Short Stories by Chekhov
He went down to the river. The General's bath-house and the bath-sheets
on the rail of the little bridge showed white before him. . . . He went
on to the bridge, stood a little, and, quite unnecessarily, touched the
sheets. They felt rough and cold. He looked down at the water. . . . The
river ran rapidly and with a faintly audible gurgle round the piles of
the bath-house. The red moon was reflected near the left bank; little
ripples ran over the reflection, stretching it out, breaking it into
bits, and seemed trying to carry it away.
"How stupid, how stupid!" thought Ryabovitch, looking at the running
water. "How unintelligent it all is!"
Now that he expected nothing, the incident of the kiss, his impatience,
his vague hopes and disappointment, presented themselves in a clear
light. It no longer seemed to him strange that he had not seen the
General's messenger, and that he would never see the girl who had
accidentally kissed him instead of some one else; on the contrary, it
would have been strange if he had seen her. . . .
The water was running, he knew not where or why, just as it did in May.
In May it had flowed into the great river, from the great river into the
sea; then it had risen in vapour, turned into rain, and perhaps the very
same water was running now before Ryabovitch's eyes again. . . . What
for? Why?
And the whole world, the whole of life, seemed to Ryabovitch an
unintelligible, aimless jest. . . . And turning his eyes from the water
and looking at the sky, he remembered again how fate in the person of an
unknown woman had by chance caressed him, he remembered his summer
dreams and fancies, and his life struck him as extraordinarily meagre,
poverty-stricken, and colourless. . . .
When he went back to his hut he did not find one of his comrades. The
orderly informed him that they had all gone to "General von Rabbek's,
who had sent a messenger on horseback to invite them. . . ."
For an instant there was a flash of joy in Ryabovitch's heart, but he
quenched it at once, got into bed, and in his wrath with his fate, as
though to spite it, did not go to the General's.
'ANNA ON THE NECK' I
AFTER the wedding they had not even light refreshments; the happy pair
simply drank a glass of champagne, changed into their travelling things,
and drove to the station. Instead of a gay wedding ball and supper,
instead of music and dancing, they went on a journey to pray at a shrine
a hundred and fifty miles away. Many people commended this, saying that
Modest Alexeitch was a man high up in the service and no longer young,
and that a noisy wedding might not have seemed quite suitable; and music
is apt to sound dreary when a government official of fifty-two marries a
girl who is only just eighteen. People said, too, that Modest Alexeitch,
being a man of principle, had arranged this visit to the monastery
expressly in order to make his young bride realize that even in marriage
he put religion and morality above everything.
The happy pair were seen off at the station. The crowd of relations and
colleagues in the service stood, with glasses in their hands, waiting
for the train to start to shout "Hurrah!" and the bride's father, Pyotr
Leontyitch, wearing a top-hat and the uniform of a teacher, already
drunk and very pale, kept craning towards the window, glass in hand and
saying in an imploring voice:
"Anyuta! Anya, Anya! one word!"
Anna bent out of the window to him, and he whispered something to her,
enveloping her in a stale smell of alcohol, blew into her ear --she could
make out nothing--and made the sign of the cross over her face, her
bosom, and her hands; meanwhile he was breathing in gasps and tears were
shining in his eyes. And the schoolboys, Anna's brothers, Petya and
Andrusha, pulled at his coat from behind, whispering in confusion:
"Father, hush! . . . Father, that's enough. . . ."
When the train started, Anna saw her father run a little way after the
train, staggering and spilling his wine, and what a kind, guilty,
pitiful face he had:
"Hurra--ah!" he shouted.
The happy pair were left alone. Modest Alexeitch looked about the
compartment, arranged their things on the shelves, and sat down,
smiling, opposite his young wife. He was an official of medium height,
rather stout and puffy, who looked exceedingly well nourished, with long
whiskers and no moustache. His clean-shaven, round, sharply defined chin
looked like the heel of a foot. The most characteristic point in his
face was the absence of moustache, the bare, freshly shaven place, which
gradually passed into the fat cheeks, quivering like jelly. His
deportment was dignified, his movements were deliberate, his manner was
soft.
"I cannot help remembering now one circumstance," he said, smiling.
"When, five years ago, Kosorotov received the order of St. Anna of the
second grade, and went to thank His Excellency, His Excellency expressed
himself as follows: 'So now you have three Annas: one in your buttonhole
and two on your neck.' And it must be explained that at that time
Kosorotov's wife, a quarrelsome and frivolous person, had just returned
to him, and that her name was Anna. I trust that when I receive the Anna
of the second grade His Excellency will not have occasion to say the
same thing to me."
He smiled with his little eyes. And she, too, smiled, troubled at the
thought that at any moment this man might kiss her with his thick damp
lips, and that she had no right to prevent his doing so. The soft
movements of his fat person frightened her; she felt both fear and
disgust. He got up, without haste took off the order from his neck, took
off his coat and waistcoat, and put on his dressing-gown.
"That's better," he said, sitting down beside Anna.
Anna remembered what agony the wedding had been, when it had seemed to
her that the priest, and the guests, and every one in church had been
looking at her sorrowfully and asking why, why was she, such a sweet,
nice girl, marrying such an elderly, uninteresting gentleman. Only that
morning she was delighted that everything had been satisfactorily
arranged, but at the time of the wedding, and now in the railway
carriage, she felt cheated, guilty, and ridiculous. Here she had married
a rich man and yet she had no money, her wedding-dress had been bought
on credit, and when her father and brothers had been saying good-bye,
she could see from their faces that they had not a farthing. Would they
have any supper that day? And tomorrow? And for some reason it seemed to
her that her father and the boys were sitting tonight hungry without
her, and feeling the same misery as they had the day after their
mother's funeral.
"Oh, how unhappy I am!" she thought. "Why am I so unhappy?"
With the awkwardness of a man with settled habits, unaccustomed to deal
with women, Modest Alexeitch touched her on the waist and patted her on
the shoulder, while she went on thinking about money, about her mother
and her mother's death. When her mother died, her father, Pyotr
Leontyitch, a teacher of drawing and writing in the high school, had
taken to drink, impoverishment had followed, the boys had not had boots
or goloshes, their father had been hauled up before the magistrate, the
warrant officer had come and made an inventory of the furniture. . . .
What a disgrace! Anna had had to look after her drunken father, darn her
brothers' stockings, go to market, and when she was complimented on her
youth, her beauty, and her elegant manners, it seemed to her that every
one was looking at her cheap hat and the holes in her boots that were
inked over. And at night there had been tears and a haunting dread that
her father would soon, very soon, be dismissed from the school for his
weakness, and that he would not survive it, but would die, too, like
their mother. But ladies of their acquaintance had taken the matter in
hand and looked about for a good match for Anna. This Modest Alexevitch,
who was neither young nor good-looking but had money, was soon found. He
had a hundred thousand in the bank and the family estate, which he had
let on lease. He was a man of principle and stood well with His
Excellency; it would be nothing to him, so they told Anna, to get a note
from His Excellency to the directors of the high school, or even to the
Education Commissioner, to prevent Pyotr Leontyitch from being
dismissed.
While she was recalling these details, she suddenly heard strains of
music which floated in at the window, together with the sound of voices.
The train was stopping at a station. In the crowd beyond the platform an
accordion and a cheap squeaky fiddle were being briskly played, and the
sound of a military band came from beyond the villas and the tall
birches and poplars that lay bathed in the moonlight; there must have
been a dance in the place. Summer visitors and townspeople, who used to
come out here by train in fine weather for a breath of fresh air, were
parading up and down on the platform. Among them was the wealthy owner
of all the summer villas--a tall, stout, dark man called Artynov. He had
prominent eyes and looked like an Armenian. He wore a strange costume;
his shirt was unbuttoned, showing his chest; he wore high boots with
spurs, and a black cloak hung from his shoulders and dragged on the
ground like a train. Two boar-hounds followed him with their sharp noses
to the ground.
Tears were still shining in Anna's eyes, but she was not thinking now of
her mother, nor of money, nor of her marriage; but shaking hands with
schoolboys and officers she knew, she laughed gaily and said quickly:
"How do you do? How are you?"
She went out on to the platform between the carriages into the
moonlight, and stood so that they could all see her in her new splendid
dress and hat.
"Why are we stopping here?" she asked.
"This is a junction. They are waiting for the mail train to pass."
Seeing that Artynov was looking at her, she screwed up her eyes
coquettishly and began talking aloud in French; and because her voice
sounded so pleasant, and because she heard music and the moon was
reflected in the pond, and because Artynov, the notorious Don Juan and
spoiled child of fortune, was looking at her eagerly and with curiosity,
and because every one was in good spirits--she suddenly felt joyful, and
when the train started and the officers of her acquaintance saluted her,
she was humming the polka the strains of which reached her from the
military band playing beyond the trees; and she returned to her
compartment feeling as though it had been proved to her at the station
that she would certainly be happy in spite of everything.
The happy pair spent two days at the monastery, then went back to town.
They lived in a rent-free flat. When Modest Alexevitch had gone to the
office, Anna played the piano, or shed tears of depression, or lay down
on a couch and read novels or looked through fashion papers. At dinner
Modest Alexevitch ate a great deal and talked about politics, about
appointments, transfers, and promotions in the service, about the
necessity of hard work, and said that, family life not being a pleasure
but a duty, if you took care of the kopecks the roubles would take care
of themselves, and that he put religion and morality before everything
else in the world. And holding his knife in his fist as though it were a
sword, he would say:
"Every one ought to have his duties!"
And Anna listened to him, was frightened, and could not eat, and she
usually got up from the table hungry. After dinner her husband lay down
for a nap and snored loudly, while Anna went to see her own people. Her
father and the boys looked at her in a peculiar way, as though just
before she came in they had been blaming her for having married for