Tales of Chekhov

by Anton Chekhov

  “Don’t agitate yourself, my dear!” said Marya Konstantinovna, sitting down beside her and taking her hand. “It will pass. Men are just as weak as we poor sinners. You are both going through a crisis. . . . One can so well understand it! Well, my dear, I am waiting for an answer. Let us have a little talk.”

  “No, we are not going to talk,” said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, listening to Laevsky’s sobs. “I feel depressed. . . . You must allow me to go home.”

  “What do you mean, what do you mean, my dear?” cried Marya Konstantinovna in alarm. “Do you think I could let you go without supper? We will have something to eat, and then you may go with my blessing.”

  “I feel miserable . . .” whispered Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, and she caught at the arm of the chair with both hands to avoid falling.

  “He’s got a touch of hysterics,” said Von Koren gaily, coming into the drawing-room, but seeing Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, he was taken aback and retreated.

  When the attack was over, Laevsky sat on the strange bed and thought.

  “Disgraceful! I’ve been howling like some wretched girl! I must have been absurd and disgusting. I will go away by the back stairs . . . . But that would seem as though I took my hysterics too seriously. I ought to take it as a joke. . . .”

  He looked in the looking-glass, sat there for some time, and went back into the drawing-room.

  “Here I am,” he said, smiling; he felt agonisingly ashamed, and he felt others were ashamed in his presence. “Fancy such a thing happening,” he said, sitting down. “I was sitting here, and all of a sudden, do you know, I felt a terrible piercing pain in my side . . . unendurable, my nerves could not stand it, and . . . and it led to this silly performance. This is the age of nerves; there is no help for it.”

  At supper he drank some wine, and, from time to time, with an abrupt sigh rubbed his side as though to suggest that he still felt the pain. And no one, except Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, believed him, and he saw that.

  After nine o’clock they went for a walk on the boulevard. Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, afraid that Kirilin would speak to her, did her best to keep all the time beside Marya Konstantinovna and the children. She felt weak with fear and misery, and felt she was going to be feverish; she was exhausted and her legs would hardly move, but she did not go home, because she felt sure that she would be followed by Kirilin or Atchmianov or both at once. Kirilin walked behind her with Nikodim Alexandritch, and kept humming in an undertone:

  “I don’t al-low people to play with me! I don’t al-low it.”

  From the boulevard they went back to the pavilion and walked along the beach, and looked for a long time at the phosphorescence on the water. Von Koren began telling them why it looked phosphorescent.

  XIV

  “It’s time I went to my vint. . . . They will be waiting for me,” said Laevsky. “Good-bye, my friends.”

  “I’ll come with you; wait a minute,” said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, and she took his arm.

  They said good-bye to the company and went away. Kirilin took leave too, and saying that he was going the same way, went along beside them.

  “What will be, will be,” thought Nadyezhda Fyodorovna. “So be it. . . .”

  And it seemed to her that all the evil memories in her head had taken shape and were walking beside her in the darkness, breathing heavily, while she, like a fly that had fallen into the inkpot, was crawling painfully along the pavement and smirching Laevsky’s side and arm with blackness.

  If Kirilin should do anything horrid, she thought, not he but she would be to blame for it. There was a time when no man would have talked to her as Kirilin had done, and she had torn up her security like a thread and destroyed it irrevocably—who was to blame for it? Intoxicated by her passions she had smiled at a complete stranger, probably just because he was tall and a fine figure. After two meetings she was weary of him, had thrown him over, and did not that, she thought now, give him the right to treat her as he chose?

  “Here I’ll say good-bye to you, darling,” said Laevsky. “Ilya Mihalitch will see you home.”

  He nodded to Kirilin, and, quickly crossing the boulevard, walked along the street to Sheshkovsky’s, where there were lights in the windows, and then they heard the gate bang as he went in.

  “Allow me to have an explanation with you,” said Kirilin. “I’m not a boy, not some Atchkasov or Latchkasov, Zatchkasov. . . . I demand serious attention.”

  Nadyezhda Fyodorovna’s heart began beating violently. She made no reply.

  “The abrupt change in your behaviour to me I put down at first to coquetry,” Kirilin went on; “now I see that you don’t know how to behave with gentlemanly people. You simply wanted to play with me, as you are playing with that wretched Armenian boy; but I’m a gentleman and I insist on being treated like a gentleman. And so I am at your service. . . .”

  “I’m miserable,” said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna beginning to cry, and to hide her tears she turned away.

  “I’m miserable too,” said Kirilin, “but what of that?”

  Kirilin was silent for a space, then he said distinctly and emphatically:

  “I repeat, madam, that if you do not give me an interview this evening, I’ll make a scandal this very evening.”

  “Let me off this evening,” said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, and she did not recognise her own voice, it was so weak and pitiful.

  “I must give you a lesson. . . . Excuse me for the roughness of my tone, but it’s necessary to give you a lesson. Yes, I regret to say I must give you a lesson. I insist on two interviews—to-day and to-morrow. After to-morrow you are perfectly free and can go wherever you like with any one you choose. To-day and to-morrow.”

  Nadyezhda Fyodorovna went up to her gate and stopped.

  “Let me go,” she murmured, trembling all over and seeing nothing before her in the darkness but his white tunic. “You’re right: I’m a horrible woman. . . . I’m to blame, but let me go . . . I beg you.” She touched his cold hand and shuddered. “I beseech you. . . .”

  “Alas!” sighed Kirilin, “alas! it’s not part of my plan to let you go; I only mean to give you a lesson and make you realise. And what’s more, madam, I’ve too little faith in women.”

  “I’m miserable. . . .”

  Nadyezhda Fyodorovna listened to the even splash of the sea, looked at the sky studded with stars, and longed to make haste and end it all, and get away from the cursed sensation of life, with its sea, stars, men, fever.

  “Only not in my home,” she said coldly. “Take me somewhere else.”

  “Come to Muridov’s. That’s better.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Near the old wall.”

  She walked quickly along the street and then turned into the side-street that led towards the mountains. It was dark. There were pale streaks of light here and there on the pavement, from the lighted windows, and it seemed to her that, like a fly, she kept falling into the ink and crawling out into the light again. At one point he stumbled, almost fell down and burst out laughing.

  “He’s drunk,” thought Nadyezhda Fyodorovna. “Never mind. . . . Never mind. . . . So be it.”

  Atchmianov, too, soon took leave of the party and followed Nadyezhda Fyodorovna to ask her to go for a row. He went to her house and looked over the fence: the windows were wide open, there were no lights.

  “Nadyezhda Fyodorovna!” he called.

  A moment passed, he called again.

  “Who’s there?” he heard Olga’s voice.

  “Is Nadyezhda Fyodorovna at home?”

  “No, she has not come in yet.”

  “Strange . . . very strange,” thought Atchmianov, feeling very uneasy. “She went home. . . .”

  He walked along the boulevard, then along the street, and glanced in at the windows of Sheshkovsky’s. Laevsky was sitting at the table without his coat on, looking attentively at his cards.

  “Strange, strange,” muttered Atchmianov, and remembering Laevsky’s hysterics, he felt ashamed.
“If she is not at home, where is she?”

  He went to Nadyezhda Fyodorovna’s lodgings again, and looked at the dark windows.

  “It’s a cheat, a cheat . . .” he thought, remembering that, meeting him at midday at Marya Konstantinovna’s, she had promised to go in a boat with him that evening.

  The windows of the house where Kirilin lived were dark, and there was a policeman sitting asleep on a little bench at the gate. Everything was clear to Atchmianov when he looked at the windows and the policeman. He made up his mind to go home, and set off in that direction, but somehow found himself near Nadyezhda Fyodorovna’s lodgings again. He sat down on the bench near the gate and took off his hat, feeling that his head was burning with jealousy and resentment.

  The clock in the town church only struck twice in the twenty-four hours—at midday and midnight. Soon after it struck midnight he heard hurried footsteps.

  “To-morrow evening, then, again at Muridov’s,” Atchmianov heard, and he recognised Kirilin’s voice. “At eight o’clock; good-bye!”

  Nadyezhda Fyodorovna made her appearance near the garden. Without noticing that Atchmianov was sitting on the bench, she passed beside him like a shadow, opened the gate, and leaving it open, went into the house. In her own room she lighted the candle and quickly undressed, but instead of getting into bed, she sank on her knees before a chair, flung her arms round it, and rested her head on it.

  It was past two when Laevsky came home.

  XV

  Having made up his mind to lie, not all at once but piecemeal, Laevsky went soon after one o’clock next day to Samoylenko to ask for the money that he might be sure to get off on Saturday. After his hysterical attack, which had added an acute feeling of shame to his depressed state of mind, it was unthinkable to remain in the town. If Samoylenko should insist on his conditions, he thought it would be possible to agree to them and take the money, and next day, just as he was starting, to say that Nadyezhda Fyodorovna refused to go. He would be able to persuade her that evening that the whole arrangement would be for her benefit. If Samoylenko, who was obviously under the influence of Von Koren, should refuse the money altogether or make fresh conditions, then he, Laevsky, would go off that very evening in a cargo vessel, or even in a sailing-boat, to Novy Athon or Novorossiisk, would send from there an humiliating telegram, and would stay there till his mother sent him the money for the journey.

  When he went into Samoylenko’s, he found Von Koren in the drawing-room. The zoologist had just arrived for dinner, and, as usual, was turning over the album and scrutinising the gentlemen in top-hats and the ladies in caps.

  “How very unlucky!” thought Laevsky, seeing him. “He may be in the way. Good-morning.”

  “Good-morning,” answered Von Koren, without looking at him.

  “Is Alexandr Daviditch at home?”

  “Yes, in the kitchen.”

  Laevsky went into the kitchen, but seeing from the door that Samoylenko was busy over the salad, he went back into the drawing-room and sat down. He always had a feeling of awkwardness in the zoologist’s presence, and now he was afraid there would be talk about his attack of hysterics. There was more than a minute of silence. Von Koren suddenly raised his eyes to Laevsky and asked:

  “How do you feel after yesterday?”

  “Very well indeed,” said Laevsky, flushing. “It really was nothing much. . . .”

  “Until yesterday I thought it was only ladies who had hysterics, and so at first I thought you had St. Vitus’s dance.”

  Laevsky smiled ingratiatingly, and thought:

  “How indelicate on his part! He knows quite well how unpleasant it is for me. . . .”

  “Yes, it was a ridiculous performance,” he said, still smiling. “I’ve been laughing over it the whole morning. What’s so curious in an attack of hysterics is that you know it is absurd, and are laughing at it in your heart, and at the same time you sob. In our neurotic age we are the slaves of our nerves; they are our masters and do as they like with us. Civilisation has done us a bad turn in that way. . . .”

  As Laevsky talked, he felt it disagreeable that Von Koren listened to him gravely, and looked at him steadily and attentively as though studying him; and he was vexed with himself that in spite of his dislike of Von Koren, he could not banish the ingratiating smile from his face.

  “I must admit, though,” he added, “that there were immediate causes for the attack, and quite sufficient ones too. My health has been terribly shaky of late. To which one must add boredom, constantly being hard up . . . the absence of people and general interests . . . . My position is worse than a governor’s.”

  “Yes, your position is a hopeless one,” answered Von Koren.

  These calm, cold words, implying something between a jeer and an uninvited prediction, offended Laevsky. He recalled the zoologist’s eyes the evening before, full of mockery and disgust. He was silent for a space and then asked, no longer smiling:

  “How do you know anything of my position?”

  “You were only just speaking of it yourself. Besides, your friends take such a warm interest in you, that I am hearing about you all day long.”

  “What friends? Samoylenko, I suppose?”

  “Yes, he too.”

  “I would ask Alexandr Daviditch and my friends in general not to trouble so much about me.”

  “Here is Samoylenko; you had better ask him not to trouble so much about you.”

  “I don’t understand your tone,” Laevsky muttered, suddenly feeling as though he had only just realised that the zoologist hated and despised him, and was jeering at him, and was his bitterest and most inveterate enemy.

  “Keep that tone for some one else,” he said softly, unable to speak aloud for the hatred with which his chest and throat were choking, as they had been the night before with laughter.

  Samoylenko came in in his shirt-sleeves, crimson and perspiring from the stifling kitchen.

  “Ah, you here?” he said. “Good-morning, my dear boy. Have you had dinner? Don’t stand on ceremony. Have you had dinner?”

  “Alexandr Daviditch,” said Laevsky, standing up, “though I did appeal to you to help me in a private matter, it did not follow that I released you from the obligation of discretion and respect for other people’s private affairs.”

  “What’s this?” asked Samoylenko, in astonishment.

  “If you have no money,” Laevsky went on, raising his voice and shifting from one foot to the other in his excitement, “don’t give it; refuse it. But why spread abroad in every back street that my position is hopeless, and all the rest of it? I can’t endure such benevolence and friend’s assistance where there’s a shilling-worth of talk for a ha’p’orth of help! You can boast of your benevolence as much as you please, but no one has given you the right to gossip about my private affairs!”

  “What private affairs?” asked Samoylenko, puzzled and beginning to be angry. “If you’ve come here to be abusive, you had better clear out. You can come again afterwards!”

  He remembered the rule that when one is angry with one’s neighbour, one must begin to count a hundred, and one will grow calm again; and he began rapidly counting.

  “I beg you not to trouble yourself about me,” Laevsky went on. “Don’t pay any attention to me, and whose business is it what I do and how I live? Yes, I want to go away. Yes, I get into debt, I drink, I am living with another man’s wife, I’m hysterical, I’m ordinary. I am not so profound as some people, but whose business is that? Respect other people’s privacy.”

  “Excuse me, brother,” said Samoylenko, who had counted up to thirty-five, “but . . .”

  “Respect other people’s individuality!” interrupted Laevsky. “This continual gossip about other people’s affairs, this sighing and groaning and everlasting prying, this eavesdropping, this friendly sympathy . . . damn it all! They lend me money and make conditions as though I were a schoolboy! I am treated as the devil knows what! I don’t want anything,” shouted Laevsky, st
aggering with excitement and afraid that it might end in another attack of hysterics. “I shan’t get away on Saturday, then,” flashed through his mind. “I want nothing. All I ask of you is to spare me your protecting care. I’m not a boy, and I’m not mad, and I beg you to leave off looking after me.”

  The deacon came in, and seeing Laevsky pale and gesticulating, addressing his strange speech to the portrait of Prince Vorontsov, stood still by the door as though petrified.

  “This continual prying into my soul,” Laevsky went on, “is insulting to my human dignity, and I beg these volunteer detectives to give up their spying! Enough!”

  “What’s that . . . what did you say?” said Samoylenko, who had counted up to a hundred. He turned crimson and went up to Laevsky.

  “It’s enough,” said Laevsky, breathing hard and snatching up his cap.

  “I’m a Russian doctor, a nobleman by birth, and a civil councillor,” said Samoylenko emphatically. “I’ve never been a spy, and I allow no one to insult me!” he shouted in a breaking voice, emphasising the last word. “Hold your tongue!”

  The deacon, who had never seen the doctor so majestic, so swelling with dignity, so crimson and so ferocious, shut his mouth, ran out into the entry and there exploded with laughter.

  As though through a fog, Laevsky saw Von Koren get up and, putting his hands in his trouser-pockets, stand still in an attitude of expectancy, as though waiting to see what would happen. This calm attitude struck Laevsky as insolent and insulting to the last degree.

  “Kindly take back your words,” shouted Samoylenko.

  Laevsky, who did not by now remember what his words were, answered:

  “Leave me alone! I ask for nothing. All I ask is that you and German upstarts of Jewish origin should let me alone! Or I shall take steps to make you! I will fight you!”

  “Now we understand,” said Von Koren, coming from behind the table. “Mr. Laevsky wants to amuse himself with a duel before he goes away. I can give him that pleasure. Mr. Laevsky, I accept your challenge.”

  “A challenge,” said Laevsky, in a low voice, going up to the zoologist and looking with hatred at his swarthy brow and curly hair. “A challenge? By all means! I hate you! I hate you!”