Short Stories by Chekhov
sound of sobbing.
"I am sorry for him . . ." muttered Liza. "Oh, I am so sorry for him!"
"Sorry for whom?"
"Va--Vanya. . . ."
"And do you suppose I'm not? But what's to be done? We are causing him
suffering. . . . He will be unhappy, will curse us . . . but is it our
fault that we love one another?"
As he uttered the last word, Groholsky darted away from Liza as though
he had been stung and sat down in an easy chair. Liza sprang away from
his neck and rapidly--in one instant--dropped on the lounge.
They both turned fearfully red, dropped their eyes, and coughed.
A tall, broad-shouldered man of thirty, in the uniform of a government
clerk, had walked into the drawing-room. He had walked in unnoticed.
Only the bang of a chair which he knocked in the doorway had warned the
lovers of his presence, and made them look round. It was the husband.
They had looked round too late.
He had seen Groholsky's arm round Liza's waist, and had seen Liza
hanging on Groholsky's white and aristocratic neck.
"He saw us!" Liza and Groholsky thought at the same moment, while they
did not know what to do with their heavy hands and embarrassed eyes. . .
.
The petrified husband, rosy-faced, turned white.
An agonising, strange, soul-revolting silence lasted for three minutes.
Oh, those three minutes! Groholsky remembers them to this day.
The first to move and break the silence was the husband. He stepped up
to Groholsky and, screwing his face into a senseless grimace like a
smile, gave him his hand. Groholsky shook the soft perspiring hand and
shuddered all over as though he had crushed a cold frog in his fist.
"Good evening," he muttered.
"How are you?" the husband brought out in a faint husky, almost
inaudible voice, and he sat down opposite Groholsky, straightening his
collar at the back of his neck.
Again, an agonising silence followed . . . but that silence was no
longer so stupid. . . . The first step, most difficult and colourless,
was over.
All that was left now was for one of the two to depart in search of
matches or on some such trifling errand. Both longed intensely to get
away. They sat still, not looking at one another, and pulled at their
beards while they ransacked their troubled brains for some means of
escape from their horribly awkward position. Both were perspiring. Both
were unbearably miserable and both were devoured by hatred. They longed
to begin the tussle but how were they to begin and which was to begin
first? If only she would have gone out!
"I saw you yesterday at the Assembly Hall," muttered Bugrov (that was
the husband's name).
"Yes, I was there . . . the ball . . . did you dance?"
"M'm . . . yes . . . with that . . . with the younger Lyukovtsky . . . .
She dances heavily. . . . She dances impossibly. She is a great
chatterbox." (Pause.) "She is never tired of talking."
"Yes. . . . It was slow. I saw you too. . ."
Groholsky accidentally glanced at Bugrov. . . . He caught the shifting
eyes of the deceived husband and could not bear it. He got up quickly,
quickly seized Bugrov's hand, shook it, picked up his hat, and walked
towards the door, conscious of his own back. He felt as though thousands
of eyes were looking at his back. It is a feeling known to the actor who
has been hissed and is making his exit from the stage, and to the young
dandy who has received a blow on the back of the head and is being led
away in charge of a policeman.
As soon as the sound of Groholsky's steps had died away and the door in
the hall creaked, Bugrov leapt up, and after making two or three rounds
of the drawing-room, strolled up to his wife. The kittenish face
puckered up and began blinking its eyes as though expecting a slap. Her
husband went up to her, and with a pale, distorted face, with arms,
head, and shoulders shaking, stepped on her dress and knocked her knees
with his.
"If, you wretched creature," he began in a hollow, wailing voice, "you
let him come here once again, I'll. . . . Don't let him dare to set his
foot. . . . I'll kill you. Do you understand? A-a-ah . . . worthless
creature, you shudder! Fil-thy woman!"
Bugrov seized her by the elbow, shook her, and flung her like an
indiarubber ball towards the window. . . .
"Wretched, vulgar woman! you have no shame!"
She flew towards the window, hardly touching the floor with her feet,
and caught at the curtains with her hands.
"Hold your tongue," shouted her husband, going up to her with flashing
eyes and stamping his foot.
She did hold her tongue, she looked at the ceiling, and whimpered while
her face wore the expression of a little girl in disgrace expecting to
be punished.
"So that's what you are like! Eh? Carrying on with a fop! Good! And your
promise before the altar? What are you? A nice wife and mother. Hold
your tongue!"
And he struck her on her pretty supple shoulder. "Hold your tongue, you
wretched creature. I'll give you worse than that! If that scoundrel
dares to show himself here ever again, if I see you--listen!--with that
blackguard ever again, don't ask for mercy! I'll kill you, if I go to
Siberia for it! And him too. I shouldn't think twice about it! You can
go, I don't want to see you!"
Bugrov wiped his eyes and his brow with his sleeve and strode about the
drawing-room, Liza sobbing more and more loudly, twitching her shoulders
and her little turned up nose, became absorbed in examining the lace on
the curtain.
"You are crazy," her husband shouted. "Your silly head is full of
nonsense! Nothing but whims! I won't allow it, Elizaveta, my girl! You
had better be careful with me! I don't like it! If you want to behave
like a pig, then . . . then out you go, there is no place in my house
for you! Out you pack if. . . . You are a wife, so you must forget these
dandies, put them out of your silly head! It's all foolishness! Don't
let it happen again! You try defending yourself! Love your husband! You
have been given to your husband, so you must love him. Yes, indeed! Is
one not enough? Go away till . . . . Torturers!"
Bugrov paused; then shouted:
"Go away I tell you, go to the nursery! Why are you blubbering, it is
your own fault, and you blubber! What a woman! Last year you were after
Petka Totchkov, now you are after this devil. Lord forgive us! . . .
Tfoo, it's time you understood what you are! A wife! A mother! Last year
there were unpleasantnesses, and now there will be unpleasantnesses. . .
. Tfoo!"
Bugrov heaved a loud sigh, and the air was filled with the smell of
sherry. He had come back from dining and was slightly drunk . . . .
"Don't you know your duty? No! . . . you must be taught, you've not been
taught so far! Your mamma was a gad-about, and you . . . you can
blubber. Yes! blubber away. . . ."
Bugrov went up to his wife and drew the curtain out of her hands.
"Don't stand by the window, people will see you blubbering. . . . Don't
let it happen again. You'll go from embracing to worse trouble. You'll
come to grief. Do you suppose I like to be made a fool of? And you will
make a fool of me if you carry on with them, the low brutes. . . . Come,
that's enough. . . . Don't you. . . . Another time. . . . Of course I .
. Liza . . . stay. . . ."
Bugrov heaved a sigh and enveloped Liza in the fumes of sherry.
"You are young and silly, you don't understand anything. . . . I am
never at home. . . . And they take advantage of it. You must be
sensible, prudent. They will deceive you. And then I won't endure it. .
. . Then I may do anything. . . . Of course! Then you can just lie down,
and die. I . . . I am capable of doing anything if you deceive me, my
good girl. I might beat you to death. . . . And . . . I shall turn you
out of the house, and then you can go to your rascals."
And Bugrov (horribile dictu) wiped the wet, tearful face of the
traitress Liza with his big soft hand. He treated his twenty-year-old
wife as though she were a child.
"Come, that's enough. . . . I forgive you. Only God forbid it should
happen again! I forgive you for the fifth time, but I shall not forgive
you for the sixth, as God is holy. God does not forgive such as you for
such things."
Bugrov bent down and put out his shining lips towards Liza's little
head. But the kiss did not follow. The doors of the hall, of the dining-
room, of the parlour, and of the drawing-room all slammed, and Groholsky
flew into the drawing-room like a whirlwind. He was pale and trembling.
He was flourishing his arms and crushing his expensive hat in his hands.
His coat fluttered upon him as though it were on a peg. He was the
incarnation of acute fever. When Bugrov saw him he moved away from his
wife and began looking out of the other window. Groholsky flew up to
him, and waving his arms and breathing heavily and looking at no one, he
began in a shaking voice:
"Ivan Petrovitch! Let us leave off keeping up this farce with one
another! We have deceived each other long enough! It's too much! I
cannot stand it. You must do as you like, but I cannot! It's hateful and
mean, it's revolting! Do you understand that it is revolting?"
Groholsky spluttered and gasped for breath.
"It's against my principles. And you are an honest man. I love her! I
love her more than anything on earth! You have noticed it and . . . it's
my duty to say this!"
"What am I to say to him?" Ivan Petrovitch wondered.
"We must make an end of it. This farce cannot drag on much longer! It
must be settled somehow."
Groholsky drew a breath and went on:
"I cannot live without her; she feels the same. You are an educated man,
you will understand that in such circumstances your family life is
impossible. This woman is not yours, so . . . in short, I beg you to
look at the matter from an indulgent humane point of view. . . . Ivan
Petrovitch, you must understand at last that I love her--love her more
than myself, more than anything in the world, and to struggle against
that love is beyond my power!"
"And she?" Bugrov asked in a sullen, somewhat ironical tone.
"Ask her; come now, ask her! For her to live with a man she does not
love, to live with you is . . . is a misery!"
"And she?" Bugrov repeated, this time not in an ironical tone.
"She . . . she loves me! We love each other, Ivan Petrovitch! Kill us,
despise us, pursue us, do as you will, but we can no longer conceal it
from you. We are standing face to face--you may judge us with all the
severity of a man whom we . . . whom fate has robbed of happiness!"
Bugrov turned as red as a boiled crab, and looked out of one eye at
Liza. He began blinking. His fingers, his lips, and his eyelids
twitched. Poor fellow! The eyes of his weeping wife told him that
Groholsky was right, that it was a serious matter.
"Well!" he muttered. "If you. . . . In these days. . . . You are always.
. . ."
"As God is above," Groholsky shrilled in his high tenor, "we understand
you. Do you suppose we have no sense, no feeling? I know what agonies I
am causing you, as God's above! But be indulgent, I beseech you! We are
not to blame. Love is not a crime. No will can struggle against it. . .
. Give her up to me, Ivan Petrovitch! Let her go with me! Take from me
what you will for your sufferings. Take my life, but give me Liza. I am
ready to do anything. . . . Come, tell me how I can do something to make
up in part at least! To make up for that lost happiness, I can give you
other happiness. I can, Ivan Petrovitch; I am ready to do anything! It
would be base on my part to leave you without satisfaction. . . . I
understand you at this moment."
Bugrov waved his hand as though to say, 'For God's sake, go away.' His
eyes began to be dimmed by a treacherous moisture--in a moment they would
see him crying like a child.