Short Stories by Chekhov
She looked at him, said nothing, and went on smiling.
After the conversation in the night he seemed to her not tall and broad
shouldered, but little, just as the biggest steamer seems to us a little
thing when we hear that it has crossed the ocean.
"Well, it is time for me to set off," she said. "I must put on my
things. Tell me where you are going now?"
"I? To the station of Klinushki, from there to Sergievo, and from
Sergievo, with horses, thirty miles to the coal mines that belong to a
horrid man, a general called Shashkovsky. My brothers have got me the
post of superintendent there. . . . I am going to be a coal miner."
"Stay, I know those mines. Shashkovsky is my uncle, you know. But . . .
what are you going there for?" asked Mlle. Ilovaisky, looking at Liharev
in surprise.
"As superintendent. To superintend the coal mines."
"I don't understand!" she shrugged her shoulders. "You are going to the
mines. But you know, it's the bare steppe, a desert, so dreary that you
couldn't exist a day there! It's horrible coal, no one will buy it, and
my uncle's a maniac, a despot, a bankrupt . . . . You won't get your
salary!"
"No matter," said Liharev, unconcernedly, "I am thankful even for coal
mines."
She shrugged her shoulders, and walked about the room in agitation.
"I don't understand, I don't understand," she said, moving her fingers
before her face. "It's impossible, and . . . and irrational! You must
understand that it's . . . it's worse than exile. It is a living tomb! O
Heavens!" she said hotly, going up to Liharev and moving her fingers
before his smiling face; her upper lip was quivering, and her sharp face
turned pale, "Come, picture it, the bare steppe, solitude. There is no
one to say a word to there, and you . . . are enthusiastic over women!
Coal mines . . . and women!"
Mlle. Ilovaisky was suddenly ashamed of her heat and, turning away from
Liharev, walked to the window.
"No, no, you can't go there," she said, moving her fingers rapidly over
the pane.
Not only in her heart, but even in her spine she felt that behind her
stood an infinitely unhappy man, lost and outcast, while he, as though
he were unaware of his unhappiness, as though he had not shed tears in
the night, was looking at her with a kindly smile. Better he should go
on weeping! She walked up and down the room several times in agitation,
then stopped short in a corner and sank into thought. Liharev was saying
something, but she did not hear him. Turning her back on him she took
out of her purse a money note, stood for a long time crumpling it in her
hand, and looking round at Liharev, blushed and put it in her pocket.
The coachman's voice was heard through the door. With a stern,
concentrated face she began putting on her things in silence. Liharev
wrapped her up, chatting gaily, but every word he said lay on her heart
like a weight. It is not cheering to hear the unhappy or the dying jest.
When the transformation of a live person into a shapeless bundle had
been completed, Mlle. Ilovaisky looked for the last time round the
"travellers' room," stood a moment in silence, and slowly walked out.
Liharev went to see her off. . . .
Outside, God alone knows why, the winter was raging still. Whole clouds
of big soft snowflakes were whirling restlessly over the earth, unable
to find a resting-place. The horses, the sledge, the trees, a bull tied
to a post, all were white and seemed soft and fluffy.
"Well, God help you," muttered Liharev, tucking her into the sledge.
"Don't remember evil against me . . . ."
She was silent. When the sledge started, and had to go round a huge
snowdrift, she looked back at Liharev with an expression as though she
wanted to say something to him. He ran up to her, but she did not say a
word to him, she only looked at him through her long eyelashes with
little specks of snow on them.
Whether his finely intuitive soul were really able to read that look, or
whether his imagination deceived him, it suddenly began to seem to him
that with another touch or two that girl would have forgiven him his
failures, his age, his desolate position, and would have followed him
without question or reasonings. He stood a long while as though rooted
to the spot, gazing at the tracks left by the sledge runners. The
snowflakes greedily settled on his hair, his beard, his shoulders. . . .
Soon the track of the runners had vanished, and he himself covered with
snow, began to look like a white rock, but still his eyes kept seeking
something in the clouds of snow. ROTHSCHILD'S FIDDLE
THE town was a little one, worse than a village, and it was inhabited by
scarcely any but old people who died with an infrequency that was really
annoying. In the hospital and in the prison fortress very few coffins
were needed. In fact business was bad. If Yakov Ivanov had been an
undertaker in the chief town of the province he would certainly have had
a house of his own, and people would have addressed him as Yakov
Matveyitch; here in this wretched little town people called him simply
Yakov; his nickname in the street was for some reason Bronze, and he
lived in a poor way like a humble peasant, in a little old hut in which
there was only one room, and in this room he and Marfa, the stove, a
double bed, the coffins, his bench, and all their belongings were
crowded together.
Yakov made good, solid coffins. For peasants and working people he made
them to fit himself, and this was never unsuccessful, for there were
none taller and stronger than he, even in the prison, though he was
seventy. For gentry and for women he made them to measure, and used an
iron foot-rule for the purpose. He was very unwilling to take orders for
children's coffins, and made them straight off without measurements,
contemptuously, and when he was paid for the work he always said:
"I must confess I don't like trumpery jobs."
Apart from his trade, playing the fiddle brought him in a small income.
The Jews' orchestra conducted by Moisey Ilyitch Shahkes, the tinsmith,
who took more than half their receipts for himself, played as a rule at
weddings in the town. As Yakov played very well on the fiddle,
especially Russian songs, Shahkes sometimes invited him to join the
orchestra at a fee of half a rouble a day, in addition to tips from the
visitors. When Bronze sat in the orchestra first of all his face became
crimson and perspiring; it was hot, there was a suffocating smell of
garlic, the fiddle squeaked, the double bass wheezed close to his right
ear, while the flute wailed at his left, played by a gaunt, red-haired
Jew who had a perfect network of red and blue veins all over his face,
and who bore the name of the famous millionaire Rothschild. And this
accursed Jew contrived to play even the liveliest things plaintively.
For no apparent reason Yakov little by little became possessed by hatred
and contempt for the Jews, and especially for Rothschild; he began to
pick quarrels with him, rail at him in unseemly language and once even
tried to strike him, and Rothschild was offended and said, looking at
him ferociously:
"If it were not that I respect you for your talent, I would have sent
you flying out of the window."
Then he began to weep. And because of this Yakov was not often asked to
play in the orchestra; he was only sent for in case of extreme necessity
in the absence of one of the Jews.
Yakov was never in a good temper, as he was continually having to put up
with terrible losses. For instance, it was a sin to work on Sundays or
Saints' days, and Monday was an unlucky day, so that in the course of
the year there were some two hundred days on which, whether he liked it
or not, he had to sit with his hands folded. And only think, what a loss
that meant. If anyone in the town had a wedding without music, or if
Shahkes did not send for Yakov, that was a loss, too. The superintendent
of the prison was ill for two years and was wasting away, and Yakov was
impatiently waiting for him to die, but the superintendent went away to
the chief town of the province to be doctored, and there took and died.
There's a loss for you, ten roubles at least, as there would have been
an expensive coffin to make, lined with brocade. The thought of his
losses haunted Yakov, especially at night; he laid his fiddle on the bed
beside him, and when all sorts of nonsensical ideas came into his mind
he touched a string; the fiddle gave out a sound in the darkness, and he
felt better.
On the sixth of May of the previous year Marfa had suddenly been taken
ill. The old woman's breathing was laboured, she drank a great deal of
water, and she staggered as she walked, yet she lighted the stove in the
morning and even went herself to get water. Towards evening she lay
down. Yakov played his fiddle all day; when it was quite dark he took
the book in which he used every day to put down his losses, and, feeling
dull, he began adding up the total for the year. It came to more than a
thousand roubles. This so agitated him that he flung the reckoning beads
down, and trampled them under his feet. Then he picked up the reckoning
beads, and again spent a long time clicking with them and heaving deep,
strained sighs. His face was crimson and wet with perspiration. He
thought that if he had put that lost thousand roubles in the bank, the
interest for a year would have been at least forty roubles, so that
forty roubles was a loss too. In fact, wherever one turned there were
losses and nothing else.
"Yakov!" Marfa called unexpectedly. "I am dying."
He looked round at his wife. Her face was rosy with fever, unusually
bright and joyful-looking. Bronze, accustomed to seeing her face always
pale, timid, and unhappy-looking, was bewildered. It looked as if she
really were dying and were glad that she was going away for ever from
that hut, from the coffins, and from Yakov. . . . And she gazed at the
ceiling and moved her lips, and her expression was one of happiness, as
though she saw death as her deliverer and were whispering with him.
It was daybreak; from the windows one could see the flush of dawn.
Looking at the old woman, Yakov for some reason reflected that he had
not once in his life been affectionate to her, had had no feeling for
her, had never once thought to buy her a kerchief, or to bring her home
some dainty from a wedding, but had done nothing but shout at her, scold
her for his losses, shake his fists at her; it is true he had never
actually beaten her, but he had frightened her, and at such times she
had always been numb with terror. Why, he had forbidden her to drink tea
because they spent too much without that, and she drank only hot water.
And he understood why she had such a strange, joyful face now, and he
was overcome with dread.
As soon as it was morning he borrowed a horse from a neighbour and took
Marfa to the hospital. There were not many patients there, and so he had
not long to wait, only three hours. To his great satisfaction the
patients were not being received by the doctor, who was himself ill, but
by the assistant, Maxim Nikolaitch, an old man of whom everyone in the
town used to say that, though he drank and was quarrelsome, he knew more
than the doctor.
"I wish you good-day," said Yakov, leading his old woman into the
consulting room. "You must excuse us, Maxim Nikolaitch, we are always
troubling you with our trumpery affairs. Here you see my better half is
ailing, the partner of my life, as they say, excuse the expression. . .
."
Knitting his grizzled brows and stroking his whiskers the assistant
began to examine the old woman, and she sat on a stool, a wasted, bent
figure with a sharp nose and open mouth, looking like a bird that wants
to drink.
"H---m . . . Ah! . . ." the assistant said slowly, and he heaved a sigh.