Short Stories by Chekhov
disconcerted, and went back to the table with a guilty step.
"Then you have had a lively time," said Mlle. Ilovaisky; "you have
something to remember."
"Well, yes, it's all very lively when one sits over tea and chatters to
a kind listener, but you should ask what that liveliness has cost me!
What price have I paid for the variety of my life? You see, Madam, I
have not held my convictions like a German doctor of philosophy,
zierlichmännerlich, I have not lived in solitude, but every conviction
I have had has bound my back to the yoke, has torn my body to pieces.
Judge, for yourself. I was wealthy like my brothers, but now I am a
beggar. In the delirium of my enthusiasm I smashed up my own fortune and
my wife's-a heap of other people's money. Now I am forty-two, old age is
close upon me, and I am homeless, like a dog that has dropped behind its
waggon at night. All my life I have not known what peace meant, my soul
has been in continual agitation, distressed even by its hopes . . . I
have been wearied out with heavy irregular work, have endured privation,
have five times been in prison, have dragged myself across the provinces
of Archangel and of Tobolsk . . . it's painful to think of it! I have
lived, but in my fever I have not even been conscious of the process of
life itself. Would you believe it, I don't remember a single spring, I
never noticed how my wife loved me, how my children were born. What more
can I tell you? I have been a misfortune to all who have loved me. . . .
My mother has worn mourning for me all these fifteen years, while my
proud brothers, who have had to wince, to blush, to bow their heads, to
waste their money on my account, have come in the end to hate me like
poison."
Liharev got up and sat down again.
"If I were simply unhappy I should thank God," he went on without
looking at his listener. "My personal unhappiness sinks into the
background when I remember how often in my enthusiasms I have been
absurd, far from the truth, unjust, cruel, dangerous! How often I have
hated and despised those whom I ought to have loved, and vice versa, I
have changed a thousand times. One day I believe, fall down and worship,
the next I flee like a coward from the gods and friends of yesterday,
and swallow in silence the 'scoundrel!' they hurl after me. God alone
has seen how often I have wept and bitten my pillow in shame for my
enthusiasms. Never once in my life have I intentionally lied or done
evil, but my conscience is not clear! I cannot even boast, Madam, that I
have no one's life upon my conscience, for my wife died before my eyes,
worn out by my reckless activity. Yes, my wife! I tell you they have two
ways of treating women nowadays. Some measure women's skulls to prove
woman is inferior to man, pick out her defects to mock at her, to look
original in her eyes, and to justify their sensuality. Others do their
utmost to raise women to their level, that is, force them to learn by
heart the 35,000 species, to speak and write the same foolish things as
they speak and write themselves."
Liharev's face darkened.
"I tell you that woman has been and always will be the slave of man," he
said in a bass voice, striking his fist on the table. "She is the soft,
tender wax which a man always moulds into anything he likes. . . . My
God! for the sake of some trumpery masculine enthusiasm she will cut off
her hair, abandon her family, die among strangers! . . . among the ideas
for which she has sacrificed herself there is not a single feminine one.
. . . An unquestioning, devoted slave! I have not measured skulls, but I
say this from hard, bitter experience: the proudest, most independent
women, if I have succeeded in communicating to them my enthusiasm, have
followed me without criticism, without question, and done anything I
chose; I have turned a nun into a Nihilist who, as I heard afterwards,
shot a gendarme; my wife never left me for a minute in my wanderings,
and like a weathercock changed her faith in step with my changing
enthusiasms."
Liharev jumped up and walked up and down the room.
"A noble, sublime slavery!" he said, clasping his hands. "It is just in
it that the highest meaning of woman's life lies! Of all the fearful
medley of thoughts and impressions accumulated in my brain from my
association with women my memory, like a filter, has retained no ideas,
no clever saying, no philosophy, nothing but that extraordinary,
resignation to fate, that wonderful mercifulness, forgiveness of
everything."
Liharev clenched his fists, stared at a fixed point, and with a sort of
passionate intensity, as though he were savouring each word as he
uttered it, hissed through his clenched teeth:
"That . . . that great-hearted fortitude, faithfulness unto death,
poetry of the heart. . . . The meaning of life lies in just that
unrepining martyrdom, in the tears which would soften a stone, in the
boundless, all-forgiving love which brings light and warmth into the
chaos of life. . . ."
Mlle. Ilovaisky got up slowly, took a step towards Liharev, and fixed
her eyes upon his face. From the tears that glittered on his eyelashes,
from his quivering, passionate voice, from the flush on his cheeks, it
was clear to her that women were not a chance, not a simple subject of
conversation. They were the object of his new enthusiasm, or, as he said
himself, his new faith! For the first time in her life she saw a man
carried away, fervently believing. With his gesticulations, with his
flashing eyes he seemed to her mad, frantic, but there was a feeling of
such beauty in the fire of his eyes, in his words, in all the movements
of his huge body, that without noticing what she was doing she stood
facing him as though rooted to the spot, and gazed into his face with
delight.
"Take my mother," he said, stretching out his hand to her with an
imploring expression on his face, "I poisoned her existence, according
to her ideas disgraced the name of Liharev, did her as much harm as the
most malignant enemy, and what do you think? My brothers give her little
sums for holy bread and church services, and outraging her religious
feelings, she saves that money and sends it in secret to her erring
Grigory. This trifle alone elevates and ennobles the soul far more than
all the theories, all the clever sayings and the 35,000 species. I can
give you thousands of instances. Take you, even, for instance! With
tempest and darkness outside you are going to your father and your
brother to cheer them with your affection in the holiday, though very
likely they have forgotten and are not thinking of you. And, wait a bit,
and you will love a man and follow him to the North Pole. You would,
wouldn't you?"
"Yes, if I loved him."
"There, you see," cried Liharev delighted, and he even stamped with his
foot. "Oh dear! How glad I am that I have met you! Fate is kind to me, I
am always meeting splendid people. Not a day passes but one makes
acquaintance with somebody one would give one's soul for. There are ever
so many more good people than bad in this world. Here, see, for
instance, how openly and from our hearts we have been talking as though
we had known each other a hundred years. Sometimes, I assure you, one
restrains oneself for ten years and holds one's tongue, is reserved with
one's friends and one's wife, and meets some cadet in a train and
babbles one's whole soul out to him. It is the first time I have the
honour of seeing you, and yet I have confessed to you as I have never
confessed in my life. Why is it?"
Rubbing his hands and smiling good-humouredly Liharev walked up and down
the room, and fell to talking about women again. Meanwhile they began
ringing for matins.
"Goodness," wailed Sasha. "He won't let me sleep with his talking!"
"Oh, yes!" said Liharev, startled. "I am sorry, darling, sleep, sleep. .
. . I have two boys besides her," he whispered. "They are living with
their uncle, Madam, but this one can't exist a day without her father.
She's wretched, she complains, but she sticks to me like a fly to honey.
I have been chattering too much, Madam, and it would do you no harm to
sleep. Wouldn't you like me to make up a bed for you?"
Without waiting for permission he shook the wet pelisse, stretched it on
a bench, fur side upwards, collected various shawls and scarves, put the
overcoat folded up into a roll for a pillow, and all this he did in
silence with a look of devout reverence, as though he were not handling
a woman's rags, but the fragments of holy vessels. There was something
apologetic, embarrassed about his whole figure, as though in the
presence of a weak creature he felt ashamed of his height and strength.
. . .
When Mlle. Ilovaisky had lain down, he put out the candle and sat down
on a stool by the stove.
"So, Madam," he whispered, lighting a fat cigarette and puffing the
smoke into the stove. "Nature has put into the Russian an extraordinary
faculty for belief, a searching intelligence, and the gift of
speculation, but all that is reduced to ashes by irresponsibility,
laziness, and dreamy frivolity. . . . Yes. . . ."
She gazed wonderingly into the darkness, and saw only a spot of red on
the ikon and the flicker of the light of the stove on Liharev's face.
The darkness, the chime of the bells, the roar of the storm, the lame
boy, Sasha with her fretfulness, unhappy Liharev and his sayings-all
this was mingled together, and seemed to grow into one huge impression,
and God's world seemed to her fantastic, full of marvels and magical
forces. All that she had heard was ringing in her ears, and human life
presented itself to her as a beautiful poetic fairy-tale without an end.
The immense impression grew and grew, clouded consciousness, and turned
into a sweet dream. She was asleep, though she saw the little ikon lamp
and a big nose with the light playing on it.
She heard the sound of weeping.
"Daddy, darling," a child's voice was tenderly entreating, "let's go
back to uncle! There is a Christmas-tree there! Styopa and Kolya are
there!"
"My darling, what can I do?" a man's bass persuaded softly. "Understand
me! Come, understand!"
And the man's weeping blended with the child's. This voice of human
sorrow, in the midst of the howling of the storm, touched the girl's ear
with such sweet human music that she could not bear the delight of it,
and wept too. She was conscious afterwards of a big, black shadow coming
softly up to her, picking up a shawl that had dropped on to the floor
and carefully wrapping it round her feet.
Mlle. Ilovaisky was awakened by a strange uproar. She jumped up and
looked about her in astonishment. The deep blue dawn was looking in at
the window half-covered with snow. In the room there was a grey
twilight, through which the stove and the sleeping child and Nasir-ed-
Din stood out distinctly. The stove and the lamp were both out. Through
the wide-open door she could see the big tavern room with a counter and
chairs. A man, with a stupid, gipsy face and astonished eyes, was
standing in the middle of the room in a puddle of melting snow, holding
a big red star on a stick. He was surrounded by a group of boys,
motionless as statues, and plastered over with snow. The light shone
through the red paper of the star, throwing a glow of red on their wet
faces. The crowd was shouting in disorder, and from its uproar Mlle.
Ilovaisky could make out only one couplet:
"Hi, you Little Russian lad, Bring your sharp knife, We will kill the
Jew, we will kill him, The son of tribulation. . ."
Liharev was standing near the counter, looking feelingly at the singers
and tapping his feet in time. Seeing Mlle. Ilovaisky, he smiled all over
his face and came up to her. She smiled too.
"A happy Christmas!" he said. "I saw you slept well."