The Tales of Chekhov

by Anton Chekhov

  Volodya looked at the sheet that was held by a plump white hand, and thought. . . .

  “He’s mute,” said Nyuta, with wonder; “it is strange, really. . . . Listen! Be a man! Come, you might smile at least! Phew, the horrid philosopher!” she laughed. “But do you know, Volodya, why you are such a clumsy seal? Because you don’t devote yourself to the ladies. Why don’t you? It’s true there are no girls here, but there is nothing to prevent your flirting with the married ladies! Why don’t you flirt with me, for instance?”

  Volodya listened and scratched his forehead in acute and painful irresolution.

  “It’s only very proud people who are silent and love solitude,” Nyuta went on, pulling his hand away from his forehead. “You are proud, Volodya. Why do you look at me like that from under your brows? Look me straight in the face, if you please! Yes, now then, clumsy seal!”

  Volodya made up his mind to speak. Wanting to smile, he twitched his lower lip, blinked, and again put his hand to his forehead.

  “I . . . I love you,” he said.

  Nyuta raised her eyebrows in surprise, and laughed.

  “What do I hear?” she sang, as prima-donnas sing at the opera when they hear something awful. “What? What did you say? Say it again, say it again. . . .”

  “I . . . I love you!” repeated Volodya.

  And without his will’s having any part in his action, without reflection or understanding, he took half a step towards Nyuta and clutched her by the arm. Everything was dark before his eyes, and tears came into them. The whole world was turned into one big, rough towel which smelt of the bathhouse.

  “Bravo, bravo!” he heard a merry laugh. “Why don’t you speak? I want you to speak! Well?”

  Seeing that he was not prevented from holding her arm, Volodya glanced at Nyuta’s laughing face, and clumsily, awkwardly, put both arms round her waist, his hands meeting behind her back. He held her round the waist with both arms, while, putting her hands up to her head, showing the dimples in her elbows, she set her hair straight under the kerchief and said in a calm voice:

  “You must be tactful, polite, charming, and you can only become that under feminine influence. But what a wicked, angry face you have! You must talk, laugh. . . . Yes, Volodya, don’t be surly; you are young and will have plenty of time for philosophising. Come, let go of me; I am going. Let go.”

  Without effort she released her waist, and, humming something, walked out of the arbour. Volodya was left alone. He smoothed his hair, smiled, and walked three times to and fro across the arbour, then he sat down on the bench and smiled again. He felt insufferably ashamed, so much so that he wondered that human shame could reach such a pitch of acuteness and intensity. Shame made him smile, gesticulate, and whisper some disconnected words.

  He was ashamed that he had been treated like a small boy, ashamed of his shyness, and, most of all, that he had had the audacity to put his arms round the waist of a respectable married woman, though, as it seemed to him, he had neither through age nor by external quality, nor by social position any right to do so.

  He jumped up, went out of the arbour, and, without looking round, walked into the recesses of the garden furthest from the house.

  “Ah! only to get away from here as soon as possible,” he thought, clutching his head. “My God! as soon as possible.”

  The train by which Volodya was to go back with his maman was at eight-forty. There were three hours before the train started, but he would with pleasure have gone to the station at once without waiting for his maman.

  At eight o’clock he went to the house. His whole figure was expressive of determination: what would be, would be! He made up his mind to go in boldly, to look them straight in the face, to speak in a loud voice, regardless of everything.

  He crossed the terrace, the big hall and the drawing-room, and there stopped to take breath. He could hear them in the dining-room, drinking tea. Madame Shumihin, maman, and Nyuta were talking and laughing about something.

  Volodya listened.

  “I assure you!” said Nyuta. “I could not believe my eyes! When he began declaring his passion and—just imagine!—put his arms round my waist, I should not have recognised him. And you know he has a way with him! When he told me he was in love with me, there was something brutal in his face, like a Circassian.”

  “Really!” gasped maman, going off into a peal of laughter. “Really! How he does remind me of his father!”

  Volodya ran back and dashed out into the open air.

  “How could they talk of it aloud!” he wondered in agony, clasping his hands and looking up to the sky in horror. “They talk aloud in cold blood . . . and maman laughed! . . . Maman! My God, why didst Thou give me such a mother? Why?”

  But he had to go to the house, come what might. He walked three times up and down the avenue, grew a little calmer, and went into the house.

  “Why didn’t you come in in time for tea?” Madame Shumihin asked sternly.

  “I am sorry, it’s . . . it’s time for me to go,” he muttered, not raising his eyes. “Maman, it’s eight o’clock!”

  “You go alone, my dear,” said his maman languidly. “I am staying the night with Lili. Goodbye, my dear. . . . Let me make the sign of the cross over you.”

  She made the sign of the cross over her son, and said in French, turning to Nyuta:

  “He’s rather like Lermontov . . . isn’t he?”

  Saying good-bye after a fashion, without looking any one in the face, Volodya went out of the dining-room. Ten minutes later he was walking along the road to the station, and was glad of it. Now he felt neither frightened nor ashamed; he breathed freely and easily.

  About half a mile from the station, he sat down on a stone by the side of the road, and gazed at the sun, which was half hidden behind a barrow. There were lights already here and there at the station, and one green light glimmered dimly, but the train was not yet in sight. It was pleasant to Volodya to sit still without moving, and to watch the evening coming little by little. The darkness of the arbour, the footsteps, the smell of the bath-house, the laughter, and the waist—all these rose with amazing vividness before his imagination, and all this was no longer so terrible and important as before.

  “It’s of no consequence. . . . She did not pull her hand away, and laughed when I held her by the waist,” he thought. “So she must have liked it. If she had disliked it she would have been angry . . . .”

  And now Volodya felt sorry that he had not had more boldness there in the arbour. He felt sorry that he was so stupidly going away, and he was by now persuaded that if the same thing happened again he would be bolder and look at it more simply.

  And it would not be difficult for the opportunity to occur again. They used to stroll about for a long time after supper at the Shumihins’. If Volodya went for a walk with Nyuta in the dark garden, there would be an opportunity!

  “I will go back,” he thought, “and will go by the morning train to-morrow. . . . I will say I have missed the train.”

  And he turned back. . . . Madame Shumihin, Maman, Nyuta, and one of the nieces were sitting on the verandah, playing vint. When Volodya told them the lie that he had missed the train, they were uneasy that he might be late for the examination day, and advised him to get up early. All the while they were playing he sat on one side, greedily watching Nyuta and waiting. . . . He already had a plan prepared in his mind: he would go up to Nyuta in the dark, would take her by the hand, then would embrace her; there would be no need to say anything, as both of them would understand without words.

  But after supper the ladies did not go for a walk in the garden, but went on playing cards. They played till one o’clock at night, and then broke up to go to bed.

  “How stupid it all is!” Volodya thought with vexation as he got into bed. “But never mind; I’ll wait till to-morrow . . . to-morrow in the arbour. It doesn’t matter. . . .”

  He did not attempt to go to sleep, but sat in bed, hugging his knees and think
ing. All thought of the examination was hateful to him. He had already made up his mind that they would expel him, and that there was nothing terrible about his being expelled. On the contrary, it was a good thing—a very good thing, in fact. Next day he would be as free as a bird; he would put on ordinary clothes instead of his school uniform, would smoke openly, come out here, and make love to Nyuta when he liked; and he would not be a schoolboy but “a young man.” And as for the rest of it, what is called a career, a future, that was clear; Volodya would go into the army or the telegraph service, or he would go into a chemist’s shop and work his way up till he was a dispenser. . . . There were lots of callings. An hour or two passed, and he was still sitting and thinking. . . .

  Towards three o’clock, when it was beginning to get light, the door creaked cautiously and his maman came into the room.

  “Aren’t you asleep?” she asked, yawning. “Go to sleep; I have only come in for a minute. . . . I am only fetching the drops. . . .”

  “What for?”

  “Poor Lili has got spasms again. Go to sleep, my child, your examination’s to-morrow. . . .”

  She took a bottle of something out of the cupboard, went to the window, read the label, and went away.

  “Marya Leontyevna, those are not the drops!” Volodya heard a woman’s voice, a minute later. “That’s convallaria, and Lili wants morphine. Is your son asleep? Ask him to look for it. . . .”

  It was Nyuta’s voice. Volodya turned cold. He hurriedly put on his trousers, flung his coat over his shoulders, and went to the door.

  “Do you understand? Morphine,” Nyuta explained in a whisper. “There must be a label in Latin. Wake Volodya; he will find it.”

  Maman opened the door and Volodya caught sight of Nyuta. She was wearing the same loose wrapper in which she had gone to bathe. Her hair hung loose and disordered on her shoulders, her face looked sleepy and dark in the half-light. . . .

  “Why, Volodya is not asleep,” she said. “Volodya, look in the cupboard for the morphine, there’s a dear! What a nuisance Lili is! She has always something the matter.”

  Maman muttered something, yawned, and went away.

  “Look for it,” said Nyuta. “Why are you standing still?”

  Volodya went to the cupboard, knelt down, and began looking through the bottles and boxes of medicine. His hands were trembling, and he had a feeling in his chest and stomach as though cold waves were running all over his inside. He felt suffocated and giddy from the smell of ether, carbolic acid, and various drugs, which he quite unnecessarily snatched up with his trembling fingers and spilled in so doing.

  “I believe maman has gone,” he thought. “That’s a good thing . . . a good thing. . . .”

  “Will you be quick?” said Nyuta, drawling.

  “In a minute. . . . Here, I believe this is morphine,” said Volodya, reading on one of the labels the word “morph . . .” “Here it is!”

  Nyuta was standing in the doorway in such a way that one foot was in his room and one was in the passage. She was tidying her hair, which was difficult to put in order because it was so thick and long, and looked absent-mindedly at Volodya. In her loose wrap, with her sleepy face and her hair down, in the dim light that came into the white sky not yet lit by the sun, she seemed to Volodya captivating, magnificent. . . . Fascinated, trembling all over, and remembering with relish how he had held that exquisite body in his arms in the arbour, he handed her the bottle and said:

  “How wonderful you are!”

  “What?”

  She came into the room.

  “What?” she asked, smiling.

  He was silent and looked at her, then, just as in the arbour, he took her hand, and she looked at him with a smile and waited for what would happen next.

  “I love you,” he whispered.

  She left off smiling, thought a minute, and said:

  “Wait a little; I think somebody is coming. Oh, these schoolboys!” she said in an undertone, going to the door and peeping out into the passage. “No, there is no one to be seen. . . .”

  She came back.

  Then it seemed to Volodya that the room, Nyuta, the sunrise and himself—all melted together in one sensation of acute, extraordinary, incredible bliss, for which one might give up one’s whole life and face eternal torments. . . . But half a minute passed and all that vanished. Volodya saw only a fat, plain face, distorted by an expression of repulsion, and he himself suddenly felt a loathing for what had happened.

  “I must go away, though,” said Nyuta, looking at Volodya with disgust. “What a wretched, ugly . . . fie, ugly duckling!”

  How unseemly her long hair, her loose wrap, her steps, her voice seemed to Volodya now! . . .

  “‘Ugly duckling’ . . .” he thought after she had gone away. “I really am ugly . . . everything is ugly.”

  The sun was rising, the birds were singing loudly; he could hear the gardener walking in the garden and the creaking of his wheelbarrow . . . and soon afterwards he heard the lowing of the cows and the sounds of the shepherd’s pipe. The sunlight and the sounds told him that somewhere in this world there is a pure, refined, poetical life. But where was it? Volodya had never heard a word of it from his maman or any of the people round about him.

  When the footman came to wake him for the morning train, he pretended to be asleep. . . .

  “Bother it! Damn it all!” he thought.

  He got up between ten and eleven.

  Combing his hair before the looking-glass, and looking at his ugly face, pale from his sleepless night, he thought:

  “It’s perfectly true . . . an ugly duckling!”

  When maman saw him and was horrified that he was not at his examination, Volodya said:

  “I overslept myself, maman. . . . But don’t worry, I will get a medical certificate.”

  Madame Shumihin and Nyuta waked up at one o’clock. Volodya heard Madame Shumihin open her window with a bang, heard Nyuta go off into a peal of laughter in reply to her coarse voice. He saw the door open and a string of nieces and other toadies (among the latter was his maman) file into lunch, caught a glimpse of Nyuta’s freshly washed laughing face, and, beside her, the black brows and beard of her husband the architect, who had just arrived.

  Nyuta was wearing a Little Russian dress which did not suit her at all, and made her look clumsy; the architect was making dull and vulgar jokes. The rissoles served at lunch had too much onion in them—so it seemed to Volodya. It also seemed to him that Nyuta laughed loudly on purpose, and kept glancing in his direction to give him to understand that the memory of the night did not trouble her in the least, and that she was not aware of the presence at table of the “ugly duckling.”

  At four o’clock Volodya drove to the station with his maman. Foul memories, the sleepless night, the prospect of expulsion from school, the stings of conscience—all roused in him now an oppressive, gloomy anger. He looked at maman‘s sharp profile, at her little nose, and at the raincoat which was a present from Nyuta, and muttered:

  “Why do you powder? It’s not becoming at your age! You make yourself up, don’t pay your debts at cards, smoke other people’s tobacco . . . . It’s hateful! I don’t love you . . . I don’t love you!”

  He was insulting her, and she moved her little eyes about in alarm, flung up her hands, and whispered in horror:

  “What are you saying, my dear! Good gracious! the coachman will hear! Be quiet or the coachman will hear! He can overhear everything.”

  “I don’t love you . . . I don’t love you!” he went on breathlessly. “You’ve no soul and no morals. . . . Don’t dare to wear that raincoat! Do you hear? Or else I will tear it into rags. . . .”

  “Control yourself, my child,” maman wept; “the coachman can hear!”

  “And where is my father’s fortune? Where is your money? You have wasted it all. I am not ashamed of being poor, but I am ashamed of having such a mother. . . . When my schoolfellows ask questions about you, I always blush.”

>   In the train they had to pass two stations before they reached the town. Volodya spent all the time on the little platform between two carriages and shivered all over. He did not want to go into the compartment because there the mother he hated was sitting. He hated himself, hated the ticket collectors, the smoke from the engine, the cold to which he attributed his shivering. And the heavier the weight on his heart, the more strongly he felt that somewhere in the world, among some people, there was a pure, honourable, warm, refined life, full of love, affection, gaiety, and serenity. . . . He felt this and was so intensely miserable that one of the passengers, after looking in his face attentively, actually asked:

  “You have the toothache, I suppose?”

  In the town maman and Volodya lived with Marya Petrovna, a lady of noble rank, who had a large flat and let rooms to boarders. Maman had two rooms, one with windows and two pictures in gold frames hanging on the walls, in which her bed stood and in which she lived, and a little dark room opening out of it in which Volodya lived. Here there was a sofa on which he slept, and, except that sofa, there was no other furniture; the rest of the room was entirely filled up with wicker baskets full of clothes, cardboard hat-boxes, and all sorts of rubbish, which maman preserved for some reason or other. Volodya prepared his lessons either in his mother’s room or in the “general room,” as the large room in which the boarders assembled at dinner-time and in the evening was called.

  On reaching home he lay down on his sofa and put the quilt over him to stop his shivering. The cardboard hat-boxes, the wicker baskets, and the other rubbish, reminded him that he had not a room of his own, that he had no refuge in which he could get away from his mother, from her visitors, and from the voices that were floating up from the “general room.” The satchel and the books lying about in the corners reminded him of the examination he had missed. . . . For some reason there came into his mind, quite inappropriately, Mentone, where he had lived with his father when he was seven years old; he thought of Biarritz and two little English girls with whom he ran about on the sand. . . . He tried to recall to his memory the colour of the sky, the sea, the height of the waves, and his mood at the time, but he could not succeed. The English girls flitted before his imagination as though they were living; all the rest was a medley of images that floated away in confusion. . . .