The Undiscovered Chekhov Page 9

  Dear Mr. Semyon Ivanovitch:

  Mr. Khryapunov, the artiste you beat up, is prepared to reach an out-of-court setdement of 100 rubles. He will not accept one kopeck less. I await your answer.

  Sincerely, your lawyer, N. Erzayev.

  To the brute who dares call himself a trader:

  Having been insulted by you most grossly, I have relegat-ed my complaint to a court of law. As you seem incapable of appreciating who I am, perhaps the justice of the peace or a public trial will teach you to respect me. Erzayev, your lawyer, said that you were not prepared to pay me a hundred rubles. This being the case, I am prepared to accept 75 rubles in com-pensation for your brutish behavior. It is only in lenience for your simplemindedness and to what one could call your animalistic instincts that I am prepared to let you off so cheaply. When an educated man insults me, I charge much more. Khryapunov, artiste

  ...concerning our demand of 539 rubles and 43 kopecks, the value of the broken mirror and the piano you demolished in the Glukharev Restaurant...

  ...anoint bruises morning and evening...

  ...after I manage to sell the ruined fabrics as if they were choice merchandise, I plan to get totally soused! Get yourself over to Feodosyas this evening. See to it that we get Kuzma the musi-cian—and spread some mustard on his head—and that we have four mademoiselles. Get plump ones.

  ...concerning the IOU—you can take a flying jump! I will gladly proffer a ten-kopeck piece, but concerning the fraudulent bankrupter, well see what we shall see.

  Finding you in a state of feverish delirium due to the excessive intake of alcohol (delirium tremens), I applied cupping glasses to your body to bring you back to your senses. For these services I request a fee of three rubles.

  Egor Frykov, Medical Attendant

  Dear Semyon, please don’t be angry—I named you as a witness in court concerning that rampage when we were being beaten up, even though you said I shouldn’t. Don’t act so superior— after all, you yourself caught a couple of wallops too. And see to it that those bruises don’t go away, keep them inflamed...

  Bill

  1 portion of fish soup................1 ruble, 80 kopecks.

  1 bottle of Champagne..............8 rubles.

  1 broken decanter......................5 rubles.

  Cab for the mademoiselles........2 rubles.

  Cabbage soup for the Gypsy....60 kopecks.

  Tearing of waiter’s jacket..........10 rubles.

  ...I kiss you coundess times, and hope to see you soon at the following address: Fayansov Furnished Rooms, number 18. Ask for Martha Sivyagina.

  Your ever-loving Angelica

  AT

  THE

  PHARMACY

  TT WAS LATE IN the evening. The private tutor Egor Alexeyitch Svoykin, so as not to waste time, went straight from the doctors to the pharmacy.

  “Its like going from a cowshed into a courtesan’s boudoir!” he thought as he climbed the staircase, which was polished and covered with an expensive runner. “You’re afraid to put your foot down!”

  As he entered, Svoykin was struck by the aroma one finds in every pharmacy in the world. Science and medicine may change over the years, but the fragrance of a pharmacy is as eternal as the atom. Our grandfathers smelled it, and our grandchildren will smell it too. As it was so late, there were no customers. Behind a polished yellow counter covered with labeled jars stood a tall gentleman, his head leaning sturdily back. He had a severe face and well-groomed side- whiskers—to all appearances, the pharmacist. From the small bald patch on his head to his long pink fingernails, everything was painstakingly starched, groomed, licked clean, as if he were standing at the altar. His haughty eyes were looking down at a newspaper lying on the counter. He was reading. A cashier sat to the side behind a wire grille, lazily counting change. On the far side of the counter two dim figures puttered about in the semidarkness, mixing a multitude of strange potions.

  Svoykin went up to the counter and gave the starched gendeman the prescription. He took it without looking at it, continued reading the newspaper article to the end of the sentence, and muttered, turning his head slighdy: “Calomeli grana duo, sacchari albi grana quinque, numero decern!”

  “Ja!” a sharp, metallic voice answered from the depths of the pharmacy.

  The pharmacist gave directions for the drops in the same muffled, measured voice.

  “Ja!” came from the other corner.

  The pharmacist wrote something on the prescription, frowned, and leaning his head back, rested his eyes again on the newspaper.

  “It will be ready in an hour,” he mumbled through his teeth, his eyes scanning for the sentence he had just finished reading.

  “Can’t I get it any sooner?” Svoykin muttered. “I can’t possibly wait that long.”

  The pharmacist did not answer. Svoykin sat down on the sofa and waited. The cashier finished counting the change, sighed deeply, and rattled his keys. One of the dark figures in the interior was pounding away with a marble pesde. The other figure shuffled about with a blue vial. Somewhere a clock stuck with rhythmic care.

  Svoykin was ill. His mouth was on fire; there was a drawn- out pain in his arms and legs; foggy images tumbled about like clouds and shrouded human figures in his heavy head. He looked as if through a veil at the pharmacist, the shelves of jars, the gas burners, and the cabinets. The monotonous pounding in the marble mortar, and the slow ticking of the clock, seemed to him to be coming not from the outside but from inside his head. The disorientation and fogginess took over his whole body more and more, so that after a while, feeling that the pounding of the pestle was making him sick, he decided to get a hold on himself by striking up a conversation with the pharmacist.

  “I think I’m getting a fever,” he said. “The doctor says it’s a bit soon to tell what I’m suffering from, but I’m already feeling quite weak. Thank God, though, I had the good fortune to fall sick here in the capital and not out in the village, where there’s neither doctor nor pharmacy!”

  The pharmacist remained stock-still and, leaning his head farther back, kept on reading his newspaper. He didn’t respond to Svoykin with word or movement—it was as if he hadn’t heard him. The cashier yawned loudly and struck a match against his pants. The pounding of the pesde grew louder and more ringing. Seeing that no one was listening to him, Svoykin lifted his eyes to the shelf of jars and began reading the labels. At first all kinds of herbs shot before his eyes: Pimpinella, Tormentilla, Zedoari- an, Gentian, and so on. Behind the herbs, tinctures flashed, - oleums, -seeds, one name stranger and more antediluvian than the next.

  “I wonder how much useless ballast there is on these shelves!” Svoykin thought. “How much stuff must be kept in these jars just for tradition’s sake, but how solid and impressive it all looks!”

  Svoykin moved his eyes from the shelves to the glass cabinet next to him. He saw rubber rings, balls, syringes, jars of toothpaste, Pierrot drops, Adelheim drops, cosmetic soaps, hair-growth ointment.

  A boy in a dirty apron entered the pharmacy and asked for ten kopecks worth of ox bile.

  “Could you tell me what ox bile is used for?” Svoykin asked the pharmacist, thinking it might be a handy subject for striking up a conversation.

  Not getting an answer, he stared at the severe and haughty face of the pharmacist.

  “God, what strange people they are!” he thought. “Why do they have science stamped all over their faces? Looking at them, you’d think they were lofty scientists, but all they do is sell hair- growth ointment and fleece you. They write in Latin and speak to one another in German... they act as if they’re medieval or something. When you’re in good health you never notice their dry, stale faces, but the moment you get sick, like me, you’re horrified that a sacrosanct profession has fallen into the hands of such rigid, unfeeling characters.”

  Looking at the pharmacist’s motionless face, Svoykin suddenly felt the uncontrollable urge to lie down somewhere in the dark, as far away as possible,
away from these scientific faces and the pounding of the marble pesde. The exhaustion of illness took over his whole being. He went up to the counter and, with an imploring grimace, asked:

  “Could you please be so kind as to hurry with my medicine! I’m... I’m ill...”

  “It’ll be ready soon enough... excuse me, but there’s no leaning on the counter!”

  Svoykin sat down again on the sofa and, chasing away the foggy images in his head, watched the cashier smoke.

  “Only half an hour has passed,” he thought. “I’m only halfway through... this is unbearable!”

  But finally the small dark chemist came up to the phar-macist and put down next to him a box with powders and a vial of pink liquid. The pharmacist read to the end of the sentence, slowly walked away from the counter, picked up the vial, and holding it up to his eyes, shook it. Then he put his signature on a label, tied it to the neck of the vial, and then reached for the seal.

  “God, what are all these rituals for?” Svoykin thought. “What a waste of time, and they even charge you extra for it!”

  The pharmacist turned round and, having finished with the liquid, went through the same procedure with the powder.

  “Here you are!” he said finally, without looking up at Svoykin. “Pay the cashier one ruble and six kopecks!”

  Svoykin put his hand in his pocket, took out a ruble, and then suddenly remembered that the ruble was all he had.

  “One ruble and she kopecks?” he mumbled, embarrassed. “All I have is one ruble... I thought a ruble would be enough... what am I going to do?”

  “I have no idea!” the pharmacist said, picking up his newspaper again.

  “Under the circumstances... I would be grateful if you would let me bring you, or maybe send you, the six kopecks tomorrow...”

  “I’m sorry, we don’t give credit here.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Go home, get the six kopecks, and then you can have your medicine.”

  “But... I’m having difficulty walking, and I don’t have anyone I can send...”

  “That’s your problem.”

  “Well,” Svoykin thought. “Fine, I’ll go home.”

  He left the pharmacy and set off home. To reach his apartment he had to sit down five or six times. He went inside, found some change on the table, and sat down on his bed to rest. A strange power pulled his head toward the pillow. He lay down for a few minutes. The foggy images, like clouds and shrouded figures, blurred his consciousness. For a long time he kept thinking he had to go back to the pharmacy, and for a long time he intended to get up. But the illness prevailed. The copper coins fell out of his hand, and the sick man dreamed that he had gone back to the pharmacy and was again chatting with the pharmacist.

  ON

  MORTALITY:

  A

  CERNIVAL

  TALE

  TOURT COUNSELOR Semyon Petrovitch Podtikin sat down at the table, spread a napkin across his chest, and quivering with impatience, await-ed the moment the bliny would appear. Before him, as before a general surveying a batdefield, a vista unfolded: rank upon rank of botdes, from the middle of the table right up to the front line—three types of vodka, Kiev brandy, Château La Rose, Rhine wine, and even a big-bellied flask of priesdy Benedictine. Crowding around the liquors in artful disarray were platters of sprats, sardines in hot sauce, sour cream, caviar (at three rubles forty kopecks a pound), fresh salmon, and so on. Podtikin greedily ran his eyes over the food. His eyes melted like butter; his face oozed with lust.

  Frowning, he turned to his wife.

  “What’s taking so long? Katya!” he called to the cook. “Hurry up!”

  Finally, the cook arrived with the bliny. At the risk of scorching his fingers, Semyon Petrovitch snatched up two of the hottest from the top of the pile and slapped them onto his plate with gusto. The bliny were crisp, lacy, and as plump as the shoulders of a merchants daughter. Podtikin smiled affably, hiccupped with pleasure, and doused the bliny in hot butter. Then, as if to tease his appetite, luxuriating in anticipation, he slowly, deliberately heaped them with caviar. He poured sour cream over the places the caviar left bare. Now he had only to eat, right? Wrong! Contemplating his creation, Podtikin was not quite satisfied. After a moments thought, he topped the bliny with the oiliest slice of salmon he could find, and a sprat, and a sardine; then, no longer able to hold back, trembling with delight and gasping, he rolled up the two bliny, downed a shot of vodka, wheezed, opened his mouth— and was struck by an apoplectic fit.

  A

  SERIOUS

  STEP

  ALEKSEI BORISITCH HAS just a risen from a deep after-lunch slumber. He is sitting by the window with his wife, Martha Afanasevna, and is grumbling. He is not pleased that his daughter Lidochka has gone for a walk in the garden with young Fyodor Petrovitch.

  “I can’t stand it,” the old man mutters, “when young girls get so carried away that they lose all sense of bashfulness! Loafing about in the garden like this, wandering down dark paths! Depravity and dissipation, that’s what it is! You, Mother, are completely blind to it all!... And anyway, as far as you’re concerned, it’s perfecdy fine for the girl to act like a fool... as far as you’re concerned, the two of them can go ahead and flirt all they want down there! Why, given half a chance you too, old as you are, would gladly throw all shame to the winds and rush off for a secret rendezvous of your own!”

  “Stop bothering me!” the old woman says angrily. “Look at him, he’s rambling on, and doesn’t even know what he’s rambling about! Bald numskull!”

  “Ha! Fine! Have it your way then! Let them kiss and hug all they want! Fine! Let them! I won’t be the one called to answer before the Lord Almighty once the girl’s head has been turned! Go ahead my children, kiss—court away all you want!”

  “Stop gloating! Maybe nothing will come of it!”

  “Let us pray that nothing will come of it!” Aleksei Borisitch sighs.

  “You have always been your own daughter’s worst enemy! Ill will, that’s all she’s ever had from you! You should pray, Aleksei, that the Lord will not punish you for your cruelty! I fear for you! And we do not have all that long to live!”

  “That’s all fine and good, but I still can’t allow this! He’s not a good enough match for her, and besides, what’s the rush? With our social status and her looks, she can find herself much better fiancés. And anyway, why am I even talking to you? Ha! That’s all I need now, a talk with you! We have to throw him out and lock Lidochka in her room, it’s as simple as that! And that’s exacdy what I’m going to do!”

  The old man yawns, and his words stretch like rubber. It is clear that he is only grumbling because he feels a weight in the pit of his stomach, and that he’s wagging his tongue just to wag it. But the old woman takes each of his words to heart. She wrings her hands and snaps back at him, clucking like a hen. Tyrant, monster, Mohammedan, effigy, and a string of other special curses fly from her mouth straight at Aleksei Borisitch’s ugly mug. The matter would have ended as always with a momentous spit, and tears, but suddenly their eye catches something unusual: Lidochka, their daughter, her hair disheveled, comes rushing up the garden path toward the house. At the same instant, far down in the garden where the path bends, Fyodor Petrovitch’s straw hat bobs up from behind the bushes. The young man is strikingly pale. Hesitating, he takes two steps forward, waves, and quickly walks off. Then they hear Lidochka running into the house, rushing through the halls, and noisily locking herself in her room.

  The old man and the old woman stare at each other with stunned surprise, cast down their eyes, and turn slightly pale. Both remain silent, not knowing what to say. To them, the meaning behind the fray is as clear as rain. Without a word, both of them understand and feel that while they were busy hissing and growling at each other, their daughters fate had been decided. The plainest human sensibility, not to mention a parent s heart, can comprehend what minutes of agony Lidochka, locked in her room, was living through,
and what an important, fateful role the retreating straw hat played in her life.

  Aleksei Borisitch gets up with a grunt and starts marching up and down the room. The old woman follows his every move, waiting with bated breath for him to say something.

  “What strange weather we’ve been having these past few days,” the old man suddenly says. “At night it’s cold, then during the day the heat’s unbearable.”

  The cook brings in the samovar. Martha Afanasevna warms the cups with hot water and then pours the tea. But no one touches it.

  “We should... we should call her... Lidochka... so she can drink her tea...” Aleksei Borisitch mumbles. “Otherwise we’ll have to put a fresh samovar on for her... I can’t stand disorder!”

  Martha Afanasevna wants to say something but cannot. Her lips twitch, her tongue does not obey, and her eyes cloud over. A few moments pass, and she bursts into tears. Aleksei Borisitch, himself teetering on the verge of tears, badly wants to pat the sobbing old woman on the back, but he is too proud. He must stand firm.

  “This is all nice and fine,” he grumbles. “It’s just that he should have spoken to us first... yes... first of all he should have, properly, asked for Lidochka’s hand!... After all, we might not want to give it to him!”

  The old woman waves her hands in the air, moans loud-ly, and rushes off to her room.

  “This is a serious step...” Aleksei Borisitch thinks to himself. “One can’t just decide willy-nilly... one has to seriously... from all sides... I’ll go question her... find out all the whys and wherefores! I’ll talk to her, and then I’ll decide... This won’t do!”

  The old man wraps his dressing gown tighdy around himself and slinks to Lidochka’s door.

  “Lidochka!” he calls, timidly tugging at the doorknob. “Um, are you... um? Are you feeling ill or something?”

  No answer. Aleksei Borisitch sighs, shrugs his shoulders for some reason, and walks away from the door.

  “This won’t do!” he thinks to himself, shuffling in his slippers through the halls. “One has to look at it... from all sides, to chat, discuss... the holy sacrament of marriage, one can’t just approach it with frivolity... I’ll go and talk to the old woman...”