Short Stories by Chekhov
first regained his expression of sleekness and his refined elegance. He
paced up and down the room, tossed his head elegantly, and was evidently
meditating on something. His anger had not cooled, but he tried to
appear not to notice his enemy. . . . The doctor stood, leaning with one
hand on the edge of the table, and looked at Abogin with that profound
and somewhat cynical, ugly contempt only to be found in the eyes of
sorrow and indigence when they are confronted with well-nourished
comfort and elegance.
When a little later the doctor got into the victoria and drove off there
was still a look of contempt in his eyes. It was dark, much darker than
it had been an hour before. The red half-moon had sunk behind the hill
and the clouds that had been guarding it lay in dark patches near the
stars. The carriage with red lamps rattled along the road and soon
overtook the doctor. It was Abogin driving off to protest, to do absurd
things. . . .
All the way home the doctor thought not of his wife, nor of his Andrey,
but of Abogin and the people in the house he had just left. His thoughts
were unjust and inhumanly cruel. He condemned Abogin and his wife and
Paptchinsky and all who lived in rosy, subdued light among sweet
perfumes, and all the way home he hated and despised them till his head
ached. And a firm conviction concerning those people took shape in his
mind.
Time will pass and Kirilov's sorrow will pass, but that conviction,
unjust and unworthy of the human heart, will not pass, but will remain
in the doctor's mind to the grave.
THE EXAMINING MAGISTRATE
A DISTRICT doctor and an examining magistrate were driving one fine
spring day to an inquest. The examining magistrate, a man of five and
thirty, looked dreamily at the horses and said:
"There is a great deal that is enigmatic and obscure in nature; and even
in everyday life, doctor, one must often come upon phenomena which are
absolutely incapable of explanation. I know, for instance, of several
strange, mysterious deaths, the cause of which only spiritualists and
mystics will undertake to explain; a clear-headed man can only lift up
his hands in perplexity. For example, I know of a highly cultured lady
who foretold her own death and died without any apparent reason on the
very day she had predicted. She said that she would die on a certain
day, and she did die."
"There's no effect without a cause," said the doctor. "If there's a
death there must be a cause for it. But as for predicting it there's
nothing very marvellous in that. All our ladies--all our females, in
fact--have a turn for prophecies and presentiments."
"Just so, but my lady, doctor, was quite a special case. There was
nothing like the ladies' or other females' presentiments about her
prediction and her death. She was a young woman, healthy and clever,
with no superstitions of any sort. She had such clear, intelligent,
honest eyes; an open, sensible face with a faint, typically Russian look
of mockery in her eyes and on her lips. There was nothing of the fine
lady or of the female about her, except--if you like-- her beauty! She was
graceful, elegant as that birch tree; she had wonderful hair. That she
may be intelligible to you, I will add, too, that she was a person of
the most infectious gaiety and carelessness and that intelligent, good
sort of frivolity which is only found in good-natured, light-hearted
people with brains. Can one talk of mysticism, spiritualism, a turn for
presentiment, or anything of that sort, in this case? She used to laugh
at all that."
The doctor's chaise stopped by a well. The examining magistrate and the
doctor drank some water, stretched, and waited for the coachman to
finish watering the horses.
"Well, what did the lady die of?" asked the doctor when the chaise was
rolling along the road again.
"She died in a strange way. One fine day her husband went in to her and
said that it wouldn't be amiss to sell their old coach before the spring
and to buy something rather newer and lighter instead, and that it might
be as well to change the left trace horse and to put Bobtchinsky (that
was the name of one of her husband's horses) in the shafts.
"His wife listened to him and said:
"'Do as you think best, but it makes no difference to me now. Before the
summer I shall be in the cemetery.'
"Her husband, of course, shrugged his shoulders and smiled.
"'I am not joking,' she said. 'I tell you in earnest that I shall soon
be dead.'
"'What do you mean by soon?'
"'Directly after my confinement. I shall bear my child and die.'
"The husband attached no significance to these words. He did not believe
in presentiments of any sort, and he knew that ladies in an interesting
condition are apt to be fanciful and to give way to gloomy ideas
generally. A day later his wife spoke to him again of dying immediately
after her confinement, and then every day she spoke of it and he laughed
and called her a silly woman, a fortune-teller, a crazy creature. Her
approaching death became an idée fixé with his wife. When her husband
would not listen to her she would go into the kitchen and talk of her
death to the nurse and the cook.
"'I haven't long to live now, nurse,' she would say. 'As soon as my
confinement is over I shall die. I did not want to die so early, but it
seems it's my fate.'
"The nurse and the cook were in tears, of course. Sometimes the priest's
wife or some lady from a neighbouring estate would come and see her and
she would take them aside and open her soul to them, always harping on
the same subject, her approaching death. She spoke gravely with an
unpleasant smile, even with an angry face which would not allow any
contradiction. She had been smart and fashionable in her dress, but now
in view of her approaching death she became slovenly; she did not read,
she did not laugh, she did not dream aloud. What was more she drove with
her aunt to the cemetery and selected a spot for her tomb. Five days
before her confinement she made her will. And all this, bear in mind,
was done in the best of health, without the faintest hint of illness or
danger. A confinement is a difficult affair and sometimes fatal, but in
the case of which I am telling you every indication was favourable, and
there was absolutely nothing to be afraid of. Her husband was sick of
the whole business at last. He lost his temper one day at dinner and
asked her:
"'Listen, Natasha, when is there going to be an end of this silliness?'
"'It's not silliness, I am in earnest.'
"'Nonsense, I advise you to give over being silly that you may not feel
ashamed of it afterwards.'
"Well, the confinement came. The husband got the very best midwife from
the town. It was his wife's first confinement, but it could not have
gone better. When it was all over she asked to look at her baby. She
looked at it and said:
"'Well, now I can die.'
"She said good-bye, shut her eyes, and half an hour later gave up her
soul to God. She was fully conscious up to the last moment. Anyway when
they gave her milk instead of water she whispered softly:
"'Why are you giving me milk instead of water?'
"So that is what happened. She died as she predicted."
The examining magistrate paused, gave a sigh and said:
"Come, explain why she died. I assure you on my honour, this is not
invented, it's a fact."
The doctor looked at the sky meditatively.
"You ought to have had an inquest on her," he said.
"Why?"
"Why, to find out the cause of her death. She didn't die because she had
predicted it. She poisoned herself most probably."
The examining magistrate turned quickly, facing the doctor, and screwing
up his eyes, asked:
"And from what do you conclude that she poisoned herself?"
"I don't conclude it, but I assume it. Was she on good terms with her
husband?"
"H'm, not altogether. There had been misunderstandings soon after their
marriage. There were unfortunate circumstances. She had found her
husband on one occasion with a lady. She soon forgave him however."
"And which came first, her husband's infidelity or her idea of dying?"
The examining magistrate looked attentively at the doctor as though he
were trying to imagine why he put that question.
"Excuse me," he said, not quite immediately. "Let me try and remember."
The examining magistrate took off his hat and rubbed his forehead. "Yes,
yes . . . it was very shortly after that incident that she began talking
of death. Yes, yes."
"Well, there, do you see? . . . In all probability it was at that time
that she made up her mind to poison herself, but, as most likely she did
not want to kill her child also, she put it off till after her
confinement."
"Not likely, not likely! . . . it's impossible. She forgave him at the
time."
"That she forgave it quickly means that she had something bad in her
mind. Young wives do not forgive quickly."
The examining magistrate gave a forced smile, and, to conceal his too
noticeable agitation, began lighting a cigarette.
"Not likely, not likely," he went on. "No notion of anything of the sort
being possible ever entered into my head. . . . And besides . . . he was
not so much to blame as it seems. . . . He was unfaithful to her in
rather a queer way, with no desire to be; he came home at night somewhat
elevated, wanted to make love to somebody, his wife was in an
interesting condition . . . then he came across a lady who had come to
stay for three days--damnation take her-- an empty-headed creature, silly
and not good-looking. It couldn't be reckoned as an infidelity. His wife
looked at it in that way herself and soon . . . forgave it. Nothing more
was said about it. . . ."
"People don't die without a reason," said the doctor.
"That is so, of course, but all the same . . . I cannot admit that she
poisoned herself. But it is strange that the idea has never struck me
before! And no one thought of it! Everyone was astonished that her
prediction had come to pass, and the idea . . . of such a death was far
from their mind. And indeed, it cannot be that she poisoned herself!
No!"
The examining magistrate pondered. The thought of the woman who had died
so strangely haunted him all through the inquest. As he noted down what
the doctor dictated to him he moved his eyebrows gloomily and rubbed his
forehead.
"And are there really poisons that kill one in a quarter of an hour,
gradually, without any pain?" he asked the doctor while the latter was
opening the skull.
"Yes, there are. Morphia for instance."
"H'm, strange. I remember she used to keep something of the sort . . . .
But it could hardly be."
On the way back the examining magistrate looked exhausted, he kept
nervously biting his moustache, and was unwilling to talk.
"Let us go a little way on foot," he said to the doctor. "I am tired of
sitting."
After walking about a hundred paces, the examining magistrate seemed to
the doctor to be overcome with fatigue, as though he had been climbing
up a high mountain. He stopped and, looking at the doctor with a strange
look in his eyes, as though he were drunk, said:
"My God, if your theory is correct, why it's. . . it was cruel, inhuman!
She poisoned herself to punish some one else! Why, was the sin so great?
Oh, my God! And why did you make me a present of this damnable idea,
doctor!"
The examining magistrate clutched at his head in despair, and went on:
"What I have told you was about my own wife, about myself. Oh, my God! I
was to blame, I wounded her, but can it have been easier to die than to
forgive? That's typical feminine logic--cruel, merciless logic. Oh, even
then when she was living she was cruel! I recall it all now! It's all
clear to me now!"
As the examining magistrate talked he shrugged his shoulders, then