Short Stories by Chekhov
on the glass bottle. He heard the rattle of wheels-- so there was no snow
now in the street. The lieutenant looked at the ray, at the familiar
furniture, at the door, and the first thing he did was to laugh. His
chest and stomach heaved with delicious, happy, tickling laughter. His
whole body from head to foot was overcome by a sensation of infinite
happiness and joy in life, such as the first man must have felt when he
was created and first saw the world. Klimov felt a passionate desire for
movement, people, talk. His body lay a motionless block; only his hands
stirred, but that he hardly noticed, and his whole attention was
concentrated on trifles. He rejoiced in his breathing, in his laughter,
rejoiced in the existence of the water-bottle, the ceiling, the
sunshine, the tape on the curtains. God's world, even in the narrow
space of his bedroom, seemed beautiful, varied, grand. When the doctor
made his appearance, the lieutenant was thinking what a delicious thing
medicine was, how charming and pleasant the doctor was, and how nice and
interesting people were in general.
"So-o, so, so. . . Excellent, excellent! . . . Now we are well again. .
. . Goo-od, goo-od!" the doctor pattered.
The lieutenant listened and laughed joyously; he remembered the Finn,
the lady with the white teeth, the train, and he longed to smoke, to
eat.
"Doctor," he said, "tell them to give me a crust of rye bread and salt,
and . . . and sardines."
The doctor refused; Pavel did not obey the order, and did not go for the
bread. The lieutenant could not bear this and began crying like a
naughty child.
"Baby!" laughed the doctor. "Mammy, bye-bye!"
Klimov laughed, too, and when the doctor went away he fell into a sound
sleep. He woke up with the same joyfulness and sensation of happiness.
His aunt was sitting near the bed.
"Well, aunt," he said joyfully. "What has been the matter?"
"Spotted typhus."
"Really. But now I am well, quite well! Where is Katya?"
"She is not at home. I suppose she has gone somewhere from her
examination."
The old lady said this and looked at her stocking; her lips began
quivering, she turned away, and suddenly broke into sobs. Forgetting the
doctor's prohibition in her despair, she said:
"Ah, Katya, Katya! Our angel is gone! Is gone!"
She dropped her stocking and bent down to it, and as she did so her cap
fell off her head. Looking at her grey head and understanding nothing,
Klimov was frightened for Katya, and asked:
"Where is she, aunt?"
The old woman, who had forgotten Klimov and was thinking only of her
sorrow, said:
"She caught typhus from you, and is dead. She was buried the day before
yesterday."
This terrible, unexpected news was fully grasped by Klimov's
consciousness; but terrible and startling as it was, it could not
overcome the animal joy that filled the convalescent. He cried and
laughed, and soon began scolding because they would not let him eat.
Only a week later when, leaning on Pavel, he went in his dressing-gown
to the window, looked at the overcast spring sky and listened to the
unpleasant clang of the old iron rails which were being carted by, his
heart ached, he burst into tears, and leaned his forehead against the
window-frame.
"How miserable I am!" he muttered. "My God, how miserable!"
And joy gave way to the boredom of everyday life and the feeling of his
irrevocable loss.
A MISFORTUNE
SOFYA PETROVNA, the wife of Lubyantsev the notary, a handsome young
woman of five-and-twenty, was walking slowly along a track that had been
cleared in the wood, with Ilyin, a lawyer who was spending the summer in
the neighbourhood. It was five o'clock in the evening. Feathery-white
masses of cloud stood overhead; patches of bright blue sky peeped out
between them. The clouds stood motionless, as though they had caught in
the tops of the tall old pine-trees. It was still and sultry.
Farther on, the track was crossed by a low railway embankment on which a
sentinel with a gun was for some reason pacing up and down. Just beyond
the embankment there was a large white church with six domes and a rusty
roof.
"I did not expect to meet you here," said Sofya Petrovna, looking at the
ground and prodding at the last year's leaves with the tip of her
parasol, "and now I am glad we have met. I want to speak to you
seriously and once for all. I beg you, Ivan Mihalovitch, if you really
love and respect me, please make an end of this pursuit of me! You
follow me about like a shadow, you are continually looking at me not in
a nice way, making love to me, writing me strange letters, and . . . and
I don't know where it's all going to end! Why, what can come of it?"
Ilyin said nothing. Sofya Petrovna walked on a few steps and continued:
"And this complete transformation in you all came about in the course of
two or three weeks, after five years' friendship. I don't know you, Ivan
Mihalovitch!"
Sofya Petrovna stole a glance at her companion. Screwing up his eyes, he
was looking intently at the fluffy clouds. His face looked angry, ill-
humoured, and preoccupied, like that of a man in pain forced to listen
to nonsense.
"I wonder you don't see it yourself," Madame Lubyantsev went on,
shrugging her shoulders. "You ought to realize that it's not a very nice
part you are playing. I am married; I love and respect my husband. . . .
I have a daughter . . . . Can you think all that means nothing? Besides,
as an old friend you know my attitude to family life and my views as to
the sanctity of marriage."
Ilyin cleared his throat angrily and heaved a sigh.
"Sanctity of marriage . . ." he muttered. "Oh, Lord!"
"Yes, yes. . . . I love my husband, I respect him; and in any case I
value the peace of my home. I would rather let myself be killed than be
a cause of unhappiness to Andrey and his daughter. . . . And I beg you,
Ivan Mihalovitch, for God's sake, leave me in peace! Let us be as good,
true friends as we used to be, and give up these sighs and groans, which
really don't suit you. It's settled and over! Not a word more about it.
Let us talk of something else."
Sofya Petrovna again stole a glance at Ilyin's face. Ilyin was looking
up; he was pale, and was angrily biting his quivering lips. She could
not understand why he was angry and why he was indignant, but his pallor
touched her.
"Don't be angry; let us be friends," she said affectionately. "Agreed?
Here's my hand."
Ilyin took her plump little hand in both of his, squeezed it, and slowly
raised it to his lips.
"I am not a schoolboy," he muttered. "I am not in the least tempted by
friendship with the woman I love."
"Enough, enough! It's settled and done with. We have reached the seat;
let us sit down."
Sofya Petrovna's soul was filled with a sweet sense of relief: the most
difficult and delicate thing had been said, the painful question was
settled and done with. Now she could breathe freely and look Ilyin
straight in the face. She looked at him, and the egoistic feeling of the
superiority of the woman over the man who loves her, agreeably flattered
her. It pleased her to see this huge, strong man, with his manly, angry
face and his big black beard--clever, cultivated, and, people said,
talented--sit down obediently beside her and bow his head dejectedly. For
two or three minutes they sat without speaking.
"Nothing is settled or done with," began Ilyin. "You repeat copy-book
maxims to me. 'I love and respect my husband . . . the sanctity of
marriage. . . .' I know all that without your help, and I could tell you
more, too. I tell you truthfully and honestly that I consider the way I
am behaving as criminal and immoral. What more can one say than that?
But what's the good of saying what everybody knows? Instead of feeding
nightingales with paltry words, you had much better tell me what I am to
do."
"I've told you already--go away."
"As you know perfectly well, I have gone away five times, and every time
I turned back on the way. I can show you my through tickets --I've kept
them all. I have not will enough to run away from you! I am struggling.
I am struggling horribly; but what the devil am I good for if I have no
backbone, if I am weak, cowardly! I can't struggle with Nature! Do you
understand? I cannot! I run away from here, and she holds on to me and
pulls me back. Contemptible, loathsome weakness!"
Ilyin flushed crimson, got up, and walked up and down by the seat.
"I feel as cross as a dog," he muttered, clenching his fists. "I hate
and despise myself! My God! like some depraved schoolboy, I am making
love to another man's wife, writing idiotic letters, degrading myself .
. . ugh!"
Ilyin clutched at his head, grunted, and sat down. "And then your
insincerity!" he went on bitterly. "If you do dislike my disgusting
behaviour, why have you come here? What drew you here? In my letters I
only ask you for a direct, definite answer--yes or no; but instead of a
direct answer, you contrive every day these 'chance' meetings with me
and regale me with copy-book maxims!"
Madame Lubyantsev was frightened and flushed. She suddenly felt the
awkwardness which a decent woman feels when she is accidentally
discovered undressed.
"You seem to suspect I am playing with you," she muttered. "I have
always given you a direct answer, and . . . only today I've begged you .
. ."
"Ough! as though one begged in such cases! If you were to say straight
out 'Get away,' I should have been gone long ago; but you've never said
that. You've never once given me a direct answer. Strange indecision!
Yes, indeed; either you are playing with me, or else . . ."
Ilyin leaned his head on his fists without finishing. Sofya Petrovna
began going over in her own mind the way she had behaved from beginning
to end. She remembered that not only in her actions, but even in her
secret thoughts, she had always been opposed to Ilyin's love-making; but
yet she felt there was a grain of truth in the lawyer's words. But not
knowing exactly what the truth was, she could not find answers to make
to Ilyin's complaint, however hard she thought. It was awkward to be
silent, and, shrugging her shoulders, she said:
So I am to blame, it appears."
"I don't blame you for your insincerity," sighed Ilyin. "I did not mean
that when I spoke of it. . . . Your insincerity is natural and in the
order of things. If people agreed together and suddenly became sincere,
everything would go to the devil."
Sofya Petrovna was in no mood for philosophical reflections, but she was
glad of a chance to change the conversation, and asked:
"But why?"
"Because only savage women and animals are sincere. Once civilization
has introduced a demand for such comforts as, for instance, feminine
virtue, sincerity is out of place. . . ."
Ilyin jabbed his stick angrily into the sand. Madame Lubyantsev listened
to him and liked his conversation, though a great deal of it she did not
understand. What gratified her most was that she, an ordinary woman, was
talked to by a talented man on "intellectual" subjects; it afforded her
great pleasure, too, to watch the working of his mobile, young face,
which was still pale and angry. She failed to understand a great deal
that he said, but what was clear to her in his words was the attractive
boldness with which the modern man without hesitation or doubt decides
great questions and draws conclusive deductions.
She suddenly realized that she was admiring him, and was alarmed.
"Forgive me, but I don't understand," she said hurriedly. "What makes
you talk of insincerity? I repeat my request again: be my good, true
friend; let me alone! I beg you most earnestly!"
"Very good; I'll try again," sighed Ilyin. "Glad to do my best. . . .