The Tales of Chekhov

by Anton Chekhov

  They all looked into their plates, but Mashenka fancied after the lady’s words that every one was looking at her. A lump rose in her throat; she began crying and put her handkerchief to her lips.

  “Pardon,” she muttered. “I can’t help it. My head aches. I’ll go away.”

  And she got up from the table, scraping her chair awkwardly, and went out quickly, still more overcome with confusion.

  “It’s beyond everything!” said Nikolay Sergeitch, frowning. “What need was there to search her room? How out of place it was!”

  “I don’t say she took the brooch,” said Fedosya Vassilyevna, “but can you answer for her? To tell the truth, I haven’t much confidence in these learned paupers.”

  “It really was unsuitable, Fenya. . . . Excuse me, Fenya, but you’ve no kind of legal right to make a search.”

  “I know nothing about your laws. All I know is that I’ve lost my brooch. And I will find the brooch!” She brought her fork down on the plate with a clatter, and her eyes flashed angrily. “And you eat your dinner, and don’t interfere in what doesn’t concern you!”

  Nikolay Sergeitch dropped his eyes mildly and sighed. Meanwhile Mashenka, reaching her room, flung herself on her bed. She felt now neither alarm nor shame, but she felt an intense longing to go and slap the cheeks of this hard, arrogant, dull-witted, prosperous woman.

  Lying on her bed she breathed into her pillow and dreamed of how nice it would be to go and buy the most expensive brooch and fling it into the face of this bullying woman. If only it were God’s will that Fedosya Vassilyevna should come to ruin and wander about begging, and should taste all the horrors of poverty and dependence, and that Mashenka, whom she had insulted, might give her alms! Oh, if only she could come in for a big fortune, could buy a carriage, and could drive noisily past the windows so as to be envied by that woman!

  But all these were only dreams, in reality there was only one thing left to do—to get away as quickly as possible, not to stay another hour in this place. It was true it was terrible to lose her place, to go back to her parents, who had nothing; but what could she do? Mashenka could not bear the sight of the lady of the house nor of her little room; she felt stifled and wretched here. She was so disgusted with Fedosya Vassilyevna, who was so obsessed by her illnesses and her supposed aristocratic rank, that everything in the world seemed to have become coarse and unattractive because this woman was living in it. Mashenka jumped up from the bed and began packing.

  “May I come in?” asked Nikolay Sergeitch at the door; he had come up noiselessly to the door, and spoke in a soft, subdued voice. “May I?”

  “Come in.”

  He came in and stood still near the door. His eyes looked dim and his red little nose was shiny. After dinner he used to drink beer, and the fact was perceptible in his walk, in his feeble, flabby hands.

  “What’s this?” he asked, pointing to the basket.

  “I am packing. Forgive me, Nikolay Sergeitch, but I cannot remain in your house. I feel deeply insulted by this search!”

  “I understand. . . . Only you are wrong to go. Why should you? They’ve searched your things, but you . . . what does it matter to you? You will be none the worse for it.”

  Mashenka was silent and went on packing. Nikolay Sergeitch pinched his moustache, as though wondering what he should say next, and went on in an ingratiating voice:

  “I understand, of course, but you must make allowances. You know my wife is nervous, headstrong; you mustn’t judge her too harshly.”

  Mashenka did not speak.

  “If you are so offended,” Nikolay Sergeitch went on, “well, if you like, I’m ready to apologise. I ask your pardon.”

  Mashenka made no answer, but only bent lower over her box. This exhausted, irresolute man was of absolutely no significance in the household. He stood in the pitiful position of a dependent and hanger-on, even with the servants, and his apology meant nothing either.

  “H’m! . . . You say nothing! That’s not enough for you. In that case, I will apologise for my wife. In my wife’s name. . . . She behaved tactlessly, I admit it as a gentleman. . . .”

  Nikolay Sergeitch walked about the room, heaved a sigh, and went on:

  “Then you want me to have it rankling here, under my heart. . . . You want my conscience to torment me. . . .”

  “I know it’s not your fault, Nikolay Sergeitch,” said Mashenka, looking him full in the face with her big tear-stained eyes. “Why should you worry yourself?”

  “Of course, no. . . . But still, don’t you . . . go away. I entreat you.”

  Mashenka shook her head. Nikolay Sergeitch stopped at the window and drummed on the pane with his finger-tips.

  “Such misunderstandings are simply torture to me,” he said. “Why, do you want me to go down on my knees to you, or what? Your pride is wounded, and here you’ve been crying and packing up to go; but I have pride, too, and you do not spare it! Or do you want me to tell you what I would not tell as Confession? Do you? Listen; you want me to tell you what I won’t tell the priest on my deathbed?”

  Mashenka made no answer.

  “I took my wife’s brooch,” Nikolay Sergeitch said quickly. “Is that enough now? Are you satisfied? Yes, I . . . took it. . . . But, of course, I count on your discretion. . . . For God’s sake, not a word, not half a hint to any one!”

  Mashenka, amazed and frightened, went on packing; she snatched her things, crumpled them up, and thrust them anyhow into the box and the basket. Now, after this candid avowal on the part of Nikolay Sergeitch, she could not remain another minute, and could not understand how she could have gone on living in the house before.

  “And it’s nothing to wonder at,” Nikolay Sergeitch went on after a pause. “It’s an everyday story! I need money, and she . . . won’t give it to me. It was my father’s money that bought this house and everything, you know! It’s all mine, and the brooch belonged to my mother, and . . . it’s all mine! And she took it, took possession of everything. . . . I can’t go to law with her, you’ll admit. . . . I beg you most earnestly, overlook it . . . stay on. Tout comprendre, tout pardonner. Will you stay?”

  “No!” said Mashenka resolutely, beginning to tremble. “Let me alone, I entreat you!”

  “Well, God bless you!” sighed Nikolay Sergeitch, sitting down on the stool near the box. “I must own I like people who still can feel resentment, contempt, and so on. I could sit here forever and look at your indignant face. . . . So you won’t stay, then? I understand. . . . It’s bound to be so. . . Yes, of course. . . . It’s all right for you, but for me—wo-o-o-o! . . . I can’t stir a step out of this cellar. I’d go off to one of our estates, but in every one of them there are some of my wife’s rascals. . . stewards, experts, damn them all! They mortgage and remortgage. . . . You mustn’t catch fish, must keep off the grass, mustn’t break the trees.”

  “Nikolay Sergeitch!” his wife’s voice called from the drawing-room. “Agnia, call your master!”

  “Then you won’t stay?” asked Nikolay Sergeitch, getting up quickly and going towards the door. “You might as well stay, really. In the evenings I could come and have a talk with you. Eh? Stay! If you go, there won’t be a human face left in the house. It’s awful!”

  Nikolay Sergeitch’s pale, exhausted face besought her, but Mashenka shook her head, and with a wave of his hand he went out.

  Half an hour later she was on her way.

  Ionitch

  I

  W

  hen visitors to the provincial town S—— complained of the dreariness and monotony of life, the inhabitants of the town, as though defending themselves, declared that it was very nice in S——, that there was a library, a theatre, a club; that they had balls; and, finally, that there were clever, agreeable, and interesting families with whom one could make acquaintance. And they used to point to the family of the Turkins as the most highly cultivated and talented.

  This family lived in their own house in the principal street, nea
r the Governor’s. Ivan Petrovitch Turkin himself—a stout, handsome, dark man with whiskers—used to get up amateur performances for benevolent objects, and used to take the part of an elderly general and cough very amusingly. He knew a number of anecdotes, charades, proverbs, and was fond of being humorous and witty, and he always wore an expression from which it was impossible to tell whether he were joking or in earnest. His wife, Vera Iosifovna—a thin, nice-looking lady who wore a pince-nez—used to write novels and stories, and was very fond of reading them aloud to her visitors. The daughter, Ekaterina Ivanovna, a young girl, used to play on the piano. In short, every member of the family had a special talent. The Turkins welcomed visitors, and good-humouredly displayed their talents with genuine simplicity. Their stone house was roomy and cool in summer; half of the windows looked into a shady old garden, where nightingales used to sing in the spring. When there were visitors in the house, there was a clatter of knives in the kitchen and a smell of fried onions in the yard—and that was always a sure sign of a plentiful and savoury supper to follow.

  And as soon as Dmitri Ionitch Startsev was appointed the district doctor, and took up his abode at Dyalizh, six miles from S——, he, too, was told that as a cultivated man it was essential for him to make the acquaintance of the Turkins. In the winter he was introduced to Ivan Petrovitch in the street; they talked about the weather, about the theatre, about the cholera; an invitation followed. On a holiday in the spring—it was Ascension Day—after seeing his patients, Startsev set off for town in search of a little recreation and to make some purchases. He walked in a leisurely way (he had not yet set up his carriage), humming all the time:

  “‘Before I’d drunk the tears from life’s goblet. . . .’”

  In town he dined, went for a walk in the gardens, then Ivan Petrovitch’s invitation came into his mind, as it were of itself, and he decided to call on the Turkins and see what sort of people they were.

  “How do you do, if you please?” said Ivan Petrovitch, meeting him on the steps. “Delighted, delighted to see such an agreeable visitor. Come along; I will introduce you to my better half. I tell him, Verotchka,” he went on, as he presented the doctor to his wife—“I tell him that he has no human right to sit at home in a hospital; he ought to devote his leisure to society. Oughtn’t he, darling?”

  “Sit here,” said Vera Iosifovna, making her visitor sit down beside her. “You can dance attendance on me. My husband is jealous—he is an Othello; but we will try and behave so well that he will notice nothing.”

  “Ah, you spoilt chicken!” Ivan Petrovitch muttered tenderly, and he kissed her on the forehead. “You have come just in the nick of time,” he said, addressing the doctor again. “My better half has written a ‘hugeous’ novel, and she is going to read it aloud to-day.”

  “Petit Jean,” said Vera Iosifovna to her husband, “dites que l’on nous donne du thé.”

  Startsev was introduced to Ekaterina Ivanovna, a girl of eighteen, very much like her mother, thin and pretty. Her expression was still childish and her figure was soft and slim; and her developed girlish bosom, healthy and beautiful, was suggestive of spring, real spring.

  Then they drank tea with jam, honey, and sweetmeats, and with very nice cakes, which melted in the mouth. As the evening came on, other visitors gradually arrived, and Ivan Petrovitch fixed his laughing eyes on each of them and said:

  “How do you do, if you please?”

  Then they all sat down in the drawing-room with very serious faces, and Vera Iosifovna read her novel. It began like this: “The frost was intense. . . .” The windows were wide open; from the kitchen came the clatter of knives and the smell of fried onions. . . . It was comfortable in the soft deep arm-chair; the lights had such a friendly twinkle in the twilight of the drawing-room, and at the moment on a summer evening when sounds of voices and laughter floated in from the street and whiffs of lilac from the yard, it was difficult to grasp that the frost was intense, and that the setting sun was lighting with its chilly rays a solitary wayfarer on the snowy plain. Vera Iosifovna read how a beautiful young countess founded a school, a hospital, a library, in her village, and fell in love with a wandering artist; she read of what never happens in real life, and yet it was pleasant to listen—it was comfortable, and such agreeable, serene thoughts kept coming into the mind, one had no desire to get up.

  “Not badsome . . .” Ivan Petrovitch said softly.

  And one of the visitors hearing, with his thoughts far away, said hardly audibly:

  “Yes . . . truly. . . .”

  One hour passed, another. In the town gardens close by a band was playing and a chorus was singing. When Vera Iosifovna shut her manuscript book, the company was silent for five minutes, listening to “Lutchina” being sung by the chorus, and the song gave what was not in the novel and is in real life.

  “Do you publish your stories in magazines?” Startsev asked Vera Iosifovna.

  “No,” she answered. “I never publish. I write it and put it away in my cupboard. Why publish?” she explained. “We have enough to live on.”

  And for some reason every one sighed.

  “And now, Kitten, you play something,” Ivan Petrovitch said to his daughter.

  The lid of the piano was raised and the music lying ready was opened. Ekaterina Ivanovna sat down and banged on the piano with both hands, and then banged again with all her might, and then again and again; her shoulders and bosom shook. She obstinately banged on the same notes, and it sounded as if she would not leave off until she had hammered the keys into the piano. The drawing-room was filled with the din; everything was resounding; the floor, the ceiling, the furniture. . . . Ekaterina Ivanovna was playing a difficult passage, interesting simply on account of its difficulty, long and monotonous, and Startsev, listening, pictured stones dropping down a steep hill and going on dropping, and he wished they would leave off dropping; and at the same time Ekaterina Ivanovna, rosy from the violent exercise, strong and vigorous, with a lock of hair falling over her forehead, attracted him very much. After the winter spent at Dyalizh among patients and peasants, to sit in a drawing-room, to watch this young, elegant, and, in all probability, pure creature, and to listen to these noisy, tedious but still cultured sounds, was so pleasant, so novel. . . .

  “Well, Kitten, you have played as never before,” said Ivan Petrovitch, with tears in his eyes, when his daughter had finished and stood up. “Die, Denis; you won’t write anything better.”

  All flocked round her, congratulated her, expressed astonishment, declared that it was long since they had heard such music, and she listened in silence with a faint smile, and her whole figure was expressive of triumph.

  “Splendid, superb!”

  “Splendid,” said Startsev, too, carried away by the general enthusiasm. “Where have you studied?” he asked Ekaterina Ivanovna. “At the Conservatoire?”

  “No, I am only preparing for the Conservatoire, and till now have been working with Madame Zavlovsky.”

  “Have you finished at the high school here?”

  “Oh, no,” Vera Iosifovna answered for her, “We have teachers for her at home; there might be bad influences at the high school or a boarding school, you know. While a young girl is growing up, she ought to be under no influence but her mother’s.”

  “All the same, I’m going to the Conservatoire,” said Ekaterina Ivanovna.

  “No. Kitten loves her mamma. Kitten won’t grieve papa and mamma.”

  “No, I’m going, I’m going,” said Ekaterina Ivanovna, with playful caprice and stamping her foot.

  And at supper it was Ivan Petrovitch who displayed his talents. Laughing only with his eyes, he told anecdotes, made epigrams, asked ridiculous riddles and answered them himself, talking the whole time in his extraordinary language, evolved in the course of prolonged practice in witticism and evidently now become a habit: “Badsome,” “Hugeous,” “Thank you most dumbly,” and so on.

  But that was not all. When the guests, replete
and satisfied, trooped into the hall, looking for their coats and sticks, there bustled about them the footman Pavlusha, or, as he was called in the family, Pava—a lad of fourteen with shaven head and chubby cheeks.

  “Come, Pava, perform!” Ivan Petrovitch said to him.

  Pava struck an attitude, flung up his arm, and said in a tragic tone: “Unhappy woman, die!”

  And every one roared with laughter.

  “It’s entertaining,” thought Startsev, as he went out into the street.

  He went to a restaurant and drank some beer, then set off to walk home to Dyalizh; he walked all the way singing:

  “‘Thy voice to me so languid and caressing. . . .’”

  On going to bed, he felt not the slightest fatigue after the six miles’ walk. On the contrary, he felt as though he could with pleasure have walked another twenty.

  “Not badsome,” he thought, and laughed as he fell asleep.

  II

  Startsev kept meaning to go to the Turkins’ again, but there was a great deal of work in the hospital, and he was unable to find free time. In this way more than a year passed in work and solitude. But one day a letter in a light blue envelope was brought him from the town.

  Vera Iosifovna had been suffering for some time from migraine, but now since Kitten frightened her every day by saying that she was going away to the Conservatoire, the attacks began to be more frequent. All the doctors of the town had been at the Turkins’; at last it was the district doctor’s turn. Vera Iosifovna wrote him a touching letter in which she begged him to come and relieve her sufferings. Startsev went, and after that he began to be often, very often at the Turkins’. . . . He really did something for Vera Iosifovna, and she was already telling all her visitors that he was a wonderful and exceptional doctor. But it was not for the sake of her migraine that he visited the Turkins’ now. . . .