Short Stories by Chekhov
was fixed on little things. He was delighted with his breathing and with
his laughter; he was delighted with the existence of the water-bottle,
the ceiling, the sunbeam, the ribbon on the curtain. God's world, even
in such a narrow corner as his bedroom, seemed to him beautiful, varied,
great. When the doctor appeared the lieutenant thought how nice his
medicine was, how nice and sympathetic the doctor was, how nice and
interesting people were, on the whole.
"Yies, yies, yies," said the doctor. "Excellent, excellent. Now we are
well again. Jist saow. Jist saow."
The lieutenant listened and laughed gleefully. He remembered the Finn,
the lady with the white teeth, the train, and he wanted to eat and
smoke.
"Doctor," he said, "tell them to bring me a slice of rye bread and salt,
and some sardines...."
The doctor refused. Pavel did not obey his order and refused to go for
bread. The lieutenant could not bear it and began to cry like a thwarted
child.
"Ba-by," the doctor laughed. "Mamma! Hush-aby!"
Klimov also began to laugh, and when the doctor had gone, he fell sound
asleep. He woke up with the same feeling of joy and happiness. His aunt
was sitting by his bed.
"Oh, aunty!" He was very happy. "What has been the matter with me?"
"Typhus."
"I say! And now I am well, quite well! Where is Katy?"
"She is not at home. She has probably gone to see some one after her
examination."
The old woman bent over her stocking as she said this; her lips began to
tremble; she turned her face away and suddenly began to sob. In her
grief, she forgot the doctor's orders and cried:
"Oh! Katy! Katy! Our angel is gone from us! She is gone!"
She dropped her stocking and stooped down for it, and her cap fell off
her head. Klimov stared at her grey hair, could not understand, was
alarmed for Katy, and asked:
"But where is she, aunty?"
The old woman, who had already forgotten Klimov and remembered only her
grief, said:
"She caught typhus from you and ... and died. She was buried the day
before yesterday."
This sudden appalling piece of news came home to Klimov's mind, but
dreadful and shocking though it was it could not subdue the animal joy
which thrilled through the convalescent lieutenant. He cried, laughed,
and soon began to complain that he was given nothing to eat.
Only a week later, when, supported by Pavel, he walked in a dressing-
gown to the window, and saw the grey spring sky and heard the horrible
rattle of some old rails being carried by on a lorry, then his heart
ached with sorrow and he began to weep and pressed his forehead against
the window-frame.
"How unhappy I am!" he murmured. "My God, how unhappy I am!"
And joy gave way to his habitual weariness and a sense of his
irreparable loss. GOOSEBERRIES
FROM early morning the sky had been overcast with clouds; the day was
still, cool, and wearisome, as usual on grey, dull days when the clouds
hang low over the fields and it looks like rain, which never comes. Ivan
Ivanich, the veterinary surgeon, and Bourkin, the schoolmaster, were
tired of walking and the fields seemed endless to them. Far ahead they
could just see the windmills of the village of Mirousky, to the right
stretched away to disappear behind the village a line of hills, and they
knew that it was the bank of the river; meadows, green willows,
farmhouses; and from one of the hills there could be seen a field as
endless, telegraph-posts, and the train, looking from a distance like a
crawling caterpillar, and in clear weather even the town. In the calm
weather when all Nature seemed gentle and melancholy, Ivan Ivanich and
Bourkin were filled with love for the fields and thought how grand and
beautiful the country was.
"Last time, when we stopped in Prokofyi's shed," said Bourkin, "you were
going to tell me a story."
"Yes. I wanted to tell you about my brother."
Ivan Ivanich took a deep breath and lighted his pipe before beginning
his story, but just then the rain began to fall. And in about five
minutes it came pelting down and showed no signs of stopping. Ivan
Ivanich stopped and hesitated; the dogs, wet through, stood with their
tails between their legs and looked at them mournfully.
"We ought to take shelter," said Bourkin. "Let us go to Aliokhin. It is
close by."
"Very well."
They took a short cut over a stubble-field and then bore to the right,
until they came to the road. Soon there appeared poplars, a garden, the
red roofs of granaries; the river began to glimmer and they came to a
wide road with a mill and a white bathing-shed. It was Sophino, where
Aliokhin lived.
The mill was working, drowning the sound of the rain, and the dam shook.
Round the carts stood wet horses, hanging their heads, and men were
walking about with their heads covered with sacks. It was wet, muddy,
and unpleasant, and the river looked cold and sullen. Ivan Ivanich and
Bourkin felt wet and uncomfortable through and through; their feet were
tired with walking in the mud, and they walked past the dam to the barn
in silence as though they were angry with each other.
In one of the barns a winnowing-machine was working, sending out clouds
of dust. On the threshold stood Aliokhin himself, a man of about forty,
tall and stout, with long hair, more like a professor or a painter than
a farmer. He was wearing a grimy white shirt and rope belt, and pants
instead of trousers; and his boots were covered with mud and straw. His
nose and eyes were black with dust. He recognised Ivan Ivanich and was
apparently very pleased.
"Please, gentlemen," he said, "go to the house. I'll be with you in a
minute."
The house was large and two-storied. Aliokhin lived down-stairs in two
vaulted rooms with little windows designed for the farm-hands; the
farmhouse was plain, and the place smelled of rye bread and vodka, and
leather. He rarely used the reception-rooms, only when guests arrived.
Ivan Ivanich and Bourkin were received by a chambermaid; such a pretty
young woman that both of them stopped and exchanged glances.
"You cannot imagine how glad I am to see you, gentlemen," said Aliokhin,
coming after them into the hall. "I never expected you. Pelagueya," he
said to the maid, "give my friends a change of clothes. And I will
change, too. But I must have a bath. I haven't had one since the spring.
Wouldn't you like to come to the bathing-shed? And meanwhile our things
will be got ready."
Pretty Pelagueya, dainty and sweet, brought towels and soap, and
Aliokhin led his guests to the bathing-shed.
"Yes," he said, "it is a long time since I had a bath. My bathing-shed
is all right, as you see. My father and I put it up, but somehow I have
no time to bathe."
He sat down on the step and lathered his long hair and neck, and the
water round him became brown.
"Yes. I see," said Ivan Ivanich heavily, looking at his head.
"It is a long time since I bathed," said Aliokhin shyly, as he soaped
himself again, and the water round him became dark blue, like ink.
Ivan Ivanich came out of the shed, plunged into the water with a splash,
and swam about in the rain, flapping his arms, and sending waves back,
and on the waves tossed white lilies; he swam out to the middle of the
pool and dived, and in a minute came up again in another place and kept
on swimming and diving, trying to reach the bottom. "Ah! how delicious!"
he shouted in his glee. "How delicious!" He swam to the mill, spoke to
the peasants, and came back, and in the middle of the pool he lay on his
back to let the rain fall on his face. Bourkin and Aliokhin were already
dressed and ready to go, but he kept on swimming and diving.
"Delicious," he said. "Too delicious!"
"You've had enough," shouted Bourkin.
They went to the house. And only when the lamp was lit in the large
drawing-room up-stairs, and Bourkin and Ivan Ivanich, dressed in silk
dressing-gowns and warm slippers, lounged in chairs, and Aliokhin
himself, washed and brushed, in a new frock coat, paced up and down
evidently delighting in the warmth and cleanliness and dry clothes and
slippers, and pretty Pelagueya, noiselessly tripping over the carpet and
smiling sweetly, brought in tea and jam on a tray, only then did Ivan
Ivanich begin his story, and it was as though he was being listened to
not only by Bourkin and Aliokhin, but also by the old and young ladies
and the officer who looked down so staidly and tranquilly from the
golden frames.
"We are two brothers," he began, "I, Ivan Ivanich, and Nicholai Ivanich,
two years younger. I went in for study and became a veterinary surgeon,
while Nicholai was at the Exchequer Court when he was nineteen. Our
father, Tchimasha-Himalaysky, was a cantonist, but he died with an
officer's rank and left us his title of nobility and a small estate.
After his death the estate went to pay his debts. However, we spent our
childhood there in the country. We were just like peasant's children,
spent days and nights in the fields and the woods, minded the house,
barked the lime-trees, fished, and so on.... And you know once a man has
fished, or watched the thrushes hovering in flocks over the village in
the bright, cool, autumn days, he can never really be a townsman, and to
the day of his death he will be drawn to the country. My brother pined
away in the Exchequer. Years passed and he sat in the same place, wrote
out the same documents, and thought of one thing, how to get back to the
country. And little by little his distress became a definite disorder, a
fixed idea--to buy a small farm somewhere by the bank of a river or a
lake.
"He was a good fellow and I loved him, but I never sympathised with the
desire to shut oneself up on one's own farm. It is a common saying that
a man needs only six feet of land. But surely a corpse wants that, not a
man. And I hear that our intellectuals have a longing for the land and
want to acquire farms. But it all comes down to the six feet of land. To
leave town, and the struggle and the swim of life, and go and hide
yourself in a farmhouse is not life--it is egoism, laziness; it is a kind
of monasticism, but monasticism without action. A man needs, not six
feet of land, not a farm, but the whole earth, all Nature, where in full
liberty he can display all the properties and qualities of the free
spirit.
"My brother Nicholai, sitting in his office, would dream of eating his
own schi, with its savoury smell floating across the farmyard; and of
eating out in the open air, and of sleeping in the sun, and of sitting
for hours together on a seat by the gate and gazing at the field and the
forest. Books on agriculture and the hints in almanacs were his joy, his
favourite spiritual food; and he liked reading newspapers, but only the
advertisements of land to be sold, so many acres of arable and grass
land, with a farmhouse, river, garden, mill, and mill-pond. And he would
dream of garden-walls, flowers, fruits, nests, carp in the pond, don't
you know, and all the rest of it. These fantasies of his used to vary
according to the advertisements he found, but somehow there was always a
gooseberry-bush in every one. Not a house, not a romantic spot could he
imagine without its gooseberry-bush.
"'Country life has its advantages,' he used to say. 'You sit on the
veranda drinking tea and your ducklings swim on the pond, and everything
smells good ... and there are gooseberries.'
"He used to draw out a plan of his estate and always the same things
were shown on it: (a) Farmhouse, (b) cottage, (c) vegetable garden, (d)
gooseberry-bush. He used to live meagrely and never had enough to eat
and drink, dressed God knows how, exactly like a beggar, and always
saved and put his money into the bank. He was terribly stingy. It used
to hurt me to see him, and I used to give him money to go away for a