Ward No. 6 and Other Stories, 1892-1895

by Anton Chekhov

  Fyodor slapped the customer on the shoulder and said to his brother, ‘Aleksey, let me introduce Grigory Timofeich, the firm’s right arm in Tambov.7 He’s a shining example to the youth of today. He’s in his sixth decade, yet he has children still at their mother’s breast.’

  The clerks laughed – and so did the customer, a skinny, pale-faced old man.

  ‘It’s contrary to the course of nature’, observed the senior clerk, who was also standing behind the counter. ‘Whatever goes in must come out the same.’

  This senior clerk, a tall man of about fifty, with a dark beard, spectacles and a pencil behind the ear, usually expressed his thoughts ambiguously, in far-fetched allusions, and it was plain from his cunning smile that he attached some special, subtle meaning to his words. He loved obscuring what he said with bookish expressions that he interpreted in his own peculiar way, often giving common words – ‘furthermore’, for example – a different meaning from their original one. Whenever he said something categorically and didn’t want to be contradicted, he would stretch out his right arm and say ‘Furthermore!’

  Most surprising of all, the other clerks and the customers understood him perfectly. His name was Ivan Vasilich Pochatkin and he came from Kashira.8 Congratulating Laptev, he expressed himself as follows: ‘It is a valiant service on your part, for a woman’s heart is bold and warlike!’

  Another person of consequence in the warehouse was the clerk Makeichev, a stout, fair-haired pillar of the community, with a bald patch on top and side-whiskers. He went over to Laptev and congratulated him respectfully, in a low voice: ‘I have the honour, sir… The Lord has listened to your good father’s prayers, sir. The Lord be praised, sir.’

  Then the others came over to congratulate him on his marriage. They were all smartly dressed and all seemed impeccably honest, educated men. They spoke with provincial accents and as they said ‘sir’ after every other word their rapidly delivered congratulations – ‘I wish you, sir, all the best, sir’ – sounded like whiplashes in the air.

  Laptev soon grew bored with all this and wanted to go home. But leaving was awkward. For propriety’s sake, he must spend at least two hours in the warehouse. He walked away from the counter and asked Makeichev if they had had a good summer and if there was any news. Makeichev replied politely, without looking him in the eye. A boy with close-cropped hair, in a grey blouse, handed Laptev a glass of tea without a saucer. Soon afterwards another boy stumbled on a crate as he went past and nearly fell over. The stolid Makeichev suddenly pulled a terrifying, vicious, monster-like face and shouted at him, ‘Look where you’re going!’

  The clerks were glad that the young master was married now and had finally returned. They gave him inquisitive, welcoming looks, each considering it his duty to make some pleasant, polite remark as he went past. But Laptev was certain that all this was insincere and that the flattery came from fear. He just couldn’t forget how, fifteen years before, a mentally ill clerk had run into the street in his underclothes, barefoot, had waved his fist menacingly at the windows in the boss’s office and shouted that they were tormenting the life out of him. People kept laughing at the poor devil for a long time after he had been cured, reminding him how he had called the bosses ‘explanters’ instead of ‘exploiters’. On the whole, life was very hard for the Laptev employees and this had long been the main topic for discussion in the whole commercial quarter. Worst of all was the oriental deviousness with which old Laptev treated them. Because of this, no one knew what salary his favourites Pochatkin and Makeichev received – actually they got no more than three thousand a year, including bonuses, but he pretended he was paying them seven. The bonuses were paid every year to all the clerks, but in secret, so that those who didn’t get much were forced by pride to say they’d received a lot. Not one of the junior boys knew when he would be promoted to clerk, and none of the staff ever knew whether the boss was satisfied with him or not. Nothing was categorically forbidden the clerks, so they didn’t know what was allowed and what wasn’t. They were not in fact forbidden to marry, but they didn’t marry for fear of displeasing the boss and losing their job. They were allowed to have friends and to pay visits, but the gates were locked at nine in the evening and every morning the boss would eye his staff suspiciously and test them to see if they smelt of vodka: ‘You there, let’s smell your breath!’

  Every church holiday the staff had to go to early service and stand in church so the boss could see them all. The fasts were strictly observed. On special occasions – the boss’s or his family’s name-days, for example – the clerks had to club together and buy a cake from Fley’s,9 or an album. They lived on the ground floor of the house on Pyatnitsky Street, as well as in the outbuilding, three or four to a room, and they ate from a common bowl, although each had his own plate in front of him. If any of the boss’s family came in during a meal they would all stand up.

  Laptev realized that only those ruined by receiving their education through the old man could seriously consider him their benefactor – the remainder saw him as an enemy and ‘explanter’. Now, after a six-month absence, he saw that nothing had improved and that a change had taken place which didn’t augur well. His brother Fyodor, who used to be quiet, thoughtful and exceptionally sensitive, was rushing around the place now, looking extremely efficient and businesslike, pencil behind ear, slapping buyers on the shoulder and calling the clerks ‘My friends!’ Evidently he was acting a part, one in which Aleksey didn’t recognize him at all.

  The old man’s voice droned on non-stop. As he had nothing else to do, Laptev senior was instructing a clerk in decent living and the best way to conduct his affairs, setting himself as a good example the whole time.

  Laptev had heard that boasting, authoritarian, crushing tone of voice ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. The old man adored himself. What he said invariably gave the impression that he had made his late wife and her family happy, had encouraged his children with rewards, had been a benefactor to his clerks and the rest of the staff, and had made the whole street and all who knew him eternally grateful. Whatever he did was absolutely perfect, and if other men’s business went badly this was only because they hadn’t followed his advice, without which no business enterprise could ever hope to succeed. In church he always stood right in front of the congregation and even rebuked the priests when, according to him, they made mistakes in the ritual. This would please God, he thought, since God loved him.

  By two o’clock everyone in the warehouse was busy, except the old man, who was still going on in that thunderous voice. To give himself something to do, Laptev took some braid from a female worker and then sent her away. Then he listened to a buyer – a Vologda10 merchant – and instructed a clerk to look after him.

  The prices and serial numbers of goods were denoted by letters and cries of T-V-A and R-I-T rang out from all sides.

  When he left Laptev said goodbye only to his brother.

  ‘I’m coming to Pyatnitsky Street with the wife tomorrow’, he said. ‘But I’m warning you, if Father says one rude word to her I won’t stay one minute.’

  ‘Just the same as ever!’ Fyodor sighed. ‘Marriage hasn’t changed you. You must be kind to the old man, dear chap. All right then, see you there tomorrow at eleven. We look forward to it – come straight after church.’

  ‘I don’t go to church.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter. The main thing is, don’t be later than eleven – we have to pray to the Lord before we have lunch. Regards to my little sister-in-law, please kiss her hand for me. I have the feeling I’m going to like her very much’, Fyodor added in complete sincerity. ‘I envy you, my dear brother!’ he shouted as Aleksey was on his way downstairs.

  ‘Why all that cringing, that shyness, as if he felt naked?’ Laptev wondered as he walked down Nikolsky Street11 trying to fathom the reason for the change in Fyodor. ‘And this new way of speaking – “dear brother”, “old chap”, “God’s mercy”, “Let’s pray to the Lord” – what sanc
timonious nonsense!’12

  VI

  At eleven the next day – a Sunday – Laptev drove down Pyatnitsky Street with his wife in a one-horse carriage. He was afraid his father might have tantrums and he felt anxious even before arriving. After two nights in her father’s house, Julia Sergeyevna considered her marriage a mistake, a disaster even. If she’d gone to live anywhere but Moscow with her husband she would not have survived such horrors, she thought. But Moscow did have its diversions. She loved the streets, houses and churches: had it been possible to drive around Moscow in this magnificent sledge with expensive horses, drive all day, from morning till night, at high speed, breathing in the cool, autumn air, she might perhaps have felt a little happier.

  The coachman halted the horse near a white, newly plastered two-storey house, then turned right. Here everyone was waiting. A house porter stood at the gate in his new tunic, high boots and galoshes, together with two police constables. The whole area, from the middle of the street to the gate and then across the yard to the porch, was strewn with fresh sand. The house porter doffed his cap, the constables saluted. His brother Fyodor greeted them at the porch with a grave expression.

  ‘Delighted to meet you, my dear sister-in-law’, he said, kissing Julia’s hand. ‘Welcome.’

  He led her upstairs by the arm, then along a corridor, through a crowd of men and women. The vestibule was packed with people too, and there was a smell of incense.

  ‘I’m going to introduce you to Father now’, Fyodor whispered amid that solemn, funereal silence. ‘A venerable old man, a true paterfamilias.’

  In the large hall, near a table prepared for divine service, stood Fyodor Stepanych, a priest with his high hat, and a deacon, all evidently expecting them. The old man offered Julia his hand without a word. Everyone was quiet. Julia felt awkward.

  The priest and deacon began robing themselves. A censer, scattering sparks and smelling of incense and charcoal, was brought in. Candles were lit. Clerks entered the hall on tiptoe and stood by the wall, in two rows. It was quiet – no one even coughed.

  ‘Bless us, oh Lord’, the deacon began.

  The service was performed solemnly, with nothing omitted, and two special prayers, ‘Sweetest Jesus’ and ‘Holy Mother’, were chanted. Laptev noticed how embarrassed his wife had just been. While the prayers were being chanted and the choristers sang a triple ‘God have mercy’, in varying harmonies, he felt dreadfully tense, expecting the old man to look round any minute and rebuke him with something like ‘You don’t know how to make the sign of the cross properly.’ And he felt annoyed: what was the point of all that crowd, ceremony, priests, choir? It reeked too much of the old merchant style. But when she joined the old man in allowing the Gospel to be held over her head and then genuflected several times, he understood that it was all to her liking and he felt relieved. At the end of the service, during the prayers for long life, the priest gave the old man and Aleksey the cross to kiss, but when Julia Sergeyevna came up to him he covered it with one hand and apparently wanted to say a few words to her. They waved to the choristers to keep quiet.

  ‘The Prophet Samuel13 came to Bethlehem at the Lord’s command’, the priest began, ‘and the elders of that town besought him, trembling: “Comest thou peaceably, O prophet?” And the Prophet said, “Peaceably, I am come to make sacrifice unto the Lord! Sanctify yourselves and rejoice this day with me.” Shall we question thee, Julia, servant of the Lord, if thou comest peaceably to this house?’

  Julia was deeply moved and she blushed. After he had finished, the priest handed her the cross to kiss and then continued in a completely different tone of voice, ‘The young Mr Laptev should get married, it’s high time.’

  The choir began to sing again, the congregation moved about and it became noisy. The old man was deeply touched and his eyes were full of tears as he kissed Julia three times and made the sign of the cross before her face. ‘This is your house,’ he said. ‘I’m an old man, I don’t need anything.’

  The clerks offered their congratulations and added a few words, but the choir sang so loud it was impossible to hear anything. Then they had lunch and drank champagne. Julia sat next to the old man, who told her that living apart was not good, that one should live together, in the same house, and that divisions and disagreements led to ruin.

  ‘I made my fortune, all my children can do is spend it’, he said. ‘Now you must live in the same house as me and make money. I’m an old man, time I had a rest.’

  Julia kept glimpsing Fyodor, who was very much like her husband, but more fidgety and more reserved. He fussed around nearby, repeatedly kissing her hand.

  ‘My dear sister-in-law!’ he exclaimed, ‘we’re just ordinary people’, and as he spoke red blotches broke out all over his face. ‘We lead simple Russian, Christian lives, dear sister.’

  On the way home Laptev felt very pleased everything had gone so well and that, contrary to what he had been expecting, nothing disastrous had happened.

  ‘You seem surprised’, he told his wife, ‘that such a strong, broad-shouldered father should have such undersized, weak-chested children like myself and Fyodor. That’s easy to explain! Father married Mother when he was forty-five and she was only seventeen. She used to turn pale and tremble in his presence. Nina was first to be born and Mother was comparatively healthy at the time, so she turned out stronger, better than us. But Fyodor and myself were conceived and born when Mother was worn out from being in a perpetual state of terror. I remember Father started giving me lessons – putting it bluntly, he started beating me – before I was five even. He birched me, boxed my ears, hit me on the head. The first thing I did when I woke up every morning was wonder whether I’d be beaten that day. Fyodor and I were forbidden to play games or have any fun. We had to go to matins and early service, kiss the priests’ and monks’ hands, read special prayers at home. Now, you’re religious and you like that kind of thing, but I’m scared of religion and when I pass a church I remember my childhood and I’m frightened. When I was eight they made me start work at the warehouse. I was just a simple factory hand and this was rotten, as I was beaten almost every day. Then, after I’d started high school, I’d sit and do my homework before dinner and from then until very late I’d have to stay in that same warehouse. This went on until I was twenty-two and met Yartsev at university. He persuaded me to leave my father’s house. This Yartsev has done me a lot of good. Do you know what?’ Laptev said, cheerfully laughing. ‘Let’s go and see Yartsev right now. He’s a terribly decent person, he’ll be so touched!’

  VII

  One Saturday in November, Anton Rubinstein14 was conducting at the Conservatoire.15 The concert hall was extremely crowded and hot. Laptev stood behind some pillars, while his wife and Kostya Kochevoy sat far off, in the front, in the third or fourth row. Right at the beginning of the interval the ‘personage’, Polina Nikolayevna Rassudina, came by, quite out of the blue. Since the wedding he had often worried at the thought of meeting her. As she looked at him, openly and frankly, he remembered that he had so far made no attempt to patch things up or write a couple of friendly lines – it was just as if he were hiding from her. He felt ashamed and he blushed. She shook his hand firmly and impulsively, and asked, ‘Have you seen Yartsev?’

  Without waiting for a reply she moved swiftly on, with long strides, as if someone were pushing her from behind.

  She was extremely thin and ugly, with a long nose, and she looked constantly tired and worn out: apparently she was always having great difficulty in keeping her eyes open and not falling over. She had beautiful, dark eyes and a clever, kind, sincere expression, but her movements were jerky and brusque. She wasn’t easy to talk to since she was incapable of listening or speaking calmly. Loving her had been a difficult proposition. When she stayed with Laptev she used to have long, loud fits of laughter, covering her face with her hands and maintaining that her life didn’t revolve around love. She was as coy as a seventeen-year-old and all the candles had to be ext
inguished before someone kissed her. She was thirty and had married a teacher, but had long lived apart from her husband. She earned her living from music lessons and playing in quartets.

  During the Ninth Symphony she once again went past, as if by accident, but a large group of men standing behind some pillars barred her way and she stopped. Laptev noticed that she was wearing the same velvet blouse she had worn for last year’s concerts, and the year before that. Her gloves were new – and so was her fan, but cheap. She wanted to be smartly dressed, but she had no flair for it and grudged spending money. As a result, she was so badly and scruffily turned out that she could easily be mistaken for a young monk as she strode hurriedly down the street on her way to a lesson.

  The audience applauded and demanded an encore.

  ‘You’re spending this evening with me’, Polina Nikolayevna said, going up to Laptev and eyeing him severely. ‘We’ll go and have tea together when the concert’s finished. Do you hear? I insist on it. You owe me a lot and you have no moral right to refuse me this little trifle.’

  ‘All right, let’s go then’, Laptev agreed.

  After the symphony there were endless encores. The audience rose and left extremely slowly. But Laptev couldn’t leave without telling his wife, so he had to stand at the door and wait.

  ‘I’m just dying for a cup of tea’, Rassudina complained. ‘I’m simply burning inside.’

  ‘We can get some tea here’, Laptev said. ‘Let’s go to the bar.’

  ‘No, I don’t have the money to throw away on barmen. I’m not a businessman’s wife!’

  He offered her his arm, but she refused, producing that long, tedious sentence he had heard from her so often before, to the effect that she didn’t consider herself one of the weaker or fair sex and could dispense with the services of gentlemen.