Short Stories by Chekhov
left her in her father's will, was at the extreme end of the town, not
far from the Tivoli. In the evenings and at night she could head the
band playing, and the crackling and banging of fireworks, and it seemed
to her that it was Kukin struggling with his destiny, storming the
entrenchments of his chief foe, the indifferent public; there was a
sweet thrill at her heart, she had no desire to sleep, and when he
returned home at day-break, she tapped softly at her bedroom window, and
showing him only her face and one shoulder through the curtain, she gave
him a friendly smile. . . .
He proposed to her, and they were married. And when he had a closer view
of her neck and her plump, fine shoulders, he threw up his hands, and
said:
"You darling!"
He was happy, but as it rained on the day and night of his wedding, his
face still retained an expression of despair.
They got on very well together. She used to sit in his office, to look
after things in the Tivoli, to put down the accounts and pay the wages.
And her rosy cheeks, her sweet, naïve, radiant smile, were to be seen
now at the office window, now in the refreshment bar or behind the
scenes of the theatre. And already she used to say to her acquaintances
that the theatre was the chief and most important thing in life and that
it was only through the drama that one could derive true enjoyment and
become cultivated and humane.
"But do you suppose the public understands that?" she used to say. "What
they want is a clown. Yesterday we gave 'Faust Inside Out,' and almost
all the boxes were empty; but if Vanitchka and I had been producing some
vulgar thing, I assure you the theatre would have been packed. Tomorrow
Vanitchka and I are doing 'Orpheus in Hell.' Do come."
And what Kukin said about the theatre and the actors she repeated. Like
him she despised the public for their ignorance and their indifference
to art; she took part in the rehearsals, she corrected the actors, she
kept an eye on the behaviour of the musicians, and when there was an
unfavourable notice in the local paper, she shed tears, and then went to
the editor's office to set things right.
The actors were fond of her and used to call her "Vanitchka and I," and
"the darling"; she was sorry for them and used to lend them small sums
of money, and if they deceived her, she used to shed a few tears in
private, but did not complain to her husband.
They got on well in the winter too. They took the theatre in the town
for the whole winter, and let it for short terms to a Little Russian
company, or to a conjurer, or to a local dramatic society. Olenka grew
stouter, and was always beaming with satisfaction, while Kukin grew
thinner and yellower, and continually complained of their terrible
losses, although he had not done badly all the winter. He used to cough
at night, and she used to give him hot raspberry tea or lime-flower
water, to rub him with eau-de-Cologne and to wrap him in her warm
shawls.
"You're such a sweet pet!" she used to say with perfect sincerity,
stroking his hair. "You're such a pretty dear!"
Towards Lent he went to Moscow to collect a new troupe, and without him
she could not sleep, but sat all night at her window, looking at the
stars, and she compared herself with the hens, who are awake all night
and uneasy when the cock is not in the hen-house. Kukin was detained in
Moscow, and wrote that he would be back at Easter, adding some
instructions about the Tivoli. But on the Sunday before Easter, late in
the evening, came a sudden ominous knock at the gate; some one was
hammering on the gate as though on a barrel-- boom, boom, boom! The
drowsy cook went flopping with her bare feet through the puddles, as she
ran to open the gate.
"Please open," said some one outside in a thick bass. "There is a
telegram for you."
Olenka had received telegrams from her husband before, but this time for
some reason she felt numb with terror. With shaking hands she opened the
telegram and read as follows:
"IVAN PETROVITCH DIED SUDDENLY TO-DAY. AWAITING IMMATE INSTRUCTIONS
FUFUNERAL TUESDAY."
That was how it was written in the telegram--"fufuneral," and the
utterly incomprehensible word "immate." It was signed by the stage
manager of the operatic company.
"My darling!" sobbed Olenka. "Vanka, my precious, my darling! Why did I
ever meet you! Why did I know you and love you! Your poor heart-broken
Olenka is alone without you!"
Kukin's funeral took place on Tuesday in Moscow, Olenka returned home on
Wednesday, and as soon as she got indoors, she threw herself on her bed
and sobbed so loudly that it could be heard next door, and in the
street.
"Poor darling!" the neighbours said, as they crossed themselves. "Olga
Semyonovna, poor darling! How she does take on!"
Three months later Olenka was coming home from mass, melancholy and in
deep mourning. It happened that one of her neighbours, Vassily Andreitch
Pustovalov, returning home from church, walked back beside her. He was
the manager at Babakayev's, the timber merchant's. He wore a straw hat,
a white waistcoat, and a gold watch-chain, and looked more a country
gentleman than a man in trade.
"Everything happens as it is ordained, Olga Semyonovna," he said
gravely, with a sympathetic note in his voice; "and if any of our dear
ones die, it must be because it is the will of God, so we ought have
fortitude and bear it submissively."
After seeing Olenka to her gate, he said good-bye and went on. All day
afterwards she heard his sedately dignified voice, and whenever she shut
her eyes she saw his dark beard. She liked him very much. And apparently
she had made an impression on him too, for not long afterwards an
elderly lady, with whom she was only slightly acquainted, came to drink
coffee with her, and as soon as she was seated at table began to talk
about Pustovalov, saying that he was an excellent man whom one could
thoroughly depend upon, and that any girl would be glad to marry him.
Three days later Pustovalov came himself. He did not stay long, only
about ten minutes, and he did not say much, but when he left, Olenka
loved him--loved him so much that she lay awake all night in a perfect
fever, and in the morning she sent for the elderly lady. The match was
quickly arranged, and then came the wedding.
Pustovalov and Olenka got on very well together when they were married.
Usually he sat in the office till dinner-time, then he went out on
business, while Olenka took his place, and sat in the office till
evening, making up accounts and booking orders.
"Timber gets dearer every year; the price rises twenty per cent," she
would say to her customers and friends. "Only fancy we used to sell
local timber, and now Vassitchka always has to go for wood to the
Mogilev district. And the freight!" she would add, covering her cheeks
with her hands in horror. "The freight!"
It seemed to her that she had been in the timber trade for ages and
ages, and that the most important and necessary thing in life was
timber; and there was something intimate and touching to her in the very
sound of words such as "baulk," "post," "beam," "pole," "scantling,"
"batten," "lath," "plank," etc.
At night when she was asleep she dreamed of perfect mountains of planks
and boards, and long strings of wagons, carting timber somewhere far
away. She dreamed that a whole regiment of six-inch beams forty feet
high, standing on end, was marching upon the timber-yard; that logs,
beams, and boards knocked together with the resounding crash of dry
wood, kept falling and getting up again, piling themselves on each
other. Olenka cried out in her sleep, and Pustovalov said to her
tenderly: "Olenka, what's the matter, darling? Cross yourself!"
Her husband's ideas were hers. If he thought the room was too hot, or
that business was slack, she thought the same. Her husband did not care
for entertainments, and on holidays he stayed at home. She did likewise.
"You are always at home or in the office," her friends said to her. "You
should go to the theatre, darling, or to the circus."
"Vassitchka and I have no time to go to theatres," she would answer
sedately. "We have no time for nonsense. What's the use of these
theatres?"
On Saturdays Pustovalov and she used to go to the evening service; on
holidays to early mass, and they walked side by side with softened faces
as they came home from church. There was a pleasant fragrance about them
both, and her silk dress rustled agreeably. At home they drank tea, with
fancy bread and jams of various kinds, and afterwards they ate pie.
Every day at twelve o'clock there was a savoury smell of beet-root soup
and of mutton or duck in their yard, and on fast-days of fish, and no
one could pass the gate without feeling hungry. In the office the
samovar was always boiling, and customers were regaled with tea and
cracknels. Once a week the couple went to the baths and returned side by
side, both red in the face.
"Yes, we have nothing to complain of, thank God," Olenka used to say to
her acquaintances. "I wish every one were as well off as Vassitchka and
I."
When Pustovalov went away to buy wood in the Mogilev district, she
missed him dreadfully, lay awake and cried. A young veterinary surgeon
in the army, called Smirnin, to whom they had let their lodge, used
sometimes to come in in the evening. He used to talk to her and play
cards with her, and this entertained her in her husband's absence. She
was particularly interested in what he told her of his home life. He was
married and had a little boy, but was separated from his wife because
she had been unfaithful to him, and now he hated her and used to send
her forty roubles a month for the maintenance of their son. And hearing
of all this, Olenka sighed and shook her head. She was sorry for him.
"Well, God keep you," she used to say to him at parting, as she lighted
him down the stairs with a candle. "Thank you for coming to cheer me up,
and may the Mother of God give you health."
And she always expressed herself with the same sedateness and dignity,
the same reasonableness, in imitation of her husband. As the veterinary
surgeon was disappearing behind the door below, she would say:
"You know, Vladimir Platonitch, you'd better make it up with your wife.
You should forgive her for the sake of your son. You may be sure the
little fellow understands."
And when Pustovalov came back, she told him in a low voice about the
veterinary surgeon and his unhappy home life, and both sighed and shook
their heads and talked about the boy, who, no doubt, missed his father,
and by some strange connection of ideas, they went up to the holy ikons,
bowed to the ground before them and prayed that God would give them
children.
And so the Pustovalovs lived for six years quietly and peaceably in love
and complete harmony.
But behold! one winter day after drinking hot tea in the office, Vassily
Andreitch went out into the yard without his cap on to see about sending
off some timber, caught cold and was taken ill. He had the best doctors,
but he grew worse and died after four months' illness. And Olenka was a
widow once more.
"I've nobody, now you've left me, my darling," she sobbed, after her
husband's funeral. "How can I live without you, in wretchedness and
misery! Pity me, good people, all alone in the world!"
She went about dressed in black with long "weepers," and gave up wearing
hat and gloves for good. She hardly ever went out, except to church, or
to her husband's grave, and led the life of a nun. It was not till six
months later that she took off the weepers and opened the shutters of
the windows. She was sometimes seen in the mornings, going with her cook
to market for provisions, but what went on in her house and how she