Short Stories by Chekhov
staying at the Dresden. He came to the Laptevs' almost every day to ask
for money. Kish had finished his studies at last, and while waiting for
Laptev to find him a job, used to spend whole days at a time with them,
telling them long, tedious stories. All this was irritating and
exhausting, and made daily life unpleasant.
Pyotr came into the study, and announced an unknown lady. On the card he
brought in was the name "Josephina Iosefovna Milan."
Yulia Sergeyevna got up languidly and went out limping slightly, as her
foot had gone to sleep. In the doorway appeared a pale, thin lady with
dark eyebrows, dressed altogether in black. She clasped her hands on her
bosom and said supplicatingly:
"M. Laptev, save my children!"
The jingle of her bracelets sounded familiar to him, and he knew the
face with patches of powder on it; he recognised her as the lady with
whom he had once so inappropriately dined before his marriage. It was
Panaurov's second wife.
"Save my children," she repeated, and her face suddenly quivered and
looked old and pitiful. "You alone can save us, and I have spent my last
penny coming to Moscow to see you! My children are starving!"
She made a motion as though she were going to fall on her knees. Laptev
was alarmed, and clutched her by the arm.
"Sit down, sit down . . ." he muttered, making her sit down. "I beg you
to be seated."
"We have no money to buy bread," she said. "Grigory Nikolaevitch is
going away to a new post, but he will not take the children and me with
him, and the money which you so generously send us he spends only on
himself. What are we to do? What? My poor, unhappy children!"
"Calm yourself, I beg. I will give orders that that money shall be made
payable to you."
She began sobbing, and then grew calmer, and he noticed that the tears
had made little pathways through the powder on her cheeks, and that she
was growing a moustache.
"You are infinitely generous, M. Laptev. But be our guardian angel, our
good fairy, persuade Grigory Nikolaevitch not to abandon me, but to take
me with him. You know I love him--I love him insanely; he's the comfort
of my life."
Laptev gave her a hundred roubles, and promised to talk to Panaurov, and
saw her out to the hall in trepidation the whole time, for fear she
should break into sobs or fall on her knees.
After her, Kish made his appearance. Then Kostya came in with his
photographic apparatus. Of late he had been attracted by photography and
took photographs of every one in the house several times a day. This new
pursuit caused him many disappointments, and he had actually grown
thinner.
Before evening tea Fyodor arrived. Sitting in a corner in the study, he
opened a book and stared for a long time at a page, obviously not
reading. Then he spent a long time drinking tea; his face turned red. In
his presence Laptev felt a load on his heart; even his silence was
irksome to him.
"Russia may be congratulated on the appearance of a new author," said
Fyodor. "Joking apart, though, brother, I have turned out a little
article--the firstfruits of my pen, so to say--and I've brought it to
show you. Read it, dear boy, and tell me your opinion --but sincerely."
He took a manuscript out of his pocket and gave it to his brother. The
article was called "The Russian Soul"; it was written tediously, in the
colourless style in which people with no talent, but full of secret
vanity, usually write. The leading idea of it was that the intellectual
man has the right to disbelieve in the supernatural, but it is his duty
to conceal his lack of faith, that he may not be a stumbling-block and
shake the faith of others. Without faith there is no idealism, and
idealism is destined to save Europe and guide humanity into the true
path.
"But you don't say what Europe has to be saved from," said Laptev.
"That's intelligible of itself."
"Nothing is intelligible," said Laptev, and he walked about the room in
agitation. "It's not intelligible to me why you wrote it. But that's
your business."
"I want to publish it in pamphlet form."
"That's your affair."
They were silent for a minute. Fyodor sighed and said:
"It's an immense regret to me, dear brother, that we think differently.
Oh, Alyosha, Alyosha, my darling brother! You and I are true Russians,
true believers, men of broad nature; all of these German and Jewish
crochets are not for us. You and I are not wretched upstarts, you know,
but representatives of a distinguished merchant family."
"What do you mean by a distinguished family?" said Laptev, restraining
his irritation. "A distinguished family! The landowners beat our
grandfather and every low little government clerk punched him in the
face. Our grandfather thrashed our father, and our father thrashed us.
What has your distinguished family done for us? What sort of nerves,
what sort of blood, have we inherited? For nearly three years you've
been arguing like an ignorant deacon, and talking all sorts of nonsense,
and now you've written--this slavish drivel here! While I, while I! Look
at me. . . . No elasticity, no boldness, no strength of will; I tremble
over every step I take as though I should be flogged for it. I am timid
before nonentities, idiots, brutes, who are immeasurably my inferiors
mentally and morally; I am afraid of porters, doorkeepers, policemen,
gendarmes. I am afraid of every one, because I was born of a mother who
was terrified, and because from a child I was beaten and frightened! . .
. You and I will do well to have no children. Oh, God, grant that this
distinguished merchant family may die with us!"
Yulia Sergeyevna came into the study and sat down at the table.
"Are you arguing about something here?" she asked. "Am I interrupting?"
"No, little sister," answered Fyodor. "Our discussion was of principles.
Here, you are abusing the family," he added, turning to his brother.
"That family has created a business worth a million, though. That stands
for something, anyway!"
"A great distinction--a business worth a million! A man with no
particular brains, without abilities, by chance becomes a trader, and
then when he has grown rich he goes on trading from day to day, with no
sort of system, with no aim, without having any particular greed for
money. He trades mechanically, and money comes to him of itself, without
his going to meet it. He sits all his life at his work, likes it only
because he can domineer over his clerks and get the better of his
customers. He's a churchwarden because he can domineer over the
choristers and keep them under his thumb; he's the patron of a school
because he likes to feel the teacher is his subordinate and enjoys
lording it over him. The merchant does not love trading, he loves
dominating, and your warehouse is not so much a commercial establishment
as a torture chamber! And for a business like yours, you want clerks who
have been deprived of individual character and personal life--and you
make them such by forcing them in childhood to lick the dust for a crust
of bread, and you've trained them from childhood to believe that you are
their benefactors. No fear of your taking a university man into your
warehouse!"
"University men are not suitable for our business."
"That's not true," cried Laptev. "It's a lie!"
"Excuse me, it seems to me you spit into the well from which you drink
yourself," said Fyodor, and he got up. "Our business is hateful to you,
yet you make use of the income from it."
"Aha! We've spoken our minds," said Laptev, and he laughed, looking
angrily at his brother. "Yes, if I didn't belong to your distinguished
family--if I had an ounce of will and courage, I should long ago have
flung away that income, and have gone to work for my living. But in your
warehouse you've destroyed all character in me from a child! I'm your
product."
Fyodor looked at the clock and began hurriedly saying good-bye. He
kissed Yulia's hand and went out, but instead of going into the hall,
walked into the drawing-room, then into the bedroom.
"I've forgotten how the rooms go," he said in extreme confusion. "It's a
strange house. Isn't it a strange house!"
He seemed utterly overcome as he put on his coat, and there was a look
of pain on his face. Laptev felt no more anger; he was frightened, and
at the same time felt sorry for Fyodor, and the warm, true love for his
brother, which seemed to have died down in his heart during those three
years, awoke, and he felt an intense desire to express that love.
"Come to dinner with us to-morrow, Fyodor," he said, and stroked him on
the shoulder. "Will you come?"
"Yes, yes; but give me some water."
Laptev ran himself to the dining-room to take the first thing he could
get from the sideboard. This was a tall beer-jug. He poured water into
it and brought it to his brother. Fyodor began drinking, but bit a piece
out of the jug; they heard a crunch, and then sobs. The water ran over
his fur coat and his jacket, and Laptev, who had never seen men cry,
stood in confusion and dismay, not knowing what to do. He looked on
helplessly while Yulia and the servant took off Fyodor's coat and helped
him back again into the room, and went with him, feeling guilty.
Yulia made Fyodor lie down on the sofa and knelt beside him.
"It's nothing," she said, trying to comfort him. "It's your nerves. . .
."
"I'm so miserable, my dear!" he said. "I am so unhappy, unhappy . . .
but all the time I've been hiding it, I've been hiding it!"
He put his arm round her neck and whispered in her ear:
"Every night I see my sister Nina. She comes and sits in the chair near
my bed. . . ."
When, an hour later, he put on his fur coat in the hall, he was smiling
again and ashamed to face the servant. Laptev went with him to
Pyatnitsky Street.
"Come and have dinner with us to-morrow," he said on the way, holding
him by the arm, "and at Easter we'll go abroad together. You absolutely
must have a change, or you'll be getting quite morbid."
When he got home Laptev found his wife in a state of great nervous
agitation. The scene with Fyodor had upset her, and she could not
recover her composure. She wasn't crying but kept tossing on the bed,
clutching with cold fingers at the quilt, at the pillows, at her
husband's hands. Her eyes looked big and frightened.
"Don't go away from me, don't go away," she said to her husband. "Tell
me, Alyosha, why have I left off saying my prayers? What has become of
my faith? Oh, why did you talk of religion before me? You've shaken my
faith, you and your friends. I never pray now."
He put compresses on her forehead, chafed her hands, gave her tea to
drink, while she huddled up to him in terror. . . .
Towards morning she was worn out and fell asleep, while Laptev sat
beside her and held her hand. So that he could get no sleep. The whole
day afterwards he felt shattered and dull, and wandered listlessly about
the rooms without a thought in his head.
XVI
The doctor said that Fyodor's mind was affected. Laptev did not know
what to do in his father's house, while the dark warehouse in which
neither his father nor Fyodor ever appeared now seemed to him like a
sepulchre. When his wife told him that he absolutely must go every day
to the warehouse and also to his father's, he either said nothing, or
began talking irritably of his childhood, saying that it was beyond his
power to forgive his father for his past, that the warehouse and the
house in Pyatnitsky Street were hateful to him, and so on.
One Sunday morning Yulia went herself to Pyatnitsky Street. She found
old Fyodor Stepanovitch in the same big drawing-room in which the
service had been held on her first arrival. Wearing slippers, and
without a cravat, he was sitting motionless in his arm-chair, blinking
with his sightless eyes.