Short Stories by Chekhov
their whips mechanically and shouted from time to time. The cannon
itself was ugly. On the fore part lay sacks of oats covered with canvas,
and the cannon itself was hung all over with kettles, soldiers'
knapsacks, bags, and looked like some small harmless animal surrounded
for some unknown reason by men and horses. To the leeward of it marched
six men, the gunners, swinging their arms. After the cannon there came
again more bombardiers, riders, shaft-horses, and behind them another
cannon, as ugly and unimpressive as the first. After the second followed
a third, a fourth; near the fourth an officer, and so on. There were six
batteries in all in the brigade, and four cannons in each battery. The
procession covered half a mile; it ended in a string of wagons near
which an extremely attractive creature--the ass, Magar, brought by a
battery commander from Turkey--paced pensively with his long-eared head
drooping.
Ryabovitch looked indifferently before and behind, at the backs of heads
and at faces; at any other time he would have been half asleep, but now
he was entirely absorbed in his new agreeable thoughts. At first when
the brigade was setting off on the march he tried to persuade himself
that the incident of the kiss could only be interesting as a mysterious
little adventure, that it was in reality trivial, and to think of it
seriously, to say the least of it, was stupid; but now he bade farewell
to logic and gave himself up to dreams. . . . At one moment he imagined
himself in Von Rabbek's drawing-room beside a girl who was like the
young lady in lilac and the fair girl in black; then he would close his
eyes and see himself with another, entirely unknown girl, whose features
were very vague. In his imagination he talked, caressed her, leaned on
her shoulder, pictured war, separation, then meeting again, supper with
his wife, children. . . .
"Brakes on!" the word of command rang out every time they went downhill.
He, too, shouted "Brakes on!" and was afraid this shout would disturb
his reverie and bring him back to reality. . . .
As they passed by some landowner's estate Ryabovitch looked over the
fence into the garden. A long avenue, straight as a ruler, strewn with
yellow sand and bordered with young birch-trees, met his eyes. . . .
With the eagerness of a man given up to dreaming, he pictured to himself
little feminine feet tripping along yellow sand, and quite unexpectedly
had a clear vision in his imagination of the girl who had kissed him and
whom he had succeeded in picturing to himself the evening before at
supper. This image remained in his brain and did not desert him again.
At midday there was a shout in the rear near the string of wagons:
"Easy! Eyes to the left! Officers!"
The general of the brigade drove by in a carriage with a pair of white
horses. He stopped near the second battery, and shouted something which
no one understood. Several officers, among them Ryabovitch, galloped up
to them.
"Well?" asked the general, blinking his red eyes. "Are there any sick?"
Receiving an answer, the general, a little skinny man, chewed, thought
for a moment and said, addressing one of the officers:
"One of your drivers of the third cannon has taken off his leg-guard and
hung it on the fore part of the cannon, the rascal. Reprimand him."
He raised his eyes to Ryabovitch and went on:
"It seems to me your front strap is too long."
Making a few other tedious remarks, the general looked at Lobytko and
grinned.
"You look very melancholy today, Lieutenant Lobytko," he said. "Are you
pining for Madame Lopuhov? Eh? Gentlemen, he is pining for Madame
Lopuhov."
The lady in question was a very stout and tall person who had long
passed her fortieth year. The general, who had a predilection for solid
ladies, whatever their ages, suspected a similar taste in his officers.
The officers smiled respectfully. The general, delighted at having said
something very amusing and biting, laughed loudly, touched his
coachman's back, and saluted. The carriage rolled on. . . .
"All I am dreaming about now which seems to me so impossible and
unearthly is really quite an ordinary thing," thought Ryabovitch,
looking at the clouds of dust racing after the general's carriage. "It's
all very ordinary, and every one goes through it. . . . That general,
for instance, has once been in love; now he is married and has children.
Captain Vahter, too, is married and beloved, though the nape of his neck
is very red and ugly and he has no waist. . . . Salrnanov is coarse and
very Tatar, but he has had a love affair that has ended in marriage. . .
. I am the same as every one else, and I, too, shall have the same
experience as every one else, sooner or later. . . ."
And the thought that he was an ordinary person, and that his life was
ordinary, delighted him and gave him courage. He pictured her and his
happiness as he pleased, and put no rein on his imagination.
When the brigade reached their halting-place in the evening, and the
officers were resting in their tents, Ryabovitch, Merzlyakov, and
Lobytko were sitting round a box having supper. Merzlyakov ate without
haste, and, as he munched deliberately, read the "Vyestnik Evropi,"
which he held on his knees. Lobytko talked incessantly and kept filling
up his glass with beer, and Ryabovitch, whose head was confused from
dreaming all day long, drank and said nothing. After three glasses he
got a little drunk, felt weak, and had an irresistible desire to impart
his new sensations to his comrades.
"A strange thing happened to me at those Von Rabbeks'," he began, trying
to put an indifferent and ironical tone into his voice. "You know I went
into the billiard-room. . . ."
He began describing very minutely the incident of the kiss, and a moment
later relapsed into silence. . . . In the course of that moment he had
told everything, and it surprised him dreadfully to find how short a
time it took him to tell it. He had imagined that he could have been
telling the story of the kiss till next morning. Listening to him,
Lobytko, who was a great liar and consequently believed no one, looked
at him sceptically and laughed. Merzlyakov twitched his eyebrows and,
without removing his eyes from the "Vyestnik Evropi," said:
"That's an odd thing! How strange! . . . throws herself on a man's neck,
without addressing him by name. .. . She must be some sort of hysterical
neurotic."
"Yes, she must," Ryabovitch agreed.
"A similar thing once happened to me," said Lobytko, assuming a scared
expression. "I was going last year to Kovno. . . . I took a second-class
ticket. The train was crammed, and it was impossible to sleep. I gave
the guard half a rouble; he took my luggage and led me to another
compartment. . . . I lay down and covered myself with a rug. . . . It
was dark, you understand. Suddenly I felt some one touch me on the
shoulder and breathe in my face. I made a movement with my hand and felt
somebody's elbow. . . . I opened my eyes and only imagine--a woman. Black
eyes, lips red as a prime salmon, nostrils breathing passionately--a
bosom like a buffer. . . ."
"Excuse me," Merzlyakov interrupted calmly, "I understand about the
bosom, but how could you see the lips if it was dark?"
Lobytko began trying to put himself right and laughing at Merzlyakov's
unimaginativeness. It made Ryabovitch wince. He walked away from the
box, got into bed, and vowed never to confide again.
Camp life began. . . . The days flowed by, one very much like another.
All those days Ryabovitch felt, thought, and behaved as though he were
in love. Every morning when his orderly handed him water to wash with,
and he sluiced his head with cold water, he thought there was something
warm and delightful in his life.
In the evenings when his comrades began talking of love and women, he
would listen, and draw up closer; and he wore the expression of a
soldier when he hears the description of a battle in which he has taken
part. And on the evenings when the officers, out on the spree with the
setter--Lobytko--at their head, made Don Juan excursions to the "suburb,"
and Ryabovitch took part in such excursions, he always was sad, felt
profoundly guilty, and inwardly begged her forgiveness. . . . In hours
of leisure or on sleepless nights, when he felt moved to recall his
childhood, his father and mother-- everything near and dear, in fact, he
invariably thought of Myestetchki, the strange horse, Von Rabbek, his
wife who was like the Empress Eugénie, the dark room, the crack of
light at the door. . . .
On the thirty-first of August he went back from the camp, not with the
whole brigade, but with only two batteries of it. He was dreaming and
excited all the way, as though he were going back to his native place.
He had an intense longing to see again the strange horse, the church,
the insincere family of the Von Rabbeks, the dark room. The "inner
voice," which so often deceives lovers, whispered to him for some reason
that he would be sure to see her . . . and he was tortured by the
questions, How he should meet her? What he would talk to her about?
Whether she had forgotten the kiss? If the worst came to the worst, he
thought, even if he did not meet her, it would be a pleasure to him
merely to go through the dark room and recall the past. . . .
Towards evening there appeared on the horizon the familiar church and
white granaries. Ryabovitch's heart beat. . . . He did not hear the
officer who was riding beside him and saying something to him, he forgot
everything, and looked eagerly at the river shining in the distance, at
the roof of the house, at the dovecote round which the pigeons were
circling in the light of the setting sun.
When they reached the church and were listening to the billeting orders,
he expected every second that a man on horseback would come round the
church enclosure and invite the officers to tea, but . . . the billeting
orders were read, the officers were in haste to go on to the village,
and the man on horseback did not appear.
"Von Rabbek will hear at once from the peasants that we have come and
will send for us," thought Ryabovitch, as he went into the hut, unable
to understand why a comrade was lighting a candle and why the orderlies
were hurriedly setting samovars. . . .
A painful uneasiness took possession of him. He lay down, then got up
and looked out of the window to see whether the messenger were coming.
But there was no sign of him.
He lay down again, but half an hour later he got up, and, unable to
restrain his uneasiness, went into the street and strode towards the
church. It was dark and deserted in the square near the church . . . .
Three soldiers were standing silent in a row where the road began to go
downhill. Seeing Ryabovitch, they roused themselves and saluted. He
returned the salute and began to go down the familiar path.
On the further side of the river the whole sky was flooded with crimson:
the moon was rising; two peasant women, talking loudly, were picking
cabbage in the kitchen garden; behind the kitchen garden there were some
dark huts. . . . And everything on the near side of the river was just
as it had been in May: the path, the bushes, the willows overhanging the
water . . . but there was no sound of the brave nightingale, and no
scent of poplar and fresh grass.
Reaching the garden, Ryabovitch looked in at the gate. The garden was
dark and still. . . . He could see nothing but the white stems of the
nearest birch-trees and a little bit of the avenue; all the rest melted
together into a dark blur. Ryabovitch looked and listened eagerly, but
after waiting for a quarter of an hour without hearing a sound or
catching a glimpse of a light, he trudged back. . . .