Stories

by Anton Chekhov

  “Still, we have a good life,” Olenka said to her acquaintances, “thank God. God grant everyone a life like Vasechka’s and mine.”

  When Pustovalov left for Mogilev province to buy lumber, she missed him very much and at night did not sleep but wept. Sometimes in the evening the regimental veterinarian Smirnin, a young man who was renting her wing, came to visit her. He told her some story or played cards with her, and that diverted her. Especially interesting were his stories about his own family life; he was married and had a son, but he was separated from his wife, because she had been unfaithful to him, and now he hated her and sent her forty roubles every month for his son’s keep. And, listening to that, Olenka sighed and shook her head, and felt sorry for him.

  “Well, God save you,” she said, seeing him to the stairs with a candle as he took his leave. “Thank you for sharing my boredom, God grant you good health, and may the Queen of Heaven …”

  And she always spoke so gravely, so sensibly, imitating her husband; the veterinarian was already disappearing through the door below when she called out to him and said:

  “You know, Vladimir Platonych, you ought to make peace with your wife. Forgive her, if only for your son’s sake! … The boy must understand everything.”

  And when Pustovalov came back, she told him in a low voice about the veterinarian and his unhappy family life, and they both sighed and shook their heads, and talked about the boy, who probably missed his father, and then, by some strange train of thought, they both stood before the icons, bowed to the ground, and prayed to God to send them children.

  And so the Pustovalovs lived quietly and placidly, in love and perfect harmony, for six years. Then one winter day Vassily Andreich, after drinking hot tea in the lumberyard, went out to deliver some lumber, caught cold, and fell ill. He was treated by the best doctors, but the disease took its toll, and after four months of illness, he died. And Olenka was widowed again.

  “Why did you go and leave me, my little dove?” she wept, having buried her husband. “How am I to live without you now, wretched and unhappy as I am? Good people, have pity on me, an orphan …”

  She went about in a black dress with weepers, and forever gave up wearing a hat and gloves, rarely left the house, except to go to church or visit her husband’s grave, and lived at home like a nun. And only when six months had passed did she remove the weepers and begin opening the shutters of her windows. Occasionally she was seen in the morning, going to market for provisions with her cook, but how she lived now and what went on in her house could only be guessed. Guessed, for instance, from the fact that she was seen having tea in the garden with the veterinarian, while he read the newspaper aloud to her, or that, on meeting a lady of her acquaintance in the post office, she said:

  “There’s no proper veterinarian supervision in our town, and that results in many diseases. You keep hearing of people getting sick from milk or catching infections from horses and cows. In fact, the health of domestic animals needs as much care as the health of people.”

  She repeated the veterinarian’s thoughts, and was now of the same opinion as he about everything. It was clear that she could not live without an attachment even for one year, and had found her new happiness in her own wing. Another woman would have been condemned for it, but no one could think ill of Olenka, and everything was so clear in her life. She and the veterinarian told no one about the change that had occurred in their relations and tried to conceal it, but they did not succeed, because Olenka could not keep a secret. When he had guests, his colleagues from the regiment, she would start talking about cattle plague, or pearl disease, or the town slaughterhouses, while she poured the tea or served supper, and he would be terribly embarrassed and, when the guests left, would seize her by the arm and hiss angrily:

  “I asked you not to talk about things you don’t understand! When we veterinarians are talking among ourselves, please don’t interfere. It’s tedious, finally!”

  But she would look at him in amazement and alarm and ask:

  “Volodechka, what then am I to talk about?”

  And with tears in her eyes she would embrace him, beg him not to be angry, and they would both be happy

  However, this happiness did not last long. The veterinarian left with his regiment, left forever, because his regiment was transferred to somewhere very far away, almost to Siberia. And Olenka was left alone.

  Now she was completely alone. Her father had died long ago; his armchair was lying in the attic, dusty, one leg missing. She lost weight and lost her looks, and those who met her in the street no longer looked at her as before and no longer smiled at her; obviously, the best years were already past, left behind, and now some new life was beginning, unknown, of which it was better not to think. In the evenings Olenka sat on the back porch, and could hear music playing in the Tivoli and rockets bursting, but that called up no thoughts in her. She gazed indifferently at her empty courtyard, thought of nothing, wanted nothing, and later, when night fell, went to sleep and dreamed of her empty courtyard. She ate and drank as if against her will.

  But chiefly, which was worst of all, she no longer had any opinions. She saw the objects around her and was aware of all that went on around her, but she was unable to form an opinion about anything and did not know what to talk about. And how terrible it was to have no opinions! You see, for instance, that a bottle is standing there, or that it is raining, or that a peasant is driving a cart, but why the bottle, the rain, or the peasant are there, what sense they make, you cannot say and even for a thousand roubles you could not say anything. With Kukin and Pustovalov, and later with the veterinarian, Olenka had been able to explain everything and give her opinion on anything you like, but now in her thoughts and in her heart there was the same emptiness as in her courtyard. And it felt as eerie and bitter as if she had eaten wormwood.

  The town was gradually expanding on all sides; the Gypsy quarter was already called a street, and houses grew up and many lanes appeared where the Tivoli garden and the lumberyard used to be. How quickly time flies! Olenka’s house darkened, the roof rusted, the shed slumped, and the whole courtyard was overgrown with weeds and prickly nettles. Olenka herself aged and lost her looks. In summer she sits on her porch, and as usual in her soul it is empty, and tedious, and smells of wormwood, and in winter she sits at the window and looks at the snow. There is a breath of spring, the ringing of the cathedral bells is borne on the wind, and suddenly a flood of memories from the past comes, her heart is sweetly wrung, and abundant tears flow from her eyes, but this lasts only a minute, and then again there is emptiness, and she does not know why she is alive. The little black cat Bryska rubs against her and purrs softly, but Olenka is not touched by the cat’s tenderness. Is that what she needs? She needs such love as would seize her whole being, her whole soul and mind, would give her thoughts, a direction in life, would warm her aging blood. And she shakes the black Bryska off her lap and says to her in vexation:

  “Go, go … You’ve no business here!”

  And so it went, day after day, year after year—and not one joy, and no opinions of any sort. Whatever the cook Mavra said was good enough.

  One hot July day, towards evening, when the town herd was being driven down the street and the whole yard was filled with clouds of dust, someone suddenly knocked at the gate. Olenka herself went to open, looked, and was dumbstruck: outside the gate stood the veterinarian Smirnin, gray-haired now and in civilian dress. She suddenly remembered everything, could not help herself, burst into tears, and laid her head on his chest without saying a word, and was so shaken that she did not notice how they both went into the house then, how they sat down to tea.

  “My little dove!” she murmured, trembling with joy. “Vladimir Platonych! Where did God bring you from?”

  “I want to settle here for good,” he told her. “I’ve retired and am here to try my luck on my own, to live a sedentary life. And it’s time my son went to school. He’s a big boy. You know, I made peace wi
th my wife.”

  “Where is she?” asked Olenka.

  “She’s in the hotel with my son, and I’m going around looking for lodgings.”

  “Lord, dear heart, take my house! Isn’t that lodgings? Oh, Lord, I won’t even take anything from you,” Olenka became excited and again began to cry “Live here, and I’ll be content with the wing. Lord, what joy!”

  The next day the roof of the house was being painted and the walls whitewashed, and Olenka, arms akimbo, strode about the yard giving orders. The former smile lit up on her face, and she became all alive, fresh, as if she had awakened after a long sleep. The veterinarian’s wife came, a thin, plain lady with short hair and a capricious expression, and with her came Sasha, small for his years (he was going on ten), plump, with bright blue eyes and dimples on his cheeks. And as soon as the boy came into the yard, he ran after the cat, and immediately his merry, joyful laughter rang out.

  “Auntie, is that your cat?” he asked Olenka. “When she has kittens, please give us one. Mama’s very afraid of mice.”

  Olenka talked with him, gave him tea, and the heart in her breast suddenly warmed and was wrung sweetly, as if this boy were her own son. And when he sat in the dining room that evening repeating his lessons, she looked at him with tenderness and pity and whispered:

  “My little dove, my handsome one … My little child, you came out so smart, so fair!”

  “An island,” he read, “is a piece of dry land surrounded on all sides by water.”

  “An island is a piece of dry land …” she repeated, and this was the first opinion she uttered with conviction after so many years of silence and emptiness in her thoughts.

  And she had her own opinions now and over dinner talked with Sasha’s parents about how difficult it was for children to study in school, but that all the same classical education was better than modern, because after school all paths are open: if you wish, you can be a doctor, if you wish, an engineer.

  Sasha started going to school. His mother went to Kharkov to visit her sister and did not come back; his father went somewhere every day to inspect the herds, and sometimes was away from home for three days, and it seemed to Olenka that Sasha was completely abandoned, that he was not wanted in the house, that he was starving to death; and she moved him to her wing and set him up in a little room there.

  And for six months now Sasha has been living with her in the wing. Each morning Olenka goes into his room; he is fast asleep, his hand under his cheek, breathing lightly. She is sorry to wake him up.

  “Sashenka,” she says sadly, “get up, dear heart! It’s time for school.”

  He gets up, dresses, says his prayers, then sits down to tea. He drinks three cups of tea and eats two big bagels and half a French roll with butter. He has not quite recovered from sleep and is therefore cross.

  “You haven’t learned your fable well, Sashenka,” says Olenka, looking at him as if she were seeing him off on a long journey. “You worry me so. You must do your best, dear heart, study … Listen to your teachers.”

  “Oh, leave me alone, please!” says Sasha.

  Then he marches down the street to school, a little boy, but in a big visored cap, with a satchel on his back. Olenka noiselessly follows him.

  “Sashenka-a!” she calls.

  He turns around, and she puts a date or a caramel in his hand. When they turn down the lane where his school is, he gets embarrassed that this tall, stout woman is following after him; he turns around and says:

  “Go home, auntie, I can get there myself now.”

  She stops and looks after him without blinking, until he disappears through the doors of the school. Ah, how she loves him! Of all her former attachments, none was so deep, never before had her soul submitted so selflessly, so disinterestedly, and with such delight as now, when the maternal feeling burned in her more and more. For this boy who was not her own, for the dimples on his cheeks, for his visored cap, she would give her whole life, give it joyfully, with tears of tenderness. Why? Who knows why?

  Having seen Sasha off to school, she slowly returns home, so content, so calm, so full of love; her face, which has grown younger in the last six months, smiles and beams; meeting her, looking at her, people feel pleasure and say to her:

  “Good morning, darling Olga Semyonovna! How are you, darling?”

  “School studies are getting difficult nowadays,” she says at the market. “It’s no joke, yesterday they gave the first-year students a fable to learn by heart, and a Latin translation, and a problem … It’s hard for a little boy!”

  And she starts talking about teachers, lessons, textbooks—saying all the same things that Sasha says about them.

  Between two and three they have dinner together, in the evening they do his homework together and weep. As she puts him to bed, she spends a long time making the cross over him and whispering a prayer. Then, going to sleep, she dreams of the far-off, misty future when Sasha has finished his studies, has become a doctor or an engineer, has his own big house, horses, a carriage, gets married, has children … She falls asleep and keeps thinking about the same thing, and from her closed eyes tears flow down her cheeks. And the little black cat lies beside her and purrs:

  “Purr … purr … purr …”

  Suddenly there is a loud knocking at the gate. Olenka wakes up, breathless with fear; her heart pounds hard. Half a minute goes by and there is more knocking.

  “It’s a telegram from Kharkov,” she thinks, beginning to tremble all over. “Sasha’s mother wants him in Kharkov … Oh, Lord!”

  She is in despair; her head, her feet, her arms go numb, and it seems that no one in the whole world is unhappier than she. But another minute goes by, she hears voices: it is the veterinarian coming home from the club.

  “Well, thank God,” she thinks.

  The weight gradually lifts from her heart, she feels light again; she lies down and thinks about Sasha, who is fast asleep in the next room and occasionally murmurs deliriously:

  “I’ll sh-show you! Get out! No fighting!”

  JANUARY 1899

  ON OFFICIAL BUSINESS

  The acting coroner and the district doctor were driving to the village of Syrnya for an autopsy On the way they were caught in a blizzard, wandered in circles for a long time, and reached the place not at noon, as they had wanted, but only towards evening, when it was already dark. They put up for the night in the zemstvo1cottage. And right there in the zemstvo cottage, as it happened, also lay the corpse, the corpse of the zemstvo insurance agent Lesnitsky, who had come to Syrnya three days earlier and, having settled in the zemstvo cottage and ordered a samovar, had shot himself, quite unexpectedly for everyone; and the circumstance that he had put an end to his life somehow strangely, over the samovar, with food laid out on the table, gave many the occasion to suspect murder; an autopsy became necessary.

  The doctor and the coroner stamped their feet in the front hall, shaking off the snow, and the beadle Ilya Loshadin, an old man, stood beside them holding a tin lamp and lighted the place for them. There was a strong smell of kerosene.

  “Who are you?” asked the doctor.

  “The biddle …” answered the beadle.

  He also signed it that way at the post office: the biddle.

  “And where are the witnesses?”

  “Must’ve gone to have tea, Your Honor.”

  To the right was the clean room, the “visiting” or master’s room, to the left the black room, with a big stove and a stove bench. The doctor and the coroner, followed by the beadle holding the lamp above his head, went into the clean room. There on the floor, by the legs of the table, the long body lay motionless, covered with a white sheet. Besides the white sheet, a pair of new rubber galoshes was clearly visible in the weak light of the lamp, and everything there was disturbing, eerie: the dark walls, and the silence, and the galoshes, and the immobility of the dead body. On the table was a samovar, long cold, and around it were some packets, probably of food.

  “
To shoot oneself in a zemstvo cottage—how tactless!” said the doctor. “If you’re so eager to put a bullet in your head, shoot yourself at home, somewhere in the barn.”

  Just as he was, in his hat, fur coat, and felt boots, he lowered himself onto the bench; his companion, the coroner, sat down facing him.

  “These hysterical and neurasthenic types are great egoists,” the doctor went on bitterly. “When a neurasthenic sleeps in the same room with you, he rustles his newspaper; when he dines with you, he makes a scene with his wife, not embarrassed by your presence; and when he decides to shoot himself, he goes and shoots himself in some village, in a zemstvo cottage, to cause more trouble for everybody. In all circumstances of life, these gentlemen think only of themselves. Only of themselves! That’s why the old folks dislike this ‘nervous age’ of ours so much.”

  “The old folks dislike all sorts of things,” said the coroner, yawning. “Go and point out to these old folk the difference between former and present-day suicides. The former so-called respectable man shot himself because he’d embezzled government funds, the present-day one because he’s sick of life, in anguish … Which is better?”

  “Sick of life, in anguish, but you must agree, he might have shot himself somewhere else than in a zemstvo cottage.”

  “Such a dire thing,” the beadle began to say, “a dire thing—sheer punishment. Folks are very upset, Your Honor, it’s the third night they haven’t slept. The kids are crying. The cows need milking, but the women won’t go to the barn, they’re afraid … lest the master appear to them in the dark. Sure, they’re foolish women, but even some of the men are afraid. Once night comes, they won’t go past the cottage singly, but always in a bunch. And the witnesses, too …”