Forty Stories

by Anton Chekhov

  On Semyon’s face there was an expression of triumph, as though he had proved something and rejoiced that everything had happened as he predicted. The miserable, helpless look on the face of the man in the jacket lined with fox fur evidently afforded him great satisfaction.

  “It’s muddy traveling this time of the year, Vassily Sergeich,” he said while they were harnessing the horses on the riverbank. “You’d have done better to wait a week or two, when it gets drier. Or better still, given up the journey.… It might be worthwhile if any good could come out of it, but as you know yourself, people have been driving about for ages and ages, and day and night too, and nothing ever came of it. That’s the truth!”

  In silence Vassily Sergeich handed them some vodka money, climbed into the carriage, and drove away.

  “So he’s chasing after a doctor,” said Semyon, shuddering with cold. “Looking for a real doctor is like hunting the wind across the fields or taking the devil by the hind leg, damn it all! What queer fellows, eh? Lord have mercy on me!”

  The Tartar went up to Semyon, looking at him with hatred and horror, trembling all over, and, mixing Tartar words with his broken Russian, said: “He is good … good, but you … you are bad! You are bad! Gentleman is good soul, fine man, you … you are beast, horrible! Gentleman is alive, you are carcass.… God created man to be alive, to be happy and sad and full of sorrow, but you … you want nothing. You not alive, you stone, lump of clay! Stone want nothing, and you want nothing! You are stone, and God does not love you. God loves gentleman!”

  They all laughed at him, and the Tartar frowned contemptuously, and with a wave of his hand he wrapped himself in his rags and went up to the fire. Semyon and the ferrymen went off to the hut.

  “It’s cold,” one of the ferrymen said in a hoarse voice, stretching himself on the straw which littered the damp clay floor.

  “Well, it’s not warm,” another agreed. “It’s a convict’s life all right!”

  They were all lying down. The door was blown open by the wind, and snow poured into the hut. No one wanted to get up and close the door; it was cold, and they were lazy.

  “I’m all right,” said Semyon, going off to sleep. “God give everyone such a life!”

  “Seven years’ hard labor, and everyone knows it. The devil himself wouldn’t have you!”

  From outside came a sound like a dog howling.

  “What’s that? Who’s there?”

  “It’s the Tartar crying.”

  “Well, he’s a queer one!”

  “Oh, he’ll get used to it,” Semyon said, and he went off to sleep.

  Soon all the others were asleep. And the door remained unclosed.

  May 1892

  1 He means a prisoner on parole, forced to live in Siberia.

  Big Volodya and Little Volodya

  “PLEASE let me drive! I’ll go and sit with the driver!” Sophia Lvovna said in a loud voice. “Wait a moment, driver! I’m coming to sit beside you!”

  She stood up in the sleigh, and her husband, Vladimir Nikitich, and the friend of her childhood, Vladimir Mikhailovich, both held her hands to prevent her from falling. The troika was moving fast.

  “I said she should never have touched the brandy,” Vladimir Nikitich said in annoyance as he turned to his companion. “You’re some fellow, eh?”

  The colonel knew from experience that after even a moderate amount of drinking women like Sophia Lvovna often give way to hysterical laughter and then tears. He was afraid that when they reached home, instead of going to sleep, he would spend the night administering compresses and pouring out medicines.

  “Whoa there!” Sophia Lvovna shouted. “I want to drive!”

  She felt genuinely happy and on top of the world. For the last two months, ever since her wedding, she had tormented herself with the thought that she had married Colonel Yagich for his money and, as they say, par dépit; but that day, in a surburban restaurant, she came suddenly and finally to the conclusion that she loved him passionately. In spite of his fifty-four years he was so finely built, so agile and sinewy, and he was always making exquisite puns and accompanying gypsy bands. It is quite true that older men nowadays are a thousand times more interesting than the young: it seems as though age and youth have exchanged roles. The colonel was two years older than her father, but such a fact could have no significance when, to tell the truth, he had infinitely more vitality, vigor, and youthfulness than she had, and she was only twenty-three.

  “Oh, my darling!” she thought. “How wonderful you are!”

  In the restaurant she came to the conclusion that there was not one spark of her old feeling for her childhood friend left. For this friend, Vladimir Mikhailovich, or simply Volodya, she had felt only the day before an insane and desperate passion; now she was completely indifferent to him. All evening he had seemed stupid, dull, uninteresting, insignificant; and the way he cold-bloodedly and continually escaped paying the restaurant checks had shocked her, and so she had only just been able to resist telling him: “Why don’t you stay at home, if you are so poor?” The colonel paid for everything.

  Perhaps because trees, telephone poles, and snowdrifts were flitting past her eyes, all kinds of disconnected thoughts were passing through her brain. She remembered now that the check at the restaurant amounted to a hundred and twenty rubles, and there was another hundred rubles for the gypsies, and tomorrow she could throw a thousand rubles away if she wanted to, while only two months ago, before her wedding, she had not three rubles to her name, and had to beg her father for the least little thing. How things had changed!

  Her thoughts were confused. It occurred to her that when she was ten years old her present husband, Colonel Yagich, was flirting with her aunt, and everyone at home said he had ruined her, and it was perfectly true that her aunt came down to dinner with tears in her eyes and was always going off somewhere; and they said of her that she would never find any peace. He was extremely handsome in those days and had extraordinary success with women, a fact widely known in the town. They said that every day he went on a round of visits among his adorers, exactly like a doctor visiting his patients. Even now, in spite of his gray hair, wrinkles, and spectacles, his lean face, especially in profile, remained handsome.

  Sophia Lvovna’s father was an army doctor who had once served in the same regiment as Yagich. Volodya’s father was also an army doctor; at one time he had served in the same regiment as Yagich and her father. In spite of many turbulent and complicated love affairs, Volodya had been a brilliant student, and now, having completed his course at the university with great success, he was specializing in foreign literature and, as they say, writing his dissertation. He lived in the barracks with his father, the army doctor, and although he was now thirty years old he still had no means of subsistence. As children, Sophia Lvovna and he had lived under the same roof, though in different apartments, and he often came to play with her, and they learned dancing and took French lessons together. As he grew to become a well-built, exceedingly handsome young man, she began to feel shy in his presence and fell madly in love with him, and she remained in love with him right up to the moment when she married Yagich. He, too, had been extraordinarily successful with women almost from the age of fourteen, and the women who deceived their husbands with him usually justified themselves by saying that Volodya was only a boy. Recently the story got around that when he was a student living in lodgings near the university, anyone who went to call on him would hear footsteps behind the door and there would come a whispered apology: “Pardon, je ne suis pas seul?” Yagich was enthusiastic about him, and as Derzhavin blessed Pushkin,1 so Yagich blessed the young student, solemnly regarding him as his successor; and apparently he was very fond of him. For whole hours they played billiards or piquet together without saying a word, and if Yagich drove out on his troika he always took Volodya with him; and Yagich alone was initiated into the mysteries of his dissertation. Earlier, when the colonel was younger, they were often rivals in love, but
there was never any jealousy between them. In the society in which they moved, Yagich was nicknamed Big Volodya and his friend Little Volodya.

  On the sleigh, besides Sophia Lvovna, Big Volodya, and Little Volodya, there was still another person—Margarita Alexandrovna, known as Rita, a cousin of Madame Yagich, a very pale woman, over thirty, with black eyebrows and wearing pince-nez; she smoked cigarettes continually even in the bitterest frosty weather: there was always cigarette ash on her knees and on the front of her dress. She spoke through her nose, drawling out each word, a coldhearted woman who could drink any amount of liqueurs and brandy without getting drunk, and she liked telling anecdotes with double-entendres in a tasteless way. At home she read serious magazines from morning to night, while strewing cigarette ash all over them and eating frozen apples.

  “Oh, Sonya, stop behaving like a lunatic!” she said, drawling out the words. “Really, it is too silly for words!”

  When they were in sight of the town gate, the troika went more slowly, as houses and people began to flicker past; and now Sophia Lvovna grew quiet, nestling against her husband and surrendering to her own thoughts. Sitting opposite her was Little Volodya. Her happy, lighthearted thoughts were mingled with melancholy ones. She thought: “This man who is sitting opposite me knows I loved him, and it is very likely he believes the gossip that I married the colonel par dépit?” Not once had she ever told him she was in love with him, and she had never wanted him to know this, and accordingly she had concealed her feelings; but from the expression on his face it was perfectly obvious that he had seen through her, and her pride suffered. The most humiliating thing was that ever since the wedding Little Volodya had been forcing his attentions upon her, and this had never happened before. He spent long hours with her in complete silence or talking about nothing at all, and even now in the sleigh, though he did not speak to her, he would gently touch her feet or her hands. It appeared that he wanted nothing more and was delighted with her marriage; it also appeared that he despised her and she excited in him an interest of a certain kind, as though she were an immoral, disreputable woman. And when her triumphant affection for her husband mingled in her soul with feelings of humiliation and wounded pride, she was overcome with a fierce resentment and wanted to sit in the coachman’s box and whistle and scream at the horses.

  They were just passing the nunnery when the huge sixteen-ton bell rang out. Rita crossed herself.

  “Our Olga lives in the nunnery,” Sophia Ivanovna said, and then she crossed herself and shivered.

  “Why did she enter a nunnery?” the colonel asked.

  “Par dépit” Rita said angrily, with obvious reference to Sophia Lvovna’s marriage to Yagich. “Par dépit is all the rage now. Defy the whole world—that’s what they do. She was a furious little coquette, always giggling, and she only liked balls and cavaliers and then suddenly—she had gone away, and everyone was surprised!”

  “Not true at all!” said Little Volodya, turning down the collar of his fur coat and revealing his handsome face. “It wasn’t par dépit at all, but something quite horrible, if you please. Her brother Dmitry went to penal servitude, and no one knows where he is. Her mother died of grief.”

  Then he turned up his collar.

  “Olga did well,” he added in a muffled voice. “Living as an adopted child and with that paragon of virtue Sophia Lvovna—you have to take that into account, too!”

  Sophia Lvovna was well aware of the note of contempt in his voice and she wanted to say something to hurt him, but she remained silent. Once again she was overcome with a passion of remonstrance, and she rose to her feet and shouted in a tear-filled voice: “I want to go to the early service! Turn back, driver! I want to see Olga!”

  They turned back, and the deep-toned nunnery bell reminded Sophia of Olga and about all Olga’s life. Other church bells were also ringing. When the driver brought the troika to a stop, Sophia Lvovna jumped from the sleigh, and ran unescorted up to the gate of the nunnery.

  “Please be quick!” her husband shouted after her. “We’re already late!”

  She went through the dark gateway and then along an avenue which led from the gateway to the largest of the churches, while the snow crackled under her feet and the church bells rang directly over her head, so that they seemed to penetrate her whole being. Then she came to the church door; there were three steps leading down, and a porch with icons on each side which smelled of incense and juniper, and then there was another door, and a dark figure opened it and bowed low to the ground. Inside the church, the service had not yet begun. One of the nuns was walking past the iconostasis and lighting the candles on the tall candlesticks, while another lit the candles on the luster. Here and there by the columns and the side chapels stood black motionless figures. “I suppose they will be standing there as they are now until tomorrow morning,” Sophia Lvovna thought, and it seemed to her that everything in the church was cold, dark, and boring—more boring than a cemetery. With a bored gaze she watched those motionless figures growing colder each minute, and suddenly she felt as though a hand were squeezing her heart. She recognized Olga, who was one of the nuns, with thin shoulders, a black kerchief over her head, and quite short. She was sure she had seen her, though when Olga had entered the nunnery she was plump and seemed taller. Hesitating, completely overwhelmed by what she had seen, Sophia Lvovna went up to the nun and looked at her over her shoulder, and she was sure it was Olga.

  “Olga!” she cried, and clapped her hands, and she was so tongue-tied that she could only say: “Olga!”

  The nun recognized her at once, and her eyebrows rose in surprise. Both her pure, pale, freshly washed face and the white headband she wore under the wimple seemed to be shining with joy.

  “God has sent a miracle!” she cried, and she clapped her thin, pale hands.

  Sophia Lvovna threw her arms fiercely around her, and then kissed her. She was afraid Olga would smell the wine she had drunk.

  “We were just driving past when I remembered about you,” she said, breathing deeply, as though she had been hurrying. “Lord, how pale you are! I’m so glad to see you! Tell me how you are! Are you lonely here?”

  Sophia Lvovna looked round at the other nuns and said softly: “There have been so many changes at home. You know I am married to Yagich—Vladimir Nikitich Yagich. I suppose you remember him.… I’m very happy!”

  “Praise be,” Olga said. “And is your father well?”

  “Yes, he’s well, thank you. He often asks about you. Olga, you must come and stay with us during the holidays.”

  “Yes, of course,” Olga said, and she smiled. “I’ll come the second day of the holidays.”

  Sophia Lvovna did not know why she began weeping. For a whole minute she wept silently, and then she dried her eyes and said: “Rita will be very sorry not to have seen you. She is here with us. Volodya’s here, too. They are near the gate. How pleased they would be if you would come out and see them! Shall we go? The service hasn’t begun yet.”

  “Yes, let’s go,” Olga agreed.

  She crossed herself three times and went out with Sophia Lvovna to the gate.

  “Are you really happy? Are you, Sophia?” she asked as they came into the open.

  “Very happy!”

  “Praise be!”

  Big Volodya and Little Volodya jumped out of the sleigh as soon as they saw the nun, and they greeted her respectfully. They were both visibly touched by her pallor and the dark nun’s costume, and they were both pleased because she remembered them and had come out to greet them. To prevent her from getting cold, Sophia wrapped her in a rug and covered her with a flap of fur coat. Sophia’s tears of a few moments ago had cleansed and relieved her spirits, and she was happy now that this noisy, restless, and in fact thoroughly impure night could have such a pure and clear-cut sequel. To keep Olga a little longer by her side, she said: “Let’s take her for a drive! Come in, Olga! We’ll just have a short drive.…”

  The men expected the nun t
o refuse—holy people do not ride around in troikas—but to their surprise she agreed and got into the sleigh. And when the sleigh was hurrying in the direction of the town gate they were all silent, while trying to keep her warm and comfortable, and they were all thinking about her past and her present. Her face was passionless, almost expressionless, cold, pale, transparent, as though water, not blood, were flowing through her veins. Only two or three years ago she had been plump and red-cheeked, and she had talked all the time about her beaux and giggled over every mortal thing.

  Near the town gate the sleigh turned back, and ten minutes later they stopped outside the nunnery gate and Olga got out. Now the church bells were ringing again.

  “May God be with you,” Olga said, making a low bow as nuns always do.

  “You’ll come and visit us, won’t you, Olga?”

  “Yes, indeed!”

  Then she left them and quickly disappeared through the dark gateway. Afterward the troika drove on again, and they were engulfed in a wave of melancholy. They were all silent. Sophia Lvovna felt as though her whole body had gone weak, and her spirits fell. It occurred to her that inviting a nun to sit in a sleigh and drive around with some drunken companions was stupid, tactless, and perhaps sacrilegious, and as her own drunkenness wore off, so she lost any desire to delude herself, and it became clear to her that she had no love for her husband and indeed could never love him, and it was all folly and stupidity. She had married him for his money, because, in the words of her school friends, he was madly rich, and because she was afraid of being an old maid like Rita, and because she was fed up with her father, the doctor, and because she wanted to annoy Little Volodya. If she could have known when she married her husband that her life would be hideous, dreadful, and burdensome, she would not have consented to the marriage for all the gold in the world. But the damage could never be undone, and she had to reconcile herself to it.