Short Stories by Chekhov
"It's in God's hands," sighed Fyodor. "Well, what of your wife? She's a
beauty, no doubt? I love her already. Of course, she is my little sister
now. We'll make much of her between us."
Laptev saw the broad, bent back--so familiar to him--of his father,
Fyodor Stepanovitch. The old man was sitting on a stool near the
counter, talking to a customer.
"Father, God has sent us joy!" cried Fyodor. "Brother has come!"
Fyodor Stepanovitch was a tall man of exceptionally powerful build, so
that, in spite of his wrinkles and eighty years, he still looked a hale
and vigorous man. He spoke in a deep, rich, sonorous voice, that
resounded from his broad chest as from a barrel. He wore no beard, but a
short-clipped military moustache, and smoked cigars. As he was always
too hot, he used all the year round to wear a canvas coat at home and at
the warehouse. He had lately had an operation for cataract. His sight
was bad, and he did nothing in the business but talk to the customers
and have tea and jam with them.
Laptev bent down and kissed his head and then his lips.
"It's a good long time since we saw you, honoured sir," said the old
man--"a good long time. Well, am I to congratulate you on entering the
state of holy matrimony? Very well, then; I congratulate you."
And he put his lips out to be kissed. Laptev bent down and kissed him.
"Well, have you brought your young lady?" the old man asked, and without
waiting for an answer, he said, addressing the customer: "'Herewith I
beg to inform you, father, that I'm going to marry such and such a young
lady.' Yes. But as for asking for his father's counsel or blessing,
that's not in the rules nowadays. Now they go their own way. When I
married I was over forty, but I went on my knees to my father and asked
his advice. Nowadays we've none of that."
The old man was delighted to see his son, but thought it unseemly to
show his affection or make any display of his joy. His voice and his
manner of saying "your young lady" brought back to Laptev the depression
he had always felt in the warehouse. Here every trifling detail reminded
him of the past, when he used to be flogged and put on Lenten fare; he
knew that even now boys were thrashed and punched in the face till their
noses bled, and that when those boys grew up they would beat others. And
before he had been five minutes in the warehouse, he always felt as
though he were being scolded or punched in the face.
Fyodor slapped the customer on the shoulder and said to his brother:
"Here, Alyosha, I must introduce our Tambov benefactor, Grigory
Timofeitch. He might serve as an example for the young men of the day;
he's passed his fiftieth birthday, and he has tiny children."
The clerks laughed, and the customer, a lean old man with a pale face,
laughed too.
"Nature above the normal capacity," observed the head-clerk, who was
standing at the counter close by. "It always comes out when it's there."
The head-clerk--a tall man of fifty, in spectacles, with a dark beard,
and a pencil behind his ear--usually expressed his ideas vaguely in
roundabout hints, while his sly smile betrayed that he attached
particular significance to his words. He liked to obscure his utterances
with bookish words, which he understood in his own way, and many such
words he used in a wrong sense. For instance, the word "except." When he
had expressed some opinion positively and did not want to be
contradicted, he would stretch out his hand and pronounce:
"Except!"
And what was most astonishing, the customers and the other clerks
understood him perfectly. His name was Ivan Vassilitch Potchatkin, and
he came from Kashira. Now, congratulating Laptev, he expressed himself
as follows:
"It's the reward of valour, for the female heart is a strong opponent."
Another important person in the warehouse was a clerk called Makeitchev-
-a stout, solid, fair man with whiskers and a perfectly bald head. He
went up to Laptev and congratulated him respectfully in a low voice:
"I have the honour, sir. . . The Lord has heard your parent's prayer.
Thank God."
Then the other clerks began coming up to congratulate him on his
marriage. They were all fashionably dressed, and looked like perfectly
well-bred, educated men. Since between every two words they put in a
"sir," their congratulations--something like "Best wishes, sir, for
happiness, sir," uttered very rapidly in a low voice--sounded rather
like the hiss of a whip in the air--"Shshsh-s s s s s!" Laptev was soon
bored and longing to go home, but it was awkward to go away. He was
obliged to stay at least two hours at the warehouse to keep up
appearances. He walked away from the counter and began asking Makeitchev
whether things had gone well while he was away, and whether anything new
had turned up, and the clerk answered him respectfully, avoiding his
eyes. A boy with a cropped head, wearing a grey blouse, handed Laptev a
glass of tea without a saucer; not long afterwards another boy, passing
by, stumbled over a box, and almost fell down, and Makeitchev's face
looked suddenly spiteful and ferocious like a wild beast's, and he
shouted at him:
"Keep on your feet!"
The clerks were pleased that their young master was married and had come
back at last; they looked at him with curiosity and friendly feeling,
and each one thought it his duty to say something agreeable when he
passed him. But Laptev was convinced that it was not genuine, and that
they were only flattering him because they were afraid of him. He never
could forget how fifteen years before, a clerk, who was mentally
deranged, had run out into the street with nothing on but his shirt and
shaking his fists at the windows, shouted that he had been ill-treated;
and how, when the poor fellow had recovered, the clerks had jeered at
him for long afterwards, reminding him how he had called his employers
"planters" instead of "exploiters." Altogether the employees at Laptevs'
had a very poor time of it, and this fact was a subject of conversation
for the whole market. The worst of it was that the old man, Fyodor
Stepanovitch, maintained something of an Asiatic despotism in his
attitude to them. Thus, no one knew what wages were paid to the old
man's favourites, Potchatkin and Makeitchev. They received no more than
three thousand a year, together with bonuses, but he made out that he
paid then seven. The bonuses were given to all the clerks every year,
but privately, so that the man who got little was bound from vanity to
say he had got more. Not one boy knew when he would be promoted to be a
clerk; not one of the men knew whether his employer was satisfied with
him or not. Nothing was directly forbidden, and so the clerks never knew
what was allowed, and what was not. They were not forbidden to marry,
but they did not marry for fear of displeasing their employer and losing
their place. They were allowed to have friends and pay visits, but the
gates were shut at nine o'clock, and every morning the old man scanned
them all suspiciously, and tried to detect any smell of vodka about
them:
"Now then, breathe," he would say.
Every clerk was obliged to go to early service, and to stand in church
in such a position that the old man could see them all. The fasts were
strictly observed. On great occasions, such as the birthday of their
employer or of any member of his family, the clerks had to subscribe and
present a cake from Fley's, or an album. The clerks lived three or four
in a room in the lower storey, and in the lodges of the house in
Pyatnitsky Street, and at dinner ate from a common bowl, though there
was a plate set before each of them. If one of the family came into the
room while they were at dinner, they all stood up.
Laptev was conscious that only, perhaps, those among them who had been
corrupted by the old man's training could seriously regard him as their
benefactor; the others must have looked on him as an enemy and a
"planter." Now, after six months' absence, he saw no change for the
better; there was indeed something new which boded nothing good. His
brother Fyodor, who had always been quiet, thoughtful, and extremely
refined, was now running about the warehouse with a pencil behind his
ear making a show of being very busy and businesslike, slapping
customers on the shoulder and shouting "Friends!" to the clerks.
Apparently he had taken up a new role, and Alexey did not recognise him
in the part.
The old man's voice boomed unceasingly. Having nothing to do, he was
laying down the law to a customer, telling him how he should order his
life and his business, always holding himself up as an example. That
boastfulness, that aggressive tone of authority, Laptev had heard ten,
fifteen, twenty years ago. The old man adored himself; from what he said
it always appeared that he had made his wife and all her relations
happy, that he had been munificent to his children, and a benefactor to
his clerks and employés, and that every one in the street and all his
acquaintances remembered him in their prayers. Whatever he did was
always right, and if things went wrong with people it was because they
did not take his advice; without his advice nothing could succeed. In
church he stood in the foremost place, and even made observations to the
priests, if in his opinion they were not conducting the service
properly, and believed that this was pleasing God because God loved him.
At two o'clock every one in the warehouse was hard at work, except the
old man, who still went on booming in his deep voice. To avoid standing
idle, Laptev took some trimmings from a workgirl and let her go; then
listened to a customer, a merchant from Vologda, and told a clerk to
attend to him.
"T. V. A.!" resounded on all sides (prices were denoted by letters in
the warehouse and goods by numbers). "R. I. T.!" As he went away, Laptev
said good-bye to no one but Fyodor.
"I shall come to Pyatnitsky Street with my wife to-morrow," he said;
"but I warn you, if father says a single rude thing to her, I shall not
stay there another minute."
"You're the same as ever," sighed Fyodor. "Marriage has not changed you.
You must be patient with the old man. So till eleven o'clock, then. We
shall expect you impatiently. Come directly after mass, then."
"I don't go to mass."
"That does not matter. The great thing is not to be later than eleven,
so you may be in time to pray to God and to lunch with us. Give my
greetings to my little sister and kiss her hand for me. I have a
presentiment that I shall like her," Fyodor added with perfect
sincerity. "I envy you, brother!" he shouted after him as Alexey went
downstairs.
"And why does he shrink into himself in that shy way as though he
fancied he was naked?" thought Laptev, as he walked along Nikolsky
Street, trying to understand the change that had come over his brother.
"And his language is new, too: 'Brother, dear brother, God has sent us
joy; to pray to God'--just like Iudushka in Shtchedrin."
VI
At eleven o'clock the next day, which was Sunday, he was driving with
his wife along Pyatnitsky Street in a light, one-horse carriage. He was
afraid of his father's doing something outrageous, and was already ill
at ease. After two nights in her husband's house Yulia Sergeyevna
considered her marriage a mistake and a calamity, and if she had had to
live with her husband in any other town but Moscow, it seemed to her
that she could not have endured the horror of it. Moscow entertained
her--she was delighted with the streets, the churches; and if it had
been possible to drive about Moscow in those splendid sledges with
expensive horses, to drive the whole day from morning till night, and
with the swift motion to feel the cold autumn air blowing upon her, she
would perhaps not have felt herself so unhappy.