The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov Read online

  * * * * *

  Mother never stops talking about poverty. It is very strange. In the first place, it is strange that we are poor, beg like beggars, and at the same time eat superbly, live in a large house; in the summer we go to our own country house, and generally speaking we do not look like beggars. Evidently this is not poverty, but something else, and rather worse. Secondly, it is strange that for the last ten years mother has been spending all her energy solely on getting money to pay interest. It seems to me that were mother to spend that terrible energy on something else, we could have twenty such houses. Thirdly, it seems to me strange that the hardest work in the family is done by mother, not by me. To me that is the strangest thing of all, most terrible. She has, as she has just said, a thought on her brain, she begs, she humiliates herself; our debts grow daily and up till now I have not done a single thing to help her. What can I do? I think and think and cannot make it out. I only see clearly that we are rushing down an inclined plane, but to what, the devil knows. They say that poverty threatens us and that in poverty there is disgrace, but that too I cannot understand, since I was never poor.

  * * * * *

  The spiritual life of these women is as gray and dull as their faces and dresses; they speak of science, literature, tendencies, and the like, only because they are the wives and sisters of scholars and literary men; were they the wives and sisters of inspectors or of dentists, they would speak with the same zeal of fires or teeth. To allow them to speak of science, which is foreign to them, and to listen to them, is to flatter their ignorance.

  * * * * *

  Essentially all this is crude and meaningless, and romantic love appears as meaningless as an avalanche which involuntarily rolls down a mountain and overwhelms people. But when one listens to music, all this is: that some people lie in their graves and sleep, and that one woman is alive—gray-haired, she is sitting in a box in the theatre, quiet and majestic, and the avalanche seems no longer meaningless, since in nature everything has a meaning. And everything is forgiven, and it would be strange not to forgive.

  * * * * *

  Olga Ivanovna regarded old chairs, stools, sofas, with the same respectful tenderness as she regarded old dogs and horses, and her room, therefore, was something like an alms-house for furniture. Round the mirror, on all tables and shelves, stood photographs of uninteresting, half-forgotten people; on the walls hung pictures at which nobody ever looked; and it was always dark in the room, because there burnt there only one lamp with a blue shade.

  * * * * *

  If you cry "Forward," you must without fail explain in which direction one must go. Do you not see that, if without explaining the direction, you fire off this word simultaneously at a monk and at a revolutionary, they will proceed in precisely opposite directions?

  * * * * *

  It is said in Holy Writ: "Fathers, do not irritate your children," even the wicked and good-for-nothing children; but the fathers irritate me, irritate me terribly. My contemporaries chime in with them and the youngsters follow, and every minute they strike me in the face with their smooth words.

  * * * * *

  That the aunt suffered and did not show it gave him the impression of a trick.

  * * * * *

  O.I. was in constant motion; such women, like bees, carry about a fertilizing pollen….

  * * * * *

  Don't marry a rich woman—she will drive you out of the house; don't marry a poor woman—you won't sleep; but marry the freest freedom, the lot and life of a Cossack. (Ukrainian saying.)

  * * * * *

  Aliosha: "I often hear people say: 'Before marriage there is romance, and then—goodbye, illusion!' How heartless and coarse it is."

  * * * * *

  So long as a man likes the splashing of a fish, he is a poet; but when he knows that the splashing is nothing but the chase of the weak by the strong, he is a thinker; but when he does not understand what sense there is in the chase, or what use in the equilibrium which results from destruction, he is becoming silly and dull, as he was when a child. And the more he knows and thinks, the sillier he becomes.

  * * * * *

  The death of a child. I have no sooner sat down in peace than—bang—fate lets fly at me.

  * * * * *

  The she-wolf, nervous and anxious, fond of her young, dragged away a foal into her winter-shelter, thinking him a lamb. She knew that there was a ewe there and that the ewe had young. While she was dragging the foal away, suddenly some one whistled; she was alarmed and dropped him, but he followed her. They arrived at the shelter. He began to suck like the young wolves. Throughout the winter he changed but little; he only grew thin and his legs longer, and the spot on his forehead turned into a triangle. The she-wolf was in delicate health.[1]

  [Footnote 1: A sketch of part of the story "Whitehead."]

  * * * * *

  They invited celebrities to these evening parties, and it was dull because there are few people of talent in Moscow, and the same singers and reciters performed at all evening parties.

  * * * * *

  She has not before felt herself so free and easy with a man.

  * * * * *

  You wait until you grow up and I'll teach you declamation.

  * * * * *

  It seemed to her that at the show many of the pictures were alike.

  * * * * *

  There filed up before you a whole line of laundry-maids.

  * * * * *

  Kostya insisted that the women had robbed themselves.

  * * * * *

  L. put himself in the place of the juryman and interpreted it thus: if it was a case of house-breaking, then there was no theft, because the laundresses themselves sold the linen and spent the money on drink; but if it was a case of theft, then there could have been no house-breaking.

  * * * * *

  Fiodor was flattered that his brother had found him at the same table with a famous actor.

  * * * * *

  When Y. spoke or ate, his beard moved as if he had no teeth in his mouth.

  * * * * *

  Ivashin loved Nadya Vishnyevsky and was afraid of his love. When the butler told him that the old lady had just gone out, but the young lady was at home, he fumbled in his fur coat and dress-coat pocket, found his card, and said: "Right."

  But it was not all right. Driving from his house in the morning, to pay a visit, he thought that he was compelled to it by conventions of society, which weighed heavily upon him. But now it was clear to him that he went to pay calls only because somewhere far away in the depths of his soul, as under a veil, there lay hidden a hope that he would see Nadya…. And he suddenly felt pitiful, sad, and a little frightened….

  * * * * *

  In his soul, it seemed to him, it was snowing, and everything faded away. He was afraid to love Nadya, because he was too old for her, thought his appearance unattractive, and did not believe that young girls like Nadya could love men for their minds and spiritual qualities. Still there would at times rise in him something like a hope. But now, from the moment when the officer's spurs jingled and then died away, there also died away his timid love…. All was at an end, hope was impossible…. "Yes, now all is finished," he thought, "I am glad, very glad."

  * * * * *

  He imagined his wife to be not Nadya, but always, for some reason, a stout woman with a large bosom, covered with Venetian lace.

  * * * * *

  The clerks in the office of the Governor of the island have a drunken headache. They long for a drink. They have no money. What is to be done? One of them, a convict who is serving his time here for forgery, devises a plan. He goes to the church, where a former officer, now exiled for giving his superior a box on the ears, sings in the choir, and says to him panting: "Here! There's a pardon come for you! They have got a telegram in the office."

  The late officer turns pale, trembles, and can hardly walk for excitement.

  "But for such news you ought to give something for a drink," says
the clerk.

  "Take all I have! All!"

  And he hands him some five roubles…. He arrives at the office. The officer is afraid that he may die from joy and presses his hand to his heart.

  "Where is the telegram?"

  "The bookkeeper has put it away." (He goes to the bookkeeper.) General laughter and an invitation to drink with them.

  "How terrible!"

  After that the officer was ill for a week.[1]

  [Footnote 1: An episode which Chekhov heard during his journey in the island, Saghalien.]

  * * * * *

  Fedya, the steward's brother-in-law, told Ivanov that wild-duck were feeding on the other side of the wood. He loaded his gun with slugs. Suddenly a wolf appeared. He fired and smashed both the wolf's hips. The wolf was mad with pain and did not see him. "What can I do for you, dear?" He thought and thought, and then went home and called Peter…. Peter took a stick, and with an awful grimace, began to beat the wolf…. He beat and beat and beat until it died…. He broke into a sweat and went away, without saying a single word.

  * * * * *

  Vera: "I do not respect you, because you married so strangely, because nothing came of you…. That is why I have secrets from you."

  * * * * *

  It is unfortunate that we try to solve the simplest questions cleverly, and therefore make them unusually complicated. We should seek a simple solution.

  * * * * *

  There is no Monday which will not give its place to Tuesday.

  * * * * *

  I am happy and satisfied, sister, but if I were born a second time and were asked: "Do you want to marry?" I should answer: "No." "Do you want to have money?" "No…."

  * * * * *

  Lenstchka liked dukes and counts in novels, not ordinary persons. She loved the chapters in which there is love, pure and ideal not sensual. Descriptions of nature she did not like. She preferred conversations to descriptions. While reading the beginning she would glance impatiently at the end. She did not remember the names of authors. She wrote with a pencil in the margins: "Wonderful!" "Beautiful!" or "Serve him right!"

  * * * * *

  Lenstchka sang without opening her mouth.

  * * * * *

  Post coitum: We Balderiovs always excelled in vigor and health.

  * * * * *

  He drove in a cab, and, as he watched his son walking away, thought: "Perhaps, he belongs to the race of men who will no longer trundle in scurvy cabs, as I do, but will fly through the skies in balloons."

  * * * * *

  She is so beautiful that it is even frightening; dark eye-brows.

  * * * * *

  The son says nothing, but the wife feels him to be an enemy; she feels that he has overheard everything….

  * * * * *

  What a lot of idiots there are among ladies. People get so used to it that they do not notice it.

  * * * * *

  They often go to the theatre and read serious magazines—and yet are spiteful and immoral.

  * * * * *

  Nat: "I never have fits of hysterics. I am not a pampered darling."[1]

  [Footnote 1: This and the following few passages are from the rough draft of Chekhov's play Three Sisters.]

  * * * * *

  Nat: (continually to her sisters): "O, how ugly you have grown. O, how old you do look!"

  * * * * *

  To live one must have something to hang on to…. In the provinces only the body works, not the spirit.

  * * * * *

  You won't become a saint through other people's sins.

  * * * * *

  Koulyguin: "I am a jolly fellow, I infect every one with my mood."

  * * * * *

  Koul. Gives lessons at rich houses.

  * * * * *

  Koul. In Act IV without mustaches.

  * * * * *

  The wife implores the husband: "Don't get fat."

  * * * * *

  O if there were a life in which every one grew younger and more beautiful.

  * * * * *

  Irene: "It is hard to live without a father, without a mother."—"And without a husband."—"Yes, without a husband. Whom could one confide in? To whom could one complain? With whom could one share ones's joy? One must love some one strongly."

  * * * * *

  Koulyguin (to his wife): "I am so happy to be married to you, that I consider it ungentlemanly and improper to speak of or even mention a dowry. Hush, don't say anything…."

  * * * * *

  The doctor enjoys being at the duel.

  * * * * *

  It is difficult to live without orderlies. You cannot make the servants answer your bell.

  * * * * *

  The 2nd, 3rd, and 6th companies left at 4, and we leave at 12 sharp.[1]

  [Footnote 1: Here the fragments from the rough draft of Three

  Sisters end.]

  * * * * *

  In the daytime conversations about the loose manners of the girls in secondary schools, in the evening a lecture on degeneration and the decline of everything, and at night, after all this, one longs to shoot oneself.

  * * * * *

  In the life of our towns there is no pessimism, no Marxism, and no movements, but there is stagnation, stupidity, mediocrity.

  * * * * *

  He had a thirst for life, but it seemed to him to mean that he wanted a drink—and he drank wine.

  * * * * *

  F. in the town-hall: Serguey Nik. in a plaintive voice: "Gentlemen, where can we get the means? Our town is poor."

  * * * * *

  To be idle involuntarily means to listen to what is being said, to see what is being done; but he who works and is occupied hears little and sees little.

  * * * * *

  In the skating rink he raced after L.; he wanted to overtake her and it seemed as if it were life which he wanted to overtake, that life which one cannot bring back or overtake or catch, just as one cannot catch one's shadow.

  * * * * *

  Only one thought reconciled him to the doctor: just as he had suffered from the doctor's ignorance, so perhaps some one was suffering from his mistakes.

  * * * * *

  But isn't it strange? In the whole town there is not a single musician, not a single orator, not a prominent man.

  * * * * *

  Honorable Justice of the Peace, Honorable Member of the Children's

  Shelter—all honorable.

  * * * * *

  L. studied and studied—but people who had finished developing could not understand her, nor could the young. Ut consecutivum.

  * * * * *

  He is dark, with little side-whiskers, dressed like a dandy, dark eyes, a warm brunet. He exterminates bugs, talks about earthquakes and China. His fiancée has a dowry of 8,000 roubles; she is very handsome, as her aunt says. He is an agent for a fire-insurance company, etc. "You're awfully pretty, my darling, awfully. And 8,000 into the bargain! You are a beauty; when I looked at you to-day, a shiver ran down my back."

  * * * * *

  He: Earthquakes are caused by the evaporation of water.

  * * * * *

  Names: Goose, Pan, Oyster.

  "Were I abroad, they would give me a medal for such a surname."

  * * * * *

  I can't be said to be handsome, but I am rather pretty.

  ANTON CHEKHOV'S DIARY.

  1896

  My neighbor V.N.S. told me that his uncle Fet-Shenshin, the famous poet, when driving through the Mokhovaia Street, would invariably let down the window of his carriage and spit at the University. He would expectorate and spit: Bah! His coachman got so used to this that every time he drove past the University, he would stop.

  In January I was in Petersburg and stayed with Souvorin. I often saw Potapenko. Met Korolenko. I often went to the Maly Theatre. As Alexander [Chekhov's brother] came downstairs one day, B.V.G. simultaneously came out of the editorial office of the Novoye Vremya and said to me indignantly: "Why do you set t
he old man (i.e. Souvorin) against Burenin?" I have never spoken ill of the contributors to the Novoye Vremya in Souvorin's presence, although I have the deepest disrespect for the majority of them.

  In February, passing through Moscow, I went to see L.N. Tolstoi. He was irritated, made stinging remarks about the décadents, and for an hour and a half argued with B. Tchitcherin, who, I thought, talked nonsense all the time. Tatyana and Mary [Tolstoi's daughters] laid out a patience; they both wished, and asked me to pick a card out; I picked out the ace of spades separately for each of them, and that annoyed them. By accident there were two aces of spades in the pack. Both of them are extraordinarily sympathetic, and their attitude to their father is touching. The countess denounced the painter Gé all the evening. She too was irritated.

  May 5. The sexton Ivan Nicolayevitch brought my portrait, which he has painted from a photograph. In the evening V.N.S. brought his friend N. He is director of the Foreign Department … editor of a magazine … and doctor of medicine. He gives the impression of being an unusually stupid person and a reptile. He said: "There's nothing more pernicious on earth than a rascally liberal paper," and told us that, apparently, the peasants whom he doctors, having got his advice and medicine free of charge, ask him for a tip. He and S. speak of the peasants with exasperation and loathing.

  June 1. I was at the Vagankov Cemetery and saw the graves there of the victims of the Khodinka. [During the coronation of Nicholas II in Moscow hundreds of people were crushed to death in the Khodinka Fields.] I. Pavlovsky, the Paris correspondent of the Novoye Vremya, came with me to Melikhovo.

  August 4. Opening of the school in Talezh. The peasants of Talezh, Bershov, Doubechnia and Sholkovo presented me with four loaves, an icon and two silver salt-cellars. The Sholkovo peasant Postnov made a speech.

  N. stayed with me from the 15th to the 18th August. He has been forbidden [by the authorities] to publish anything: he speaks contemptuously now of the younger G., who said to the new Chief of the Central Press Bureau that he was not going to sacrifice his weekly Nedelya for N.'s sake and that "We have always anticipated the wishes of the Censorship." In fine weather N. walks in goloshes, and carries an umbrella, so as not to die of sunstroke; he is afraid to wash in cold water, and complains of palpitations of the heart. From me he went on to L.N. Tolstoi.