Short Stories by Chekhov
town; and I could not understand what these sixty thousand people lived
for, what they read the gospel for, why they prayed, why they read books
and magazines. What good had they gained from all that had been said and
written hitherto if they were still possessed by the same spiritual
darkness and hatred of liberty, as they were a hundred and three hundred
years ago? A master carpenter spends his whole life building houses in
the town, and always, to the day of his death, calls a "gallery" a
"galdery." So these sixty thousand people have been reading and hearing
of truth, of justice, of mercy, of freedom for generations, and yet from
morning till night, till the day of their death, they are lying, and
tormenting each other, and they fear liberty and hate it as a deadly
foe.
"And so my fate is decided," said my sister, as we arrived home. "After
what has happened I cannot go back there. Heavens, how good that is! My
heart feels lighter."
She went to bed at once. Tears were glittering on her eyelashes, but her
expression was happy; she fell into a sound sweet sleep, and one could
see that her heart was lighter and that she was resting. It was a long,
long time since she had slept like that.
And so we began our life together. She was always singing and saying
that her life was very happy, and the books I brought her from the
public library I took back unread, as now she could not read; she wanted
to do nothing but dream and talk of the future, mending my linen, or
helping Karpovna near the stove; she was always singing, or talking of
her Vladimir, of his cleverness, of his charming manners, of his
kindness, of his extraordinary learning, and I assented to all she said,
though by now I disliked her doctor. She wanted to work, to lead an
independent life on her own account, and she used to say that she would
become a school-teacher or a doctor's assistant as soon as her health
would permit her, and would herself do the scrubbing and the washing.
Already she was passionately devoted to her child; he was not yet born,
but she knew already the colour of his eyes, what his hands would be
like, and how he would laugh. She was fond of talking about education,
and as her Vladimir was the best man in the world, all her discussion of
education could be summed up in the question how to make the boy as
fascinating as his father. There was no end to her talk, and everything
she said made her intensely joyful. Sometimes I was delighted, too,
though I could not have said why.
I suppose her dreaminess infected me. I, too, gave up reading, and did
nothing but dream. In the evenings, in spite of my fatigue, I walked up
and down the room, with my hands in my pockets, talking of Masha.
"What do you think?" I would ask of my sister. "When will she come back?
I think she'll come back at Christmas, not later; what has she to do
there?"
"As she doesn't write to you, it's evident she will come back very
soon."
"That's true," I assented, though I knew perfectly well that Masha would
not return to our town.
I missed her fearfully, and could no longer deceive myself, and tried to
get other people to deceive me. My sister was expecting her doctor, and
I-Masha; and both of us talked incessantly, laughed, and did not notice
that we were preventing Karpovna from sleeping. She lay on the stove and
kept muttering:
"The samovar hummed this morning, it did hum! Oh, it bodes no good, my
dears, it bodes no good!"
No one ever came to see us but the postman, who brought my sister
letters from the doctor, and Prokofy, who sometimes came in to see us in
the evening, and after looking at my sister without speaking went away,
and when he was in the kitchen said:
"Every class ought to remember its rules, and anyone, who is so proud
that he won't understand that, will find it a vale of tears."
He was very fond of the phrase "a vale of tears." One day-it was in
Christmas week, when I was walking by the bazaar-he called me into the
butcher's shop, and not shaking hands with me, announced that he had to
speak to me about something very important. His face was red from the
frost and vodka; near him, behind the counter, stood Nikolka, with the
expression of a brigand, holding a bloodstained knife in his hand.
"I desire to express my word to you," Prokofy began. "This incident
cannot continue, because, as you understand yourself that for such a
vale, people will say nothing good of you or of us. Mamma, through pity,
cannot say something unpleasant to you, that your sister should move
into another lodging on account of her condition, but I won't have it
any more, because I can't approve of her behaviour."
I understood him, and I went out of the shop. The same day my sister and
I moved to Radish's. We had no money for a cab, and we walked on foot; I
carried a parcel of our belongings on my back; my sister had nothing in
her hands, but she gasped for breath and coughed, and kept asking
whether we should get there soon. XIX
At last a letter came from Masha.
"Dear, good M. A." (she wrote), "our kind, gentle 'angel' as the old
painter calls you, farewell; I am going with my father to America for
the exhibition. In a few days I shall see the ocean-so far from
Dubetchnya, it's dreadful to think! It's far and unfathomable as the
sky, and I long to be there in freedom. I am triumphant, I am mad, and
you see how incoherent my letter is. Dear, good one, give me my freedom,
make haste to break the thread, which still holds, binding you and me
together. My meeting and knowing you was a ray from heaven that lighted
up my existence; but my becoming your wife was a mistake, you understand
that, and I am oppressed now by the consciousness of the mistake, and I
beseech you, on my knees, my generous friend, quickly, quickly, before I
start for the ocean, telegraph that you consent to correct our common
mistake, to remove the solitary stone from my wings, and my father, who
will undertake all the arrangements, promised me not to burden you too
much with formalities. And so I am free to fly whither I will? Yes?
"Be happy, and God bless you; forgive me, a sinner.
"I am well, I am wasting money, doing all sorts of silly things, and I
thank God every minute that such a bad woman as I has no children. I
sing and have success, but it's not an infatuation; no, it's my haven,
my cell to which I go for peace. King David had a ring with an
inscription on it: 'All things pass.' When one is sad those words make
one cheerful, and when one is cheerful it makes one sad. I have got
myself a ring like that with Hebrew letters on it, and this talisman
keeps me from infatuations. All things pass, life will pass, one wants
nothing. Or at least one wants nothing but the sense of freedom, for
when anyone is free, he wants nothing, nothing, nothing. Break the
thread. A warm hug to you and your sister. Forgive and forget your M."
My sister used to lie down in one room, and Radish, who had been ill
again and was now better, in another. Just at the moment when I received
this letter my sister went softly into the painter's room, sat down
beside him and began reading aloud. She read to him every day, Ostrovsky
or Gogol, and he listened, staring at one point, not laughing, but
shaking his head and muttering to himself from time to time:
"Anything may happen! Anything may happen!"
If anything ugly or unseemly were depicted in the play he would say as
though vindictively, thrusting his finger into the book:
"There it is, lying! That's what it does, lying does."
The plays fascinated him, both from their subjects and their moral, and
from their skilful, complex construction, and he marvelled at "him,"
never calling the author by his name. How neatly he has put it all
together.
This time my sister read softly only one page, and could read no more:
her voice would not last out. Radish took her hand and, moving his
parched lips, said, hardly audibly, in a husky voice:
"The soul of a righteous man is white and smooth as chalk, but the soul
of a sinful man is like pumice stone. The soul of a righteous man is
like clear oil, but the soul of a sinful man is gas tar. We must labour,
we must sorrow, we must suffer sickness," he went on, "and he who does
not labour and sorrow will not gain the Kingdom of Heaven. Woe, woe to
them that are well fed, woe to the mighty, woe to the rich, woe to the
moneylenders! Not for them is the Kingdom of Heaven. Lice eat grass,
rust eats iron. . ."
"And lying the soul," my sister added laughing. I read the letter
through once more. At that moment there walked into the kitchen a
soldier who had been bringing us twice a week parcels of tea, French
bread and game, which smelt of scent, from some unknown giver. I had no
work. I had had to sit at home idle for whole days together, and
probably whoever sent us the French bread knew that we were in want.
I heard my sister talking to the soldier and laughing gaily. Then, lying
down, she ate some French bread and said to me:
"When you wouldn't go into the service, but became a house painter,
Anyuta Blagovo and I knew from the beginning that you were right, but we
were frightened to say so aloud. Tell me what force is it that hinders
us from saying what one thinks? Take Anyuta Blagovo now, for instance.
She loves you, she adores you, she knows you are right, she loves me
too, like a sister, and knows that I am right, and I daresay in her soul
envies me, but some force prevents her from coming to see us, she shuns
us, she is afraid."
My sister crossed her arms over her breast, and said passionately:
"How she loves you, if only you knew! She has confessed her love to no
one but me, and then very secretly in the dark. She led me into a dark
avenue in the garden, and began whispering how precious you were to her.
You will see, she'll never marry, because she loves you. Are you sorry
for her?"
"Yes."
"It's she who has sent the bread. She is absurd really, what is the use
of being so secret? I used to be absurd and foolish, but now I have got
away from that and am afraid of nobody. I think and say aloud what I
like, and am happy. When I lived at home I hadn't a conception of
happiness, and now I wouldn't change with a queen."
Dr. Blagovo arrived. He had taken his doctor's degree, and was now
staying in our town with his father; he was taking a rest, and said that
he would soon go back to Petersburg again. He wanted to study anti-
toxins against typhus, and, I believe, cholera; he wanted to go abroad
to perfect his training, and then to be appointed a professor. He had
already left the army service, and wore a roomy serge reefer jacket,
very full trousers, and magnificent neckties. My sister was in ecstasies
over his scarfpin, his studs, and the red silk handkerchief which he
wore, I suppose from foppishness, sticking out of the breast pocket of
his jacket. One day, having nothing to do, she and I counted up all the
suits we remembered him wearing, and came to the conclusion that he had
at least ten. It was clear that he still loved my sister as before, but
he never once even in jest spoke of taking her with him to Petersburg or
abroad, and I could not picture to myself clearly what would become of
her if she remained alive and what would become of her child. She did
nothing but dream endlessly, and never thought seriously of the future;
she said he might go where he liked, and might abandon her even, so long
as he was happy himself; that what had been was enough for her.
As a rule he used to sound her very carefully on his arrival, and used
to insist on her taking milk and drops in his presence. It was the same
on this occasion. He sounded her and made her drink a glass of milk, and
there was a smell of creosote in our room afterwards.