Short Stories by Chekhov
money a tedious, wearisome man she did not love; her rustling skirts,
her bracelets, and her general air of a married lady, offended them and
made them uncomfortable. In her presence they felt a little embarrassed
and did not know what to talk to her about; but yet they still loved her
as before, and were not used to having dinner without her. She sat down
with them to cabbage soup, porridge, and fried potatoes, smelling of
mutton dripping. Pyotr Leontyitch filled his glass from the decanter
with a trembling hand and drank it off hurriedly, greedily, with
repulsion, then poured out a second glass and then a third. Petya and
Andrusha, thin, pale boys with big eyes, would take the decanter and say
desperately:
"You mustn't, father. . . . Enough, father. . . ."
And Anna, too, was troubled and entreated him to drink no more; and he
would suddenly fly into a rage and beat the table with his fists:
"I won't allow any one to dictate to me!" he would shout. "Wretched
boys! wretched girl! I'll turn you all out!"
But there was a note of weakness, of good-nature in his voice, and no
one was afraid of him. After dinner he usually dressed in his best.
Pale, with a cut on his chin from shaving, craning his thin neck, he
would stand for half an hour before the glass, prinking, combing his
hair, twisting his black moustache, sprinkling himself with scent, tying
his cravat in a bow; then he would put on his gloves and his top-hat,
and go off to give his private lessons. Or if it was a holiday he would
stay at home and paint, or play the harmonium, which wheezed and
growled; he would try to wrest from it pure harmonious sounds and would
sing to it; or would storm at the boys:
"Wretches! Good-for-nothing boys! You have spoiled the instrument!"
In the evening Anna's husband played cards with his colleagues, who
lived under the same roof in the government quarters. The wives of these
gentlemen would come in--ugly, tastelessly dressed women, as coarse as
cooks--and gossip would begin in the flat as tasteless and unattractive
as the ladies themselves. Sometimes Modest Alexevitch would take Anna to
the theatre. In the intervals he would never let her stir a step from
his side, but walked about arm in arm with her through the corridors and
the foyer. When he bowed to some one, he immediately whispered to Anna:
"A civil councillor . . . visits at His Excellency's"; or, "A man of
means . . . has a house of his own." When they passed the buffet Anna
had a great longing for something sweet; she was fond of chocolate and
apple cakes, but she had no money, and she did not like to ask her
husband. He would take a pear, pinch it with his fingers, and ask
uncertainly:
"How much?"
"Twenty-five kopecks!"
"I say!" he would reply, and put it down; but as it was awkward to leave
the buffet without buying anything, he would order some seltzer-water
and drink the whole bottle himself, and tears would come into his eyes.
And Anna hated him at such times.
And suddenly flushing crimson, he would say to her rapidly:
"Bow to that old lady!"
"But I don't know her."
"No matter. That's the wife of the director of the local treasury! Bow,
I tell you," he would grumble insistently. "Your head won't drop off."
Anna bowed and her head certainly did not drop off, but it was
agonizing. She did everything her husband wanted her to, and was furious
with herself for having let him deceive her like the veriest idiot. She
had only married him for his money, and yet she had less money now than
before her marriage. In old days her father would sometimes give her
twenty kopecks, but now she had not a farthing.
To take money by stealth or ask for it, she could not; she was afraid of
her husband, she trembled before him. She felt as though she had been
afraid of him for years. In her childhood the director of the high
school had always seemed the most impressive and terrifying force in the
world, sweeping down like a thunderstorm or a steam-engine ready to
crush her; another similar force of which the whole family talked, and
of which they were for some reason afraid, was His Excellency; then
there were a dozen others, less formidable, and among them the teachers
at the high school, with shaven upper lips, stern, implacable; and now
finally, there was Modest Alexeitch, a man of principle, who even
resembled the director in the face. And in Anna's imagination all these
forces blended together into one, and, in the form of a terrible, huge
white bear, menaced the weak and erring such as her father. And she was
afraid to say anything in opposition to her husband, and gave a forced
smile, and tried to make a show of pleasure when she was coarsely
caressed and defiled by embraces that excited her terror. Only once
Pyotr Leontyitch had the temerity to ask for a loan of fifty roubles in
order to pay some very irksome debt, but what an agony it had been!
"Very good; I'll give it to you," said Modest Alexeitch after a moment's
thought; "but I warn you I won't help you again till you give up
drinking. Such a failing is disgraceful in a man in the government
service! I must remind you of the well-known fact that many capable
people have been ruined by that passion, though they might possibly,
with temperance, have risen in time to a very high position."
And long-winded phrases followed: "inasmuch as . . .", "following upon
which proposition . . .", "in view of the aforesaid contention . . .";
and Pyotr Leontyitch was in agonies of humiliation and felt an intense
craving for alcohol.
And when the boys came to visit Anna, generally in broken boots and
threadbare trousers, they, too, had to listen to sermons.
"Every man ought to have his duties!" Modest Alexeitch would say to
them.
And he did not give them money. But he did give Anna bracelets, rings,
and brooches, saying that these things would come in useful for a rainy
day. And he often unlocked her drawer and made an inspection to see
whether they were all safe. II
Meanwhile winter came on. Long before Christmas there was an
announcement in the local papers that the usual winter ball would take
place on the twenty-ninth of December in the Hall of Nobility. Every
evening after cards Modest Alexeitch was excitedly whispering with his
colleagues' wives and glancing at Anna, and then paced up and down the
room for a long while, thinking. At last, late one evening, he stood
still, facing Anna, and said:
"You ought to get yourself a ball dress. Do you understand? Only please
consult Marya Grigoryevna and Natalya Kuzminishna."
And he gave her a hundred roubles. She took the money, but she did not
consult any one when she ordered the ball dress; she spoke to no one but
her father, and tried to imagine how her mother would have dressed for a
ball. Her mother had always dressed in the latest fashion and had always
taken trouble over Anna, dressing her elegantly like a doll, and had
taught her to speak French and dance the mazurka superbly (she had been
a governess for five years before her marriage). Like her mother, Anna
could make a new dress out of an old one, clean gloves with benzine,
hire jewels; and, like her mother, she knew how to screw up her eyes,
lisp, assume graceful attitudes, fly into raptures when necessary, and
throw a mournful and enigmatic look into her eyes. And from her father
she had inherited the dark colour of her hair and eyes, her highly-
strung nerves, and the habit of always making herself look her best.
When, half an hour before setting off for the ball, Modest Alexeitch
went into her room without his coat on, to put his order round his neck
before her pier-glass, dazzled by her beauty and the splendour of her
fresh, ethereal dress, he combed his whiskers complacently and said:
"So that's what my wife can look like . . . so that's what you can look
like! Anyuta!" he went on, dropping into a tone of solemnity, "I have
made your fortune, and now I beg you to do something for mine. I beg you
to get introduced to the wife of His Excellency! For God's sake, do!
Through her I may get the post of senior reporting clerk!"
They went to the ball. They reached the Hall of Nobility, the entrance
with the hall porter. They came to the vestibule with the hat-stands,
the fur coats; footmen scurrying about, and ladies with low necks
putting up their fans to screen themselves from the draughts. There was
a smell of gas and of soldiers. When Anna, walking upstairs on her
husband's arm, heard the music and saw herself full length in the
looking-glass in the full glow of the lights, there was a rush of joy in
her heart, and she felt the same presentiment of happiness as in the
moonlight at the station. She walked in proudly, confidently, for the
first time feeling herself not a girl but a lady, and unconsciously
imitating her mother in her walk and in her manner. And for the first
time in her life she felt rich and free. Even her husband's presence did
not oppress her, for as she crossed the threshold of the hall she had
guessed instinctively that the proximity of an old husband did not
detract from her in the least, but, on the contrary, gave her that shade
of piquant mystery that is so attractive to men. The orchestra was
already playing and the dances had begun. After their flat Anna was
overwhelmed by the lights, the bright colours, the music, the noise, and
looking round the room, thought, "Oh, how lovely!" She at once
distinguished in the crowd all her acquaintances, every one she had met
before at parties or on picnics--all the officers, the teachers, the
lawyers, the officials, the landowners, His Excellency, Artynov, and the
ladies of the highest standing, dressed up and very décollettées,
handsome and ugly, who had already taken up their positions in the
stalls and pavilions of the charity bazaar, to begin selling things for
the benefit of the poor. A huge officer in epaulettes--she had been
introduced to him in Staro-Kievsky Street when she was a schoolgirl, but
now she could not remember his name--seemed to spring from out of the
ground, begging her for a waltz, and she flew away from her husband,
feeling as though she were floating away in a sailing-boat in a violent
storm, while her husband was left far away on the shore. She danced
passionately, with fervour, a waltz, then a polka and a quadrille, being
snatched by one partner as soon as she was left by another, dizzy with
music and the noise, mixing Russian with French, lisping, laughing, and
with no thought of her husband or anything else. She excited great
admiration among the men--that was evident, and indeed it could not have
been otherwise; she was breathless with excitement, felt thirsty, and
convulsively clutched her fan. Pyotr Leontyitch, her father, in a
crumpled dress-coat that smelt of benzine, came up to her, offering her
a plate of pink ice.
"You are enchanting this evening," he said, looking at her rapturously,
"and I have never so much regretted that you were in such a hurry to get
married. . . . What was it for? I know you did it for our sake, but . .
." With a shaking hand he drew out a roll of notes and said: "I got the
money for my lessons today, and can pay your husband what I owe him."
She put the plate back into his hand, and was pounced upon by some one
and borne off to a distance. She caught a glimpse over her partner's
shoulder of her father gliding over the floor, putting his arm round a
lady and whirling down the ball-room with her.
"How sweet he is when he is sober!" she thought.
She danced the mazurka with the same huge officer; he moved gravely, as
heavily as a dead carcase in a uniform, twitched his shoulders and his
chest, stamped his feet very languidly--he felt fearfully disinclined to
dance. She fluttered round him, provoking him by her beauty, her bare