Short Stories by Chekhov
somewhere else because of her condition, but I don't want it either,
because I do not approve of her behaviour."
I understood and left the shop. That very day my sister and I went to
Radish's. We had no money for a cab, so we went on foot; I carried a
bundle with all our belongings on my back, my sister had nothing in her
hands, and she was breathless and kept coughing and asking if we would
soon be there.
XIX
At last there came a letter from Masha.
"My dear, kind M. A.," she wrote, "my brave, sweet angel, as the old
painter calls you, good-bye. I am going to America with my father for
the exhibition. In a few days I shall be on the ocean--so far from
Dubechnia. It is awful to think of! It is vast and open like the sky and
I long for it and freedom. I rejoice and dance about and you see how
incoherent my letter is. My dear Misail, give me my freedom. Quick, tear
the thread which still holds and binds us. My meeting and knowing you
was a ray from heaven, which brightened my existence. But, you know, my
becoming your wife was a mistake, and the knowledge of the mistake
weighs me down, and I implore you on my knees, my dear, generous friend,
quick--quick--before I go over the sea--wire that you will agree to correct
our mutual mistake, remove then the only burden on my wings, and my
father, who will be responsible for the whole business, has promised me
not to overwhelm you with formalities. So, then, I am free of the whole
world? Yes?
"Be happy. God bless you. Forgive my wickedness.
"I am alive and well. I am squandering money on all sorts of follies,
and every minute I thank God that such a wicked woman as I am has no
children. I am singing and I am a success, but it is not a passing whim.
No. It is my haven, my convent cell where I go for rest. King David had
a ring with an inscription: 'Everything passes.' When one is sad, these
words make one cheerful; and when one is cheerful, they make one sad.
And I have got a ring with the words written in Hebrew, and this
talisman will keep me from losing my heart and head. Or does one need
nothing but consciousness of freedom, because, when one is free, one
wants nothing, nothing, nothing. Snap the thread then. I embrace you and
your sister warmly. Forgive and forget your M."
My sister had one room. Radish, who had been ill and was recovering, was
in the other. Just as I received this letter, my sister went into the
painter's room and sat by his side and began to read to him. She read
Ostrovsky or Gogol to him every day, and he used to listen, staring
straight in front of him, never laughing, shaking his head, and every
now and then muttering to himself:
"Anything may happen! Anything may happen!"
If there was anything ugly in what she read, he would say vehemently,
pointing to the book:
"There it is! Lies! That's what lies do!"
Stories used to attract him by their contents as well as by their moral
and their skilfully complicated plot, and he used to marvel at him,
though he never called him by his name.
"How well he has managed it."
Now my sister read a page quickly and then stopped, because her breath
failed her. Radish held her hand, and moving his dry lips he said in a
hoarse, hardly audible voice:
"The soul of the righteous is white and smooth as chalk; and the soul of
the sinner is as a pumice-stone. The soul of the righteous is clear oil,
and the soul of the sinner is coal-tar. We must work and sorrow and
pity," he went on. "And if a man does not work and sorrow he will not
enter the kingdom of heaven. Woe, woe to the well fed, woe to the
strong, woe to the rich, woe to the usurers! They will not see the
kingdom of heaven. Grubs eat grass, rust eats iron...."
"And lies devour the soul," said my sister, laughing.
I read the letter once more. At that moment the soldier came into the
kitchen who had brought in twice a week, without saying from whom, tea,
French bread, and pigeons, all smelling of scent. I had no work and used
to sit at home for days together, and probably the person who sent us
the bread knew that we were in want.
I heard my sister talking to the soldier and laughing merrily. Then she
lay down and ate some bread and said to me:
"When you wanted to get away from the office and become a house-painter,
Aniuta Blagovo and I knew from the very beginning that you were right,
but we were afraid to say so. Tell me what power is it that keeps us
from saying what we feel? There's Aniuta Blagovo. She loves you, adores
you, and she knows that you are right. She loves me, too, like a sister,
and she knows that I am right, and in her heart she envies me, but some
power prevents her coming to see us. She avoids us. She is afraid."
My sister folded her hands across her bosom and said rapturously:
"If you only knew how she loves you! She confessed it to me and to no
one else, very hesitatingly, in the dark. She used to take me out into
the garden, into the dark, and begin to tell me in a whisper how dear
you were to her. You will see that she will never marry because she
loves you. Are you sorry for her?"
"Yes."
"It was she sent the bread. She is funny. Why should she hide herself? I
used to be silly and stupid, but I left all that and I am not afraid of
any one, and I think and say aloud what I like--and I am happy. When I
lived at home I had no notion of happiness, and now I would not change
places with a queen."
Doctor Blagovo came. He had got his diploma and was now living in the
town, at his father's, taking a rest. After which he said he would go
back to Petersburg. He wanted to devote himself to vaccination against
typhus, and, I believe, cholera; he wanted to go abroad to increase his
knowledge and then to become a University professor. He had already left
the army and wore serge clothes, with well-cut coats, wide trousers, and
expensive ties. My sister was enraptured with his pins and studs and his
red-silk handkerchief, which, out of swagger, he wore in his outside
breast-pocket. Once, when we had nothing to do, she and I fell to
counting up his suits and came to the conclusion that he must have at
least ten. It was clear that he still loved my sister, but never once,
even in joke, did he talk of taking her to Petersburg or abroad with
him, and I could not imagine what would happen to her if she lived, or
what was to become of her child. But she was happy in her dreams and
would not think seriously of the future. She said he could go wherever
he liked and even cast her aside, if only he were happy himself, and
what had been was enough for her.
Usually when he came to see us he would sound her very carefully, and
ask her to drink some milk with some medicine in it. He did so now. He
sounded her and made her drink a glass of milk, and the room began to
smell of creosote.
"That's a good girl," he said, taking the glass from her. "You must not
talk much, and you have been chattering like a magpie lately. Please, be
quiet."
She began to laugh and he came into Radish's room, where I was sitting,
and tapped me affectionately on the shoulder.
"Well, old man, how are you?" he asked, bending over the patient.
"Sir," said Radish, only just moving his lips. "Sir, I make so bold....
We are all in the hands of God, and we must all die.... Let me tell you
the truth, sir.... You will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
And suddenly I lost consciousness and was caught up into a dream: it was
winter, at night, and I was standing in the yard of the slaughter-house
with Prokofyi by my side, smelling of pepper-brandy; I pulled myself
together and rubbed my eyes and then I seemed to be going to the
governor's for an explanation. Nothing of the kind ever happened to me,
before or after, and I can only explain these strange dreams like
memories, by ascribing them to overstrain of the nerves. I lived again
through the scene in the slaughter-house and the conversation with the
governor, and at the same time I was conscious of its unreality.
When I came to myself I saw that I was not at home, but standing with
the doctor by a lamp in the street.
"It is sad, sad," he was saying with tears running down his cheeks. "She
is happy and always laughing and full of hope. But, poor darling, her
condition is hopeless. Old Radish hates me and keeps trying to make me
understand that I have wronged her. In his way he is right, but I have
my point of view, too, and I do not repent of what has happened. It is
necessary to love. We must all love. That's true, isn't it? Without love
there would be no life, and a man who avoids and fears love is not
free."
We gradually passed to other subjects. He began to speak of science and
his dissertation which had been very well received in Petersburg. He
spoke enthusiastically and thought no more of my sister, or of his
going, or of myself. Life was carrying him away. She has America and a
ring with an inscription, I thought, and he has his medical degree and
his scientific career, and my sister and I are left with the past.
When we parted I stood beneath the lamp and read my letter again. And I
remembered vividly how she came to me at the mill that spring morning
and lay down and covered herself with my fur coat--pretending to be just
a peasant woman. And another time--also in the early morning--when we
pulled the bow-net out of the water, and the willows on the bank
showered great drops of water on us and we laughed....
All was dark in our house in Great Gentry Street. I climbed the fence,
and, as I used to do in old days, I went into the kitchen by the back
door to get a little lamp. There was nobody in the kitchen. On the stove
the samovar was singing merrily, all ready for my father. "Who pours out
my father's tea now?" I thought. I took the lamp and went on to the shed
and made a bed of old newspapers and lay down. The nails in the wall
looked ominous as before and their shadows flickered. It was cold. I
thought I saw my sister coming in with my supper, but I remembered at
once that she was ill at Radish's, and it seemed strange to me that I
should have climbed the fence and be lying in the cold shed. My mind was
blurred and filled with fantastic imaginations.
A bell rang; sounds familiar from childhood; first the wire rustled
along the wall, and then there was a short, melancholy tinkle in the
kitchen. It was my father returning from the club. I got up and went
into the kitchen. Akhsinya, the cook, clapped her hands when she saw me
and began to cry:
"Oh, my dear," she said in a whisper. "Oh, my dear! My God!"
And in her agitation she began to pluck at her apron. On the window-sill
were two large bottles of berries soaking in vodka. I poured out a cup
and gulped it down, for I was very thirsty. Akhsinya had just scrubbed
the table and the chairs, and the kitchen had the good smell which
kitchens always have when the cook is clean and tidy. This smell and the
trilling of the cricket used to entice us into the kitchen when we were
children, and there we used to be told fairy-tales, and we played at
kings and queens....
"And where is Cleopatra?" asked Akhsinya hurriedly, breathlessly. "And
where is your hat, sir? And they say your wife has gone to Petersburg."
She had been with us in my mother's time and used to bathe Cleopatra and
me in a tub, and we were still children to her, and it was her duty to
correct us. In a quarter of an hour or so she laid bare all her
thoughts, which she had been storing up in her quiet kitchen all the
time I had been away. She said the doctor ought to be made to marry
Cleopatra--we would only have to frighten him a bit and make him send in
a nicely written application, and then the archbishop would dissolve his
first marriage, and it would be a good thing to sell Dubechnia without