“My God, Nadya’s come!” he said and laughed merrily. “My dearest, my darling!”
They sat for a while in the printing shop, where it was smoky and smelled strongly, suffocatingly, of India ink and paint; then they went to his room, where it was also smoky, messy; on the table, next to the cold samovar, was a cracked plate with a piece of dark paper, and on the table and the floor a multitude of dead flies.7And here everything showed that Sasha’s personal life was slovenly, that he lived anyhow, with a total disdain of comfort, and if anyone had begun talking to him about his personal happiness, about his personal life, about anyone’s love for him, he would have understood none of it and would only have laughed.
“It’s all right, everything worked out very well,” Nadya told him hurriedly. “Mama came to see me in Petersburg during the autumn and told me that my grandmother wasn’t angry, but only kept going into my room and crossing the walls.”
Sasha looked cheerful, but kept coughing and spoke in a cracked voice, and Nadya peered at him and could not understand whether he was indeed seriously ill or it only seemed so to her.
“Sasha, my dear,” she said, “you’re quite ill!”
“No, it’s nothing. I’m sick, but not very …”
“Ah, my God!” Nadya said worriedly, “why don’t you go to a doctor, why don’t you look after your health? My dear, sweet Sasha,” she said, and tears poured from her eyes, and for some reason Andrei Andreich appeared in her imagination, and the naked lady with the vase, and all her past life, which now seemed as distant as her childhood; and she wept because Sasha no longer seemed so new, intelligent, interesting to her as he had last year. “Dear Sasha, you’re very, very ill. I don’t know what I wouldn’t do to keep you from being so pale and thin. I owe you so much! You can’t even imagine how much you’ve done for me, my good Sasha! In fact, you’re now the nearest and dearest person for me.”
They sat and talked for a while; and now, after Nadya had spent a winter in Petersburg, there was in Sasha, in his words, in his smile, and in his whole figure, the air of something outlived, old-fashioned, long sung, and perhaps already gone to its grave.
“I’m leaving for the Volga the day after tomorrow,” said Sasha, “and then for a kumys cure.8 I want to drink kumys. A friend of mine and his wife are coming with me. His wife is an amazing woman; I keep whipping her up, convincing her to go and study. I want her to turn her life around.”
Having talked, they went to the station. Sasha treated her to tea and apples; and when the train started and he smiled and waved his handkerchief, she could tell even from his legs that he was very ill and would hardly live long.
Nadya arrived in her town at noon. As she drove home from the station, the streets seemed very wide and the houses very small, flattened; there were no people, and she met only the German piano tuner in his faded brown coat. And all the houses seemed covered with dust. Her grandmother, quite old now, stout and homely as before, put her arms around Nadya, and wept for a long time, pressing her face to Nadya’s shoulder, unable to tear herself away. Nina Ivanovna had also aged considerably and looked bad, somehow all pinched, but was still as tightly corseted as before, and the diamonds sparkled on her fingers.
“My dear!” she said, trembling all over. “My dear!”
Then they sat and wept silently. It was evident that both her grandmother and her mother felt that the past was lost forever and irretrievably: gone now was their position in society, gone their former honor, and their right to invite people; so it happens when, amidst a carefree, easy life, the police suddenly come at night, make a search, and it turns out that the master of the house is an embezzler, a counterfeiter—and then farewell forever to the carefree, easy life!
Nadya went upstairs and saw the same bed, the same windows with the naïve white curtains, and through the windows the same garden, flooded with light, cheerful, noisy. She touched her table, sat, thought a little. And she ate well, and drank tea with rich, delicious cream, but something was lacking now, there was a feeling of emptiness in the rooms, and the ceilings were low. In the evening she went to bed, covered herself up, and for some reason it was funny to be lying in that warm, very soft bed.
Nina Ivanovna came in for a moment and sat down, as guilty people do, timidly and furtively.
“Well, how is it, Nadya?” she asked, after some silence. “Are you content? Quite content?”
“I am, mama.”
Nina Ivanovna stood up and made a cross over Nadya and over the windows.
“And I, as you see, have become religious,” she said. “You know, I’ve taken up philosophy and keep thinking, thinking … And many things have become clear as day to me now. First of all, I think, the whole of life must pass as if through a prism.”
“Tell me, mama, how is grandmother?”
“She seems all right. When you left then with Sasha, and the telegram came from you, your grandmother read it and collapsed; for three days she lay in bed without moving. Then she prayed to God and wept all the time. But now it’s all right.”
She got up and paced about the room.
“Tick-tock…” the watchman rapped. “Tick-tock, tick-tock …”
“First of all, the whole of life must pass as if through a prism,” she said, “that is, in other words, life must be broken down into the simplest elements, as if into the seven primary colors, and each element must be studied separately.”
What else Nina Ivanovna said, and when she left, Nadya did not hear, because she soon fell asleep.
May passed, June came. Nadya was accustomed to home now. Her grandmother fussed over the samovar and sighed deeply; Nina Ivanovna talked in the evenings about her philosophy; as before, she lived in the house as a hanger-on and had to turn to the grandmother for every penny. There were lots of flies in the house, and the ceilings of the rooms seemed to get lower and lower. Granny and Nina Ivanovna did not go out, for fear of meeting Father Andrei and Andrei Andreich. Nadya walked in the garden, in the street, looked at the houses, at the gray fences, and it seemed to her that everything in the town had long since grown old, outlived itself, and was only waiting for the end, or for the beginning of something young, fresh. Oh, if only this new, bright life would come sooner, when one could look one’s fate directly and boldly in the eye, be conscious of one’s rightness, be cheerful, free! And this life would come sooner or later! There would be a time when of grandmother’s house, where everything was so arranged that four maids could not live otherwise than in a single basement room, in filth—there would be a time when no trace of this house would remain, it would be forgotten, no one would remember it. And Nadya’s only entertainment came from the boys in the neighboring yard; when she strolled in the garden, they rapped on the fence and teased her, laughing:
“The fiancée! The fiancée!”
A letter came from Sasha in Saratov. In his merry, dancing hand he wrote that the trip down the Volga had been quite successful, but that he had fallen slightly ill in Saratov, had lost his voice, and had been in the hospital for two weeks now. She realized what it meant, and a foreboding that amounted to certainty came over her. And she found it unpleasant that this foreboding and her thoughts of Sasha did not trouble her as before. She wanted passionately to live, wanted to be in Petersburg, and her acquaintance with Sasha now seemed to her something dear, but long, long past! She did not sleep all night and in the morning sat by the window, listening. And, indeed, voices could be heard downstairs; her grandmother was quickly, anxiously asking about something. Then someone began to weep … When Nadya came downstairs, her grandmother was standing in the corner and praying, and her face was wet with tears. On the table lay a telegram.
Nadya paced the room for a long time, listening to her grandmother’s weeping, then picked up the telegram and read it. It said that on the previous morning, in Saratov, there died of consumption Alexander Timofeich, or simply Sasha.
The grandmother and Nina Ivanovna went to church to order a panikhida, but Nadya stil
l paced the rooms for a long time, thinking. She realized clearly that her life had been turned around, as Sasha had wanted, that here she was lonely, alien, not needed, and that she needed nothing here, that all former things had been torn from her and had vanished, as if they had been burned and their ashes scattered on the wind. She went into Sasha’s room and stood there for a while.
“Farewell, dear Sasha!” she thought, and pictured before her a new, expansive, spacious life, and that life, still unclear, full of mysteries, lured and beckoned to her.
She went to her room upstairs to pack, and the next morning said good-bye to her family and, alive, cheerful, left town—as she thought, forever.
DECEMBER 1903
NOTES
THE DEATH OF A CLERK
1. The name Cherviakov comes from the Russian word cherviak (“worm”).
2. A popular operetta by French composer Robert Planquette (1843–1903).
3. The name Brizzhalov suggests a combination of bryzgat’ (“to spray”) and briuzzhat’ (“to grumble”).
SMALL FRY
1. The name Nevyrazimov comes from nevyrazimy (“inexpressible”), also used as a euphemism for men’s long underwear (nevyrazimye, i.e., unmentionables).
2. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, Easter Sunday and the days of the week following Easter are called “bright” days.
3. In Russia windows are double-glazed and sealed for the winter, but one pane can be opened for ventilation.
4. Easter is preceded by the forty-day fast known as the Great Lent, which continues through Holy Week and ends with a feast on Easter Day.
5. A kulich is a dense, sweet yeast bread that is traditionally eaten at Easter; the loaves are brought to church to be blessed.
6. Titular councillor was ninth of the fourteen ranks of the Russian imperial civil service established by Peter the Great, immortalized by Nikolai Gogol in the figure of the poor clerk Akaky Akakievich, hero of “The Overcoat.”
7. The Order of St. Stanislas, a Polish civil order founded in 1792, began to be awarded in Russia in 1831; its decoration was in the form of a star.
PANIKHIDA
1. The church is named for a famous iconographic type of the Mother of God which Byzantine tradition traces back to an image painted by Saint Luke. There is no agreement among scholars on the origin and meaning of the word “Hodigitria.”
2. An iconostasis is an icon-bearing partition with three doors that spans the width of an Orthodox church, separating the body of the church from the sanctuary.
3. A prosphora is a small, round loaf of leavened bread used for communion in the Orthodox Church. Prosphoras are sent in to the sanctuary by each of the faithful with a list of names of people to be commemorated during the offering, and are sent out again for distribution at the end of the liturgy.
4. The proskomedia is the office of preparation of the bread and wine for the sacrament of communion.
5. The forgiving of the harlot is recounted in John 8:3–11. Mary of Egypt, a fifth-century saint greatly venerated in Orthodoxy, was a prostitute who converted to Christianity and spent forty-seven years in the desert in prayer and repentance.
6. A panikhida, which gives the story its title, is an Orthodox prayer service in commemoration of the dead.
7. Kolivo, also known as kutya, is a special dish made of grain (wheat or rice) mixed with nuts, raisins, and honey, served in the church on occasions of commemoration of the dead.
8. Esau’s selling of his birthright “for a mess of pottage” is told in Genesis 27:1–46, the punishment of Sodom in Genesis 18:20–19:29, and the account of Joseph in Genesis 37.
EASTER NIGHT
1. The exclamation “Christ is risen!” is heard during the Orthodox Easter service, and is also used as a greeting among Orthodox Christians during the forty days between Easter and the Ascension.
2. The words are from the first hymn (troparion) of Canticle IX of the Easter matins (Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church, trans. by Isabel F. Hapgood, fifth edition, Englewood, N.J., 1975, p. 232).
3. An akathist (from the Greek “standing up”) is a special canticle sung in honor of Christ, the Mother of God, or one of the saints.
4. An archimandrite is the Orthodox equivalent of an abbot, the superior of a monastery or superintendent of several monasteries.
5. Saint Nicholas, fourth-century bishop of Myra in Lycia (Asia Minor), is one of the most highly venerated saints in all Christendom.
6. The church is emptied and the people and clergy process around it with candles before going back in to begin the Easter service.
7. See note 5 to “Small Fry.”
8. The royal doors are the central doors in the iconostasis (see note 2 to “Panikhida”); a large church would have several side chapels with their own iconostasis and royal doors; they are all left open throughout the Easter service, signifying that the Kingdom of Heaven is now open to all.
9. From the first hymn of Canticle VIII of the Easter matins (Hapgood, p. 231).
10. See note 4 to “Small Fry.”
VANKA
1. Watchmen patrolled their territory at night rapping out the hours on an iron or wooden bar.
2. A village Christmas custom, commemorating the wise men’s journey to Bethlehem (Matthew 2:1–12).
3. In a village church anyone who wanted to could sing in the choir; the choirs in large city churches could be more selective.
A BORING STORY
1. See note 2 to “Panikhida.” The iconostasis of a large church may be hung with a great many icons, large and small, often in gold or silver casings.
2. N. I. Pirogov (1810–81) was a great Russian surgeon and anatomist, active in questions of popular education. K. D. Kavelin (1818–85) was a liberal journalist and social activist. N. A. Nekrasov (1821–78) was a poet and liberal social critic, editor of the influential journal The Contemporary.
3. The reference is to the eminent Russian writer Ivan Turgenev (1818–83); we are unable to identify the heroine Nikolai Stepanovich has in mind.
4. A novel by the German writer Friedrich Spielhagen (1829–1911).
5. “History of the illness” (Latin), the heading on the blank page to be filled in by the doctor.
6. V. L. Gruber (1814–85) was a Russian anatomist. A. I. Babukhin (1835–91) was a histologist and physiologist.
7. M. D. Skobelev (1843–82) was a Russian general prominent at the time of the Russo-Turkish war of 1877–78.
8. Professor V. G. Perov (1833–82), Russian artist, was head of the Russian Academy of Art in Petersburg.
9. Adelina Patti (1843–1919), Italian opera singer, was one of the great sopranos of her time, known especially for her performances of Mozart, Rossini, and Verdi.
10. Cf. Hamlet, II, 2, 562: “What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba …?”
11. The phrase, become proverbial, is from Part I, chapter 8 of Dead Souls, by Nikolai Gogol (1809–52).
12. Chatsky is the hero of the comedy in verse Woe from Wit (1822–23), the first real masterpiece of the Russian theater, by Alexander S. Griboedov (1795–1829).
13. Having the civil service rank of privy councillor, third of the fourteen degrees established by Peter the Great and equivalent to the military rank of general, Nikolai Stepanovich is also entitled to be addressed as “Your Excellency.”
14. Nikolai Stepanovich lists some of the homeliest and most comforting staples of Russian peasant cooking, including kasha, most often made from buckwheat.
15. Seminary education was open to poorer people who could not afford private tutors or expensive schools, and did not necessarily mean that the student was preparing for a church career.
16. The first line of the poem “Reflection,” by Mikhail Lermontov (1814–41).
17. N. A. Dobrolyubov (1836–61) was a radical literary critic of the earnest materialist sort, with a prominent forehead and tubercular pallor.
18. A. A. Arakcheev (1769–1834), all-powerful minister under emp
erors Paul I and Alexander I, was an extreme reactionary and strict disciplinarian.
19. “Final argument” (Latin). The full phrase, ultima ratio regum (“the final argument of kings”), was the motto Louis XIV had engraved on his cannons.
20. 2 Kings 2:23.
21. There are several important Orthodox feast days during the summer months: the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul on June 29, the feast of the Transfiguration on August 6, and of the Dormition of the Mother of God (Assumption) on August 15. However, Chekhov also commonly refers to ordinary Sundays as feast days.
22. A distortion of the opening line of the old Latin students’ song Gaudeamus igitur, juvenes dum sumus (“Let us make merry while we are young”).
23. N. I. Krylov (1807–79) was a famous Russian jurist. Revel is the old name of Tallinn, capital of Estonia.
24. A quotation from the fable “The Eagle and the Hens,” by the Russian poet and fabulist I. A. Krylov (1768–1844).
25. Berdichev, a town in the Ukraine, is synonymous with deep provinciality.
26. Actual illustrated magazines of the time.
27. A reference to the Russian law requiring the use of internal passports for citizens traveling within the country. At the time, Russia was the only European country to have such a system.
28. These words (Gnôthi seauton in Greek) were inscribed on the pediment of the oracular temple of Apollo at Delphi; Socrates adopted them as his personal motto.
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