Ward No. 6 and Other Stories

by Anton Chekhov

  ‘I can’t and I won’t!’

  ‘But why not?’ Tanya asked, trembling all over. ‘Tell me, why not?’

  ‘Because I don’t like him, that’s all’, Kovrin said nonchalantly, with a shrug of the shoulders. ‘But let’s not talk about him, he’s your father.’

  ‘I just can’t understand, I really can’t!’ Tanya said, clutching her temples and staring fixedly at something. ‘Something incomprehensible and horrible is going on in this house. You’ve changed, you’re not your normal self. A clever, remarkable man like you losing your temper over trifles, getting mixed up in petty squabbles… These little things worry you and sometimes I’m simply amazed, I just can’t believe it’s really you.’ Then she continued, frightened of her own words and kissing his hands, ‘Now, now, don’t be angry, don’t be angry. You are a clever man, and a good man. You will be fair to Father, he’s so kind.’

  ‘He’s not kind, only smug. Music-hall clowns like your father, bounteous old cranks, with their well-fed, smug faces, used to touch and amuse me once in stories, farces and in real life. But now I find them repugnant. They’re egotists to the marrow. What I find most disgusting is their being so well fed, with that optimism that comes from a full belly. They’re just like oxen or wild pigs.’

  Tanya sat on the bed and lay her head on the pillow. ‘This is sheer torture’, she said and from her voice it was plain that she was utterly exhausted and that she found it hard to speak. ‘Not a single moment’s peace since winter… It’s so terrible. Oh God, I feel shocking!’

  ‘Yes, of course I’m the monster and you and your Papa are the sweet innocents. Of course!’

  His face seemed ugly and unpleasant to Tanya. Hatred and that mocking expression did not suit him. And she had in fact noticed before that there was something lacking in his face, as if that had changed too since his hair was cut short. She wanted to say something to hurt him, but immediately she became aware of this hostile feeling she grew frightened and left the bedroom.

  IX

  Kovrin was awarded a professorship. His inaugural lecture was fixed for 2 December and a notice announcing it was put up in the university corridor. But on the appointed day he cabled the dean, informing him he was not well enough to lecture.

  He had a haemorrhage in the throat. He would spit blood, but twice a month there was considerable loss of blood, which left him extremely weak and drowsy. The illness did not frighten him particularly, since he knew his late mother had lived with exactly the same disease for ten years or more. And the doctors assured him it was not dangerous, and merely advised him not to get excited, to lead a regular life and to talk as little as possible.

  In January the lecture was again cancelled for the same reason and in February it was too late to start the course, which had to be postponed until the following year.

  He no longer lived with Tanya, but with another woman two years older than he was and who cared for him as though he were a child. His state of mind was calm, submissive. He eagerly gave in to her and when Barbara (his mistress’s name) decided to take him to the Crimea he agreed, although he expected no good to come from the trip.

  They reached Sevastopol one evening and rested at a hotel before going on to Yalta the next day. They were both exhausted from the journey. Barbara drank some tea, went to bed and soon fell asleep. But Kovrin did not go to bed. Before he had left home – an hour before setting off for the station – he had received a letter from Tanya and had decided not to open it. It was now in one of his coat pockets and the thought of it had a disagreeable, unsettling effect on him. In the very depths of his heart he now considered his marriage to Tanya had been a mistake, and was pleased he had finally broken with her. The memory of that woman who had ended up as a walking skeleton and in whom everything seemed to have died – except for those large, clever, staring eyes – this memory aroused only pity in him and annoyance with himself. The writing on the envelope reminded him how unjust and cruel he had been two years ago, how he had taken revenge on others for his spiritual emptiness, his boredom, his loneliness, his dissatisfaction with life.

  In this respect he remembered how he had once torn his dissertation and all the articles written during his illness into shreds and thrown them out of the window, the scraps of paper fluttering in the breeze, catching on trees and flowers. In every line he saw strange, utterly unfounded claims, enthusiasm run riot, audacity and megalomania, which had made him feel as if he were reading a description of his own vices. But when the last notebook had been torn up and had flown through the window, he felt for some reason bitterly annoyed: he had gone to his wife and told her many unpleasant things. God, how he had tormented her! Once, when he wanted to hurt his wife, he told her that her father had played a most distasteful role in their romance, having asked him if he would marry her. Yegor Semyonych happened to hear this and rushed into the room speechless with despair; all he could do was stamp his feet and make a strange bellowing noise, as if he had lost the power of speech, while Tanya looked at her father, gave a heart-rending shriek and fainted. It was an ugly scene.

  All this came to mind at the sight of the familiar handwriting. Kovrin went out onto the balcony. The weather was warm and calm, and he could smell the sea. The magnificent bay reflected the moon and the lights, and its colour was hard to describe. It was a delicate, soft blending of dark blue and green; in places the water was like blue vitriol, in others the moonlight seemed to have taken on material substance and filled the bay instead of water. But what a harmony of colour, what a peaceful, calm and ennobling mood reigned over all!

  The windows were most probably open in the room below, beneath the balcony, as he could hear women’s voices and laughter quite distinctly. Someone was having a party, it seemed.

  Kovrin forced himself to open the letter, returned to his room and read: ‘Father has just died. I owe that to you, as you killed him. Our garden is going to rack and ruin – strangers are running it – that’s to say, what poor father feared so much has come about. I owe this to you as well. I hate you with all my heart and hope you’ll soon be dead. Oh, how I’m suffering! An unbearable pain is burning inside me. May you be damned! I took you for an outstanding man, for a genius, I loved you, but you turned out a madman…’

  Kovrin could not read any more, tore the letter up and threw it away. He was seized by a feeling of anxiety that was very close to terror. Barbara was sleeping behind a screen and he could hear her breathing. From the ground floor came women’s voices and laughter, but he felt that besides himself there wasn’t a living soul in the whole hotel. He was terrified because the unhappy, broken-hearted Tanya had cursed him in her letter and had wished for his death. He glanced at the door, as if fearing that the unknown force which had wrought such havoc in his life and in the lives of those near and dear over the last two years might come into the room and take possession of him again.

  He knew from experience that the best cure for shattered nerves is work. One should sit down at a table and force oneself at all costs to concentrate on one idea, no matter what. From his red briefcase he took out a notebook in which he had sketched out a plan for a short work he had considered compiling in case he was bored doing nothing in the Crimea. He sat at the table and busied himself with the plan, and it seemed his calm, resigned, detached state of mind was returning. The notebook and plan even stimulated him to meditate on the world’s vanity. He thought how much life demands in return for those insignificant or very ordinary blessings that it can bestow. For example, to receive a university chair in one’s late thirties, to be a run-of-the-mill professor, expounding in turgid, boring, ponderous language commonplace ideas that were not even original, in brief, to achieve the status of a third-rate scholar he, Kovrin, had had to study fifteen years – working day and night – suffer severe mental illness, experience a broken marriage and do any number of stupid, unjust things that were best forgotten. Kovrin realized quite clearly now that he was a nobody and eagerly accepted the fact since, in his op
inion, every man should be content with what he is.

  The plan would have calmed his nerves, but the sight of the shiny white pieces of letter on the floor stopped him concentrating. He got up from the table, picked up the pieces and threw them out of the window, but a light breeze blew in from the sea and scattered them over the windowsill. Once again he was gripped by that restless feeling, akin to panic, and he began to think that there was no one else besides him in the whole hotel… He went out onto the balcony. The bay, which seemed to be alive, looked at him with its many sky-blue, dark-blue, turquoise and flame-coloured eyes and beckoned him. It was truly hot and humid, and a bathe would not have come amiss. A violin began to play on the ground floor, under his balcony, and two female voices softly sang a song he knew. It was about some young girl, sick in her mind, who heard mysterious sounds one night in her garden and thought it must be a truly divine harmony, incomprehensible to us mortals… Kovrin caught his breath, he felt twinges of sadness in his heart and a wonderful, sweet, long-forgotten gladness quivered in his heart.

  A tall black column like a whirlwind or tornado appeared on the far side of the bay. With terrifying speed it moved over the water towards the hotel, growing smaller and darker as it approached, and Kovrin barely had time to move out of its path… Barefoot, arms folded over chest, with a bare grey head and black eyebrows, the monk floated past and stopped in the middle of the room.

  ‘Why didn’t you trust me?’ he asked reproachfully, looking affectionately at Kovrin. ‘If you had trusted me then, when I told you that you were a genius, you wouldn’t have spent these two years so miserably, so unprofitably.’

  Kovrin believed now that he was one of God’s Chosen, and a genius, and he vividly recollected all his previous conversations with the black monk; he wanted to speak, but the blood welled out of his throat onto his chest. Not knowing what to do, he drew his hands over his chest and his shirt cuffs became soaked with blood. He wanted to call Barbara, who was sleeping behind the screen, and with a great effort murmured, ‘Tanya!’

  He fell on the floor, lifted himself on his arms and called again, ‘Tanya!’

  He called on Tanya, on the great garden with its gorgeous flowers sprinkled with dew, he called on the park, the pines with their shaggy roots, the rye field, his wonderful learning, his youth, his daring, his joy; he called on life, which had been so beautiful. On the floor near his face, he saw a large pool of blood and was too weak now to say one word, but an ineffable, boundless happiness flooded his whole being. Beneath the balcony they were playing a serenade, and at the same time the black monk whispered to him that he was a genius and that he was dying only because his weak human body had lost its balance and could no longer serve to house a genius. When Barbara woke and came out from behind the screen Kovrin was dead and a blissful smile was frozen on his face.

  Murder

  I

  They were celebrating vespers at Progonnaya Station. A crowd of railwaymen, their wives and children, with some woodcutters and sawyers working nearby along the line, were standing before the great icon brightly painted on a gold background. All of them stood in silence, spellbound by the glittering light and the howling blizzard which had blown up all of a sudden, although it was the eve of Annunciation Day. The old priest from Vedenyapino was officiating and the singers were the precentor, and Matvey Terekhov.

  Matvey’s face glowed with joy; and as he sang he craned his neck, as though he wanted to fly up into the sky. He sang tenor and read the canon in the same sweet, persuasive tenor voice. While they were singing ‘Song of Archangels’1 he waved his hand like a choirmaster and produced some extremely complicated sounds in his effort to harmonize with the old lay reader’s hollow bass. One could see from his face that he was thoroughly enjoying himself. But then the service ended, the congregation quietly left, the place became dark and empty again, and that silence descended which is found only at lonely stations in the open country or in forests when nothing can be heard except the moaning of the wind; all one feels is emptiness all around and the wretchedness of life slowly slipping by.

  Matvey lived near the station, at his cousin’s inn. But he did not feel like going home and sat at the counter in the refreshment room talking in a low voice. ‘We had our own choir at the tile-works. And I must say, although we were just simple workmen, we were great singers. It was marvellous. We were often invited into town and when Ivan the suffragan bishop took the service at Trinity Church the cathedral choir sang in the right-hand stalls, while we were on the left. But people in the town complained we sang too long and said that lot from the tile-works were dragging things out. They were right, St Andrew’s Vigil and the Te Deum2 began before seven and didn’t finish till after ten, so very often it was gone midnight before we were back at the works.’

  Matvey sighed. ‘Really marvellous it was, Sergey Nikanorych, really marvellous. But I don’t get much joy living here in the old house. The nearest church is three miles away, I can’t manage that in my state of health and there’s no choir. And you can’t get a moment’s peace with our family, just one long racket all day, with swearing, filth, everyone eating from the same bowl like peasants, and cockroaches in the soup. If God had blessed me with good health I’d have cleared off ages ago, Sergey Nikanorych.’

  Matvey Terekhov was not old – about forty-five – but he had an unhealthy look. His face was covered in wrinkles and his thin, weedy beard was already completely white, which made him seem a lot older. He spoke cautiously, in a feeble voice, clasped his chest when he coughed – then he had the uneasy, worried look of a true hypochondriac. He would never say what exactly was wrong, but he loved telling a long story about straining himself lifting a heavy box once at the tile-works, giving himself a ‘rumpture’, as he put it, which forced him to leave his job there and go back home. But what a ‘rumpture’ was, he could not explain.

  ‘I must say, I don’t like that cousin of mine’, he continued, pouring himself some tea. ‘He’s older than me, it’s wrong to say things against him, and I’m a God-fearing man. But I just can’t stand him. He’s a proud, stern man, always swearing and tormenting the life out of his relatives and workmen, and he doesn’t go to confession. Last Sunday I asked him, all nice and friendly, “Let’s go to the service at Pakhomo, Cousin,” and he replies: “Not me, the priest there plays cards.” And he didn’t come here today either, he says the priest at Vedenyapino smokes and drinks vodka. He just hates the clergy! He says his own offices, and matins, and vespers, and his sister’s his lay reader. While he’s saying his “We beseech Thee, oh Lord”, she’s screeching away like a turkey-hen with her “Lord have mercy”. Right sinful, that’s what it is. Every day I tell him, “Come to your senses, Cousin Yakov! Repent, Cousin!”, but he just ignores me.’

  Sergey Nikanorych the buffet attendant poured out five glasses of tea and carried them to the ladies’ waiting-room on a tray. A moment later they could hear someone shouting, ‘Is that the way to serve tea, you pig? You don’t know your job!’ It was the stationmaster. A timid muttering followed, then more shouting, angry and brusque: ‘Clear off!’

  The buffet attendant returned looking very put out. ‘Time was when I waited on counts and princes’, he said softly, ‘but now I don’t know how to serve tea, do you see? Swearing at me in front of a priest and ladies!’

  Sergey Nikanorych the buffet attendant once had money and managed the refreshment room at a main-line junction in a county town. In those days he used to wear coat and tails, and a gold watch. But then he fell on bad times, all his money wasted on fancy equipment and his staff robbing him. Gradually sinking deeper and deeper into debt, he moved to a station that was not so busy. There his wife ran off with all the silver. He moved to a third station, which was even worse – they did not serve hot meals there. Then he went to a fourth. After numerous moves, sinking lower and lower the whole time, he finally ended up at Progonnaya, where all he sold was tea and cheap vodka, and where the only food he served was hard-boiled eggs
and tough sausage that smelt of tar: he himself thought it was a joke, calling it ‘bandsmen’s food’. He was completely bald on top, had bulging blue eyes and thick, fluffy whiskers which he was always combing, peering at himself in a small hand-mirror. He was perpetually tormented by memories and just could not get used to ‘bandsmen’s sausage’, to the stationmaster’s insults and the haggling peasants – in his opinion haggling was just as improper in a station refreshment room as in a chemist’s. He was ashamed of being so poverty-stricken and degraded, and this feeling of shame was his chief worry in life.

  ‘Spring’s late this year’, Matvey said, listening hard. ‘And it’s a good thing. I don’t like the spring, it’s very muddy, Sergey Nikano rych. In books they write about the spring, birds singing and the sun setting, but what’s so nice about it? A bird’s a bird, that’s all. I like good company, so I can hear what people have to say, I like chatting about religion or singing something nice in the choir. But I’ve no time for all them nightingales and nice little flowers!’

  He went on again about the tile-works and the choir, but Sergey Nikanorych was deeply offended, would not calm down and kept shrugging his shoulders and muttering. Matvey said good night and went home.

  It was not freezing – it was thawing on the roofs – yet it was snowing hard. The snow swiftly whirled through the air and white clouds chased each other along the railway track. Dimly lit by a moon that lay hidden high up in the clouds, the oak grove lining both sides of the track kept up a constant roar. How terrifying trees can be when they are shaken by a violent storm! Matvey walked along the road by the track, covering his face and hands. The wind shoved him in the back. Suddenly he caught sight of a small, wretched-looking horse, plastered with snow; a sledge scraped the bare cobbles of the road and a peasant, his muffled head as white as his horse, cracked a whip. Matvey looked round, but the sledge and peasant had already vanished as if in a dream, and he quickened his pace, suddenly feeling scared – of what, he did not know.