About Love and Other Stories

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

  He just could not get used to the fear he involuntarily inspired in people, despite his quiet, humble manner. Everyone in the province seemed small, frightened, and guilty when he looked at them. They were all shy in his presence, even the old archdeacons; they all fell at his feet, and one petitioner recently, an old priest’s wife from the country, had been so terrified she could not utter a single word, and left having achieved nothing. He could never bring himself to speak badly of a person or reproach anyone in his sermons because he felt sorry for them, but even he now lost his temper with petitioners, became angry, and threw their petitions on the floor. In all the time that he had been in the post, not one person had talked to him openly and simply in a down-to-earth way; even his old mother did not seem the same anymore, she was not remotely the same! Why was it that with Sisoy she could talk non-stop and laugh a lot, but be serious, tongue-tied, and embarrassed with her own son, which was not like her at all? The only person who was uninhibited in his presence and who said everything he wanted was old Sisoy, who had spent his whole life around bishops and had seen all their trials and torments at close hand. So for that reason it was easy being with him, although he was definitely a difficult and cantankerous character.

  On Tuesday after the liturgy the bishop was in the episcopal palace, where he received petitioners and became upset and angry; then he went home. He still felt unwell and was longing to be able to go to bed, but barely had he walked through the door when he was informed that the young merchant and benefactor Erakin had come on very important business. He had to be received. Erakin sat for about an hour talking very loudly and almost shouting, and it was difficult to understand what he was saying.

  ‘God grant it!’ he said as he left. ‘Absolutely unfailingly! According to circumstances, your most holy Reverence! I do so hope!’

  After him came the abbess from a distant convent. And when she had gone, the bells were rung for Vespers and it was time to go to church.

  The monks’ singing that evening was harmonious and inspired; there was a young monk with a black beard leading the service; and as he heard about the bridegroom who cometh at midnight,* and about the bridal chamber being adorned, the bishop did not feel repentance for his sins, or sorrow, but a spiritual calm, a quietness, and he was carried away by thoughts of the distant past, of his childhood and youth, when they had also sung about the bridegroom and the bridal chamber, and now that past seemed vivid, beautiful, and joyful, as it had probably never been. And maybe in our next life we will remember the distant past and our life here on earth with the same feeling. Who knows! The bishop was sitting by the altar, where it was dark. Tears were running down his face. He was thinking that he had achieved everything possible for a man in his position, and he had faith, but still not everything was clear to him, something was missing, he did not want to die; it seemed to him that he was still missing something really important, something which he had dreamed about vaguely once long ago, and that same hope about the future stirred him now, as it had during his childhood, while he was at the academy and when he had been abroad.

  ‘They are singing so beautifully today!’ he thought as he listened to the choir; ‘So beautifully!’

  IV

  On Thursday he took the morning service in the cathedral and there was the washing of feet. When the service finished and people had gone home, it was radiantly warm and sunny, water was gurgling in ditches, and the unceasing tender song of larks wafted in from the fields outside the city, bringing a sense of peace. The trees had already come to life and were smiling amiably, while above them the vast, blue, fathomless sky disappeared heaven knows where into the unknown.

  After he came home, Bishop Pyotr had some tea, then he got undressed, climbed into bed, and asked the lay brother to close the shutters. His bedroom darkened. Goodness, how tired he was, there was such pain in his legs and his back, a cold, heavy pain, and what a din there was in his ears! It seemed as if he had not slept for a long time, a very long time, and what was preventing him from falling asleep was some tiny thing which glimmered in his brain as soon as he shut his eyes. Voices and the sound of teaspoons clinking against glasses came through the walls of the next-door rooms as they had the day before… Mariya Timofeyevna was merrily recounting something to Father Sisoy with all kinds of funny sayings, and he was replying in a sullen, disgruntled voice: ‘Never! I don’t believe it! As if!’ And the bishop once again started to feel annoyed and then offended that the old lady could behave in a normal and straightforward manner with strangers, while with him, with her own son, she was tongue-tied and shy, not able to say what she wanted to; she had even kept looking for an excuse to stand up in his presence these past few days, as she felt awkward sitting, or so it seemed to him. And his father? If he had been alive he probably would not have been able to say a single word in front of him…

  Something fell and shattered in the room next door; Katya must have dropped a cup or a saucer, because Father Sisoy suddenly snorted and said angrily:

  ‘Lord have mercy, but it’s pure punishment having this girl around! Can’t keep anything safe!’

  Then it became quiet, and the only sounds that could be heard came from outside. When the bishop opened his eyes he saw Katya standing there motionless in his room, looking at him. Her red hair was sticking out from her comb as usual and standing up like a halo.

  ‘Is that you Katya?’ he asked. ‘Who is it who keeps opening and shutting the door downstairs?’

  ‘I can’t hear anything,’ she answered, listening out.

  ‘Someone just walked past.’

  ‘That’s just in your tummy, uncle!’

  He laughed and stroked her hair.

  ‘So your cousin Nikolasha cuts up dead bodies, does he?’ he asked after a pause.

  ‘Yes. He’s studying.’

  ‘Is he a good cousin?’

  ‘He’s all right I suppose. But he drinks a lot of vodka.’

  ‘And what illness did your father die of?’

  ‘Papa was weak and he got ever so thin and then suddenly it was his throat. And then I was ill and my brother Fedya was ill— everyone’s throat hurt. Papa died, but we got better, uncle.’

  Her chin had started to wobble; tears appeared in her eyes and ran down her cheeks.

  ‘Your holiness,’ she said in a thin little voice, already crying bitterly, ‘me and Mama have been left so unhappy, uncle… Please give us a little bit of money… Please be kind… dear uncle!…’

  He also started crying, and for a long time he was so upset that he could not say a word, then he stroked her hair and patted her shoulder and said:

  ‘Don’t worry, child. Once Easter Sunday comes we will talk… I will help, of course I will…’

  His mother came in quietly and timidly to pray to the icon. When she noticed he was not asleep she asked:

  ‘Wouldn’t you like a little soup?’

  ‘No, thank you…’ he answered. ‘I don’t feel like eating.’

  ‘You don’t seem very well… looking at you now. And how could you not fall ill! On your feet all day, from morning to night, goodness me, it’s tiring just to watch you. Well, Easter Week is not far off and then you can have a rest, God willing, and we can talk, but I am not going to bother you with conversations now. Let’s go Katya—let his Lordship get some sleep.’

  And he remembered that she had talked to the dean in just the same half-playful, half-respectful tone when he was still a boy a very long time ago… Only from the unusually kind eyes and the shy, concerned look she threw him in passing as she left the room could one see that she was his mother. He shut his eyes and thought he had gone to sleep, but he heard the clock striking twice, and Father Sisoy coughing behind the wall. And his mother came in once more and spent a minute looking at him shyly. He could hear someone driving up to the porch in a coach or a carriage. Suddenly there was a knock and the door banged: the lay brother came into his room:

  ‘Your Reverence!’ he called out.

 
‘What?’

  ‘The horses have been sent round, it’s time for the Lord’s Passion.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Quarter-past seven.’

  He got dressed and drove over to the cathedral. He had to stand motionless right in the middle throughout all the twelve passages from the gospel, and the first, the longest and most beautiful, was read by him. He suddenly felt cheerful and well. He knew this first gospel reading, ‘Now is the son of man glorified’,* by heart, and while he read it he occasionally lifted his eyes and saw on both sides an ocean of flames, and heard the sputtering of candles, but as in previous years he could not see any people, and it seemed that these were the same people who had been there back in his childhood and in his youth, and that they would be there every year until God only knows when.

  His father had been a deacon, his grandfather had been a priest, his great-grandfather had been a deacon, and his family had maybe belonged to the clergy from the time that Rus adopted Christianity;* his love for church services, the clergy, and the sound of bells being rung was deep, innate, and ineradicable; he felt energetic, cheerful, and happy when he was in church, especially when he was taking part in the service himself. And so it was now. It was only when they finished the eighth gospel reading that he felt his voice had become weak, so that even his coughing was not audible; he had a terrible headache and he began to worry that he might keel over at any moment. His legs really had gone numb, so that he gradually lost all sensation in them, and he could not understand how he was managing to stand up, and why he was not falling over…

  When the service finished it was a quarter to midnight. After arriving home, the bishop immediately got undressed and went to bed without even saying his prayers. He could not speak and would no longer be able to stand up, he thought. When he covered himself up with the blanket, he was suddenly gripped by a desire to go abroad—an incredibly intense desire! He felt he would give his life not to have to see these miserable cheap shutters and low ceilings, and endure this stifling monastery smell. If only there was one person whom he could talk to and unburden his soul!

  He could hear someone walking about for a long time in the room next door, but he just could not remember who it might be. Finally the door opened and Sisoy came in with a candle and a teacup in his hands.

  ‘You’ve already gone to bed, Your Reverence?’ he asked. ‘Well I’ve come to rub you down with vodka and vinegar. It can be a real help if you rub it in well. Oh Lord Jesus… There we are… There we are… I’ve just been over to our monastery… I don’t like it, I really don’t! I’m going to leave tomorrow, your Reverence, I don’t want to stay any longer. Sweet Lord Jesus… There we are…’

  Sisoy could never stay long in one place, and he felt as if he had already been living in the Pankratiev monastery for a whole year. But what was really hard to puzzle out listening to him was where his home was, whether there was anyone or anything he actually loved, and whether he believed in God… He himself did not understand why he was a monk, he certainly never thought about it, and the time when he took his vows had vanished from his memory so long ago that it was as if he had actually been born a monk.

  ‘I’m leaving tomorrow. Stuff it! Stuff everything!’

  ‘If I could just have a little talk with you… it’s been difficult to find the time,’ said the bishop softly, speaking with great effort. ‘I don’t know anyone here, you see, or anything…’

  ‘All right, I will stay until Sunday, if I have to, but I’m not staying longer than that. Confound it all!’

  ‘What sort of bishop am I?’ the bishop continued softly. ‘I ought to be a village priest, a sexton… or an ordinary monk… All this weighs me down… it weighs me down…’

  ‘What? Lord Jesus… There we are… Well, time to get some sleep now, my Lord!… I don’t know! Heavens above! Good night!’

  The bishop did not sleep all night. And in the morning, at about eight, his intestine started bleeding. The lay brother was scared and ran first to the archimandrite and then to the monastery doctor, Ivan Andreyevich, who lived in the city. The doctor, a rotund old man with a long grey beard, examined the bishop for a long time, shaking his head as he did so and frowning, and then he said:

  ‘You know what, your Reverence? You’ve got typhoid!’

  In the hour following the haemorrhage the bishop became very thin and pale, his cheeks hollowed, his face wrinkled, his eyes grew larger, and it was as if he had grown old and had shrunk in size; it already seemed to him that he was thinner and weaker and more insignificant than everyone else, that everything that existed had gone somewhere very, very far away, and would never be repeated or continue.

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

  His old mother arrived. When she saw his shrunken face and his large eyes, she took fright and fell to her knees by the bed, and started kissing his face, his shoulders, and his hands. And for some reason it seemed to her too that he was thinner, weaker, and more insignificant than anyone else; she had already forgotten that he was a bishop and was kissing him as if he was a child, her very own dear child.

  ‘Pavlusha, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘Darling! My dear son! What’s happened to you? Pavlusha, speak to me!’

  Katya stood there looking pale and tight-lipped, not understanding what was wrong with uncle, why there was such suffering on her grandmother’s face, and why she was saying such touching, sad words. And he could no longer say a single word nor understand what was happening, and was imagining himself as a simple, ordinary person, walking briskly and happily through the fields, tapping his stick, while up above him was the huge sky, drenched with sunshine; he was as free as a bird now and could go wherever he wanted!

  ‘Pavlusha, dear son, please answer me!’ said the old woman. ‘What’s the matter with you? My dearest!’

  ‘Don’t upset his Lordship,’ said Sisoy angrily as he marched across the room. ‘Let him get some sleep… Nothing you can do… there’s no point!…’

  Three doctors arrived and consulted with each other and then they went away. The day was long, unbelievably long, and then night fell and it went on and on, but towards morning on the Saturday the lay brother went over to the old lady, who was lying on the couch in the sitting room, and asked her to go into the bedroom; the bishop had passed away.

  The next day it was Easter. There were forty-two churches and six monasteries and convents in the city, and the booming, joyous sound of bell-ringing hung over it from dawn to dusk without a break, stirring up the spring air; birds sang and the sun shone brightly. It was noisy in the main marketplace; there were swings going up and down, barrel organs playing, an accordion wheezing away, and drunken voices calling out. And then pony-rides began on the main street in the afternoon—it was all great fun, in a word; everything went well, just as it had the previous year, and as it probably would the following one.

  A month later they appointed a new bishop, and no one remembered Bishop Pyotr any more. And then they completely forgot about him. The old lady, the dead man’s mother, went to live with her son-in-law the deacon in a remote little district town, and it was only when she went out in the late afternoon to fetch her cow and meet up with the other women in the pasture that she talked about her children, her grandchildren, and about her son who had been a bishop; she spoke shyly, because she was afraid that people would not believe her…

  And indeed, not everyone did believe her.

  EXPLANATORY NOTES

  THE HUNTSMAN [Eger′]

  First published in the Petersburg Newspaper [Peterburgskaya gazeta], 18 July 1885.

  ON THE ROAD [Na puti]

  First published in New Times [Novoe vremya], 25 December 1886.

  A little golden cloud… boulder: the beginning of ‘The Crag’ (‘Utes’), dating from 1841, by Mikhail Lermontov (1814–41).

  the icon of St George the Victor: the third-century martyr credited with slaying the dragon.

  Serafim… Nasreddin: the m
onk Serafim of Sarov (1759–1833), renowned for his ascetism, was canonized in 1903; Nasreddin (1831–96) became Shah of Persia in 1848. A Russian translation of a travelogue by him was published in St Petersburg in 1887.

  Madam Ilovaiskaya is here: the Chekhov family’s nanny, Agafya Kumskaya, was a serf of the Ilovaisky family, whose estates were situated in the Don steppe region, not far from Taganrog in southern Russia.

  break the fast: a fast preceding Christmas morning.

  gymnasium: the Russians adopted the German word for government-run secondary schools, and also their classical bias. Such schools were initially for the nobility only, but later admitted the children of merchants. Chekhov attended the gymnasium at Taganrog.