The Steppe and Other Stories, 1887-91

by Anton Chekhov

  They sew him up in sailcloth, putting in two iron bars to weigh him down. Stitched up in sailcloth he resembles a carrot or a radish: wide at the head, narrow at the feet. They take him on deck before sunset and lay him on a plank; one end of the plank rests on the ship’s rail, the other on a box placed on a stool. The discharged soldiers and crew stand around, their heads bared.

  ‘Blessed be the Lord,’ chants the priest. ‘As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be!’

  ‘Amen!’ three sailors sing.

  The soldiers and the crew cross themselves and look sideways at the waves. It is strange that a man has been sewn up in sailcloth and that in a moment he will fly into those waves. Could such a thing really happen to them?

  The priest scatters earth over Gusev and makes an obeisance. They sing ‘Eternal Memory’.

  The officer of the watch tilts one end of the plank. Gusev slides down, flies off head first, turns a somersault and – splash into the water! The foam covers him and for a moment he seems wrapped in lace; but the moment passes and he vanishes beneath the waves.

  Quickly he sinks towards the bottom. Will he reach it? They say it’s three miles deep. After sinking eight or ten fathoms he begins to move more and more slowly, swaying rhythmically as if he is deliberating. Then, caught by a current, he is borne quicker sideways than downwards.

  And now he meets on his descent a shoal of tiny pilot-fish. Seeing the dark body the fish stop dead in their tracks, then all of them suddenly turn tail and vanish. Less than a minute later they again swoop on Gusev as swift as arrows and trace zigzags in the water around him…

  Then another dark shape looms. It is a shark. With dignity and indifferently, apparently not even noticing Gusev, it glides beneath him and Gusev sinks onto its back. Then it turns belly upwards, basks in the warm, limpid water and lazily opens its jaws with their two rows of teeth. The pilot-fish are delighted: they stop and wait to see what will happen next. After toying with the body the shark nonchalantly puts its jaws under it, cautiously touches it with its teeth and the sailcloth tears along its full length, from head to foot. One of the weights falls out, scares the pilot-fish, strikes the shark on the side and rapidly goes to the bottom.

  But meanwhile, up above where the sun is setting, clouds are massing, one like a triumphal arch, another like a lion, a third like a pair of scissors. A broad green shaft of light comes out from the clouds, reaching to the very centre of the sky. A moment later a violet ray settles next to it, then a golden ray, then one of pink. The sky turns a delicate lilac. Surveying this magnificent, magical sky, the ocean frowns at first, but before long it too takes on gentle, joyous, ardent hues which are difficult to name in the language of man.

  The Duel

  I

  It was eight in the morning, a time when officers, civil servants and visitors usually took a dip in the sea after the hot, stuffy night, proceeding to the Pavilion afterwards for tea or coffee. When Ivan Layevsky, a thin, fair-haired young man of about twenty-eight, came down for his bathe in slippers and with his Ministry of Finance peaked cap, he met many of his friends on the beach, including Samoylenko, an army doctor.

  The stout, red-faced, flabby Samoylenko with his large, close-cropped head, big nose, black bushy eyebrows, grey side-whiskers and no neck to speak of, with a hoarse soldier’s voice as well, struck all newcomers as an unpleasant army upstart. But about two or three days after the first meeting his face began to strike them as exceptionally kind, amiable, handsome even. Although a rude-mannered, clumsy person, he was docile, infinitely kind, good-humoured and obliging. He called everyone in town by their Christian names, lent money to everyone, gave medical treatment to all, arranged marriages, patched up quarrels and organized picnics, where he grilled kebabs and made a very tasty grey mullet soup. He was always helping people and interceding for them, and there was always something that made him happy. He was generally regarded as a saint, with just two weaknesses: firstly, he was ashamed of his own kindness and tried to conceal it behind a forbidding expression and an affected rudeness; secondly, he liked to be called ‘General’ by the medical orderlies and soldiers, although he was only a colonel.

  ‘Just answer one question for me, Alexander,’ Layevsky began when he and Samoylenko were right up to their shoulders in the water. ‘Suppose you fell in love and had an affair with the woman. Suppose you lived with her for more than two years and then, as happens so often, you stopped loving her and felt she was no more than a stranger. What would you have done in that event?’

  ‘Very simple. I would say “Get out, my dear” – and that would be that.’

  ‘That’s easy enough to say! But supposing she had nowhere to go? Supposing she was all on her own, with no family, not a penny to her name, no job…’

  ‘What of it? Five hundred roubles down, to keep her quiet, or twenty-five a month and no arguments. Very simple.’

  ‘Let’s assume you could pay her the five hundred or twenty-five a month, but the woman I’m talking about is educated and has her pride. Could you really offer someone like that money? How would you pay her?’

  Samoylenko wanted to give him an answer, but at that moment a large wave broke over them both, crashed onto the beach and roared back over the shingle. The two friends came out of the water and started dressing.

  ‘Of course it’s difficult living with a woman if you don’t love her,’ Samoylenko said, shaking the sand out of his boot. ‘But you must consider, Ivan, would it be humane? If it were me, I wouldn’t let her see I didn’t love her any more and I’d stay with her until my dying day.’ Suddenly he felt ashamed of these words and thought again. ‘In my opinion we’d be better off if there weren’t any women at all, damn them!’

  The friends dressed and went into the Pavilion where Samoylenko was one of the regulars, and even had his own cups, saucers and glasses reserved for him. Every morning he was served a cup of coffee, a tall, cut-glass tumbler of iced water and a glass of brandy on a tray. First he would drink the brandy, then the hot coffee, then the iced water, all of which obviously gave him great enjoyment, as afterwards his eyes would gleam and he would gaze at the sea, stroking his side-whiskers with both hands, and say: ‘A remarkably beautiful view!’

  Layevsky was feeling jaded and lifeless after a long night of gloomy, empty thoughts which had disturbed his sleep and only intensified the humidity and darkness, it seemed. Nor did the swim and the coffee make him feel any better. ‘Alexander, may we carry on this conversation?’ he said. ‘I shan’t hide anything and I’m telling you quite candidly, as a friend: things with Nadezhda are bad… very bad! Forgive me for letting you into my secrets, but I must tell someone.’

  Samoylenko had anticipated that he was going to tell him this; he lowered his eyes and drummed his fingers on the table.

  ‘I’ve lived with her for two years and now I don’t love her any more…’ Layevsky said. ‘To be more precise, I’ve come to realize I never did love her. These two years have been sheer delusion.’

  Layevsky had the habit of closely studying his pink palms, biting his nails or crumpling his shirt cuffs during a conversation. And this is what he did now. ‘I know only too well you can’t help,’ he said, ‘but I’m telling you, talking things over is the only salvation for failures, or Superfluous Men1 like yours truly. I always feel I have to start generalizing after anything I do, I have to find an explanation and justification for my absurd existence in some sort of theory or other, in literary types – for example in the fact that we gentlefolk are becoming degenerate, and so on… All last night, for example, I consoled myself by thinking how right Tolstoy is, how ruthlessly right! And it made me feel better. A really great writer, my friend, say what you like!’

  Samoylenko, who had never read Tolstoy and had been meaning to read him every day, was taken aback and said: ‘Yes, all writers draw on their imagination, but he writes directly from nature…’

  ‘Good Lord!’ Layevsky sighed, ‘how civilization has crippled us!
I fell in love with a married woman, and she with me. At first there was kissing, and quiet evenings, and promises, and Spencer,2 and ideals, and mutual interests… What a sham! Essentially, we were just running away from her husband, but we deluded ourselves into thinking we were running away from the emptiness of our lives. We imagined our future like this: first, until we got to know the Caucasus and the people here, I would wear my civil service uniform and work in a government office; then, out in the wide open spaces, we would buy a little plot of land, work by the sweat of our brows, cultivate a vineyard, fields, and so on. If you yourself or that zoologist friend of yours, von Koren, had been in my place, perhaps you would have lived with Nadezhda for thirty years and left your heirs a thriving vineyard and three thousand acres or so of maize. But I felt a complete failure, from the very first day. It’s insufferably hot and boring in this town, no one you can make friends with, and out in the country, under every bush and stone you think you’re seeing poisonous spiders, scorpions and snakes. Beyond the fields there’s nothing but mountains and the wilderness. Foreign people, foreign landscape, pathetic cultural standards – all this, my friend, is a different proposition from strolling along the Nevsky in your fur coat, arm-in-arm with Nadezhda and dreaming of sunny climes. Here you have to go at it hammer and tongs – and I’m no fighter. Just a wretched bag of nerves, an old softy… I realized from the very first day that my ideas about the life of labour and vineyards aren’t worth a tinker’s cuss. And as for love, I must inform you that life with a woman who’s read Spencer and gone to the ends of the earth for you is just about as boring as living with any village girl. There’s that same old smell of ironing, face powder and medicine, the same curling-papers every morning, the same self-deception…’

  ‘You can’t run a household without ironing,’ Samoylenko said, blushing because Layevsky was speaking so frankly about a woman he knew. ‘Ivan, I can see you’re feeling a bit low this morning, aren’t you? Nadezhda is a beautiful, cultured woman and you’re a highly intelligent man… Of course, you’re not married,’ Samoylenko continued, looking round at the neighbouring tables, ‘but after all, that’s not your fault… What’s more, one has to cast aside one’s prejudices and keep up with modern ideas on the subject. I’m all for civil marriage myself, yes… But I do think that once you’ve started living with someone you must stay that way till your dying day.’

  ‘But without loving her?’

  ‘I’ll tell you why, here and now,’ Samoylenko said. ‘About eight years ago there was an old shipping-agent living here, a very intelligent man. This is what he used to say: the most important thing in family life is patience. Are you listening, Ivan? Not love, but patience. Love can’t last very long. You’ve been in love for two years but now your domestic life has entered that stage when you have to bring all your patience into play to maintain your equilibrium, so to speak…’

  ‘You can believe that old agent of yours if you like, but his advice makes no sense at all to me. Your old gentleman could have been fooling his partner, testing his stamina, at the same time using the unloved woman as something essential for his exercises. But I haven’t fallen that low yet. If I wanted to put my powers of endurance to the test, I’d buy dumb-bells or a lively horse, but I’d leave human beings alone.’

  Samoylenko ordered some chilled wine. After they had drunk a glass each Layevsky suddenly asked, ‘Can you please explain what softening of the brain is?’

  ‘It’s… how can I best explain it to you? It’s an illness where the brain gets softer, as if it were decomposing…’

  ‘Is it curable?’

  ‘Yes, if it hasn’t gone too far. Cold showers, plasters… and some sort of medicine you have to drink.’

  ‘Oh. Well, so you see the state I’m in. I can’t live with her, it’s more than I can cope with. While I’m sitting here with you I can philosophize and smile all right, but the moment I’m home I really get very down in the dumps. I feel so bad, so absolutely awful, that if someone told me I must live with her, let’s say just one more month, I think I’d put a bullet through my brains. And at the same time I just can’t leave her. She’s got no one else, she can’t work, neither of us has any money… Where could she go? And to whom? I just can’t think… Well now, tell me what to do.’

  ‘Hm… yes…’ Samoylenko mumbled, at a loss for a reply. ‘Does she love you?’

  ‘Yes, as much as anyone of her age and temperament needs a man. She’d find it as difficult to part with me as with her powder and curling-papers… I’m an indispensable component of her boudoir.’

  Samoylenko was taken aback by this. ‘You’re really in a foul mood today, Ivan,’ he said. ‘Probably it’s lack of sleep.’

  ‘Yes, I had a bad night… And I feel generally pretty rough, old chap. It all seems so futile, I feel so nervy, so weak… I must get away from here!’

  ‘But where to?’

  ‘Up north. To pines, mushrooms, people, ideas… I’d give half my life to be somewhere near Moscow or Tula now, to have a swim in a river, then cool down, then wander around for about three hours, with the most wretched student even, and talk, talk, talk… You remember the scent of that hay! And those evening walks in the garden when you can hear the piano in the house, the sound of a passing train…’

  Layevsky smiled with pleasure, his eyes filled with tears and in an effort to hide them he leant over to the next table for a box of matches without getting up.

  ‘It’s eighteen years since I was up north,’ Samoylenko said. ‘I’ve forgotten what it’s like there. If you ask me, nowhere’s as magnificent as the Caucasus.’

  ‘There’s a painting by Vereshchagin3 in which some prisoners condemned to death are languishing at the bottom of a terribly deep well. Your magnificent Caucasus strikes me as exactly the same kind of bottomless pit. If you offered me two choices – being a chimney-sweep in St Petersburg or a prince in this place – I’d opt for the chimney-sweep.’

  Layevsky thought for a moment. As he looked at that stooping figure, those staring eyes, that pale sweaty face with its sunken temples, the gnawed finger nails and the slipper hanging down from Layevsky’s heel, revealing a badly darned sock, Samoylenko felt a surge of pity. Then, probably because Layevsky reminded him of a helpless child, he asked:

  ‘Is your mother still alive?’

  ‘Yes, but we never see each other. She never forgave me for this affair.’

  Samoylenko was very fond of his friend. In his eyes Layevsky was a thoroughly decent ‘hail-fellow-well-met’ type, a genuine student, the kind of person with whom one could have a good laugh over a drink and a real heart-to-heart chat. What he understood about him he disliked intensely. Layevsky drank a great deal, and at the wrong time, played cards, despised his work, lived beyond his means, often used bad language, wore slippers in the street and quarrelled with Nadezhda in public. Samoylenko liked none of this. But the fact that Layevsky was once a university student, in the arts faculty, that he now subscribed to two literary reviews and often spoke so cleverly that only few could understand him, that he was living with a woman of culture – all this was beyond Samoylenko’s understanding and it pleased him; he considered Layevsky his superior and respected him.

  ‘Just one more thing,’ Layevsky said, shaking his head. ‘Just between ourselves. I’m not telling Nadezhda for the moment, so don’t let the cat out of the bag when you see her. The day before yesterday I received a letter saying her husband had died of softening of the brain.’

  ‘May he rest in peace!’ Samoylenko sighed. ‘But why are you hiding it from her?’

  ‘Showing her that letter would mean “Off to the altar, please!” Things between us have to be cleared up first. When she’s convinced that we can’t go on living together I’ll show her the letter. There’ll be no danger then.’

  ‘Do you know what, Ivan?’ Samoylenko said and his face took on a sad, pleading expression, as if he was about to beg for something very nice and was afraid of being refused. ‘Get ma
rried, my dear chap!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Do your duty by this beautiful woman! Her husband has died – this is the way Providence has of showing you what to do!’

  ‘But please try and understand, you silly man! That’s impossible. Marrying someone you don’t love is just as vile and dishonourable as celebrating Mass and not believing in God.’

  ‘But it’s your duty!’

  ‘Why is it my duty?’ Layevsky asked irritably.

  ‘Because you took her away from her husband and therefore you assumed responsibility.’

  ‘Well, I’m telling you in plain language, I don’t love her!’

  ‘Then if you don’t love her, show her some respect, spoil her a little.’

  ‘Respect, spoil?’ Layevsky said, mimicking him. ‘Do you think she’s a Mother Superior?… You’re not much of a psychologist or physiologist if you think that respect and honour on their own will do you much good when you live with a woman. What women need most is bed.’

  ‘Ivan, Ivan!’ Samoylenko said, embarrassed.

  ‘You’re a big baby, all theories. As for me, I’m old before my time and a pragmatist, so we shall never see eye to eye. Let’s change the subject.’ Layevsky called out to one of the waiters, ‘Mustafa, how much do we owe you?’

  ‘No, no,’ the doctor said, grasping Layevsky’s arm anxiously. ‘I’ll do the honours. I ordered.’ And he called out to Mustafa, ‘Charge it to me.’

  The friends got up and walked in silence along the front. They stopped at the main boulevard to say goodbye and shook hands.

  ‘You gentlemen are too spoilt!’ Samoylenko sighed. ‘Fate has sent you a young, beautiful, educated woman and you don’t want her. If only God would send me some hunch-backed old crone, how happy I should be – as long as she was affectionate and kind. I’d live in my vineyard with her and…’ Samoylenko suddenly pulled himself up. ‘As long as the old witch could keep my samovar on the boil!’