The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories
"My father is just dead. I owe that to you, for you have killed him. Our
garden is being ruined; strangers are managing it already--that is, the
very thing is happening that poor father dreaded. That, too, I owe to
you. I hate you with my whole soul, and I hope you may soon perish. Oh,
how wretched I am! Insufferable anguish is burning my soul.... My curses
on you. I took you for an extraordinary man, a genius; I loved you, and
you have turned out a madman...."
Kovrin could read no more, he tore up the letter and threw it away. He
was overcome by an uneasiness that was akin to terror. Varvara
Nikolaevna was asleep behind the screen, and he could hear her
breathing. From the lower storey came the sounds of laughter and women's
voices, but he felt as though in the whole hotel there were no living
soul but him. Because Tanya, unhappy, broken by sorrow, had cursed him
in her letter and hoped for his perdition, he felt eerie and kept
glancing hurriedly at the door, as though he were afraid that the
uncomprehended force which two years before had wrought such havoc in
his life and in the life of those near him might come into the room and
master him once more.
He knew by experience that when his nerves were out of hand the best
thing for him to do was to work. He must sit down to the table and force
himself, at all costs, to concentrate his mind on some one thought. He
took from his red portfolio a manuscript containing a sketch of a small
work of the nature of a compilation, which he had planned in case he
should find it dull in the Crimea without work. He sat down to the table
and began working at this plan, and it seemed to him that his calm,
peaceful, indifferent mood was coming back. The manuscript with the
sketch even led him to meditation on the vanity of the world. He thought
how much life exacts for the worthless or very commonplace blessings it
can give a man. For instance, to gain, before forty, a university chair,
to be an ordinary professor, to expound ordinary and second-hand
thoughts in dull, heavy, insipid language--in fact, to gain the position
of a mediocre learned man, he, Kovrin, had had to study for fifteen
years, to work day and night, to endure a terrible mental illness, to
experience an unhappy marriage, and to do a great number of stupid and
unjust things which it would have been pleasant not to remember. Kovrin
recognised clearly, now, that he was a mediocrity, and readily resigned
himself to it, as he considered that every man ought to be satisfied
with what he is.
The plan of the volume would have soothed him completely, but the torn
letter showed white on the floor and prevented him from concentrating
his attention. He got up from the table, picked up the pieces of the
letter and threw them out of window, but there was a light wind blowing
from the sea, and the bits of paper were scattered on the windowsill.
Again he was overcome by uneasiness akin to terror, and he felt as
though in the whole hotel there were no living soul but himself.... He
went out on the balcony. The bay, like a living thing, looked at him
with its multitude of light blue, dark blue, turquoise and fiery eyes,
and seemed beckoning to him. And it really was hot and oppressive, and
it would not have been amiss to have a bathe.
Suddenly in the lower storey under the balcony a violin began playing,
and two soft feminine voices began singing. It was something familiar.
The song was about a maiden, full of sick fancies, who heard one night
in her garden mysterious sounds, so strange and lovely that she was
obliged to recognise them as a holy harmony which is unintelligible to
us mortals, and so flies back to heaven.... Kovrin caught his breath and
there was a pang of sadness at his heart, and a thrill of the sweet,
exquisite delight he had so long forgotten began to stir in his breast.
A tall black column, like a whirlwind or a waterspout, appeared on the
further side of the bay. It moved with fearful rapidity across the bay,
towards the hotel, growing smaller and darker as it came, and Kovrin
only just had time to get out of the way to let it pass.... The monk
with bare grey head, black eyebrows, barefoot, his arms crossed over his
breast, floated by him, and stood still in the middle of the room.
"Why did you not believe me?" he asked reproachfully, looking
affectionately at Kovrin. "If you had believed me then, that you were a
genius, you would not have spent these two years so gloomily and so
wretchedly."
Kovrin already believed that he was one of God's chosen and a genius; he
vividly recalled his conversations with the monk in the past and tried
to speak, but the blood flowed from his throat on to his breast, and not
knowing what he was doing, he passed his hands over his breast, and his
cuffs were soaked with blood. He tried to call Varvara Nikolaevna, who
was asleep behind the screen; he made an effort and said:
"Tanya!"
He fell on the floor, and propping himself on his arms, called again:
"Tanya!"
He called Tanya, called to the great garden with the gorgeous flowers
sprinkled with dew, called to the park, the pines with their shaggy
roots, the rye-field, his marvellous learning, his youth, courage,
joy--called to life, which was so lovely. He saw on the floor near his
face a great pool of blood, and was too weak to utter a word, but an
unspeakable, infinite happiness flooded his whole being. Below, under
the balcony, they were playing the serenade, and the black monk
whispered to him that he was a genius, and that he was dying only
because his frail human body had lost its balance and could no longer
serve as the mortal garb of genius.
When Varvara Nikolaevna woke up and came out from behind the screen,
Kovrin was dead, and a blissful smile was set upon his face.
VOLODYA
AT five o'clock one Sunday afternoon in summer, Volodya, a plain, shy,
sickly-looking lad of seventeen, was sitting in the arbour of the
Shumihins' country villa, feeling dreary. His despondent thought flowed
in three directions. In the first place, he had next day, Monday, an
examination in mathematics; he knew that if he did not get through the
written examination on the morrow, he would be expelled, for he had
already been two years in the sixth form and had two and three-quarter
marks for algebra in his annual report. In the second place, his
presence at the villa of the Shumihins, a wealthy family with
aristocratic pretensions, was a continual source of mortification to his
_amour-propre_. It seemed to him that Madame Shumihin looked upon him
and his maman as poor relations and dependents, that they laughed at his
_maman_ and did not respect her. He had on one occasion accidently
overheard Madame Shumihin, in the verandah, telling her cousin Anna
Fyodorovna that his _maman_ still tried to look young and got herself
up, that she never paid her losses at cards, and had a partiality for
other people's shoes and tobacco. Every day Volodya besought his _maman_
not to go to the Shumihins', and drew a picture of the humiliating part
she played with these gentlefolk. He tried to persuade her, said rude
things, but she--a frivolous, pampered woman, who had run through two
fortunes, her own and her husband's, in her time, and always gravitated
towards acquaintances of high rank--did not understand him, and twice a
week Volodya had to accompany her to the villa he hated.
In the third place, the youth could not for one instant get rid of a
strange, unpleasant feeling which was absolutely new to him.... It
seemed to him that he was in love with Anna Fyodorovna, the Shumihins'
cousin, who was staying with them. She was a vivacious, loud-voiced,
laughter-loving, healthy, and vigorous lady of thirty, with rosy cheeks,
plump shoulders, a plump round chin and a continual smile on her thin
lips. She was neither young nor beautiful--Volodya knew that perfectly
well; but for some reason he could not help thinking of her, looking at
her while she shrugged her plump shoulders and moved her flat back as
she played croquet, or after prolonged laughter and running up and down
stairs, sank into a low chair, and, half closing her eyes and gasping
for breath, pretended that she was stifling and could not breathe. She
was married. Her husband, a staid and dignified architect, came once a
week to the villa, slept soundly, and returned to town. Volodya's
strange feeling had begun with his conceiving an unaccountable hatred
for the architect, and feeling relieved every time he went back to town.
Now, sitting in the arbour, thinking of his examination next day, and of
his _maman_, at whom they laughed, he felt an intense desire to see
Nyuta (that was what the Shumihins called Anna Fyodorovna), to hear her
laughter and the rustle of her dress.... This desire was not like the
pure, poetic love of which he read in novels and about which he dreamed
every night when he went to bed; it was strange, incomprehensible; he
was ashamed of it, and afraid of it as of something very wrong and
impure, something which it was disagreeable to confess even to himself.
"It's not love," he said to himself. "One can't fall in love with women
of thirty who are married. It is only a little intrigue.... Yes, an
intrigue...."
Pondering on the "intrigue," he thought of his uncontrollable shyness,
his lack of moustache, his freckles, his narrow eyes, and put himself in
his imagination side by side with Nyuta, and the juxtaposition seemed to
him impossible; then he made haste to imagine himself bold, handsome,
witty, dressed in the latest fashion.
When his dreams were at their height, as he sat huddled together and
looking at the ground in a dark corner of the arbour, he heard the sound
of light footsteps. Some one was coming slowly along the avenue. Soon
the steps stopped and something white gleamed in the entrance.
"Is there any one here?" asked a woman's voice.
Volodya recognised the voice, and raised his head in a fright.
"Who is here?" asked Nyuta, going into the arbour. "Ah, it is you,
Volodya? What are you doing here? Thinking? And how can you go on
thinking, thinking, thinking?... That's the way to go out of your mind!"
Volodya got up and looked in a dazed way at Nyuta. She had only just
come back from bathing. Over her shoulder there was hanging a sheet and
a rough towel, and from under the white silk kerchief on her head he
could see the wet hair sticking to her forehead. There was the cool damp
smell of the bath-house and of almond soap still hanging about her. She
was out of breath from running quickly. The top button of her blouse was
undone, so that the boy saw her throat and bosom.
"Why don't you say something?" said Nyuta, looking Volodya up and down.
"It's not polite to be silent when a lady talks to you. What a clumsy
seal you are though, Volodya! You always sit, saying nothing, thinking
like some philosopher. There's not a spark of life or fire in you! You
are really horrid!... At your age you ought to be living, skipping, and
jumping, chattering, flirting, falling in love."
Volodya looked at the sheet that was held by a plump white hand, and
thought....
"He's mute," said Nyuta, with wonder; "it is strange, really.... Listen!
Be a man! Come, you might smile at least! Phew, the horrid philosopher!"
she laughed. "But do you know, Volodya, why you are such a clumsy seal?
Because you don't devote yourself to the ladies. Why don't you? It's
true there are no girls here, but there is nothing to prevent your
flirting with the married ladies! Why don't you flirt with me, for
instance?"
Volodya listened and scratched his forehead in acute and painful
irresolution.
"It's only very proud people who are silent and love solitude," Nyuta
went on, pulling his hand away from his forehead. "You are proud,