Short Stories by Chekhov
hysterical dog with the lustreless, tipsy-looking eyes, at the workmen
flitting to and fro in the morning fog, at the embankment, at the little
nag straining with its neck, and thought:
"There is no making out anything in this world."
And when I lashed my horse and galloped along the line, and when a
little later I saw nothing before me but the endless gloomy plain and
the cold overcast sky, I recalled the questions which were discussed in
the night. I pondered while the sun-scorched plain, the immense sky, the
oak forest, dark on the horizon and the hazy distance, seemed saying to
me:
"Yes, there's no understanding anything in this world!"
The sun began to rise. . . .
A STORY WITHOUT AN END
SOON after two o'clock one night, long ago, the cook, pale and agitated,
rushed unexpectedly into my study and informed me that Madame Mimotih,
the old woman who owned the house next door, was sitting in her kitchen.
"She begs you to go in to her, sir . . ." said the cook, panting.
"Something bad has happened about her lodger. . . . He has shot himself
or hanged himself. . . ."
"What can I do?" said I. "Let her go for the doctor or for the police!"
"How is she to look for a doctor! She can hardly breathe, and she has
huddled under the stove, she is so frightened. . . . You had better go
round, sir."
I put on my coat and hat and went to Madame Mimotih's house. The gate
towards which I directed my steps was open. After pausing beside it,
uncertain what to do, I went into the yard without feeling for the
porter's bell. In the dark and dilapidated porch the door was not
locked. I opened it and walked into the entry. Here there was not a
glimmer of light, it was pitch dark, and, moreover, there was a marked
smell of incense. Groping my way out of the entry I knocked my elbow
against something made of iron, and in the darkness stumbled against a
board of some sort which almost fell to the floor. At last the door
covered with torn baize was found, and I went into a little hall.
I am not at the moment writing a fairy tale, and am far from intending
to alarm the reader, but the picture I saw from the passage was
fantastic and could only have been drawn by death. Straight before me
was a door leading to a little drawing-room. Three five-kopeck wax
candles, standing in a row, threw a scanty light on the faded slate-
coloured wallpaper. A coffin was standing on two tables in the middle of
the little room. The two candles served only to light up a swarthy
yellow face with a half-open mouth and sharp nose. Billows of muslin
were mingled in disorder from the face to the tips of the two shoes, and
from among the billows peeped out two pale motionless hands, holding a
wax cross. The dark gloomy corners of the little drawing-room, the ikons
behind the coffin, the coffin itself, everything except the softly
glimmering lights, were still as death, as the tomb itself.
"How strange!" I thought, dumbfoundered by the unexpected panorama of
death. "Why this haste? The lodger has hardly had time to hang himself,
or shoot himself, and here is the coffin already!"
I looked round. On the left there was a door with a glass panel; on the
right a lame hat-stand with a shabby fur coat on it. . . .
"Water. . . ." I heard a moan.
The moan came from the left, beyond the door with the glass panel. I
opened the door and walked into a little dark room with a solitary
window, through which there came a faint light from a street lamp
outside.
"Is anyone here?" I asked.
And without waiting for an answer I struck a match. This is what I saw
while it was burning. A man was sitting on the blood-stained floor at my
very feet. If my step had been a longer one I should have trodden on
him. With his legs thrust forward and his hands pressed on the floor, he
was making an effort to raise his handsome face, which was deathly pale
against his pitch-black beard. In the big eyes which he lifted upon me,
I read unutterable terror, pain, and entreaty. A cold sweat trickled in
big drops down his face. That sweat, the expression of his face, the
trembling of the hands he leaned upon, his hard breathing and his
clenched teeth, showed that he was suffering beyond endurance. Near his
right hand in a pool of blood lay a revolver.
"Don't go away," I heard a faint voice when the match had gone out.
"There's a candle on the table."
I lighted the candle and stood still in the middle of the room not
knowing what to do next. I stood and looked at the man on the floor, and
it seemed to me that I had seen him before.
"The pain is insufferable," he whispered, "and I haven't the strength to
shoot myself again. Incomprehensible lack of will."
I flung off my overcoat and attended to the sick man. Lifting him from
the floor like a baby, I laid him on the American-leather covered sofa
and carefully undressed him. He was shivering and cold when I took off
his clothes; the wound which I saw was not in keeping either with his
shivering nor the expression on his face. It was a trifling one. The
bullet had passed between the fifth and sixth ribs on the left side,
only piercing the skin and the flesh. I found the bullet itself in the
folds of the coat-lining near the back pocket. Stopping the bleeding as
best I could and making a temporary bandage of a pillow-case, a towel,
and two handkerchiefs, I gave the wounded man some water and covered him
with a fur coat that was hanging in the passage. We neither of us said a
word while the bandaging was being done. I did my work while he lay
motionless looking at me with his eyes screwed up as though he were
ashamed of his unsuccessful shot and the trouble he was giving me.
"Now I must trouble you to lie still," I said, when I had finished the
bandaging, "while I run to the chemist and get something."
"No need!" he muttered, clutching me by the sleeve and opening his eyes
wide.
I read terror in his eyes. He was afraid of my going away.
"No need! Stay another five minutes . . . ten. If it doesn't disgust
you, do stay, I entreat you."
As he begged me he was trembling and his teeth were chattering. I
obeyed, and sat down on the edge of the sofa. Ten minutes passed in
silence. I sat silent, looking about the room into which fate had
brought me so unexpectedly. What poverty! This man who was the possessor
of a handsome, effeminate face and a luxuriant well-tended beard, had
surroundings which a humble working man would not have envied. A sofa
with its American-leather torn and peeling, a humble greasy-looking
chair, a table covered with a little of paper, and a wretched oleograph
on the wall, that was all I saw. Damp, gloomy, and grey.
"What a wind!" said the sick man, without opening his eyes, "How it
whistles!"
"Yes," I said. "I say, I fancy I know you. Didn't you take part in some
private theatricals in General Luhatchev's villa last year?"
"What of it?" he asked, quickly opening his eyes.
A cloud seemed to pass over his face.
"I certainly saw you there. Isn't your name Vassilyev?"
"If it is, what of it? It makes it no better that you should know me."
"No, but I just asked you."
Vassilyev closed his eyes and, as though offended, turned his face to
the back of the sofa.
"I don't understand your curiosity," he muttered. "You'll be asking me
next what it was drove me to commit suicide!"
Before a minute had passed, he turned round towards me again, opened his
eyes and said in a tearful voice:
"Excuse me for taking such a tone, but you'll admit I'm right! To ask a
convict how he got into prison, or a suicide why he shot himself is not
generous . . . and indelicate. To think of gratifying idle curiosity at
the expense of another man's nerves!"
"There is no need to excite yourself. . . . It never occurred to me to
question you about your motives."
"You would have asked. . . . It's what people always do. Though it would
be no use to ask. If I told you, you would not believe or understand. .
. . I must own I don't understand it myself. . . . There are phrases
used in the police reports and newspapers such as: 'unrequited love,'
and 'hopeless poverty,' but the reasons are not known. . . . They are
not known to me, nor to you, nor to your newspaper offices, where they
have the impudence to write 'The diary of a suicide.' God alone
understands the state of a man's soul when he takes his own life; but
men know nothing about it."
"That is all very nice," I said, "but you oughtn't to talk. . . ."
But my suicide could not be stopped, he leaned his head on his fist, and
went on in the tone of some great professor:
"Man will never understand the psychological subtleties of suicide! How
can one speak of reasons? To-day the reason makes one snatch up a
revolver, while to-morrow the same reason seems not worth a rotten egg.
It all depends most likely on the particular condition of the individual
at the given moment. . . . Take me for instance. Half an hour ago, I had
a passionate desire for death, now when the candle is lighted, and you
are sitting by me, I don't even think of the hour of death. Explain that
change if you can! Am I better off, or has my wife risen from the dead?
Is it the influence of the light on me, or the presence of an outsider?"
"The light certainly has an influence . . ." I muttered for the sake of
saying something. "The influence of light on the organism . . . ."
"The influence of light. . . . We admit it! But you know men do shoot
themselves by candle-light! And it would be ignominious indeed for the
heroes of your novels if such a trifling thing as a candle were to
change the course of the drama so abruptly. All this nonsense can be
explained perhaps, but not by us. It's useless to ask questions or give
explanations of what one does not understand. . . ."
"Forgive me," I said, "but . . . judging by the expression of your face,
it seems to me that at this moment you . . . are posing."
"Yes," Vassilyev said, startled. "It's very possible! I am naturally
vain and fatuous. Well, explain it, if you believe in your power of
reading faces! Half an hour ago I shot myself, and just now I am posing.
. . . Explain that if you can."
These last words Vassilyev pronounced in a faint, failing voice. He was
exhausted, and sank into silence. A pause followed. I began scrutinising
his face. It was as pale as a dead man's. It seemed as though life were
almost extinct in him, and only the signs of the suffering that the
"vain and fatuous" man was feeling betrayed that it was still alive. It
was painful to look at that face, but what must it have been for
Vassilyev himself who yet had the strength to argue and, if I were not
mistaken, to pose?
"You here--are you here?" he asked suddenly, raising himself on his
elbow. "My God, just listen!"
I began listening. The rain was pattering angrily on the dark window,
never ceasing for a minute. The wind howled plaintively and
lugubriously.
"'And I shall be whiter than snow, and my ears will hear gladness and
rejoicing.'" Madame Mimotih, who had returned, was reading in the
drawing-room in a languid, weary voice, neither raising nor dropping the
monotonous dreary key.
"It is cheerful, isn't it?" whispered Vassilyev, turning his frightened
eyes towards me. "My God, the things a man has to see and hear! If only
one could set this chaos to music! As Hamlet says, 'it would--
"Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed, The very faculties of eyes and
ears."
"How well I should have understood that music then! How I should have
felt it! What time is it?"
"Five minutes to three."
"Morning is still far off. And in the morning there's the funeral. A
lovely prospect! One follows the coffin through the mud and rain. One
walks along, seeing nothing but the cloudy sky and the wretched scenery.