Short Stories by Chekhov
dilettante. God had given me a strong healthy Russian brain with promise
of talent. And, only fancy, here was that brain at twenty-six,
undisciplined, completely free from principles, not weighed down by any
stores of knowledge, but only lightly sprinkled with information of a
sort in the engineering line; it was young and had a physiological
craving for exercise, it was on the look-out for it, when all at once
quite casually the fine juicy idea of the aimlessness of life and the
darkness beyond the tomb descends upon it. It greedily sucks it in, puts
its whole outlook at its disposal and begins playing with it, like a cat
with a mouse. There is neither learning nor system in the brain, but
that does not matter. It deals with the great ideas with its own innate
powers, like a self-educated man, and before a month has passed the
owner of the brain can turn a potato into a hundred dainty dishes, and
fancies himself a philosopher . . . .
"Our generation has carried this dilettantism, this playing with serious
ideas into science, into literature, into politics, and into everything
which it is not too lazy to go into, and with its dilettantism has
introduced, too, its coldness, its boredom, and its one-sidedness and,
as it seems to me, it has already succeeded in developing in the masses
a new hitherto non-existent attitude to serious ideas.
"I realised and appreciated my abnormality and utter ignorance, thanks
to a misfortune. My normal thinking, so it seems to me now, dates from
the day when I began again from the A, B, C, when my conscience sent me
flying back to N., when with no philosophical subleties I repented,
besought Kisotchka's forgiveness like a naughty boy and wept with her. .
. ."
Ananyev briefly described his last interview with Kisotchka.
"H'm. . . ." the student filtered through his teeth when the engineer
had finished. "That's the sort of thing that happens."
His face still expressed mental inertia, and apparently Ananyev's story
had not touched him in the least. Only when the engineer after a
moment's pause, began expounding his view again and repeating what he
had said at first, the student frowned irritably, got up from the table
and walked away to his bed. He made his bed and began undressing.
"You look as though you have really convinced some one this time," he
said irritably.
"Me convince anybody!" said the engineer. "My dear soul, do you suppose
I claim to do that? God bless you! To convince you is impossible. You
can reach conviction only by way of personal experience and suffering!"
"And then--it's queer logic!" grumbled the student as he put on his
nightshirt. "The ideas which you so dislike, which are so ruinous for
the young are, according to you, the normal thing for the old; it's as
though it were a question of grey hairs. . . . Where do the old get this
privilege? What is it based upon? If these ideas are poison, they are
equally poisonous for all?"
"Oh, no, my dear soul, don't say so!" said the engineer with a sly wink.
"Don't say so. In the first place, old men are not dilettanti. Their
pessimism comes to them not casually from outside, but from the depths
of their own brains, and only after they have exhaustively studied the
Hegels and Kants of all sorts, have suffered, have made no end of
mistakes, in fact--when they have climbed the whole ladder from bottom to
top. Their pessimism has both personal experience and sound philosophic
training behind it. Secondly, the pessimism of old thinkers does not
take the form of idle talk, as it does with you and me, but of
Weltschmertz, of suffering; it rests in them on a Christian foundation
because it is derived from love for humanity and from thoughts about
humanity, and is entirely free from the egoism which is noticeable in
dilettanti. You despise life because its meaning and its object are
hidden just from you, and you are only afraid of your own death, while
the real thinker is unhappy because the truth is hidden from all and he
is afraid for all men. For instance, there is living not far from here
the Crown forester, Ivan Alexandritch. He is a nice old man. At one time
he was a teacher somewhere, and used to write something; the devil only
knows what he was, but anyway he is a remarkably clever fellow and in
philosophy he is A1. He has read a great deal and he is continually
reading now. Well, we came across him lately in the Gruzovsky district.
. . . They were laying the sleepers and rails just at the time. It's not
a difficult job, but Ivan Alexandritch, not being a specialist, looked
at it as though it were a conjuring trick. It takes an experienced
workman less than a minute to lay a sleeper and fix a rail on it. The
workmen were in good form and really were working smartly and rapidly;
one rascal in particular brought his hammer down with exceptional
smartness on the head of the nail and drove it in at one blow, though
the handle of the hammer was two yards or more in length and each nail
was a foot long. Ivan Alexandritch watched the workmen a long time, was
moved, and said to me with tears in his eyes:
"'What a pity that these splendid men will die!' Such pessimism I
understand."
"All that proves nothing and explains nothing," said the student,
covering himself up with a sheet; "all that is simply pounding liquid in
a mortar. No one knows anything and nothing can be proved by words."
He peeped out from under the sheet, lifted up his head and, frowning
irritably, said quickly:
"One must be very naïve to believe in human words and logic and to
ascribe any determining value to them. You can prove and disprove
anything you like with words, and people will soon perfect the technique
of language to such a point that they will prove with mathematical
certainty that twice two is seven. I am fond of reading and listening,
but as to believing, no thank you; I can't, and I don't want to. I
believe only in God, but as for you, if you talk to me till the Second
Coming and seduce another five hundred Kisothchkas, I shall believe in
you only when I go out of my mind . . . . Goodnight."
The student hid his head under the sheet and turned his face towards the
wall, meaning by this action to let us know that he did not want to
speak or listen. The argument ended at that.
Before going to bed the engineer and I went out of the hut, and I saw
the lights once more.
"We have tired you out with our chatter," said Ananyev, yawning and
looking at the sky. "Well, my good sir! The only pleasure we have in
this dull hole is drinking and philosophising. . . . What an embankment,
Lord have mercy on us!" he said admiringly, as we approached the
embankment; "it is more like Mount Ararat than an embankment."
He paused for a little, then said: "Those lights remind the Baron of the
Amalekites, but it seems to me that they are like the thoughts of man. .
. . You know the thoughts of each individual man are scattered like that
in disorder, stretch in a straight line towards some goal in the midst
of the darkness and, without shedding light on anything, without
lighting up the night, they vanish somewhere far beyond old age. But
enough philosophising! It's time to go bye-bye."
When we were back in the hut the engineer began begging me to take his
bed.
"Oh please!" he said imploringly, pressing both hands on his heart. "I
entreat you, and don't worry about me! I can sleep anywhere, and,
besides, I am not going to bed just yet. Please do--it's a favour!"
I agreed, undressed, and went to bed, while he sat down to the table and
set to work on the plans.
"We fellows have no time for sleep," he said in a low voice when I had
got into bed and shut my eyes. "When a man has a wife and two children
he can't think of sleep. One must think now of food and clothes and
saving for the future. And I have two of them, a little son and a
daughter. . . . The boy, little rascal, has a jolly little face. He's
not six yet, and already he shows remarkable abilities, I assure you. .
. . I have their photographs here, somewhere. . . . Ah, my children, my
children!"
He rummaged among his papers, found their photographs, and began looking
at them. I fell asleep.
I was awakened by the barking of Azorka and loud voices. Von Schtenberg
with bare feet and ruffled hair was standing in the doorway dressed in
his underclothes, talking loudly with some one . . . . It was getting
light. A gloomy dark blue dawn was peeping in at the door, at the
windows, and through the crevices in the hut walls, and casting a faint
light on my bed, on the table with the papers, and on Ananyev. Stretched
on the floor on a cloak, with a leather pillow under his head, the
engineer lay asleep with his fleshy, hairy chest uppermost; he was
snoring so loudly that I pitied the student from the bottom of my heart
for having to sleep in the same room with him every night.
"Why on earth are we to take them?" shouted Von Schtenberg. "It has
nothing to do with us! Go to Tchalisov! From whom do the cauldrons
come?"
"From Nikitin . . ." a bass voice answered gruffly.
"Well, then, take them to Tchalisov. . . . That's not in our department.
What the devil are you standing there for? Drive on!"
"Your honour, we have been to Tchalisov already," said the bass voice
still more gruffly. "Yesterday we were the whole day looking for him
down the line, and were told at his hut that he had gone to the
Dymkovsky section. Please take them, your honour! How much longer are we
to go carting them about? We go carting them on and on along the line,
and see no end to it."
"What is it?" Ananyev asked huskily, waking up and lifting his head
quickly.
"They have brought some cauldrons from Nikitin's," said the student,
"and he is begging us to take them. And what business is it of ours to
take them?"
"Do be so kind, your honour, and set things right! The horses have been
two days without food and the master, for sure, will be angry. Are we to
take them back, or what? The railway ordered the cauldrons, so it ought
to take them. . . ."
"Can't you understand, you blockhead, that it has nothing to do with us?
Go on to Tchalisov!"
"What is it? Who's there?" Ananyev asked huskily again. "Damnation take
them all," he said, getting up and going to the door. "What is it?"
I dressed, and two minutes later went out of the hut. Ananyev and the
student, both in their underclothes and barefooted, were angrily and
impatiently explaining to a peasant who was standing before them bare-
headed, with his whip in his hand, apparently not understanding them.
Both faces looked preoccupied with workaday cares.
"What use are your cauldrons to me," shouted Ananyev. "Am I to put them
on my head, or what? If you can't find Tchalisov, find his assistant,
and leave us in peace!"
Seeing me, the student probably recalled the conversation of the
previous night. The workaday expression vanished from his sleepy face
and a look of mental inertia came into it. He waved the peasant off and
walked away absorbed in thought.
It was a cloudy morning. On the line where the lights had been gleaming
the night before, the workmen, just roused from sleep, were swarming.
There was a sound of voices and the squeaking of wheelbarrows. The
working day was beginning. One poor little nag harnessed with cord was
already plodding towards the embankment, tugging with its neck, and
dragging along a cartful of sand.
I began saying good-bye. . . . A great deal had been said in the night,
but I carried away with me no answer to any question, and in the
morning, of the whole conversation there remained in my memory, as in a
filter, only the lights and the image of Kisotchka. As I got on the
horse, I looked at the student and Ananyev for the last time, at the