Tales of Chekhov Page 5

  Even at a good-humoured moment, she could always insult a servant or kill an insect without a pang; she liked bull-fights, liked to read about murders, and was angry when prisoners were acquitted.

  For the life Ariadne and I were leading, we had to have a great deal of money. My poor father sent me his pension, all the little sums he received, borrowed for me wherever he could, and when one day he answered me: “Non habeo,” I sent him a desperate telegram in which I besought him to mortgage the estate. A little later I begged him to get money somehow on a second mortgage. He did this too without a murmur and sent me every farthing. Ariadne despised the practical side of life; all this was no concern of hers, and when flinging away thousands of francs to satisfy her mad desires I groaned like an old tree, she would be singing “Addio bella Napoli” with a light heart.

  Little by little I grew cold to her and began to be ashamed of our tie. I am not fond of pregnancy and confinements, but now I sometimes dreamed of a child who would have been at least a formal justification of our life. That I might not be completely disgusted with myself, I began reading and visiting museums and galleries, gave up drinking and took to eating very little. If one keeps oneself well in hand from morning to night, one’s heart seems lighter. I began to bore Ariadne too. The people with whom she won her triumphs were, by the way, all of the middling sort; as before, there were no ambassadors, there was no salon, the money did not run to it, and this mortified her and made her sob, and she announced to me at last that perhaps she would not be against our returning to Russia.

  And here we are on our way. For the last few months she has been zealously corresponding with her brother; she evidently has some secret projects, but what they are—God knows! I am sick of trying to fathom her underhand schemes! But we’re going, not to the country, but to Yalta and afterwards to the Caucasus. She can only exist now at watering-places, and if you knew how I hate all these watering-places, how suffocated and ashamed I am in them. If I could be in the country now! If I could only be working now, earning my bread by the sweat of my brow, atoning for my follies. I am conscious of a superabundance of energy and I believe that if I were to put that energy to work I could redeem my estate in five years. But now, as you see, there is a complication. Here we’re not abroad, but in mother Russia; we shall have to think of lawful wedlock. Of course, all attraction is over; there is no trace left of my old love, but, however that may be, I am bound in honour to marry her.

  Shamohin, excited by his story, went below with me and we continued talking about women. It was late. It appeared that he and I were in the same cabin.

  “So far it is only in the village that woman has not fallen behind man,” said Shamohin. “There she thinks and feels just as man does, and struggles with nature in the name of culture as zealously as he. In the towns the woman of the bourgeois or intellectual class has long since fallen behind, and is returning to her primitive condition. She is half a human beast already, and, thanks to her, a great deal of what had been won by human genius has been lost again; the woman gradually disappears and in her place is the primitive female. This dropping-back on the part of the educated woman is a real danger to culture; in her retrogressive movement she tries to drag man after her and prevents him from moving forward. That is incontestable.”

  I asked: “Why generalise? Why judge of all women from Ariadne alone? The very struggle of women for education and sexual equality, which I look upon as a struggle for justice, precludes any hypothesis of a retrograde movement.”

  But Shamohin scarcely listened to me and he smiled distrustfully. He was a passionate, convinced misogynist, and it was impossible to alter his convictions.

  “Oh, nonsense!” he interrupted. “When once a woman sees in me, not a man, not an equal, but a male, and her one anxiety all her life is to attract me—that is, to take possession of me—how can one talk of their rights? Oh, don’t you believe them; they are very, very cunning! We men make a great stir about their emancipation, but they don’t care about their emancipation at all, they only pretend to care about it; they are horribly cunning things, horribly cunning!”

  I began to feel sleepy and weary of discussion. I turned over with my face to the wall.

  “Yes,” I heard as I fell asleep—“yes, and it’s our education that’s at fault, sir. In our towns, the whole education and bringing up of women in its essence tends to develop her into the human beast —that is, to make her attractive to the male and able to vanquish him. Yes, indeed”—Shamohiri sighed—“little girls ought to be taught and brought up with boys, so that they might be always together. A woman ought to be trained so that she may be able, like a man, to recognise when she’s wrong, or she always thinks she’s in the right. Instil into a little girl from her cradle that a man is not first of all a cavalier or a possible lover, but her neighbour, her equal in everything. Train her to think logically, to generalise, and do not assure her that her brain weighs less than a man’s and that therefore she can be indifferent to the sciences, to the arts, to the tasks of culture in general. The apprentice to the shoemaker or the house painter has a brain of smaller size than the grown-up man too, yet he works, suffers, takes his part in the general struggle for existence. We must give up our attitude to the physiological aspect, too—to pregnancy and childbirth, seeing that in the first place women don’t have babies every month; secondly, not all women have babies; and, thirdly, a normal countrywoman works in the fields up to the day of her confinement and it does her no harm. Then there ought to be absolute equality in everyday life. If a man gives a lady his chair or picks up the handkerchief she has dropped, let her repay him in the same way. I have no objection if a girl of good family helps me to put on my coat or hands me a glass of water—”

  I heard no more, for I fell asleep.

  Next morning when we were approaching Sevastopol, it was damp, unpleasant weather; the ship rocked. Shamohin sat on deck with me, brooding and silent. When the bell rang for tea, men with their coat-collars turned up and ladies with pale, sleepy faces began going below; a young and very beautiful lady, the one who had been so angry with the Customs officers at Volotchisk, stopped before Shamohin and said with the expression of a naughty, fretful child:

  “Jean, your birdie’s been sea-sick.”

  Afterwards when I was at Yalta I saw the same beautiful lady dashing about on horseback with a couple of officers hardly able to keep up with her. And one morning I saw her in an overall and a Phrygian cap, sketching on the sea-front with a great crowd admiring her a little way off. I too was introduced to her. She pressed my hand with great warmth, and looking at me ecstatically, thanked me in honeyed cadences for the pleasure I had given her by my writings.

  “Don’t you believe her,” Shamohin whispered to me, “she has never read a word of them.”

  When I was walking on the sea-front in the early evening Shamohin met me with his arms full of big parcels of fruits and dainties.

  “Prince Maktuev is here!” he said joyfully. “He came yesterday with her brother, the spiritualist! Now I understand what she was writing to him about! Oh, Lord!” he went on, gazing up to heaven, and pressing his parcels to his bosom. “If she hits it off with the prince, it means freedom, then I can go back to the country with my father!”

  And he ran on.

  “I begin to believe in spirits,” he called to me, looking back. “The spirit of grandfather Ilarion seems to have prophesied the truth! Oh, if only it is so!”

  The day after this meeting I left Yalta and how Shamohin’s story ended I don’t know.

  Polinka

  I

  t is one o’clock in the afternoon. Shopping is at its height at the “Nouveauté’s de Paris,” a drapery establishment in one of the Arcades. There is a monotonous hum of shopmen’s voices, the hum one hears at school when the teacher sets the boys to learn something by heart. This regular sound is not interrupted by the laughter of lady customers nor the slam of the glass door, nor the scurrying of the boys.


  Polinka, a thin fair little person whose mother is the head of a dressmaking establishment, is standing in the middle of the shop looking about for some one. A dark-browed boy runs up to her and asks, looking at her very gravely:

  “What is your pleasure, madam?”

  “Nikolay Timofeitch always takes my order,” answers Polinka.

  Nikolay Timofeitch, a graceful dark young man, fashionably dressed, with frizzled hair and a big pin in his cravat, has already cleared a place on the counter and is craning forward, looking at Polinka with a smile.

  “Morning, Pelagea Sergeevna!” he cries in a pleasant, hearty baritone voice. “What can I do for you?”

  “Good-morning!” says Polinka, going up to him. “You see, I’m back again. . . . Show me some gimp, please.”

  “Gimp—for what purpose?”

  “For a bodice trimming—to trim a whole dress, in fact.”

  “Certainly.”

  Nickolay Timofeitch lays several kinds of gimp before Polinka; she looks at the trimmings languidly and begins bargaining over them.

  “Oh, come, a rouble’s not dear,” says the shopman persuasively, with a condescending smile. “It’s a French trimming, pure silk. . . . We have a commoner sort, if you like, heavier. That’s forty-five kopecks a yard; of course, it’s nothing like the same quality.”

  “I want a bead corselet, too, with gimp buttons,” says Polinka, bending over the gimp and sighing for some reason. “And have you any bead motifs to match?”

  “Yes.”

  Polinka bends still lower over the counter and asks softly:

  “And why did you leave us so early on Thursday, Nikolay Timofeitch?”

  “Hm! It’s queer you noticed it,” says the shopman, with a smirk. “You were so taken up with that fine student that . . . it’s queer you noticed it!”

  Polinka flushes crimson and remains mute. With a nervous quiver in his fingers the shopman closes the boxes, and for no sort of object piles them one on the top of another. A moment of silence follows.

  “I want some bead lace, too,” says Polinka, lifting her eyes guiltily to the shopman.

  “What sort? Black or coloured? Bead lace on tulle is the most fashionable trimming.”

  “And how much is it?”

  “The black’s from eighty kopecks and the coloured from two and a half roubles. I shall never come and see you again,” Nikolay Timofeitch adds in an undertone.

  “Why?”

  “Why? It’s very simple. You must understand that yourself. Why should I distress myself? It’s a queer business! Do you suppose it’s a pleasure to me to see that student carrying on with you? I see it all and I understand. Ever since autumn he’s been hanging about you and you go for a walk with him almost every day; and when he is with you, you gaze at him as though he were an angel. You are in love with him; there’s no one to beat him in your eyes. Well, all right, then, it’s no good talking.”

  Polinka remains dumb and moves her finger on the counter in embarrassment.

  “I see it all,” the shopman goes on. “What inducement have I to come and see you? I’ve got some pride. It’s not every one likes to play gooseberry. What was it you asked for?”

  “Mamma told me to get a lot of things, but I’ve forgotten. I want some feather trimming too.”

  “What kind would you like?”

  “The best, something fashionable.”

  “The most fashionable now are real bird feathers. If you want the most fashionable colour, it’s heliotrope or kanak—that is, claret with a yellow shade in it. We have an immense choice. And what all this affair is going to lead to, I really don’t understand. Here you are in love, and how is it to end?”

  Patches of red come into Nikolay Timofeitch’s face round his eyes. He crushes the soft feather trimming in his hand and goes on muttering:

  “Do you imagine he’ll marry you—is that it? You’d better drop any such fancies. Students are forbidden to marry. And do you suppose he comes to see you with honourable intentions? A likely idea! Why, these fine students don’t look on us as human beings . . . they only go to see shopkeepers and dressmakers to laugh at their ignorance and to drink. They’re ashamed to drink at home and in good houses, but with simple uneducated people like us they don’t care what any one thinks; they’d be ready to stand on their heads. Yes! Well, which feather trimming will you take? And if he hangs about and carries on with you, we know what he is after. . . . When he’s a doctor or a lawyer he’ll remember you: ‘Ah,’ he’ll say, ‘I used to have a pretty fair little thing! I wonder where she is now?’ Even now I bet you he boasts among his friends that he’s got his eye on a little dressmaker.”

  Polinka sits down and gazes pensively at the pile of white boxes.

  “No, I won’t take the feather trimming,” she sighs. “Mamma had better choose it for herself; I may get the wrong one. I want six yards of fringe for an overcoat, at forty kopecks the yard. For the same coat I want cocoa-nut buttons, perforated, so they can be sown on firmly. . . .”

  Nikolay Timofeitch wraps up the fringe and the buttons. She looks at him guiltily and evidently expects him to go on talking, but he remains sullenly silent while he tidies up the feather trimming.

  “I mustn’t forget some buttons for a dressing-gown . . .” she says after an interval of silence, wiping her pale lips with a handkerchief.

  “What kind?”

  “It’s for a shopkeeper’s wife, so give me something rather striking.”

  “Yes, if it’s for a shopkeeper’s wife, you’d better have something bright. Here are some buttons. A combination of colours—red, blue, and the fashionable gold shade. Very glaring. The more refined prefer dull black with a bright border. But I don’t understand. Can’t you see for yourself? What can these . . . walks lead to?”

  “I don’t know,” whispers Polinka, and she bends over the buttons; “I don’t know myself what’s come to me, Nikolay Timofeitch.”

  A solid shopman with whiskers forces his way behind Nikolay Timofeitch’s back, squeezing him to the counter, and beaming with the choicest gallantry, shouts:

  “Be so kind, madam, as to step into this department. We have three kinds of jerseys: plain, braided, and trimmed with beads! Which may I have the pleasure of showing you?”

  At the same time a stout lady passes by Polinka, pronouncing in a rich, deep voice, almost a bass:

  “They must be seamless, with the trade mark stamped in them, please.”

  “Pretend to be looking at the things,” Nikolay Timofeitch whispers, bending down to Polinka with a forced smile. “Dear me, you do look pale and ill; you are quite changed. He’ll throw you over, Pelagea Sergeevna! Or if he does marry you, it won’t be for love but from hunger; he’ll be tempted by your money. He’ll furnish himself a nice home with your dowry, and then be ashamed of you. He’ll keep you out of sight of his friends and visitors, because you’re uneducated. He’ll call you ‘my dummy of a wife.’ You wouldn’t know how to behave in a doctor’s or lawyer’s circle. To them you’re a dressmaker, an ignorant creature.”

  “Nikolay Timofeitch!” somebody shouts from the other end of the shop. “The young lady here wants three yards of ribbon with a metal stripe. Have we any?”

  Nikolay Timofeitch turns in that direction, smirks and shouts:

  “Yes, we have! Ribbon with a metal stripe, ottoman with a satin stripe, and satin with a moiré stripe!”

  “Oh, by the way, I mustn’t forget, Olga asked me to get her a pair of stays!” says Polinka.

  “There are tears in your eyes,” says Nikolay Timofeitch in dismay. “What’s that for? Come to the corset department, I’ll screen you —it looks awkward.”

  With a forced smile and exaggeratedly free and easy manner, the shopman rapidly conducts Polinka to the corset department and conceals her from the public eye behind a high pyramid of boxes.

  “What sort of corset may I show you?” he asks aloud, whispering immediately: “Wipe your eyes!”

  “I want .
. . I want . . . size forty-eight centimetres. Only she wanted one, lined . . . with real whalebone . . . I must talk to you, Nikolay Timofeitch. Come to-day!”

  “Talk? What about? There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “You are the only person who . . . cares about me, and I’ve no one to talk to but you.”

  “These are not reed or steel, but real whalebone. . . . What is there for us to talk about? It’s no use talking. . . . You are going for a walk with him to-day, I suppose?”

  “Yes; I . . . I am.”

  “Then what’s the use of talking? Talk won’t help. . . . You are in love, aren’t you?”

  “Yes . . .” Polinka whispers hesitatingly, and big tears gush from her eyes.

  “What is there to say?” mutters Nikolay Timofeitch, shrugging his shoulders nervously and turning pale. “There’s no need of talk. . . . Wipe your eyes, that’s all. I . . . I ask for nothing.”

  At that moment a tall, lanky shopman comes up to the pyramid of boxes, and says to his customer:

  “Let me show you some good elastic garters that do not impede the circulation, certified by medical authority . . .”

  Nikolay Timofeitch screens Polinka, and, trying to conceal her emotion and his own, wrinkles his face into a smile and says aloud:

  “There are two kinds of lace, madam: cotton and silk! Oriental, English, Valenciennes, crochet, torchon, are cotton. And rococo, soutache, Cambray, are silk. . . . For God’s sake, wipe your eyes! They’re coming this way!”