Short Stories by Chekhov
all the little pictures which my imagination paints, not even the most
cunning analyst will discover what is called the general idea, or the
god of the living man.
And if this is not there, then nothing is there.
In poverty such as this a serious infirmity, fear of death, influence of
circumstances and people would have been enough to overthrow and shatter
all that I formerly considered as my conception of the world, and all
wherein I saw the meaning and joy of my life. Therefore, it is nothing
strange that I have darkened the last months of my life by thoughts and
feelings worthy of a slave or a savage, and that I am now indifferent
and do not notice the dawn. If there is lacking in a man that which is
higher and stronger than all outside influences, then verily a good cold
in the head is enough to upset his balance and to make him see each bird
an owl and hear a dog's whine in every sound; and all his pessimism or
his optimism with their attendant thoughts, great and small, seem then
to be merely symptoms and no more.
I am beaten. Then it's no good going on thinking, no good talking. I
shall sit and wait in silence for what will come.
In the morning the porter brings me tea and the local paper.
Mechanically I read the advertisements on the first page, the leader,
the extracts from newspapers and magazines, the local news ... Among
other things I find in the local news an item like this: "Our famous
scholar, emeritus professor Nicolai Stiepanovich arrived in Kharkov
yesterday by the express, and stayed at----hotel."
Evidently big names are created to live detached from those who bear
them. Now my name walks in Kharkov undisturbed. In some three months it
will shine as bright as the sun itself, inscribed in letters of gold on
my tombstone--at a time when I myself will be under the sod....
A faint knock at the door. Somebody wants me.
"Who's there? Come in!"
The door opens. I step back in astonishment, and hasten to pull my
dressing gown together. Before me stands Katy.
"How do you do?" she says, panting from running up the stairs. "You
didn't expect me? I ... I've come too."
She sits down and continues, stammering and looking away from me. "Why
don't you say 'Good morning'? I arrived too ... to-day. I found out you
were at this hotel, and came to see you."
"I'm delighted to see you," I say shrugging my shoulders. "But I'm
surprised. You might have dropped straight from heaven. What are you
doing here?"
"I?... I just came."
Silence. Suddenly she gets up impetuously and comes over to me.
"Nicolai Stiepanich!" she says, growing pale and pressing her hands to
her breast. "Nicolai Stiepanich! I can't go on like this any longer. I
can't. For God's sake tell me now, immediately. What shall I do? Tell
me, what shall I do?"
"What can I say? I am beaten. I can say nothing."
"But tell me, I implore you," she continues, out of breath and trembling
all over her body. "I swear to you, I can't go on like this any longer.
I haven't the strength."
She drops into a chair and begins to sob. She throws her head back,
wrings her hands, stamps with her feet; her hat falls from her head and
dangles by its string, her hair is loosened.
"Help me, help," she implores. "I can't bear it any more."
She takes a handkerchief out of her little travelling bag and with it
pulls out some letters which fall from her knees to the floor. I pick
them up from the floor and recognise on one of them Mikhail
Fiodorovich's hand-writing, and accidentally read part of a word:
"passionat...."
"There's nothing that I can say to you, Katy," I say.
"Help me," she sobs, seizing my hand and kissing it. "You're my father,
my only friend. You're wise and learned, and you've lived long! You were
a teacher. Tell me what to do."
I am bewildered and surprised, stirred by her sobbing, and I can hardly
stand upright.
"Let's have some breakfast, Katy," I say with a constrained smile.
Instantly I add in a sinking voice:
"I shall be dead soon, Katy...."
"Only one word, only one word," she weeps and stretches out her hands to
me. "What shall I do?"
"You're a queer thing, really....", I murmur. "I can't understand it.
Such a clever woman and suddenly--weeping...."
Comes silence. Katy arranges her hair, puts on her hat, then crumples
her letters and stuffs them in her little bag, all in silence and
unhurried. Her face, her bosom and her gloves are wet with tears, but
her expression is dry already, stern.... I look at her and am ashamed
that I am happier than she. It was but a little while before my death,
in the ebb of my life, that I noticed in myself the absence of what our
friends the philosophers call the general idea; but this poor thing's
soul has never known and never will know shelter all her life, all her
life.
"Katy, let's have breakfast," I say.
"No, thank you," she answers coldly.
One minute more passes in silence.
"I don't like Kharkov," I say. "It's too grey. A grey city."
"Yes ... ugly.... I'm not here for long.... On my way. I leave to-day."
"For where?"
"For the Crimea ... I mean, the Caucasus."
"So. For long?"
"I don't know."
Katy gets up and gives me her hand with a cold smile, looking away from
me.
I would like to ask her: "That means you won't be at my funeral?" But
she does not look at me; her hand is cold and like a stranger's. I
escort her to the door in silenqe.... She goes out of my room and walks
down the long passage, without looking back. She knows that my eyes are
following her, and probably on the landing she will look back.
No, she did not look back. The black dress showed for the last time, her
steps were stilled.... Goodbye, my treasure! THE FIT I
The medical student Mayer, and Ribnikov, a student at the Moscow school
of painting, sculpture, and architecture, came one evening to their
friend Vassiliev, law student, and proposed that he should go with them
to S----v Street. For a long while Vassiliev did not agree, but eventually
dressed himself and went with them.
Unfortunate women he knew only by hearsay and from books, and never once
in his life had he been in the houses where they live. He knew there
were immoral women who were forced by the pressure of disastrous
circumstances--environment, bad up-bringing, poverty, and the like--to
sell their honour for money. They do not know pure love, have no
children and no legal rights; mothers and sisters mourn them for dead,
science treats them as an evil, men are familiar with them. But
notwithstanding all this they do not lose the image and likeness of God.
They all acknowledge their sin and hope for salvation. They are free to
avail themselves of every means of salvation. True, Society does not
forgive people their past, but with God Mary of Egypt is not lower than
the other saints. Whenever Vassiliev recognised an unfortunate woman in
the street by her costume or her manner, or saw a picture of one in a
comic paper, there came into his mind every time a story he once read
somewhere: a pure and heroic young man falls in love with an unfortunate
woman and asks her to be his wife, but she, considering herself unworthy
of such happiness, poisons herself.
Vassiliev lived in one of the streets off the Tverskoi boulevard. When
he and his friends came out of the house it was about eleven o'clock--the
first snow had just fallen and all nature was under the spell of this
new snow; The air smelt of snow, the snow cracked softly under foot, the
earth, the roofs, the trees, the benches on the boulevards--all were
soft, white, and young. Owing to this the houses had a different look
from yesterday, the lamps burned brighter, the air was more transparent,
the clatter of the cabs was dulled and there entered into the soul with
the fresh, easy, frosty air a feeling like the white, young, feathery
snow. "To these sad shores unknowing" the medico began to sing in a
pleasant tenor, "An unknown power entices...."
"Behold the mill" ... the painter's voice took him up, "it is now fall'n
to ruin."
"Behold the mill, it is now fall'n to ruin," the medico repeated,
raising his eyebrows and sadly shaking his head.
He was silent for a while, passed his hand over his forehead trying to
recall the words, and began to sing in a loud voice and so well that the
passers-by looked back.
"Here, long ago, came free, free love to me"...
All three went into a restaurant and without taking off their coats they
each had two thimblefuls of vodka at the bar. Before drinking the
second, Vassiliev noticed a piece of cork in his Vodka, lifted the glass
to his eye, looked at it for a long while with a short-sighted frown.
The medico misunderstood his expression and said--
"Well, what are you staring at? No philosophy, please. Vodka's made to
be drunk, caviare to be eaten, women to sleep with, snow to walk on.
Live like a man for one evening."
"Well, I've nothing to say," said Vassiliev laughingly, "I'm not
refusing?"
The vodka warmed his breast. He looked at his friends, admired and
envied them. How balanced everything is in these healthy, strong,
cheerful people. Everything in their minds and souls is smooth and
rounded off. They sing, have a passion for the theatre, paint, talk
continually, and drink, and they never have a headache the next day.
They are romantic and dissolute, sentimental and insolent; they can work
and go on the loose and laugh at nothing and talk rubbish; they are hot-
headed, honest, heroic and as human beings not a bit worse than
Vassiliev, who watches his every step and word, who is careful,
cautious, and able to give the smallest trifle the dignity of a problem.
And he made tip his mind if only for one evening to live like his
friends, to let himself go, and be free from his own control. Must he
drink vodka? He'll drink, even if his head falls to pieces to-morrow.
Must he be taken to women? He'll go. He'll laugh, play the fool, and
give a joking answer to disapproving passers-by.
He came out of the restaurant laughing. He liked his friends--one in a
battered hat with a wide brim who aped aesthetic disorder; the other in
a sealskin cap, not very poor, with a pretence of learned Bohemia. He
liked the snow, the paleness, the lamp-lights, the dear black prints
which the passers' feet left on the snow. He liked the air, and above
all the transparent, tender, naive, virgin tone which can be seen in
nature only twice in the year: when everything is covered in snow, on
the bright days in spring, and on moonlight nights when the ice breaks
on the river.
"To these sad shores unknowing," he began to sing sotto-voce, "An
unknown power entices."
And all the way for some reason or other he and his friends had this
melody on their lips. All three hummed it mechanically out of time with
each other.
Vassiliev Imagined how in about ten minutes he and his friends would
knock at a door, how they would stealthily walk through-the narrow
little passages and dark rooms to the women, how he would take advantage
of the dark, suddenly strike a match, and see lit up a suffering face
and a guilty smile. There he will surely find a fair or a dark woman in
a white nightgown with her hair loose. She will be frightened of the
light, dreadfully confused and say: "Good God! What are you doing? Blow
it out!" All this was frightening, but curious and novel. II
The friends turned out of Trubnoi Square into the Grachovka and soon
arrived at the street which Vassiliev knew only from hearsay. Seeing two
rows of houses with brightly lighted windows and wide open doors, and
hearing the gay sound of pianos and fiddles--sounds which flew out of all
the doors and mingled in a strange confusion, as if somewhere in the
darkness over the roof-tops an unseen orchestra were tuning, Vassiliev
was bewildered and said: