Short Stories by Chekhov
volunteering for the army. But my father advises my going into a
chemist's."
"H'm! . . . But it would be better for you to go into the university.
The examination is difficult, but with patience and hard work you could
get through. Study, read more. . . . Do you read much?"
"Not much, I must own . . ." says Ivan Matveyitch, lighting a cigarette.
"Have you read Turgenev?"
"N-no. . . ."
"And Gogol?"
"Gogol. H'm! . . . Gogol. . . . No, I haven't read him!"
"Ivan Matveyitch! Aren't you ashamed? Aie! aie! You are such a nice
fellow, so much that is original in you . . . you haven't even read
Gogol! You must read him! I will give you his works! It's essential to
read him! We shall quarrel if you don't!"
Again a silence follows. The man of learning meditates, half reclining
on a soft lounge, and Ivan Matveyitch, leaving his collar in peace,
concentrates his whole attention on his boots. He has not till then
noticed that two big puddles have been made by the snow melting off his
boots on the floor. He is ashamed.
"I can't get on to-day . . ." mutters the man of learning. "I suppose
you are fond of catching birds, too, Ivan Matveyitch?"
"That's in autumn, . . . I don't catch them here, but there at home I
always did."
"To be sure . . . very good. But we must write, though."
The man of learning gets up resolutely and begins dictating, but after
ten lines sits down on the lounge again.
"No. . . . Perhaps we had better put it off till to-morrow morning," he
says. "Come to-morrow morning, only come early, at nine o'clock. God
preserve you from being late!"
Ivan Matveyitch lays down his pen, gets up from the table and sits in
another chair. Five minutes pass in silence, and he begins to feel it is
time for him to go, that he is in the way; but in the man of learning's
study it is so snug and light and warm, and the impression of the nice
rusks and sweet tea is still so fresh that there is a pang at his heart
at the mere thought of home. At home there is poverty, hunger, cold, his
grumbling father, scoldings, and here it is so quiet and unruffled, and
interest even is taken in his tarantulas and birds.
The man of learning looks at his watch and takes up a book.
"So you will give me Gogol?' says Ivan Matveyitch, getting up.
"Yes, yes! But why are you in such a hurry, my dear boy? Sit down and
tell me something . . ."
Ivan Matveyitch sits down and smiles broadly. Almost every evening he
sits in this study and always feels something extraordinarily soft,
attracting him, as it were akin, in the voice and the glance of the man
of learning. There are moments when he even fancies that the man of
learning is becoming attached to him, used to him, and that if he scolds
him for being late, it's simply because he misses his chatter about
tarantulas and how they catch goldfinches on the Don.
ZINOTCHKA
THE party of sportsmen spent the night in a peasant's hut on some newly
mown hay. The moon peeped in at the window; from the street came the
mournful wheezing of a concertina; from the hay came a sickly sweet,
faintly troubling scent. The sportsmen talked about dogs, about women,
about first love, and about snipe. After all the ladies of their
acquaintance had been picked to pieces, and hundreds of stories had been
told, the stoutest of the sportsmen, who looked in the darkness like a
haycock, and who talked in the mellow bass of a staff officer, gave a
loud yawn and said:
"It is nothing much to be loved; the ladies are created for the purpose
of loving us men. But, tell me, has any one of you fellows been hated-
passionately, furiously hated? Has any one of you watched the ecstasies
of hatred? Eh?"
No answer followed.
"Has no one, gentlemen?" asked the staff officer's bass voice. "But I,
now, have been hated, hated by a pretty girl, and have been able to
study the symptoms of first hatred directed against myself. It was the
first, because it was something exactly the converse of first love. What
I am going to tell, however, happened when I knew nothing about love or
hate. I was eight at the time, but that made no difference; in this case
it was not he but she that mattered. Well, I beg your attention. One
fine summer evening, just before sunset, I was sitting in the nursery,
doing my lesson with my governess, Zinotchka, a very charming and
poetical creature who had left boarding school not long before.
Zinotchka looked absent-mindedly towards the window and said:
"'Yes. We breathe in oxygen; now tell me, Petya, what do we breathe
out?'
"'Carbonic acid gas,' I answered, looking towards the same window.
"'Right,' assented Zinotchka. 'Plants, on the contrary, breathe in
carbonic acid gas, and breathe out oxygen. Carbonic acid gas is
contained in seltzer water, and in the fumes from the samovar. . . . It
is a very noxious gas. Near Naples there is the so-called Cave of Dogs,
which contains carbonic acid gas; a dog dropped into it is suffocated
and dies.'
"This luckless Cave of Dogs near Naples is a chemical marvel beyond
which no governess ventures to go. Zinotchka always hotly maintained the
usefulness of natural science, but I doubt if she knew any chemistry
beyond this Cave.
"Well, she told me to repeat it. I repeated it. She asked me what was
meant by the horizon. I answered. And meantime, while we were ruminating
over the horizon and the Cave, in the yard below, my father was just
getting ready to go shooting. The dogs yapped, the trace horses shifted
from one leg to another impatiently and coquetted with the coachman, the
footman packed the waggonette with parcels and all sorts of things.
Beside the waggonette stood a brake in which my mother and sisters were
sitting to drive to a name-day party at the Ivanetskys'. No one was left
in the house but Zinotchka, me, and my eldest brother, a student, who
had toothache. You can imagine my envy and my boredom.
"'Well, what do we breathe in?' asked Zinotchka, looking at the window.
"'Oxygen. . .'
"'Yes. And the horizon is the name given to the place where it seems to
us as though the earth meets the sky.'
"Then the waggonette drove off, and after it the brake. . . . I saw
Zinotchka take a note out of her pocket, crumple it up convulsively and
press it to her temple, then she flushed crimson and looked at her
watch.
"'So, remember,' she said, 'that near Naples is the so-called Cave of
Dogs. . . .' She glanced at her watch again and went on: 'where the sky
seems to us to meet the earth. . . .'
"The poor girl in violent agitation walked about the room, and once more
glanced at her watch. There was another half-hour before the end of our
lesson.
"'Now arithmetic,' she said, breathing hard and turning over the pages
of the sum-book with a trembling hand. 'Come, you work out problem 325
and I . . . will be back directly.'
"She went out. I heard her scurry down the stairs, and then I saw her
dart across the yard in her blue dress and vanish through the garden
gate. The rapidity of her movements, the flush on her cheeks and her
excitement, aroused my curiosity. Where had she run, and what for? Being
intelligent beyond my years I soon put two and two together, and
understood it all: she had run into the garden, taking advantage of the
absence of my stern parents, to steal in among the raspberry bushes, or
to pick herself some cherries. If that were so, dash it all, I would go
and have some cherries too. I threw aside the sum-book and ran into the
garden. I ran to the cherry orchard, but she was not there. Passing by
the raspberries, the gooseberries, and the watchman's shanty, she
crossed the kitchen garden and reached the pond, pale, and starting at
every sound. I stole after her, and what I saw, my friends, was this. At
the edge of the pond, between the thick stumps of two old willows, stood
my elder brother, Sasha; one could not see from his face that he had
toothache. He looked towards Zinotchka as she approached him, and his
whole figure was lighted up by an expression of happiness as though by
sunshine. And Zinotchka, as though she were being driven into the Cave
of Dogs, and were being forced to breathe carbonic acid gas, walked
towards him, scarcely able to move one leg before the other, breathing
hard, with her head thrown back. . . . To judge from appearances she was
going to a rendezous for the first time in her life. But at last she
reached him. . . . For half a minute they gazed at each other in
silence, as though they could not believe their eyes. Thereupon some
force seemed to shove Zinotchka; she laid her hands on Sasha's shoulders
and let her head droop upon his waistcoat. Sasha laughed, muttered
something incoherent, and with the clumsiness of a man head over ears in
love, laid both hands on Zinotchka's face. And the weather, gentlemen,
was exquisite. . . . The hill behind which the sun was setting, the two
willows, the green bank, the sky-all together with Sasha and Zinotchka
were reflected in the pond . . . perfect stillness . . . you can imagine
it. Millions of butterflies with long whiskers gleamed golden above the
reeds; beyond the garden they were driving the cattle. In fact, it was a
perfect picture.
"Of all I had seen the only thing I understood was that Sasha was
kissing Zinotchka. That was improper. If maman heard of it they would
both catch it. Feeling for some reason ashamed I went back to the
nursery, not waiting for the end of the rendezvous. There I sat over the
sum-book, pondered and reflected. A triumphant smile strayed upon my
countenance. On one side it was agreeable to be the possessor of another
person's secret; on the other it was also very agreeable that such
authorities as Sasha and Zinotchka might at any moment be convicted by
me of ignorance of the social proprieties. Now they were in my power,
and their peace was entirely dependent on my magnanimity. I'd let them
know.
"When I went to bed, Zinotchka came into the nursery as usual to find
out whether I had dropped asleep without undressing and whether I had
said my prayers. I looked at her pretty, happy face and grinned. I was
bursting with my secret and itching to let it out. I had to drop a hint
and enjoy the effect.
"'I know,' I said, grinning. 'Gy-y.'
"'What do you know?'
"'Gy-y! I saw you near the willows kissing Sasha. I followed you and saw
it all.'
"Zinotchka started, flushed all over, and overwhelmed by 'my hint' she
sank down on the chair, on which stood a glass of water and a
candlestick.
"'I saw you . . . kissing . . .' I repeated, sniggering and enjoying her
confusion. 'Aha! I'll tell mamma!'
"Cowardly Zinotchka gazed at me intently, and convincing herself that I
really did know all about it, clutched my hand in despair and muttered
in a trembling whisper:
"'Petya, it is low. . . . I beg of you, for God's sake. . . . Be a man .
. . don't tell anyone. . . . Decent people don't spy . . . . It's low. .
. . I entreat you.'
"The poor girl was terribly afraid of my mother, a stern and virtuous
lady-that was one thing; and the second was that my grinning countenance
could not but outrage her first love so pure and poetical, and you can
imagine the state of her heart. Thanks to me, she did not sleep a wink
all night, and in the morning she appeared at breakfast with blue rings
round her eyes. When I met Sasha after breakfast I could not refrain
from grinning and boasting:
"'I know! I saw you yesterday kissing Mademoiselle Zina!'
"Sasha looked at me and said:
"'You are a fool.'
"He was not so cowardly as Zinotchka, and so my effect did not come off.
That provoked me to further efforts. If Sasha was not frightened it was
evident that he did not believe that I had seen and knew all about it;
wait a bit, I would show him.