by Chekhov, Anton; Bartlett, Leverhulme Research Fellow in Russian Cultural History Rosamund ;
‘I left my brother early in the morning, and I’ve found it unbearable being in the town ever since. The peace and quiet depress me and I am afraid to look through people’s windows, because the hardest thing for me is to see a happy family sitting round a table drinking tea. I am old, and not up to fighting now; I’m not even capable of hatred. I’m just in a state of mourning inside, I get angry and annoyed, and at night my head is filled with a mass of thoughts and I can’t sleep… Oh, if only I was young!’
In his agitated state, Ivan Ivanych was pacing the room from one corner to the other, saying over and over again: ‘If only I was young!’
Then suddenly he went up to Alyokhin and started clasping his hands, first one then the other.
‘Pavel Konstantinovich,’ he said in a beseeching voice. ‘Never be satisfied, don’t let yourself go! Don’t tire of doing good while you are young and strong and active! Happiness does not exist and it should not exist, and if there is a meaning and purpose to life, then that meaning and purpose is certainly not for us to be happy, but something far greater and wiser. Do good!’
Ivan Ivanych said all this with a pitiful, pleading smile, as if he was asking him to do this for him personally.
All three then sat in their armchairs at different ends of the drawing room without saying anything. Neither Burkin nor Alyokhin found Ivan Ivanych’s story satisfying. With the generals and the ladies gazing out of their golden frames and looking in the dusk as if they were alive, it was boring to listen to a story about a poor official who ate gooseberries. For some reason they would have liked to have heard and talked about elegant people, about ladies. Sitting in a drawing room where everything—from the chandelier in its dust-cover to the armchairs and the carpets under their feet—was a reminder of the fact that the very people who were now looking out of those frames once walked about here, sat down and drank tea, and where the beautiful Pelageya was now moving about silently, was far better than any story.
Alyokhin was desperate to go to bed; he had got up early to start work on the estate, before three in the morning, and he could barely keep his eyes open, but he was afraid that his guests might start talking about something interesting without him, so he did not leave. He could not work out whether the story Ivan Ivanych had just told was clever or fair; his guests were not talking about grain or hay or tar but about something which bore no direct relation to his life, and he was glad and wanted them to carry on…
‘But it’s time to sleep,’ said Burkin, getting up. ‘May I wish you goodnight.’
Alyokhin took his leave and went downstairs to his rooms while the guests remained upstairs. They had been given a large room for the night in which there were two old wooden beds with carved decorations and a crucifix made of ivory in the corner; the cool, wide beds which the beautiful Pelageya had made up smelt pleasantly of fresh linen.
Ivan Ivanych undressed silently and got into bed.
‘Lord, forgive us sinners!’ he said, covering his head.
There was a strong smell of tobacco smoke from his pipe which lay on the table; Burkin took a long time to go to sleep and he could not work out where that pungent smell was coming from.
The rain hammered against the windows all night.
ABOUT LOVE
The next day for lunch delicious pies, crayfish, and lamb rissoles were served, and Nikanor the cook came upstairs during the meal to ask what the guests would like for dinner. He was an average-sized man, with a chubby face and small eyes; he was clean-shaven, and it looked as if his whiskers had been plucked out rather than shaved.
Alyokhin said that the beautiful Pelageya was in love with this cook. Since he drank a lot and could be violent at times, she did not want to marry him, but she had agreed to live with him. He was very devout, however, and his religious convictions did not allow him to live with her; he demanded that she marry him, and did not want it any other way; he would shout at her when he was drunk, and even hit her. She used to hide upstairs and cry when he was drunk, and Alyokhin and the servants would not go out of the house during those times, so that they could protect her if necessary.
The conversation turned to love.
‘How love is born,’ said Alyokhin; ‘why, for example, Pelageya didn’t go for someone more suited to her emotionally and physically, since personal happiness is so important in love, but instead developed an attachment to Nikanor, that great pig-snout—everyone calls him pig-snout around here—is completely unknowable, and you can analyse it any way you want. Only one indisputable truth has ever been uttered about love, which is that “this is a great mystery”, * as it says in the Bible; nothing else that has been written and uttered about love has provided any kind of answer, but merely posed a set of problems which have remained without a solution. The explanation which seems to be right for one particular set of circumstances turns out to be wrong for a dozen others, and so the best one can do, as far as I can see, is to assess each situation on its own terms, without trying to generalize. As doctors say, you should treat each case individually.’
‘Quite true,’ agreed Burkin.
‘We respectable Russians are drawn precisely to these problems which have remained without a solution. People of other nations poeticize love, or adorn it with roses and nightingales, but we Russians have to adorn love with imponderable problems, and we always pick on the most uninteresting problems too. I once had a lady friend in Moscow when I was still a student, a charming woman, who was always thinking about how much money I was going to give her each month whenever I held her in my arms, or how much the current price of a pound of beef was. We’re just the same where love is concerned; we can never stop asking ourselves questions as to whether we are being honest or not, whether we are acting wisely or stupidly, whether the relationship is going anywhere and so forth. I don’t know whether all this is a good or a bad thing, but I do know that it holds us back; it’s not rewarding, it’s just a source of irritation.’
It seemed that he had a story he wanted to tell. People who live alone always have something or other that they want to get off their chests. Bachelors who live in towns make a point of going to the baths or to restaurants just to talk, and sometimes the stories they tell their bath attendants or waiters are very interesting. In the country they usually end up pouring their hearts out to their house guests. Through the window could be seen grey sky and trees wet with rain; since there was nowhere one could go in that kind of weather, there was nothing else to do but tell stories and listen.
‘I’ve been living and working on the land in Sofyino a long time now,’ began Alyokhin; ‘since I left university in fact. My upbringing was not conducive to physical work, and my natural inclinations are towards books and papers. But when I came here, the estate was saddled with debts, and since my father had taken out loans partly because he had spent so much money on my education, I decided I would not leave; I’d stay and work until I had paid off the debt. I made my decision and started to work here, although not, I have to admit, without a certain amount of dread. The land around here does not yield very much, and in order for the farming not to make a loss, you need to use slave labour or take on casual workers, which amounts pretty much to the same thing, otherwise you have to put everything on to a peasant footing, which means you and your family working in the fields yourselves. There is nothing in between. But back then I did not go in for such fine distinctions. I didn’t leave a single patch of earth untouched. I rounded up all the men and women labourers from the neighbouring villages and got them working like crazy. I also threw myself into the ploughing and the sowing and the reaping, but I found it very tedious and frowned with disdain, like the village cat, which finally gets so hungry it ends up eating the cucumbers in the vegetable patch. My body ached and I used to fall asleep on the job. At first I was under the impression that I could easily accommodate my cultural pursuits to this kind of working life, and I thought all I would need would be to maintain a certain amount of discipline. So I set up home in
the smart rooms here upstairs, arranged to have coffee and liqueurs served after lunch and dinner, and then when I went to bed I used to read the Messenger of Europe * into the early hours. But our priest Father Ivan came over one day and drank all my bottles of liqueur in one sitting, and then my Messengers of Europe started ending up with his daughters, because in the summer, especially when we were haymaking, I would not even manage to make it to my own bed, and used to fall asleep in the sleigh in the barn or in some forest hut—what reading was I going to do? I gradually ended up moving downstairs and eating in the servants’ kitchen, and the only remnants of my former luxurious lifestyle are all the people here who used to work for my father, and I’d find it too painful to let them go.
‘During my first few years here, I was elected to serve as an honorary justice of the peace. Every now and then I would have to go into town and take part in sessions at the assizes and at the regional court, and it kept me amused. After you have lived here for two or three months on end, especially during the winter-time, you end up beginning to miss seeing black frock-coats. And it wasn’t just black frock-coats you could see at the circuit court, but uniforms and tailcoats—these were all lawyers, people who had been educated; there was always someone to talk to. After sleeping in the sleigh and sitting in the servants’ kitchen, it was such a luxury to sit in an armchair, wearing a clean shirt and ankle-boots, with a chain around your neck!
‘People in the town received me warmly, and I was keen to get to know them. Of all the acquaintances I made, the most lasting, and also the most pleasant, to be honest, was with my colleague Luganovich, the president of the circuit court. You both know him—he’s an absolutely charming man. It was just after that famous arson case; the cross-examination went on for two days, and we were exhausted. Luganovich looked at me and said:
‘“Look, why don’t you come over for dinner?”
‘It was unexpected, because I barely knew Luganovich; our relationship had been purely formal up to that point, and I had never been to his home. I nipped back to my hotel room to change and set off for dinner. And that’s when I had the opportunity to get to know Anna Alexeyevna, Luganovich’s wife. She was still very young then, no more than twenty-two, and her first child had been born six months earlier. It’s all in the past, and so I would find it hard now to define what exactly was so unusual about her, and what I liked so much about her, but back then at the dinner it was crystal clear. I saw a young woman—a beautiful, kind, intelligent, charming woman, who was unlike anyone I had ever met before. I immediately felt she was a kindred spirit, someone I already knew, as if I had seen her face and those warm, intelligent eyes back in my childhod, in the album which lay on my mother’s dresser.
‘In the arson case, four Jews had been accused of forming a conspiracy, but totally falsely in my opinion. I got very worked up at dinner because I felt so miserable about it, and I can’t for the life of me remember what I said, but Anna Alexeyevna kept shaking her head and saying to her husband:
‘“Dmitry, how on earth could this have happened?”
‘Luganovich is a good-natured sort, and one of those straightforward kind of people who strongly believe that if a person is brought to court he must therefore be guilty, and that expressing doubt in the correctness of the sentence can only be done in a legal manner, on paper, but certainly not over dinner, nor in private conversation.
‘“Neither you nor I started the fire,” he said gently, “and that’s why they haven’t taken us to court and sent us to prison.”
‘Both husband and wife pressed me to eat and drink more. From various small details, such as the way they made coffee together, for example, and the way they understood each other without finishing their sentences, I could see that they had a peaceful, happy relationship, and that they were glad to have a guest. After dinner we played duets on the piano, then it began to grow dark and I went home. This was at the beginning of spring. Then I spent the whole of the summer at Sofyino without once leaving, and I had no time even to think about the town, but the memory of the slender, fair-haired woman remained with me all those days; I didn’t think about her, but it was as if her graceful shadow lay across my soul.
‘In late autumn there was a charity performance in town. When I went into the governor’s box (I had been invited to stop by in the interval) who should I see but Anna Alexeyevna with the governor’s wife, and I was struck once again by the same impression of irresistible, dazzling beauty and kind, gentle eyes, and again a feeling of intimacy.
‘We sat next to each other and then went into the foyer.
‘“You’ve lost weight,” she said. “Have you been ill?”
‘“Yes. I have a problem with my shoulder, and I sleep badly when it rains.”
‘“You look run down. When you came to dinner in the spring you seemed younger and in brighter spirits. You were inspired that evening and talked a great deal; what you said was very interesting, and I have to confess that I even became a little bit carried away by you. For some reason you came into my mind quite often during the summer months, and today, when I was getting ready to come to the theatre, I just had a feeling I would see you.”
‘And she started laughing.
‘“But you look run down today,” she said again. “It makes you look older.”
‘I had lunch with the Luganoviches the next day, then after lunch they went off to their dacha to get everything ready there for winter, and I went with them. I returned to town with them too, and at midnight sat drinking tea with them in their peaceful family home, with the fire blazing and the young mother constantly going out to check whether her little girl was asleep. After that I would go and visit the Luganoviches whenever I went to town. They got used to me and I got used to them. I would usually turn up without any advance notice, as if I was one of the family.
‘“Who is it?” From a far-off room would come that lilting voice I found so lovely.
‘“It’s Pavel Konstantinovich,” the maid or the nanny would answer.
‘Anna Alexeyevna would come to greet me with a concerned expression, and would ask every time:
‘“Why have you been away so long? Has something happened?”
‘The look of her eyes, the refined, elegant hand she held out to me, the dress she wore at home, her hairstyle, her voice, and the way she walked always gave me the impression of something new, unusual, and important in my life. We would talk for ages and be silent for ages, each thinking our own thoughts, or else she would play the piano for me. If no one was at home, I would stay and wait, talking to the nanny and playing with the baby, or I would go and lie down on the ottoman in the study and read the newspaper; when Anna Alexeyevna returned I would go and greet her in the hall, take her parcels from her, and for some reason I would always carry those parcels with as much love and solemnity as if I was a little boy.
‘There is a saying: the woman had no cares, so she bought a pig. The Luganoviches had no worries, so they made friends with me. If I did not come to town for a long time, it meant I was ill or something bad had happened to me, and they both began to worry a great deal. They worried that instead of engaging in academic or literary work, here I was, an educated man who knew foreign languages, living in the countryside, running round and round like a hamster in a wheel, working fiendishly hard but never making any money. They thought I was unhappy, and that if I talked and laughed and ate, then it was only to cover up my unhappiness; I felt their anxious eyes on me even in more light-hearted moments, when I was in a good mood. Their concern was particularly touching when I really was going through a tough time, when some creditor was hounding me, or there was not enough money to pay an urgent bill; both of them, husband and wife, would whisper by the window, then he would come up to me and say with a serious expression:
‘“If you need money at the moment, Pavel Konstantinovich, then my wife and I hope you won’t feel shy about borrowing from us.”
‘And his ears would turn red with embarrassment. And
sometimes after they had whispered by the window in just the same way, he would come up to me with his red ears and say:
‘“My wife and I would sincerely like you to accept this gift.”
‘And he would give me cufflinks, a cigarette case, or a lamp, and in return I would send them from the country some slaughtered fowl, butter, and flowers. They were both very wealthy, by the way. In the early days I often took out loans, and was not particularly fussy about where I obtained them from, anywhere would do, but nothing in the world would have induced me to borrow from the Luganoviches. The very idea!
‘I was unhappy. I thought about her at home, out in the fields, and in the barn; and I tried to unravel the mystery of how a young, beautiful, clever woman could marry an uninteresting man on the brink of old age (her husband was over forty) and have children with him. I also tried to unravel the mystery of this boring, good-natured, simple soul, who thought in such a boring sensible way, who only ever socialized with wealthy people at balls and parties, who was superfluous and inert, who wore a submissive and detached expression as if he had been put up for sale, but who believed, however, in his right to be happy and have children with her. I kept trying to understand why she had to meet him of all people, rather than me, and why such a dreadful mistake should have taken place in our lives.