Short Stories by Chekhov
Nickolay Timofeitch lays several kinds of gimp before Polinka; she looks
at the trimmings languidly and begins bargaining over them.
"Oh, come, a rouble's not dear," says the shopman persuasively, with a
condescending smile. "It's a French trimming, pure silk. . . . We have a
commoner sort, if you like, heavier. That's forty-five kopecks a yard;
of course, it's nothing like the same quality."
"I want a bead corselet, too, with gimp buttons," says Polinka, bending
over the gimp and sighing for some reason. "And have you any bead motifs
to match?"
"Yes."
Polinka bends still lower over the counter and asks softly:
"And why did you leave us so early on Thursday, Nikolay Timofeitch?"
"Hm! It's queer you noticed it," says the shopman, with a smirk. "You
were so taken up with that fine student that . . . it's queer you
noticed it!"
Polinka flushes crimson and remains mute. With a nervous quiver in his
fingers the shopman closes the boxes, and for no sort of object piles
them one on the top of another. A moment of silence follows.
"I want some bead lace, too," says Polinka, lifting her eyes guiltily to
the shopman.
"What sort? Black or coloured? Bead lace on tulle is the most
fashionable trimming."
"And how much is it?"
"The black's from eighty kopecks and the coloured from two and a half
roubles. I shall never come and see you again," Nikolay Timofeitch adds
in an undertone.
"Why?"
"Why? It's very simple. You must understand that yourself. Why should I
distress myself? It's a queer business! Do you suppose it's a pleasure
to me to see that student carrying on with you? I see it all and I
understand. Ever since autumn he's been hanging about you and you go for
a walk with him almost every day; and when he is with you, you gaze at
him as though he were an angel. You are in love with him; there's no one
to beat him in your eyes. Well, all right, then, it's no good talking."
Polinka remains dumb and moves her finger on the counter in
embarrassment.
"I see it all," the shopman goes on. "What inducement have I to come and
see you? I've got some pride. It's not every one likes to play
gooseberry. What was it you asked for?"
"Mamma told me to get a lot of things, but I've forgotten. I want some
feather trimming too."
"What kind would you like?"
"The best, something fashionable."
"The most fashionable now are real bird feathers. If you want the most
fashionable colour, it's heliotrope or _kanak_--that is, claret with a
yellow shade in it. We have an immense choice. And what all this affair
is going to lead to, I really don't understand. Here you are in love,
and how is it to end?"
Patches of red come into Nikolay Timofeitch's face round his eyes. He
crushes the soft feather trimming in his hand and goes on muttering:
"Do you imagine he'll marry you--is that it? You'd better drop any such
fancies. Students are forbidden to marry. And do you suppose he comes to
see you with honourable intentions? A likely idea! Why, these fine
students don't look on us as human beings . . . they only go to see
shopkeepers and dressmakers to laugh at their ignorance and to drink.
They're ashamed to drink at home and in good houses, but with simple
uneducated people like us they don't care what any one thinks; they'd be
ready to stand on their heads. Yes! Well, which feather trimming will
you take? And if he hangs about and carries on with you, we know what he
is after. . . . When he's a doctor or a lawyer he'll remember you: 'Ah,'
he'll say, 'I used to have a pretty fair little thing! I wonder where
she is now?' Even now I bet you he boasts among his friends that he's
got his eye on a little dressmaker."
Polinka sits down and gazes pensively at the pile of white boxes.
"No, I won't take the feather trimming," she sighs. "Mamma had better
choose it for herself; I may get the wrong one. I want six yards of
fringe for an overcoat, at forty kopecks the yard. For the same coat I
want cocoa-nut buttons, perforated, so they can be sown on firmly. . .
."
Nikolay Timofeitch wraps up the fringe and the buttons. She looks at him
guiltily and evidently expects him to go on talking, but he remains
sullenly silent while he tidies up the feather trimming.
"I mustn't forget some buttons for a dressing-gown . . ." she says after
an interval of silence, wiping her pale lips with a handkerchief.
"What kind?"
"It's for a shopkeeper's wife, so give me something rather striking."
"Yes, if it's for a shopkeeper's wife, you'd better have something
bright. Here are some buttons. A combination of colours--red, blue, and
the fashionable gold shade. Very glaring. The more refined prefer dull
black with a bright border. But I don't understand. Can't you see for
yourself? What can these . . . walks lead to?"
"I don't know," whispers Polinka, and she bends over the buttons; "I
don't know myself what's come to me, Nikolay Timofeitch."
A solid shopman with whiskers forces his way behind Nikolay Timofeitch's
back, squeezing him to the counter, and beaming with the choicest
gallantry, shouts:
"Be so kind, madam, as to step into this department. We have three kinds
of jerseys: plain, braided, and trimmed with beads! Which may I have the
pleasure of showing you?"
At the same time a stout lady passes by Polinka, pronouncing in a rich,
deep voice, almost a bass:
"They must be seamless, with the trade mark stamped in them, please."
"Pretend to be looking at the things," Nikolay Timofeitch whispers,
bending down to Polinka with a forced smile. "Dear me, you do look pale
and ill; you are quite changed. He'll throw you over, Pelagea Sergeevna!
Or if he does marry you, it won't be for love but from hunger; he'll be
tempted by your money. He'll furnish himself a nice home with your
dowry, and then be ashamed of you. He'll keep you out of sight of his
friends and visitors, because you're uneducated. He'll call you 'my
dummy of a wife.' You wouldn't know how to behave in a doctor's or
lawyer's circle. To them you're a dressmaker, an ignorant creature."
"Nikolay Timofeitch!" somebody shouts from the other end of the shop.
"The young lady here wants three yards of ribbon with a metal stripe.
Have we any?"
Nikolay Timofeitch turns in that direction, smirks and shouts:
"Yes, we have! Ribbon with a metal stripe, ottoman with a satin stripe,
and satin with a moiré stripe!"
"Oh, by the way, I mustn't forget, Olga asked me to get her a pair of
stays!" says Polinka.
"There are tears in your eyes," says Nikolay Timofeitch in dismay.
"What's that for? Come to the corset department, I'll screen you --it
looks awkward."
With a forced smile and exaggeratedly free and easy manner, the shopman
rapidly conducts Polinka to the corset department and conceals her from
the public eye behind a high pyramid of boxes.
"What sort of corset may I show you?" he asks aloud, whispering
immediately: "Wipe your eyes!"
"I want . . . I want . . . size forty-eight centimetres. Only she wanted
one, lined . . . with real whalebone . . . I must talk to you, Nikolay
Timofeitch. Come to-day!"
"Talk? What about? There's nothing to talk about."
"You are the only person who . . . cares about me, and I've no one to
talk to but you."
"These are not reed or steel, but real whalebone. . . . What is there
for us to talk about? It's no use talking. . . . You are going for a
walk with him to-day, I suppose?"
"Yes; I . . . I am."
"Then what's the use of talking? Talk won't help. . . . You are in love,
aren't you?"
"Yes . . ." Polinka whispers hesitatingly, and big tears gush from her
eyes.
"What is there to say?" mutters Nikolay Timofeitch, shrugging his
shoulders nervously and turning pale. "There's no need of talk. . . .
Wipe your eyes, that's all. I . . . I ask for nothing."
At that moment a tall, lanky shopman comes up to the pyramid of boxes,
and says to his customer:
"Let me show you some good elastic garters that do not impede the
circulation, certified by medical authority . . ."
Nikolay Timofeitch screens Polinka, and, trying to conceal her emotion
and his own, wrinkles his face into a smile and says aloud:
"There are two kinds of lace, madam: cotton and silk! Oriental, English,
Valenciennes, crochet, torchon, are cotton. And rococo, soutache,
Cambray, are silk. . . . For God's sake, wipe your eyes! They're coming
this way!"
And seeing that her tears are still gushing he goes on louder than ever:
"Spanish, Rococo, soutache, Cambray . . . stockings, thread, cotton,
silk . . ."
ANYUTA
IN the cheapest room of a big block of furnished apartments Stepan
Klotchkov, a medical student in his third year, was walking to and fro,
zealously conning his anatomy. His mouth was dry and his forehead
perspiring from the unceasing effort to learn it by heart.
In the window, covered by patterns of frost, sat on a stool the girl who
shared his room--Anyuta, a thin little brunette of five-and-twenty, very
pale with mild grey eyes. Sitting with bent back she was busy
embroidering with red thread the collar of a man's shirt. She was
working against time. . . . The clock in the passage struck two
drowsily, yet the little room had not been put to rights for the
morning. Crumpled bed-clothes, pillows thrown about, books, clothes, a
big filthy slop-pail filled with soap-suds in which cigarette ends were
swimming, and the litter on the floor--all seemed as though purposely
jumbled together in one confusion. . . .
"The right lung consists of three parts . . ." Klotchkov repeated.
"Boundaries! Upper part on anterior wall of thorax reaches the fourth or
fifth rib, on the lateral surface, the fourth rib . . . behind to the
_spina scapulæ_. . ."
Klotchkov raised his eyes to the ceiling, striving to visualise what he
had just read. Unable to form a clear picture of it, he began feeling
his upper ribs through his waistcoat.
"These ribs are like the keys of a piano," he said. "One must
familiarise oneself with them somehow, if one is not to get muddled over
them. One must study them in the skeleton and the living body . . . . I
say, Anyuta, let me pick them out."
Anyuta put down her sewing, took off her blouse, and straightened
herself up. Klotchkov sat down facing her, frowned, and began counting
her ribs.
"H'm! . . . One can't feel the first rib; it's behind the shoulder-blade
. . . . This must be the second rib. . . . Yes . . . this is the third .
. . this is the fourth. . . . H'm! . . . yes. . . . Why are you
wriggling?"
"Your fingers are cold!"
"Come, come . . . it won't kill you. Don't twist about. That must be the
third rib, then . . . this is the fourth. . . . You look such a skinny
thing, and yet one can hardly feel your ribs. That's the second . . .
that's the third. . . . Oh, this is muddling, and one can't see it
clearly. . . . I must draw it. . . . Where's my crayon?"
Klotchkov took his crayon and drew on Anyuta's chest several parallel
lines corresponding with the ribs.
"First-rate. That's all straightforward. . . . Well, now I can sound
you. Stand up!"
Anyuta stood up and raised her chin. Klotchkov began sounding her, and
was so absorbed in this occupation that he did not notice how Anyuta's
lips, nose, and fingers turned blue with cold. Anyuta shivered, and was
afraid the student, noticing it, would leave off drawing and sounding
her, and then, perhaps, might fail in his exam.
"Now it's all clear," said Klotchkov when he had finished. "You sit like
that and don't rub off the crayon, and meanwhile I'll learn up a little
more."
And the student again began walking to and fro, repeating to himself.
Anyuta, with black stripes across her chest, looking as though she had
been tattooed, sat thinking, huddled up and shivering with cold. She