Short Stories by Chekhov
which she was subject, and to Nadya it seemed as though there were a
deep mysterious significance in all that.
Now Nadya kissed her mother and walked beside her.
"What have you been crying about, mother?" she asked.
"Last night I was reading a story in which there is an old man and his
daughter. The old man is in some office and his chief falls in love with
his daughter. I have not finished it, but there was a passage which made
it hard to keep from tears," said Nina Ivanovna and she sipped at her
glass. "I thought of it this morning and shed tears again."
"I have been so depressed all these days," said Nadya after a pause.
"Why is it I don't sleep at night!"
"I don't know, dear. When I can't sleep I shut my eyes very tightly,
like this, and picture to myself Anna Karenin moving about and talking,
or something historical from the ancient world. . . ."
Nadya felt that her mother did not understand her and was incapable of
understanding. She felt this for the first time in her life, and it
positively frightened her and made her want to hide herself; and she
went away to her own room.
At two o'clock they sat down to dinner. It was Wednesday, a fast day,
and so vegetable soup and bream with boiled grain were set before
Granny.
To tease Granny Sasha ate his meat soup as well as the vegetable soup.
He was making jokes all through dinner-time, but his jests were laboured
and invariably with a moral bearing, and the effect was not at all
amusing when before making some witty remark he raised his very long,
thin, deathly-looking fingers; and when one remembered that he was very
ill and would probably not be much longer in this world, one felt sorry
for him and ready to weep.
After dinner Granny went off to her own room to lie down. Nina Ivanovna
played on the piano for a little, and then she too went away.
"Oh, dear Nadya!" Sasha began his usual afternoon conversation, "if only
you would listen to me! If only you would!"
She was sitting far back in an old-fashioned armchair, with her eyes
shut, while he paced slowly about the room from corner to corner.
"If only you would go to the university," he said. "Only enlightened and
holy people are interesting, it's only they who are wanted. The more of
such people there are, the sooner the Kingdom of God will come on earth.
Of your town then not one stone will be left, everything will be blown
up from the foundations, everything will be changed as though by magic.
And then there will be immense, magnificent houses here, wonderful
gardens, marvellous fountains, remarkable people. . . . But that's not
what matters most. What matters most is that the crowd, in our sense of
the word, in the sense in which it exists now--that evil will not exist
then, because every man will believe and every man will know what he is
living for and no one will seek moral support in the crowd. Dear Nadya,
darling girl, go away! Show them all that you are sick of this stagnant,
grey, sinful life. Prove it to yourself at least!"
"I can't, Sasha, I'm going to be married."
"Oh nonsense! What's it for!"
They went out into the garden and walked up and down a little.
"And however that may be, my dear girl, you must think, you must realize
how unclean, how immoral this idle life of yours is," Sasha went on. "Do
understand that if, for instance, you and your mother and your
grandmother do nothing, it means that someone else is working for you,
you are eating up someone else's life, and is that clean, isn't it
filthy?"
Nadya wanted to say "Yes, that is true"; she wanted to say that she
understood, but tears came into her eyes, her spirits drooped, and
shrinking into herself she went off to her room.
Towards evening Andrey Andreitch arrived and as usual played the fiddle
for a long time. He was not given to much talk as a rule, and was fond
of the fiddle, perhaps because one could be silent while playing. At
eleven o'clock when he was about to go home and had put on his
greatcoat, he embraced Nadya and began greedily kissing her face, her
shoulders, and her hands.
"My dear, my sweet, my charmer," he muttered. "Oh how happy I am! I am
beside myself with rapture!"
And it seemed to her as though she had heard that long, long ago, or had
read it somewhere . . . in some old tattered novel thrown away long ago.
In the dining-room Sasha was sitting at the table drinking tea with the
saucer poised on his five long fingers; Granny was laying out patience;
Nina Ivanovna was reading. The flame crackled in the ikon lamp and
everything, it seemed, was quiet and going well. Nadya said good-night,
went upstairs to her room, got into bed and fell asleep at once. But
just as on the night before, almost before it was light, she woke up.
She was not sleepy, there was an uneasy, oppressive feeling in her
heart. She sat up with her head on her knees and thought of her fiancé
and her marriage. . . . She for some reason remembered that her mother
had not loved her father and now had nothing and lived in complete
dependence on her mother-in-law, Granny. And however much Nadya pondered
she could not imagine why she had hitherto seen in her mother something
special and exceptional, how it was she had not noticed that she was a
simple, ordinary, unhappy woman.
And Sasha downstairs was not asleep, she could hear him coughing. He is
a queer, naïve man, thought Nadya, and in all his dreams, in all those
marvellous gardens and wonderful fountains one felt there was something
absurd. But for some reason in his naïveté, in this very absurdity
there was something so beautiful that as soon as she thought of the
possibility of going to the university, it sent a cold thrill through
her heart and her bosom and flooded them with joy and rapture.
"But better not think, better not think . . ." she whispered. "I must
not think of it."
"Tick-tock," tapped the watchman somewhere far away. "Tick-tock . . .
tick-tock. . . ." III
In the middle of June Sasha suddenly felt bored and made up his mind to
return to Moscow.
"I can't exist in this town," he said gloomily. "No water supply, no
drains! It disgusts me to eat at dinner; the filth in the kitchen is
incredible. . . ."
"Wait a little, prodigal son!" Granny tried to persuade him, speaking
for some reason in a whisper, "the wedding is to be on the seventh."
"I don't want to."
"You meant to stay with us until September!"
"But now, you see, I don't want to. I must get to work."
The summer was grey and cold, the trees were wet, everything in the
garden looked dejected and uninviting, it certainly did make one long to
get to work. The sound of unfamiliar women's voices was heard downstairs
and upstairs, there was the rattle of a sewing machine in Granny's room,
they were working hard at the trousseau. Of fur coats alone, six were
provided for Nadya, and the cheapest of them, in Granny's words, had
cost three hundred roubles! The fuss irritated Sasha; he stayed in his
own room and was cross, but everyone persuaded him to remain, and he
promised not to go before the first of July.
Time passed quickly. On St. Peter's day Andrey Andreitch went with Nadya
after dinner to Moscow Street to look once more at the house which had
been taken and made ready for the young couple some time before. It was
a house of two storeys, but so far only the upper floor had been
furnished. There was in the hall a shining floor painted and parqueted,
there were Viennese chairs, a piano, a violin stand; there was a smell
of paint. On the wall hung a big oil painting in a gold frame--a naked
lady and beside her a purple vase with a broken handle.
"An exquisite picture," said Andrey Andreitch, and he gave a respectful
sigh. "It's the work of the artist Shismatchevsky."
Then there was the drawing-room with the round table, and a sofa and
easy chairs upholstered in bright blue. Above the sofa was a big
photograph of Father Andrey wearing a priest's velvet cap and
decorations. Then they went into the dining-room in which there was a
sideboard; then into the bedroom; here in the half dusk stood two
bedsteads side by side, and it looked as though the bedroom had been
decorated with the idea that it would always be very agreeable there and
could not possibly be anything else. Andrey Andreitch led Nadya about
the rooms, all the while keeping his arm round her waist; and she felt
weak and conscience-stricken. She hated all the rooms, the beds, the
easy chairs; she was nauseated by the naked lady. It was clear to her
now that she had ceased to love Andrey Andreitch or perhaps had never
loved him at all; but how to say this and to whom to say it and with
what object she did not understand, and could not understand, though she
was thinking about it all day and all night. . . . He held her round the
waist, talked so affectionately, so modestly, was so happy, walking
about this house of his; while she saw nothing in it all but vulgarity,
stupid, naïve, unbearable vulgarity, and his arm round her waist felt
as hard and cold as an iron hoop. And every minute she was on the point
of running away, bursting into sobs, throwing herself out of a window.
Andrey Andreitch led her into the bathroom and here he touched a tap
fixed in the wall and at once water flowed.
"What do you say to that?" he said, and laughed. "I had a tank holding
two hundred gallons put in the loft, and so now we shall have water."
They walked across the yard and went out into the street and took a cab.
Thick clouds of dust were blowing, and it seemed as though it were just
going to rain.
"You are not cold?" said Andrey Andreitch, screwing up his eyes at the
dust.
She did not answer.
"Yesterday, you remember, Sasha blamed me for doing nothing," he said,
after a brief silence. "Well, he is right, absolutely right! I do
nothing and can do nothing. My precious, why is it? Why is it that the
very thought that I may some day fix a cockade on my cap and go into the
government service is so hateful to me? Why do I feel so uncomfortable
when I see a lawyer or a Latin master or a member of the Zemstvo? O
Mother Russia! O Mother Russia! What a burden of idle and useless people
you still carry! How many like me are upon you, long-suffering Mother!"
And from the fact that he did nothing he drew generalizations, seeing in
it a sign of the times.
"When we are married let us go together into the country, my precious;
there we will work! We will buy ourselves a little piece of land with a
garden and a river, we will labour and watch life. Oh, how splendid that
will be!"
He took off his hat, and his hair floated in the wind, while she
listened to him and thought: "Good God, I wish I were home!"
When they were quite near the house they overtook Father Andrey.
"Ah, here's father coming," cried Andrey Andreitch, delighted, and he
waved his hat. "I love my dad really," he said as he paid the cabman.
"He's a splendid old fellow, a dear old fellow."
Nadya went into the house, feeling cross and unwell, thinking that there
would be visitors all the evening, that she would have to entertain
them, to smile, to listen to the fiddle, to listen to all sorts of
nonsense, and to talk of nothing but the wedding.
Granny, dignified, gorgeous in her silk dress, and haughty as she always
seemed before visitors, was sitting before the samovar. Father Andrey
came in with his sly smile.
"I have the pleasure and blessed consolation of seeing you in health,"
he said to Granny, and it was hard to tell whether he was joking or
speaking seriously. IV
The wind was beating on the window and on the roof; there was a
whistling sound, and in the stove the house spirit was plaintively and
sullenly droning his song. It was past midnight; everyone in the house