The Complete Short Novels

by Chekhov, Anton

  On every feast day, the employees were obliged to attend the early liturgy and stand in church so that the master could see them all. Fasts were strictly observed. On festive days, for instance, the name day of the master or one of his family members, the salesclerks had to take up a collection and offer him a cake from Fley’s or an album. They lived on the ground floor of the house on Pyatnitskaya or in the wing, three to four men to a room, and at dinner they all ate from the same bowl, though each of them had a plate in front of him. If one of the masters came in during dinner, they all stood up.

  Laptev was aware that only those among them who had been corrupted by the old man’s tutelage could seriously consider him a benefactor; the rest saw in him an enemy and a ‘‘plantator.’’ Now, after six months’ absence, he did not see any changes for the better; there was even something new that boded no good. His brother Fyodor, who used to be quiet, pensive, and extremely tactful, now ran about the warehouse with the look of a very occupied and businesslike man, with a pencil behind his ear, patting customers on the shoulder, and shouting ‘‘Friends!’’ to the salesclerks. Apparently he was playing some sort of role, and Alexei did not recognize him in this new role.

  The old man’s voice boomed incessantly. Being unoccupied, the old man was instructing the customer on how he ought to live and conduct his affairs, and kept setting himself up as an example. This boasting, this authoritative, overbearing tone, Laptev had heard ten and fifteen and twenty years ago. The old man adored himself; to listen to him, he had made the happiness of his late wife and her family, provided for his children, showered his salesclerks and employees with benefactions, and had the whole street and all his acquaintances eternally praying to God for him; whatever he did was all very good, and if things were not going well for people, it was only because they did not want to take his advice; without his advice, nothing could succeed. In church he always stood in front of everyone and even made observations to the priests when, in his opinion, they were not serving correctly, and thought it was pleasing to God, because God loved him.

  By two o’clock everybody in the warehouse had gotten down to business, except the old man, who went on booming. Laptev, so as not to stand there doing nothing, took some braid from a maker and dismissed her, then heard out a customer, a merchant from Vologda, and told a salesclerk to take care of him.

  ‘‘T, V, A!’’ came from all sides (letters stood for prices and numbers for goods). ‘‘R, I, T!’’

  Going out, Laptev said good-bye only to Fyodor.

  ‘‘Tomorrow I’ll come to Pyatnitskaya with my wife,’’ he said, ‘‘but I warn you that if father says just one rude word to her, I won’t stay there for a minute.’’

  ‘‘And you’re still the same,’’ sighed Fyodor. ‘‘Married, but unchanged. You must be indulgent to the old man, brother. So, then, tomorrow at around eleven. We’ll be waiting impatiently. Come straight from the liturgy.’’

  ‘‘I don’t go to the liturgy.’’

  ‘‘Well, it makes no difference. Above all, no later than eleven, so that we’ll have time to pray to God and have lunch together. I send greetings to my little sister and kiss her hand. I have a presentiment that I’ll come to love her,’’ Fyodor added quite sincerely. ‘‘I’m envious, brother!’’ he cried when Alexei was already going downstairs.

  ‘‘And why is it that he keeps cringing somehow bashfully, as if he feels naked?’’ thought Laptev, walking down Nikolskaya Street and trying to understand the change that had taken place in Fyodor. ‘‘And he’s got some kind of new language: brother, dear brother, God has sent us mercy, we’ll pray to God—just like Shchedrin’s Iudushka.’’ 8

  VI

  THE NEXT DAY, Sunday, at eleven o’clock, he was driving down Pyatnitskaya in a light one-horse carriage. He feared some sort of escapade on Fyodor Stepanych’s part and had an unpleasant feeling beforehand. Yulia Sergeevna, after spending two nights in her husband’s home, already considered her marriage a mistake, a misfortune, and if she had had to live with her husband not in Moscow but somewhere in another town, it seemed to her she could not have endured this horror. But Moscow diverted her; she liked the streets, the houses, and the churches very much, and if it had been possible to ride around Moscow in these excellent carriages, with expensive horses, to ride all day long, from morning to evening, and, while going very fast, to breathe the cool autumnal air, perhaps she would not have felt so miserable.

  The driver reined in the horse near a white, recently stuccoed two-story house and began turning to the right. Here they were expected. By the gate stood a porter in a new caftan, high boots, and galoshes, and two policemen; the whole space from the middle of the street to the gate, and then through the yard to the porch, had been sprinkled with fresh sand. The porter took off his hat, the policemen saluted. Fyodor met them by the porch with a very serious face.

  ‘‘I am very glad to make your acquaintance, little sister,’’ he said, kissing Yulia’s hand. ‘‘You are welcome.’’

  He took her under the arm and led her up the stairs, then down a corridor through a crowd of men and women. The front room was also crowded; there was a smell of incense.

  ‘‘I’ll introduce you to our father now,’’ Fyodor whispered amidst the solemn, sepulchral silence. ‘‘A venerable old man, a paterfamilias.’’

  In a big reception room, near a table prepared for a prayer service, Fyodor Stepanych, a priest in a kamilavka,9 and a deacon stood in obvious expectation. The old man gave Yulia his hand and did not say a word. Everyone was silent. Yulia became embarrassed.

  The priest and the deacon began to put on their vestments. A censer was brought, which showered sparks and gave off a smell of incense and charcoal. The candles were lighted. The salesclerks tiptoed into the room and stood near the wall in two rows. It was quiet; no one even coughed.

  ‘‘Bless, master,’’ the deacon began.

  The prayer service proceeded solemnly, without any omissions, and two akathists10 were read: to Sweet Jesus and to the Most Holy Mother of God. The choir sang only by the scores and at great length. Laptev noticed how his wife became embarrassed at the beginning; while the akathists were being read, and the choir chanted the triple ‘‘Lord have mercy’’ in various tunes, he waited with inner tension for the old man to turn and make some observation, such as: ‘‘You don’t know how to cross yourself,’’ and he was vexed: why this crowd, why this whole ceremony with clergy and choir? It was too much in merchant style. But when she, together with the old man, bowed her head to be blessed by the Gospel, and then knelt on several occasions, he realized that she liked it all and calmed down.

  At the end of the service, when ‘‘Many Years’’11 was sung, the priest held out the cross for Alexei and the old man to kiss, but when Yulia Sergeevna approached, he covered the cross with his hand and indicated that he wanted to speak. They waved for the choir to stop singing.

  ‘‘The prophet Samuel,’’ began the priest, ‘‘came to Bethlehem by order of the Lord, and there the town elders asked him in trembling: ‘Comest thou peaceably, O seer?’ And the prophet said: ‘Peaceably: I am come to sacrifice unto the Lord, sanctify yourselves and rejoice with me today.’12 Shall we, too, ask of thee, the servant of God Yulia, whether thou hast come peaceably into this house?...’

  Yulia turned all red with agitation. Having finished, the priest gave her the cross to kiss and said in an altogether different tone:

  ‘‘Now we must get Fyodor Fyodorych married. It’s high time.’’

  Again the choir sang, people stirred, it became noisy. The old man, moved, his eyes filled with tears, kissed Yulia three times, made a cross over her face, and said:

  ‘‘This is your house. I’m an old man, I don’t need anything.’’

  The salesclerks congratulated her and said something, but the choir sang so loudly that it was impossible to hear anything. Then they had lunch and drank champagne. She sat next to the old man, and he said to her that it was not good to l
ive separately, that they must live together, in one house, and separations and disagreements lead to ruin.

  ‘‘I made money, but the children only spend it,’’ he said. ‘‘Now you come and live in the same house with me and make money. I’m an old man, it’s time for me to rest.’’

  Fyodor was flitting in front of Yulia’s eyes all the time, looking very much like her husband, but more fidgety and bashful; he fussed about her and often kissed her hand.

  ‘‘We’re simple people, little sister,’’ he kept saying, and red blotches came to his face. ‘‘We live simply, little sister, like Russians, like Christians.’’

  On the way home, Laptev, very pleased that it had all gone well and that, beyond his expectations, nothing particular had happened, said to his wife:

  ‘‘You’re surprised that a big, broad-shouldered father has such undersized, weak-chested children as me and Fyodor. Yes, but it’s so understandable! Father married my mother when he was forty-five and she was only seventeen. She went pale and trembled in his presence. Nina was born first, born of a comparatively healthy mother, and therefore came out stronger and better than we did. Fyodor and I were conceived and born when mother was already exhausted by perpetual fear. I remember my father began teaching me, or, to put it simply, beating me, when I was not yet five years old. He whipped me with birches, boxed my ears, hit me on the head, and every morning when I woke up, my first thought was: ‘Will I be whipped today?’ Fyodor and I were forbidden to play and frolic: we had to go to matins and the early liturgy, kiss the hands of priests and monks, read akathists at home. You are religious and like all that, but I’m afraid of religion, and when I pass a church, I recall my childhood and feel eerie. When I was eight years old, I went to work in the warehouse; I worked as a simple boy, and that was unhealthy, because I was beaten almost every day. Later, when I was sent to school, I studied before dinner and had to sit in that same warehouse from dinner till evening, and so it went till I was twenty-two and at the university made the acquaintance of Yartsev, who persuaded me to leave my father’s house. This Yartsev did me a lot of good. You know what,’’ Laptev said and laughed with pleasure, ‘‘let’s go now and visit Yartsev. He’s a most noble man! How touched he’ll be!’’

  VII

  ONE SATURDAY IN November, Anton Rubinstein13 conducted at the symphony. It was very crowded and hot. Laptev stood behind the columns, while his wife and Kostya Kochevoy sat way up front, in the third or fourth row. At the very beginning of the intermission, the ‘‘individual,’’ Polina Nikolaevna Rassudina, quite unexpectedly walked past him. After the wedding he had often thought anxiously about a possible encounter with her. Now, when she looked at him openly and directly, he remembered that so far he had not even managed to have a talk with her or write her at least two or three friendly lines, as if he was hiding from her; he felt ashamed and blushed. She strongly and impetuously shook his hand and asked:

  ‘‘Have you seen Yartsev?’’

  And without waiting for a reply, she walked on rapidly, in long strides, as if someone was pushing her from behind.

  She was very thin and unattractive, with a long nose, and her face was always exhausted, worn out, and it seemed a great effort for her to keep her eyes open and not fall down. She had beautiful dark eyes and an intelligent, kind, sincere expression, but her movements were angular, abrupt. It was not easy to talk with her, because she was not good at listening or talking calmly. To love her was difficult. It happened, when she was alone with Laptev, that she would laugh for a long time, covering her face with her hands and insisting that love was not the main thing in her life, mincing like a seventeen-year-old girl, and before kissing her, he had to put out all the candles. She was thirty years old. Her husband was a teacher, but she had not lived with him for a long time. She provided for herself by giving music lessons and participating in quartets.

  During the Ninth Symphony, she walked past again, as if by chance, but the crowd of men who stood in a thick wall behind the columns blocked her way, and she stopped. Laptev saw on her the same velvet blouse in which she had gone to concerts last year and the year before. Her gloves were new, the fan was also new, but cheap. She loved dressing up but did not know how and was reluctant to spend money on it, and dressed badly and slovenly, so that usually, when she walked down the street in long, hurried strides on her way to a lesson, she could easily be taken for a young novice.

  The public applauded and shouted encore.

  ‘‘You’ll spend this evening with me,’’ said Polina Nikolaevna, going up to Laptev and looking at him sternly. ‘‘We’ll leave here and go to have tea. Do you hear? I demand it. You owe me a lot and have no moral right to deny me this trifle.’’

  ‘‘All right, let’s go,’’ Laptev agreed.

  After the symphony there were endless curtain calls. The public got up from their places and went out extremely slowly, but Laptev could not leave without telling his wife. He had to stand at the door and wait.

  ‘‘I’m dying for some tea,’’ Rassudina complained. ‘‘My soul is on fire.’’

  ‘‘We can have it here,’’ said Laptev. ‘‘Let’s go to the buffet.’’

  ‘‘No, I have no money to throw around at buffets. I’m not some little merchant.’’

  He offered her his arm, she refused, uttering a long, tiresome phrase he had heard many times from her, namely that she did not count herself as part of the weak fair sex and had no need of gentlemen’s services.

  While talking to him, she looked over the public and often greeted acquaintances; these were her classmates from the Guerrier courses14 and the conservatory, and her pupils, young men and women. She shook their hands strongly and impetuously, almost jerkily. But then she began to hunch her shoulders, as if in a fever, and to tremble, and at last said quietly, looking at Laptev in horror:

  ‘‘Whom have you married? Where were your eyes, you crazy man? What did you find in that stupid, worthless girl? I loved you for your intelligence, your soul, but this china doll only needs your money!’’

  ‘‘Let’s drop that, Polina,’’ he said in a pleading voice. ‘‘Everything you can tell me about my marriage, I’ve already told myself many times... Don’t cause me any extra pain.’’

  Yulia Sergeevna appeared in a black dress and with a large diamond brooch her father-in-law had sent her after the prayer service; she was followed by her retinue: Kochevoy, two doctors of their acquaintance, an officer, and a stout young man in a student’s uniform whose last name was Kish.

  ‘‘Go with Kostya,’’ Laptev said to his wife. ‘‘I’ll come later.’’

  Yulia nodded and walked on. Polina Nikolaevna followed her with her eyes, trembling all over and hugging herself nervously, and her look was filled with disgust, hatred, and pain.

  Laptev was afraid to go with her, anticipating an unpleasant talk, harsh words, and tears, and he suggested they go and have tea in some restaurant. But she said:

  ‘‘No, no, let’s go to my place. Don’t you dare talk to me about restaurants.’’

  She disliked going to restaurants, because restaurant air seemed poisoned to her by tobacco and men’s breath. She regarded all unknown men with a strange prejudice, considering them all debauchees capable of throwing themselves at her any moment. Besides that, tavern music irritated her to the point of giving her a headache.

  Coming out of the Assembly of Nobility, they hired a cab for Ostozhenka, to Savelovsky Lane, where Rassudina lived. Laptev thought about her all the way. In fact, he did owe her a lot. He had made her acquaintance at his friend Yartsev’s, to whom she was teaching the theory of music. She loved him deeply, quite disinterestedly, and, after becoming intimate with him, went on giving lessons and working herself to exhaustion as before. Thanks to her, he began to understand and love music, which previously he had been almost indifferent to.

  ‘‘My kingdom for a cup of tea!’’ she said in a hollow voice, covering her mouth with her muff so as not to catch cold. ‘‘I ga
ve five lessons today, devil take them! The pupils are such dimwits, such dullards, that I nearly died of spite. And I don’t know when this hard labor will end. I’m worn out. As soon as I save three hundred roubles, I’ll drop everything and go to the Crimea. I’ll lie on the beach and gulp down oxygen. How I love the sea, oh, how I love the sea!’’

  ‘‘You won’t go anywhere,’’ said Laptev. ‘‘First, you won’t save anything, and second, you’re stingy. Forgive me, I’ll repeat again: is saving these three hundred roubles kopeck by kopeck from idle people, who study music with you because they have nothing to do, really less humiliating than borrowing it from your friends?’’

  ‘‘I have no friends!’’ she said irritably. ‘‘And I beg you not to say foolish things. The working class, to which I belong, has one privilege: the consciousness of its incorruptibility, the right not to owe anything to little merchants and to despise them. No, sir, you won’t buy me! I’m not Yulechka!’’

  Laptev did not try to pay the cabby, knowing it would provoke a whole flood of words he had heard many times before. She paid herself.

  She rented a small furnished room, with board, in the apartment of a single lady. Her big Becker grand piano15 was meanwhile at Yartsev’s, on Bolshaya Nikitskaya, and she went there every day to play. There were armchairs in slip-covers in her room, a bed with a white summer coverlet, and the landlady’s flowers, some oleographs on the walls, and nothing to remind one that a woman and former student lived there. There was no dressing table, no books, not even a desk. It was evident that she went to bed as soon as she came home and left the house as soon as she got up in the morning.