life it would be! I envied
her. March was near, the days were growing longer and longer, and on
bright sunny days water dripped from the roofs at midday, and there was
a fragrance of spring; I, too, longed for the country.
And when she said that she should move to Dubetchnya, I realized vividly
that I should remain in the town alone, and I felt that I envied her
with her cupboard of books and her agriculture. I knew nothing of work
on the land, and did not like it, and I should have liked to have told
her that work on the land was slavish toil, but I remembered that
something similar had been said more than once by my father, and I held
my tongue.
Lent began. Viktor Ivanitch, whose existence I had begun to forget,
arrived from Petersburg. He arrived unexpectedly, without even a
telegram to say he was coming. When I went in, as usual in the evening,
he was walking about the drawing-room, telling some story with his face
freshly washed and shaven, looking ten years younger: his daughter was
kneeling on the floor, taking out of his trunks boxes, bottles, and
books, and handing them to Pavel the footman. I involuntarily drew back
a step when I saw the engineer, but he held out both hands to me and
said, smiling, showing his strong white teeth that looked like a sledge-
driver's:
"Here he is, here he is! Very glad to see you, Mr. House-painter! Masha
has told me all about it; she has been singing your praises. I quite
understand and approve," he went on, taking my arm. "To be a good
workman is ever so much more honest and more sensible than wasting
government paper and wearing a cockade on your head. I myself worked in
Belgium with these very hands and then spent two years as a mechanic. .
. ."
He was wearing a short reefer jacket and indoor slippers; he walked like
a man with the gout, rolling slightly from side to side and rubbing his
hands. Humming something he softly purred and hugged himself with
satisfaction at being at home again at last, and able to have his
beloved shower bath.
"There is no disputing," he said to me at supper, "there is no
disputing; you are all nice and charming people, but for some reason, as
soon as you take to manual labour, or go in for saving the peasants, in
the long run it all comes to no more than being a dissenter. Aren't you
a dissenter? Here you don't take vodka. What's the meaning of that if it
is not being a dissenter?"
To satisfy him I drank some vodka and I drank some wine, too. We tasted
the cheese, the sausage, the pâtés, the pickles, and the savouries of
all sorts that the engineer had brought with him, and the wine that had
come in his absence from abroad. The wine was first-rate. For some
reason the engineer got wine and cigars from abroad without paying duty;
the caviare and the dried sturgeon someone sent him for nothing; he did
not pay rent for his flat as the owner of the house provided the
kerosene for the line; and altogether he and his daughter produced on me
the impression that all the best in the world was at their service, and
provided for them for nothing.
I went on going to see them, but not with the same eagerness. The
engineer made me feel constrained, and in his presence I did not feel
free. I could not face his clear, guileless eyes, his reflections
wearied and sickened me; I was sickened, too, by the memory that so