Selected early short stories 1887

by Антон Чехов

  "He doesn't like our ways," sighed the "virago." "Never mind, never mind, he'll have a drink."

  Not to offend his father by refusing, Boris took a wineglass and drank in silence. When they brought in the samovar, to satisfy the old man, he drank two cups of disgusting tea in silence, with a melancholy face. Without a word he listened to the virago dropping hints about there being in this world cruel, heartless children who abandon their parents.

  "I know what you are thinking now!" said the old man, after drinking more and passing into his habitual state of drunken excitement. "You think I have let myself sink into the mire, that I am to be pitied, but to my thinking, this simple life is much more normal than your life, . . . I don't need anybody, and . . . and I don't intend to eat humble pie. . . . I can't endure a wretched boy's looking at me with compassion."

  After tea he cleaned a herring and sprinkled it with onion, with such feeling, that tears of emotion stood in his eyes. He began talking again about the races and his winnings, about some Panama hat for which he had paid sixteen roubles the day before. He told lies with the same relish with which he ate herring and drank. His son sat on in silence for an hour, and began to say good-bye.

  "I don't venture to keep you," the old man said, haughtily. "You must excuse me, young man, for not living as you would like!"

  He ruffled up his feathers, snorted with dignity, and winked at the women.

  "Good-bye, young man," he said, seeing his son into the entry. "Attendez."

  In the entry, where it was dark, he suddenly pressed his face against the young man's sleeve and gave a sob.

  "I should like to have a look at Sonitchka," he whispered. "Arrange it, Borenka, my angel. I'll shave, I'll put on your suit . . . I'll put on a straight face . . . I'll hold my tongue while she is there. Yes, yes, I will hold my tongue! "

  He looked round timidly towards the door, through which the women's voices were heard, checked his sobs, and said aloud:

  "Good-bye, young man! Attendez."

  NOTES

  summer villa: the Russian for a summer residence is "dacha"

  kvass: a Russian beer made from rye or barley

  delicatesse, consommé: daintiness, accomplished

  * * *

  A HAPPY ENDING

  by Anton Chekhov

  LYUBOV GRIGORYEVNA, a substantial, buxom lady of forty who undertook matchmaking and many other matters of which it is usual to speak only in whispers, had come to see Stytchkin, the head guard, on a day when he was off duty. Stytchkin, somewhat embarrassed, but, as always, grave, practical, and severe, was walking up and down the room, smoking a cigar and saying:

  "Very pleased to make your acquaintance. Semyon Ivanovitch recommended you on the ground that you may be able to assist me in a delicate and very important matter affecting the happiness of my life. I have, Lyubov Grigoryevna, reached the age of fifty-two; that is a period of life at which very many have already grown-up children. My position is a secure one. Though my fortune is not large, yet I am in a position to support a beloved being and children at my side. I may tell you between ourselves that apart from my salary I have also money in the bank which my manner of living has enabled me to save. I am a practical and sober man, I lead a sensible and consistent life, so that I may hold myself up as an example to many. But one thing I lack -- a domestic hearth of my own and a partner in life, and I live like a wandering Magyar, moving from place to place without any satisfaction. I have no one with whom to take counsel, and when I am ill no one to give me water, and so on. Apart from that, Lyubov Grigoryevna, a married man has always more weight in society than a bachelor. . . . I am a man of the educated class, with money, but if you look at me from a point of view, what am I? A man with no kith and kin, no better than some Polish priest. And therefore I should be very desirous to be united in the bonds of Hymen -- that is, to enter into matrimony with some worthy person."

  "An excellent thing," said the matchmaker, with a sigh.

  "I am a solitary man and in this town I know no one. Where can I go, and to whom can I apply, since all the people here are strangers to me? That is why Semyon Ivanovitch advised me to address myself to a person who is a specialist in this line, and makes the arrangement of the happiness of others her profession. And therefore I most earnestly beg you, Lyubov Grigoryevna, to assist me in ordering my future. You know all the marriageable young ladies in the town, and it is easy for you to accommodate me."

  "I can. . . ."

  "A glass of wine, I beg you. . . ."

  With an habitual gesture the matchmaker raised her glass to her mouth and tossed it off without winking.

  "I can," she repeated. "And what sort of bride would you like, Nikolay Nikolayitch?"

  "Should I like? The bride fate sends me."

  "Well, of course it depends on your fate, but everyone has his own taste, you know. One likes dark ladies, the other prefers fair ones."

  "You see, Lyubov Grigoryevna," said Stytchkin, sighing sedately, "I am a practical man and a man of character; for me beauty and external appearance generally take a secondary place, for, as you know yourself, beauty is neither bowl nor platter, and a pretty wife involves a great deal of anxiety. The way I look at it is, what matters most in a woman is not what is external, but what lies within -- that is, that she should have soul and all the qualities. A glass of wine, I beg. . . . Of course, it would be very agreeable that one's wife should be rather plump, but for mutual happiness it is not of great consequence; what matters is the mind. Properly speaking, a woman does not need mind either, for if she has brains she will have too high an opinion of herself, and take all sorts of ideas into her head. One cannot do without education nowadays, of course, but education is of different kinds. It would be pleasing for one's wife to know French and German, to speak various languages, very pleasing; but what's the use of that if she can't sew on one's buttons, perhaps? I am a man of the educated class: I am just as much at home, I may say, with Prince Kanitelin as I am with you here now. But my habits are simple, and I want a girl who is not too much a fine lady. Above all, she must have respect for me and feel that I have made her happiness."

  "To be sure."

  "Well, now as regards the essential. . . . I do not want a wealthy bride; I would never condescend to anything so low as to marry for money. I desire not to be kept by my wife, but to keep her, and that she may be sensible of it. But I do not want a poor girl either. Though I am a man of means, and am marrying not from mercenary motives, but from love, yet I cannot take a poor girl, for, as you know yourself, prices have gone up so, and there will be children."

  "One might find one with a dowry," said the matchmaker.

  "A glass of wine, I beg. . . ."

  There was a pause of five minutes.

  The matchmaker heaved a sigh, took a sidelong glance at the guard, and asked:

  "Well, now, my good sir . . . do you want anything in the bachelor line? I have some fine bargains. One is a French girl and one is a Greek. Well worth the money."

  The guard thought a moment and said:

  "No, I thank you. In view of your favourable disposition, allow me to enquire now how much you ask for your exertions in regard to a bride?"

  "I don't ask much. Give me twenty-five roubles and the stuff for a dress, as is usual, and I will say thank you . . . but for the dowry, that's a different account."

  Stytchkin folded his arms over his chest and fell to pondering in silence. After some thought he heaved a sigh and said:

  "That's dear. . . ."

  "It's not at all dear, Nikolay Nikolayitch! In old days when there were lots of weddings one did do it cheaper, but nowadays what are our earnings? If you make fifty roubles in a month that is not a fast, you may be thankful. It's not on weddings we make our money, my good sir."

  Stytchkin looked at the matchmaker in amazement and shrugged his shoulders.

  "H'm! . . . Do you call fifty roubles little?" he asked.

  "Of course it is little! In old days we som
etimes made more than a hundred."

  "H'm! I should never have thought it was possible to earn such a sum by these jobs. Fifty roubles! It is not every man that earns as much! Pray drink your wine. . . ."

  The matchmaker drained her glass without winking. Stytchkin looked her over from head to foot in silence, then said:

  "Fifty roubles. . . . Why, that is six hundred roubles a year. . . . Please take some more. . . With such dividends, you know, Lyubov Grigoryevna, you would have no difficulty in making a match for yourself. . . ."

  "For myself," laughed the matchmaker, "I am an old woman."

  "Not at all. . . . You have such a figure, and your face is plump and fair, and all the rest of it."

  The matchmaker was embarrassed. Stytchkin was also embarrassed and sat down beside her.

  "You are still very attractive," said he; "if you met with a practical, steady, careful husband, with his salary and your earnings you might even attract him very much, and you'd get on very well together. . . ."

  "Goodness knows what you are saying, Nikolay Nikolayitch."

  "Well, I meant no harm. . . ."

  A silence followed. Stytchkin began loudly blowing his nose, while the matchmaker turned crimson, and looking bashfully at him, asked:

  "And how much do you get, Nikolay Nikolayitch?"

  "I? Seventy-five roubles, besides tips. . . . Apart from that we make something out of candles and hares."

  "You go hunting, then?"

  "No. Passengers who travel without tickets are called hares with us."

  Another minute passed in silence. Stytchkin got up and walked about the room in excitement.

  "I don't want a young wife," said he. "I am a middle-aged man, and I want someone who . . . as it might be like you . . . staid and settled and a figure something like yours. . . ."

  "Goodness knows what you are saying . . ." giggled the matchmaker, hiding her crimson face in her kerchief.

  "There is no need to be long thinking about it. You are after my own heart, and you suit me in your qualities. I am a practical, sober man, and if you like me . . . what could be better? Allow me to make you a proposal!"

  The matchmaker dropped a tear, laughed, and, in token of her consent, clinked glasses with Stytchkin.

  "Well," said the happy railway guard, "now allow me to explain to you the behaviour and manner of life I desire from you. . . . I am a strict, respectable, practical man. I take a gentlemanly view of everything. And I desire that my wife should be strict also, and should understand that to her I am a benefactor and the foremost person in the world."

  He sat down, and, heaving a deep sigh, began expounding to his bride-elect his views on domestic life and a wife's duties.

  NOTES

  Magyar: Hungarian

  bonds of Hymen: marriage; Hymen was the Greek god of marriage

  In the Coach-House

  by Anton Chekhov

  IT was between nine and ten o'clock in the evening. Stepan the coachman, Mihailo the house-porter, Alyoshka the coachman's grandson, who had come up from the village to stay with his grandfather, and Nikandr, an old man of seventy, who used to come into the yard every evening to sell salt herrings, were sitting round a lantern in the big coach-house, playing "kings." Through the wide-open door could be seen the whole yard, the big house, where the master's family lived, the gates, the cellars, and the porter's lodge. It was all shrouded in the darkness of night, and only the four windows of one of the lodges which was let were brightly lit up. The shadows of the coaches and sledges with their shafts tipped upwards stretched from the walls to the doors, quivering and cutting across the shadows cast by the lantern and the players. . . . On the other side of the thin partition that divided the coach-house from the stable were the horses. There was a scent of hay, and a disagreeable smell of salt herrings coming from old Nikandr.

  The porter won and was king; he assumed an attitude such as was in his opinion befitting a king, and blew his nose loudly on a red-checked handkerchief.

  "Now if I like I can chop off anybody's head," he said. Alyoshka, a boy of eight with a head of flaxen hair, left long uncut, who had only missed being king by two tricks, looked angrily and with envy at the porter. He pouted and frowned.

  "I shall give you the trick, grandfather," he said, pondering over his cards; "I know you have got the queen of diamonds."

  "Well, well, little silly, you have thought enough!"

  Alyoshka timidly played the knave of diamonds. At that moment a ring was heard from the yard.

  "Oh, hang you!" muttered the porter, getting up. "Go and open the gate, O king!"

  When he came back a little later, Alyoshka was already a prince, the fish-hawker a soldier, and the coachman a peasant.

  "It's a nasty business," said the porter, sitting down to the cards again. "I have just let the doctors out. They have not extracted it."

  "How could they? Just think, they would have to pick open the brains. If there is a bullet in the head, of what use are doctors?"

  "He is lying unconscious," the porter went on. "He is bound to die. Alyoshka, don't look at the cards, you little puppy, or I will pull your ears! Yes, I let the doctors out, and the father and mother in. . . They have only just arrived. Such crying and wailing, Lord preserve us! They say he is the only son. . . . It's a grief!"

  All except Alyoshka, who was absorbed in the game, looked round at the brightly lighted windows of the lodge.

  "I have orders to go to the police station tomorrow," said the porter. "There will be an inquiry . . . But what do I know about it? I saw nothing of it. He called me this morning, gave me a letter, and said: 'Put it in the letter-box for me.' And his eyes were red with crying. His wife and children were not at home. They had gone out for a walk. So when I had gone with the letter, he put a bullet into his forehead from a revolver. When I came back his cook was wailing for the whole yard to hear."

  "It's a great sin," said the fish-hawker in a husky voice, and he shook his head, "a great sin!"

  "From too much learning," said the porter, taking a trick; "his wits outstripped his wisdom. Sometimes he would sit writing papers all night. . . . Play, peasant! . . . But he was a nice gentleman. And so white skinned, black-haired and tall! . . . He was a good lodger."

  "It seems the fair sex is at the bottom of it," said the coachman, slapping the nine of trumps on the king of diamonds. "It seems he was fond of another man's wife and disliked his own; it does happen."

  "The king rebels," said the porter.

  At that moment there was again a ring from the yard. The rebellious king spat with vexation and went out. Shadows like dancing couples flitted across the windows of the lodge. There was the sound of voices and hurried footsteps in the yard.

  "I suppose the doctors have come again," said the coachman. "Our Mihailo is run off his legs. . . ."

  A strange wailing voice rang out for a moment in the air. Alyoshka looked in alarm at his grandfather, the coachman; then at the windows, and said:

  "He stroked me on the head at the gate yesterday, and said, 'What district do you come from, boy?' Grandfather, who was that howled just now?"

  His grandfather trimmed the light in the lantern and made no answer.

  "The man is lost," he said a little later, with a yawn. "He is lost, and his children are ruined, too. It's a disgrace for his children for the rest of their lives now."

  The porter came back and sat down by the lantern.

  "He is dead," he said. "They have sent to the almshouse for the old women to lay him out."

  "The kingdom of heaven and eternal peace to him!" whispered the coachman, and he crossed himself.

  Looking at him, Alyoshka crossed himself too.

  "You can't pray for such as him," said the fish-hawker.

  "Why not?"

  "It's a sin."

  "That's true," the porter assented. "Now his soul has gone straight to hell, to the devil. . . ."

  "It's a sin," repeated the fish-hawker; "such as he have no funeral
, no requiem, but are buried like carrion with no respect."

  The old man put on his cap and got up.

  "It was the same thing at our lady's," he said, pulling his cap on further. "We were serfs in those days; the younger son of our mistress, the General's lady, shot himself through the mouth with a pistol, from too much learning, too. It seems that by law such have to be buried outside the cemetery, without priests, without a requiem service; but to save disgrace our lady, you know, bribed the police and the doctors, and they gave her a paper to say her son had done it when delirious, not knowing what he was doing. You can do anything with money. So he had a funeral with priests and every honor, the music played, and he was buried in the church; for the deceased General had built that church with his own money, and all his family were buried there. Only this is what happened, friends. One month passed, and then another, and it was all right. In the third month they informed the General's lady that the watchmen had come from that same church. What did they want? They were brought to her, they fell at her feet. 'We can't go on serving, your excellency,' they said. 'Look out for other watchmen and graciously dismiss us.' 'What for?' 'No,' they said, 'we can't possibly; your son howls under the church all night.' "

  Alyoshka shuddered, and pressed his face to the coachman's back so as not to see the windows.

  "At first the General's lady would not listen," continued the old man. "'All this is your fancy, you simple folk have such notions,' she said. 'A dead man cannot howl.' Some time afterwards the watchmen came to her again, and with them the sacristan. So the sacristan, too, had heard him howling. The General's lady saw that it was a bad job; she locked herself in her bedroom with the watchmen. 'Here, my friends, here are twenty-five roubles for you, and for that go by night in secret, so that no one should hear or see you, dig up my unhappy son, and bury him,' she said, 'outside the cemetery.' And I suppose she stood them a glass . . . And the watchmen did so. The stone with the inscription on it is there to this day, but he himself, the General's son, is outside the cemetery. . . . O Lord, forgive us our transgressions!" sighed the fish-hawker. "There is only one day in the year when one may pray for such people: the Saturday before Trinity. . . . You mustn't give alms to beggars for their sake, it is a sin, but you may feed the birds for the rest of their souls. The General's lady used to go out to the crossroads every three days to feed the birds. Once at the cross-roads a black dog suddenly appeared; it ran up to the bread, and was such a . . . we all know what that dog was. The General's lady was like a half-crazy creature for five days afterwards, she neither ate nor drank. . . . All at once she fell on her knees in the garden, and prayed and prayed. . . . Well, good-by, friends, the blessing of God and the Heavenly Mother be with you. Let us go, Mihailo, you'll open the gate for me."