Short Stories by Chekhov
After a long silence the little girl suddenly turned over, and said
angrily, emphasizing each word:
"Oh, goodness, goodness, how unhappy I am! Unhappier than anyone!"
The man got up and moved with little steps to the child with a guilty
air, which was utterly out of keeping with his huge figure and big
beard.
"You are not asleep, dearie?" he said, in an apologetic voice. "What do
you want?"
"I don't want anything, my shoulder aches! You are a wicked man, Daddy,
and God will punish you! You'll see He will punish you."
"My darling, I know your shoulder aches, but what can I do, dearie?"
said the man, in the tone in which men who have been drinking excuse
themselves to their stern spouses. "It's the journey has made your
shoulder ache, Sasha. To-morrow we shall get there and rest, and the
pain will go away. . . ."
"To-morrow, to-morrow. . . . Every day you say to-morrow. We shall be
going on another twenty days."
"But we shall arrive to-morrow, dearie, on your father's word of honour.
I never tell a lie, but if we are detained by the snowstorm it is not my
fault."
"I can't bear any more, I can't, I can't!"
Sasha jerked her leg abruptly and filled the room with an unpleasant
wailing. Her father made a despairing gesture, and looked hopelessly
towards the young lady. The latter shrugged her shoulders, and
hesitatingly went up to Sasha.
"Listen, my dear," she said, "it is no use crying. It's really naughty;
if your shoulder aches it can't be helped."
"You see, Madam," said the man quickly, as though defending himself, "we
have not slept for two nights, and have been travelling in a revolting
conveyance. Well, of course, it is natural she should be ill and
miserable, . . . and then, you know, we had a drunken driver, our
portmanteau has been stolen . . . the snowstorm all the time, but what's
the use of crying, Madam? I am exhausted, though, by sleeping in a
sitting position, and I feel as though I were drunk. Oh, dear! Sasha,
and I feel sick as it is, and then you cry!"
The man shook his head, and with a gesture of despair sat down.
"Of course you mustn't cry," said the young lady. "It's only little
babies cry. If you are ill, dear, you must undress and go to sleep. . .
. Let us take off your things!"
When the child had been undressed and pacified a silence reigned again.
The young lady seated herself at the window, and looked round
wonderingly at the room of the inn, at the ikon, at the stove. . . .
Apparently the room and the little girl with the thick nose, in her
short boy's nightgown, and the child's father, all seemed strange to
her. This strange man was sitting in a corner; he kept looking about him
helplessly, as though he were drunk, and rubbing his face with the palm
of his hand. He sat silent, blinking, and judging from his guilty-
looking figure it was difficult to imagine that he would soon begin to
speak. Yet he was the first to begin. Stroking his knees, he gave a
cough, laughed, and said:
"It's a comedy, it really is. . . . I look and I cannot believe my eyes:
for what devilry has destiny driven us to this accursed inn? What did
she want to show by it? Life sometimes performs such 'salto mortale,'
one can only stare and blink in amazement. Have you come from far,
Madam?"
"No, not from far," answered the young lady. "I am going from our
estate, fifteen miles from here, to our farm, to my father and brother.
My name is Ilovaisky, and the farm is called Ilovaiskoe. It's nine miles
away. What unpleasant weather!"
"It couldn't be worse."
The lame boy came in and stuck a new candle in the pomatum pot.
"You might bring us the samovar, boy," said the man, addressing him.
"Who drinks tea now?" laughed the boy. "It is a sin to drink tea before
mass. . . ."
"Never mind boy, you won't burn in hell if we do. . . ."
Over the tea the new acquaintances got into conversation.
Mlle. Ilovaisky learned that her companion was called Grigory Petrovitch
Liharev, that he was the brother of the Liharev who was Marshal of
Nobility in one of the neighbouring districts, and he himself had once
been a landowner, but had "run through everything in his time." Liharev
learned that her name was Marya Mihailovna, that her father had a huge
estate, but that she was the only one to look after it as her father and
brother looked at life through their fingers, were irresponsible, and
were too fond of harriers.
"My father and brother are all alone at the farm," she told him,
brandishing her fingers (she had the habit of moving her fingers before
her pointed face as she talked, and after every sentence moistened her
lips with her sharp little tongue). "They, I mean men, are an
irresponsible lot, and don't stir a finger for themselves. I can fancy
there will be no one to give them a meal after the fast! We have no
mother, and we have such servants that they can't lay the tablecloth
properly when I am away. You can imagine their condition now! They will
be left with nothing to break their fast, while I have to stay here all
night. How strange it all is."
She shrugged her shoulders, took a sip from her cup, and said:
"There are festivals that have a special fragrance: at Easter, Trinity
and Christmas there is a peculiar scent in the air. Even unbelievers are
fond of those festivals. My brother, for instance, argues that there is
no God, but he is the first to hurry to Matins at Easter."
Liharev raised his eyes to Mlle. Ilovaisky and laughed.
"They argue that there is no God," she went on, laughing too, "but why
is it, tell me, all the celebrated writers, the learned men, clever
people generally, in fact, believe towards the end of their life?"
"If a man does not know how to believe when he is young, Madam, he won't
believe in his old age if he is ever so much of a writer."
Judging from Liharev's cough he had a bass voice, but, probably from
being afraid to speak aloud, or from exaggerated shyness, he spoke in a
tenor. After a brief pause he heaved a sign and said:
"The way I look at it is that faith is a faculty of the spirit. It is
just the same as a talent, one must be born with it. So far as I can
judge by myself, by the people I have seen in my time, and by all that
is done around us, this faculty is present in Russians in its highest
degree. Russian life presents us with an uninterrupted succession of
convictions and aspirations, and if you care to know, it has not yet the
faintest notion of lack of faith or scepticism. If a Russian does not
believe in God, it means he believes in something else."
Liharev took a cup of tea from Mlle. Ilovaisky, drank off half in one
gulp, and went on:
"I will tell you about myself. Nature has implanted in my breast an
extraordinary faculty for belief. Whisper it not to the night, but half
my life I was in the ranks of the Atheists and Nihilists, but there was
not one hour in my life in which I ceased to believe. All talents, as a
rule, show themselves in early childhood, and so my faculty showed
itself when I could still walk upright under the table. My mother liked
her children to eat a great deal, and when she gave me food she used to
say: 'Eat! Soup is the great thing in life!' I believed, and ate the
soup ten times a day, ate like a shark, ate till I was disgusted and
stupefied. My nurse used to tell me fairy tales, and I believed in
house-spirits, in wood-elves, and in goblins of all kinds. I used
sometimes to steal corrosive sublimate from my father, sprinkle it on
cakes, and carry them up to the attic that the house-spirits, you see,
might eat them and be killed. And when I was taught to read and
understand what I read, then there was a fine to-do. I ran away to
America and went off to join the brigands, and wanted to go into a
monastery, and hired boys to torture me for being a Christian. And note
that my faith was always active, never dead. If I was running away to
America I was not alone, but seduced someone else, as great a fool as I
was, to go with me, and was delighted when I was nearly frozen outside
the town gates and when I was thrashed; if I went to join the brigands I
always came back with my face battered. A most restless childhood, I
assure you! And when they sent me to the high school and pelted me with
all sorts of truths-that is, that the earth goes round the sun, or that
white light is not white, but is made up of seven colours-my poor little
head began to go round! Everything was thrown into a whirl in me: Navin
who made the sun stand still, and my mother who in the name of the
Prophet Elijah disapproved of lightning conductors, and my father who
was indifferent to the truths I had learned. My enlightenment inspired
me. I wandered about the house and stables like one possessed, preaching
my truths, was horrified by ignorance, glowed with hatred for anyone who
saw in white light nothing but white light. . . . But all that's
nonsense and childishness. Serious, so to speak, manly enthusiasms began
only at the university. You have, no doubt, Madam, taken your degree
somewhere?"
"I studied at Novotcherkask at the Don Institute."
"Then you have not been to a university? So you don't know what science
means. All the sciences in the world have the same passport, without
which they regard themselves as meaningless . . . the striving towards
truth! Every one of them, even pharmacology, has for its aim not
utility, not the alleviation of life, but truth. It's remarkable! When
you set to work to study any science, what strikes you first of all is
its beginning. I assure you there is nothing more attractive and
grander, nothing is so staggering, nothing takes a man's breath away
like the beginning of any science. From the first five or six lectures
you are soaring on wings of the brightest hopes, you already seem to
yourself to be welcoming truth with open arms. And I gave myself up to
science, heart and soul, passionately, as to the woman one loves. I was
its slave; I found it the sun of my existence, and asked for no other. I
studied day and night without rest, ruined myself over books, wept when
before my eyes men exploited science for their own personal ends. But my
enthusiasm did not last long. The trouble is that every science has a
beginning but not an end, like a recurring decimal. Zoology has
discovered 35,000 kinds of insects, chemistry reckons 60 elements. If in
time tens of noughts can be written after these figures, Zoology and
chemistry will be just as far from their end as now, and all
contemporary scientific work consists in increasing these numbers. I saw
through this trick when I discovered the 35,001-st and felt no
satisfaction. Well, I had no time to suffer from disillusionment, as I
was soon possessed by a new faith. I plunged into Nihilism, with its
manifestoes, its 'black divisions,' and all the rest of it. I 'went to
the people,' worked in factories, worked as an oiler, as a barge hauler.
Afterwards, when wandering over Russia, I had a taste of Russian life, I
turned into a fervent devotee of that life. I loved the Russian people
with poignant intensity; I loved their God and believed in Him, and in
their language, their creative genius. . . . And so on, and so on. . . .
I have been a Slavophile in my time, I used to pester Aksakov with
letters, and I was a Ukrainophile, and an archæologist, and a collector
of specimens of peasant art. . . . I was enthusiastic over ideas,
people, events, places . . . my enthusiasm was endless! Five years ago I
was working for the abolition of private property; my last creed was
non-resistance to evil."
Sasha gave an abrupt sigh and began moving. Liharev got up and went to
her.
"Won't you have some tea, dearie?" he asked tenderly.
"Drink it yourself," the child answered rudely. Liharev was