Tales of Chekhov

by Anton Chekhov

  And Vera felt full of anger against herself and every one else. She took up a book again and tried to read it, but soon afterwards sat down and thought again. To become a doctor? But to do that one must pass an examination in Latin; besides, she had an invincible repugnance to corpses and disease. It would be nice to become a mechanic, a judge, a commander of a steamer, a scientist; to do something into which she could put all her powers, physical and spiritual, and to be tired out and sleep soundly at night; to give up her life to something that would make her an interesting person, able to attract interesting people, to love, to have a real family of her own. . . . But what was she to do? How was she to begin?

  One Sunday in Lent her aunt came into her room early in the morning to fetch her umbrella. Vera was sitting up in bed clasping her head in her hands, thinking.

  “You ought to go to church, darling,” said her aunt, “or people will think you are not a believer.”

  Vera made no answer.

  “I see you are dull, poor child,” said Auntie Dasha, sinking on her knees by the bedside; she adored Vera. “Tell me the truth, are you bored?”

  “Dreadfully.”

  “My beauty, my queen, I am your willing slave, I wish you nothing but good and happiness. . . . Tell me, why don’t you want to marry Nestchapov? What more do you want, my child? You must forgive me, darling; you can’t pick and choose like this, we are not princes . . . . Time is passing, you are not seventeen. . . . And I don’t understand it! He loves you, idolises you!”

  “Oh, mercy!” said Vera with vexation. “How can I tell? He sits dumb and never says a word.”

  “He’s shy, darling. . . . He’s afraid you’ll refuse him!”

  And when her aunt had gone away, Vera remained standing in the middle of her room uncertain whether to dress or to go back to bed. The bed was hateful; if one looked out of the window there were the bare trees, the grey snow, the hateful jackdaws, the pigs that her grandfather would eat. . . .

  “Yes, after all, perhaps I’d better get married!” she thought.

  III

  For two days Auntie Dasha went about with a tear-stained and heavily powdered face, and at dinner she kept sighing and looking towards the ikon. And it was impossible to make out what was the matter with her. But at last she made up her mind, went in to Vera, and said in a casual way:

  “The fact is, child, we have to pay interest on the bank loan, and the tenant hasn’t paid his rent. Will you let me pay it out of the fifteen thousand your papa left you?”

  All day afterwards Auntie Dasha spent in making cherry jam in the garden. Alyona, with her cheeks flushed with the heat, ran to and from the garden to the house and back again to the cellar.

  When Auntie Dasha was making jam with a very serious face as though she were performing a religious rite, and her short sleeves displayed her strong, little, despotic hands and arms, and when the servants ran about incessantly, bustling about the jam which they would never taste, there was always a feeling of martyrdom in the air. . . .

  The garden smelt of hot cherries. The sun had set, the charcoal stove had been carried away, but the pleasant, sweetish smell still lingered in the air. Vera sat on a bench in the garden and watched a new labourer, a young soldier, not of the neighbourhood, who was, by her express orders, making new paths. He was cutting the turf with a spade and heaping it up on a barrow.

  “Where were you serving?” Vera asked him.

  “At Berdyansk.”

  “And where are you going now? Home?”

  “No,” answered the labourer. “I have no home.”

  “But where were you born and brought up?”

  “In the province of Oryol. Till I went into the army I lived with my mother, in my step-father’s house; my mother was the head of the house, and people looked up to her, and while she lived I was cared for. But while I was in the army I got a letter telling me my mother was dead. . . . And now I don’t seem to care to go home. It’s not my own father, so it’s not like my own home.”

  “Then your father is dead?”

  “I don’t know. I am illegitimate.”

  At that moment Auntie Dasha appeared at the window and said:

  “Il ne faut pas parler aux gens . . . . Go into the kitchen, my good man. You can tell your story there,” she said to the soldier.

  And then came as yesterday and every day supper, reading, a sleepless night, and endless thinking about the same thing. At three o’clock the sun rose; Alyona was already busy in the corridor, and Vera was not asleep yet and was trying to read. She heard the creak of the barrow: it was the new labourer at work in the garden. . . . Vera sat at the open window with a book, dozed, and watched the soldier making the paths for her, and that interested her. The paths were as even and level as a leather strap, and it was pleasant to imagine what they would be like when they were strewn with yellow sand.

  She could see her aunt come out of the house soon after five o’clock, in a pink wrapper and curl-papers. She stood on the steps for three minutes without speaking, and then said to the soldier:

  “Take your passport and go in peace. I can’t have any one illegitimate in my house.”

  An oppressive, angry feeling sank like a stone on Vera’s heart. She was indignant with her aunt, she hated her; she was so sick of her aunt that her heart was full of misery and loathing. But what was she to do? To stop her mouth? To be rude to her? But what would be the use? Suppose she struggled with her, got rid of her, made her harmless, prevented her grandfather from flourishing his stick— what would be the use of it? It would be like killing one mouse or one snake in the boundless steppe. The vast expanse, the long winters, the monotony and dreariness of life, instil a sense of helplessness; the position seems hopeless, and one wants to do nothing—everything is useless.

  Alyona came in, and bowing low to Vera, began carrying out the arm-chairs to beat the dust out of them.

  “You have chosen a time to clean up,” said Vera with annoyance. “Go away.”

  Alyona was overwhelmed, and in her terror could not understand what was wanted of her. She began hurriedly tidying up the dressing-table.

  “Go out of the room, I tell you,” Vera shouted, turning cold; she had never had such an oppressive feeling before. “Go away!”

  Alyona uttered a sort of moan, like a bird, and dropped Vera’s gold watch on the carpet.

  “Go away!” Vera shrieked in a voice not her own, leaping up and trembling all over. “Send her away; she worries me to death!” she went on, walking rapidly after Alyona down the passage, stamping her feet. “Go away! Birch her! Beat her!” Then suddenly she came to herself, and just as she was, unwashed, uncombed, in her dressing-gown and slippers, she rushed out of the house. She ran to the familiar ravine and hid herself there among the sloe-trees, so that she might see no one and be seen by no one. Lying there motionless on the grass, she did not weep, she was not horror-stricken, but gazing at the sky open-eyed, she reflected coldly and clearly that something had happened which she could never forget and for which she could never forgive herself all her life.

  “No, I can’t go on like this,” she thought. “It’s time to take myself in hand, or there’ll be no end to it. . . . I can’t go on like this. . . .”

  At midday Dr. Neshtchapov drove by the ravine on his way to the house. She saw him and made up her mind that she would begin a new life, and that she would make herself begin it, and this decision calmed her. And following with her eyes the doctor’s well-built figure, she said, as though trying to soften the crudity of her decision:

  “He’s a nice man. . . . We shall get through life somehow.”

  She returned home. While she was dressing, Auntie Dasha came into the room, and said:

  “Alyona upset you, darling; I’ve sent her home to the village. Her mother’s given her a good beating and has come here, crying.”

  “Auntie,” said Vera quickly, “I’m going to marry Dr. Neshtchapov. Only talk to him yourself . . . I can’t.”

&nbs
p; And again she went out into the fields. And wandering aimlessly about, she made up her mind that when she was married she would look after the house, doctor the peasants, teach in the school, that she would do all the things that other women of her circle did. And this perpetual dissatisfaction with herself and every one else, this series of crude mistakes which stand up like a mountain before one whenever one looks back upon one’s past, she would accept as her real life to which she was fated, and she would expect nothing better. . . . Of course there was nothing better! Beautiful nature, dreams, music, told one story, but reality another. Evidently truth and happiness existed somewhere outside real life. . . . One must give up one’s own life and merge oneself into this luxuriant steppe, boundless and indifferent as eternity, with its flowers, its ancient barrows, and its distant horizon, and then it would be well with one. . . .

  A month later Vera was living at the works.

  Expensive Lessons

  F

  or a cultivated man to be ignorant of foreign languages is a great inconvenience. Vorotov became acutely conscious of it when, after taking his degree, he began upon a piece of research work.

  “It’s awful,” he said, breathing hard (although he was only twenty-six he was fat, heavy, and suffered from shortness of breath).

  “It’s awful! Without languages I’m like a bird without wings. I might just as well give up the work.”

  And he made up his mind at all costs to overcome his innate laziness, and to learn French and German; and began to look out for a teacher.

  One winter noon, as Vorotov was sitting in his study at work, the servant told him that a young lady was inquiring for him.

  “Ask her in,” said Vorotov.

  And a young lady elaborately dressed in the last fashion walked in. She introduced herself as a teacher of French, Alice Osipovna Enquête, and told Vorotov that she had been sent to him by one of his friends.

  “Delighted! Please sit down,” said Vorotov, breathing hard and putting his hand over the collar of his nightshirt (to breathe more freely he always wore a nightshirt at work instead of a stiff linen one with collar). “It was Pyotr Sergeitch sent you? Yes, yes . . . I asked him about it. Delighted!”

  As he talked to Mdlle. Enquête he looked at her shyly and with curiosity. She was a genuine Frenchwoman, very elegant and still quite young. Judging from her pale, languid face, her short curly hair, and her unnaturally slim waist, she might have been eighteen; but looking at her broad, well-developed shoulders, the elegant lines of her back and her severe eyes, Vorotov thought that she was not less than three-and-twenty and might be twenty-five; but then again he began to think she was not more than eighteen. Her face looked as cold and business-like as the face of a person who has come to speak about money. She did not once smile or frown, and only once a look of perplexity flitted over her face when she learnt that she was not required to teach children, but a stout grown-up man.

  “So, Alice Osipovna,” said Vorotov, “we’ll have a lesson every evening from seven to eight. As regards your terms—a rouble a lesson—I’ve nothing to say against that. By all means let it be a rouble. . . .”

  And he asked her if she would not have some tea or coffee, whether it was a fine day, and with a good-natured smile, stroking the baize of the table, he inquired in a friendly voice who she was, where she had studied, and what she lived on.

  With a cold, business-like expression, Alice Osipovna answered that she had completed her studies at a private school and had the diploma of a private teacher, that her father had died lately of scarlet fever, that her mother was alive and made artificial flowers; that she, Mdlle. Enquête, taught in a private school till dinnertime, and after dinner was busy till evening giving lessons in different good families.

  She went away leaving behind her the faint fragrance of a woman’s clothes. For a long time afterwards Vorotov could not settle to work, but, sitting at the table stroking its green baize surface, he meditated.

  “It’s very pleasant to see a girl working to earn her own living,” he thought. “On the other hand, it’s very unpleasant to think that poverty should not spare such elegant and pretty girls as Alice Osipovna, and that she, too, should have to struggle for existence. It’s a sad thing!”

  Having never seen virtuous Frenchwomen before, he reflected also that this elegantly dressed young lady with her well-developed shoulders and exaggeratedly small waist in all probability followed another calling as well as giving French lessons.

  The next evening when the clock pointed to five minutes to seven, Mdlle. Enquête appeared, rosy from the frost. She opened Margot, which she had brought with her, and without introduction began:

  “French grammar has twenty-six letters. The first letter is called A, the second B . . .”

  “Excuse me,” Vorotov interrupted, smiling. “I must warn you, mademoiselle, that you must change your method a little in my case. You see, I know Russian, Greek, and Latin well. . . . I’ve studied comparative philology, and I think we might omit Margot and pass straight to reading some author.”

  And he explained to the French girl how grown-up people learn languages.

  “A friend of mine,” he said, “wanting to learn modern languages, laid before him the French, German, and Latin gospels, and read them side by side, carefully analysing each word, and would you believe it, he attained his object in less than a year. Let us do the same. We’ll take some author and read him.”

  The French girl looked at him in perplexity. Evidently the suggestion seemed to her very naïve and ridiculous. If this strange proposal had been made to her by a child, she would certainly have been angry and have scolded it, but as he was a grown-up man and very stout and she could not scold him, she only shrugged her shoulders hardly perceptibly and said:

  “As you please.”

  Vorotov rummaged in his bookcase and picked out a dog’s-eared French book.

  “Will this do?”

  “It’s all the same,” she said.

  “In that case let us begin, and good luck to it! Let’s begin with the title . . . ‘Mémoires.’”

  “Reminiscences,” Mdlle. Enquête translated.

  With a good-natured smile, breathing hard, he spent a quarter of an hour over the word “Mémoires,” and as much over the word de, and this wearied the young lady. She answered his questions languidly, grew confused, and evidently did not understand her pupil well, and did not attempt to understand him. Vorotov asked her questions, and at the same time kept looking at her fair hair and thinking:

  “Her hair isn’t naturally curly; she curls it. It’s a strange thing! She works from morning to night, and yet she has time to curl her hair.”

  At eight o’clock precisely she got up, and saying coldly and dryly, “Au revoir, monsieur,” walked out of the study, leaving behind her the same tender, delicate, disturbing fragrance. For a long time again her pupil did nothing; he sat at the table meditating.

  During the days that followed he became convinced that his teacher was a charming, conscientious, and precise young lady, but that she was very badly educated, and incapable of teaching grown-up people, and he made up his mind not to waste his time, to get rid of her, and to engage another teacher. When she came the seventh time he took out of his pocket an envelope with seven roubles in it, and holding it in his hand, became very confused and began:

  “Excuse me, Alice Osipovna, but I ought to tell you . . . I’m under painful necessity . . .”

  Seeing the envelope, the French girl guessed what was meant, and for the first time during their lessons her face quivered and her cold, business-like expression vanished. She coloured a little, and dropping her eyes, began nervously fingering her slender gold chain. And Vorotov, seeing her perturbation, realised how much a rouble meant to her, and how bitter it would be to her to lose what she was earning.

  “I ought to tell you,” he muttered, growing more and more confused, and quavering inwardly; he hurriedly stuffed the envelope into his pocket and went on
: “Excuse me, I . . . I must leave you for ten minutes.”

  And trying to appear as though he had not in the least meant to get rid of her, but only to ask her permission to leave her for a short time, he went into the next room and sat there for ten minutes. And then he returned more embarrassed than ever: it struck him that she might have interpreted his brief absence in some way of her own, and he felt awkward.

  The lessons began again. Yorotov felt no interest in them. Realising that he would gain nothing from the lessons, he gave the French girl liberty to do as she liked, asking her nothing and not interrupting her. She translated away as she pleased ten pages during a lesson, and he did not listen, breathed hard, and having nothing better to do, gazed at her curly head, or her soft white hands or her neck and sniffed the fragrance of her clothes. He caught himself thinking very unsuitable thoughts, and felt ashamed, or he was moved to tenderness, and then he felt vexed and wounded that she was so cold and business-like with him, and treated him as a pupil, never smiling and seeming afraid that he might accidentally touch her. He kept wondering how to inspire her with confidence and get to know her better, and to help her, to make her understand how badly she taught, poor thing.