by Chekhov, Anton; Bartlett, Leverhulme Research Fellow in Russian Cultural History Rosamund ;
When he had finished the job, Bronza put on his glasses and wrote in his book:
‘Marfa Ivanovna–one coffin–2 roubles, 40 kopecks.’
He sighed. The old woman had been lying there silently all the time with her eyes shut. But in the evening, when it had got dark, she suddenly called the old man over.
‘Yakov, do you remember?’ she asked, looking radiantly at him. ‘Do you remember fifty years ago when God gave us a little baby with blonde curly hair? We used to sit on the riverbank all the time and sing songs… underneath the willow tree.’ Then with a grimace she added: ‘But our little girl died.’
Yakov searched his memory, but could not for the life of him remember any little baby, or willow.
‘You’ve been dreaming,’ he said.
The priest came and administered the sacrament and extreme unction. Then Marfa started mumbling something unintelligible, and towards morning she died.
The old women from next door washed and dressed her and laid her in the coffin. Yakov read the psalms himself so as not to pay the deacon anything extra, and he was not charged for the grave either, because the cemetery caretaker was a relative. Four men carried the coffin to the cemetery, but out of respect, not because they were paid to. Old women, beggars, and two holy fools * followed the coffin, and the people they passed on the way crossed themselves devoutly… And Yakov was very pleased that everything was so honourable, decent, and cheap, and not a nuisance to anyone. As he said goodbye to Marfa for the last time, he patted the coffin with his hand and thought: ‘Good workmanship!’
But when he was coming back from the cemetery he was overcome by a deep sorrow. He did not feel quite well: his breathing was fevered and short, his legs felt weak, he needed to drink. All sorts of thoughts were going through his head. He remembered again that he had never once in his life felt compassion for Marfa. He had never caressed her. The fifty—two years that they had lived in the same hut had gone by incredibly slowly, but it had somehow turned out that he had not once thought about her in all that time; he had paid her no more attention than if she was a cat or a dog. But she had kept the stove going every day, she had cooked and baked, gone for water, chopped wood, slept in the same bed as him, and whenever he had come home drunk from a wedding, she had always hung up his violin on the wall with reverence and put him to bed, and she had done all this silently, with a timid, concerned expression.
Walking in Yakov’s direction was Rothschild, all smiles and bows.
‘I’ve been looking for you!’ he said. ‘Moisey Ilyich is sending his regards and wanting you to go and see him straight away.’
Yakov was not feeling up to it. He wanted to cry.
‘Go away!’ he said, and walked on.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Rothschild anxiously, running ahead of him. ‘Moisey Ilyich will get upset! He wants you to come at once.’
Yakov was revolted by this out—of—breath, blinking yid with so many red freckles. And it was horrible looking at his green frock-coat with dark patches and at his fragile, delicate frame.
‘Why are you bothering me, garlic breath?’ Yakov shouted. ‘Keep away from me!’
The Jew started to get cross. ‘Just you be quiet please or I’ll send you flying over the fence!’ he shouted.
‘Get out of my sight!’ yelled Yakov and went at him with his fists. ‘Can’t get away from you wretched people!’
Frozen with fear, Rothschild crouched down low and started waving his arms over his head as if to protect himself from the blows, then he jumped up and ran away as fast as he could. As he ran he jumped up and down, flinging up his arms, and you could see his long, thin back shuddering convulsively. The little boys enjoyed the spectacle and ran after him, shouting ‘Yid! Yid!’ at him. The dogs also chased after him, barking. Someone started laughing, then gave a whistle and the dogs started barking louder and in unison… Then a dog must have bitten Rothschild because a desperate shriek of pain filled the air.
Yakov wandered along the meadow, then walked aimlessly through the outskirts of the town, with the little boys shouting: ‘Bronza’s coming! Bronza’s coming!’ And then he arrived at the river. There were sandpipers squeaking as they flew over and ducks quacking. The sun was shining very brightly and the water was so dazzling it was hard to look at it. Yakov walked along the path by the riverbank and saw a plump, red-cheeked lady getting out of the bathing pool, and he thought: ‘Goodness! Just like an otter!’ Little boys were fishing for crayfish with bits of meat not far from the bathing pool, and when they saw him they started shouting maliciously ‘Bronza, Bronza!’ Then he came to a broad old willow tree with a huge trunk and crows’ nests in it. And suddenly the blonde, curly-haired baby and the willow that Marfa had spoken about came vividly back into his memory. Yes, this was the same willow–all green, quiet, and sad… how old the poor thing had grown!
He sat underneath it and memories started flooding back. He remembered there had once been a large birch wood on the other bank, where there was now a water meadow, and an ancient blue pine forest on the bare hill just visible in the distance. There had been barges on the river too. And now everything was flat and smooth; on the other bank there was just one birch tree, young and slim like a fine lady, and on the river there were just ducks and geese, and it was difficult to imagine that there had ever been barges. It seemed that there were fewer geese than before too. Yakov closed his eyes and huge gaggles of white geese flew into his imagination, one after the other.
He wondered how it had come about that he had never once gone down to the river during the past forty or fifty years of his life, or if he had by chance, how he could have failed to notice it? It was a decent-sized river after all, not just any old river; he could have done some fishing and sold the fish he caught to merchants, town officials, and the café owner at the station, and then put the money in the bank. He could have rowed a boat from one country estate to the next and played his violin, and all kinds of people would have paid him money; he could have tried barge-hauling again—it would have been better than making coffins. He could even have bred geese for slaughter and sent them to Moscow in the winter. You could probably get about ten roubles a year just for the down. But he had failed to take the initiative and had done none of these things. What losses! What terrible losses! If he had managed to do all those things together–fish, play the violin, haul barges, and slaughter geese, just think how much capital he would have built up! But there was none of that, not even in his dreams; life had gone by without purpose, without pleasure of any kind; it had been wasted in vain; it was not even worth a sniff of tobacco. There was nothing left to look forward to now, and if you looked back there was nothing to see but losses, and such awful ones that it gave you the shivers. Why couldn’t people live without these losses and all this waste? Why did they have to chop down the birch wood and the pine forest? Why was the meadow so bare? Why do people always do the opposite of what they ought to do? Why had Yakov spent his whole life cursing, snarling, and going at people with his fists? Why had he been mean to his wife and what was the point of frightening and insulting that Jew just now? Why do people stop each other from getting on with their lives? It brings such losses! Such awful losses! If there was no hatred or anger, people would be an enormous help to one another.
All evening and all night he thought about the little baby, the willow, the fish, the slaughtered geese, and Marfa, who in profile had looked like a bird wanting to drink. And he thought about the pale, pitiful face of Rothschild, and then other ugly faces started coming at him from all directions, murmuring about losses. He tossed from side to side and got out of bed about five times to play the violin.
In the morning he forced himself to get up and go to the hospital. The same Maxim Nikolayevich told him to put a cold compress on his head and gave him some powders, but Yakov could tell from the expression on his face and from the tone of his voice that things were very bad and that no amount of powders were going to help. As he walked home, he r
ealized that being dead would bring only profit: he would not need to eat or drink, pay tax, or offend people, and since people get to lie in their graves for not just one, but for hundreds and thousands of years, then you would make a huge profit if you added it all up. From life you just made a loss, but from death you made a profit. This was, of course, a reasonable way of looking at things, but it was annoying and painful to come to terms with it: why was the world set up in such a strange way so that life, which a human being only gets once, brings no profit?
He was not sad about dying, but as soon as he saw his violin at home, he was overcome with emotion and then he did become sad. He could not take his violin into the grave with him, and now it would be an orphan and would suffer the same fate as the birch wood and the pine forest. Everything in the world had disappeared and would continue to disappear! Yakov went out of the hut and sat by the threshold hugging his violin to his chest. As he thought about his lost, wasted life, he began to play; he did not know what he was playing, but it was mournful and touching, and tears started running down his cheeks. And the deeper his thoughts, the sadder his violin sang.
The latch squeaked a couple of times, and Rothschild appeared at the gate. He walked boldly across the first half of the yard, but when he saw Yakov he stopped dead and cowered. He started making signs with his hands as if he wanted to show on his fingers what time it was, no doubt from fear.
‘Come over, it’s all right,’ said Yakov gently, beckoning him to come nearer. ‘Come over here!’
Looking around distrustfully and in fear, Rothschild began to approach him, stopping about a yard away.
‘Look, please, just don’t hit me!’ he said as he squatted down. ‘Moisey Ilyich has sent me over again. Don’t be scared, he said, go and see Yakov again, he said, and tell him that we can’t do without him. There is a wedding on Wednesday… Yes, there is! Mr Shapovalov is giving away his daugher to a fine man… And the wedding will be very smart,’ added the Jew, screwing up one eye.
‘I can’t…,’ Yakov said, breathing heavily. ‘I’ve been taken poorly, my friend.’
He started playing again, and the tears splashed from his eyes onto the violin. Rothschild listened intently, standing to one side, his arms folded on his chest. The frightened, confused expression on his face gradually changed to one of grief and suffering. He rolled his eyes, as if experiencing exquisite pain, and said: ‘Aaagh!’ And tears started slowly running down his cheeks and falling onto his green frock-coat.
And then Yakov lay down all day and felt sorrowful. When the priest came in the evening to administer the last rites, he asked him whether he could remember any particular sin in his life. Straining his fading memory, he again remembered Marfa’s unhappy face and the Jew’s desperate cry when he was bitten by the dog, and, barely audibly, he said:
‘Give my violin to Rothschild.’
‘Very well,’ replied the priest.
And now everyone in the town wonders where Rothschild got such a good violin. Did he buy it or steal it, or did someone perhaps pawn it? He stopped playing the flute a long time ago, and now he only plays the violin. The same mournful sounds that used to come out of his flute now pour from his bow, but when he tries to repeat what Yakov played when he was sitting on the porch, what comes out is so mournful and sad that it makes people cry, and by the end even he is rolling his eyes and saying: ‘Aaagh…!’ People in the town like this new song so much that merchants and officials are always inviting him over to their houses and making him play it ten times over.
THE STUDENT
The weather was fine and still at first. There were thrushes singing, and in the marshes nearby something alive was whistling mournfully, as if blowing into an empty bottle. A lone woodcock flew over, and the shot fired at it rang out with a resounding brightness in the spring air. But when it grew dark in the wood, an unseasonable cold and biting wind started blowing from the east and everything fell silent. Ice needles stretched across the puddles and the wood became bleak, desolate, and empty. It began to smell of winter.
Ivan Velikopolsky, a seminary student, son of a sexton, had been following the path along the water meadow as he returned from shooting. His fingers had turned numb and the wind was making his face burn. It seemed to him that this sudden cold spell had broken the order and harmony of everything, that nature itself was scared, and that was why the evening shadows had gathered more quickly than they needed to. Everything seemed desolate and somehow particularly gloomy. The only fire burning was in the widows’ vegetable gardens near the river; everything else had completely dissolved into the cold evening mist, including the village about three miles away. The student remembered that when he had left the house, his mother had been sitting barefoot in the doorway cleaning the samovar, while his father lay coughing on the stove; because it was Good Friday there was no cooking at home, and he was ravenous. And now, shivering from the cold, the student thought about how exactly the same sort of wind must have blown in the times of Ryurik, Ivan the Terrible, and Peter the Great, * and how in their day there would have been exactly the same desperate poverty and hunger, the same thatched roofs with holes in them, the same ignorance and misery, the same wilderness all around, the same gloom and feeling of oppression—all these awful things existed back then, existed now, and would continue to exist, and life would be no better after another thousand years had passed. And he did not want to go home.
The vegetable gardens were called the widows’ gardens because they were tended by two widows, a mother and daughter. A bonfire was burning brightly with a crackle, lighting up the ploughed earth far around it. The widow Vasilisa, a tall, stout old woman in a man’s sheepskin jacket, was standing by it and staring into the flames, while her daughter Lukerya, small, with a pitted and stupid-looking face, was sitting on the ground washing a pot and spoons. They had obviously just eaten supper. Men’s voices could be heard—local labourers were watering their horses down by the river.
‘Well, it looks like winter’s come back,’ said the student as he walked over to the bonfire. ‘Hello there!’
Vasilisa gave a start, but immediately recognized him and smiled warmly.
‘Goodness, I didn’t recognize you,’ she said. ‘That means you’re going to be rich.’
They talked. Vasilisa, a worldly woman, who had once served with the gentry as a wet-nurse and then as a nanny, expressed herself gracefully, and a gentle, serene smile never left her face; her daughter Lukerya, a peasant woman who had been battered by her husband, simply looked at the student through narrowed eyes and remained silent, and her expression was strange, like that of someone deaf and dumb.
‘Peter the Apostle warmed himself by a fire on a cold night just like this,’ said the student, holding out his hands in front of the fire. ‘So it must have been cold then too. That was a terrible night, wasn’t it? An utterly miserable, long night.’
He looked around him at the shadows, shook his head vigorously, then asked: ‘You were at the twelve gospel readings * yesterday, I expect?’
‘Yes, I was,’ said Vasilisa.
‘If you remember, at the Last Supper, Peter said to Jesus: “I am ready to go with you, both to prison and to death.” * And the Lord replied to him: “I tell you Peter, that before the cock has finished crowing today, thou shalt—I mean, you will—deny knowing me three times.” After the supper, Jesus went through the agony of death in the garden and prayed, while poor Peter was weary in spirit; he grew weak, his eyelids were heavy, and he just could not fight off sleep. He slept. Then you heard how that same night Judas kissed Jesus and betrayed him to his tormentors. They took him bound to the high priest and beat him, while Peter, who was exhausted and tormented with fear and worry, you see, not having got enough sleep, followed them with a premonition that something awful was about to happen in the world… He loved Jesus passionately and with complete devotion, and now from afar he could see them beating him…’
Lukerya left the spoons and fastened her gaze on the stud
ent.
‘They came to the high priest,’ he continued, ‘and started to question Jesus, and meanwhile some attendants had started a fire in the courtyard because it was cold, and were warming themselves. Peter stood with them near the fire, warming himself as well, like I am doing now. One woman said when she saw him, “He was with Jesus too” in other words, she was saying that he should also be taken for questioning. And all the attendants who were standing near the fire must have looked at him suspiciously and harshly, because he was confused, and said, “I do not know him”. A little later someone again recognized him as one of Jesus’ disciples and said, “You are one of them too”. But again he denied it. And for the third time someone said to him, “Didn’t I see you with him in the garden today?” He denied it a third time. And then the cock began to crow at once, and Peter, having looked at Jesus from afar, now remembered what he had said to him at the supper… He remembered, realized what he had done, left the courtyard, and began to cry bitterly. In the gospel it says: “And he went out and shed bitter tears.” I can imagine the garden being totally still and dark, with just a faint sound of muffled sobbing in the silence…’
The student gave a sigh and became pensive. Continuing to smile, Vasilisa suddenly started sobbing, and copious large tears started flowing down her cheeks; she hid her face from the fire with her sleeve, as if ashamed of her tears, while Lukerya, whose eyes had been fixed on the student, blushed, and her expression became tense and strained, like that of someone stifling severe pain.