The Complete Short Novels

by Chekhov, Anton

  ‘‘This soup tastes like licorice,’’ he said, smiling; he forced himself to appear affable, but he could not restrain himself and said: ‘‘Nobody looks after the household here... If you’re so sick or busy reading, then, if you please, I’ll take care of our cooking.’’

  Formerly she would have replied: ‘‘Go ahead’’ or: ‘‘I see you want to make a cook out of me,’’ but now she only glanced at him timidly and blushed.

  ‘‘Well, how are you feeling today?’’ he asked affectionately.

  ‘‘Not bad today. Just a little weak.’’

  ‘‘You must take care of yourself, my dove. I’m terribly afraid for you.’’

  Nadezhda Fyodorovna was sick with something. Samoilenko said she had undulant fever and gave her quinine; the other doctor, Ustimovich, a tall, lean, unsociable man who sat at home during the day and, in the evening, putting his hands behind him and holding his cane up along his spine, quietly strolled on the embankment and coughed, thought she had a feminine ailment and prescribed warm compresses. Formerly, when Laevsky loved her, Nadezhda Fyodorovna’s ailment had aroused pity and fear in him, but now he saw a lie in the ailment as well. The yellow, sleepy face, the listless gaze and fits of yawning that Nadezhda Fyodorovna had after the attacks of fever, and the fact that she lay under a plaid during the attack and looked more like a boy than a woman, and that her room was stuffy and smelled bad—all this, in his opinion, destroyed the illusion and was a protest against love and marriage.

  For the second course he was served spinach with hard-boiled eggs, while Nadezhda Fyodorovna, being sick, had custard with milk. When, with a preoccupied face, she first prodded the custard with her spoon and then began lazily eating it, sipping milk along with it, and he heard her swallow, such a heavy hatred came over him that his head even began to itch. He was aware that such a feeling would be insulting even to a dog, but he was vexed not with himself but with Nadezhda Fyodorovna for arousing this feeling in him, and he understood why lovers sometimes kill their mistresses. He himself would not kill, of course, but if he had now been on a jury, he would have acquitted the murderer.

  ‘‘Merci, my dove,’’ he said after dinner and kissed Nadezhda Fyodorovna on the forehead.

  Going to his study, he paced up and down for five minutes, looking askance at his boots, then sat down on the sofa and muttered:

  ‘‘To escape, to escape! To clarify our relations and escape!’’

  He lay down on the sofa and again remembered that he was perhaps to blame for the death of Nadezhda Fyodorovna’s husband.

  ‘‘To blame a man for falling in love or falling out of love is stupid,’’ he persuaded himself as he lay there and raised his feet in order to put on his boots. ‘‘Love and hate are not in our power. As for the husband, perhaps in an indirect way I was one of the causes of his death, but, again, am I to blame that I fell in love with his wife and she with me?’’

  Then he got up and, finding his peaked cap, took himself to his colleague Sheshkovsky’s, where officials gathered each day to play vint and drink cold beer.

  ‘‘In my indecision I am reminiscent of Hamlet,’’ Laevsky thought on the way. ‘‘How rightly Shakespeare observed it! Ah, how rightly!’’

  III

  SO AS NOT to be bored and to condescend to the extreme need of newcomers and the familyless who, for lack of hotels in the town, had nowhere to dine, Dr. Samoilenko kept something like a table d’hôte in his home. At the time of writing, he had only two people at his table: the young zoologist von Koren, who came to the Black Sea in the summers to study the embryology of jellyfish; and the deacon Pobedov, recently graduated from the seminary and sent to our town to take over the functions of the old deacon, who had gone away for a cure. They each paid twelve roubles a month for dinner and supper, and Samoilenko made them give their word of honor that they would appear for dinner at precisely two o’clock.

  Von Koren was usually the first to come. He would sit silently in the drawing room and, taking an album from the table, begin studying attentively the faded photographs of some unknown men in wide trousers and top hats and ladies in crinolines and caps. Samoilenko remembered only a few of them by name, and of those he had forgotten he said with a sigh: ‘‘An excellent man, of the greatest intelligence!’’ Having finished with the album, von Koren would take a pistol from the shelf and, squinting his left eye, aim for a long time at the portrait of Prince Vorontsov, or station himself in front of the mirror and study his swarthy face, big forehead, and hair black and curly as a Negro’s, and his faded cotton shirt with large flowers, which resembled a Persian carpet, and the wide leather belt he wore instead of a waistcoat. Self-contemplation afforded him hardly less pleasure than looking at the photographs or the pistol in its costly mounting. He was very pleased with his face, and his handsomely trimmed little beard, and his broad shoulders, which served as obvious proof of his good health and sturdy build. He was also pleased with his smart outfit, starting with the tie, picked to match the color of the shirt, and ending with the yellow shoes.

  While he was studying the album and standing in front of the mirror, at the same time, in the kitchen and around it, in the hall, Samoilenko, with no frock coat or waistcoat, bare-chested, excited, and drenched in sweat, fussed about the tables, preparing a salad, or some sort of sauce, or meat, cucumbers, and onions for a cold kvass soup, meanwhile angrily rolling his eyes at the orderly who was helping him, and brandishing a knife or a spoon at him.

  ‘‘Give me the vinegar!’’ he ordered. ‘‘I mean, not the vinegar but the olive oil!’’ he shouted, stamping his feet. ‘‘Where are you going, you brute?’’

  ‘‘For the oil, Your Excellency,’’ the nonplussed orderly said in a cracked tenor.

  ‘‘Be quick! It’s in the cupboard! And tell Darya to add some dill to the jar of pickles! Dill! Cover the sour cream, you gawk, or the flies will get into it!’’

  The whole house seemed to resound with his voice. When it was ten or fifteen minutes before two, the deacon would come, a young man of about twenty-two, lean, long-haired, beardless, and with a barely noticeable mustache. Coming into the drawing room, he would cross himself in front of the icon, smile, and offer von Koren his hand.

  ‘‘Greetings,’’ the zoologist would say coldly. ‘‘Where have you been?’’

  ‘‘On the pier fishing for bullheads.’’

  ‘‘Well, of course... Apparently, Deacon, you’re never going to take up any work.’’

  ‘‘Why so? Work’s not a bear, it won’t run off to the woods,’’ the deacon would say, smiling and putting his hands into the deep pockets of his cassock.

  ‘‘Beating’s too good for you!’’ the zoologist would sigh.

  Another fifteen or twenty minutes would go by, but dinner was not announced, and they could still hear the orderly, his boots stomping, running from the hall to the kitchen and back, and Samoilenko shouting:

  ‘‘Put it on the table! Where are you shoving it? Wash it first!’’

  Hungry by now, the deacon and von Koren would start drumming their heels on the floor, expressing their impatience, like spectators in the gallery of a theater. At last the door would open, and the exhausted orderly would announce: ‘‘Dinner’s ready!’’ In the dining room they were met by the crimson and irate Samoilenko, stewed in the stifling kitchen. He looked at them spitefully and, with an expression of terror on his face, lifted the lid of the soup tureen and poured them each a plateful, and only when he had made sure that they were eating with appetite and liked the food did he sigh with relief and sit down in his deep armchair. His face became languid, unctuous... He unhurriedly poured himself a glass of vodka and said:

  ‘‘To the health of the younger generation!’’

  After his conversation with Laevsky, all the time from morning till dinner, despite his excellent spirits, Samoilenko felt a slight oppression in the depths of his soul. He felt sorry for Laevsky and wanted to help him. Having drunk a glass of vodka before the soup,
he sighed and said:

  ‘‘I saw Vanya Laevsky today. The fellow’s having a hard time of it. The material side of his life is inauspicious, but above all, he’s beset by psychology. I feel sorry for the lad.’’

  ‘‘There’s one person I don’t feel sorry for!’’ said von Koren. ‘‘If the dear chap were drowning, I’d help him along with a stick: drown, brother, drown...’

  ‘‘Not true. You wouldn’t do that.’’

  ‘‘Why don’t you think so?’’ the zoologist shrugged his shoulders. ‘‘I’m as capable of a good deed as you are.’’

  ‘‘Is drowning a man a good deed?’’ the deacon asked and laughed.

  ‘‘Laevsky? Yes.’’

  ‘‘This kvass soup seems to lack something ...’ said Samoilenko, wishing to change the subject.

  ‘‘Laevsky is unquestionably harmful and as dangerous for society as the cholera microbe,’’ von Koren went on. ‘‘Drowning him would be meritorious.’’

  ‘‘It’s no credit to you that you speak that way of your neighbor. Tell me, what makes you hate him?’’

  ‘‘Don’t talk nonsense, Doctor. To hate and despise a microbe is stupid, but to consider anyone who comes along without discrimination as your neighbor—that, I humbly thank you, that means not to reason, to renounce a just attitude towards people, to wash your hands, in short. I consider your Laevsky a scoundrel, I don’t conceal it, and I treat him like a scoundrel in good conscience. Well, but you consider him your neighbor—so go and kiss him; you consider him your neighbor, and that means you have the same relation to him as to me and the deacon—that is, none at all. You’re equally indifferent to everybody.’’

  ‘‘To call a man a scoundrel!’’ Samoilenko murmured, wincing scornfully. ‘‘That’s so wrong, I can’t even tell you!’’

  ‘‘One judges people by their actions,’’ von Koren went on. ‘‘So judge now, Deacon... I shall talk to you, Deacon. The activity of Mr. Laevsky is openly unrolled before you like a long Chinese scroll, and you can read it from beginning to end. What has he done in the two years he’s been living here? Let’s count on our fingers. First, he has taught the town inhabitants to play vint; two years ago the game was unknown here, but now everybody plays vint from morning till night, even women and adolescents; second, he has taught the townspeople to drink beer, which was also unknown here; to him they also owe a knowledge of various kinds of vodka, so that they can now tell Koshelev’s from Smirnov’s No. 21 blindfolded. Third, before, they lived with other men’s wives here secretly, for the same motives that thieves steal secretly and not openly; adultery was considered something that it was shameful to expose to general view; Laevsky appears to be a pioneer in that respect: he lives openly with another man’s wife. Fourth...’

  Von Koren quickly ate his kvass soup and handed the plate to the orderly.

  ‘‘I understood Laevsky in the very first month of our acquaintance,’’ he went on, addressing the deacon. ‘‘We arrived here at the same time. People like him are very fond of friendship, intimacy, solidarity, and the like, because they always need company for vint, drinking, and eating; besides, they’re babblers and need an audience. We became friends, that is, he loafed about my place every day, preventing me from working and indulging in confidences about his kept woman. From the very first, he struck me with his extraordinary falseness, which simply made me sick. In the quality of a friend, I chided him, asking why he drank so much, why he lived beyond his means and ran up debts, why he did nothing and read nothing, why he had so little culture and so little knowledge, and in answer to all my questions, he would smile bitterly, sigh, and say: ‘I’m a luckless fellow, a superfluous man,’ or ‘What do you want, old boy, from us remnants of serfdom,’ or ‘We’re degenerating...’ Or he would start pouring out some lengthy drivel about Onegin, Pechorin, Byron’s Cain, Bazarov,9 of whom he said: ‘They are our fathers in flesh and spirit.’ Meaning he is not to blame that official packets lie unopened for weeks and that he drinks and gets others to drink, but the blame goes to Onegin, Pechorin, and Turgenev, who invented the luckless fellow and the superfluous man. The cause of extreme licentiousness and outrageousness, as you see, lies not in him but somewhere outside, in space. And besides—clever trick!— it’s not he alone who is dissolute, false, and vile, but we... ‘we, the people of the eighties,’ ‘we, the sluggish and nervous spawn of serfdom,’ ‘civilization has crippled us...’ In short, we should understand that such a great man as Laevsky is also great in his fall; that his dissoluteness, ignorance, and unscrupulousness constitute a natural-historical phenomenon, sanctified by necessity; that the causes here are cosmic, elemental, and Laevsky should have an icon lamp hung before him, because he is a fatal victim of the times, the trends, heredity, and the rest. All the officials and ladies oh’d and ah’d, listening to him, but I couldn’t understand for a long time whom I was dealing with: a cynic or a clever huckster. Subjects like him, who look intelligent, are slightly educated, and talk a lot about their own nobility, can pretend to be extraordinarily complex natures.’’

  ‘‘Quiet!’’ Samoilenko flared up. ‘‘I won’t allow bad things to be said in my presence about a very noble man!’’

  ‘‘Don’t interrupt, Alexander Davidych,’’ von Koren said coldly. ‘‘I’ll finish presently. Laevsky is a rather uncomplicated organism. Here is his moral structure: in the morning, slippers, bathing, and coffee; then up till dinner, slippers, constitutional, and talk; at two o’clock, slippers, dinner, and drink; at five o’clock, bathing, tea, and drink, then vint and lying; at ten o’clock, supper and drink; and after midnight, sleep and la femme. His existence is confined within this tight program like an egg in its shell. Whether he walks, sits, gets angry, writes, rejoices—everything comes down to drink, cards, slippers, and women. Women play a fatal, overwhelming role in his life. He himself tells us that at the age of thirteen, he was already in love; when he was a first-year student, he lived with a lady who had a beneficial influence on him and to whom he owes his musical education. In his second year, he bought out a prostitute from a brothel and raised her to his level—that is, kept her—but she lived with him for about half a year and fled back to her madam, and this flight caused him no little mental suffering. Alas, he suffered so much that he had to leave the university and live at home for two years, doing nothing. But that was for the better. At home he got involved with a widow who advised him to leave the law department and study philology. And so he did. On finishing his studies, he fell passionately in love with his present... what’s her name? ... the married one, and had to run away with her here to the Caucasus, supposedly in pursuit of ideals... Any day now he’ll fall out of love with her and flee back to Petersburg, also in pursuit of ideals.’’

  ‘‘How do you know?’’ Samoilenko growled, looking at the zoologist with spite. ‘‘Better just eat.’’

  Poached mullet with Polish sauce was served. Samoilenko placed a whole mullet on each of his boarders’ plates and poured the sauce over it with his own hands. A couple of minutes passed in silence.

  ‘‘Women play an essential role in every man’s life,’’ said the deacon. ‘‘There’s nothing to be done about it.’’

  ‘‘Yes, but to what degree? For each of us, woman is a mother, a sister, a wife, a friend, but for Laevsky, she is all that—and at the same time only a mistress. She—that is, cohabiting with her—is the happiness and goal of his life; he is merry, sad, dull, disappointed—on account of a woman; he’s sick of his life—it’s the woman’s fault; the dawn of a new life breaks, ideals are found—look for a woman here as well... He’s only satisfied by those writings or paintings that have a woman in them. Our age, in his opinion, is bad and worse than the forties and the sixties only because we are unable to give ourselves with self-abandon to amorous ecstasy and passion. These sensualists must have a special growth in their brain, like a sarcoma, that presses on the brain and controls their whole psychology. Try observing Laevsky when he’s sitting somewhere in
society. You’ll notice that when, in his presence, you raise some general question, for instance about cells or instincts, he sits to one side, doesn’t speak or listen; he has a languid, disappointed air, nothing interests him, it’s all banal and worthless; but as soon as you start talking about males and females, about the fact, for instance, that the female spider eats the male after fertilization, his eyes light up with curiosity, his face brightens, and, in short, the man revives! All his thoughts, however noble, lofty, or disinterested, always have one and the same point of common convergence. You walk down the street with him and meet, say, a donkey... ‘Tell me, please,’ he asks, ‘what would happen if a female donkey was coupled with a camel?’ And his dreams! Has he told you his dreams? It’s magnificent! Now he dreams he’s marrying the moon, then that he’s summoned by the police, and there they order him to live with a guitar...’

  The deacon burst into ringing laughter; Samoilenko frowned and wrinkled his face angrily, so as not to laugh, but could not help himself and guffawed.

  ‘‘That’s all lies!’’ he said, wiping his tears. ‘‘By God, it’s lies!’’

  IV

  THE DEACON WAS much given to laughter and laughed at every trifle till his sides ached, till he dropped. It looked as though he liked being among people only because they had funny qualities and could be given funny nicknames. Samoilenko he called ‘‘the tarantula,’’ his orderly ‘‘the drake,’’ and he was delighted when von Koren once called Laevsky and Nadezhda Fyodorovna ‘‘macaques.’’ He peered greedily into people’s faces, listened without blinking, and you could see his eyes fill with laughter and his face strain in anticipation of the moment when he could let himself go and rock with laughter.

  ‘‘He’s a corrupted and perverted subject,’’ the zoologist went on, and the deacon, in anticipation of funny words, fastened his eyes on him. ‘‘It’s not everywhere you can meet such a nonentity. His body is limp, feeble, and old, and in his intellect he in no way differs from a fat merchant’s wife, who only feeds, guzzles, sleeps on a featherbed, and keeps her coachman as a lover.’’