Short Stories by Chekhov
station the streets struck her as very wide and the houses very small
and squat; there were no people about, she met no one but the German
piano-tuner in a rusty greatcoat. And all the houses looked as though
they were covered with dust. Granny, who seemed to have grown quite old,
but was as fat and plain as ever, flung her arms round Nadya and cried
for a long time with her face on Nadya's shoulder, unable to tear
herself away. Nina Ivanovna looked much older and plainer and seemed
shrivelled up, but was still tightly laced, and still had diamonds
flashing on her fingers.
"My darling," she said, trembling all over, "my darling!"
Then they sat down and cried without speaking. It was evident that both
mother and grandmother realized that the past was lost and gone, never
to return; they had now no position in society, no prestige as before,
no right to invite visitors; so it is when in the midst of an easy
careless life the police suddenly burst in at night and made a search,
and it turns out that the head of the family has embezzled money or
committed forgery--and goodbye then to the easy careless life for ever!
Nadya went upstairs and saw the same bed, the same windows with naïve
white curtains, and outside the windows the same garden, gay and noisy,
bathed in sunshine. She touched the table, sat down and sank into
thought. And she had a good dinner and drank tea with delicious rich
cream; but something was missing, there was a sense of emptiness in the
rooms and the ceilings were so low. In the evening she went to bed,
covered herself up and for some reason it seemed to her to be funny
lying in this snug, very soft bed.
Nina Ivanovna came in for a minute; she sat down as people who feel
guilty sit down, timidly, and looking about her.
"Well, tell me, Nadya," she enquired after a brief pause, "are you
contented? Quite contented?"
"Yes, mother."
Nina Ivanovna got up, made the sign of the cross over Nadya and the
windows.
"I have become religious, as you see," she said. "You know I am studying
philosophy now, and I am always thinking and thinking. . . . And many
things have become as clear as daylight to me. It seems to me that what
is above all necessary is that life should pass as it were through a
prism."
"Tell me, mother, how is Granny in health?"
"She seems all right. When you went away that time with Sasha and the
telegram came from you, Granny fell on the floor as she read it; for
three days she lay without moving. After that she was always praying and
crying. But now she is all right again."
She got up and walked about the room.
"Tick-tock," tapped the watchman. "Tick-tock, tick-tock. . . ."
"What is above all necessary is that life should pass as it were through
a prism," she said; "in other words, that life in consciousness should
be analyzed into its simplest elements as into the seven primary
colours, and each element must be studied separately."
What Nina Ivanovna said further and when she went away, Nadya did not
hear, as she quickly fell asleep.
May passed; June came. Nadya had grown used to being at home. Granny
busied herself about the samovar, heaving deep sighs. Nina Ivanovna
talked in the evenings about her philosophy; she still lived in the
house like a poor relation, and had to go to Granny for every farthing.
There were lots of flies in the house, and the ceilings seemed to become
lower and lower. Granny and Nina Ivanovna did not go out in the streets
for fear of meeting Father Andrey and Andrey Andreitch. Nadya walked
about the garden and the streets, looked at the grey fences, and it
seemed to her that everything in the town had grown old, was out of date
and was only waiting either for the end, or for the beginning of
something young and fresh. Oh, if only that new, bright life would come
more quickly--that life in which one will be able to face one's fate
boldly and directly, to know that one is right, to be light-hearted and
free! And sooner or later such a life will come. The time will come when
of Granny's house, where things are so arranged that the four servants
can only live in one room in filth in the basement--the time will come
when of that house not a trace will remain, and it will be forgotten, no
one will remember it. And Nadya's only entertainment was from the boys
next door; when she walked about the garden they knocked on the fence
and shouted in mockery: "Betrothed! Betrothed!"
A letter from Sasha arrived from Saratov. In his gay dancing handwriting
he told them that his journey on the Volga had been a complete success,
but that he had been taken rather ill in Saratov, had lost his voice,
and had been for the last fortnight in the hospital. She knew what that
meant, and she was overwhelmed with a foreboding that was like a
conviction. And it vexed her that this foreboding and the thought of
Sasha did not distress her so much as before. She had a passionate
desire for life, longed to be in Petersburg, and her friendship with
Sasha seemed now sweet but something far, far away! She did not sleep
all night, and in the morning sat at the window, listening. And she did
in fact hear voices below; Granny, greatly agitated, was asking
questions rapidly. Then some one began crying. . . . When Nadya went
downstairs Granny was standing in the corner, praying before the ikon
and her face was tearful. A telegram lay on the table.
For some time Nadya walked up and down the room, listening to Granny's
weeping; then she picked up the telegram and read it.
It announced that the previous morning Alexandr Timofeitch, or more
simply, Sasha, had died at Saratov of consumption.
Granny and Nina Ivanovna went to the church to order a memorial service,
while Nadya went on walking about the rooms and thinking. She recognized
clearly that her life had been turned upside down as Sasha wished; that
here she was, alien, isolated, useless and that everything here was
useless to her; that all the past had been torn away from her and
vanished as though it had been burnt up and the ashes scattered to the
winds. She went into Sasha's room and stood there for a while.
"Good-bye, dear Sasha," she thought, and before her mind rose the vista
of a new, wide, spacious life, and that life, still obscure and full of
mysteries, beckoned her and attracted her.
She went upstairs to her own room to pack, and next morning said good-
bye to her family, and full of life and high spirits left the town--as
she supposed for ever.
FROM THE DIARY OF A VIOLENT-TEMPERED MAN
I AM a serious person and my mind is of a philosophic bent. My vocation
is the study of finance. I am a student of financial law and I have
chosen as the subject of my dissertation--the Past and Future of the Dog
Licence. I need hardly point out that young ladies, songs, moonlight,
and all that sort of silliness are entirely out of my line.
Morning. Ten o'clock. My maman pours me out a cup of coffee. I drink it
and go out on the little balcony to set to work on my dissertation. I
take a clean sheet of paper, dip the pen into the ink, and write out the
title: "The Past and Future of the Dog Licence."
After thinking a little I write: "Historical Survey. We may deduce from
some allusions in Herodotus and Xenophon that the origin of the tax on
dogs goes back to . . . ."
But at that point I hear footsteps that strike me as highly suspicious.
I look down from the balcony and see below a young lady with a long face
and a long waist. Her name, I believe, is Nadenka or Varenka, it really
does not matter which. She is looking for something, pretends not to
have noticed me, and is humming to herself:
"Dost thou remember that song full of tenderness?"
I read through what I have written and want to continue, but the young
lady pretends to have just caught sight of me, and says in a mournful
voice:
"Good morning, Nikolay Andreitch. Only fancy what a misfortune I have
had! I went for a walk yesterday and lost the little ball off my
bracelet!"
I read through once more the opening of my dissertation, I trim up the
tail of the letter "g" and mean to go on, but the young lady persists.
"Nikolay Andreitch," she says, "won't you see me home? The Karelins have
such a huge dog that I simply daren't pass it alone."
There is no getting out of it. I lay down my pen and go down to her.
Nadenka (or Varenka) takes my arm and we set off in the direction of her
villa.
When the duty of walking arm-in-arm with a lady falls to my lot, for
some reason or other I always feel like a peg with a heavy cloak hanging
on it. Nadenka (or Varenka), between ourselves, of an ardent temperament
(her grandfather was an Armenian), has a peculiar art of throwing her
whole weight on one's arm and clinging to one's side like a leech. And
so we walk along.
As we pass the Karelins', I see a huge dog, who reminds me of the dog
licence. I think with despair of the work I have begun and sigh.
"What are you sighing for?" asks Nadenka (or Varenka), and heaves a sigh
herself.
Here I must digress for a moment to explain that Nadenka or Varenka (now
I come to think of it, I believe I have heard her called Mashenka)
imagines, I can't guess why, that I am in love with her, and therefore
thinks it her duty as a humane person always to look at me with
compassion and to soothe my wound with words.
"Listen," said she, stopping. "I know why you are sighing. You are in
love, yes; but I beg you for the sake of our friendship to believe that
the girl you love has the deepest respect for you. She cannot return
your love; but is it her fault that her heart has long been another's?"
Mashenka's nose begins to swell and turn red, her eyes fill with tears:
she evidently expects some answer from me, but, fortunately, at this
moment we arrive. Mashenka's mamma, a good-natured woman but full of
conventional ideas, is sitting on the terrace: glancing at her
daughter's agitated face, she looks intently at me and sighs, as though
saying to herself: "Ah, these young people! they don't even know how to
keep their secrets to themselves!"
On the terrace with her are several young ladies of various colours and
a retired officer who is staying in the villa next to ours. He was
wounded during the last war in the left temple and the right hip. This
unfortunate man is, like myself, proposing to devote the summer to
literary work. He is writing the "Memoirs of a Military Man." Like me,
he begins his honourable labours every morning, but before he has
written more than "I was born in . . ." some Varenka or Mashenka is sure
to appear under his balcony, and the wounded hero is borne off under
guard.
All the party sitting on the terrace are engaged in preparing some
miserable fruit for jam. I make my bows and am about to beat a retreat,
but the young ladies of various colours seize my hat with a squeal and
insist on my staying. I sit down. They give me a plate of fruit and a
hairpin. I begin taking the seeds out.
The young ladies of various colours talk about men: they say that So-
and-So is nice-looking, that So-and-So is handsome but not nice, that
somebody else is nice but ugly, and that a fourth would not have been
bad-looking if his nose were not like a thimble, and so on.
"And you, Monsieur Nicolas," says Varenka's mamma, turning to me, "are
not handsome, but you are attractive. . . . There is something about
your face. . . . In men, though, it's not beauty but intelligence that
matters," she adds, sighing.
The young ladies sigh, too, and drop their eyes . . . they agree that
the great thing in men is not beauty but intelligence. I steal a glance
sideways at a looking-glass to ascertain whether I really am attractive.
I see a shaggy head, a bushy beard, moustaches, eyebrows, hair on my