‘Nadya, what was that bang?’ she asked.
With her hair done up in a single plait and smiling timidly, her mother looked older, uglier and shorter on that stormy night. Nadya recalled how, not long ago, she had looked on her mother as an extraordinary woman and had listened proudly to her every word. But now she could not remember those words: everything that came to mind was so feeble and useless.
Suddenly, several deep voices began droning in the stove and she could even make out the words, ‘O-oh! Good Go-od!’ Nadya sat up in bed, suddenly clutched her head and burst out sobbing.
‘Dearest Mother,’ she sobbed, ‘if only you knew what’s happening to me! I beg you, implore you, let me go away from here. Please!’
‘But where?’ Nina Ivanovna asked, not understanding. ‘Where to?’
Nadya wept for a long time, and could not say one word. ‘Please let me leave this town!’ she said at last. ‘There can’t be any wedding, there shan’t be any wedding, so there! I don’t love that man and I can’t bear talking about him.’
‘No, my darling, no,’ Nina Ivanovna said quickly, absolutely horrified. ‘Please calm down. You’re not yourself at the moment, it will pass. These things happen. You’ve probably had a little argument with Andrey, but love’s not complete without a quarrel.’
‘Please leave me alone, Mother. Please!’ sobbed Nadya.
‘Yes,’ Nina Ivanovna said after a brief silence. ‘Not long ago you were a child, just a little girl, and now you’re going to be married. This transmutation of matter is constantly taking place in nature. Without even noticing it, you’ll be a mother yourself, then an old lady – and then you’ll have a stubborn little daughter like I have.’
‘My sweet darling, you are clever, but you’re unhappy,’ Nadya said. ‘You’re very unhappy, but why say such nasty things? In heaven’s name why?’
Nina Ivanovna wanted to speak, but she was unable to utter one word. Sobbing, she went to her room. Those deep voices began droning in the stove again and Nadya suddenly felt terrified. She leapt out of bed and dashed to her mother’s room. Nina Ivanovna was lying under a light blue quilt, book in hand; her eyes were filled with tears.
‘Mother, please hear what I have to say!’ Nadya said. ‘Now think and try to see my point of view. Just look how petty and degrading our lives are. My eyes have been opened, I can see everything clearly now. What’s so special about Andrey? He’s not very clever, is he, Mother? Heavens, can’t you see that he’s stupid!’
Nina Ivanovna sat up abruptly. ‘You and your grandmother are torturing me,’ she sobbed. ‘I want some life… some life!’ she repeated, striking herself twice on the chest with her fist. ‘Give me my freedom. I’m still young, I want some life, but you two have made an old woman out of me.’
She wept bitterly, lay down and curled up under the quilt – she seemed so small, pathetic, stupid. Nadya went to her room, dressed, and sat by the window to wait for morning. All night long she sat there brooding, while someone seemed to be banging the shutter from outside and whistling.
In the morning Grandmother complained that the wind had blown all the apples off the trees during the night and broken an old plum tree. Everything was so grey, dull and cheerless, it seemed dark enough for lighting the lamps. Everyone complained of the cold, and the rain lashed the windows. After her morning tea, Nadya went to Sasha’s room. Without a word she knelt in the corner by his armchair and covered her face in her hands.
‘What’s the matter?’ Sasha asked.
‘I can’t stand it any more,’ she said. ‘I just don’t understand how I could ever have lived in this place. It’s beyond me. I despise my fiancé, I despise myself and I despise this idle existence.’
‘It’s all right now,’ Sasha said, not yet realizing what was wrong. ‘It’s all right. Everything’s fine.’
For a minute, Sasha looked at her in amazement. Finally he understood and was as happy as a little boy. He waved his arms and delightedly performed a tapdance in his slippers.
‘Wonderful!’ he said, rubbing his hands. ‘God, that’s wonderful!’
Like one enchanted, her large eyes full of love, she looked at him unblinking, expecting him to tell her something vitally, immensely important there and then. He had not told her anything yet, but she felt that a new, boundless world that she had never known was opening up before her. She watched him, full of expectation and ready for anything – even death.
‘I’m leaving tomorrow,’ he said after a moment’s thought, ‘and you can come to the station, so that it looks as if you’re seeing me off. I’ll put your luggage in my trunk and get your ticket. When the departure bell rings, on you get and off we go. Come with me as far as Moscow, then travel on to St Petersburg on your own. Do you have a passport?’4
‘Yes.’
‘You won’t be sorry, I swear it. You won’t have any regrets,’ Sasha said enthusiastically. ‘You’ll start your studies and then it’s all in the hands of fate. Drastically alter your way of life and then everything else will change too. The most important thing is to make a completely fresh start, the rest doesn’t matter. So, we’ll leave tomorrow then?’
‘Oh yes, for God’s sake yes!’
Nadya felt very agitated, more depressed than ever before – and now there was the prospect of going through sheer mental hell until the time came to leave. But the moment she went upstairs and lay on her bed she fell asleep. And she slept soundly, right until the evening, and there was a smile on her tear-stained face.
V
A cab had been ordered. With her hat and coat on, Nadya went upstairs for one more look at her mother, at all that had been hers. In her own room she stood by the bed – still warm – looked around and then went to her mother’s room without making a sound. Nina Ivanovna was asleep and it was quiet there. Nadya kissed her mother, smoothed her hair and stood still for a couple of minutes. Then she slowly went downstairs.
It was pelting with rain. The cab’s top was up and the driver was standing near the porch, soaking wet.
‘There won’t be enough room for you, Nadya,’ Grandmother said when the servants started putting the luggage in. ‘Fancy seeing someone off in this weather! You should stay at home! Heavens, just look at that rain!’
Nadya wanted to say something, but she couldn’t. Sasha helped her to sit down, covered her legs with a rug and sat beside her.
‘Good luck! God bless!’ Grandmother shouted from the porch. ‘Mind you write to us from Moscow, Sasha.’
‘Of course. Cheerio, Grannie.’
‘May God protect you!’
‘What lousy weather,’ Sasha said.
Only now did Nadya begin to cry. Only now did she realize that she was actually leaving – even when she had said goodbye to Grandmother and looked at her mother she still hadn’t believed it. Farewell, dear old town! Suddenly she remembered everything: Andrey, his father, the new house, the naked lady with the vase. None of these things frightened or oppressed her any more – it all seemed so mindless and trivial, and was receding ever further into the past. When they climbed into the carriage and the train moved off, all that past existence which had seemed so large, so serious, now dwindled into insignificance, and a vast, broad future opened out before her, a future she had hardly dreamt of. The rain beat against the carriage windows and all she could see was green fields, with glimpses of telegraph poles and birds on the wires. Suddenly she gasped for joy: she remembered that she was travelling to freedom, that she was going to study – it was exactly the same as running away to join the Cossacks, as it was called long, long ago. She laughed, she wept, she prayed.
‘Don’t worry!’ Sasha said, grinning. ‘Everything’s going to be all right!’
VI
Autumn passed, winter followed. Nadya felt very homesick. Every day she thought about Mother and Grandmother, and about Sasha. The letters from home were calm and affectionate and it seemed that all had been forgiven and forgotten. After the May examinations she went home feel
ing healthy and cheerful, stopping at Moscow on the way to see Sasha. He looked just the same as last summer: bearded, hair dishevelled, with the same frock-coat and canvas trousers, the same big, handsome eyes. But he looked ill and worn out, and he had aged, grown thinner and was always coughing. Somehow he struck Nadya as dull, provincial.
‘Good God, Nadya’s here!’ he said, laughing cheerfully. ‘My dear little darling!’
They sat in the smoky printing-room with its suffocating, overwhelming smell of Indian ink and paint. Then they went to his room, also full of the smell of stale tobacco, and with saliva stains. On the table, next to a cold samovar, lay a broken plate and a piece of dark paper. Both table and floor were covered with dead flies. Everything showed what a slipshod existence Sasha led – he was living any old how, with a profound contempt for creature comforts. If someone had spoken to him about his personal happiness, his private life, about someone being in love with him, he wouldn’t have understood – he would have just laughed.
‘It’s all right, everything’s turned out nicely,’ Nadya said hurriedly. ‘Last autumn Mother came to St Petersburg to see me. She told me that Grandmother isn’t angry, but she keeps going to my room and making the sign of the cross over the walls.’
Sasha looked at her cheerfully, but he kept coughing and spoke in a cracked voice. Nadya watched him closely, unable to tell whether he really was seriously ill or if she was imagining it.
‘Dear Sasha, you really are ill, aren’t you?’ she asked.
‘No, it’s nothing. I’m ill, but not terribly…’
‘Good God,’ Nadya said, deeply disturbed. ‘Why don’t you go and see a doctor, why don’t you look after your health? My dear, sweet Sasha!’ The tears spurted from her eyes. For some strange reason, Andrey, that naked lady with the vase, her entire past which now seemed as remote as her childhood – all this loomed in her imagination now. She wept because Sasha did not seem as abreast of things, as intellectual, as interesting as last year.
‘Dear Sasha, you are very, very ill. I would do anything in the world to stop you being so pale and thin. I owe you so much. You can’t imagine how much you’ve done for me, my good Sasha! Really, you’re my very nearest and dearest now.’
They sat talking for a while. But now, after that winter she had spent in St Petersburg, everything about Sasha – his words, his smile, his whole presence – seemed outmoded, old-fashioned, obsolete and lifeless.
‘I’m going down to the Volga the day after tomorrow,’ Sasha said, ‘and then I’ll be taking the fermented mare’s milk cure – drinking koumiss.5 A friend of mine and his wife are coming with me. The wife’s quite amazing. I’ve been trying to win her over and persuade her to go and study. I want her life to be transformed.’
After their talk they went to the station. Sasha treated her to tea and some apples. As he stood there smiling and waving his handkerchief while the train pulled out, one could tell just by looking at his legs that he was desperately ill and did not have long to live.
Nadya arrived at her home town at noon. As she drove from the station, the streets seemed very wide, but the houses small and squat. No one was about, except for a German piano-tuner in his brown coat. All the houses seemed covered in dust. Grandmother, who was really quite ancient now and as plump and ugly as ever, flung her arms round Nadya and wept for a long time, pressing her face to her shoulder and unable to tear herself away. Nina Ivanovna also looked a great deal older and had deteriorated considerably. She had a hunched-up look, but was still as tightly corseted as before and diamonds still sparkled on her fingers.
‘My darling!’ she exclaimed, trembling all over. ‘My darling!’
They sat down, silently weeping. Grandmother and Mother plainly sensed that the past had gone for ever, that nothing could bring it back. No longer did they have any position in society, reputation, the right to entertain guests. It was rather like when, in the midst of a life without cares, the police raid the house suddenly one night and the master turns out to be an embezzler and forger – then it’s goodbye for ever to any carefree, untroubled existence!
Nadya went upstairs and saw that same bed, those same windows with their simple white curtains, that same cheerful, noisy garden bathed in sunlight. She touched her table, sat down and pondered. Then she ate a fine lunch and drank tea with delicious rich cream. But something was missing, however – the rooms seemed empty and the ceilings low. That night, when she went to bed and pulled up the blankets, it was somehow rather funny lying in that warm, very soft bed again.
Nina Ivanovna came in for a moment and sat down guiltily, timidly glancing around her.
‘Well, how are you, Nadya?’ she asked after a brief silence. ‘Are you happy? Very happy?’
‘Yes I am, Mother.’
Nina Ivanovna stood up and made the sign of the cross over Nadya and the windows.
‘As you see, I’ve become religious. You know, I’m studying philosophy now and I think a great deal. Many things have become as clear as daylight now. Filter your whole life through a prism – that’s the most important thing.’
‘Tell me, Mother, how’s Grandmother’s health these days?’
‘Not too bad, it seems. After you left with Sasha and your telegram arrived, Grandmother collapsed when she read it. She lay for three days without moving. Then she kept praying and crying. But she’s all right now.’
She stood up and paced the room.
That knocking could be heard again – it was the night watchman.
‘Your whole life must be filtered through a prism, that’s what’s most important,’ she said. ‘In other words, one’s perception of life must be broken down into its simplest elements, like the seven primary colours, and each element must be studied separately.’
Whatever else Nina Ivanovna said, Nadya didn’t hear. And she didn’t hear her leave either, as she was soon fast asleep.
May passed, June began. Nadya had grown used to that house again. Grandmother fussed over the samovar, heaving deep sighs, and Nina Ivanovna talked about her philosophy in the evenings. She was still in the ignominious position of hanger-on in that household and had to turn to Grandmother for every twenty-copeck piece. The house was full of flies and the ceilings seemed to get lower and lower. Grannie and Nina Ivanovna never went out into the street, for fear of meeting Father Andrey, or Andrey his son. Nadya would walk around the garden, down the street, look at the houses, the grey fences. Everything in that town struck her as ancient, obsolete – either it was awaiting its own demise or perhaps some fresh beginning. Oh, if only that bright new life would come quickly, then one could face one’s destiny boldly, cheerful and free in the knowledge that one was right! That life would come, sooner or later. Surely the time would come when not a trace would remain of Grandmother’s house, where four servants were forced to live in one filthy basement room – it would be forgotten, erased from the memory. The only distraction for Nadya was the small boys from next door. Whenever she strolled in the garden they would bang on the fence, laugh and taunt her with the words, ‘And she thought she was going to get married, she did!’
A letter came from Sasha – from Saratov.6 In that sprightly, dancing hand of his he wrote that his trip on the Volga had been a huge success, but that he hadn’t been well in Saratov, had lost his voice and had been in hospital for two weeks. Nadya understood what this meant and felt a deep foreboding that was very similar to absolute certainty. But her forebodings and thoughts about Sasha did not trouble her as much as before, and this she found disagreeable. She passionately wanted a full life and to go to St Petersburg again, and her friendship with Sasha seemed a thing of the far distant past, even though she still cherished it. She lay awake the whole night and next morning sat by the window listening. And she did hear voices down below – Grandmother, highly agitated, was asking one question after another.
Then someone began to cry. When Nadya went downstairs she saw Grandmother standing in a corner praying, her face tear-stained. On the
table lay a telegram.
Nadya paced the room for a long time listening to Grandmother crying, then she picked up the telegram and read it. The news was that yesterday morning Aleksandr Timofeich (or Sasha for short) had died of tuberculosis in Saratov.
Grandmother and Nina Ivanovna went to church to arrange a prayer service, while Nadya kept pacing the house, thinking things over. She saw quite clearly that her life had been turned upside down, as Sasha had wanted, that she was a stranger in this place, unwanted, and that there was nothing in fact that she needed from it. She saw how her whole past had been torn away, had vanished as if burnt and the ashes scattered in the wind.
She went to Sasha’s room and stood there for a while.
‘Goodbye, dear Sasha!’ she thought, and before her there opened up a new, full and rich life. As yet vague and mysterious, this life beckoned and lured her.
She went upstairs to pack and next morning said goodbye to her family. In a lively, cheerful mood she left that town – for ever, so she thought.
PUBLISHING HISTORY AND NOTES
The House with the Mezzanine
First published in Russian Thought in 1896. On 29 December 1895 Chekhov wrote to A. S. Suvorin: ‘I’m writing a short story and I just cannot finish it: visitors keep disturbing me. Since 23 December people have been knocking around all over the place and I long for solitude. But when I’m on my own I get angry and feel revulsion for the day that has passed. All day long nothing but eating and talking, eating and talking.’
Chekhov’s first reference to this story is in his First Notebook (1891–1904) for February 1895, where he writes: ‘Missy: I respect and love my sister so dearly that I would never offend or hurt her.’ The first mention of actual work on the story is in a letter of 26 November 1895 to Yelena Shavrova: ‘I’m writing a little story now, “My Fiancée”. I once had a fiancée, she was called Missy. That’s what I’m writing about.’
The story’s setting – and possibly prototypes for the characters – is largely derived from Chekhov’s stay at Bogimovo, Kaluga province, during the summer of 1891, where he rented part of a large country house on the estate. Chekhov’s brother Mikhail states that the owner of Bogimovo, Ye. D. Bylim-Kosolovsky and his wife Anemaisa were possibly the prototypes for Belokurov and Lyubov Ivanovna.
The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904 Page 40