About Love and Other Stories

by Chekhov, Anton; Bartlett, Leverhulme Research Fellow in Russian Cultural History Rosamund ;

  Gurov had already got fed up with listening; he was annoyed by the naive and penitential tone, which was so unexpected and so misplaced; without the tears in her eyes you might have thought she was joking or acting out a role.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said quietly. ‘What is it you want?’

  She hid her face in his chest and clung closely to him.

  ‘Please believe me, I beg you…’ she said, ‘I just want to live a decent, honest life; I can’t bear sin and I don’t know myself what I am doing. Country people talk about getting tangled up with an evil spirit. Now I can say about myself that I have got tangled up with an evil spirit.’

  ‘Come on now, that’s enough…’ he murmured.

  He looked at her scared, staring eyes, kissed her, spoke softly and tenderly, and she gradually calmed down; her good spirits returned and they both started to laugh.

  Later on, when they went out, there was not a soul down on the seafront; the town with its cypresses looked totally dead, but the waves were still crashing noisily against the shore; there was just one fishing-boat tossing about on the sea, its light twinkling sleepily.

  They found a cab and set off for Oreanda. *

  ‘Just now in the lobby downstairs I found out what your surname is: there was a von Diederitz written up on the board,’ said Gurov. ‘Is your husband German?’

  ‘No. I think his grandfather may have been German, but he was born Russian Orthodox.’

  They sat on a bench not far from the church at Oreanda, looking down at the sea and not saying anything. Yalta was barely visible through the morning mist, and white clouds stood motionless on the tops of the mountains. The leaves on the trees did not stir, the cicadas were chattering, and the monotonous, muffled noise of the sea coming up from down below spoke of rest and of the eternal sleep which awaits us. It had made that noise down below when neither Yalta nor Oreanda existed, it was making that noise now, and would continue to make that noise in that same hushed and indifferent way when we are no longer here. And in that permanence, in that complete indifference to the life and death of each one of us, is perhaps concealed a guarantee of our eternal salvation, a guarantee of the constant movement of life on earth and of endless perfection. Sitting tranquilly next to a young woman who seemed so beautiful in the dawn light, entranced by this magical setting—the sea, the mountains, the clouds, the vast sky—Gurov was thinking that when you really reflect on it, everything is beautiful on this earth, everything that is, except what we think and do when we forget about the higher purpose of existence and about our human dignity.

  Someone—most likely a nightwatchman—came up close, peered at them, and then went away. Even that detail seemed mysterious and beautiful too. They could see the steamer from Feodosia * arriving; it was lit up by the dawn and already without lights.

  ‘There is dew on the grass,’ said Anna Sergeyevna, breaking the silence.

  ‘Yes. Time to go back.’

  They returned to town.

  Then they took to meeting up every day at twelve on the seafront, having lunch together, dining, going for walks, and admiring the sea. She complained that she was not sleeping well and that her heart was beating irregularly; she kept asking him the same questions, either out of jealousy or a fear that he did not respect her sufficiently. And often in the square or in the gardens, when there was no one about, he would suddenly draw her to him and kiss her passionately. He felt rejuvenated by the complete idleness and those kisses in the middle of the day, which were accompanied by furtive looks and the fear that they might be seen; he felt rejuvenated by the heat, by the smell of the sea, and by the constant flitting before his eyes of contented, elegantly dressed holidaymakers; he told Anna Sergeyevna how pretty and attractive she was, he was ardent and passionate and never left her side even for a minute, while she often became pensive and begged him to admit that he did not respect her or love her at all, and just saw her as a cheap woman. They went out of town almost every evening when it was getting late, either to Oreanda or to the waterfall; * and their excursions were always a success; the impressions they made were unfailingly beautiful and majestic.

  They were expecting her husband to arrive. But a letter came from him in which he told her he had contracted an eye infection and begged her to come home as soon as possible. Anna Sergeyevna made haste.

  ‘It’s a good thing that I am leaving,’ she said to Gurov. ‘It’s fate.’

  She set off in a carriage to Sevastopol, and he accompanied her. It took all day. When she had settled into her compartment on the express train and the second bell had gone, she said:

  ‘Let me look at you again… I want one last look. That’s right.’

  She was not crying, but she looked miserable, as if she was ill, and her face was trembling.

  ‘I’ll think about you… and remember you,’ she said. ‘God bless you, don’t go yet. Think well of me. This is goodbye forever and it has to be that way, because we shouldn’t have ever met. Well, God bless.’

  The train departed quickly, its lights soon disappeared, and within a minute you could no longer hear any noise, as if a special arrangement had been made to bring this sweet oblivion, this insanity, to a swift end. As he stood alone on the platform looking into the far distance, Gurov listened to the crickets chirping and the humming of the telegraph wires and felt as if he had just woken up. He thought about how this had been one more escapade or adventure in his life; it too had now come to an end and all that was left was a memory… He felt moved, sad, and slightly repentant; after all, the young woman whom he would never see again had not been happy with him; he had been friendly and sincere with her, but all the same, whenever he had been with her there had been a trace of mockery in his tone and in his endearments—the crude arrogance of a contented man who was, moreover, almost twice her age. She had kept saying he was kind, exceptional, noble; she had not divined his real personality, so he had unwittingly deceived her…

  There was already a smell of autumn down at the station, and the evening was cool.

  ‘It’s time for me to go north too,’ thought Gurov as he left the platform. ‘Time to go north!’

  III

  At home in Moscow everything was already on the winter timetable; the stoves were lit and it was dark in the mornings when the children were getting ready for school and drinking their tea; the nanny had to light the lamps for a while. There were frosts already. When the first snow falls, and when you travel by sleigh for the first time, how nice it is to see the ground and the rooftops all white; the air is soft and lovely, and it makes you start remembering the times when you were young. Clothed in white rime, the old lindens and birches have a good-natured appearance; they are more endearing than cypresses and palms, and being near them dispels any desire to think about sea and mountains.

  Gurov was a Muscovite, and he arrived back in Moscow on a wonderful frosty day; when he put on his fur coat and warm gloves and walked down Petrovka, * and when he heard the church bells ringing on Saturday evening, his recent trip and the places he had visited completely lost their charm for him. Little by little he re-immersed himself in Moscow life; soon he was avidly reading three newspapers a day and saying he did not read Moscow newspapers on principle. Before long he was being lured to restaurants, clubs, dinners, and parties; he felt flattered that he was visited by famous lawyers and artists, and played cards at the doctors’ club with a professor. And he was soon able to polish off a whole portion of cabbage stew served in the pan, Moscow style…

  A month or so would go by, he had thought, and Anna Sergeyevna’s image would become shrouded in mist; he would just dream of her touching smile from time to time, like he dreamed about all the others. But more than a month had gone by and winter had set in, and his memories were as clear as if he had parted from Anna Sergeyevna the day before. His memories grew more vivid, in fact. He might hear from his study the voices of his children doing their homework in the quiet of an evening, a song or an organ in a restau
rant, or the howling of the snowstorm in the chimney, and all of a sudden everything would be resurrected in his mind: the time when they were at the jetty, that early misty morning in the mountains, the steamer from Feodosia, the kisses. He would spend hours walking about his room, remembering and smiling, and then his memories would turn into dreams and the past would fuse with the future in his imagination. Anna Sergeyevna did not appear in his dreams, but she followed him everywhere he went like a shadow, watching over him. As soon as he closed his eyes he would see her as if she were standing right there, and she would seem prettier, younger, and more affectionate than before; and he himself seemed better than he was back then in Yalta. In the evenings she would look across at him from the bookshelf, or from the fireplace or from the corner of the room; he could hear her breathing and the gentle rustle of her dress. Outside on the street he followed women with his eyes, looking to see if there was someone like her…

  And he was overcome by a powerful desire to share his memories with someone. But he could not talk about his love at home, and there was no one anywhere else. He could not talk to the lodgers or to the people at the bank. And what would he say anyway? Had he really loved her back then? Was there really something beautiful, poetic, uplifting, or even simply interesting about his relationship with Anna Sergeyevna? All he could do was talk in vague terms about love and women, and no one guessed what was going on; his wife just knitted her dark eyebrows and said:

  ‘You know, Dimitry, the role of the romantic really does not suit you.’

  One night when he was coming out of the doctors’ club with his partner at cards, an official, he could not restrain himself and said:

  ‘You can’t imagine what an enchanting woman I met in Yalta!’

  The official got into his sleigh and drove off, but then suddenly he turned round and called out:

  ‘Hey, Dmitry Dmitrich!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You were right earlier: the sturgeon was off!’

  Those very ordinary words for some reason suddenly made Gurov angry; they seemed degrading and dishonourable to him. What appalling manners, and what dreadful people there were! What meaningless nights and what uninteresting, unmemorable days! Frenzied games of cards, gluttony, drunkenness, and endless conversations always about one and the same thing. These pointless activities and conversations about one and the same thing took up the better part of your time and energy and eventually left you with an uninspired, restricted kind of life which was worth nothing, and which you could neither leave nor run away from; it was like sitting in a madhouse or behind bars!

  Gurov could not sleep all night and he became angry, and then he had a headache all the next day. He slept badly the following nights too; he would sit up in bed and think, or he would pace about. He was fed up with his children, fed up with the bank, and he did not want to go anywhere or talk about anything.

  In December, during the Christmas holidays, he packed a bag and told his wife that he was going to St Petersburg to try and intercede on behalf of a certain young man—but he actually went to S. Why? He himself did not really know the answer. He wanted to see Anna Sergeyevna and talk to her, arrange a meeting if possible.

  He arrived in S. the next morning and took the best room in the hotel, whose floor was covered wall to wall with thick, grey military felt. On the desk there was an inkwell, grey with dust, which was shaped like a rider on a horse; the rider was raising his hat with his hand, but his head had been knocked off. The porter gave him the necessary information: von Diederitz lived on Old Goncharnaya Street, in his own house, not far from the hotel—he lived well, prosperously, had his own horses and was known by everybody in the town. The porter pronounced his name as Dridiritz.

  Gurov set off unhurriedly along Old Goncharnaya Street, looking for the house. Just in front of it stretched a long, grey fence studded with nails.

  ‘That’s the kind of fence that makes you want to run away,’ thought Gurov casting his eyes back and forth from the windows to the fence.

  He figured that since this was not a working day, the husband would probably be at home. It would be tactless anyway to go into the house and cause embarrassment. If he were to send a message it might perhaps fall into the husband’s hands and everything would be ruined. It would be better to count on the right opportunity presenting itself. So he walked up and down the street and along the fence, waiting for this opportunity. He saw a beggar walking through the gates and being attacked by dogs, then an hour later he heard a piano being played and faint, indistinct sounds floating out. It must have been Anna Sergeyevna playing. Then the front door suddenly opened and an old woman came out, with the familiar white Pomeranian running after her. Gurov wanted to call out to the dog, but his heart started beating wildly, and he was so nervous he could not remember what it was called.

  As he walked up and down he started to hate the grey fence more and more; he was thinking with irritation that Anna Sergeyevna would have forgotten about him and maybe was seeing someone else, and it would be so natural for a young woman who was compelled to see that wretched fence from morning till night. He went back to his hotel room and sat for a long time on the couch, not knowing what to do; then he had lunch and went to sleep for a long time.

  ‘This is all so stupid and pointless,’ he thought, after he had woken up and was staring through the dark windows; it was already evening. ‘Now I have gone and had a good sleep. But what am I going to do tonight?’

  He sat on the bed, which was covered with a cheap grey blanket which looked as if it had come out of a hospital, and taunted himself with his feelings of disappointment:

  ‘So much for your lady with the little dog… So much for your adventure… You can just sit here.’

  At the station that morning he had noticed a poster advertising the first performance of The Geisha * with very large letters. He remembered it, and set off for the theatre.

  ‘It’s quite possible that she goes to first nights,’ he thought.

  The theatre was full. As in most provincial theatres there was mist above the central chandelier and people in the gallery making a lot of noise. The local romeos stood in the front row before the performance started with their hands clasped behind their backs; in the governor’s box the governor’s daughter was sitting in the front row wearing a boa, with the governor himself modestly hiding behind the partition, so that only his hands were visible; the curtain was swaying and the orchestra was taking a long time tuning up. While the audience were coming in and finding their seats Gurov scoured the place with his eyes.

  Anna Sergeyevna came in. She sat down in the third row, and when Gurov looked at her his heart leapt, and he understood clearly that there was now no person whom he cherished more, no one dearer or more important to him; lost in the provincial crowd, this small and in no way remarkable woman, with a vulgar lorgnette in her hands, now made up his whole life; she was his sorrow and his joy, the only happiness he now wanted for himself; and to the accompaniment of the sounds coming from the terrible orchestra and the wretched amateur violins, he thought about how lovely she was. He thought and dreamed.

  A young man with short sideburns, very tall and stooping, had come in with Anna Sergeyevna and sat down next to her; at every step he had nodded his head and seemed to be constantly bowing. This was probably her husband, whom in Yalta in a rush of bitterness she had called a flunkey. There really was something deferential and flunkey-like in his long figure, his sideburns, and his small bald patch; he was smiling insipidly, and there was some kind of academic insignia glinting in his buttonhole just like a lackey’s badge.

  During the first interval the husband went out to smoke and she stayed in her seat. Gurov had also been sitting in the stalls and so he went up to her; in a shaking voice, forcing a smile, he said ‘Hello’.

  She looked up at him and went pale, then looked at him again with horror, not believing her eyes, clasping her fan and lorgnette tightly together and clearly doing her best not to faint.
They said nothing. She sat and he stood, frightened by her embarrassment, and unsure as to whether he should sit down next to her. The violins and the flute had begun to tune up and it was suddenly horrifying; it felt as if the people in all the boxes were all looking at them. But then she got up and quickly headed towards the exit; he followed her and they both walked in confusion along corridors and then up and down staircases, while before their eyes flitted people in judicial, pedagogical, and state uniforms, all with insignia, ladies, and fur coats on pegs; a draught was blowing which gave off a smell of cigarette ends. His heart beating wildly, Gurov was thinking, ‘Heavens! Why do there have to be all these people here, and that orchestra…?’ And at that moment he suddenly remembered that when he had seen Anna Sergeyevna off at the station that evening, he had told himself that it was all over and that they would never see each other again. But it was far from over in fact!

  She stopped on a dark, narrow staircase where there was a sign saying: ‘Entrance to the amphitheatre.’

  ‘You gave me such a scare!’ she said, breathing hard, still pale from the shock. ‘Such a scare! I’m barely conscious. Why did you come here? Why?’

  ‘You must understand, Anna, you must understand…’ he said hurriedly in a hushed voice. ‘You must understand, I beg you…’

  She looked at him entreatingly with a mixture of fear and love, staring into his face so as to imprint his features more firmly in her memory.

  ‘I’ve suffered so much!’ she continued, without listening to him. ‘I’ve thought about you all the time; all I’ve thought about is you. I wanted to forget about you, forget all about you. Why, oh why have you come?’