The Complete Short Novels

by Chekhov, Anton

  The deacon guffawed again.

  ‘‘Don’t laugh, Deacon,’’ said von Koren, ‘‘it’s stupid, finally. I’d pay no attention to this nonentity,’’ he went on, after waiting for the deacon to stop guffawing, ‘‘I’d pass him by, if he weren’t so harmful and dangerous. His harmfulness consists first of all in the fact that he has success with women and thus threatens to have progeny, that is, to give the world a dozen Laevskys as feeble and perverted as himself. Second, he’s contagious in the highest degree. I’ve already told you about the vint and the beer. Another year or two and he’ll conquer the whole Caucasian coast. You know to what degree the masses, especially their middle stratum, believe in the intelligentsia, in university education, in highborn manners and literary speech. Whatever vileness he may commit, everyone will believe that it’s good, that it should be so, since he is an intellectual, a liberal, and a university man. Besides, he’s a luckless fellow, a superfluous man, a neurasthenic, a victim of the times, and that means he’s allowed to do anything. He’s a sweet lad, a good soul, he’s so genuinely tolerant of human weaknesses; he’s complaisant, yielding, obliging, he’s not proud, you can drink with him, and use foul language, and gossip a bit... The masses, always inclined to anthropomorphism in religion and morality, like most of all these little idols that have the same weaknesses as themselves. Consider, then, what a wide field for contagion! Besides, he’s not a bad actor, he’s a clever hypocrite, and he knows perfectly well what o’clock it is. Take his dodges and tricks—his attitude to civilization, for instance. He has no notion of civilization, and yet: ‘Ah, how crippled we are by civilization! Ah, how I envy the savages, those children of nature, who know no civilization!’ We’re to understand, you see, that once upon a time he devoted himself heart and soul to civilization, served it, comprehended it thoroughly, but it exhausted, disappointed, deceived him; you see, he’s a Faust, a second Tolstoy... He treats Schopenhauer10 and Spencer like little boys and gives them a fatherly slap on the shoulder: ‘Well, how’s things, Spencer, old boy?’ He hasn’t read Spencer, of course, but how sweet he is when he says of his lady, with a slight, careless irony: ‘She’s read Spencer!’ And people listen to him, and nobody wants to understand that this charlatan has no right not only to speak of Spencer in that tone but merely to kiss Spencer’s bootsole! Undermining civilization, authority, other people’s altars, slinging mud, winking at them like a buffoon only in order to justify and conceal one’s feebleness and moral squalor, is possible only for a vain, mean, and vile brute.’’

  ‘‘I don’t know what you want from him, Kolya,’’ said Samoilenko, looking at the zoologist now not with anger but guiltily. ‘‘He’s the same as everybody. Of course, he’s not without weaknesses, but he stands on the level of modern ideas, he serves, he’s useful to his fatherland. Ten years ago an old man served as an agent here, a man of the greatest intelligence... He used to say . . .’

  ‘‘Come, come!’’ the zoologist interrupted. ‘‘You say he serves. But how does he serve? Have the ways here become better and the officials more efficient, more honest and polite, because he appeared? On the contrary, by his authority as an intellectual, university man, he only sanctions their indiscipline. He’s usually efficient only on the twentieth, when he receives his salary, and on the other days he only shuffles around the house in slippers and tries to make it look as if he’s doing the Russian government a great favor by living in the Caucasus. No, Alexander Davidych, don’t defend him. You’re insincere from start to finish. If you actually loved him and considered him your neighbor, first of all you wouldn’t be indifferent to his weaknesses, you wouldn’t indulge them, but would try, for his own good, to render him harmless.’’

  ‘‘That is?’’

  ‘‘Render him harmless. Since he’s incorrigible, there’s only one way he can be rendered harmless...’

  Von Koren drew a finger across his neck.

  ‘‘Or drown him, maybe...’ he added. ‘‘In the interests of mankind and in their own interests, such people should be destroyed. Without fail.’’

  ‘‘What are you saying?’’ Samoilenko murmured, getting up and looking with astonishment at the zoologist’s calm, cold face. ‘‘Deacon, what is he saying? Are you in your right mind?’’

  ‘‘I don’t insist on the death penalty,’’ said von Koren. ‘‘If that has been proved harmful, think up something else. It’s impossible to destroy Laevsky—well, then isolate him, depersonalize him, send him to common labor...’

  ‘‘What are you saying?’’ Samoilenko was horrified. ‘‘With pepper, with pepper!’’ he shouted in a desperate voice, noticing that the deacon was eating his stuffed zucchini without pepper. ‘‘You, a man of the greatest intelligence, what are you saying?! To send our friend, a proud man, an intellectual, to common labor!!’’

  ‘‘And if he’s proud and starts to resist—clap him in irons!’’

  Samoilenko could no longer utter a single word and only twisted his fingers; the deacon looked at his stunned, truly ridiculous face and burst out laughing.

  ‘‘Let’s stop talking about it,’’ the zoologist said. ‘‘Remember only one thing, Alexander Davidych, that primitive mankind was protected from the likes of Laevsky by the struggle for existence and selection; but nowadays our culture has considerably weakened the struggle and the selection, and we ourselves must take care of destroying the feeble and unfit, or else, as the Laevskys multiply, civilization will perish and mankind will become totally degenerate. It will be our fault.’’

  ‘‘If it comes to drowning and hanging people,’’ said Samoilenko, ‘‘then to hell with your civilization, to hell with mankind! To hell! I’ll tell you this: you’re a man of the greatest learning and intelligence, and the pride of our fatherland, but you’ve been spoiled by the Germans. Yes, the Germans! The Germans!’’

  Since leaving Dorpat,11 where he had studied medicine, Samoilenko had seldom seen Germans and had not read a single German book, but in his opinion, all the evil in politics and science proceeded from the Germans. Where he had acquired such an opinion, he himself was unable to say, but he held fast to it.

  ‘‘Yes, the Germans!’’ he repeated once more. ‘‘Let’s go and have tea.’’

  The three men got up, put on their hats, went to the front garden, and sat down there under the shade of pale maples, pear trees, and a chestnut. The zoologist and the deacon sat on a bench near a little table, and Samoilenko lowered himself into a wicker chair with a broad, sloping back. The orderly brought tea, preserves, and a bottle of syrup.

  It was very hot, about ninety-two in the shade. The torrid air congealed, unmoving, and a long spiderweb, dangling from the chestnut to the ground, hung slackly and did not stir.

  The deacon took up the guitar that always lay on the ground by the table, tuned it, and began to sing in a soft, thin little voice: ‘‘ ‘Seminary youths stood nigh the pot-house ...’ ’ but at once fell silent from the heat, wiped the sweat from his brow, and looked up at the hot blue sky. Samoilenko dozed off; the torrid heat, the silence, and the sweet after-dinner drowsiness that quickly came over all his members left him weak and drunk; his arms hung down, his eyes grew small, his head lolled on his chest. He looked at von Koren and the deacon with tearful tenderness and murmured:

  ‘‘The younger generation . .. A star of science and a luminary of the Church... This long-skirted alleluia may someday pop up as a metropolitan, 12 for all I know, I may have to kiss his hand... So what... God grant it...’

  Soon snoring was heard. Von Koren and the deacon finished their tea and went out to the street.

  ‘‘Going back to the pier to fish for bullheads?’’ asked the zoologist.

  ‘‘No, it’s too hot.’’

  ‘‘Let’s go to my place. You can wrap a parcel for me and do some copying. Incidentally, we can discuss what you’re going to do with yourself. You must work, Deacon. It’s impossible like this.’’

  ‘‘Your words are just and logical,’’
said the deacon, ‘‘but my laziness finds its excuse in the circumstances of my present life. You know yourself that an uncertainty of position contributes significantly to people’s apathy. God alone knows whether I’ve been sent here for a time or forever; I live here in uncertainty, while my wife languishes at her father’s and misses me. And, I confess, my brains have melted from the heat.’’

  ‘‘That’s all nonsense,’’ said the zoologist. ‘‘You can get used to the heat, and you can get used to being without a wife. It won’t do to pamper yourself. You must keep yourself in hand.’’

  V

  NADEZHDA FYODOROVNA WAS going to swim in the morning, followed by her kitchen maid, Olga, who was carrying a jug, a copper basin, towels, and a sponge. Two unfamiliar steamships with dirty white stacks stood at anchor in the roads, evidently foreign freighters. Some men in white, with white shoes, were walking about the pier and shouting loudly in French, and answering calls came from the ships. The bells were ringing briskly in the small town church.

  ‘‘Today is Sunday!’’ Nadezhda Fyodorovna recalled with pleasure.

  She felt perfectly well and was in a gay, festive mood. Wearing a new loose dress of coarse man’s tussore and a big straw hat, its wide brim bent down sharply to her ears, so that her face looked out of it as if out of a box, she fancied herself very sweet. She was thinking that in the whole town there was only one young, beautiful, intelligent woman—herself— and that she alone knew how to dress cheaply, elegantly, and with taste. For example, this dress had cost only twenty-two roubles, and yet how sweet it was! In the whole town, she alone could still attract men, and there were many, and therefore, willy-nilly, they should all envy Laevsky.

  She was glad that lately Laevsky had been cold, politely restrained, and at times even impertinent and rude with her; to all his outbursts and all his scornful, cold, or strange, incomprehensible glances, she would formerly have responded with tears, reproaches, and threats to leave him, or to starve herself to death, but now her response was merely to blush, to glance at him guiltily and be glad that he was not nice to her. If he rebuked her or threatened her, it would be still better and more agreeable, because she felt herself roundly guilty before him. It seemed to her that she was guilty, first, because she did not sympathize with his dreams of a life of labor, for the sake of which he had abandoned Petersburg and come here to the Caucasus, and she was certain that he had been cross with her lately precisely for that. As she was going to the Caucasus, it had seemed to her that on the very first day, she would find there a secluded nook on the coast, a cozy garden with shade, birds, brooks, where she could plant flowers and vegetables, raise ducks and chickens, receive neighbors, treat poor muzhiks and distribute books to them; but it turned out that the Caucasus was bare mountains, forests, and enormous valleys, where you had to spend a long time choosing, bustling about, building, and that there weren’t any neighbors there, and it was very hot, and they could be robbed. Laevsky was in no rush to acquire a plot; she was glad of that, and it was as if they both agreed mentally never to mention the life of labor. He was silent, she thought, that meant he was angry with her for being silent.

  Second, over those two years, unknown to him, she had bought all sorts of trifles in Atchmianov’s shop for as much as three hundred roubles. She had bought now a bit of fabric, then some silk, then an umbrella, and the debt had imperceptibly mounted.

  ‘‘I’ll tell him about it today ...’ she decided, but at once realized that, given Laevsky’s present mood, it was hardly opportune to talk to him about debts.

  Third, she had already twice received Kirilin, the police chief, in Laevsky’s absence: once in the morning, when Laevsky had gone to swim, and the other time at midnight, when he was playing cards. Remembering it, Nadezhda Fyodorovna flushed all over and turned to look at the kitchen maid, as if fearing she might eavesdrop on her thoughts. The long, unbearably hot, boring days, the beautiful, languorous evenings, the stifling nights, and this whole life, when one did not know from morning to evening how to spend the useless time, and the importunate thoughts that she was the most beautiful young woman in town and that her youth was going for naught, and Laevsky himself, an honest man with ideas, but monotonous, eternally shuffling in his slippers, biting his nails, and boring her with his caprices— resulted in her being gradually overcome with desires, and, like a madwoman, she thought day and night about one and the same thing. In her breathing, in her glance, in the tone of her voice, and in her gait—all she felt was desire; the sound of the sea told her she had to love, so did the evening darkness, so did the mountains... And when Kirilin began to court her, she had no strength, she could not and did not want to resist, and she gave herself to him...

  Now the foreign steamships and people in white reminded her for some reason of a vast hall; along with the French talk, the sounds of a waltz rang in her ears, and her breast trembled with causeless joy. She wanted to dance and speak French.

  She reasoned joyfully that there was nothing terrible in her infidelity; her soul took no part in it; she continues to love Laevsky, and that is obvious from the fact that she is jealous of him, pities him, and misses him when he’s not at home. Kirilin turned out to be so-so, a bit crude, though handsome; she’s broken everything off with him, and there won’t be anything more. What there was is past, it’s nobody’s business, and if Laevsky finds out, he won’t believe it.

  There was only one bathing cabin on the shore, for women; the men bathed under the open sky. Going into the bathing cabin, Nadezhda Fyodorovna found an older lady there, Marya Konstantinovna Bitiugov, the wife of an official, and her fifteen-year-old daughter, Katya, a schoolgirl; the two were sitting on a bench undressing. Marya Konstantinovna was a kind, rapturous, and genteel person who spoke in a drawl and with pathos. Until the age of thirty-two, she had lived as a governess, then she married the official Bitiugov, a small bald person who brushed his hair forward on his temples and was very placid. She was still in love with him, was jealous, blushed at the word ‘‘love,’’ and assured everyone that she was very happy.

  ‘‘My dear!’’ she said rapturously, seeing Nadezhda Fyodorovna and giving her face the expression that all her acquaintances called ‘‘almond butter.’’ ‘‘Darling, how nice that you’ve come! We’ll bathe together—that’s charming!’’

  Olga quickly threw off her dress and chemise and began to undress her mistress.

  ‘‘The weather’s not so hot today as yesterday, isn’t that so?’’ said Nadezhda Fyodorovna, shrinking under the rough touch of the naked kitchen maid. ‘‘Yesterday it was so stifling I nearly died.’’

  ‘‘Oh, yes, my dear! I nearly suffocated myself. Would you believe, yesterday I went bathing three times ... imagine, my dear, three times! Even Nikodim Alexandrych got worried.’’

  ‘‘How can they be so unattractive?’’ thought Nadezhda Fyodorovna, glancing at Olga and the official’s wife. She looked at Katya and thought: ‘‘The girl’s not badly built.’’

  ‘‘Your Nikodim Alexandrych is very, very sweet!’’ she said. ‘‘I’m simply in love with him.’’

  ‘‘Ha, ha, ha!’’ Marya Konstantinovna laughed forcedly. ‘‘That’s charming!’’

  Having freed herself of her clothes, Nadezhda Fyodorovna felt a wish to fly. And it seemed to her that if she waved her arms, she would certainly take off. Undressed, she noticed that Olga was looking squeamishly at her white body. Olga, married to a young soldier, lived with her lawful husband and therefore considered herself better and higher than her mistress. Nadezhda Fyodorovna also felt that Marya Konstantinovna and Katya did not respect her and were afraid of her. That was unpleasant, and to raise herself in their opinion, she said:

  ‘‘It’s now the height of the dacha season13 in Petersburg. My husband and I have so many acquaintances! We really must go and visit them.’’

  ‘‘It seems your husband’s an engineer?’’ Marya Konstantinovna asked timidly.

  ‘‘I’m speaking of Laevsky. He has
many acquaintances. But unfortunately his mother, a proud aristocrat, rather limited...’

  Nadezhda Fyodorovna did not finish and threw herself into the water; Marya Konstantinovna and Katya went in after her.

  ‘‘Our society has many prejudices,’’ Nadezhda Fyodorovna continued, ‘‘and life is not as easy as it seems.’’

  Marya Konstantinovna, who had served as a governess in aristocratic families and knew something about society, said:

  ‘‘Oh, yes! Would you believe, at the Garatynskys’ it was

  absolutely required that one dress both for lunch and for dinner, so that, like an actress, besides my salary, I also received money for my wardrobe.’’

  She placed herself between Nadezhda Fyodorovna and Katya, as if screening her daughter from the water that lapped at Nadezhda Fyodorovna. Through the open door that gave onto the sea, they could see someone swimming about a hundred paces from the bathing cabin.

  ‘‘Mama, it’s our Kostya!’’ said Katya.

  ‘‘Ah, ah!’’ Marya Konstantinovna clucked in fright. ‘‘Ah! Kostya,’’ she cried, ‘‘go back! Go back, Kostya!’’

  Kostya, a boy of about fourteen, to show off his bravery before his mother and sister, dove and swam further out, but got tired and hastened back, and by his grave, strained face, one could see that he did not believe in his strength.

  ‘‘These boys are trouble, darling!’’ Marya Konstantinovna said, calming down. ‘‘He can break his neck any moment. Ah, darling, it’s so pleasant and at the same time so difficult to be a mother! One’s afraid of everything.’’

  Nadezhda Fyodorovna put on her straw hat and threw herself out into the sea. She swam some thirty feet away and turned on her back. She could see the sea as far as the horizon, the ships, the people on the shore, the town, and all of it, together with the heat and the transparent, caressing waves, stirred her and whispered to her that she must live, live... A sailboat raced swiftly past her, energetically cleaving the waves and the air; the man who sat at the tiller looked at her, and she found it pleasing to be looked at...