Forty Stories

by Anton Chekhov

  The Bride

  I

  IT was about ten o’clock in the evening, and a full moon was shining over the garden. In the Shumins’ house the evening service, held because the grandmother, Marfa Mikhailovna, wanted it, was only just over, and now Nadya—who had slipped out into the garden for a minute—could see the table being laid for supper in the dining room, and her grandmother bustling about in a magnificent silk dress, while Father Andrey, the archpresbyter of the cathedral, was discussing something with Nina Ivanovna, Nadya’s mother, who for some reason looked very young when seen through the window in the evening light. Beside Nina Ivanovna stood Andrey Andreyich, Father Andrey’s son, who was listening attentively.

  It was quiet and cool in the garden, where the dark peaceful shadows lay on the earth. From a long way away, probably from outside the town, came the croaking of frogs. There was a feeling of May, sweet May, in the air. You found yourself breathing deeply, and you imagined that somewhere else, somewhere beneath the sky and above the treetops, somewhere in the open fields and the forests far from the town—somewhere there the spring was burgeoning with its own mysterious and beautiful life, full of riches and holiness, beyond the comprehension of weak, sinful man. And for some reason you found yourself wanting to cry.

  Nadya was already twenty-three, and ever since she was sixteen she had been passionately dreaming of marriage: now at last she was betrothed to Andrey Andreyich, whom she could see clearly through the window. She liked him, the wedding had been arranged for the seventh of July, but she felt no joy in her heart, slept badly at night, and all her happiness had gone from her. Through the open windows of the kitchen in the basement, she heard the servants scurrying about, the clatter of knives, the banging of the swinging door; there was the smell of roast turkey and marinated cherries. And for some reason it seemed to her that it would always be like this, unchanging till the end of time.

  Someone came out of the house and stood on the steps. It was Alexander Timofeyich, known as Sasha, who had arrived from Moscow about ten days before for a visit. Many years ago there had come to the grandmother’s house a certain distant relative, Maria Petrovna, a widowed gentlewoman, begging charity. She was small and thin, and suffered from some illness, and was very poor. Sasha was her son. For some reason people said of him that he would make a fine artist, and when his mother died, Grandmother, for the salvation of her own soul, sent him to study at the Komissarov school in Moscow. A year or so later he went on to study at a school of painting, where he remained for about fifteen years, just managing to scrape through his final examinations in architecture, but he never practiced as an architect. Instead he went to work at a lithography shop in Moscow. He used to spend nearly every summer with Nadya’s grandmother, usually very ill, to rest and recuperate.

  He wore a tightly buttoned frock coat and shabby canvas trousers crumpled at the hems. His shirt had not been ironed, and there was something soiled about him. He wore a beard, was very thin, with enormous eyes, long lean fingers, and his skin was dark; in spite of this, he was handsome. At the Shumins’ he was regarded as one of the family, and felt himself at home. For a long time the room where he lived when he visited them had been known as Sasha’s room.

  Standing on the porch, he caught sight of Nadya and went up to her.

  “It’s nice here,” he said.

  “It’s really nice. You ought to stay until the autumn.”

  “Yes, I know. Probably I’ll have to. I may stay with you till September.”

  He burst out laughing for no reason at all, and then sat down beside her.

  “I’ve been sitting here and gazing at Mother,” said Nadya. “She looks so young from here. Of course, she has her weaknesses,” she added after a pause, “but she is still a most unusual woman.”

  “Yes, she’s very nice,” Sasha agreed. “In her own way, of course. She’s good and kind, but somehow … How shall I put it? Early this morning I went down to your kitchen. I saw four maidservants sleeping right there on the floor, no beds, just a few rags for bedclothes, stench, bedbugs, cockroaches.… It was like that twenty years ago, and since then there’s been no change at all. It’s no use blaming your grandmother, God bless her soul, but your mother speaks French and acts in amateur theatricals.… You’d think she’d understand about these things.”

  While Sasha talked, he held out two long bony fingers in front of Nadya’s face.

  “Everything here looks strange to me,” he went on. “Maybe it’s because I’m not used to it. God in heaven, no one ever does anything! Your mother does nothing all day but walk about like a duchess, your grandmother does nothing either, and you’re the same. And your fiancé, Andrey Andreyich, does nothing either!”

  Nadya had heard all this the year before, and she thought she had heard it the year before that: she knew that was how Sasha’s mind worked. Once these speeches had amused her, but now for some reason they irritated her.

  “It’s old stuff,” she said, and got up. “I wish you’d say something new.”

  He laughed and got up too, and they walked together to the house. She was tall, beautiful, well formed, and looked almost offensively healthy and stylishly dressed beside him; she was even conscious of this herself, and felt sorry for him, and strangely awkward.

  “You talk a lot of nonsense!” she said. “Look what you just said about my Andrey—you really don’t know him at all!”

  “My Andrey!… Never mind your Andrey!… It’s your youth I’m sorry for!”

  When they reached the dining room, everyone was already at supper. The grandmother—“Granny” to everyone in the house—was a very corpulent, plain old lady with thick eyebrows and a tiny mustache, who talked in a loud voice: from her voice and manner of speaking it was obvious that she was the most important woman in the household. She owned a row of stalls in the market place, the old house with its pillars and garden was hers, and every morning she prayed tearfully to God to spare her from ruin. Her daughter-in-law, Nadya’s mother, Nina Ivanovna, was a tightly corseted blonde who wore pince-nez and rings on all her fingers. Father Andrey was a lean toothless old man who wore an expression which suggested that he was always about to say something amusing, and his son Andrey Andreyich, Nadya’s fiancé, was a plump handsome creature with curly hair, who resembled an actor or a painter. They were all talking about hypnotism.

  “You’ll be well again in a week here,” Granny said, turning to Sasha. “Only you must eat more. Just look at you,” she sighed. “You look dreadful! Why, you look like the Prodigal Son, and that’s the truth!”

  “He wasted his substance in riotous living,” Father Andrey said slowly, his eyes lighting up with amusement. “And it was his curse to feed with the unmitigated swine!”

  “I admire my old man,” Andrey Andreyich said, patting his father’s shoulder. “He’s really a splendid old fellow. Very decent.”

  They were silent for a while. Sasha suddenly burst out laughing, and covered his mouth with his napkin.

  “So you believe in hypnotism?” Father Andrey asked Nina Ivanovna.

  “No, I can’t exactly say I believe in it,” Nina Ivanovna replied, assuming a very grave, almost harsh expression. “Still, I must admit there is a good deal that remains mysterious and incomprehensible in nature.”

  “I am entirely of your opinion, though I would add that for us faith decidedly narrows the sphere of the mysterious.”

  A huge, immensely fat turkey was being served. Father Andrey and Nina Ivanovna continued their conversation. The diamonds on Nina Ivanovna’s fingers sparkled, but soon tears came to gleam in her eyes, and she was overcome with emotion.

  “Yes, yes,” she said. “I wouldn’t dream of arguing with you, but you must agree that there are many insoluble riddles to life!”

  “Well, I don’t know one insoluble riddle!”

  After supper Andrey Andreyich played the violin, Nina Ivanovna accompanying him on the piano. Ten years previously he had graduated from the faculty of philolo
gy at the university, but he never entered government service, never worked at a definite occupation; he merely played at occasional concerts given for charity. In the town, people spoke of him as an artist.

  Andrey Andreyich played, and they listened in silence. The samovar steamed quietly on the table, but Sasha was the only one to drink tea. When it struck twelve, a violin string suddenly snapped, and they all laughed. Then they bustled about, and soon they were saying good-by.

  After taking leave of her fiancé, Nadya went upstairs to the apartment she shared with her mother—the lower floor was occupied by her grandmother. Down below, in the drawing room, they were putting out the lights, but Sasha was still there, drinking tea. He always spent a long time over his tea, in the Moscow fashion, drinking up to seven glasses at a sitting. Long after she had undressed and gone to bed, Nadya could hear the servants clearing away and Granny talking angrily. At last silence reigned over the house, and there was no sound except the occasional coughing which came from somewhere below, from Sasha’s room.

  II

  It must have been about two o’clock when Nadya awoke. The dawn was coming up. The night watchman’s rattle could be heard in the distance. Nadya could not sleep: her bed felt soft and uncomfortable. She sat up in bed and gave herself up to her thoughts, as she had done during all the previous nights of May. Her thoughts were the same as on the night before: monotonous, futile, insistent—thoughts of how Andrey Andreyich courted and proposed to her, and how she had accepted him and gradually learned to appreciate this good and intelligent man. Yet for some reason, now, a month before the wedding, she began to experience a sense of fear and uneasiness, as though something vague and oppressive lay in wait for her.

  “Tick-tock, tick-tock …” came the lazy tapping of the night watchman. “Tick-tock …”

  Through the big old-fashioned window she could see the garden, and beyond the garden lay the lilac bushes heavy with bloom, drowsy and languid in the cold air, and a heavy white mist suddenly swept up to the lilacs, as though determined to drown them. The drowsy rooks were cawing in the distant trees.

  “My God, why am I so depressed?”

  Perhaps all brides feel the same before their weddings? Who knows? Or could it be the influence of Sasha? But for several years now Sasha had been repeating the same outworn phrases, like a copybook, and when he spoke to her now, he seemed naive and strange to her. Why couldn’t she get the thought of Sasha out of her head? Why?

  The night watchman had stopped tapping long ago. The birds were twittering beneath her window, and in the garden the mist vanished, so that everything glittered and seemed to be smiling in the spring sunshine. Soon the whole garden, warmed and caressed by the sun, sprang to life, and drops of dew gleamed like jewels on the leaves; and the ancient, long-neglected garden looked young and beautifully arrayed in the morning light.

  Granny was already awake. Sasha’s deep coughing could be heard. From below came the sound of the servants setting up the samovar and arranging the chairs.

  The hours passed slowly. Nadya had risen long ago, and for a long time she had been walking about the garden, and still the morning dragged on.

  Then Nina Ivanovna appeared, her face tear-stained, a glass of mineral water in her hand. She went in for spiritualism and homeopathy, read a great deal, and loved talking about the doubts which continually assailed her, and Nadya supposed that all this possessed a profound and mysterious significance. She kissed her mother and walked beside her.

  “What are you crying for, Mama?” she asked.

  “I started a novel last night—it was about an old man and his daughter. The old man worked in an office, and the boss fell in love with the daughter. I never finished it, but I came to a place where I couldn’t prevent myself from crying,” Nina Ivanovna said, and she took a sip from the glass. “And then this morning I remembered it again, and it made me cry.”

  “I’ve been so depressed these nights,” Nadya said after a silence. “I wish I knew why I can’t sleep.”

  “I don’t know, dear. When I can’t sleep I shut my eyes very, very tight—like this—and then I try to imagine how Anna Karenina walked and talked, or else I try to imagine something historical, something from ancient times.…”

  Nadya felt that her mother did not understand her, and was incapable of understanding her. She had never felt this before, and it frightened her. She wanted to hide, and went back to her room.

  At two o’clock they sat down to dinner. It was Wednesday, a fast day, and Granny was served meatless borshch and bream with porridge.

  To tease the grandmother, Sasha ate the meat soup as well as the vegetable soup. He joked all through the meal, but his jokes were labored and invariably directed toward a moral, and there was nothing amusing in his habit of lifting up his long, lean, deathly fingers before making some witty remark, nor was there anything amusing in the thought that he was very ill and perhaps not long for this world. At such times you felt so sorry for him that tears sprang to the eyes.

  After dinner the grandmother went to her room to rest. Nina Ivanovna played for a while on the piano, and then she too went to her room.

  “Oh, dearest Nadya,” Sasha started his usual after-dinner conversation. “If only you would listen to me! If only you would!”

  She was sitting back in an old-fashioned armchair, her eyes closed, while he paced up and down the room.

  “If only you would go away and study!” he said. “Only the enlightened and holy people are interesting—they are the only ones needed. The more such people there are, the quicker will the Kingdom of Heaven descend on earth. Then it will happen little by little that not one stone will be left standing, in this town of yours everything will be shaken to its foundations, and everything will be changed, as though by magic. There will be immense and utterly magnificent houses, marvelous gardens, glorious fountains, extraordinary people.… But this is not the important thing! The most important thing is that the masses, as we understand the word, giving it its present-day meaning—they will disappear, this evil will vanish, and every man will know what he is living for, and no one any longer will look for support among the masses. My dearest darling, go away! Show them that you are sick to the stomach of this stagnant, dull, sinful life of yours! At least prove it for yourself!”

  “No, Sasha, I can’t! I’m going to be married.”

  “Never mind! Who cares about that?”

  They went into the garden and strolled for a while.

  “Anyhow, my dearest, you simply must think, you must realize how immoral and unclean your idle life is,” Sasha went on. “Can’t you realize that to enable you and your mother and your grandmother to live a life of leisure, others have to work for you, and you are devouring their lives? Is that right? Isn’t it a filthy thing to do?”

  Nadya wanted to say: “Yes, you are right.” She wanted to say she understood perfectly, but tears came to her eyes, and suddenly she fell silent, and she shrank into herself, and went to her room.

  Toward evening Andrey Andreyich arrived, and as usual he played the violin for a long time. He was by nature taciturn, and perhaps he enjoyed playing the violin because there was no need to speak while playing it. At eleven o’clock he had put on his overcoat and was about to go home when he took Nadya in his arms and passionately kissed her face, her shoulders, her hands.

  “My dear, beautiful darling,” he murmured. “Oh, how happy I am! I am out of my mind with happiness!”

  And it seemed to her that she had heard these same words long ago, or perhaps she had read them somewhere … in an old dog-eared novel thrown away a long time ago.

  In the drawing room Sasha was sitting at table drinking tea, the saucer poised on his five long fingers, while Granny was spreading out the cards for a game of patience, and Nina Ivanovna was reading. The flame spluttered in the icon lamp, and it seemed that everyone was quietly happy. Nadya said good night and went upstairs to her room, and lying down on the bed, she immediately fell asleep. But just
as on the night before, she awoke with the first light of dawn. She could not sleep: a restless and oppressive spirit moved in her. She sat up in bed, resting her head on her knees, and thinking about her fiancé and her wedding.… For some reason she remembered that her mother had never loved her father, and now the mother possessed nothing of her own, and was completely dependent on Granny, her mother-in-law. And try as she would, Nadya could not understand why she had always regarded her mother as an exceptional and remarkable person, and why it had never occurred to her that her mother was only a simple, quite ordinary, and unhappy woman.

  And Sasha, too, was awake—she heard him coughing downstairs. “What a strange naïve person he is,” Nadya thought, “and those dreams of his—those marvelous gardens and glorious fountains—how absurd they are!” But for some reason she found so much that was beautiful in his naïveté and his absurdity, and the moment she permitted herself to dream of going away and studying, cold shivers bathed her whole heart and breast, and she was overwhelmed with sensations of joy and ecstasy.

  “Better not to think about it,” she whispered. “No, one shouldn’t think about such things.”

  “Tick-tock …” the night watchman was rapping with his stick far away. “Tick-tock … tick-tock …”

  III

  Toward the middle of June, Sasha was suddenly overcome with boredom and made up his mind to return to Moscow.

  “I can’t go on living in this town,” he said moodily. “No running water, no drains! I can hardly force myself to eat dinner—the kitchen is so indescribably filthy!”

  “Wait a little while, Prodigal Son,” Grandmother said, and for some reason she lowered her voice to a whisper. “The wedding is on the seventh.”

  “I don’t want to wait!”

  “Didn’t you say you intended to stay until September?”

  “I don’t want to any more. I want to go and work!”

  The summer had turned cold and wet, the trees were damp, the garden looked somber and uninviting, and none of this caused anyone to desire to work. Unfamiliar female voices were heard in all the rooms upstairs and downstairs, and they could hear the clatter of the sewing machince in Grandmother’s room: they were rushing to get the trousseau ready. Of fur coats alone, Nadya was to have six, and the cheapest of them, according to Grandmother, cost three hundred rubles! The fuss irritated Sasha, who remained in his room, fuming with anger; but they talked him into staying, and he promised not to leave before the first of July.