The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904

by Anton Chekhov

  After Tuesday morning service the bishop received parish petitioners at the episcopal palace, which upset and angered him no end: afterwards he went home. Once again he felt ill and longed for his bed. But hardly had he reached his room than he was told that a young merchant called Yerakin, a most charitable man, had come on a most urgent matter. He just could not turn him away. Yerakin stayed for about an hour, and spoke so loud he nearly shouted, making it almost impossible to understand a word he said.

  ‘God grant – well, you know,’ he said as he left. ‘Oh, most certainly! Depending on the circumstances, your grace. I wish you – well, you know!’

  Then the Mother Superior from a distant convent arrived. But by the time she had left, the bells were ringing for evensong and he had to go to church.

  That evening the monks’ singing was harmonious and inspired; a young, black-bearded priest was officiating. When he heard the ‘bridegroom who cometh at midnight’2 and ‘the mansion richly adorned’, he felt neither penitent nor sorrowful, but a spiritual peace and calm as his thoughts wandered off into the distant past, to his childhood and youth, when they had sung of that same bridegroom and mansion. Now that past seemed alive, beautiful, joyful, such as it most probably had never been. Perhaps, in the next world, in the life to come, we will remember that distant past and our life on earth below with just the same feelings. Who knows? The bishop took his seat in the dark chancel, and the tears flowed. He reflected that he had attained everything a man of his position could hope for, and his faith was still strong. All the same, there were things he did not understand, something was lacking. He did not want to die. And still it seemed that an integral part of his life, which he had vaguely dreamed of at some time, had vanished; and precisely the same hopes for the future which he had nurtured in his childhood, at the college and abroad, still haunted him.

  ‘Just listen to them sing today!’ he thought, listening intently. ‘How wonderful!’

  IV

  On Maundy Thursday he celebrated Mass and ritual washing of feet in the cathedral. When the service was over and the congregation had gone home, the weather turned out sunny, warm and cheerful, and water bubbled along the ditches, while the never-ending, sweetly soothing song of the skylarks drifted in from the fields beyond the town. The trees, already in bud, smiled their welcome, while the fathomless, vast expanse of blue sky overhead floated away into the mysterious beyond.

  When he arrived home the bishop had his tea, changed, climbed into bed and ordered the lay brother to close the shutters. It was dark in the bedroom. How tired he felt, though, how his legs and back ached with that cold numbing pain – and what a ringing in his ears! He felt that it was ages since he last got some sleep, absolutely ages, and every time he closed his eyes there seemed to be some little trifling thought that flickered into life in his brain and kept him awake. And, just like yesterday, he could hear voices and the clink of glasses and teaspoons through the walls of the adjoining rooms. His mother, Marya, was cheerfully telling Father Sisoy some funny story while the priest kept commenting in a crusty, disgruntled voice, ‘Damn them! Not on your life! What for!’ Once more the bishop felt annoyed, then offended, when he saw that old lady behaving so naturally and normally with strangers, while with him, her own son, she was so timid and inarticulate, always saying the wrong thing and even trying to find an excuse to stand up, as she was too shy to sit down. And what about his father? Had he been alive, he would probably have been unable to say one word with his son there.

  In the next room something fell on the floor and broke. Katya must have dropped a cup or saucer, because Father Sisoy suddenly spat and said angrily, ‘That girl’s a real terror, Lord forgive me, miserable sinner! She won’t be satisfied until she’s broken everything!’

  Then it grew quiet except for some sounds from outside. When the bishop opened his eyes, Katya was in his room, standing quite still and looking at him. As usual, her red hair rose up above her comb like a halo.

  ‘Is that you, Katya?’ he asked. ‘Who keeps opening and shutting that door downstairs?’

  ‘I can’t hear anything,’ she replied, listening hard.

  ‘Listen – someone’s just gone through.’

  ‘That was your stomach rumbling, Uncle!’

  He laughed and stroked her head.

  ‘So Cousin Nikolasha cuts dead bodies up, does he?’ he asked after a short silence.

  ‘Yes, he’s studying to be a doctor.’

  ‘Is he nice?’

  ‘Yes, he’s all right, but he’s a real devil with the vodka!’

  ‘What did your father die of?’

  ‘Papa was always weak and terribly thin, then suddenly he had a bad throat. I became ill as well, and my brother Fedya too – all of us had bad throats. Papa died, but we got better, Uncle.’

  Her chin trembled and tears welled up in her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. ‘Your grace,’ she said in a thin little voice, weeping bitterly now, ‘Mama and I were left with nothing… please give us a little money, please Uncle, dear!’

  He burst out crying too and for a while was so upset he couldn’t say a word. Then he stroked her hair, touched her shoulder and said, ‘Never mind, little girl, it’s all right. Soon it will be Easter Sunday and we’ll have a little talk then… Of course I’ll help you…’

  Then his mother came in, quietly and timidly, and turned and prayed to the icon. Seeing that he was awake she asked, ‘Would you like a little soup?’

  ‘No thanks, I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Looking at you now, I can see you’re not well. And I’m not surprised. On your feet all day long. Good God, it really hurts me to see you like this. Well, Easter’s not far away and you can have a rest then, God willing. But I won’t bother you any more with my nonsense. Come on, Katya, let the bishop sleep.’

  He could recall her talking to some rural dean in that mock-respectful way a long, long time ago, when he was still a small boy. Only from her unusually loving eyes and the anxious, nervous look she darted at him as she left the room could one tell that she was actually his mother. He closed his eyes and appeared to have fallen asleep, but twice he heard the clock striking, then Father Sisoy coughing in the next room. His mother came into the room again and watched him anxiously for a minute. He heard some coach or carriage drive up to the front steps. Suddenly there was a knock and the door banged: in came the lay brother, shouting, ‘Your grace.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘The carriage is ready, it’s time for evening service.’

  ‘What’s the time?’

  ‘Quarter past seven.’

  He got dressed and went to the cathedral. Throughout the entire twelve lessons from the Gospels he had to stand motionless in the centre; he read the first, the longest and most beautiful, himself. A lighthearted mood came over him. He knew that first lesson (‘Now is the Son of Man glorified’)3 by heart. Now and again he raised his eyes as he read and he saw a sea of lights on both sides of him, heard the candles sputtering. But he could not make any faces out as he used to do in years gone by, and he felt that this was the very same congregation he had seen when he was a boy and a young man, and he felt that it would be the same year after year – for how long God alone knew. His father had been a deacon, his grandfather a priest, and his great-grandfather a deacon. In all likelihood his entire family, from the time of the coming of Christianity to Russia,4 had belonged to the clergy and his love of ritual, of the priesthood, of ringing bells was deep, innate and ineradicable. He always felt active, cheerful and happy when he was in church, especially when he was officiating, and this was how he felt now. Only after the eighth lesson had been read did he feel that his voice was weakening, he could not even hear himself cough and he had a splitting headache; he began to fear he might fall down any moment. In actual fact his legs had gone quite numb, there was no longer any feeling in them. He just could not make out how he was managing to keep on his feet at all and didn’t fall over.

  It was a
quarter to twelve when the service finished. The moment he arrived home, the bishop undressed and went to bed without even saying his prayers. He was unable to speak and thought his legs were about to give way. As he pulled the blanket over him he had a sudden urge, an intolerable longing to go abroad. He felt that he could even sacrifice his life, so long as he didn’t have to look at those miserable cheap shutters any more, those low ceilings, and he yearned to escape from that nasty monastery smell.

  For a long time he heard someone’s footsteps in the next room, but he just could not recollect whose they could be.

  Finally the door opened and in came Sisoy with candle and tea cup.

  ‘In bed already, your grace?’ he asked. ‘I’ve come to give you a good rubdown with vodka and vinegar. It’ll do you the world of good if it’s well rubbed in. Lord above! There, that’s it… I’ve just been to the monastery. Don’t like it there! I’m leaving tomorrow, master, I’ve had enough. Oh, Jesus Christ!’

  Sisoy was incapable of staying very long in one place and he felt as though he had already spent a whole year at the Pankratiyev Monastery. But the hardest thing was making any sense out of what he said, discovering where his home really was, whether he loved anyone or anything, whether he believed in God. He did not really know himself why he had become a monk – he never gave the matter any thought – and he had long forgotten the time when he had taken his vows. It was as if he had come into this world as a monk.

  ‘Tomorrow I’m off, damn it all!’

  ‘I’d like to have a talk with you, but I never seem to get round to it,’ the bishop said softly and with great effort. ‘But I don’t know anyone or anything here.’

  ‘I’ll stay until Sunday if you like, but after that I’m off, damn it!’

  ‘Why am I a bishop?’ the bishop continued in his soft voice. ‘I should have been a village priest, a lay reader or an ordinary monk. All of this crushes the life out of me…’

  ‘What? Heavens above! Now… there! You can have a good sleep now, your grace. Whatever next! Good night!’

  The bishop did not sleep the whole night. At about eight o’clock in the morning he had rectal bleeding. The lay brother panicked and rushed off, first to the Father Superior, then he went to the monastery doctor, Ivan Andreyevich, who lived in town. This doctor, a plump old man with a long grey beard, gave the bishop a thorough examination, kept shaking his head and frowning, after which he said, ‘Did you know it’s typhoid, your grace?’

  Within an hour of the haemorrhage, the bishop had turned thin, pale, and he had a pinched look. His face became wrinkled, his eyes dilated and he seemed suddenly to have aged and shrunk. He felt thinner and weaker and more insignificant than anyone else, and it seemed the entire past had vanished somewhere far, far away and would never be repeated or continued.

  ‘How wonderful!’ he thought. ‘How wonderful!’

  His old mother arrived. She was frightened when she saw his wrinkled face and dilated eyes, and she fell on her knees by the bed and started kissing his face, shoulders and hands. And somehow she too thought that he had become thinner, weaker and more insignificant than anyone else; she forgot that he was a bishop and kissed him like a much-loved child.

  ‘Darling Pavlusha,’ she said. ‘My own flesh and blood… my little son… What’s happened to you? Pavlusha, answer me.’

  Katya stood there, pale and solemn, unable to understand what had happened to her uncle and why her grandmother had such a pained expression, why she spoke so sadly and emotionally. But the bishop just could not articulate a simple word, understood nothing that was going on and he felt that he was just an ordinary, simple man walking swiftly and cheerfully across fields, beating his stick on the ground, under a broad, brilliant sky. Now he was as free as a bird and could go wherever he liked!

  ‘Pavlusha, my angel, my son!’ the old lady said. ‘What’s the matter, dear, please answer!’

  ‘Leave him alone,’ Sisoy said angrily as he crossed the room. ‘Let him sleep, there’s nothing you can do… nothing…’

  Three doctors arrived, consulted together and left. That day seemed never-ending, unbelievably long, and then came a seemingly endless night. Just before dawn on the Saturday, the lay brother went up to the old lady, who was lying on a couch in the drawing-room, and asked her to come to the bedroom as the bishop had just departed this world.

  Next day was Easter Sunday. There were forty-two churches in the town and six monasteries and the sonorous, joyful, incessant pealing of bells lay over it, from morn till night, rippling the spring air. Birds sang and the sun shone brightly. The big market square was noisy, swings rocked back and forwards, barrel organs played, an accordion squealed and drunken shouts rang out.

  In the afternoon there was pony-trotting down the main street. In brief, it was all so cheerful, gay and happy, just as it had been the year before and as it probably would be in the years to come.

  A month later a new suffragan bishop was appointed. No one remembered Bishop Pyotr any more and soon they forgot all about him. Only the old lady (the late bishop’s mother) who was now living with her brother-in-law, a deacon in an obscure provincial town, talked about her son to the women she met when she went out in the evening to fetch her cow from pasture; then she would tell them about her children, her grandchildren, about her son who had been a bishop. And she spoke hesitantly, afraid they would not believe her. Nor did they all believe her, as it happened.

  The Bride

  I

  It was ten o’clock in the evening and a full moon was shining over the garden. At the Shumins’ the service held at Grandmother’s request had just finished. Nadya had gone out into the garden for a moment and now she could see them laying the table for supper, with Grandmother fussing about in her splendid silk dress. Father Andrey, a cathedral dean, was chatting to Nina Ivanovna, Nadya’s mother. In the window, in the evening light, her mother looked somehow very young. Father Andrey’s son (also called Andrey) was standing nearby listening attentively.

  The garden was quiet and cool, and deep, restful shadows lay on the earth. Somewhere, far, far away, probably on the other side of town, she could hear frogs croaking. May, beautiful May, was all around! She could breathe deeply and she liked to imagine that somewhere else, beneath the sky, above the trees, far beyond the town, in the fields and forests, spring was unfolding its own secret life, so lovely, rich and sacred, beyond the understanding of weak, sinful man. And she felt rather like crying.

  Nadya was twenty-three now. Since the age of sixteen she had longed passionately for marriage and now, at last, she was engaged to that Andrey Andreich whom she could see through the window. She liked him, the wedding was fixed for 7 July, and yet she felt no joy, slept badly and was miserable. Through an open window she could hear people rushing about, knives clattering, a door banging on its block and pulley in the basement where the kitchen was. There was a smell of roast turkey and pickled cherries. She felt that life would go on for ever like this, never changing.

  Just then someone came out of the house and stopped on the steps. It was Aleksandr Timofeich, or Sasha for short: he was one of the guests who had arrived from Moscow about ten days before. Once, a long time ago, a distant relative of Grandmother’s by the name of Marya Petrovna – an impoverished, widowed gentlewoman, small, thin and in poor health – used to call on her and be given money. Sasha was her son. People said for some mysterious reason that he was a fine artist, and when his mother died Grandmother sent him off to the Komissarov School in Moscow, for the good of her soul. About two years later he transferred to the Fine Arts Institute, where he stayed almost fifteen years, just managing in the end to qualify in architecture. But he did not practise architecture and worked for a firm of lithographers in Moscow instead. Seriously ill most of the time, he would come and stay at Grandmother’s nearly every summer to rest and recuperate.

  He was wearing a buttoned-up frock-coat and shabby canvas trousers that were ragged at the bottoms. His shirt had not been ir
oned and on the whole he looked somewhat grubby. Although very thin, with large eyes, long gaunt fingers, a beard and swarthy complexion, he was still a handsome man. He was like one of the family with the Shumins and felt quite at home with them. The room in which he stayed had been known as Sasha’s for years.

  As he stood in the porch he caught sight of Nadya and went up to her.

  ‘Nice here, isn’t it?’ he remarked.

  ‘Why, of course. You ought to stay until the autumn.’

  ‘Yes, I might have to. Yes, I may well stay until September.’

  For no reason he laughed and sat down next to her.

  ‘Here I am sitting watching Mother,’ Nadya said. ‘She looks so young from here!’ After a brief silence she added, ‘Mother does have her weak points. Despite that, she’s a remarkable woman.’

  ‘Yes, she’s a good woman,’ Sasha agreed. ‘In her own way your mother’s very kind and charming of course, but… how can I put it?… early this morning I popped into the kitchen and four of the servants were asleep on the bare floor. They don’t have beds; instead of bedding all they have is rags, stench, bugs, cockroaches. It’s all exactly the same as twenty years ago – nothing’s changed. Well, don’t blame your grandmother, it’s not her fault. But your mother speaks French, doesn’t she? She takes part in amateur dramatics. You would have thought that she would understand.’