Short Stories by Chekhov
"Piano . . . piano. . . . You see 'piano' is written there. . . . More
lightly, more lightly."
When they had to sing "piano" an expression of benevolence and
amiability overspread Alexey Alexeitch's face, as though he was dreaming
of a dainty morsel.
"Forte . . . forte! Hold it!"
And when they had to sing "forte" the sacristan's fat face expressed
alarm and even horror.
The "Cherubim" hymn was sung well, so well that the school-children
abandoned their copies and fell to watching the movements of Alexey
Alexeitch. People stood under the windows. The school-watchman, Vassily,
came in wearing an apron and carrying a dinner-knife in his hand and
stood listening. Father Kuzma, with an anxious face appeared suddenly as
though he had sprung from out of the earth. . . . After 'Let us lay
aside all earthly cares' Alexey Alexeitch wiped the sweat off his brow
and went up to Father Kuzma in excitement.
"It puzzles me, Father Kuzma," he said, shrugging his shoulders, "why is
it that the Russian people have no understanding? It puzzles me, may the
Lord chastise me! Such an uncultured people that you really cannot tell
whether they have a windpipe in their throats or some other sort of
internal arrangement. Were you choking, or what?" he asked, addressing
the bass Gennady Semitchov, the innkeeper's brother.
"Why?"
"What is your voice like? It rattles like a saucepan. I bet you were
boozing yesterday! That's what it is! Your breath smells like a tavern.
. . . E-ech! You are a clodhopper, brother! You are a lout! How can you
be a chorister if you keep company with peasants in the tavern? Ech, you
are an ass, brother!"
"It's a sin, it's a sin, brother," muttered Father Kuzma. "God sees
everything . . . through and through . . . ."
"That's why you have no idea of singing--because you care more for vodka
than for godliness, you fool."
"Don't work yourself up," said Father Kuzma. "Don't be cross. . . . I
will persuade him."
Father Kuzma went up to Gennady Semitchov and began "persuading" him:
"What do you do it for? Try and put your mind to it. A man who sings
ought to restrain himself, because his throat is . . . er . . tender."
Gennady scratched his neck and looked sideways towards the window as
though the words did not apply to him.
After the "Cherubim" hymn they sang the Creed, then "It is meet and
right"; they sang smoothly and with feeling, and so right on to "Our
Father."
"To my mind, Father Kuzma," said the sacristan, "the old 'Our Father' is
better than the modern. That's what we ought to sing before the Count."
"No, no. . . . Sing the modern one. For the Count hears nothing but
modern music when he goes to Mass in Petersburg or Moscow. . . . In the
churches there, I imagine . . . there's very different sort of music
there, brother!"
After "Our Father" there was again a great blowing of noses, coughing
and turning over of pages. The most difficult part of the performance
came next: the "concert." Alexey Alexeitch was practising two pieces,
"Who is the God of glory" and "Universal Praise." Whichever the choir
learned best would be sung before the Count. During the "concert" the
sacristan rose to a pitch of enthusiasm. The expression of benevolence
was continually alternating with one of alarm.
"Forte!" he muttered. "Andante! let yourselves go! Sing, you image!
Tenors, you don't bring it off! To-to-ti-to-tom. . . . Sol . . . si . .
. sol, I tell you, you blockhead! Glory! Basses, glo . . . o . . . ry."
His bow travelled over the heads and shoulders of the erring trebles and
altos. His left hand was continually pulling the ears of the young
singers. On one occasion, carried away by his feelings he flipped the
bass Gennady under the chin with his bent thumb. But the choristers were
not moved to tears or to anger at his blows: they realised the full
gravity of their task.
After the "concert" came a minute of silence. Alexey Alexeitch, red,
perspiring and exhausted, sat down on the window-sill, and turned upon
the company lustreless, wearied, but triumphant eyes. In the listening
crowd he observed to his immense annoyance the deacon Avdiessov. The
deacon, a tall thick-set man with a red pock-marked face, and straw in
his hair, stood leaning against the stove and grinning contemptuously.
"That's right, sing away! Perform your music!" he muttered in a deep
bass. "Much the Count will care for your singing! He doesn't care
whether you sing with music or without. . . . For he is an atheist."
Father Kuzma looked round in a scared way and twiddled his fingers.
"Come, come," he muttered. "Hush, deacon, I beg."
After the "concert" they sang "May our lips be filled with praise," and
the choir practice was over. The choir broke up to reassemble in the
evening for another practice. And so it went on every day.
One month passed and then a second. . . . The steward, too, had by then
received a notice that the Count would soon be coming. At last the dusty
sun-blinds were taken off the windows of the big house, and Yefremovo
heard the strains of the broken-down, out-of-tune piano. Father Kuzma
was pining, though he could not himself have said why, or whether it was
from delight or alarm. . . . The deacon went about grinning.
The following Saturday evening Father Kuzma went to the sacristan's
lodgings. His face was pale, his shoulders drooped, the lilac of his
cassock looked faded.
"I have just been at his Excellency's," he said to the sacristan,
stammering. "He is a cultivated gentleman with refined ideas. But . . .
er . . . it's mortifying, brother. . . . 'At what o'clock, your
Excellency, do you desire us to ring for Mass to-morrow?' And he said:
'As you think best. Only, couldn't it be as short and quick as possible
without a choir.' Without a choir! Er . . . do you understand, without,
without a choir. . . ."
Alexey Alexeitch turned crimson. He would rather have spent two hours on
his knees again than have heard those words! He did not sleep all night.
He was not so much mortified at the waste of his labours as at the fact
that the deacon would give him no peace now with his jeers. The deacon
was delighted at his discomfiture. Next day all through the service he
was casting disdainful glances towards the choir where Alexey Alexeitch
was booming responses in solitude. When he passed by the choir with the
censer he muttered:
"Perform your music! Do your utmost! The Count will give a ten-rouble
note to the choir!"
After the service the sacristan went home, crushed and ill with
mortification. At the gate he was overtaken by the red-faced deacon.
"Stop a minute, Alyosha!" said the deacon. "Stop a minute, silly, don't
be cross! You are not the only one, I am in for it too! Immediately
after the Mass Father Kuzma went up to the Count and asked: 'And what
did you think of the deacon's voice, your Excellency. He has a deep
bass, hasn't he?' And the Count--do you know what he answered by way of
compliment? 'Anyone can bawl,' he said. 'A man's voice is not as
important as his brains.' A learned gentleman from Petersburg! An
atheist is an atheist, and that's all about it! Come, brother in
misfortune, let us go and have a drop to drown our troubles!"
And the enemies went out of the gate arm-in-arm.
NERVES
DMITRI OSIPOVITCH VAXIN, the architect, returned from town to his
holiday cottage greatly impressed by the spiritualistic séance at which
he had been present. As he undressed and got into his solitary bed
(Madame Vaxin had gone to an all-night service) he could not help
remembering all he had seen and heard. It had not, properly speaking,
been a séance at all, but the whole evening had been spent in
terrifying conversation. A young lady had begun it by talking, apropos
of nothing, about thought-reading. From thought-reading they had passed
imperceptibly to spirits, and from spirits to ghosts, from ghosts to
people buried alive. . . . A gentleman had read a horrible story of a
corpse turning round in the coffin. Vaxin himself had asked for a saucer
and shown the young ladies how to converse with spirits. He had called
up among others the spirit of his deceased uncle, Klavdy Mironitch, and
had mentally asked him:
"Has not the time come for me to transfer the ownership of our house to
my wife?"
To which his uncle's spirit had replied:
"All things are good in their season."
"There is a great deal in nature that is mysterious and . . . terrible .
. ." thought Vaxin, as he got into bed. "It's not the dead but the
unknown that's so horrible."
It struck one o'clock. Vaxin turned over on the other side and peeped
out from beneath the bedclothes at the blue light of the lamp burning
before the holy ikon. The flame flickered and cast a faint light on the
ikon-stand and the big portrait of Uncle Klavdy that hung facing his
bed.
"And what if the ghost of Uncle Klavdy should appear this minute?"
flashed through Vaxin's mind. "But, of course, that's impossible."
Ghosts are, we all know, a superstition, the offspring of undeveloped
intelligence, but Vaxin, nevertheless, pulled the bed-clothes over his
head, and shut his eyes very tight. The corpse that turned round in its
coffin came back to his mind, and the figures of his deceased mother-in-
law, of a colleague who had hanged himself, and of a girl who had
drowned herself, rose before his imagination. . . . Vaxin began trying
to dispel these gloomy ideas, but the more he tried to drive them away
the more haunting the figures and fearful fancies became. He began to
feel frightened.
"Hang it all!" he thought. "Here I am afraid in the dark like a child!
Idiotic!"
Tick . . . tick . . . tick . . . he heard the clock in the next room.
The church-bell chimed the hour in the churchyard close by. The bell
tolled slowly, depressingly, mournfully. . . . A cold chill ran down
Vaxin's neck and spine. He fancied he heard someone breathing heavily
over his head, as though Uncle Klavdy had stepped out of his frame and
was bending over his nephew. . . . Vaxin felt unbearably frightened. He
clenched his teeth and held his breath in terror.
At last, when a cockchafer flew in at the open window and began buzzing
over his bed, he could bear it no longer and gave a violent tug at the
bellrope.
"Dmitri Osipitch, was wollen Sie?" he heard the voice of the German
governess at his door a moment later.
"Ah, it's you, Rosalia Karlovna!" Vaxin cried, delighted. "Why do you
trouble? Gavrila might just . . ."
"Yourself Gavrila to the town sent. And Glafira is somewhere all the
evening gone. . . . There's nobody in the house. . . . Was wollen Sie
doch?"
"Well, what I wanted . . . it's . . . but, please, come in . . . you
needn't mind! . . . it's dark."
Rosalia Karlovna, a stout red-cheeked person, came in to the bedroom and
stood in an expectant attitude at the door.
"Sit down, please . . . you see, it's like this. . . . What on earth am
I to ask her for?" he wondered, stealing a glance at Uncle Klavdy's
portrait and feeling his soul gradually returning to tranquility.
"What I really wanted to ask you was . . . Oh, when the man goes to
town, don't forget to tell him to . . . er . . . er . . . to get some
cigarette-papers. . . . But do, please sit down."
"Cigarette-papers? good. . . . Was wollen Sie noch?"
"Ich will . . . there's nothing I will, but. . . But do sit down! I
shall think of something else in a minute."
"It is shocking for a maiden in a man's room to remain. . . . Mr. Vaxin,
you are, I see, a naughty man. . . . I understand. . . . To order
cigarette-papers one does not a person wake. . . . I understand you. . .
."
Rosalia Karlovna turned and went out of the room.
Somewhat reassured by his conversation with her and ashamed of his