Tales of Chekhov Read online

Page 27


  “I don’t know what you want,” said Samoylenko, yawning; “the poor thing, in the simplicity of her heart, wanted to talk to you of scientific subjects, and you draw a conclusion from that. You’re cross with him for something or other, and with her, too, to keep him company. She’s a splendid woman.”

  “Ah, nonsense! An ordinary kept woman, depraved and vulgar. Listen, Alexandr Daviditch; when you meet a simple peasant woman, who isn’t living with her husband, who does nothing but giggle, you tell her to go and work. Why are you timid in this case and afraid to tell the truth? Simply because Nadyezhda Fyodorovna is kept, not by a sailor, but by an official.”

  “What am I to do with her?” said Samoylenko, getting angry. “Beat her or what?

  “Not flatter vice. We curse vice only behind its back, and that’s like making a long nose at it round a corner. I am a zoologist or a sociologist, which is the same thing; you are a doctor; society believes in us; we ought to point out the terrible harm which threatens it and the next generation from the existence of ladies like Nadyezhda Ivanovna.”

  “Fyodorovna,” Samoylenko corrected. “But what ought society to do?”

  “Society? That’s its affair. To my thinking the surest and most direct method is—compulsion. Manu militari she ought to be returned to her husband; and if her husband won’t take her in, then she ought to be sent to penal servitude or some house of correction.”

  “Ouf!” sighed Samoylenko. He paused and asked quietly: “You said the other day that people like Laevsky ought to be destroyed. . . . Tell me, if you . . . if the State or society commissioned you to destroy him, could you . . . bring yourself to it?”

  “My hand would not tremble.”

  IX

  When they got home, Laevsky and Nadyezhda Fyodorovna went into their dark, stuffy, dull rooms. Both were silent. Laevsky lighted a candle, while Nadyezhda Fyodorovna sat down, and without taking off her cloak and hat, lifted her melancholy, guilty eyes to him.

  He knew that she expected an explanation from him, but an explanation would be wearisome, useless and exhausting, and his heart was heavy because he had lost control over himself and been rude to her. He chanced to feel in his pocket the letter which he had been intending every day to read to her, and thought if he were to show her that letter now, it would turn her thoughts in another direction.

  “It is time to define our relations,” he thought. “I will give it her; what is to be will be.”

  He took out the letter and gave it her.

  “Read it. It concerns you.”

  Saying this, he went into his own room and lay down on the sofa in the dark without a pillow. Nadyezhda Fyodorovna read the letter, and it seemed to her as though the ceiling were falling and the walls were closing in on her. It seemed suddenly dark and shut in and terrible. She crossed herself quickly three times and said:

  “Give him peace, O Lord . . . give him peace. . . .”

  And she began crying.

  “Vanya,” she called. “Ivan Andreitch!”

  There was no answer. Thinking that Laevsky had come in and was standing behind her chair, she sobbed like a child, and said:

  “Why did you not tell me before that he was dead? I wouldn’t have gone to the picnic; I shouldn’t have laughed so horribly. . . . The men said horrid things to me. What a sin, what a sin! Save me, Vanya, save me. . . . I have been mad. . . . I am lost. . . .”

  Laevsky heard her sobs. He felt stifled and his heart was beating violently. In his misery he got up, stood in the middle of the room, groped his way in the dark to an easy-chair by the table, and sat down.

  “This is a prison . . .” he thought. “I must get away . . . I can’t bear it.”

  It was too late to go and play cards; there were no restaurants in the town. He lay down again and covered his ears that he might not hear her sobbing, and he suddenly remembered that he could go to Samoylenko. To avoid going near Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, he got out of the window into the garden, climbed over the garden fence and went along the street. It was dark. A steamer, judging by its lights, a big passenger one, had just come in. He heard the clank of the anchor chain. A red light was moving rapidly from the shore in the direction of the steamer: it was the Customs boat going out to it.

  “The passengers are asleep in their cabins . . .” thought Laevsky, and he envied the peace of mind of other people.

  The windows in Samoylenko’s house were open. Laevsky looked in at one of them, then in at another; it was dark and still in the rooms.

  “Alexandr Daviditch, are you asleep?” he called. “Alexandr Daviditch!”

  He heard a cough and an uneasy shout:

  “Who’s there? What the devil?”

  “It is I, Alexandr Daviditch; excuse me.”

  A little later the door opened; there was a glow of soft light from the lamp, and Samoylenko’s huge figure appeared all in white, with a white nightcap on his head.

  “What now?” he asked, scratching himself and breathing hard from sleepiness. “Wait a minute; I’ll open the door directly.”

  “Don’t trouble; I’ll get in at the window. . . .”

  Laevsky climbed in at the window, and when he reached Samoylenko, seized him by the hand.

  “Alexandr Daviditch,” he said in a shaking voice, “save me! I beseech you, I implore you. Understand me! My position is agonising. If it goes on for another two days I shall strangle myself like . . . like a dog.”

  “Wait a bit. . . . What are you talking about exactly?”

  “Light a candle.”

  “Oh . . . oh! . . .” sighed Samoylenko, lighting a candle. “My God! My God! . . . Why, it’s past one, brother.”

  “Excuse me, but I can’t stay at home,” said Laevsky, feeling great comfort from the light and the presence of Samoylenko. “You are my best, my only friend, Alexandr Daviditch. . . . You are my only hope. For God’s sake, come to my rescue, whether you want to or not. I must get away from here, come what may! . . . Lend me the money!”

  “Oh, my God, my God! . . .” sighed Samoylenko, scratching himself. “I was dropping asleep and I hear the whistle of the steamer, and now you . . . Do you want much?”

  “Three hundred roubles at least. I must leave her a hundred, and I need two hundred for the journey. . . . I owe you about four hundred already, but I will send it you all . . . all. . . .”

  Samoylenko took hold of both his whiskers in one hand, and standing with his legs wide apart, pondered.

  “Yes . . .” he muttered, musing. “Three hundred. . . . Yes. . . . But I haven’t got so much. I shall have to borrow it from some one.”

  “Borrow it, for God’s sake!” said Laevsky, seeing from Samoylenko’s face that he wanted to lend him the money and certainly would lend it. “Borrow it, and I’ll be sure to pay you back. I will send it from Petersburg as soon as I get there. You can set your mind at rest about that. I’ll tell you what, Sasha,” he said, growing more animated; “let us have some wine.”

  “Yes . . . we can have some wine, too.”

  They both went into the dining-room.

  “And how about Nadyezhda Fyodorovna?” asked Samoylenko, setting three bottles and a plate of peaches on the table. “Surely she’s not remaining?”

  “I will arrange it all, I will arrange it all,” said Laevsky, feeling an unexpected rush of joy. “I will send her the money afterwards and she will join me. . . . Then we will define our relations. To your health, friend.”

  “Wait a bit,” said Samoylenko. “Drink this first. . . . This is from my vineyard. This bottle is from Navaridze’s vineyard and this one is from Ahatulov’s. . . . Try all three kinds and tell me candidly. . . . There seems a little acidity about mine. Eh? Don’t you taste it?”

  “Yes. You have comforted me, Alexandr Daviditch. Thank you. . . . I feel better.”

  “Is there any acidity?”

  “Goodness only knows, I don’t know. But you are a splendid, wonderful man!”

  Looking at his pale, excited, good-
natured face, Samoylenko remembered Von Koren’s view that men like that ought to be destroyed, and Laevsky seemed to him a weak, defenceless child, whom any one could injure and destroy.

  “And when you go, make it up with your mother,” he said. “It’s not right.”

  “Yes, yes; I certainly shall.”

  They were silent for a while. When they had emptied the first bottle, Samoylenko said:

  “You ought to make it up with Von Koren too. You are both such splendid, clever fellows, and you glare at each other like wolves.”

  “Yes, he’s a fine, very intelligent fellow,” Laevsky assented, ready now to praise and forgive every one. “He’s a remarkable man, but it’s impossible for me to get on with him. No! Our natures are too different. I’m an indolent, weak, submissive nature. Perhaps in a good minute I might hold out my hand to him, but he would turn away from me . . . with contempt.”

  Laevsky took a sip of wine, walked from corner to corner and went on, standing in the middle of the room:

  “I understand Von Koren very well. His is a resolute, strong, despotic nature. You have heard him continually talking of ‘the expedition,’ and it’s not mere talk. He wants the wilderness, the moonlit night: all around in little tents, under the open sky, lie sleeping his sick and hungry Cossacks, guides, porters, doctor, priest, all exhausted with their weary marches, while only he is awake, sitting like Stanley on a camp-stool, feeling himself the monarch of the desert and the master of these men. He goes on and on and on, his men groan and die, one after another, and he goes on and on, and in the end perishes himself, but still is monarch and ruler of the desert, since the cross upon his tomb can be seen by the caravans for thirty or forty miles over the desert. I am sorry the man is not in the army. He would have made a splendid military genius. He would not have hesitated to drown his cavalry in the river and make a bridge out of dead bodies. And such hardihood is more needed in war than any kind of fortification or strategy. Oh, I understand him perfectly! Tell me: why is he wasting his substance here? What does he want here?”

  “He is studying the marine fauna.”

  “No, no, brother, no!” Laevsky sighed. “A scientific man who was on the steamer told me the Black Sea was poor in animal life, and that in its depths, thanks to the abundance of sulphuric hydrogen, organic life was impossible. All the serious zoologists work at the biological station at Naples or Villefranche. But Von Koren is independent and obstinate: he works on the Black Sea because nobody else is working there; he is at loggerheads with the university, does not care to know his comrades and other scientific men because he is first of all a despot and only secondly a zoologist. And you’ll see he’ll do something. He is already dreaming that when he comes back from his expedition he will purify our universities from intrigue and mediocrity, and will make the scientific men mind their p’s and q’s. Despotism is just as strong in science as in the army. And he is spending his second summer in this stinking little town because he would rather be first in a village than second in a town. Here he is a king and an eagle; he keeps all the inhabitants under his thumb and oppresses them with his authority. He has appropriated every one, he meddles in other people’s affairs; everything is of use to him, and every one is afraid of him. I am slipping out of his clutches, he feels that and hates me. Hasn’t he told you that I ought to be destroyed or sent to hard labour?”

  “Yes,” laughed Samoylenko.

  Laevsky laughed too, and drank some wine.

  “His ideals are despotic too,” he said, laughing, and biting a peach. “Ordinary mortals think of their neighbour—me, you, man in fact—if they work for the common weal. To Von Koren men are puppets and nonentities, too trivial to be the object of his life. He works, will go for his expedition and break his neck there, not for the sake of love for his neighbour, but for the sake of such abstractions as humanity, future generations, an ideal race of men. He exerts himself for the improvement of the human race, and we are in his eyes only slaves, food for the cannon, beasts of burden; some he would destroy or stow away in Siberia, others he would break by discipline, would, like Araktcheev, force them to get up and go to bed to the sound of the drum; would appoint eunuchs to preserve our chastity and morality, would order them to fire at any one who steps out of the circle of our narrow conservative morality; and all this in the name of the improvement of the human race. . . . And what is the human race? Illusion, mirage . . . despots have always been illusionists. I understand him very well, brother. I appreciate him and don’t deny his importance; this world rests on men like him, and if the world were left only to such men as us, for all our good-nature and good intentions, we should make as great a mess of it as the flies have of that picture. Yes.”

  Laevsky sat down beside Samoylenko, and said with genuine feeling: “I’m a foolish, worthless, depraved man. The air I breathe, this wine, love, life in fact—for all that, I have given nothing in exchange so far but lying, idleness, and cowardice. Till now I have deceived myself and other people; I have been miserable about it, and my misery was cheap and common. I bow my back humbly before Von Koren’s hatred because at times I hate and despise myself.”

  Laevsky began again pacing from one end of the room to the other in excitement, and said:

  “I’m glad I see my faults clearly and am conscious of them. That will help me to reform and become a different man. My dear fellow, if only you knew how passionately, with what anguish, I long for such a change. And I swear to you I’ll be a man! I will! I don’t know whether it is the wine that is speaking in me, or whether it really is so, but it seems to me that it is long since I have spent such pure and lucid moments as I have just now with you.”

  “It’s time to sleep, brother,” said Samoylenko.

  “Yes, yes. . . . Excuse me; I’ll go directly.”

  Laevsky moved hurriedly about the furniture and windows, looking for his cap.

  “Thank you,” he muttered, sighing. “Thank you. . . . Kind and friendly words are better than charity. You have given me new life.”

  He found his cap, stopped, and looked guiltily at Samoylenko.

  “Alexandr Daviditch,” he said in an imploring voice.

  “What is it?”

  “Let me stay the night with you, my dear fellow!”

  “Certainly. . . . Why not?”

  Laevsky lay down on the sofa, and went on talking to the doctor for a long time.

  X

  Three days after the picnic, Marya Konstantinovna unexpectedly called on Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, and without greeting her or taking off her hat, seized her by both hands, pressed them to her breast and said in great excitement:

  “My dear, I am deeply touched and moved: our dear kind-hearted doctor told my Nikodim Alexandritch yesterday that your husband was dead. Tell me, my dear . . . tell me, is it true?

  “Yes, it’s true; he is dead,” answered Nadyezhda Fyodorovna.

  “That is awful, awful, my dear! But there’s no evil without some compensation; your husband was no doubt a noble, wonderful, holy man, and such are more needed in Heaven than on earth.”

  Every line and feature in Marya Konstantinovna’s face began quivering as though little needles were jumping up and down under her skin; she gave an almond-oily smile and said, breathlessly, enthusiastically:

  “And so you are free, my dear. You can hold your head high now, and look people boldly in the face. Henceforth God and man will bless your union with Ivan Andreitch. It’s enchanting. I am trembling with joy, I can find no words. My dear, I will give you away. . . . Nikodim Alexandritch and I have been so fond of you, you will allow us to give our blessing to your pure, lawful union. When, when do you think of being married?”

  “I haven’t thought of it,” said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, freeing her hands.

  “That’s impossible, my dear. You have thought of it, you have.”

  “Upon my word, I haven’t,” said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, laughing. “What should we be married for? I see no necessity for it. We’ll go on
living as we have lived.”

  “What are you saying!” cried Marya Konstantinovna in horror. “For God’s sake, what are you saying!”

  “Our getting married won’t make things any better. On the contrary, it will make them even worse. We shall lose our freedom.”

  “My dear, my dear, what are you saying!” exclaimed Marya Konstantinovna, stepping back and flinging up her hands. “You are talking wildly! Think what you are saying. You must settle down!”

  “‘Settle down.’ How do you mean? I have not lived yet, and you tell me to settle down.”

  Nadyezhda Fyodorovna reflected that she really had not lived. She had finished her studies in a boarding-school and had been married to a man she did not love; then she had thrown in her lot with Laevsky, and had spent all her time with him on this empty, desolate coast, always expecting something better. Was that life?

  “I ought to be married though,” she thought, but remembering Kirilin and Atchmianov she flushed and said:

  “No, it’s impossible. Even if Ivan Andreitch begged me to on his knees—even then I would refuse.”

 

    The Steppe and Other Stories, 1887-91 Read onlineThe Steppe and Other Stories, 1887-91The Tales of Chekhov Read onlineThe Tales of ChekhovPeasants and Other Stories Read onlinePeasants and Other StoriesAbout Love and Other Stories Read onlineAbout Love and Other StoriesA Nervous Breakdown Read onlineA Nervous BreakdownThe Duel Read onlineThe DuelFive Great Short Stories Read onlineFive Great Short StoriesLittle Apples: And Other Early Stories Read onlineLittle Apples: And Other Early StoriesFive Plays: Ivanov Read onlineFive Plays: IvanovThe Undiscovered Chekhov: Forty-Three New Stories Read onlineThe Undiscovered Chekhov: Forty-Three New StoriesThe Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov Read onlineThe Cherry Orchard by Anton ChekhovStories Read onlineStoriesThe Big Book of Christmas Read onlineThe Big Book of ChristmasWard No. 6 and Other Stories Read onlineWard No. 6 and Other StoriesThe Shooting Party Read onlineThe Shooting PartyLetters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends Read onlineLetters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and FriendsForty Stories Read onlineForty StoriesThe Plays of Anton Chekhov Read onlineThe Plays of Anton ChekhovThe Beauties: Essential Stories Read onlineThe Beauties: Essential StoriesThe Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904 Read onlineThe Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904The Cherry Orchard Read onlineThe Cherry OrchardKashtanka Read onlineKashtankaThe Darling and Other Stories Read onlineThe Darling and Other StoriesTales of Chekhov 10- The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories Read onlineTales of Chekhov 10- The Horse-Stealers and Other StoriesTales of Chekhov 02- The Duel and Other Stories Read onlineTales of Chekhov 02- The Duel and Other StoriesThe Beauties Read onlineThe BeautiesTales of Chekhov 12- The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories Read onlineTales of Chekhov 12- The Cook's Wedding and Other StoriesTales of Chekhov 11- The Schoolmaster and other stories Read onlineTales of Chekhov 11- The Schoolmaster and other storiesThe Undiscovered Chekhov Read onlineThe Undiscovered ChekhovSelected short stories -1888-1892- translated by Constance Garnett Read onlineSelected short stories -1888-1892- translated by Constance GarnettSelected plays Read onlineSelected playsTales of Chekhov 03-The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories Read onlineTales of Chekhov 03-The Lady with the Dog and Other StoriesTales of Chekhov Read onlineTales of ChekhovPlays Read onlinePlaysSelected short stories -1882-1887- translated by Constance Garnett Read onlineSelected short stories -1882-1887- translated by Constance GarnettIvanov Read onlineIvanovTales of Chekhov 08-The Chorus Girl and Other Stories Read onlineTales of Chekhov 08-The Chorus Girl and Other StoriesTales of Chekhov 05- The Wife and other stories Read onlineTales of Chekhov 05- The Wife and other storiesTales of Chekhov 13 (final ) Love and other stories Read onlineTales of Chekhov 13 (final ) Love and other storiesA Night in the Cemetery Read onlineA Night in the CemeteryTales of Chekhov 07- The Bishop and Other Stories Read onlineTales of Chekhov 07- The Bishop and Other StoriesLittle Apples Read onlineLittle ApplesTales of Chekhov 04-The Party and other stories Read onlineTales of Chekhov 04-The Party and other storiesThe House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories Read onlineThe House with the Mezzanine and Other StoriesTales of Chekhov 09- The Schoolmistress and other stories Read onlineTales of Chekhov 09- The Schoolmistress and other storiesSelected short stories -1896-1904- translated by Constance Garnett Read onlineSelected short stories -1896-1904- translated by Constance GarnettSelected short stories -1892-1895- translated by Constance Garnett Read onlineSelected short stories -1892-1895- translated by Constance GarnettWard No. 6 and Other Stories, 1892-1895 Read onlineWard No. 6 and Other Stories, 1892-1895