Tales of Chekhov Read online

  “I don’t know why the devil I’m coming with you,” said Laevsky. “How stupid and vulgar it is! I want to go to the North, to run away, to escape; but here I am, for some reason, going to this stupid picnic.”

  “But look, what a view!” said Samoylenko as the horses turned to the left, and the valley of the Yellow River came into sight and the stream itself gleamed in the sunlight, yellow, turbid, frantic.

  “I see nothing fine in that, Sasha,” answered Laevsky. “To be in continual ecstasies over nature shows poverty of imagination. In comparison with what my imagination can give me, all these streams and rocks are trash, and nothing else.”

  The carriages now were by the banks of the stream. The high mountain banks gradually grew closer, the valley shrank together and ended in a gorge; the rocky mountain round which they were driving had been piled together by nature out of huge rocks, pressing upon each other with such terrible weight, that Samoylenko could not help gasping every time he looked at them. The dark and beautiful mountain was cleft in places by narrow fissures and gorges from which came a breath of dewy moisture and mystery; through the gorges could be seen other mountains, brown, pink, lilac, smoky, or bathed in vivid sunlight. From time to time as they passed a gorge they caught the sound of water falling from the heights and splashing on the stones.

  “Ach, the damned mountains!” sighed Laevsky. “How sick I am of them!”

  At the place where the Black River falls into the Yellow, and the water black as ink stains the yellow and struggles with it, stood the Tatar Kerbalay’s duhan, with the Russian flag on the roof and with an inscription written in chalk: “The Pleasant duhan.” Near it was a little garden, enclosed in a hurdle fence, with tables and chairs set out in it, and in the midst of a thicket of wretched thornbushes stood a single solitary cypress, dark and beautiful.

  Kerbalay, a nimble little Tatar in a blue shirt and a white apron, was standing in the road, and, holding his stomach, he bowed low to welcome the carriages, and smiled, showing his glistening white teeth.

  “Good-evening, Kerbalay,” shouted Samoylenko. “We are driving on a little further, and you take along the samovar and chairs! Look sharp!”

  Kerbalay nodded his shaven head and muttered something, and only those sitting in the last carriage could hear: “We’ve got trout, your Excellency.”

  “Bring them, bring them!” said Von Koren.

  Five hundred paces from the duhan the carriages stopped. Samoylenko selected a small meadow round which there were scattered stones convenient for sitting on, and a fallen tree blown down by the storm with roots overgrown by moss and dry yellow needles. Here there was a fragile wooden bridge over the stream, and just opposite on the other bank there was a little barn for drying maize, standing on four low piles, and looking like the hut on hen’s legs in the fairy tale; a little ladder sloped from its door.

  The first impression in all was a feeling that they would never get out of that place again. On all sides wherever they looked, the mountains rose up and towered above them, and the shadows of evening were stealing rapidly, rapidly from the duhan and dark cypress, making the narrow winding valley of the Black River narrower and the mountains higher. They could hear the river murmuring and the unceasing chirrup of the grasshoppers.

  “Enchanting!” said Marya Konstantinovna, heaving deep sighs of ecstasy. “Children, look how fine! What peace!”

  “Yes, it really is fine,” assented Laevsky, who liked the view, and for some reason felt sad as he looked at the sky and then at the blue smoke rising from the chimney of the duhan. “Yes, it is fine,” he repeated.

  “Ivan Andreitch, describe this view,” Marya Konstantinovna said tearfully.

  “Why?” asked Laevsky. “The impression is better than any description. The wealth of sights and sounds which every one receives from nature by direct impression is ranted about by authors in a hideous and unrecognisable way.”

  “Really?” Von Koren asked coldly, choosing the biggest stone by the side of the water, and trying to clamber up and sit upon it. “Really?” he repeated, looking directly at Laevsky. “What of ‘Romeo and Juliet’? Or, for instance, Pushkin’s ‘Night in the Ukraine’? Nature ought to come and bow down at their feet.”

  “Perhaps,” said Laevsky, who was too lazy to think and oppose him. “Though what is ‘Romeo and Juliet’ after all?” he added after a short pause. “The beauty of poetry and holiness of love are simply the roses under which they try to hide its rottenness. Romeo is just the same sort of animal as all the rest of us.”

  “Whatever one talks to you about, you always bring it round to . . .” Von Koren glanced round at Katya and broke off.

  “What do I bring it round to?” asked Laevsky.

  “One tells you, for instance, how beautiful a bunch of grapes is, and you answer: ‘Yes, but how ugly it is when it is chewed and digested in one’s stomach!’ Why say that? It’s not new, and . . . altogether it is a queer habit.”

  Laevsky knew that Von Koren did not like him, and so was afraid of him, and felt in his presence as though every one were constrained and some one were standing behind his back. He made no answer and walked away, feeling sorry he had come.

  “Gentlemen, quick march for brushwood for the fire!” commanded Samoylenko.

  They all wandered off in different directions, and no one was left but Kirilin, Atchmianov, and Nikodim Alexandritch. Kerbalay brought chairs, spread a rug on the ground, and set a few bottles of wine.

  The police captain, Kirilin, a tall, good-looking man, who in all weathers wore his great-coat over his tunic, with his haughty deportment, stately carriage, and thick, rather hoarse voice, looked like a young provincial chief of police; his expression was mournful and sleepy, as though he had just been waked against his will.

  “What have you brought this for, you brute?” he asked Kerbalay, deliberately articulating each word. “I ordered you to give us kvarel, and what have you brought, you ugly Tatar? Eh? What?”

  “We have plenty of wine of our own, Yegor Alekseitch,” Nikodim Alexandritch observed, timidly and politely.

  “What? But I want us to have my wine, too; I’m taking part in the picnic and I imagine I have full right to contribute my share. I im-ma-gine so! Bring ten bottles of kvarel.”

  “Why so many?” asked Nikodim Alexandritch, in wonder, knowing Kirilin had no money.

  “Twenty bottles! Thirty!” shouted Kirilin.

  “Never mind, let him,” Atchmianov whispered to Nikodim Alexandritch; “I’ll pay.”

  Nadyezhda Fyodorovna was in a light-hearted, mischievous mood; she wanted to skip and jump, to laugh, to shout, to tease, to flirt. In her cheap cotton dress with blue pansies on it, in her red shoes and the same straw hat, she seemed to herself, little, simple, light, ethereal as a butterfly. She ran over the rickety bridge and looked for a minute into the water, in order to feel giddy; then, shrieking and laughing, ran to the other side to the drying-shed, and she fancied that all the men were admiring her, even Kerbalay. When in the rapidly falling darkness the trees began to melt into the mountains and the horses into the carriages, and a light gleamed in the windows of the duhan, she climbed up the mountain by the little path which zigzagged between stones and thorn-bushes and sat on a stone. Down below, the camp-fire was burning. Near the fire, with his sleeves tucked up, the deacon was moving to and fro, and his long black shadow kept describing a circle round it; he put on wood, and with a spoon tied to a long stick he stirred the cauldron. Samoylenko, with a copper-red face, was fussing round the fire just as though he were in his own kitchen, shouting furiously:

  “Where’s the salt, gentlemen? I bet you’ve forgotten it. Why are you all sitting about like lords while I do the work?”

  Laevsky and Nikodim Alexandritch were sitting side by side on the fallen tree looking pensively at the fire. Marya Konstantinovna, Katya, and Kostya were taking the cups, saucers, and plates out of the baskets. Von Koren, with his arms folded and one foot on a stone, was standing on a
bank at the very edge of the water, thinking about something. Patches of red light from the fire moved together with the shadows over the ground near the dark human figures, and quivered on the mountain, on the trees, on the bridge, on the drying-shed; on the other side the steep, scooped-out bank was all lighted up and glimmering in the stream, and the rushing turbid water broke its reflection into little bits.

  The deacon went for the fish which Kerbalay was cleaning and washing on the bank, but he stood still half-way and looked about him.

  “My God, how nice it is!” he thought. “People, rocks, the fire, the twilight, a monstrous tree—nothing more, and yet how fine it is!”

  On the further bank some unknown persons made their appearance near the drying-shed. The flickering light and the smoke from the camp-fire puffing in that direction made it impossible to get a full view of them all at once, but glimpses were caught now of a shaggy hat and a grey beard, now of a blue shirt, now of a figure, ragged from shoulder to knee, with a dagger across the body; then a swarthy young face with black eyebrows, as thick and bold as though they had been drawn in charcoal. Five of them sat in a circle on the ground, and the other five went into the drying-shed. One was standing at the door with his back to the fire, and with his hands behind his back was telling something, which must have been very interesting, for when Samoylenko threw on twigs and the fire flared up, and scattered sparks and threw a glaring light on the shed, two calm countenances with an expression on them of deep attention could be seen, looking out of the door, while those who were sitting in a circle turned round and began listening to the speaker. Soon after, those sitting in a circle began softly singing something slow and melodious, that sounded like Lenten Church music. . . . Listening to them, the deacon imagined how it would be with him in ten years’ time, when he would come back from the expedition: he would be a young priest and monk, an author with a name and a splendid past; he would be consecrated an archimandrite, then a bishop; and he would serve mass in the cathedral; in a golden mitre he would come out into the body of the church with the ikon on his breast, and blessing the mass of the people with the triple and the double candelabra, would proclaim: “Look down from Heaven, O God, behold and visit this vineyard which Thy Hand has planted,” and the children with their angel voices would sing in response: “Holy God. . .”

  “Deacon, where is that fish?” he heard Samoylenko’s voice.

  As he went back to the fire, the deacon imagined the Church procession going along a dusty road on a hot July day; in front the peasants carrying the banners and the women and children the ikons, then the boy choristers and the sacristan with his face tied up and a straw in his hair, then in due order himself, the deacon, and behind him the priest wearing his calotte and carrying a cross, and behind them, tramping in the dust, a crowd of peasants—men, women, and children; in the crowd his wife and the priest’s wife with kerchiefs on their heads. The choristers sing, the babies cry, the corncrakes call, the lark carols. . . . Then they make a stand and sprinkle the herd with holy water. . . . They go on again, and then kneeling pray for rain. Then lunch and talk. . . .

  “And that’s nice too . . .” thought the deacon.

  VII

  Kirilin and Atchmianov climbed up the mountain by the path. Atchmianov dropped behind and stopped, while Kirilin went up to Nadyezhda Fyodorovna.

  “Good-evening,” he said, touching his cap.

  “Good-evening.”

  “Yes!” said Kirilin, looking at the sky and pondering.

  “Why ‘yes’?” asked Nadyezhda Fyodorovna after a brief pause, noticing that Atchmianov was watching them both.

  “And so it seems,” said the officer, slowly, “that our love has withered before it has blossomed, so to speak. How do you wish me to understand it? Is it a sort of coquetry on your part, or do you look upon me as a nincompoop who can be treated as you choose.”

  “It was a mistake! Leave me alone!” Nadyezhda Fyodorovna said sharply, on that beautiful, marvellous evening, looking at him with terror and asking herself with bewilderment, could there really have been a moment when that man attracted her and had been near to her?

  “So that’s it!” said Kirilin; he thought in silence for a few minutes and said: “Well, I’ll wait till you are in a better humour, and meanwhile I venture to assure you I am a gentleman, and I don’t allow any one to doubt it. Adieu!”

  He touched his cap again and walked off, making his way between the bushes. After a short interval Atchmianov approached hesitatingly.

  “What a fine evening!” he said with a slight Armenian accent.

  He was nice-looking, fashionably dressed, and behaved unaffectedly like a well-bred youth, but Nadyezhda Fyodorovna did not like him because she owed his father three hundred roubles; it was displeasing to her, too, that a shopkeeper had been asked to the picnic, and she was vexed at his coming up to her that evening when her heart felt so pure.

  “The picnic is a success altogether,” he said, after a pause.

  “Yes,” she agreed, and as though suddenly remembering her debt, she said carelessly: “Oh, tell them in your shop that Ivan Andreitch will come round in a day or two and will pay three hundred roubles . . . . I don’t remember exactly what it is.”

  “I would give another three hundred if you would not mention that debt every day. Why be prosaic?”

  Nadyezhda Fyodorovna laughed; the amusing idea occurred to her that if she had been willing and sufficiently immoral she might in one minute be free from her debt. If she, for instance, were to turn the head of this handsome young fool! How amusing, absurd, wild it would be really! And she suddenly felt a longing to make him love her, to plunder him, throw him over, and then to see what would come of it.

  “Allow me to give you one piece of advice,” Atchmianov said timidly. “I beg you to beware of Kirilin. He says horrible things about you everywhere.”

  “It doesn’t interest me to know what every fool says of me,” Nadyezhda Fyodorovna said coldly, and the amusing thought of playing with handsome young Atchmianov suddenly lost its charm.

  “We must go down,” she said; “they’re calling us.”

  The fish soup was ready by now. They were ladling it out by platefuls, and eating it with the religious solemnity with which this is only done at a picnic; and every one thought the fish soup very good, and thought that at home they had never eaten anything so nice. As is always the case at picnics, in the mass of dinner napkins, parcels, useless greasy papers fluttering in the wind, no one knew where was his glass or where his bread. They poured the wine on the carpet and on their own knees, spilt the salt, while it was dark all round them and the fire burnt more dimly, and every one was too lazy to get up and put wood on. They all drank wine, and even gave Kostya and Katya half a glass each. Nadyezhda Fyodorovna drank one glass and then another, got a little drunk and forgot about Kirilin.

  “A splendid picnic, an enchanting evening,” said Laevsky, growing lively with the wine. “But I should prefer a fine winter to all this. ‘His beaver collar is silver with hoar-frost.’

  “Every one to his taste,” observed Von Koren.

  Laevsky felt uncomfortable; the heat of the campfire was beating upon his back, and the hatred of Von Koren upon his breast and face: this hatred on the part of a decent, clever man, a feeling in which there probably lay hid a well-grounded reason, humiliated him and enervated him, and unable to stand up against it, he said in a propitiatory tone:

  “I am passionately fond of nature, and I regret that I’m not a naturalist. I envy you.”

  “Well, I don’t envy you, and don’t regret it,” said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna. “I don’t understand how any one can seriously interest himself in beetles and ladybirds while the people are suffering.”

  Laevsky shared her opinion. He was absolutely ignorant of natural science, and so could never reconcile himself to the authoritative tone and the learned and profound air of the people who devoted themselves to the whiskers of ants and the claws of beetles, and
he always felt vexed that these people, relying on these whiskers, claws, and something they called protoplasm (he always imagined it in the form of an oyster), should undertake to decide questions involving the origin and life of man. But in Nadyezhda Fyodorovna’s words he heard a note of falsity, and simply to contradict her he said: “The point is not the ladybirds, but the deductions made from them.”

  VIII

  It was late, eleven o’clock, when they began to get into the carriages to go home. They took their seats, and the only ones missing were Nadyezhda Fyodorovna and Atchmianov, who were running after one another, laughing, the other side of the stream.

  “Make haste, my friends,” shouted Samoylenko.

  “You oughtn’t to give ladies wine,” said Von Koren in a low voice.

  Laevsky, exhausted by the picnic, by the hatred of Von Koren, and by his own thoughts, went to meet Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, and when, gay and happy, feeling light as a feather, breathless and laughing, she took him by both hands and laid her head on his breast, he stepped back and said dryly:

  “You are behaving like a . . . cocotte.”

  It sounded horribly coarse, so that he felt sorry for her at once. On his angry, exhausted face she read hatred, pity and vexation with himself, and her heart sank at once. She realised instantly that she had gone too far, had been too free and easy in her behaviour, and overcome with misery, feeling herself heavy, stout, coarse, and drunk, she got into the first empty carriage together with Atchmianov. Laevsky got in with Kirilin, the zoologist with Samoylenko, the deacon with the ladies, and the party set off.

  “You see what the Japanese monkeys are like,” Von Koren began, rolling himself up in his cloak and shutting his eyes. “You heard she doesn’t care to take an interest in beetles and ladybirds because the people are suffering. That’s how all the Japanese monkeys look upon people like us. They’re a slavish, cunning race, terrified by the whip and the fist for ten generations; they tremble and burn incense only before violence; but let the monkey into a free state where there’s no one to take it by the collar, and it relaxes at once and shows itself in its true colours. Look how bold they are in picture galleries, in museums, in theatres, or when they talk of science: they puff themselves out and get excited, they are abusive and critical . . . they are bound to criticise—it’s the sign of the slave. You listen: men of the liberal professions are more often sworn at than pickpockets—that’s because three-quarters of society are made up of slaves, of just such monkeys. It never happens that a slave holds out his hand to you and sincerely says ‘Thank you’ to you for your work.”