Tales of Chekhov Read online

  “Owing to differences of climate, of energy, of tastes, of age, equality among men is physically impossible. But civilised man can make this inequality innocuous, as he has already done with bogs and bears. A learned man succeeded in making a cat, a mouse, a falcon, a sparrow, all eat out of one plate; and education, one must hope, will do the same thing with men. Life continually progresses, civilisation makes enormous advances before our eyes, and obviously a time will come when we shall think, for instance, the present condition of the factory population as absurd as we now do the state of serfdom, in which girls were exchanged for dogs.”

  “That won’t be for a long while, a very long while,” said Kostya, with a laugh, “not till Rothschild thinks his cellars full of gold absurd, and till then the workers may bend their backs and die of hunger. No; that’s not it. We mustn’t wait for it; we must struggle for it. Do you suppose because the cat eats out of the same saucer as the mouse—do you suppose that she is influenced by a sense of conscious intelligence? Not a bit of it! She’s made to do it by force.”

  “Fyodor and I are rich; our father’s a capitalist, a millionaire. You will have to struggle with us,” said Laptev, rubbing his forehead with his hand. “Struggle with me is an idea I cannot grasp. I am rich, but what has money given me so far? What has this power given me? In what way am I happier than you? My childhood was slavery, and money did not save me from the birch. When Nina was ill and died, my money did not help her. If people don’t care for me, I can’t make them like me if I spend a hundred million.”

  “But you can do a great deal of good,” said Kish.

  “Good, indeed! You spoke to me yesterday of a mathematical man who is looking for a job. Believe me, I can do as little for him as you can. I can give money, but that’s not what he wants—I asked a well-known musician to help a poor violinist, and this is what he answered: ‘You apply to me just because you are not a musician yourself.’ In the same way I say to you that you apply for help to me so confidently because you’ve never been in the position of a rich man.”

  “Why you bring in the comparison with a well-known musician I don’t understand!” said Yulia Sergeyevna, and she flushed crimson. “What has the well-known musician to do with it!”

  Her face was quivering with hatred, and she dropped her eyes to conceal the feeling. And not only her husband, but all the men sitting at the table, knew what the look in her face meant.

  “What has the well-known musician got to do with it?” she said slowly. “Why, nothing’s easier than helping some one poor.”

  Silence followed. Pyotr handed the woodcock, but they all refused it, and ate nothing but salad. Laptev did not remember what he had said, but it was clear to him that it was not his words that were hateful, but the fact of his meddling in the conversation at all.

  After supper he went into his study; intently, with a beating heart, expecting further humiliation, he listened to what was going on in the hall. An argument had sprung up there again. Then Yartsev sat down to the piano and played a sentimental song. He was a man of varied accomplishments; he could play and sing, and even perform conjuring tricks.

  “You may please yourselves, my friends, but I’m not going to stay at home,” said Yulia. “We must go somewhere.”

  They decided to drive out of town, and sent Kish to the merchant’s club to order a three-horse sledge. They did not ask Laptev to go with them because he did not usually join these expeditions, and because his brother was sitting with him; but he took it to mean that his society bored them, and that he was not wanted in their light-hearted youthful company. And his vexation, his bitter feeling, was so intense that he almost shed tears. He was positively glad that he was treated so ungraciously, that he was scorned, that he was a stupid, dull husband, a money-bag; and it seemed to him, that he would have been even more glad if his wife were to deceive him that night with his best friend, and were afterwards to acknowledge it, looking at him with hatred. . . . He was jealous on her account of their student friends, of actors, of singers, of Yartsev, even of casual acquaintances; and now he had a passionate longing for her really to be unfaithful to him. He longed to find her in another man’s arms, and to be rid of this nightmare forever. Fyodor was drinking tea, gulping it noisily. But he, too, got up to go.

  “Our old father must have got cataract,” he said, as he put on his fur coat. “His sight has become very poor.”

  Laptev put on his coat, too, and went out. After seeing his brother part of the way home, he took a sledge and drove to Yar’s.

  “And this is family happiness!” he said, jeering at himself. “This is love!”

  His teeth were chattering, and he did not know if it were jealousy or something else. He walked about near the tables; listened to a comic singer in the hall. He had not a single phrase ready if he should meet his own party; and he felt sure beforehand that if he met his wife, he would only smile pitifully and not cleverly, and that every one would understand what feeling had induced him to come here. He was bewildered by the electric light, the loud music, the smell of powder, and the fact that the ladies he met looked at him. He stood at the doors trying to see and to hear what was going on in the private rooms, and it seemed to him that he was somehow playing a mean, contemptible part on a level with the comic singers and those ladies. Then he went to Strelna, but he found none of his circle there, either; and only when on the way home he was again driving up to Yar’s, a three-horse sledge noisily overtook him. The driver was drunk and shouting, and he could hear Yartsev laughing: “Ha, ha, ha!”

  Laptev returned home between three and four. Yulia Sergeyevna was in bed. Noticing that she was not asleep, he went up to her and said sharply:

  “I understand your repulsion, your hatred, but you might spare me before other people; you might conceal your feelings.”

  She got up and sat on the bed with her legs dangling. Her eyes looked big and black in the lamplight.

  “I beg your pardon,” she said.

  He could not utter a single word from excitement and the trembling of his whole body; he stood facing her and was dumb. She trembled, too, and sat with the air of a criminal waiting for explanations.

  “How I suffer!” he said at last, and he clutched his head. “I’m in hell, and I’m out of my mind.”

  “And do you suppose it’s easy for me?” she asked, with a quiver in her voice. “God alone knows what I go through.”

  “You’ve been my wife for six months, but you haven’t a spark of love for me in your heart. There’s no hope, not one ray of light! Why did you marry me?” Laptev went on with despair. “Why? What demon thrust you into my arms? What did you hope for? What did you want?”

  She looked at him with terror, as though she were afraid he would kill her.

  “Did I attract you? Did you like me?” he went on, gasping for breath. “No. Then what? What? Tell me what?” he cried. “Oh, the cursed money! The cursed money!”

  “I swear to God, no!” she cried, and she crossed herself. She seemed to shrink under the insult, and for the first time he heard her crying. “I swear to God, no!” she repeated. “I didn’t think about your money; I didn’t want it. I simply thought I should do wrong if I refused you. I was afraid of spoiling your life and mine. And now I am suffering for my mistake. I’m suffering unbearably!”

  She sobbed bitterly, and he saw that she was hurt; and not knowing what to say, dropped down on the carpet before her.

  “That’s enough; that’s enough,” he muttered. “I insulted you because I love you madly.” He suddenly kissed her foot and passionately hugged it. “If only a spark of love,” he muttered. “Come, lie to me; tell me a lie! Don’t say it’s a mistake! . . .”

  But she went on crying, and he felt that she was only enduring his caresses as an inevitable consequence of her mistake. And the foot he had kissed she drew under her like a bird. He felt sorry for her.

  She got into bed and covered her head over; he undressed and got into bed, too. In the morning th
ey both felt confused and did not know what to talk about, and he even fancied she walked unsteadily on the foot he had kissed.

  Before dinner Panaurov came to say good-bye. Yulia had an irresistible desire to go to her own home; it would be nice, she thought, to go away and have a rest from married life, from the embarrassment and the continual consciousness that she had done wrong. It was decided at dinner that she should set off with Panaurov, and stay with her father for two or three weeks until she was tired of it.

  XI

  She travelled with Panaurov in a reserved compartment; he had on his head an astrachan cap of peculiar shape.

  “Yes, Petersburg did not satisfy me,” he said, drawling, with a sigh. “They promise much, but nothing definite. Yes, my dear girl. I have been a Justice of the Peace, a member of the local Board, chairman of the Board of Magistrates, and finally councillor of the provincial administration. I think I have served my country and have earned the right to receive attention; but—would you believe it?—I can never succeed in wringing from the authorities a post in another town. . . .”

  Panaurov closed his eyes and shook his head.

  “They don’t recognise me,” he went on, as though dropping asleep. “Of course I’m not an administrator of genius, but, on the other hand, I’m a decent, honest man, and nowadays even that’s something rare. I regret to say I have not been always quite straightforward with women, but in my relations with the Russian government I’ve always been a gentleman. But enough of that,” he said, opening his eyes; “let us talk of you. What put it into your head to visit your papa so suddenly?”

  “Well. . . . I had a little misunderstanding with my husband,” said Yulia, looking at his cap.

  “Yes. What a queer fellow he is! All the Laptevs are queer. Your husband’s all right—he’s nothing out of the way, but his brother Fyodor is a perfect fool.”

  Panaurov sighed and asked seriously:

  “And have you a lover yet?”

  Yulia looked at him in amazement and laughed.

  “Goodness knows what you’re talking about.”

  It was past ten o’clock when they got out at a big station and had supper. When the train went on again Panaurov took off his greatcoat and his cap, and sat down beside Yulia.

  “You are very charming, I must tell you,” he began. “Excuse me for the eating-house comparison, but you remind me of fresh salted cucumber; it still smells of the hotbed, so to speak, and yet has a smack of the salt and a scent of fennel about it. As time goes on you will make a magnificent woman, a wonderful, exquisite woman. If this trip of ours had happened five years ago,” he sighed, “I should have felt it my duty to join the ranks of your adorers, but now, alas, I’m a veteran on the retired list.”

  He smiled mournfully, but at the same time graciously, and put his arm round her waist.

  “You must be mad!” she said; she flushed crimson and was so frightened that her hands and feet turned cold.

  “Leave off, Grigory Nikolaevitch!”

  “What are you afraid of, dear?” he asked softly. “What is there dreadful about it? It’s simply that you’re not used to it.”

  If a woman protested he always interpreted it as a sign that he had made an impression on her and attracted her. Holding Yulia round the waist, he kissed her firmly on the cheek, then on the lips, in the full conviction that he was giving her intense gratification. Yulia recovered from her alarm and confusion, and began laughing. He kissed her once more and said, as he put on his ridiculous cap:

  “That is all that the old veteran can give you. A Turkish Pasha, a kind-hearted old fellow, was presented by some one—or inherited, I fancy it was—a whole harem. When his beautiful young wives drew up in a row before him, he walked round them, kissed each one of them, and said: ‘That is all that I am equal to giving you.’ And that’s just what I say, too.”

  All this struck her as stupid and extraordinary, and amused her. She felt mischievous. Standing up on the seat and humming, she got a box of sweets from the shelf, and throwing him a piece of chocolate, shouted:

  “Catch!”

  He caught it. With a loud laugh she threw him another sweet, then a third, and he kept catching them and putting them into his mouth, looking at her with imploring eyes; and it seemed to her that in his face, his features, his expression, there was a great deal that was feminine and childlike. And when, out of breath, she sat down on the seat and looked at him, laughing, he tapped her cheek with two fingers, and said as though he were vexed:

  “Naughty girl!”

  “Take it,” she said, giving him the box. “I don’t care for sweet things.”

  He ate up the sweets—every one of them, and locked the empty box in his trunk; he liked boxes with pictures on them.

  “That’s mischief enough, though,” he said. “It’s time for the veteran to go bye-bye.”

  He took out of his hold-all a Bokhara dressing-gown and a pillow, lay down, and covered himself with the dressing-gown.

  “Good-night, darling!” he said softly, and sighed as though his whole body ached.

  And soon a snore was heard. Without the slightest feeling of constraint, she, too, lay down and went to sleep.

  When next morning she drove through her native town from the station homewards, the streets seemed to her empty and deserted. The snow looked grey, and the houses small, as though some one had squashed them. She was met by a funeral procession: the dead body was carried in an open coffin with banners.

  “Meeting a funeral, they say, is lucky,” she thought.

  There were white bills pasted in the windows of the house where Nina Fyodorovna used to live.

  With a sinking at her heart she drove into her own courtyard and rang at the door. It was opened by a servant she did not know—a plump, sleepy-looking girl wearing a warm wadded jacket. As she went upstairs Yulia remembered how Laptev had declared his love there, but now the staircase was unscrubbed, covered with foot-marks. Upstairs in the cold passage patients were waiting in their out-door coats. And for some reason her heart beat violently, and she was so excited she could scarcely walk.

  The doctor, who had grown even stouter, was sitting with a brick-red face and dishevelled hair, drinking tea. Seeing his daughter, he was greatly delighted, and even lacrymose. She thought that she was the only joy in this old man’s life, and much moved, she embraced him warmly, and told him she would stay a long time—till Easter. After taking off her things in her own room, she went back to the dining-room to have tea with him. He was pacing up and down with his hands in his pockets, humming, “Ru-ru-ru”; this meant that he was dissatisfied with something.

  “You have a gay time of it in Moscow,” he said. “I am very glad for your sake. . . . I’m an old man and I need nothing. I shall soon give up the ghost and set you all free. And the wonder is that my hide is so tough, that I’m alive still! It’s amazing!”

  He said that he was a tough old ass that every one rode on. They had thrust on him the care of Nina Fyodorovna, the worry of her children, and of her burial; and that coxcomb Panaurov would not trouble himself about it, and had even borrowed a hundred roubles from him and had never paid it back.

  “Take me to Moscow and put me in a madhouse,” said the doctor. “I’m mad; I’m a simple child, as I still put faith in truth and justice.”

  Then he found fault with her husband for his short-sightedness in not buying houses that were being sold so cheaply. And now it seemed to Yulia that she was not the one joy in this old man’s life. While he was seeing his patients, and afterwards going his rounds, she walked through all the rooms, not knowing what to do or what to think about. She had already grown strange to her own town and her own home. She felt no inclination to go into the streets or see her friends; and at the thought of her old friends and her life as a girl, she felt no sadness nor regret for the past.

  In the evening she dressed a little more smartly and went to the evening service. But there were only poor people in the church, and her splendid f
ur coat and hat made no impression. And it seemed to her that there was some change in the church as well as in herself. In old days she had loved it when they read the prayers for the day at evening service, and the choir sang anthems such as “I will open my lips.” She liked moving slowly in the crowd to the priest who stood in the middle of the church, and then to feel the holy oil on her forehead; now she only waited for the service to be over. And now, going out of the church, she was only afraid that beggars would ask for alms; it was such a bore to have to stop and feel for her pockets; besides, she had no coppers in her pocket now—nothing but roubles.

  She went to bed early, and was a long time in going to sleep. She kept dreaming of portraits of some sort, and of the funeral procession she had met that morning. The open coffin with the dead body was carried into the yard, and brought to a standstill at the door; then the coffin was swung backwards and forwards on a sheet, and dashed violently against the door. Yulia woke and jumped up in alarm. There really was a bang at the door, and the wire of the bell rustled against the wall, though no ring was to be heard.

  The doctor coughed. Then she heard the servant go downstairs, and then come back.

  “Madam!” she said, and knocked at the door. “Madam!”

  “What is it?” said Yulia.

  “A telegram for you!”

  Yulia went out to her with a candle. Behind the servant stood the doctor, in his night-clothes and greatcoat, and he, too, had a candle in his hand. “Our bell is broken,” he said, yawning sleepily. “It ought to have been mended long ago.”

  Yulia broke open the telegram and read:

  “We drink to your health.—YARTSEV, KOTCHEVOY.”

  “Ah, what idiots!” she said, and burst out laughing; and her heart felt light and gay.

  Going back into her room, she quietly washed and dressed, then she spent a long time in packing her things, until it was daylight, and at midday she set off for Moscow.