Stories

by Anton Chekhov

  She put the dish in his hands and, carried off by someone, flew far away, and over her partner’s shoulder she caught a glimpse of her father gliding across the parquet floor, putting his arms around a lady, and racing through the hall with her.

  “He’s so sweet when he’s sober!” she thought.

  She danced the mazurka with the same immense officer; he stepped gravely and heavily, like a uniformed side of beef, moved his shoulders and chest, barely stamped his feet—he was terribly reluctant to dance, and she fluttered around him, teasing him with her beauty, with her open neck; her eyes burned with provocation, her movements were passionate, while he became ever more indifferent and held his arms out to her benevolently, like a king.

  “Bravo, bravo! …” came from the public.

  But the immense officer gradually loosened up; he became lively, excited, and, yielding now to the enchantment, waxed enthusiastic and moved lightly, youthfully, while she only shifted her shoulders and glanced at him slyly, as if she were a queen and he her slave, and it seemed to her just then that everyone in the hall was looking at them, that all these people were thrilled and envied them. The immense officer had barely managed to thank her, when the public suddenly parted and the men straightened up somehow strangely, their arms at their sides … Walking towards her was His Excellency, in a tailcoat with two stars. Yes, His Excellency was walking precisely towards her, because he was looking straight at her with a saccharine smile and at the same time munching his lips, something he always did at the sight of pretty women.

  “Delighted, delighted …” he began. “I’ll order your husband put under arrest for concealing such a treasure from us till today. I’ve come on an errand from my wife,” he went on, offering her his arm. “You must help us … Mm, yes … We should give you a prize for beauty … as in America … Mm, yes … The Americans … My wife is waiting impatiently for you.”

  He brought her to a booth, to an elderly lady, the lower part of whose face was so incongruously large that it seemed as if she were holding a big stone in her mouth.

  “Help us,” she said through her nose, in a sing-song voice. “All the pretty women are working at the charity bazaar, and you alone are having fun for some reason. Why don’t you want to help us?”

  She left, and Anya took her place by the silver samovar and cups. A brisk trade began at once. Anya took no less than a rouble per cup of tea, and she made the immense officer drink three cups. Artynov came up; the rich man with the prominent eyes, who suffered from shortness of breath, was no longer in the strange costume in which Anya had seen him that summer, but was wearing a tailcoat like everyone else. Not tearing his eyes from Anya, he drank a glass of champagne and paid a hundred roubles for it, then drank tea and gave another hundred—and all that in silence, suffering from asthma … Anya called customers over and took their money, now deeply convinced that her smiles and looks gave these people nothing but the greatest pleasure. She already understood that she had been created solely for this noisy, brilliant, laughing life with its music, dancing, and admirers, and her long-standing fear before the power that was coming down on her and threatening to crush her, seemed ridiculous to her; she was no longer afraid of anyone and only regretted that her mother was not there to rejoice with her now over her successes.

  Pyotr Leontyich, pale but still keeping firmly on his feet, came up to the booth and asked for a glass of cognac. Anya blushed, expecting him to say something inappropriate (she was already ashamed of having such a poor, such an ordinary father), but he drank up, peeled off ten roubles from his little wad, and sedately walked away without saying a word. A little later she saw him stepping out the grand rond with a partner, and this time he staggered and shouted something, to the great embarrassment of his lady, and Anya remembered how three years ago he had staggered and shouted in the same way at a ball, and it had ended with a policeman taking him home to bed, and next day the director had threatened to dismiss him from his work. How untimely this memory was!

  When the samovars went out in the booths and the weary benefactresses handed their receipts over to the elderly woman with the stone in her mouth, Artynov led Anya by the arm to the big hall, where supper was laid out for all the participants in the charity bazaar. There were about twenty people at the table, not more, but it was very noisy. His Excellency gave the toast: “In this magnificent dining room it would be appropriate to drink to the prosperity of the cheap eateries that were the object of today’s bazaar.” A brigadier general suggested that they drink “to the power before which even the artillery quails,” and everybody began clinking with the ladies. There was great, great merriment!

  When Anya was taken home, day was already breaking and the cooks were going to market. Joyful, drunk, filled with new impressions, exhausted, she undressed, collapsed on her bed, and fell asleep at once …

  Past one o’clock in the afternoon her maid awakened her and reported that Mr. Artynov had come to visit. She dressed quickly and went to the drawing room. Soon after Artynov, His Excellency came to thank her for taking part in the charity bazaar. Munching and looking at her with saccharine eyes, he kissed her hand, asked her permission to come again, and left, while she stood in the middle of the drawing room, amazed, enchanted, unable to believe that the change in her life, an astonishing change, had taken place so soon; and just then her husband, Modest Alexeich, came in … And he stood before her now with the same ingratiating, sweet, slavishly deferential expression she was accustomed to seeing him have in the presence of the strong and distinguished; and with rapture, with indignation, with scorn, confident now that nothing would happen to her for it, she said, pronouncing each word distinctly:

  “Get out, blockhead!”

  After that Anya never had a single free day, for she participated now in a picnic, now in a promenade, now in a performance. She came home each day towards morning and lay on the floor in the drawing room, and then touchingly told everyone how she had slept under the flowers. She needed a great deal of money, but she was no longer afraid of Modest Alexeich and spent his money as if it were her own; she did not ask, did not demand, but merely sent him the bills or notes: “Pay the bearer 200 r.,” or “100 r. payable at once.”

  At Easter Modest Alexeich received the Anna second degree. When he went to say thank you, His Excellency laid aside his newspaper and settled deeper into his armchair.

  “So now you have three Annas,” he said, examining his white hands with their pink nails, “one in the buttonhole and two on your neck.”

  Modest Alexeich put two fingers to his lips as a precaution against laughing out loud, and said:

  “It now only remains to wait for a little Vladimir to come into the world. I make so bold as to ask Your Excellency to be the godfather.”

  He was alluding to the Vladimir fourth degree,4 and was already imagining himself telling everywhere about this pun, so fortunate in its resourcefulness and boldness, and he wanted to say something else equally fortunate, but His Excellency again immersed himself in his newspaper and nodded his head …

  And Anya kept riding about in troikas, went hunting with Artynov, acted in one-act plays, had suppers, and visited her family more and more rarely. They now dined by themselves. Pyotr Leontyich drank more than ever, they had no money, and the harmonium had long since been sold to pay a debt. Now the boys never let him go out alone and watched him lest he fall down; and when they met Anya in Staro-Kievsky Street in a coach and pair with an outrunner, and Artynov on the box instead of a driver, Pyotr Leontyich took off his top hat and was about to shout something, but Petya and Andryusha held him by the arms and said imploringly:

  “You mustn’t, papa … That will do, papa …”

  OCTOBER 1895

  THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE

  AN ARTIST’S STORY

  I

  This was six or seven years ago, when I was living in one of the districts of T—— province, on the estate of the landowner Belokurov, a young man who got up very early,
went about in a vest, drank beer in the evenings, and kept complaining to me that he met with no sympathy anywhere or from anyone. He lived in a cottage in the garden, and I in the old mansion, in a huge hall with columns, where there was no furniture except a wide sofa on which I slept and a table on which I played patience. Here, even in calm weather, something always howled in the old Amosov stoves,1 but during a thunderstorm the whole house trembled and seemed to crack to pieces, and it was a little frightening, especially at night, when all ten big windows were suddenly lit up by lightning.

  Condemned by fate to permanent idleness, I was doing decidedly nothing. I spent whole hours looking out my windows at the sky, the birds, the avenues, read everything that came in the mail, slept. Sometimes I left the house and wandered about somewhere till late in the evening.

  Once, returning home, I accidentally wandered onto an unfamiliar estate. The sun was already hiding, and evening shadows stretched across the flowering rye. Two rows of old, closely planted, very tall fir trees stood like two solid walls, forming a beautiful, gloomy avenue. I easily climbed the fence and went down this avenue, slipping on the fir needles that lay inches-thick on the ground. It was quiet, dark, and only high in the treetops did a bright golden light tremble here and there and play iridescently on the spiderwebs. There was a strong, almost stifling, smell of fir needles. Then I turned down a long linden avenue. Here, too, there was old age and desolation; last year’s leaves rustled sorrowfully under my feet, and shadows hid in the twilight between the trees. To the right, in an old orchard, an oriole sang reluctantly, in a weak voice—it must have been a little old lady, too. But now the lindens also ended; I passed a white house with a terrace and a mezzanine, and before me there unexpectedly opened up a view of the manor yard and a wide pond with a bathing house, a stand of green willows, a village on the other side, with a tall, slender belfry, the cross of which blazed, reflecting the setting sun. For a moment I felt the enchantment of something dear and very familiar, as if I had already seen this same panorama sometime in my childhood.

  And by the white stone gateway that led from the yard into the fields, by the sturdy old gates with their lions, stood two girls. One of them, the elder, slender, pale, very beautiful, with a whole mass of chestnut hair on her head, with a small, stubborn mouth, had a stern expression and barely paid any attention to me; the other, still very young—she was seventeen or eighteen years old, not more— also slender and pale, with a big mouth and big eyes, looked at me in surprise as I passed by, said something in English, and became embarrassed, and it seemed to me that these two sweet faces had also been long familiar to me. And I returned home feeling as if I had had a good dream.

  Soon after that, around noon one day, as Belokurov and I were strolling near the house, a spring carriage, swishing through the grass, unexpectedly drove into the yard, with one of those girls sitting in it. It was the older one. She had come with a subscription list, seeking aid for the victims of a fire. Without looking at us, she told us very seriously and in detail how many houses had burned down in the village of Siyanovo, how many men, women, and children had been left without a roof, and what the committee for the victims, of which she was now a member, intended to undertake as a first step. After having us sign it, she put the list away and at once began taking her leave.

  “You’ve quite forgotten us, Pyotr Petrovich,” she said to Belokurov, giving him her hand. “Come over, and if Monsieur X” (she said my name) “wishes to have a look at how some admirers of his talent live, and is so good as to visit us, mama and I will be very glad.”

  I bowed.

  When she left, Pyotr Petrovich told me the story. This girl, in his words, was from a good family, her name was Lydia Volchaninova, and the estate she lived on with her mother and sister was called Shelkovka, the same as the one across the pond. Her father had once occupied a prominent position in Moscow and had died with the rank of privy councillor. Although they were well off, the Volchaninovs lived permanently in the country, summer and winter, and Lydia was a teacher in a zemstvo2 school in her own Shelkovka and earned twenty-five roubles a month. She spent only this money on herself and was proud to be living at her own expense.

  “An interesting family,” said Belokurov. “We might go and see them sometime. They’d be very glad to have you.”

  After dinner once, on a feast day, we remembered the Volchaninovs and went to visit them in Shelkovka. They, the mother and both daughters, were at home. The mother, Ekaterina Pavlovna, evidently beautiful once but now flabby beyond her years, suffering from shortness of breath, sad, distracted, tried to engage me in a conversation about painting. Having learned from her daughter that I might visit Shelkovka, she had hastily recalled two or three landscapes of mine that she had seen at exhibitions in Moscow, and now asked me what I had meant to express in them. Lydia, or Lida, as they called her at home, talked more with Belokurov than with me. Serious, unsmiling, she asked him why he did not serve in the zemstvo and why he had never yet come to a single zemstvo meeting.

  “It’s not good, Pyotr Petrovich,” she said reproachfully. “It’s not good. It’s a shame.”

  “True, Lida, true,” her mother agreed. “It’s not good.”

  “Our whole district is in the hands of Balagin,” Lida went on, turning to me. “He himself is the chairman of the board, and he’s given all the posts in the district to his nephews and sons-in-law and does whatever he likes. We must fight. The young people should form a strong party, but you see what kind of young people we have. It’s a shame, Pyotr Petrovich!”

  While we talked about the zemstvo, the younger sister, Zhenya, was silent. She did not take part in serious conversations, the family did not consider her grown up yet, and called her Missyus, like a little girl, because that was what she had called Miss, her governess, as a child. She kept looking at me with curiosity, and when I glanced through the photograph album, she explained to me: “That’s my uncle … That’s my godfather,” and moved her little finger over the portraits, and at that moment she touched me childishly with her shoulder, and I could see close-up her weak, undeveloped breast, her slender shoulders, her braid, and her thin body, tightly bound with a sash.

  We played croquet and lawn tennis, strolled about the garden, had tea, and then a long supper. After the enormous, empty hall with columns, I felt somehow ill at ease in this small, cozy house in which there were no oleographs on the walls and the servants were addressed formally, and everything seemed young and pure to me, owing to the presence of Lida and Missyus, and everything breathed respectability. Over supper Lida again talked with Belokurov about the zemstvo, about Balagin, about the school libraries. She was a lively, sincere girl, with deep convictions, and it was interesting to listen to her, though she talked a lot and loudly—perhaps because she was used to talking at school. On the other hand, my Pyotr Petrovich, who from his student days had kept the manner of turning every conversation into an argument, spoke dully, listlessly, and at length, with the obvious wish of appearing to be an intelligent and progressive man. Gesticulating, he overturned the sauceboat with his sleeve, and a big puddle formed on the tablecloth, but, except for me, no one seemed to notice it.

  When we returned home, it was dark and still.

  “Good manners doesn’t mean not spilling sauce on the tablecloth, but not noticing when someone else does,” said Belokurov, and he sighed. “Yes, a wonderful, intellectual family. I’ve lost touch with good people, indeed I have! I’m always busy, busy, busy!”

  He talked of how much one had to work if one wanted to be a model farmer. And I thought: what a sluggish and lazy fellow he is! When he talked about something serious, he drawled and strained, “E-e-eh,” and he worked the same way as he talked—slow, always late, missing all deadlines. I had little faith in his business abilities, if only because when I asked him to mail some letters for me, he carried them around in his pockets for weeks.

  “The hardest thing of all,” he muttered, walking beside me, “the hardest
thing of all is to work and get no sympathy from anybody No sympathy at all!”

  II

  I began to visit the Volchaninovs. Usually I sat on the bottom step of the terrace; dissatisfaction with myself oppressed me, I felt sorry for my life, which was passing so quickly and uninterestingly, and I kept thinking how good it would be to tear this heart, which had grown so heavy, out of my breast. And all the while there would be talking on the terrace, one could hear the rustling of dresses and the leafing-through of books. I soon became accustomed to Lida’s receiving sick people in the afternoon, handing out books, and often leaving for the village, bare-headed3 under her parasol, and in the evening talking loudly about the zemstvo and schools. This slender, beautiful, invariably severe girl, with her small, gracefully outlined mouth, would turn to me whenever a practical conversation began, and say drily:

  “This is of no interest to you.”

  She did not find me sympathetic. She disliked me because I was a landscape painter and did not portray the needs of the people in my pictures, and because I was, as it seemed to her, indifferent to what she so strongly believed in. I remember once riding along the shore of Baikal and meeting a Buryat4 girl in a shirt and blue dungaree trousers, on horseback; I asked her if she would sell me her pipe, and as we spoke, she looked scornfully at my European face and my hat, and after a minute got sick of talking to me, whooped, and galloped off. In the same way, Lida scorned the alien in me. She did not express her indisposition towards me in any external way, but I sensed it and, sitting on the bottom step of the terrace, felt annoyed and said that to treat peasants without being a doctor was to deceive them and that it was easy to be philanthropic when one owned five thousand acres.