Short Stories by Chekhov
"Yulia came before dinner while you were out," she said. "So far as I
can see, she hasn't much faith in her papa. 'Let papa go on treating
you,' she said, 'but write in secret to the holy elder to pray for you,
too.' There is a holy man somewhere here. Yulia forgot her parasol here;
you must take it to her to-morrow," she went on after a brief pause.
"No, when the end comes, neither doctors nor holy men are any help."
"Nina, why can't you sleep at night?" Laptev asked, to change the
subject.
"Oh, well, I don't go to sleep--that's all. I lie and think."
"What do you think about, dear?"
"About the children, about you . . . about my life. I've gone through a
great deal, Alyosha, you know. When one begins to remember and remember.
. . . My God!" She laughed. "It's no joke to have borne five children as
I have, to have buried three. . . Sometimes I was expecting to be
confined while my Grigory Nikolaitch would be sitting at that very time
with another woman. There would be no one to send for the doctor or the
midwife. I would go into the passage or the kitchen for the servant, and
there Jews, tradesmen, moneylenders, would be waiting for him to come
home. My head used to go round . . . . He did not love me, though he
never said so openly. Now I've grown calmer--it doesn't weigh on my
heart; but in old days, when I was younger, it hurt me--ach! how it hurt
me, darling! Once-- while we were still in the country--I found him in
the garden with a lady, and I walked away. . . I walked on aimlessly,
and I don't know how, but I found myself in the church porch. I fell on
my knees: 'Queen of Heaven!' I said. And it was night, the moon was
shining. . . ."
She was exhausted, she began gasping for breath. Then, after resting a
little, she took her brother's hand and went on in a weak, toneless
voice:
"How kind you are, Alyosha! . . . And how clever! . . . What a good man
you've grown up into!"
At midnight Laptev said good-night to her, and as he went away he took
with him the parasol that Yulia Sergeyevna had forgotten. In spite of
the late hour, the servants, male and female, were drinking tea in the
dining-room. How disorderly! The children were not in bed, but were
there in the dining-room, too. They were all talking softly in
undertones, and had not noticed that the lamp was smoking and would soon
go out. All these people, big and little, were disturbed by a whole
succession of bad omens and were in an oppressed mood. The glass in the
hall had been broken, the samovar had been buzzing every day, and, as
though on purpose, was even buzzing now. They were describing how a
mouse had jumped out of Nina Fyodorovna's boot when she was dressing.
And the children were quite aware of the terrible significance of these
omens. The elder girl, Sasha, a thin little brunette, was sitting
motionless at the table, and her face looked scared and woebegone, while
the younger, Lida, a chubby fair child of seven, stood beside her sister
looking from under her brows at the light.
Laptev went downstairs to his own rooms in the lower storey, where under
the low ceilings it was always close and smelt of geraniums. In his
sitting-room, Panaurov, Nina Fyodorovna's husband, was sitting reading
the newspaper. Laptev nodded to him and sat down opposite. Both sat
still and said nothing. They used to spend whole evenings like this
without speaking, and neither of them was in the least put out by this
silence.
The little girls came down from upstairs to say good-night. Deliberately
and in silence, Panaurov made the sign of the cross over them several
times, and gave them his hand to kiss. They dropped curtsies, and then
went up to Laptev, who had to make the sign of the cross and give them
his hand to kiss also. This ceremony with the hand-kissing and curtsying
was repeated every evening.
When the children had gone out Panaurov laid aside the newspaper and
said:
"It's not very lively in our God-fearing town! I must confess, my dear
fellow," he added with a sigh, "I'm very glad that at last you've found
some distraction."
"What do you mean?" asked Laptev.
"I saw you coming out of Dr. Byelavin's just now. I expect you don't go
there for the sake of the papa."
"Of course not," said Laptev, and he blushed.
"Well, of course not. And by the way, you wouldn't find such another old
brute as that papa if you hunted by daylight with a candle. You can't
imagine what a foul, stupid, clumsy beast he is! You cultured people in
the capitals are still interested in the provinces only on the lyrical
side, only from the _paysage_ and _Poor Anton_ point of view, but I can
assure you, my boy, there's nothing logical about it; there's nothing
but barbarism, meanness, and nastiness--that's all. Take the local
devotees of science--the local intellectuals, so to speak. Can you
imagine there are here in this town twenty-eight doctors? They've all
made their fortunes, and they are living in houses of their own, and
meanwhile the population is in just as helpless a condition as ever.
Here, Nina had to have an operation, quite an ordinary one really, yet
we were obliged to get a surgeon from Moscow; not one doctor here would
undertake it. It's beyond all conception. They know nothing, they
understand nothing. They take no interest in anything. Ask them, for
instance, what cancer is--what it is, what it comes from."
And Panaurov began to explain what cancer was. He was a specialist on
all scientific subjects, and explained from a scientific point of view
everything that was discussed. But he explained it all in his own way.
He had a theory of his own about the circulation of the blood, about
chemistry, about astronomy. He talked slowly, softly, convincingly.
"It's beyond all conception," he pronounced in an imploring voice,
screwing up his eyes, sighing languidly, and smiling as graciously as a
king, and it was evident that he was very well satisfied with himself,
and never gave a thought to the fact that he was fifty.
"I am rather hungry," said Laptev. "I should like something savoury."
"Well, that can easily be managed."
Not long afterwards Laptev and his brother-in-law were sitting upstairs
in the dining-room having supper. Laptev had a glass of vodka, and then
began drinking wine. Panaurov drank nothing. He never drank, and never
gambled, yet in spite of that he had squandered all his own and his
wife's property, and had accumulated debts. To squander so much in such
a short time, one must have, not passions, but a special talent.
Panaurov liked dainty fare, liked a handsome dinner service, liked music
after dinner, speeches, bowing footmen, to whom he would carelessly
fling tips of ten, even twenty-five roubles. He always took part in all
lotteries and subscriptions, sent bouquets to ladies of his acquaintance
on their birthdays, bought cups, stands for glasses, studs, ties,
walking-sticks, scents, cigarette-holders, pipes, lap-dogs, parrots,
Japanese bric-à-brac, antiques; he had silk nightshirts, and a bedstead
made of ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl. His dressing-gown was a
genuine Bokhara, and everything was to correspond; and on all this there
went every day, as he himself expressed, "a deluge" of money.
At supper he kept sighing and shaking his head.
"Yes, everything on this earth has an end," he said softly, screwing up
his dark eyes. "You will fall in love and suffer. You will fall out of
love; you'll be deceived, for there is no woman who will not deceive;
you will suffer, will be brought to despair, and will be faithless too.
But the time will come when all this will be a memory, and when you will
reason about it coldly and look upon it as utterly trivial. . . ."
Laptev, tired, a little drunk, looked at his handsome head, his clipped
black beard, and seemed to understand why women so loved this pampered,
conceited, and physically handsome creature.
After supper Panaurov did not stay in the house, but went off to his
other lodgings. Laptev went out to see him on his way. Panaurov was the
only man in the town who wore a top-hat, and his elegant, dandified
figure, his top-hat and tan gloves, beside the grey fences, the pitiful
little houses, with their three windows and the thickets of nettles,
always made a strange and mournful impression.
After saying good-bye to him Laptev returned home without hurrying. The
moon was shining brightly; one could distinguish every straw on the
ground, and Laptev felt as though the moonlight were caressing his bare
head, as though some one were passing a feather over his hair.
"I love!" he pronounced aloud, and he had a sudden longing to run to
overtake Panaurov, to embrace him, to forgive him, to make him a present
of a lot of money, and then to run off into the open country, into a
wood, to run on and on without looking back.
At home he saw lying on the chair the parasol Yulia Sergeyevna had
forgotten; he snatched it up and kissed it greedily. The parasol was a
silk one, no longer new, tied round with old elastic. The handle was a
cheap one, of white bone. Laptev opened it over him, and he felt as
though there were the fragrance of happiness about him.
He settled himself more comfortably in his chair, and still keeping hold
of the parasol, began writing to Moscow to one of his friends:
"DEAR PRECIOUS KOSTYA,
"Here is news for you: I'm in love again! I say _again_, because six
years ago I fell in love with a Moscow actress, though I didn't even
succeed in making her acquaintance, and for the last year and a half I
have been living with a certain person you know--a woman neither young
nor good-looking. Ah, my dear boy, how unlucky I am in love. I've never
had any success with women, and if I say _again_ it's simply because
it's rather sad and mortifying to acknowledge even to myself that my
youth has passed entirely without love, and that I'm in love in a real
sense now for the first time in my life, at thirty-four. Let it stand
that I love _again_.
"If only you knew what a girl she was! She couldn't be called a beauty--
she has a broad face, she is very thin, but what a wonderful expression
of goodness she has when she smiles! When she speaks, her voice is as
clear as a bell. She never carries on a conversation with me--I don't
know her; but when I'm beside her I feel she's a striking, exceptional
creature, full of intelligence and lofty aspirations. She is religious,
and you cannot imagine how deeply this touches me and exalts her in my
eyes. On that point I am ready to argue with you endlessly. You may be
right, to your thinking; but, still, I love to see her praying in
church. She is a provincial, but she was educated in Moscow. She loves
our Moscow; she dresses in the Moscow style, and I love her for that--
love her, love her . . . . I see you frowning and getting up to read me
a long lecture on what love is, and what sort of woman one can love, and
what sort one cannot, and so on, and so on. But, dear Kostya, before I
was in love I, too, knew quite well what love was.
"My sister thanks you for your message. She often recalls how she used
to take Kostya Kotchevoy to the preparatory class, and never speaks of
you except as _poor Kostya_, as she still thinks of you as the little
orphan boy she remembers. And so, poor orphan, I'm in love. While it's a
secret, don't say anything to a 'certain person.' I think it will all
come right of itself, or, as the footman says in Tolstoy, will 'come
round.'"
When he had finished his letter Laptev went to bed. He was so tired that
he couldn't keep his eyes open, but for some reason he could not get to
sleep; the noise in the street seemed to prevent him. The cattle were
driven by to the blowing of a horn, and soon afterwards the bells began
ringing for early mass. At one minute a cart drove by creaking; at the