Short Stories by Chekhov
One afternoon on a holiday we thought of the Voltchaninovs, and went to
Shelkovka to see them. They--the mother and two daughters --were at
home. The mother, Ekaterina Pavlovna, who at one time had been handsome,
but now, asthmatic, depressed, vague, and over-feeble for her years,
tried to entertain me with conversation about painting. Having heard
from her daughter that I might come to Shelkovka, she had hurriedly
recalled two or three of my landscapes which she had seen in exhibitions
in Moscow, and now asked what I meant to express by them. Lidia, or as
they called her Lida, talked more to Byelokurov than to me. Earnest and
unsmiling, she asked him why he was not on the Zemstvo, and why he had
not attended any of its meetings.
"It's not right, Pyotr Petrovitch," she said reproachfully. "It's not
right. It's too bad."
"That's true, Lida--that's true," the mother assented. "It isn't right."
"Our whole district is in the hands of Balagin," Lida went on,
addressing me. "He is the chairman of the Zemstvo Board, and he has
distributed all the posts in the district among his nephews and sons-in-
law; and he does as he likes. He ought to be opposed. The young men
ought to make a strong party, but you see what the young men among us
are like. It's a shame, Pyotr Petrovitch!"
The younger sister, Genya, was silent while they were talking of the
Zemstvo. She took no part in serious conversation. She was not looked
upon as quite grown up by her family, and, like a child, was always
called by the nickname of Misuce, because that was what she had called
her English governess when she was a child. She was all the time looking
at me with curiosity, and when I glanced at the photographs in the
album, she explained to me: "That's uncle . . . that's god-father,"
moving her finger across the photograph. As she did so she touched me
with her shoulder like a child, and I had a close view of her delicate,
undeveloped chest, her slender shoulders, her plait, and her thin little
body tightly drawn in by her sash.
We played croquet and lawn tennis, we walked about the garden, drank
tea, and then sat a long time over supper. After the huge empty room
with columns, I felt, as it were, at home in this small snug house where
there were no oleographs on the walls and where the servants were spoken
to with civility. And everything seemed to me young and pure, thanks to
the presence of Lida and Misuce, and there was an atmosphere of
refinement over everything. At supper Lida talked to Byelokurov again of
the Zemstvo, of Balagin, and of school libraries. She was an energetic,
genuine girl, with convictions, and it was interesting to listen to her,
though she talked a great deal and in a loud voice--perhaps because she
was accustomed to talking at school. On the other hand, Pyotr
Petrovitch, who had retained from his student days the habit of turning
every conversation into an argument, was tedious, flat, long-winded, and
unmistakably anxious to appear clever and advanced. Gesticulating, he
upset a sauce-boat with his sleeve, making a huge pool on the
tablecloth, but no one except me appeared to notice it.
It was dark and still as we went home.
"Good breeding is shown, not by not upsetting the sauce, but by not
noticing it when somebody else does," said Byelokurov, with a sigh.
"Yes, a splendid, intellectual family! I've dropped out of all decent
society; it's dreadful how I've dropped out of it! It's all through
work, work, work!"
He talked of how hard one had to work if one wanted to be a model
farmer. And I thought what a heavy, sluggish fellow he was! Whenever he
talked of anything serious he articulated "Er-er" with intense effort,
and worked just as he talked--slowly, always late and behind-hand. I had
little faith in his business capacity if only from the fact that when I
gave him letters to post he carried them about in his pocket for weeks
together.
"The hardest thing of all," he muttered as he walked beside me-- "the
hardest thing of all is that, work as one may, one meets with no
sympathy from any one. No sympathy!"
II
I took to going to see the Voltchaninovs. As a rule I sat on the lower
step of the terrace; I was fretted by dissatisfaction with myself; I was
sorry at the thought of my life passing so rapidly and uninterestingly,
and felt as though I would like to tear out of my breast the heart which
had grown so heavy. And meanwhile I heard talk on the terrace, the
rustling of dresses, the pages of a book being turned. I soon grew
accustomed to the idea that during the day Lida received patients, gave
out books, and often went into the village with a parasol and no hat,
and in the evening talked aloud of the Zemstvo and schools. This slim,
handsome, invariably austere girl, with her small well-cut mouth, always
said dryly when the conversation turned on serious subjects:
"That's of no interest to you."
She did not like me. She disliked me because I was a landscape painter
and did not in my pictures portray the privations of the peasants, and
that, as she fancied, I was indifferent to what she put such faith in. I
remember when I was travelling on the banks of Lake Baikal, I met a
Buriat girl on horseback, wearing a shirt and trousers of blue Chinese
canvas; I asked her if she would sell me her pipe. While we talked she
looked contemptuously at my European face and hat, and in a moment she
was bored with talking to me; she shouted to her horse and galloped on.
And in just the same way Lida despised me as an alien. She never
outwardly expressed her dislike for me, but I felt it, and sitting on
the lower step of the terrace, I felt irritated, and said that doctoring
peasants when one was not a doctor was deceiving them, and that it was
easy to be benevolent when one had six thousand acres.
Meanwhile her sister Misuce had no cares, and spent her life in complete
idleness just as I did. When she got up in the morning she immediately
took up a book and sat down to read on the terrace in a deep arm-chair,
with her feet hardly touching the ground, or hid herself with her book
in the lime avenue, or walked out into the fields. She spent the whole
day reading, poring greedily over her book, and only from the tired,
dazed look in her eyes and the extreme paleness of her face one could
divine how this continual reading exhausted her brain. When I arrived
she would flush a little, leave her book, and looking into my face with
her big eyes, would tell me eagerly of anything that had happened--for
instance, that the chimney had been on fire in the servants' hall, or
that one of the men had caught a huge fish in the pond. On ordinary days
she usually went about in a light blouse and a dark blue skirt. We went
for walks together, picked cherries for making jam, went out in the
boat. When she jumped up to reach a cherry or sculled in the boat, her
thin, weak arms showed through her transparent sleeves. Or I painted a
sketch, and she stood beside me watching rapturously.
One Sunday at the end of July I came to the Voltchaninovs about nine o
clock in the morning. I walked about the park, keeping a good distance
from the house, looking for white mushrooms, of which there was a great
number that summer, and noting their position so as to come and pick
them afterwards with Genya. There was a warm breeze. I saw Genya and her
mother both in light holiday dresses coming home from church, Genya
holding her hat in the wind. Afterwards I heard them having tea on the
terrace.
For a careless person like me, trying to find justification for my
perpetual idleness, these holiday mornings in our country-houses in the
summer have always had a particular charm. When the green garden, still
wet with dew, is all sparkling in the sun and looks radiant with
happiness, when there is a scent of mignonette and oleander near the
house, when the young people have just come back from church and are
having breakfast in the garden, all so charmingly dressed and gay, and
one knows that all these healthy, well-fed, handsome people are going to
do nothing the whole long day, one wishes that all life were like that.
Now, too, I had the same thought, and walked about the garden prepared
to walk about like that, aimless and unoccupied, the whole day, the
whole summer.
Genya came out with a basket; she had a look in her face as though she
knew she would find me in the garden, or had a presentiment of it. We
gathered mushrooms and talked, and when she asked a question she walked
a little ahead so as to see my face.
"A miracle happened in the village yesterday," she said. "The lame woman
Pelagea has been ill the whole year. No doctors or medicines did her any
good; but yesterday an old woman came and whispered something over her,
and her illness passed away."
"That's nothing much," I said. "You mustn't look for miracles only among
sick people and old women. Isn't health a miracle? And life itself?
Whatever is beyond understanding is a miracle."
"And aren't you afraid of what is beyond understanding?"
"No. Phenomena I don't understand I face boldly, and am not overwhelmed
by them. I am above them. Man ought to recognise himself as superior to
lions, tigers, stars, superior to everything in nature, even what seems
miraculous and is beyond his understanding, or else he is not a man, but
a mouse afraid of everything."
Genya believed that as an artist I knew a very great deal, and could
guess correctly what I did not know. She longed for me to initiate her
into the domain of the Eternal and the Beautiful--into that higher world
in which, as she imagined, I was quite at home. And she talked to me of
God, of the eternal life, of the miraculous. And I, who could never
admit that my self and my imagination would be lost forever after death,
answered: "Yes, men are immortal"; "Yes, there is eternal life in store
for us." And she listened, believed, and did not ask for proofs.
As we were going home she stopped suddenly and said:
"Our Lida is a remarkable person--isn't she? I love her very dearly, and
would be ready to give my life for her any minute. But tell me"--Genya
touched my sleeve with her finger--"tell me, why do you always argue
with her? Why are you irritated?"
"Because she is wrong."
Genya shook her head and tears came into her eyes.
"How incomprehensible that is!" she said. At that minute Lida had just
returned from somewhere, and standing with a whip in her hand, a slim,
beautiful figure in the sunlight, at the steps, she was giving some
orders to one of the men. Talking loudly, she hurriedly received two or
three sick villagers; then with a busy and anxious face she walked about
the rooms, opening one cupboard after another, and went upstairs. It was
a long time before they could find her and call her to dinner, and she
came in when we had finished our soup. All these tiny details I remember
with tenderness, and that whole day I remember vividly, though nothing
special happened. After dinner Genya lay in a long arm-chair reading,
while I sat upon the bottom step of the terrace. We were silent. The
whole sky was overcast with clouds, and it began to spot with fine rain.
It was hot; the wind had dropped, and it seemed as though the day would
never end. Ekaterina Pavlovna came out on the terrace, looking drowsy
and carrying a fan.
"Oh, mother," said Genya, kissing her hand, "it's not good for you to
sleep in the day."
They adored each other. When one went into the garden, the other would
stand on the terrace, and, looking towards the trees, call "Aa--oo,
Genya!" or "Mother, where are you?" They always said their prayers
together, and had the same faith; and they understood each other
perfectly even when they did not speak. And their attitude to people was