Short Stories by Chekhov
and she would feel that she was the most unhappy woman in the world. But
another minute would pass, voices would be heard: it would turn out to
be the veterinary surgeon coming home from the club.
"Well, thank God!" she would think.
And gradually the load in her heart would pass off, and she would feel
at ease. She would go back to bed thinking of Sasha, who lay sound
asleep in the next room, sometimes crying out in his sleep:
"I'll give it you! Get away! Shut up!"
ARIADNE
ON the deck of a steamer sailing from Odessa to Sevastopol, a rather
good-looking gentleman, with a little round beard, came up to me to
smoke, and said:
"Notice those Germans sitting near the shelter? Whenever Germans or
Englishmen get together, they talk about the crops, the price of wool,
or their personal affairs. But for some reason or other when we Russians
get together we never discuss anything but women and abstract subjects--
but especially women."
This gentleman's face was familiar to me already. We had returned from
abroad the evening before in the same train, and at Volotchisk when the
luggage was being examined by the Customs, I saw him standing with a
lady, his travelling companion, before a perfect mountain of trunks and
baskets filled with ladies' clothes, and I noticed how embarrassed and
downcast he was when he had to pay duty on some piece of silk frippery,
and his companion protested and threatened to make a complaint.
Afterwards, on the way to Odessa, I saw him carrying little pies and
oranges to the ladies' compartment.
It was rather damp; the vessel swayed a little, and the ladies had
retired to their cabins.
The gentleman with the little round beard sat down beside me and
continued:
"Yes, when Russians come together they discuss nothing but abstract
subjects and women. We are so intellectual, so solemn, that we utter
nothing but truths and can discuss only questions of a lofty order. The
Russian actor does not know how to be funny; he acts with profundity
even in a farce. We're just the same: when we have got to talk of
trifles we treat them only from an exalted point of view. It comes from
a lack of boldness, sincerity, and simplicity. We talk so often about
women, I fancy, because we are dissatisfied. We take too ideal a view of
women, and make demands out of all proportion with what reality can give
us; we get something utterly different from what we want, and the result
is dissatisfaction, shattered hopes, and inward suffering, and if any
one is suffering, he's bound to talk of it. It does not bore you to go
on with this conversation?
"No, not in the least."
"In that case, allow me to introduce myself," said my companion, rising
from his seat a little:
"Ivan Ilyitch Shamohin, a Moscow landowner of a sort. . . . You I know
very well."
He sat down and went on, looking at me with a genuine and friendly
expression:
"A mediocre philosopher, like Max Nordau, would explain these incessant
conversations about women as a form of erotic madness, or would put it
down to our having been slave-owners and so on; I take quite a different
view of it. I repeat, we are dissatisfied because we are idealists. We
want the creatures who bear us and our children to be superior to us and
to everything in the world. When we are young we adore and poeticize
those with whom we are in love: love and happiness with us are synonyms.
Among us in Russia marriage without love is despised, sensuality is
ridiculed and inspires repulsion, and the greatest success is enjoyed by
those tales and novels in which women are beautiful, poetical, and
exalted; and if the Russian has been for years in ecstasies over
Raphael's Madonna, or is eager for the emancipation of women, I assure
you there is no affectation about it. But the trouble is that when we
have been married or been intimate with a woman for some two or three
years, we begin to feel deceived and disillusioned: we pair off with
others, and again--disappointment, again--repulsion, and in the long run
we become convinced that women are lying, trivial, fussy, unfair,
undeveloped, cruel--in fact, far from being superior, are immeasurably
inferior to us men. And in our dissatisfaction and disappointment there
is nothing left for us but to grumble and talk about what we've been so
cruelly deceived in."
While Shamohin was talking I noticed that the Russian language and our
Russian surroundings gave him great pleasure. This was probably because
he had been very homesick abroad. Though he praised the Russians and
ascribed to them a rare idealism, he did not disparage foreigners, and
that I put down to his credit. It could be seen, too, that there was
some uneasiness in his soul, that he wanted to talk more of himself than
of women, and that I was in for a long story in the nature of a
confession. And when we had asked for a bottle of wine and had each of
us drunk a glass, this was how he did in fact begin:
"I remember in a novel of Weltmann's some one says, 'So that's the
story!' and some one else answers, 'No, that's not the story-- that's
only the introduction to the story.' In the same way what I've said so
far is only the introduction; what I really want to tell you is my own
love story. Excuse me, I must ask you again; it won't bore you to
listen?"
I told him it would not, and he went on:
The scene of my story is laid in the Moscow province in one of its
northern districts. The scenery there, I must tell you, is exquisite.
Our homestead is on the high bank of a rapid stream, where the water
chatters noisily day and night: imagine a big old garden, neat flower-
beds, beehives, a kitchen-garden, and below it a river with leafy
willows, which, when there is a heavy dew on them, have a lustreless
look as though they had turned grey; and on the other side a meadow, and
beyond the meadow on the upland a terrible, dark pine forest. In that
forest delicious, reddish agarics grow in endless profusion, and elks
still live in its deepest recesses. When I am nailed up in my coffin I
believe I shall still dream of those early mornings, you know, when the
sun hurts your eyes: or the wonderful spring evenings when the
nightingales and the landrails call in the garden and beyond the garden,
and sounds of the harmonica float across from the village, while they
play the piano indoors and the stream babbles . . . when there is such
music, in fact, that one wants at the same time to cry and to sing
aloud.
We have not much arable land, but our pasture makes up for it, and with
the forest yields about two thousand roubles a year. I am the only son
of my father; we are both modest persons, and with my father's pension
that sum was amply sufficient for us.
The first three years after finishing at the university I spent in the
country, looking after the estate and constantly expecting to be elected
on some local assembly; but what was most important, I was violently in
love with an extraordinarily beautiful and fascinating girl. She was the
sister of our neighbour, Kotlovitch, a ruined landowner who had on his
estate pine-apples, marvellous peaches, lightning conductors, a fountain
in the courtyard, and at the same time not a farthing in his pocket. He
did nothing and knew how to do nothing. He was as flabby as though he
had been made of boiled turnip; he used to doctor the peasants by
homeopathy and was interested in spiritualism. He was, however, a man of
great delicacy and mildness, and by no means a fool, but I have no
fondness for these gentlemen who converse with spirits and cure peasant
women by magnetism. In the first place, the ideas of people who are not
intellectually free are always in a muddle, and it's extremely difficult
to talk to them; and, secondly, they usually love no one, and have
nothing to do with women, and their mysticism has an unpleasant effect
on sensitive people. I did not care for his appearance either. He was
tall, stout, white-skinned, with a little head, little shining eyes, and
chubby white fingers. He did not shake hands, but kneaded one's hands in
his. And he was always apologising. If he asked for anything it was
"Excuse me"; if he gave you anything it was "Excuse me" too.
As for his sister, she was a character out of a different opera. I must
explain that I had not been acquainted with the Kotlovitches in my
childhood and early youth, for my father had been a professor at N., and
we had for many years lived away. When I did make their acquaintance the
girl was twenty-two, had left school long before, and had spent two or
three years in Moscow with a wealthy aunt who brought her out into
society. When I was introduced and first had to talk to her, what struck
me most of all was her rare and beautiful name--Ariadne. It suited her
so wonderfully! She was a brunette, very thin, very slender, supple,
elegant, and extremely graceful, with refined and exceedingly noble
features. Her eyes were shining, too, but her brother's shone with a
cold sweetness, mawkish as sugar-candy, while hers had the glow of
youth, proud and beautiful. She conquered me on the first day of our
acquaintance, and indeed it was inevitable. My first impression was so
overwhelming that to this day I cannot get rid of my illusions; I am
still tempted to imagine that nature had some grand, marvellous design
when she created that girl.
Ariadne's voice, her walk, her hat, even her footprints on the sandy
bank where she used to angle for gudgeon, filled me with delight and a
passionate hunger for life. I judged of her spiritual being from her
lovely face and lovely figure, and every word, every smile of Ariadne's
bewitched me, conquered me and forced me to believe in the loftiness of
her soul. She was friendly, ready to talk, gay and simple in her
manners. She had a poetic belief in God, made poetic reflections about
death, and there was such a wealth of varying shades in her spiritual
organisation that even her faults seemed in her to carry with them
peculiar, charming qualities. Suppose she wanted a new horse and had no
money--what did that matter? Something might be sold or pawned, or if
the steward swore that nothing could possibly be sold or pawned, the
iron roofs might be torn off the lodges and taken to the factory, or at
the very busiest time the farm-horses might be driven to the market and
sold there for next to nothing. These unbridled desires reduced the
whole household to despair at times, but she expressed them with such
refinement that everything was forgiven her; all things were permitted
her as to a goddess or to Cæsar's wife. My love was pathetic and was
soon noticed by every one--my father, the neighbours, and the peasants--
and they all sympathised with me. When I stood the workmen vodka, they
would bow and say: "May the Kotlovitch young lady be your bride, please
God!"
And Ariadne herself knew that I loved her. She would often ride over on
horseback or drive in the char-à-banc to see us, and would spend whole
days with me and my father. She made great friends with the old man, and
he even taught her to bicycle, which was his favourite amusement.
I remember helping her to get on the bicycle one evening, and she looked
so lovely that I felt as though I were burning my hands when I touched
her. I shuddered with rapture, and when the two of them, my old father
and she, both looking so handsome and elegant, bicycled side by side
along the main road, a black horse ridden by the steward dashed aside on
meeting them, and it seemed to me that it dashed aside because it too
was overcome by her beauty. My love, my worship, touched Ariadne and
softened her; she had a passionate longing to be captivated like me and
to respond with the same love. It was so poetical!
But she was incapable of really loving as I did, for she was cold and